cineSOURCE magazine

State of the Cartoon Report
by Karl Cohen

SF's Mark Fiore Wins Pulitzer for Polical Animated Cartoons

Mark Fiore, a political cartoonist and animator who rises above all others on the Internet, is presently on SFGate.com, Mother Jones.com, CBSNews.com and other sites.

Equal Opportunity Insulter: Fiore reserves his most searing sarcasm for bankers, Republicans, etc. Photo: courtesy M. Fiore

His submissions for the Pulitzer included "Science-gate" (12/09/09) which lampoons skeptics of global warming, "Obama Interruptus" (12/02/09) which portrays his trying to stay focused despite the distractions of the world around him, and "Credit Card Reform" (10/28/09) which takes on the fabulous mumbo-jumbo double-talk offers of the credit card industry.

In 2000, Fiore taught himself Flash, found two customers and started churning out Flash cartoons like crazy. Then the "dream job" he had always wanted appeared: the San Jose Mercury News hired him as their political cartoonist. Being on staff was great until he discovered his editor was under tremendous pressure to keep circulation and ad revenues up.

"It was awful," Fiore says. He lasted six months due to their restrictive editorial policy. (Translation: the Merc did not allow him to kick ass and say what he wanted because of editor's fear of loosing income if he really allowed his staff to speak freely.)

Fiore has been syndicating his weekly animated cartoons online since leaving the paper in 2001, earning high praise. The Wall Street Journal calls him "The undisputed guru of the form." He has received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and other honors. Syndicated weekly to numerous Websites run by newspapers and other organizations, his work is seen regularly by millions of people.

With excellent voice work, music, and animation, Fiore's cartoons are extremely well produced. More importantly, he is free to say what he wants. He says he gets his ideas from the daily media. Whatever upsets him the most generally becomes the subject/butt of his next cartoon. Indeed, he dares to make fun of any subject that interests him.

One brilliant Fiore cartoon, "What If_" (6/25/08), suggests what might happen if a third candidate had entered the 2008 presidential race. In a faux political hit piece, Fiore has an advertisement attacking the candidate's ethics, patriotism, etc. "He has never once been seen wearing a flag pin. He has spent years studying at a religious school in the Middle East. Some call him a hero for the injuries he sustained under torture, yet he would sit down and talk with those who would harm us. His tax plan amounts to making the rich poor and poor rich - Jesus Christ, not the change we want!" See Fiore's work at http://www.markfiore.com.

Imagemovers Starts "Dark Life" for Disney

Robert Zemeckis, who was one of the "Dirty Dozen" cabal of filmmakers at USC including Walter Murch and George Lucas, is keeping his team in the game despite Imagemovers's closure by Disney last month (see CS Apr10). "Dark Life," a science fiction set in the near future, when some humans have escaped environmental disasters by living under the sea, is slated for a fall 2010 release. But it is will contain little or no performance capture work, so I suspect the actors will perform on blue or green screen sets and Imagemovers Digital will drop in computer generated backgrounds. The studio is still set to close early next year.

Oakland Museum Celebrates Pixar

To celebrate Pixar's 25 years of animating excellence in the Bay Area, the Oakland Museum of California is mounting a massive show, with over 500 works, including several not previously seen, from July 31 to January 9, 2011. The show began in 2005 at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and over the past five years it has traveled around the world.

The local exhibit will also show off the museum's new major remodeling work, which kept it closed for months. The museum updated the exhibit so it will include art from "Up," "Toy Story 3," "Wall'E" and other recent projects. Adding a sense of novelty, there will be a giant "Pixar Zoetrope" that you can enter to see the moving images, and Artscape, "an immersive, wide-screen projection of digitally processed images that gives the viewer a sensation of entering into and exploring the exquisite details of the original artwork."

The exhibit covers about 11,000 square feet of exhibit space and is adjacent to Oakland's centerpiece, Lake Merritt, a lovely place to take a walk and grab a bite at Lake Chalet.

Disney/Pixar Sign Selick Contract

Variety announced no details except that the renown animator Henry Selick will work out of Pixar (he is still commuting from Portland but plans to move back soon) and that Henry's stop-motion work could be based on either his own ideas or adaptations. They also said, "Selick hopes to benefit from the Pixar brain trust and technology, but will continue to produce 'toons using his trademark stop-motion style."

Selick directed both "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach" for Disney. After "James" was completed, Disney decided to only produce computer-generated animation. However, after creating overly expensive CG products that were not super profitable, they suddenly see the wisdom of returning to less expensive, Selick-style stop-motion or to hand-drawn animation - a historically rare case of technological de-evolution.

Lucas Expert at Extending "Star Wars"

Variety has announced Lucasfilm Animation is working on a Star Wars animated comedy series. The Daily Show's Brendan Hay and Robot Chicken's Seth Green and Matthew Seinreich, will be among the writers.

Posted on May 11, 2010 - 12:15 AM
My Half Century With Islam, Part 3
by Doniphan Blair

Mediaeval Jewish money lenders, not as severely caricatured as some images. illo: unknown, circa 16th century

Continued from My Half Century With Islam, Part 2
Go to My Half Century With Islam, Part 1

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WHILE THIS HUMAN TENDENCY TO
transfer blame was exploited by greedy, tyrannical or psychopathic individuals, it was also exacerbated by design flaws in Christian and Muslim civilization. The most notable of these is the prohibition of lending at interest, which Christians and Muslims “borrowed” from “The Old Testament”, where it is forbidden 18 times. The Jews could prohibit interest because they operated as a tribe, with members repaying the favor of an interest-free loan through labor, marriage or other gifts, but in a multitribal society or enormous civilization that would be severely limiting. Who would lend a non-tribal member a hundred head of sheep, say, only to be reimbursed five years later with the same herd? Indeed, lending is the central fiduciary instrument for building civilization, after money itself, and it dates back to Sumer. Lending at interest encourages people to help those outside their tribe; it redistributes accumulated resources through fair recompense, rather than disruptive or violent seizure; it accelerates economic recovery after environmental or social disaster; and it finances startups and inventions. The common complaint against it, that excessive or “usurious” interest rates are punishing or even enslaving, which is true in many cases, is solved by free markets and competition between lenders, not increasing control.

To replace the essential growth mechanism of financing, Muslims turned loans into investments, with recompense dependent on outcome, while the Christians invented a “tax loophole with God.” After the turn of the first millennium, Christians leaders began to worry that Christ had cancelled his “second coming” because the Church was serving as the bank, which condemned them to eternal damnation. Since the Jews were going to hell anyway, they reasoned, the Jews could serve as the retail money lenders for the Christians, while the princes and bishops would be the wholesale bankers, lending to and collecting their cut from the Jews (see my article on about it ).

During the Middle Ages, Muslims, Christians and Jews debated lending publicly as well as privately. Due to their hypocrisy about moneylending, religious compulsion and heavenly reward but similar views on other subjects, many Christians and Muslims were challenged by their encounter with Judaism, which their faiths had supposedly surpassed. This generated a conscious or subconscious death wish, much like unhappy sons hoping their fathers would get out of the way or simply die already. Despite worshiping the same single Lord and believing in monotheism’s universal justice, Christian and Muslim authorities decided to relieve their inferiority complexes and need to scapegoat by punishing the Jews. They instituted restrictions and humiliations, identifying insignias, hats or clothing, exclusion from professions, activities or the community outright, and, ultimately, mass murder. You don’t need to be a religious scholar to realize that murdering Jews solely for their religion abrogates the ethics of Christ and Muhammad, which, in turn, increased Christian and Muslim guilt and anger with their fathers.

The Muslims enacted only a few massacres of Jews, or “farhuds” as their pogroms are called, before the 20th century, while Christians executed over 99% of the killing. They started in 1096 with the First Crusade, which commenced its effort to “bring the light of Christ to the world” by slaughtering the large Jewish communities thriving along the Rhine River. It culminated three years later, with the capture of Jerusalem and the Crusaders’ slaughter of its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants—until its streets ran ankle deep with blood. In point of fact, the previous Dark Ages were actually a time of light for Jews living across southern and middle Europe, doing the same work as their Christian neighbors, members in good standing of multi-faith communities. The central square of 4th century Cologne, Germany, for example, had polytheist temples for Roman and Gothic deities as well as a church and a synagogue. Their millennium of horror started around the Renaissance, ironically, as the Church’s spiritual monopoly and wealth allowed them to force Jews into moneylending, ghettos, wearing insignias and endless abuse.

The cover of Reverend James Parkes's 'The Jew in the Medieval Community' showing Christians and Jews arguing, books in hand. photo: courtesy J. Parkes

The mass psychosis of mob-driven antisemitism first appeared as the “blood libel,” which started in 1144 AD, in Norwich England, when a 12-year-old boy was found dead. Although there was nothing linking his death to Jews, the monk, Thomas of Monmouth, who investigated it four years later, claimed there was and similar accusations spread across Europe. Supposedly, evil rabbis liked to use gentile children’s blood to make their Passover matzo, the unleavened bread honoring their liberation from slavery, despite the patently obvious fact that blood is red and flour white. Nine centuries later, after immense English achievements, from Shakespeare to defeating the Nazis or maintaining the earth’s oldest continual democracy, a malevolent strain of antisemitism continues in England, supported by hard leftists, new agers and conspiracy theorists as well as Muslim immigrants.

European antisemitism expanded during Black Plague (1346-53), which was blamed on the Jews, because their witchcraft supposedly kept death rates low, not their Kosher cleanliness or medical practices. Then came the Inquisition, which started in 12th century Italy and France but reached its height in 16th century Spain. In the 17th century, the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine killed tens of thousands of Jews, although that was more of a political attack against Polish aristocrats, with whom the mercantile Jews were allied. In the 19th century, religious slaughter started small in Russia (where the word “pogrom” comes from) but reached horrific levels in 1920, when 100,000 Jews were killed and 1,000 communities disappeared. However, that was during the Russian Civil War which caused nine million casualties in a chaotic clash between the Red, White, Black and Green Armies (communist, tsarist, anarchist and peasant, respectively) and immediately followed the unprecedented death trip of World War One, when about 20 million died, half soldier, half civilian.

As if that were not enough to slake European blood lust, after only 21 years, the Nazis tried to redeem Germany’s losses in a second even larger war, condemning some 65 million souls to the grave. The crowning achievement of that sepulchral orgy was the Holocaust, from “holokaustos,” Greek for “burnt offering,” the killing of almost six million Jews on an industrial scale, which the Nazis and their collaborators thought would allow their societies to finally start functioning. Even though the Jews served as proud German partners for 1600 years, from developing the Jewish language of Yiddish from German to Otto von Bismarck, the father of modern Germany, recommending Jews as wives, diplomats and economic associates, the Nazis were obsessed with eliminating Jews, just as Freud predicted. It was largely because they served as the perfect scapegoats around which to orchestrate conspiracy theories, like “The Stab in the Back” (where Jews secretly orchestrated Germany’s WWI surrender) and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (a Russian forgery claiming Jews controlled the banks). But there was an even more important reason: the Jews represented freedom of religion, elevated ethics and liberal democracy—the same reasoning as Rome’s war to the death with the Jews, in other words—which the Nazis rightly assumed would restrict their survival of the fittest behavior.

Moreover, this blood lust tainted European states which were Nazi vassals or collaborators or denied Jews refuge, which almost all societies throughout history provided during wars. Since only the city-state of Shanghai accepted visa-less Jews fleeing the Nazis (about 20,000 made the long and expensive journey), all the nations of the earth joined the Nazis to form the last ring of guard towers and barbed-wire in their vast archipelago of concentration camps, death camps and killing fields.

As if increasing mass murder into the millions was not enough sin for European Christian civilization, in the course of the half millennium from the 13th century to the Enlightenment, Jews were often confined to ghettos, which were closed to varying degrees, from locked after curfew to 24/7 imprisonment, sometimes for centuries. Although Jews could convert to Christianity, which made mediaeval Christianity seem enlightened compared to the Nazis, forcing them into ghettos generated generations of Jews who had never seen a tree, save the ones painted on their synagogues walls. In fact, often only two types of people were allowed to leave the ghetto, rag collectors and moneylenders, and the latter were essentially fiduciary serfs. Indeed, they could be loaned, rented, sold or “harvested” (for hidden gold), while the “Right of First Night” entitled dukes and princes to rape their wives on their marriage night.

The German Rahel Varnhagen (1771-1833) hosted the first of the many popular European literary salons that were beloved by gentile intellectuals. illo: unknown

Jews finally rejoined monotheist civilization in the West around 1800, and in the Middle East, starting about a half a century later, after the Enlightenment was brought at the point of a sword, in the Muslim manner, to much of Europe. Emancipation started with the French Revolution’s “Rights of Man”, which included the Jews, but was instituted by Napoleon through his conquests (1798-1814), although those laws were often rescinded. Indeed, traditional religious antisemitism transformed almost immediately into the political version, where Jews were accused of being communists or capitalists, ill-mannered or overeducated, foreign immigrants or too assimilated. France itself dissolved into paroxysms of antisemitic psychosis 80 years later, with mobs chanting “Death to the Jews” in the streets of Paris during the Dreyfus Affair, when a Jewish army officer by that name was accused of spying for Germany (he was eventually acquitted).

The standard antisemitic trope was that the Jews were crafty, controlling or outright evil, even though many Europeans loved them, seeing them as suitable spouses, writers, musicians, chemists, political theorists and entrepreneurs. Indeed, the respect of many gentiles, as with the ancient polytheists who pilgrimaged to pray in Jerusalem, helped Jews join society with surprising speed. Their talent and vigor, however, was largely due to their millennia of monotheism, which fostered literacy, education and even scientific investigation (mostly medical, until the 19th century) as well as optimism, love (familial, romantic and humanist) and dedication to justice. Derived directly from Moses bringing down the law from Mount Sinai, many Jews became lawyers. While some were shysters, many fought for rule of law and human rights. Indeed, their ancient project of relief from bondage, poverty and suffering continued with many Jews becoming involved in progressive politics, from liberal democrat to communist, and philanthropies, especially building hospitals, where Jewish often exceeded gentiles, despite their tiny percent of society. Others devoted themselves to writing, music, other arts and their promotion through publishing, museums and theatres.

The Jews were released from European ghettos just in time for the 19th century’s explosion of democracy, capitalism and science. They had the energy, intelligence and desperation for freedom but also cash, due to the moneylending, which nurtured a few rich families, notably the Rothschilds. While their forbears served as grubby smalltime lenders or “tax farmers” (who paid a region’s tax bill up front and were provided soldiers to collect it, an veritable antisemitism manufacturing machine), five centuries is a longtime to study a profession and market. Naturally, they became adept bankers, international merchants and industrial magnates but also war materiel suppliers, required by Europeans for their endless wars. It was only through complex lending, international connections and detailed planning, they could get the weapons, ammunition, horses and food needed for aristocracies as well as democracies, including England.

Most Jews, however, were impoverished, like my grandfather, Mendel Rotkopf, who worked as weaver in Lodz, Poland, and lived paycheck to paycheck in one room with his family of five. Indeed, Jews had to study, work and hustle very hard to reenter the civilization they helped invent.

Nevertheless, within a century, they developed dozens of new enterprises and fields, from lumber yards and department stores to medical professions and film making, which enriched a few but benefited millions, both in Europe and the Americas but also the Middle East and Islam. Indeed, their invention and achievement was historically unprecedented, notably in political, psychological and scientific fields: the communism of Marx (who was of Jewish descent but became antisemitic), Freud’s psychoanalysis and social theories (he was an atheist but still tribal Jew) and the physics of Einstein (a mystical modernist of Jewish descent).

Indeed, the Jews were instrumental in the establishment of the modern, liberal and democratic era, despite representing as little as ten percent of a nation’s population, as in Poland, or less than one percent, as in Germany. In point of fact, Germany was saved during World War One by two Jews. Fritz Haber invented nitrogen fabrication and, after the war, the Allies were going to try him as war criminal, because nitrogen was the main ingredient in explosives but gave him the 1918 Nobel Prize instead, because it’s needed for fertilizers (which helped feed billions, to this day). Walter Rathenau was so revered for reengineering Germany’s wartime military supply chain, he was elected prime minister but served only five months in 1922, until his assassination (his assassins fled, although one later apologized to his mother).

All civilizations are like monotheisms, insomuch they’re rules-based, share the social moral construct of increased ethics and cooperation, and are universalist. Despite their stupendous suffering and occasional cynicism, often expressed in humor, most Jews assumed the other monotheists would eventually recognize that obvious fact. They were mistaken. Indeed, many Muslims, Christians and rational atheists, socialists and communists, rejected monotheism’s inherent equality, tolerance and spiritual generosity, even after it helped inspire the American Constitution and the elimination of slavery, during the Civil War (Abraham Lincoln referred to it often). Sadly, monotheism has long been gamed by charlatans, cult leaders and false messiahs as well as authoritarians, who roleplay Islamic, Christian or Jewish values but lust for the idolatry of personal or tribal benefits, despite the fact that “[a] civilization that builds on the basis of blood is a tribe, a tribe that builds on the basis of ideas is a civilization,” as I noted in “The Tribe Versus Civilization Manifesto”.

Salafists Try to Make Islam Great Again

The Wahhabis were resisted from their very beginning, in the mid-18th century, by liberal Muslims, first by preachers in Wahhab’s own family and then in Mecca. Islam’s most sacred city was famous pre-Islam for tolerance and creativity, a tradition which continued during the Hajj. Making the pilgrimage is one of the “Five Pillars of Islam” (but only if a devotee can afford it) and Muslims from all over the world come to pray, talk, trade and sometimes marry, since women often attended unveiled. After the Sufi Renaissance, they were also entertained and enlightened by Sufi storytellers and theologians. During the Hajj of Wahhab and his devotees, however, “the qadi [head judge] of Mecca pronounced them to be unbelievers, in view of the well-known principle, based on Hadith, that whoever without good reason denounces a fellow Muslim as an unbeliever himself enters that category,” (Hamid Algars, “Wahhabism”, 2002).

The Wahhabis were so unpopular, in fact, they were driven from Mecca in 1811, only eight years after conquering it, by Egypt’s new ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha, a military genius backed by his hardened Albanian troops. Ali Pasha was also a liberal Muslim, probably a Bektashi Sufi (a tariqa which allows alcohol), who opened Egypt to the West, by reviving the multicultural and intellectual center and port of Alexandria.

The Ottomans followed suit in 1839 with top-down reforms, called “Tanzimat,” which introduced elections and eventually full citizenship for Greeks, Armenians and even Jews, including the right to serve in the military (important to men to prove dedication and status, unfortunately, just in time for WWI). Meanwhile, “The Nahda,” meaning Arab Enlightenment, bubbled up from Arab street, driven by writers, intellectuals and diplomats, ranging from progressive modernists to conservatives or clandestine Wahhabis. Many Middle Easterners adopted western ideas, tools and goods, which radically altered their lives and life spans, but their democracy was in its infancy, their institutions were archaic, and their leaders were often corrupt. Hence, the poor and disenfranchised were perpetually pushed toward Salafism, as Wahhabism came to be known, after incorporating Islamist ideas from India and elsewhere.

Unlike the Protestants, who evolved in three centuries from Wahhabi-like Puritans to mostly tolerant democrats, the Salafists believed that modernity could be resisted by increasing fidelity to Shari’ah Law, even as they reinterpreted “The Quran” and even added sections. The Muslim Brotherhood, started by an Egyptian schoolteacher in 1928, adopted a few ideas from Abduh, Egypt’s famously liberal Grand Mufti (religious head), who allowed figurative art (after visiting European museums), often quoted “No compulsion” scripture, increased women’s rights, and helped inspired Egypt’s 1919 Revolution. But it mostly borrowed from the Fascists and Nazis, the latter already in control of Italy, with its use of brown uniforms, mass rallies, claims for resurrecting the thousand-year caliphate, extreme antisemitism and more. It became Salafism’s preeminent sect, with Hamas an offshoot, Qatar a Brotherhood state, and Erdogan’s Turkey Brotherhood-inspired, while its Egyptian wing tried to capitalize on the 2012 Arab Spring but then destroyed it. While the Brotherhood was getting going, the Wahhab-Sauds finished their conquest of most of the Arabian peninsula, established Saudi Arabia (1932), and began building immense wealth in partnership with infidels, the Americans who discovered oil there in 1938, which is forbidden by Shari’ah Law.

The Salafists also condemned the traditional Middle Eastern culture of belly dancing, music, wine and hash, which flourished in their world-class cafés. For millennia, Arabs made wine and “al-kuḥl” (another Arabic word), which many Muslims continue to enjoy privately, when Islamic prohibitions are enforced, and young men use as a rite of passage or even a psychedelic by getting blotto drunk. Coffee was discovered in nearby Ethiopia and popularized and commercialized in Yemen by Sufis and Arab traders around the 10th century. The international hash trade began a few centuries later, mostly imported from Afghanistan, before Morocco and Lebanon became hash superpowers, again with Sufis involved. Baba Ku was a hash-smoking folk hero from Balkh but the real pioneer was another Afghan, Qutb ad-Dīn Haydar, the dour leader of a small Malamati (self-blaming) tariqa in the 13th century. He preached abstinence and fakirism (pushing iron rods through scabbed-up holes in their arms) until, one day, “Walking in the country side in the midday heat, he discovered the divine properties of a plant that… almighty God has bestowed… which will dispatch the shadows that cloud your soul and will brighten your spirit,” (Gabriel Georges Nahas, Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, 1982).

After tobacco arrived from the New World in the 16th century, and the sultans convinced the mullahs to allow it, globalization gifted the Middle East three very pleasant, only modestly toxic, and still popular drugs, which were not available in Europe until the 19th century. Indeed, many Middle Eastern men enjoyed coffee, tobacco and hash in the male space of their cafes until the arrival of the Salafists.

From Morocco to India, Salafists began challenging the corruption of regular folk as well as authorities and started funding charities, schools and hospitals, which was welcomed. Not as popular, however, was their advocacy of covering women and punishing liberals, artists, gays and minorities, although they did inspire some Sufi and Shi’a theologians to adopt aspects of their doctrine and enthusiasm. This two-century struggle was considered an internal Islamic reform movement and largely unknown in the West until Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979.

Notorious for holding 53 Americans hostage for 15 months, the Shi’a Ayatollahs of Iran proved to be more brutal than the Shah, who was culturally liberal. After installing harsh regular and religious police and hanging judges, the Ayatollahs jailed and executed many opponents but also nominal allies. Some Western leftists, like French philosopher Michel Foucault (who visited Iran twice in 1978), supported Iran’s revolution and reversal of the CIA-assisted coup of 1953, even though it proved disastrous for Iranian women, artists, Sufis and minorities as well as socialists. A vibrant intelligentsia endures, especially among their filmmakers, but the authoritarianism generally increases, which sparks months-long protests every few years and are repressed with mass incarceration and murder. There were protests in 2019 and even larger and longer ones starting in September 2022, after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, was killed for not covering her hair properly. In the summer of 2024, mainstream media reported that agents from the Iran Revolutionary Guard were assassinating dissidents in Turkey.

The Ayatollahs also adopted extreme antisemitism, despite the ancient Persian friendship with the Jews, which started in antiquity with a mythical Persian Jewess, who became queen and saved her people (recounted in “The Bible”’s “Book of Ester”), and the factual Cyrus the Great. A brilliant general and lawgiver as well as liberal, Cyrus freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity, helped rebuild their temple, became the only gentile ever called a “messiah,” and invited Jews to Persia. They lived there comparatively well for 2,500 years, sometimes serving as advisors and doctors, and reaching a population of 100,000 in 1948, after which Iran was one of only a few Muslim countries to not expel their Jews.

Despite their long fraternity, mutual benefit and occasional intermarriage, however, the Ayatollahs kicked out the Jews (a few remain, but they are vehemently anti-Zionist). Moreover, they decided supporting the Palestinians and the abused Shi’a of Lebanon and attacking Israel would unify a chaotic Islam and attract Muslims of any sect who felt humiliated by the battlefield and economic achievements of the once-impoverished, third-class Jews living across Islam. Even though Israel was a tiny and a long way from Iran, if the Ayatollahs could destroy it, that would prove the superiority of Shi’a theology and ethics, help them defeat the nine-times larger Sunnis and make them God’s chosen people—absurd as that may sound to an Iranian liberal, artist or Sufi as well as any rational observer.

The Palestinian spiritual leader as well as war lord, Amin al-Husseini, lived in Germany the last few years of WWII, during he met with Hitler and tried to bring the death camps to Palestine. photo: unknown

The Muslim Brotherhood as not the only people to import fascist and Nazi ideologies and tactics to the Middle East. Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1938, ministered to the spiritual needs of Islam’s third sacred city, but was also a brutal warlord. Indeed, he ordered the murder of dozens of liberal Muslims as well as hundreds of Jews, in massacres, which started in Hebron in 1929, with killing about 68 Jews (after the Jewish community fled, the Hebron merchants wrote them an open letter asking them to return), and then revolts and wars. Indeed, he took over the Arab Revolt in 1936 and, six years later, moved to Berlin, where he spent the remainer of World War Two encouraging Bosnian Muslims to fight for Germany and lobbying the Nazis to bring the Holocaust to the Holy Land.

Anti-colonial British sentiment in Iraq inspired the “Golden Square” coup of 1941, which was supported by Italian Fascists as well as the Nazis. The rebelling officers controlled the country only briefly, but it was enough time to slaughter some 250 Jews in Baghdad, which was half Jewish for over two millennia, replete with pillaging, raping and defilement, a foreshadowing of the 1948 attacks, which forced Iraq’s 90,000 Jews to flee to Israel, as well as Hamas’s October 7th invasion. Although the Ba’ath Party founded after the war was technically socialist, it produced the fascism of Sunni Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (1979-2003), and that of the Shi’a Assad family in Syria (1970-present). Full-blown Islamo-fascism, albeit not so much nationalist but Islam-wide, came in 1979 with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Within three years, Egypt’s liberal president, Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Egyptian soldiers affiliated with Islamic Jihad (another Muslim Brotherhood offshoot). His crime: making peace with Israel. Then came Hezbollah, “The Party of God,” an aggressive mosque-state combo of sect, political party and armed forces (now bigger than the Lebanese Army), as well as essentially an Iranian colonial foothold in the Middle East, like the ten Hashasheens castles Persia installed in Syria, eight centuries earlier. The Iranians capitalized on the Shi’a underclass status and oppression in Lebanon and Israel’s perhaps imprudent involvement in the country’s civil war, 1975 to 1990 (some 150,000 killed). Hezbollah earned radical Islamist and socialist street cred with two massive suicide truck bombings: one of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in 1983, the other of a Jewish community center in Argentina, in 1994, murdering 241 and 85, respectively.

Seven years later, those numbers were eclipsed ten-fold by al-Qaeda’s killing of 3,000 on 9/11, Hashasheen-style, which raced Salafism to the top of the news, foreign policy and negative public opinion world-wide as well as in the U.S. While some Muslims celebrated, others took to the streets of Tehran, Cairo and elsewhere to show solidarity with the U.S. and opposition to radical Islamism, which largely went quiet for a decade. Indeed, in 2011, pro-democracy protestors rose up across the Arab world after a Tunisian fruit vendor, Tarek Bouazizi, set himself afire to draw attention to the endemic and punishing corruption. The Arab Spring quickly toppled Egypt’s corrupt dictator, Hosni Mubarak (he died in prison), Libya’s colorful and capricious one, Muammar Gaddafi (after three and four decades of abuse, respectively), and the leaders of Tunisia and Yemen. Alas, the Arab Spring failed to secure overwhelming support, was outflanked by the seasoned political operatives among the Salafists, and triggered civil wars in Libya and Yemen as well as Syria. Civil wars favor fundamentalists, as per the one-sentence revelation from 14th century Arabia, “Better a century of tyranny than one day of chaos.”

The Arab Spring did produce Egypt's first-ever free election in 2012, although voters elected president a Muslim Brotherhood member, Muhammad Morsi, whom the army had to oust in less than a year for abrogating democracy (he died in prison). Syria, meanwhile, sank into the standard Sunni-Shi’a slaughter, with over 600,000 casualties thus far (supported by Russia as well as Iran), as did Yemen, with almost a half a million dead, its Houthi rebels supported by Iran.

Sunni fundamentalists, for their part, flocked from across the West as well as Islam to Salafism’s newest iteration, the Islamic State. Amid the chaotic fighting of 2014 in Syria, IS (also called ISIS, an affront to that great goddess, and DAESH, their initials in Arabic) conquered a third of the country and a similar slice of Iraq. In bursts of orgiastic attacks, armed men raced across the desert, a la Wahhab cavalry, but in pickup trucks, and proclaimed a caliphate, the first since the Ottoman Caliphate collapsed nine decades earlier. In keeping with Salafism’s double-down strategy, IS adopted every possible western weapon, communication system and luxury good but an even more repressive Islam than Wahhabism. They mandated gloves, eye mesh and anklets, to more completely cover women, and forbode images or music for entertainment, educational or enlightenment purposes, but not propaganda. Their slick marketing and social media used extensive beheading, torture and snuff film imagery.

We need not find al-Ghazali’s modern counterpart to divine that IS’s claim to abide the letter of Shari’ah Law contradicts the spirit of the peaceful and mystical Muhammad as well as the Sufis. IS’s fiendish fundamentalism frightened so many Muslims, in fact, many Middle Eastern countries—including Iran—helped the American and Iraqi armies defeat them, which culminated in the Battle of Mosul (2016-’17), killing about 10,000 IS fighters and 8,000 civilians. Other than the Taliban’s second seizure of Kabul in 2021 (the first was in 1996), that was Salafism’s last major battle before October 7th, 2023.

Authoritarians Invariably Attack Liberals

On October 7th, I was in Lviv, Ukraine, a lovely university and café town, hanging out with its many educated, artistic and internationally-aware teens and 20-somethings—hippies, in other words…

This concludes the first half of “My Half Century With a Loving Islam, Its Four Secrets and the Monotheist Wars”. The second half will include the rest of this chapter, covering Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution of 2013-4, the situation there after the Russian invasion in 2022, and on my second visit in 2023. It will also have about eight more chapters:

My Dark Night of the Soul: Realizing a Second Holocaust Is Possible
Why Israel Does Have the Right to Exist
The Fourth Middle East Secret: Many Arabs Welcomed the Zionists
Today’s Arab Liberals: Arab Springers, Islamist Opponents and Honest Monotheists
Can Sufis Save Islam a Fifth Time?
The War of Symbols in The Middle East and Across the World
The Meaning of 10/7: The Beginning of Just and Equitable Multiculturalism

Other of my articles I will be linking to:

Why Arab Liberals Support Israel
Did Arabs and Jews Like Each Other in 1948?
Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed
Darwin and Love: What I Learned Making a Holocaust Movie
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Posted on Oct 26, 2024 - 04:30 PM
My Half Century With Islam, Part 2
by Doniphan Blair

Bedouin women get water, Middle East, early 20th century. photo: unknown

Continued from My Half Century With Islam, Part 1
Go to My Half Century With Islam, Part 3

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KHADIJA AND MUHAMMAD'S
reciprocal altruism reflected not only the romanticism popular in the Middle East since ancient Sumer but a cooperative relationship between equally an empowered woman and man, also evidenced by how she helped him intellectually and spiritually. After the shock of Muhammad's first revelation, when he feared he was possessed by a spirit, Khadija assured him he was hearing the one, true God, “submitted” to his new faith, and became the first Muslim. Submission may seem like a strange central metaphor for a religion based on unity, equality and justice, but it symbolizes how a ruling matriarch cedes power to an emerging patriarch, or how we mortals must accept a single, all-powerful Lord or universe.

Women organized our earliest clans, we can assume, since the men knew little about birthing, nursing and child rearing, and spent a lot of time away from camp. Indeed, as many biologists have noted, the human race is a hybridizing experiment run by women. Although the results of the research are still in dispute, a lot is known, as with goddess culture. For starters, as homo Sapiens developed bigger brains (“sapiens” being Latin for “wise”), it became harder for females to pass babies through the birth canal, requiring they be born premature, which increased the calories and time needed to bring them to maturity as well as injury to the mother, placing upon them enormous evolutionary pressure.

Since nothing can live forever, all living entities must focus on reproduction, after simple survival. That women’s bridge to consciousness and self-consciousness was reproduction is documented by both “The Bible”, where the snake in “Genesis” obviously signifies "penis," and science, from Darwin’s second theory of evolution, sexual selection, to cutting-edge brain and behavioral studies. Female homo Sapiens have language centers in both of their brain hemispheres (unlike the male’s left only), become verbal earlier as toddlers and are more talkative as adults. Instead of relying on instincts and emotions, actual data on reproduction became the first fruit on the Tree of Knowledge and triggered our cultural Big Bang, from language to art and romance. Once women could count the nine months back to conception and identify fathers, they could dispel paternity uncertainty and leverage male desire, which led to a revolution in communication—language was invented about 70 to 140,000 BCE— as well as cooperation and clan organization.

Matriarchal polytheism must have guided our evolution, both genetically and socially, for tens of millennia, at least back to the paleolithic “Venus figurines,” up to 42,000 years old. Those few-inch-long icons, often depicting fat, fantastically-breasted women, were undoubtedly fashioned by tool-using men to honor their community’s most successful mothers, who were also their leaders and priestesses as well as girlfriends. In fact, women’s research into reproduction informed the invention of both agriculture (controlling the reproduction of other species) and romance (the intellectualization of mating calls, dances and other intersex signaling, which is reproduction’s first step). Agriculture and romance, in turn, rapidly blew up small, wandering clans into tribes and towns and, after about five millennia, civilizations and empires.

During that exponential growth, however, the leading matriarchs evidently noticed diminishing returns on how they organized families with multiple fathers, inspired men to work the fields (which required a full day, not hunting’s half), or convinced them to fight to the death invading marauders. (Hunters flee overwhelming force, but farmers fight for fecund fields.) After women learned to use language to trade their services and products (sex and children) for male-provided supplies, shelter and safety (negotiations which were the first form of verbal romance), men more readily came in from the wild. (Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s boon friend, was seduced into civilization by a temple prostitute and cooked food.) Men were always instinctively and emotionally part of the reproductive process, of course, but making the universe male and them social leaders was the third big attractor, after sex and children, and arguably the most important. Indeed, getting men to renounced rough folkways, take responsibility and massively increase labor and creativity was central to their evolution from hunters into fathers, farmers, fighters and vast builders.

Necessity is the mother invention, and new circumstances beget new worldviews. Khadija believed her husband provided exactly that for her tribal group, the Arabs, who had long pined for a monotheist prophet of their own, and her city, Mecca, which was famous for poetry contests, many religions and non-violence oaths during festivals but beset by conflicting male poets and warriors as well as matriarchs and priestesses. When societies are successful, they reproduce and grow. But when they get too large, the efficacy of women’s horizontal networking fades before the efficiency of male hierarchies, hero worship and brute strength. To parse this tricky transition, Khadija granted Muhammad authority over her body, family, real estate and businesses, as well as the previously female universe and, together, they forged the Arabs’ late but fast shift to patriarchy and civilization building.

A gate to Baghdad in the 19th century. illo: Arthur Aletrilly,1882

Regendering a society is not easy, as we are learning. Christian theologians thought monotheism would be more successful if God was more loving, marriage was sacred and sex a sin (even within marriage if outside procreation). Alas, that didn’t cure Christian lust for power as well as sex, as we well know, and Muhammad must have noticed among his Christian relatives and friends in Mecca or those he met in Jerusalem, where he travelled for trade. Returning to Judaism’s more matriarchal female-male relations, he allowed for divorce and hailed sexual pleasure as natural and a gift from God, even incorporating it into Islamic heaven (a brilliant reimagining of monotheist metaphors and syncretization of polytheist perks).

Muhammad famously adored women and, after Khadija died, took a dozen wives and concubines, although he limited men to four wives (who have to be loved equally, signaling the superiority of monogamy). In fact, Muhammad can be considered a feminist for his day given “The Quran” refers to men and women as equals and that “both men and women, are guardians of one another” (Surah 9:71); it grants women property rights and half a male's inheritance; and he supported women’s right to satisfaction (to respect natural feeling but also deter polytheist revanchism), issues he must have decided in consultation with Khadija. In Christianity’s more feminized culture, however, women received no property, inheritance or pleasure privileges.

Islam reversed Christianity's separation of church and state and sex restrictions and become the most masculine monotheism, largely due to its late arrival to the civilizational project and need to raise armies as well as male social involvement and discipline. Moreover, it was determined to end matriarchal power rather than balance it, as in Judaism, or transform its romantic aspects into religious devotion, as in Christianity. Muslim men wield full authority over female family members as well as their own children, whom they retain after divorce. While Christianity forbade divorce and Jews required a rabbi’s approval, under Islam the man merely pronounces “I divorce you” three times before witnesses (which can liberate a woman, when an abusive husband does it in a fit of rage, according to Moroccan scholar Fatima Mernissi). This parallels Islamic conversion, which involves the thrice oath taking of “There is no true god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God,” and affirms the intellectual power of monotheism, wherein words are holy and a Muslim’s word is their bond.

To make peace with matriarchal polytheism, however, Christianity introduced a fertility goddess, Mary (who was considered a virgin, despite Christ’s older siblings), and the Hebrews honored women as matriarchs. Their Sabbath similar to a goddess holiday, wherein women do the first prayer (candle lighting), don’t work at all (au contraire Christian and Muslim women), and are encouraged to pursue reproduction. The stories of powerful Jewesses are recounted in “The Bible”, some of which are repeated in “The Quran”, and pre- or extra- marital sex is not a mortal sin, since Jewish familial descent is matriarchal, after the ancient patriarchal period. Matriarchy makes children inherently legitimate (“Free women don’t commit adultery,” according to Hind, the wife of Mecca’s chief and Muhammad’s main opponent, because whomever they sexually select is legal). The Christians attempted to control male sexuality by restricting sex and reverting to a virginal, pre-lapsarian philosophy, but the Jews emphasized self-control and circumcision, which they enshrined as the males’ primary sacrifice to the one, true God.

Despite claims that circumcision promotes cleanliness, especially in water-scarce environments (which it does), it is more obviously a symbol of sexual suppression, although removing the penis's protective skin also unveils and beautifies it, a body modification undoubtedly preferred by matriarchs. The Christians passed on circumcision, assuming their sex-is-sin and guilt-induction system was enough, but the Muslims embraced it, despite the fact it is not mentioned in "The Quran". Nevertheless, it’s covered in “The Hadith”, the collections of Muhammad’s sayings, and throughout “The Old Testament”, which Muslims consider sacred (“He sent down the Torah and the Gospel,” Surah 3:3), and most Muslim boys endure it during their seventh year (as opposed to seventh day, as with Jews). Unfortunately, sex was so seductive, according to Muslims with more recent matriarchal memories, a second circumcision was needed: that of women. Hence, the "mullahs" (Sunni ministers) allowed female genital mutilation (FGM), despite its absence from “The Quran” or “Old Testament”, its capacity to inflict grievous injury or death, and its reduction or elimination of an important pleasure, considered a gift from God by Muhammad. FGM is still practiced among many Sunnis, largely in Africa (highest in the Horn of Africa), and a majority of women in Egypt, despite the nation's legal ban and media campaign against it, starting in 2005.

Desert travelers stop for the night, essentially how Muhammad and his crew looked in the 7th century. illo: unknown, circa 19th century

In addition to being orphaned as a child, Muhammad was probably skinny, nerdy and perhaps sickly. But he laboriously built up his body, mind and character, which was why Khadija sought him out, as well as developed his theology, during long hikes across the desert or months on the mountain, using mysticism. After ten years extensive prayer, he received visions, which he discussed with Khadija and others, and preached poetically in downtown Mecca, in front of the idol-filled Ka’aba. Muhammad’s early revelations abided Judeo-Christian stories and traditions, such as building God’s kingdom voluntarily, ethically and peacefully, in accord with from the Jewish prophets, “‘Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit,’ saith the Lord,” (Zechariah 4:6) or “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares… nation shall not lift up sword against nation,” (Isaiah 2:4). After being persecuted by Meccan authorities, fleeing to Medina and entering a war, however, he changed his mind. Instead of a slow evolution through better ideas and behavior, he reasoned, Islam could be more beneficial to more people, faster—which is one definition of “good”—by explaining in simple, local terms how monotheism works, by proselytizing aggressively, and by defending Muslims as well as by going on offense, when necessary.

Already a charismatic public speaker, Muhammad transformed himself into a brilliant politician and strategic general, who led the outnumbered and ill-equipped Muslims to heroic victories. But he was the messenger not son of God, and there were some defeats and mistakes, notably with his wives and the Jews. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem five centuries earlier, Jews dispersed across the Middle East in the “Jewish Diaspora,” including a large and popular community in Medina. The Muslim holy day became Friday, in fact, because Jews had their weekly market then, the day before their work-free sabbath, and attending Muslims were available for mosque. Some Jews sided with Muhammad in his fight against Mecca but, during a loyalty dispute with another Jewish clan, he ordered the massacre of about five hundred Jewish men and boys.

Alas, 7th century Arabian politics were internecine and complex, as was the art of receiving a revelation, editing it into a text, and establishing a new, better adapted religion. Hence, “The Quran” has differing or contradictory dictums, just as does “The Bible”, including pronouncements for and against Jews, alcohol, gambling, murder, fate and more. Such sacred incongruities oblige monotheists to distance themselves from the letter of “divine” law and dedicated themselves to its spirit, to rationally and voluntarily decide which scripture, in a complex situation, better advances monotheism’s core concepts of compassion, equality, justice and cooperation.

Relief depicting Akhenaten and Nefertiti with three of their daughters under the rays of Aten. courtesy: Wikipedia, please donate here

Since the Middle East is home to some of humanity’s oldest cities, religions and civilizations, it is, therefore, the birthplace of our oldest conflicts, confusions and psychological problems. After the stoic, hedonist, intellectual and militaristic Roman empire gave way to the romantic, chaste, emotive and pacifist Christian civilization, the largely Christian Middle East was caught between the eastern Roman Christians’ Byzantine Empire, the Persian Empire, which practiced Zoroastrianism (a millennium-old monotheism with many polytheist aspects), and the persisting polytheisms of the mountain and desert tribes often excluded from civilization. Regardless of its divine origins, monotheism had to be periodically updated, from incremental adjustment and syncretic mixing to full revisions, followed by new sects or religions.

Ever since the first monotheism, Egyptian Atenism, which flourished briefly around 1350 BCE, the one-god theory has been renovated or reinvented at 300 to 500 year intervals. There was Moses, or someone like him (or someone telling stories about someone like him), around 1000 BCE; the Jewish prophets after the Jews were exiled to Babylon, starting around 500 BCE; Jesus Christ (building on John the Baptist and the Essenes); the rabbinical reform after the devastating Jewish-Roman Wars (66-136 AD); Christianity’s First Council of Nicaea (Turkey) in 325 AD (when dozens of “apocryphal” books were edited from “The New Testament”); and, three centuries later, Islam (the last major monotheism until the mid-19th century Mormons and Baha’is in middle America and Persia, respectively, although the former fled to Utah and the latter to Israel). In keeping with this chronology, Al-Ghazali’s Sufi revolution started nearly a half millennium after Muhammad, while Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” to a German church door in 1517, almost exactly a millennium and a half after Christ’s ministry.

Muhammad revered Judaism and Christianity and opposed the polytheist empires of the East, which makes him a westerner, but he developed many unique stories, philosophies and ceremonies. They obviously satisfied a pressing need, especially in our harsher climes, given Islam’s phenomenal expansion: over twice the size of the Roman Empire in half the time. This can be attributed to Muhammad's simple and straightforward focus on justice, equality and peace, which is highlighted by the first phrase of all 114 of “The Quran”’s Surahs (chapters), “In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, most merciful,” one-line revelations like “There should be no compulsion in religion” (Surah 2:257), the universal greeting of “As-salamu alaykum” (“Peace be upon you”), and many of “Hadith” sayings, like Muhammad's theory of jihad, wherein “the greater jihad” is against the ego but political struggle is “the lesser jihad,” or exhortations to tolerate disagreement and forgive enemies.

According to most Sufis, Sufism does not derive from ancient fertility cults, as some scholars suggest, but Muhammad’s secret oral teachings, which are thought to be more spiritual and metaphysical than his public oral or written work, “The Hadith” and “The Quran”, respectively. Although those secret teachings may be apocryphal, Sufis followed Muhammad’s lived example of having a mystical practice but also a profession and family, and of respecting women, who were excluded from most mystical fraternities. The vast majority of Sufis were men, devout Muslims and patriarchal, but many accepted women as tariqa members, teachers or saints, notably Rabi’ah Basri, from 8th century Basra (Iraq), who started as a slave or prostitute, devoted herself to charity and became the first saint of Sufism’s Religion of Love. In point of fact, Sufis developed more female and romantic values and art than almost any other religious, social or literary movement by basing their beliefs on the core tenets of monotheism, which provided a firm foundation, but then by building ornate intellectual edifices on the universal human interests in art, love and transcendence of the material world.

Scholars and pupils st Baghdad's House of Wisdom's, late Abbasid dynasty. illo: by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, 1237, courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale de France and Wikipedia (please donate here)

The Inherent Liberalism of Monotheism

Islam’s vast conquests in under a century, which went west to southern France and east to northern India, often featuring fearsome warriors riding spectacular Arabian steeds, sometimes wielding swords impaled with copies of “The Quran”, was a wonder to behold and a world record. It could also be brutal, murderous and depraved. Nevertheless, those Arab-lead armies often abided advanced rules of war, negotiated fair surrenders—like when Caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem in 637 AD and, despite a long siege, allowed the ruling Christians to resume normal life and Jews to re-enter the city—and installed regimes with liberal aspects and economic benefits. Many communities converted to Islam voluntarily, starting with Medina, where intractable Jahiliyyah problems inspired them to invite Muhammad to move there and take over. Jews and Christians were accepted as fellow believers in the one, true God, which the former called “Yahweh” or “Elohim” and the latter Jesus Christ or “The Trinity” (a combination of Christ, Yahweh and ineffable spirit), and Muslims labelled “Allah.” Nevertheless, Christians and Jews were considered second-class monotheists, or “dhimmis,” and saddled with special taxes and restrictions, like prohibitions against riding horses or carrying weapons, although both were exempt from military service.

Islam’s conquests as well as Shari’ah Law, a precedent-based legal system, liberated many people from oppressive rulers, arcane rituals and racist caste systems. In addition, it often reduced poverty, illness and ignorance by increasing opportunity, trade and literacy. Islam was such a modernizing force and promoter of advanced Greek and Jewish ideas, in fact, some say it saved Western Civilization. Books in its lingua franca, Arabic, became the era’s internet, spreading scientific knowledge, philosophy and poetry faster than ever in history, along the many silk, spice and trade routes of an already globalized world. Communities devoted to learning, like Alexandria or Timbuktu, had law forbidding books to pass through without being copied by scribes.

Despite Islam’s impressive achievements, however, tribalism, sectarianism, wealth disparities, slavery, tyranny and war, not to mention vestigial matriarchal and polytheist practices, remained. Out-of-wedlock sex continued with gusto in rural areas (according to Dupree’s Afghan research), crowded cities (where veiling helped women have affairs), and merchant families (wherein men sometimes travelled for years). Slavery was pervasive, from the massive slave trade (almost double the European) of both black Africans (which sometimes included castration) and white Eastern Europeans (and western European sailors seized by Muslim Barbary pirates), to Islam’s ubiquitous concubines and “slave armies.”

To prevent constant palace coups, boys from tough tribes were kidnapped, educated in Islam, trained in the art of war, and sworn as “slave soldiers” to the sultan, a respected status. For related reasons, sultans often surrounded themselves with Christian, Jewish or Sufi advisors. Muhammad advocated freeing slaves, which many Muslims did, after which they could become full citizens (if they submitted to Islam), intermarry and serve in the army. Meanwhile, “slave generals” simply seized power, became the new sultans and mounted their own slave armies.

Protestors at the United Nations' 'Isaiah Wall,' featuring Isaiah quote, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares," in 2015. photo: unknown

Nevertheless, many monotheist metaphors, ideals and practices are inherently liberal. Each grandmother goddess physically birthed her own human species, but a single masculine lord would have to create them mentally and metaphysically, suggesting he did so simultaneously, equally and in his image, which imbued them with autonomy and reason. Allowing humans to freely choose good over evil, instead of programming them animalistically, proved God’s greatness. “The Parable of Adam and Eve”, far from depicting “The Fall” inflicted by a woman disobeying God, dramatizes how we evolved from matriarchy to patriarchy but also from genetically-governed natural and sexual selection, living au natural in the Garden of Eden, to “conscious selection” (the identification and choosing of facts and building of abstract worldviews directly tied to reality).

Monotheism failed to establish the perfect justice and cooperation suggested by divine law, but it did excel at symbolizing those values on earth and in the afterlife. Polytheist heavens were crowded, incestuous, chaotic and crime-ridden, much like the ancient towns on which they were modeled, but more so in the Middle East, after millennia of civilization, exacerbated by the end of the golden ages of Sumer, Egypt and Babylon, and the mysterious late Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BCE. The Middle East simply had too many cosmologies, clans and populations, per square mile, and too few men willing to take full responsibility for their communities or children to continue to prosper in the manner to which they were accustom. Monotheism may smack of misogyny to modern observers, but it was immanently logical and progressive after tens of millennia of matriarchal polytheism. Indeed, making the universe masculine and men central to it can be considered one of religion’s most important innovations, and it was orchestrated by women, as Khadija signaled with her actions.

Based on books, monotheism fostered literacy and abstract thinking but also prayer, meditation and ethical analysis. More intellectual than polytheism’s ritual spectacles, titillating stories or mystery cult metaphysics, monotheism evolved beyond sacrificing living beings, which was often how polytheists placated their deities or soothsayers (usually women) divined the future (they often examined a sheep or goat's liver for signs). Monotheism also emphasized individual souls and equal rights, rather than castes or social or priestly hierarchies (although the Catholics and Shi’a resurrected strong priesthoods). Moreover, they spoke of justice between tribes, nations and classes, favored internalized civilized guilt over external tribal shame, and were more optimistic and romantic. The one, true God must know all or at least have a plan, including for finding true love, as emphasized in the beginning of “The Bible”: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, therefore shall a man cleave unto his wife,” (Genesis 2:24). Romanticism assists the difficult chore of defending the family and community, by romanticizing hero tales but also the need to defend the family and fields from the evil doers who periodically threaten more tolerant or successful communities.

Monotheism provided an emotional and ethical foundation for liberal democracy, in fact, by establishing an overarching system that organized the prodigious intellectual and scientific work of the Greeks. The citizens of Hellenist city-states invented or greatly improved almost all the disciplines of modern civilization from democracy, math and science to theatre, architecture, realistic sculpture and the Olympics. But without a coordinating overall mechanism, by the 5th century AD, most Greek speakers had abandoned their classical achievements and became Christian peasants. The Jews, however, preserved their monotheism through extensive travails and, in the 19th century, integrated Greek thinking. All tribes practice some form of democracy, and the Norse, Native American and other groups contributed to its development through their egalitarian councils, advanced ethics and strong friendship traditions. But few tribal federations were able to expand egalitarianism and suffrage before 18th century Enlightenment Europe, where it emerged largely due to the indepth study of Judaic theology and Hellenic philosophy and science, with Muslim scholars and theologians helping preserve and expand much of both.

The Golden Rule as seen in various cultures, although the Judeo-Christian version is the best known. illo: unknown

Monotheism revealed the fullness of its liberal democracy foundation in a single sentence: “The Golden Rule”. Based on the reciprocal altruism of animals and the universal practice of good friends treating each other as equals, “The Golden Rule” figures prominently in all three Abrahamic faiths: Jesus’s "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” delivered during the Sermon on the Mount; the Hebrew trying to first limit negative behavior with, “Don’t do unto others as you don’t want done unto you;” and the Muslim, from “Hadith”, “Do unto all men as you would wish to have done unto you.”

We must take full responsibility, Muhammad felt, since each soul will have to answer for their deeds on Judgment Day, although “The Quran” does take both sides in the ancient argument between predetermined fate and voluntary free will. Desert dwellers, sailors and others living in harsh environmental or abusive societies often prefer an all-controlling fate to soften God’s will and their normal guilt over failing to alleviate suffering, which their more rational coreligionists don’t have the heart to deny them. Nevertheless, they still take fate into their own hands, starting as infants crying out, to satisfy their immediate desires but also defend their right to be treated equally to others in their family, tribe or perceived community. Ironically, whether nurture and culture or nature and biology dominate the human condition remains in dispute across modern civilization, from politics and policing to psychology and biology, with respected thinkers, like the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, favoring the latter.

Emphasizing the former, however, Muhammad esteemed individual merit and rights and opposed inherited rule and kings. Hence, the four “Righteous Caliphs,” who ruled Islam after he died, in 632 AD, were chosen democratically, using acclamation (cheering), by all Muslims present—including women! The vast majority shouted to support Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s closest friend and the father of his child bride, Aisha, but a small minority insisted power be passed in the ancient manner, to a family member, which triggered Islam’s terrible civil war, 14 centuries and counting. Muhammad had no surviving sons, an obvious sign from God, but his cousin and son-in-law Ali was considered close enough by “The Party of Ali,” words in Arabic which condense into “Shi’a.”

A respected warrior, Ali served Muhammad devotedly, including during the massacre of Medinan Jews, but he was also a man of peace, who opposed power grabs—a Muhammadian democrat, in other words. Finally elected as the fourth “Righteous Caliph,” he was assassinated, at prayer no less, for being too tolerant, for not adequately punishing Muslims who committed infractions. Considered by some to be the first Sufi, he was murdered by the Kharijites, members of Islam’s first extremist sect, who were traumatized by Islam’s first civil war (656-61 AD). That grotesque, sanguinous slaughter started when the majoritarian Sunnis established a dynasty (in contradiction to Muhammad), amassed a massive army, and mercilessly massacred the minority Shi’a, including Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn. Martyr stories require spiritual leaders reinterpret reality to parse God’s will, which can stimulate sophisticated ideas and art but often leaves regular folk confused and injured.

Muhammadian democracy and Sunni egalitarianism were hard to scale up further from his charisma and leadership, as was integrating mosque and state. The Sunnis soon switched to primogeniture succession and hierarchies headed by “sultans” and “viziers” (political leaders and managers), who ran the caliphate’s armies and bureaucracies in the name of the caliph (religious leader). After the Damascus-based Umayyad Dynasty grew too fast and was wracked by divisions, the Abbasid Caliphate seized power in 749 AD and reigned supreme from Baghdad for almost exactly a half millennium, to 1258. Although reforms were attempted, often by Sufis, the Abbasid understanding of Islam was too far from a unified field theory, and the Caliphate declined into dysfunction and delusion. In 1258, they were annihilated by the Mongols, who flooded and burnt as well as butchered Baghdad. No democratic elections were held until the Sunni Ottomans started experimenting with democracy in 1877, and many Arab nations still have kings today.

Despite Islam’s tyrannical tendencies, however, Muslim life could be vastly improved by encouraging ethical leadership, everyman activism and moral suasion, as Muhammad did in his day, decent mullahs ever since, and the Sufis have done throughout Islamic history and especially during their renaissance. Islam’s allowance of four wives, to those who could afford it, deprived poor men of marriage partners and dowry requirements favored older or elderly men, but the lingering loose morays of the matriarchal era and the universal practice of situational homosexuality relieved sexual deficits. Alas, the efficacy of these workarounds faded after Islam turned a thousand and was confronted by European colonialism and modernism.

A fully outfitted Wahhabi warrior. illo: unknown

By the late 18th century, Muhammad Wahhab’s innovative if extremely conservative Islam was attracting many fanatical devotees. After conquering most of Arabia, his warriors turned north and annihilated Karbala, the main Shi’a city, which features Husayn’s shrine and is near Baghdad. They became the symbolic leaders of Islam, in fact, after capturing Mecca in 1803 but only for a few years. En route, they decimated Sufis, Jews, Christians and pagans, enforced mosque attendance and daily prayers, and took totalitarian control of women, replete with full body covering (sometimes enforced while working in the fields), public chaperoning, female genital mutilation and “honor killings,” which they hoped would reduce women’s sex magic and increase men’s ability to resist it.

Islam’s hybridizing of politics and religion made its achievements gifts from God but, by the same token, its defeats and decadence were because of sin and violations of Islamic law. Monotheism became so popular so quickly because it solved so many polytheist problems, but not “Why bad things happen to good people?”, which pagans could easily explain through polytheism’s central conceit: “You’re praying to the wrong god.” A similar theological crisis challenged Judaism, in the 6th century BCE, after the King Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Solomon’s Temple and Jerusalem, and kidnapped half its inhabitants to exile in Babylon. Although the temple was soon rebuilt, with Persian help, the rabbis still had to answer to their flock for why they were abandoned by God. Blaming increasingly subtle sin, like “coveting thy neighbor’s wife in thy heart,” they invented “guilt,” a more sophisticated style of social control than the peer pressure of tribal shame, shunning and excommunication.

Rejecting such extreme self-criticism, a few rabbis wrote and many approved of “The Book of Job”, arguably “The Bible”’s most advanced theology, which is thought to come from outside Hebrew culture (probably a polytheist tale). It was probably written in the 5th century BCE, shortly after Babylonian captivity, part of the new ideas and prophets which eventually became the Pharisees. Using big characters and drama reminiscent of “The Parable of Adam and Eve”, God bets the Devil that the famously righteous Job won’t renounce him, even after his good luck and fortune are removed. After losing his flocks, possessions and family—everyone except his wife (who recommends he admit error, unlike the supportive Khadija)—Job defies the three wise men, who insist he must have sinned, and addresses God directly. In the heat of their argument, God retorts, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4), which triggers Job’s epiphany: the universe is simply too old, large and complex to be understood. Indeed, the path toward good—which can be defined as “Good is greater benefit for more people over longer periods,” while “Evil is short term benefit for the few”—inevitably includes struggle, pain and terrible tragedy.

I dealt with Job’s conundrum personally once in a discussion with my mother (by phone in the 1990s). “If it wasn’t for the Holocaust, you probably would have stayed in Poland and not come to America, and not met my father,” I said, “which means I wouldn’t exist.” After a few seconds, she came back with, “That’s not true. You would have been your father’s son.” “But how could that be, without you as my mother?” “You would have been your father’s son with another woman,” she concluded, which would have pleased Khadija, since she ceded the traditional power of woman over birth to my father, who was also a righteous patriarch.

Honoring Thy Father While Also Hating Him

Muhammad drew on preceding Jewish and Christian stories and theologies, while adding those from his own experience, his tribe’s or Mecca’s many polytheisms. Hence, “The Quran” has the single-sentence revelation, “God speaks in parables to mankind” (Surah 24:37), which contradicts literalism, if taken literally. Christians also syncretized older polytheist themes, like gods mating with humans, while Jews incorporated Egyptian theology and Babylonian myths, like the Flood or Tower of Babel.

Attempting to integrate millennia of mystical insight, the Israelite authors exploited every known narrative device, from poetic flights of fancy to omniscient instruction from on high or proto-modern books, like the agnostic, vanity-busting “Ecclesiastes” or “Songs of Solomon”, with its eight romantic, semi-matriarchal poems, but it’s mostly a long, avant-garde novel starring the Jews. The origin of the universe, humans and their early heroes are covered in the first book, “Genesis”, but the next four, starting with “Exodus”, detail their liberation from slavery and idolatry led by Moses. Traditionally considered the author of “The Torah” (the Jewish name for those first five books), and the Hebrew’s greatest prophet, Moses was probably Egyptian, perhaps even a Pharaoh’s son. (I feel this fact is worth highlighting to offset the Pharaohs as the Biblical symbol for evil—they built the pyramids, after all—and to share with modern Egyptians the legacy of Moses and monotheism.)

There’s no archeological proof that Moses actually existed, but if he didn’t, why did the Hebrews give him an Egyptian name, have him speak through his brother Aaron (implying a lack of Hebrew fluency) and marry a Kenite woman (when Jewish decent is matrilineal)? Foundling stories, like the Pharoah’s daughter “finding” Moses floating on the Nile, were popular in the Middle East as literary tricks for tribe switching (there was a similar one about Sargon, founder of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BCE). All societies are somewhat or largely multicultural, regardless of their purity claims (which are often amplified among the more mixed), which obliges their storytellers to invent intricate but believable tales establishing their heroes as blood kin.

'Moses', by Michelangelo. photo: unknown

Moses was an acolyte of the Egyptian sun god, Aten, as Freud famously detailed in his last book, “Moses and Monotheism”, written in 1938, after he was allowed to flee Vienna by the Nazis, who reviled his theories of guilt, conscience and sex but feared he was too famous to murder at that time (they soon sent many of his relatives to death camps). History’s first recorded monotheism, Atenism was developed by elite priests and instituted by Pharoah Akhenaton around 1350 BCE, with support from his powerful and beautiful wife, Nefertiti, but mostly his generals, who installed the new religion by force. Alas, that enraged Egypt’s aristocrats, who rued losing their status and incomes, often from polytheist temples, and, after his 17-year reign, destroyed his statues, shrines to Aten and sacred capital city.

Recognizing the inherent conflict between religious compulsion and normal friendship and ethics, Moses (or someone like him) reinterpreted Atenism, liberalized monotheism and began building it from the ground up, through better ideals and narratives, among slaves and poor people. Indeed, Moses’ major theme, aside from monotheism, is the right to freedom and equality, just as friends treat each other. Despite the prevalence of slavery in the classical world (and its tolerance in Judaism), Moses’ signature achievement was freeing the Jews from bondage and idolatry, which symbolizes attachment to anything unproductive, and leading them to the “promised land.” Although slavery began as a primitive welfare program, which allowed starving families to sell their children to finance the survival of both parties, with the rise of civilization, it became a booty-of-war and labor system, especially the lifelong chattel slavery practiced in the Americas (in contrast to the temporary enslavement of the classical world, Judaism and Islam). Judaism started as an anti-slavery movement, liberating the laborers who built the pyramids, a process honored in their principal holiday, Passover. An egalitarian ritual, Passover is performed priest-less, in the home, using Socratic discourse, notably asking the children “The Four Questions,” and references the freeing all people (naturally, since monotheism is universal). The Christians turned Passover dinner into the Last Supper, which precedes the high drama of Easter, Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and ostensibly frees all people from sin, but only if they accept the Christian system of metaphors.

Whether Moses saw “god” or made “god” up, or someone else did, is immaterial. Why did the Hebrews write that Moses carved “The Ten Commandments” into stone tablets on Mount Sinai only to have him break them shortly thereafter? Or, if that actually happened, why didn’t they edit it out? Narratively, it was to express Moses’s sorrow upon seeing his adopted tribe revert to polytheism by praying to the Golden Calf, even as he struggled mightily to bring them monotheist law. Meta-narratively, however, it highlighted “no compulsion,” an oft-revisited theme in monotheism, like when Moses’s first cousin, Korach, led a rebellion and was punished by God. “The Bible”’s authors realized ethical evolution is personal and voluntary, and the best way to promote it was through stories with colorful characters arguing and reasoning out the issues, at multiple symbol levels.

In fact, eliminating idol worship also refers to transcending the material world, money and power to focus on spiritual values, responsible relationships and psychological and social health. This established the intellectual environment which birthed dozens of monotheist prophets, a few of whom got their own Biblical chapters, and thousands of activists, preachers, intellectuals, theologians, humanists and saints, as well as the prophets of two new monotheisms, Christ and Muhammad.

Solomon's original temple in Jerusalem. illo: unknown

Religion Inevitably Involves Politics

No coercion was the Jewish religious position, but to flourish on a continental crossroads—the homo genus had been hiking out of Africa and across the Israeli isthmus for over a million years—they fashioned two tiny states around the ancient city of Jerusalem. First born was to its north, the Kingdom of Israel (900-720 BCE), but shortly thereafter around the city itself, the Kingdom of Judah (850-586 BCE and then 530 BCE-70 AD). That poorer, smaller state was also called Judea, which gave us the words “Judean,” “Judaism” and “Jew,” after its residents were kidnapped to Babylon in 586 BCE and the Babylonians inquiresd as to their origins and faith. The larger, stronger Israel had more farmers, traders and solders, and provided the name for their political state (until today), but the Judeans surpassed them through sheer intellect. It was probably King Josiah, ruling from 648 to 609 BCE, who instituted major theological reforms, like eliminating all lesser gods, and hiring rabbis and scribes to compile, edit and publish “The Torah,” the first five books. They also composed the additional books of “Kings” and “Chronicles” to describe Josiah’s doings. Their powerfully-worded texts became the first 14 chapters of the greatest bestseller in history, and established Jerusalem as a religious, scholarly and publishing center, as well as the world’s only Jewish metropolis.

So respected was Jerusalem’s religion, intellectuals and mystics, it was never made the capital of any other state or imperial district in the course of three millennia and over three dozen conquests. Polytheists of all persuasions pilgrimaged to petition its all-powerful god, which was why the liberal Persian king, Cyrus the Great, helped rebuild the Temple in the 6th century BCE. In Christ’s time, the moneychangers in front of the Temple he so objected to were there to serve foreigners in need of local currency to buy devotional oil. Muhammad ascended to heaven from Jerusalem, which made it Islam’s third sacred city, after Mecca and Medina, although he probably only visited a couple of times and certainly never lived there. And the city retains that status today, including mental institutions with people of all faiths afflicted with “Jerusalem Syndrome” (messianic psychosis).

Atenism, Judaism and the late Bronze Age collapse also inspired a radical new philosophy among the Babylonians, which came to be called “Babylonian Science.” A combination of ancient soothsaying and myths, cutting-edge astronomy and monotheism, it came to be revered by the Greeks, Egyptians and others and called astrology. Indeed, it is one of the our most popular unified field theories, along with Judaism, Christianity, Islam and science, with horoscopes featured in many newspapers and magazines and now online.

Forty-eight years after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Judea, it resurrected and ran ‘til 70 AD, not a bad reign, although Judaism was ripe for reinterpretation by then, in keeping with monotheism’s half-millennium update cycles. Conquest by the Roman Empire in 63 BCE complicated the already fraught relationship between the Pharisees, the populist, mystical and anti-Hellenist Jews, who emerged from Babylonian captivity and attempted to integrate fate and free will, and the priestly, upper-class Sadducees, who rejected predestination and the newer prophets and abided only “The Torah”. Indeed, there was soon a plethora of radical new prophets with fanatical followers, like the cult of crossdressing Zealots, who terrorized Jerusalem killing and looting, and the Sicarii (which still means “hit man” in Spanish), who enacted expert assassinations (although they fled attacks instead of standing and praying like Hashasheens).

Jesus was a peaceful hippie type, who embodied Judaism’s highest ideals, but he was also a maverick mystic in the mode of the great Hebrew prophets, who often criticized Jews or the Judaism of their day. Jesus’s pacifism contradicted David, in fact, the most revered Jewish sage after Moses, who started as a young, romantic shepherd and musician but killed Goliath and became their greatest king (although “The Bible” cites some crimes, notably dispatching to battle Bathsheba’s husband in order to seduce her). Given David supposedly co-authored “The Psalms”, still some of humanity’s most profound poems and wisdom literature, he exemplified the wedding of the sword, spirit and word, which came to be considered mandatory for messiahs (in seeming contradiction to Zachariah). David was probably just a local chieftain, not the second king of the mythical Israel-Judah Kingdom, but his existence was confirmed in the 1990s by archeologists unearthing a stone bearing the inscription “The House of David” (at Tel Dan, Israel). Either way, someone must have led the establishment of Jerusalem around the 9th century BCE and their son or grandson, perhaps named Solomon, must have built its temple, even if the details were embellished by Josiah’s writers in the 7th century BCE.

The authors of “The New Testament” undoubtedly invented Joseph and Mary’s journey from Galilee to Jerusalem around Christmas in order to connect Christ to David’s royal lineage as well as the pagan winter solstice festival. While Christ’s rejection of political power precluded him from being the long-predicted messiah, according to most Jews, some liked separating church and state, hence Christianity’s phenomenal growth. It allowed them to follow the new Judaism with less persecution, interact with converts from other tribes in church, and enjoy romantic devotion to a personal God, the spiritual hero who unraveled the secret of death as a mental construct. While Gilgamesh had to hike to the end of the earth to learn about death from a male mystic, after he rejected the goddess Ishtar, and Jews focused on terrestrial ethics, without mentioning heaven much, Christ celebrated celestial life, which could be made eternal through the infinite reach of abstraction. Indeed, heaven was a perfectly logical, religiously-imagined reward for doing right by the Lord. With its hero-martyr protagonist, “The Gospels” was a biography told from four perspectives, the books of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John (written about 70 to 100 CE), which contradicts divine dictation, although “The New Testament” includes 26 additional books. Fourteen are attributed to Paul, a Pharisee Jew from Turkey, who probably penned only half and persecuted Christians until his epiphany on the road to Damascus.

Islam’s theology is more Jewish than Christian, given it didn’t endorse the central thesis of Christ as God, although it mentioned him by name over a hundred times and indirectly almost two hundred (only Moses is more esteemed, with 136 by-name listings). It also rejiggered Jewish and Christian stories, such as making early Bible characters Muslim. Abraham and his first son, Ismail, father to Muslims (while his second son, Isaac, generated the Jews), are said to have carved the Ka’aba Stone, which polytheists later defaced with their “yoni” symbol. Other sagas are synopsized, like turning Moses’s sister, Miriam, into Jesus’s mother and subtracting a millennium. The Jews were the Muslim’s forbears, but they disobeyed God, misinterpreted his prophets and grievously sinned, hence the need for Islam to replace Judaism.

“The Quran” was also recorded by scribes, since Muhammad didn’t write—although he emphasized the importance of literacy to monotheism—but his personality suffuses the text, making it an autobiography. As we read its nonchronological Surahs, arranged from longest to shortest, we can hear him preaching in front of the Ka’aba, explaining or pleading with his fellow Meccans and the town’s many visitors to join not only his new monotheism but monotheist civilization, and its promise of a more just, functional and loving society.

The Romans became massively multicultural after conquering Greece, which they copied wholesale, and then many other tribes and civilizations, from which they borrowed deities, knowledge and practices. Such assimilation was impossible with monotheism, however, especially since Roman emperors insisted on being worshipped as gods, an abomination to monotheists. While many Jews respected Greek and Roman amenities, like roads, aqueducts, and amphitheaters, plus their science and Olympics (in which Jews competed naked, after tying their foreskins to look uncircumcised), the polytheism versus monotheist fight had reached a breaking point. It escalated rapidly after the Romans crucified Christ, Caligula installed a statue of himself in the Second Temple, and subsequent emperors destroyed it outright and then Judea in its entirety. Using their traditional tactic of severe repression, the Romans brutally put down three Jewish rebellions between 66 to 136 AD. Indeed, Rome was obliged to destroy the Jews because they stood for freedom of religion and speech—proto-liberal democrats, in other words.

After Rome killed as many as half a million Jews, many emigrated (the Diaspora), although some remained in Jerusalem or the region. Since monotheism solved so many polytheist problems, those wandering Jews (mostly men) were often respected. In fact, they sometimes married into ruling families, taught Judaism or their interpretation of Mosaic Law and built philo-Semitic communities as far afield as Nigeria, Samarkand and Bangladesh, a few of which are extant today. Jews and Christians also spread out across the Roman empire, the Christians preaching but the Jews discussing their faiths, as well as scribing their texts and building synagogues and churches. Focusing on analysis and commentary, the Jews produced “The Talmud” (200-500 AD), about “The Torah”, and “The Zohar” (written in 1275 AD, by Moses de León of Spain, although he claimed it was an ancient Israelite manuscript).

In this way, the Christians and, to a lesser degree, the Jews converted much of the Middle East, North Africa and southern Europe (all the way to Spain), using spirit not the sword, greatly assisted by the fact that those populations were civilized and often viewed monotheism as the next logical step. The Romans themselves gradually converted to Christianity, culminating when it became the state religion in 380 CE. Three hundred years later, however, when warrior preachers accompanied Muslim armies into Central Asia and North Africa or their Christian counterparts entered northern Europe, religious compulsion traumatized tribal members, from the Berber and Turkic tribal groups to the Celts and Goths. As one Goth said after converting, “I hear my father crying out from the grave.”

Christians attack Frankfurt’s Jewish ghetto, the Fettmilch riot, 1614. illo: Matthäus Merian/Wikimedia Commons

Why Christians and Muslims Began Punishing Jews

As Jews used their book learning and intellectual training to grow from traditional work as shepherds, farmers, merchants and rabbis, they became doctors, diplomats, moneylenders, international traders and other professions central to civilization but easy to blame when health, politics or finances went bad. Hence, despite scriptural directives to be ethical, help strangers and respect fathers, including spiritual fathers, Christian and Muslim authorities decided to demote them to third class status, although many people did maintain friendships, partnerships and marriages (as proven by the similarity look of Jews with non-Jews from their lands of origin, as well as DNA tests). There was even more cooperation with some elites, which is well documented from Morocco to India but personified by the Jews of Baghdad, originally brought by Nebuchadnezzar. Through Muslim conquest, Mongol annihilation and Ottoman resurrection, they lived alongside their neighbors, often working in the diamond, spice or commodity businesses, but, starting in the 19th century, going into newspapers, railroads and other modern enterprises. Baghdad had the world’s largest urban Jewish population (90,000), outside of Europe and New York, until their expulsion in 1948.

The front stage rationale for repressing Jews was: If they can be pressured into accepting to Christianity or Islam that proves those faiths’ superiority. Just as the Jews were “chosen” as the first monotheists (aside from Atenism), subsequent monotheists saw themselves as chosen, entitled to take over. Backstage and subconsciously, however, many Christians and Muslims were angry, confused and in desperate need of psychological or political relief both of which could be achieved by having villain around which to build the standard system of scapegoating, which is now called conspiracy theories. Given the Jews were an ancient people who started travelling the world in the 2nd century AD and were present in many nations, including times of historical difficulty, they made convenient scapegoats.

Freud detailed how scapegoating works in “Civilization and its Discontents” (1928): “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, as long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness… In this respect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews of the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows… Once the Apostle Paul had posited universal love between men as the foundation of his Christian community, extreme intolerance on the part of Christendom towards those who remained outside it became the inevitable consequence.” Similarly, once the Goths converted to Christianity, their tribal law essentially made all Christians their fellow tribalists, leaving only the Jews, Gypsies and witches as blameworthy. In fact, “the dream of a Germanic world-dominion called for antisemitism as its compliment,” Freud wrote, before Nazism was even a decade old, and added presciently, “the attempt to establish a new, communist civilization [finds] its psychological support in the persecution of the bourgeois. One only wonders, with concern, what the Soviets will do after they have wiped out their bourgeois.”

Although Freud nailed the basic psychology of scapegoating, based on his concept of the “narcissism of minor differences,” there were bigger problems in my opinion. The failure of tribes, cities, nations and civilizations is mostly due to stupid, repressive or corrupt leaders, compounded by the often unavoidable occurrence of war, weather and pestilence. Since those failed leaders are peoples’ fathers and (sometimes) mothers, blaming them openly is difficult, especially in a patriarchy, where fatherly respect is required and criticism can offend community members as well as authorities. This primordial conflict between respecting ones’ ancestors and correcting their errors can be alleviated either through honesty, courage and the bold action of a mature or what I call “repressed father hatred syndrome.” That mental disorder occurs when people continue to revere dysfunctional forbears but transfer their rage at being deprived of the care or functional society they see others enjoying to scapegoats.

Article continues at My Half Century With Islam, Part 3

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker who can be reached .
Posted on Oct 26, 2024 - 03:58 PM
My Half Century With Islam: Its Loving Sufis, Four Secrets and the Monotheist Wars
by Doniphan Blair

Me (with guitar) in my only photo from my journey to the East, along with (lf-rt) Dave Winterburn, Darko Radonovich (Yugoslavia) and Jimmy (Canada), Iran, 1972. photo: unknown

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Go to My Half Century With Islam, Part 2
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NOW THAT WE'VE ENTERED ANOTHER
hell cycle in the Middle East, it is only fitting and proper that I honor the brilliant and angelic Muslims and Arabs who helped me over the last half a century. Their personalities and culture touched me deeply, starting when I crossed into Asia at age 17; they inspired my art and spiritual development; and they contributed to my discovery—if you’ll allow me that boast—of four little known but rather large facts about the Middle East, which may allow me to return the favor and help them.

To touch on my fourth finding first, about a century ago, a generation of dedicated Muslim and Arab mystics and artists came to prominence in the United States and Europe as well as across the Middle East. Although I had long studied the mystics, I only learned about the artists recently, when I was in New York City, stumbled on a street sign for Columbia University’s Wallach Gallery and saw its phenomenal show of 20th century Middle Eastern art. That was on October 17th, 2023, ten days after the biggest-ever massacre of Israelis in the Arab-Jewish wars, which are also a century old, while Columbia was being besieged by students and others protesting Israel and tacitly or overtly supporting Hamas, the radical Islamist organization that ruled Gaza and perpetrated the attack. Columbia’s then president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, is Egyptian and probably knew personally some of the 42 artists in the Wallach show, but she had a lot on her plate, didn’t publicize it much, and few students attended. That was a pity, given their interest in the politics of the Middle East but ignorance of its progressive culture, as well as the coincidence of the Wallach show being scheduled in that tumultuous time.

The show covered from 1920 to 1970 and featured fascinating content but also form, with painting styles ranging from realist and impressionist to abstract and avant-garde. So much so, Sooud Al Qassemi, an art critic and collector from the United Arab Emirates, called those artists “the most pivotal moment in the history of Arab art,” a point reiterated by the show’s name, which was what the artists themselves called their movement: Partisans of the Nude (see my article about them). Not only did the Partisans of the Nude like to paint images of people, which violates Sunni Muslim prohibitions against portraying humans, clothed or unclothed, they stood for truth and honesty, symbolized by the naked body, and against repressive religion and politics—proto-hippies, in other words. Art and Freedom, another cultural group to which many of the Partisans belonged, published a manifesto in 1938, “Long Live Degenerate Art”, which denounced censorship, nationalism and fascism as well as the “Degenerate Art” show mounted by the Nazis in Munich, Germany, a year earlier.

“Girl in a Fishnet” by Egyptian Amy Nimr, part of her application to London's Slade School of Fine Art, when she was 20. image: A Nimr.

The Partisans of the Nude were mostly Arab men, including some of the top Middle Eastern painters of the day, but one was Jewish and a fifth were women. Exemplifying the latter was Amy Nimr (1898–1974), who attended art school in London but soon moved to Paris, got a one-woman show, and started hanging out with Henry Miller, the avant-garde, sex-positive American author (see my article on him), his Jewish friends and other Surrealists. That was not surprising given the innate surrealism of her work, like “Girl in a Fishnet” (1920, before Surrealism had emerged) of a woman hauled from the sea slathered in mussels. The daughter of a Lebanese publishing magnate, Nimr became Cairo’s premier cultural salonniere and continued to make interesting paintings, especially after her son was killed by a landmine, until she was forced to flee by Abdel Nasser's nationalist revolution in 1952.

I have not yet been able to determine if any of the Partisans of the Nude were involved with Sufism, Islam’s mystical, artistic and non-sectarian order, although some surely were. Indeed, Sufis had long dominated high culture across Islam, and they were prominent in Cairo until the mid-1970s, including a number of teachers with western students, even as Sufis were being repressed or outlawed elsewhere in the Middle East. Moreover, they had already taken the West by storm, starting in 1908. That was when Hazrat Inayat Khan, a master musician and oud player as well as Sufi from India, performed a concert in San Francisco and met a mystically-minded Jewish woman, Ada Martin. Directed by his "sheikh" (teacher) to spread Sufism, if he encountered suitable students, Khan renamed her Rabi’ah, after Sufism's 8th century “saint of love,” and administered a crash course of teachings and blessings but with no conversion to Islam. “His spiritual power was all summed up in the principle of love,” Martin wrote and, together, they started the Sufi Order, the first Sufi group in the modern West.

The Wallach Gallery's Partisans of the Nude retrospective, the first of its kind in America, was so spectacular, it raised my spirits from the orgy of violence and hate emanating from the Middle East but also across the West, in the large, anti-Israel demonstrations in dozens of cities and campuses as well as on Columbia’s quad, a dozen blocks away, and my Facebook feed. The show put me in mind of my own encounter with Islam, 51 years earlier, which was peaceful, pleasurable and enlightening. Strolling away from the gallery, in fact, it dawned on me: During my journey to the East, perhaps I wasn’t a "white hippie drug addict destroying native space," as a cultural Marxist might critique me today or a Central Asian satrap back then, but a fellow Partisan of the Nude or Sufi searching for my peeps.

One of my drawings from Stadelheim Prison, Munich, Germany, before I knew much about India. illo: D. Blair

My Journey to the East

My journey to the East started slowly with literary and cinematic references but was brought to life by the world travelers I met my first months on the road. Toronto Lee liked to reminisce about India's incredible food, over bowls of gruel camping on a beach in British Columbia. Wolf told me about staying with a maharaja, while we played chess with homemade cardboard pieces on the yard of Munich’s Stadelheim Prison (he was in for distributing LSD, me for theft). After an elderly guard backhanded me in the face, and I spent a week listening to members of the Baader-Meinhof gang (AKA Red Army Faction) shout to each other down the air shafts, I began to wonder if the West wasn’t still somewhat Nazi, and I turned to face the East, as illustrated in my prison sketches.

My physical odyssey, however, began in Athens, with the Turkish girl. We danced in a Plaka nightclub—she was on summer break from architecture school in Ankara—and retired to Annafiotika Way, an ancient alley under the Acropolis, where I had a two-room flat with Australia Paul, my road buddy since Yugoslavia. Although he later dissed her as ugly, I found her smart and stunning, despite some acne, and our sex languorous, intimate and, after a few hours, transcending physicality, what can be classified as mystical. My only conjugal connection during my Asia year, the Turkish girl came to symbolize that continent’s surprising openness and generosity but also secret matriarchy, which I finally learned about thirty years later.

A lush orientalism continued to embrace me as I stumbled off the small Greek ferry and around Izmir’s large whorehouse district—its gaggles of women waving—or tasted Turkey’s delightful cuisine, still one of my faves. By the time I hit Istanbul, in mid-September 1972, I was speedballing newness and oldness, otherness and revelations about the innermost me, or philosophy, like the night I toured the old city with a pack of dogs. They stayed behind when I entered a mosque, which are left open, and tried to develop my own form of prayer.

My great friend, fellow traveller and teacher, even after he went QAnon, around 2005, on vacation in Europe (perhaps). photo: Iris Sultan

By day, I ran around Istanbul’s museums, tea shops, hammams (steam baths) and hippie hotels, switching to The Utopia when I learned they had beds for a buck on the open roof. As I chose one and pushed my backpack beneath, I heard a “Hey" from across the roof, shouted by a slight, bald, bearded and bespectacled guy, sitting on a bed cross-legged. Ten years my senior, he had taken the “hippie trail” to India the year before and could provide practical tips and mystical bon mots in a mellifluous mélange. Eventually a political essayist, astrologer and herbalist, as well as one of my mentors, John Edmond Milich (1944-2023) converted to Islam on his deathbed. On the roof of The Utopia, I also met David Winterburn. Of modest demeanor but an avid intellectual and geographical adventurer, David preferred Hinduism, became a language expert, married an amazing African woman, and still goes to India.

A Turk in a trench coat and severe mustache turned out to be a nice guy, over beers in a cafe behind The Utopia, and to have hashish, the psychedelic green variety, yet another Turkish secret. When I shared it with the rooftoppers, even Milich showed respect. A few days later, a short, bushy-bearded Cuban, who went by Dolphin and was a member of Berkeley’s Hog Farm commune (famous for serving “breakfast in bed for 400,000” at Woodstock three years earlier), appeared on The Utopia roof and announced, “I’m driving to Afghanistan, in a bus called the Rainbow Express, 35 dollars a ticket.” I bought one.

We crossed into Asia on a large Bosporus ferry, hit the bus’s cruising speed (50 mph) on the Ankara Plains, and saw double rainbows out the Bedford’s roof windows, on both the left and the right. That was prophetic, as you might imagine, for the 23 hippies barreling east on the Rainbow Express. Also prophetic was Milich, who found a book of poetry rummaging in my pack, and started to shout sonorously, “Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all wines flowed and all hearts opened. One evening I seated beauty on my knee, and I found her bitter, and I cursed her.”

A world traveler relaxing on the roof of the Utopia Hotel, Istanbul, across the street from the Sultan Ahmet mosque. illo: D. Blair

“Season in Hell” (1873) by Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet some call “the teenager’s Christ,” acquired special meaning for me six months later, when I fell ill with hepatitis, and then dysentery and worms, and dropped fifty pounds and into a deep, many-month depression. It proved even more predictive thirty years later, when Milich became an avid conspiracy theorist (see my article about him).

Islam, however, was utterly unconspiratorial, at that time. It was wide open, in fact, from Morocco to Indonesia—almost everywhere except Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union’s Muslim states—as millions of Muslims enjoyed tourism’s easy money and entertainment but also friendships and cultural exchange. Indeed, the tens of thousands of westerners who crossed south-central Asia from the mid-1960s to the late-‘70s were almost always welcomed by locals, even in the desert and mountain redoubts not visited since Marco Polo.

I realized that fact our first night out on the Rainbow Express when Dolphin drove off the road and into the woods and announced, “We’ll camp here for the night,” no facilities let alone permission. The police arrived within the hour, still all the chief wanted to do was sit by the fire, listen to me play guitar, and have one of his officers stuff cigarettes with hash—grinning broadly the entire time.

The very next night, however, some boys in Erzincan pelted us with tomatoes. Evidently, they saw us enter the town’s historic hammam, peaked through its roof vents, got excited about foreign partisans of the nude, and there was a truck nearby with tomatoes. The only person hit was Barbara, the beauty among us, naturally, but we helped her back to the bus and we scrambled on, as the boys surrounded and started shaking it. After Dolphin drove us off, I went up front and played an E-blues boogie, which got him banging the steering wheel and beeping the horn. At 37, Dolphin was oldest person on the bus, and I was the youngest.

Life on the Rainbow Express, including a visitor (wearing a fez in the back), probably western Afghanistan. illo: D. Blair

Two hundred miles later, Iran’s curvy Arabic script and camels loping across the road broke my worldview, literally: a crack appeared and those images flooded in. Also breaking was the Rainbow Express, in a gorgeous gorge in the Alborz mountains, a hundred miles north-east of Tehran. Our resident German hippie, also an acid dealer, gave me a few hits and the admonition not to dose the Yugoslavians, whom he considered too young and immature, even though they were about my age. Naturally, I located Darko and Jelko, as well as the two-years-older David, and we dropped down by the river. Listening to its torrent and looking at the snowcapped peaks of Persia, I thought I could make out Alamut Castle, on a saw-toothed ridge, the first mountain fortress of the Hashasheens. I had heard about them from Mick Jagger’s character in “Performance” (1970), a film written and co-directed by the poet Donald Cammell, which explores the zero-sum challenge between vision, freedom and responsibility. (The actual Alamut was 75 miles west.)

Starting in 1094 AD, the Hashasheens were a small Persian subsect of Egyptian Ishmaelites, itself a subsect of Islam’s minority sect, the Shi’a, but they loomed large across Central Asia as well as my imagination due to their innovative use of hash, espionage and suicide strikes. Although suicide is forbidden by Islam, according to their founder, Hassan-i-Sabbah, a scholar and religious activist also known as the Old Man of the Mountains, “Nothing is true, and everything is permitted.” That is an extreme interpretation of the Hindu thesis that "Everything is maya," meaning illusion or mental construct. Although Sabbah didn't take drugs himself and killed his own son for drink, he used hash to brainwash his disciples, along with intellectual manipulation, like promises of paradise and radical readings of "The Quran". In fact, the Hashasheens gave us the word “assassin” (from their name, meaning hashish user) because they would stand and pray after an attack, not flee like earlier assassins. European poets immediately appropriated their name and narrative to express intense devotion, as in the line from the 13th century troubadour Aimeric de Peguilhand: “You have me more fully in your power than the Old Man his assassins.” For centuries, they terrorized Persia and the Middle East region around Jerusalem, where they obtained more mountain castles, from which to fight the Crusades, the first of which started two years after they did, oddly enough. The Hashasheens used disinformation, rumormongering and roleplaying, much like today’s conspiracy theorists, and performative killing, grotesque violence and religious fantasy, much like today’s Islamo-fascists.

On my seven-month, 7,000-mile journey through Islam, I met no Islamo-fascists, assassins or even bandits, except for a Kabul cabbie who put a knife to my throat.

Images from my journey to the East dominated my art for decades. illo: D. Blair, 1979

After our delightful afternoon tripping in the Alborz mountains, Darko, Jelko, David and I hitchhiked into the town of Amol for a bite and some of the opium Iran was famous for, even under the repressive Shah Pahlavi. A banker we met at the restaurant ferreted out a connection, but opium doesn’t burn in cigarettes like hash, so we couldn’t get high. The next day, our banker friend and his two young daughters came out in his chauffeured Mercedes to the Rainbow, which was still next to a mountain road under repair by a family of mechanics, for an afternoon of intercultural dialogue.

The border was closed, by the time we got to Afghanistan, but the guards let us stay in a room covered in Persian carpets and big enough for all 23 of us, a nice omen to mark entering that ancient, ennobled land. Aside from its ubiquitous hash, starting with a guy waiving a slab from the side of the road a mile from the border, I was amazed by the dun-brown mountains and deserts dotted with green oases and villages made of domed mud huts, the 1940s-era trucks speckled with paintings of planes, trains and telephones (albeit no people), the flocks of females in bright blue, head-to-toe burkas, chirping in Farsi and swooping around like birds, and the dark turbaned, black bearded men, stoic but sometimes friendly. There was the owner of Your Apple Pie Bakery in Kandahar, who liked DJing tapes while chatting up Barbara; the Kabul hotel boys, who spun madly around the room at my 18th birthday party, as I rocked another blues; the hotelier in Mazar-i-Sharif, who blasted Turkic tunes and provided tea, crackers and opium (which he showed me how to ingest: orally, starting with a tiny piece); and the "chai wallah" of Kunduz’s biggest tea house, who enthralled me, Hans Van Loo and his buddy Wim (Dutch hippies with whom I’m still in touch) with his evocative gestures and number one hash, five bucks a pound. The chai wallah was so expressive and welcoming, in fact, I came to believe he was a practitioner of Afghanistan’s millennia-old and highly regarded Sufism.

I still kick myself for not visiting the ten-story-tall Buddhas of Bamiyan, one of the seven wonders of the world, which survived 13 centuries of Islam and weather in the Hindu Kush mountains only to be shelled to dust in 2001 by Islamo-fascists. But the mountains were freezing by December, and I was desperate for India.

My Dutch friends, Hans Van Loo (rt) and his friend Wim, on Chapura Beach, Goa:. illo: D. Blair

Delhi’s rickshaws, restaurants and ear cleaners did not disappoint, nor did Bombay (now Mumbai), where we camped on the street next to India Gate and partied for a week, not to mention full hippie immersion in Goa. For two months, I camped on Chapura Beach, hiked the beaches (as a partisan of the nude), swam with the dolphins (once), and read Fyodor Dostoyevsky (“Crime and Punishment” 1866), as well as ingested copious quantities of hash and LSD. Every sunset, I would make a chillum of my number one Kunduz and shout the Hindu hashish prayers, “Alec bom” and “Bom Shankar,” which brought Hans and Wim running from their nearby camp and, eventually, a crowd of “India freaks,” pilgrims from afar as Brazil, Japan and South Africa.

“Journey to the East” is a metaphor for self-examination, I recalled from reading Herman Hesse’s 1932 book by that name, but some acquaintance with religion was useful, if not essential, I finally realized. Having learned little during my secular humanist youth or at my elite private high school, I cribbed from Dutch Hans and English Julia, who managed a multi-faith shrine in a small thatched hut next door to my tent on Chapura Beach. There was also the English-speaking Indians, most of whom seemed to enjoy a rollicking religious discussion, and the “sadhus,” the wandering Hindu holy men and (rarely) women. A sadhu named Boleram liked to sneak up behind me at night, when I was walking home from the cafe along the beach, and scream. “To keep you in the present,” he smirked, when I ran into him in the hut of Craig Karp, a harmonica-playing Jewish kid from the New York suburbs, for whom Boleram cooked in exchange for room and board. (After Craig and I hitchhiked west together in 1974, I went to the San Francisco Art Institute on and off for 16 years, while he attended Portland State, got a degree in Arabic, joined the State Department, and became their man in northern Pakistan during the Afghan-Soviet War, 1979-‘89.)

I discovered Indian art through Om Prakash Sharma, one of India’s first and finest abstract painters, as well as a great sitarist, who attended Columbia University on a Fulbright scholarship and met my father somehow (we lived three blocks from campus). For three weeks, Om hosted and ferried me around Old Delhi, visiting herbal doctors, mango stands and artist friends, while his wife Savitri fattened me up from hepatitis on her fabulous yogurts and curries. I was awed by—indeed, I still strive to abide—Om’s preternatural balance of East and West aesthetics, capitalist and communist concepts, and mysticism and rationalism, as well as the rebel artist and middleclass householder lifestyles. He lived in four modest rooms with Savitri, three kids and his girlfriend, Kathleen, an American studying Bharatnatyam, south Indian dance (see my article about him).

An Om Prakash Sharma masterpiece, shown in 1986 at Ancient Currents Gallery, San Francisco. image: O.P. Sharma,"untitled", 1965

I found Hinduism’s florid myths and guruology equal parts fascinating and grotesque and inhaled them from the India freaks. A long-blond-haired surfer from California, whom I met on top of a truck in Gujarat State, told me an epic tale of gods and goddesses, after which he added, “But India itself is the guru.” A skinny French girl in a dirty sari (probably an ex-junkie) taught me the Hindu chants at the ashram of Swami Muktananda, which I stumbled on hitchhiking around the fluorescent green countryside east of Mumbai. An upper caste member who renounced that life to become a wandering sadhu, Muktananda had Boleram’s angular energy and withering gaze, which he would turn on me from his pillowed repose, on the dais of his marbled hall, which were invariably echoing with the chants of dozens devotees (mostly gringo), when I walked in.

Considered a “sadguru,” a combination of sadhu and guru or perfectly realized being, Muktananda enthralled, educated and enlightened many people, first as a sadhu, then at his ashram, finally around the world, which he began touring in 1970. He would give talks and blessings and set up satellite ashrams, including a large facility two miles from my live-work space in Oakland, California, which is still there today. Unfortunately, Muktananda could be abusive: spiritually of liberal humanism, physically of men, and sexually of women, even girls, according to eyewitness reports and journalists, like William Rodarmor (CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1983).

David Winterburn and I sometimes play what we call “Find the Guru Who Transcended Sex,” where one team proposes a clean candidate and the other gets to dig up dirt, a hard game for the first team to win, since spiritual awakening connects through its romantic aspects to sexual love. The last time we played, David said, “The temptation of the flesh seems to symbolize the difficulty of the journey.” Sufism’s embrace of female-male relations, romance and sex was the main reason I was so smitten by it.

My series of nudes using brush-strokes inspired by Arabic can be considered my contribution to the Partisans of the Nude movement. illo: 'Ryoko in Repose', D. Blair, 2012

My Sufism

My Sufism started slowly, also with world traveler mentions, but increased as I hitchhiked across Rajasthan State and saw its mosques, maharaja castles and Persian miniature paintings, and exploded upon return to the States, when I finally cracked a book. Brilliant almost from page one, Sufism marries mysticism, poetry, music, dance, tolerance and secular activities, like work, family, romantic love and even soldiering, as well as some of the simplest but most sophisticated metaphysics in the history of religion.

On the road in Islam, I also learned to paint, including people. Arabic-like brush strokes appeared in my India sketches, expanded during my South America years, and matured into canvasses of monochrome figures, shaped like Arabic letters, or colorful nudes formed from Arabic-like puzzle pieces, which could be considered my contribution to the Partisans of the Nude art movement.

My poster "East Actually Does Meet West" (Max Michel, lft, Nicholas Soter, rt). illo: D. Blair, 2002

For thirty years, I dipped and sometimes dove into Muslim, Arab, Turkish, Persian, Afghan, Pakistani, Indian and Palestinian culture but especially Sufism, which often expressed the others' best. A decade before I delved into Judaism or my mother’s Holocaust experience, I adopted aspects of Islamic ideas, dress and music. My father was a fan of Egypt’s ethereal grand diva, Umm Kulthum, whom he heard there as a soldier during World War Two, and I played related riffs on guitar. My Asian interests, which also included Japan, China and Tibet, harmonized easily with my liberal upbringing and the multiculturalism of Manhattan and California, where I settled, although the reading and deciphering took years.

Everything changed after 9/11, a spectacular suicide attack in the Hashasheen tradition, even though the 19 hijackers were Sunni Muslims not Shi’a. When no one wrote editorials or toured talk shows to explain how the Sufis actually embodied President George W. Bush's claim that, “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam… Islam is peace” (9/17/2001)—except for Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Egyptian-American writer, Sufi and founder of Cordoba House, also known as “Ground Zero Mosque” (an Islamic cultural center cancelled for being two blocks from the Twin Towers)—I felt obliged to speak up. Within two months, I wrote and performed my “Art Fatwa”, a manifesto celebrating Islamic achievement and excoriating Muslims and Westerners defaming Muhammad’s dedication to peace and love, and I photographed and produced “East Actually Does Meet West”, a poster with that headline over a photo of a Muslim and an American musician meeting. And I began buying every Sufi book I could find in New York, Berkeley or Fremont, California, which had a large Afghan community with many ethnic grocery stores, a few of which stocked books.

'Abstract Aborigine 11' from my series of paintings featuring Arabic and figures distilled into icons. illo: D. Blair, 2019

After a six-month read and three-week typing frenzy, I finished “What Happened to the Sufis of the Middle East?”, a 6,000-word essay based on the best evidence I could find and the tragic realization that the Sufi sheiks were laying low for fear of assassination by radical Islamists. I gleaned a lot from “A History of Islamic Societies” (1988) by Ira Lapidus, a respected professor of Islam at the University of California, Berkeley, which has 26 entrees each for “Sunni” or “Shi’a” but double that (53) for “Sufi.” Although I was just an amateur scholar, who had only visited Islam for seven months in the ‘70s (plus the West Bank for a week during the First Intifada, in 1988), and I was not an actual Sufi, let alone Muslim or religious practitioner, I felt duty bound to build on what Lapidus and the other scholars had implied or revealed, often in just one sentence, to rise to the challenge of not only the so-called “clash of civilizations” but Sufi creativity and what I myself had witnessed.

Kabul was quite the Shangri-la in the early ‘70s. There was with Afghan pop music blasting everywhere, bazars bursting with color, sides of beef black with flies, and bearded men who liked to haggle but loved to chat, hippie cafes covered with magical, mirror-speckled cloth (made by the Kuchi tribal women), and a downtown with uncovered Afghan women, often beautiful, sometimes in miniskirts, a few studying medicine. The hippie invasion unnerved Muslim conservatives, I could imagine, even though I didn't personally experience any opprobrium, especially since much of Afghanistan was still feudal, as I noticed touring its rural regions, but their fears seemed far outweighed by the Afghans' enjoyment of the tourist revenue, cultural exchange and friendships, including romantic.

My 'Art Fatwa' called on 'Islamic artists to rise up. For one thousand years, your mystical brothers have been slaughtering you. There is no war with the West, the crisis is between moderate and radical Islam.' illo: D. Blair, 2001

Nevertheless, on July 17, 1973, the liberal King Zahir Shah was overthrown and exiled by his cousin, Daoud Khan, a military man. I didn’t hear about the coup passing through Kabul on my way west a few days later, but I followed developments in the newspapers or through David, who returned to Kabul as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English. They evacuated him in March 1978, two months after the Islamist revolution started in Iran and about two months before Afghan Marxists murdered Khan and 2000 supporters, seized the state and turned it toward socialism. Within a year and a half of what became known as the Saur Revolution, the American ambassador was kidnapped and killed, the Soviet Union had invaded, and that dun-brown land dotted with green entered a hell cycle, still going today.

When “What Happened to the Sufis of the Middle East?” was not accepted for publication, I produced a 20-page booklet and mailed it to a few friends and scholars, including Lapidus. When neither he nor anyone else acclaimed my findings, I feared a bad case of Dunning-Kruger delusions but calmed those concerns—if you accept my positive self-diagnosis—with 20 more years of readings and following the news. My discoveries are even more critical today, in turns out, in light of the absence of Sufi perspectives, even among liberal or educated Muslims, and the popularity of radical Islamism, among conservative or young Muslims but also Western academics, young people and leftists.

So, what did I glean from Lapidus, the other scholars and my Arab and Muslim friends not to mention the Sufi greats? And is it relevant to the modern Middle East? You be the judge, of course, although it’s obviously controversial, especially as the region’s radicals push it toward broader war. One thing for sure, with the situation so ancient, intractable and dangerous, we are well advised to explore any promising perspective whatsoever, which my four discoveries appear to provide, take for example:

The cover of my chap book "What Happened to the Sufis of the Middle East?" illo: D. Blair, 2003

Sufis Saved Islam Four Times

The Sufis were a significant spiritual force in Islam, starting a generation after Muhammad. Often itinerant mystics, quietist contemplatives or local teachers, they emphasized esoteric knowledge, vision-inducing rituals and “futuwah,” their codes of self-denial, generosity and right action. Although the Persian poet Mansur al-Hallaj (858-922 AD), sometimes called the “Sufi Christ,” was martyred in Baghdad for defying the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate, an affluent empire stretching from North Africa to Afghanistan, the Abbasids did support the sciences and arts, including outspoken poets, some of whom were openly queer or Sufi.

Gradually growing in stature, the Sufis attained leadership status around 1100 AD, after a titan of Islamic scholarship, al-Ghazali, proved that “Sufism was the mystical heart of Sunnism.” Al-Ghazali’s theological leap revived both Sunnism, Islam’s majority sect (about 85%), which had grown moribund over the half millennium since Muhammad, and the Abbasids themselves, who had exhausted their golden era. Although Sufis often started as Shi’a, Islam’s small, scholarly and hierarchical but also artistic sect—the Shi’a never outlawed human figuration and often adorned their mosques with massive portraits—they switched to Sunnism for its egalitarianism, simplicity, seven times more Muslims and, ultimately, al-Ghazali’s shattering insight.

A few decades after al-Ghazali, also in Baghdad (the world’s largest city, with up to a million inhabitants, from 800 to 1258 AD), al-Qadiri solved the central riddle of Islam: How does one integrate religion and politics? This allowed his disciples, the Qadiriyya, to establish the first stable Sufi “tariqa,” which translates as “path” but means “religious order” (since Sufis oppose sects and sectarianism). The Qadiriyya are still with us, in fact, as are the followers of the many other tariqas able to fashion a functional balance between freedom, vision and responsibility. “Give your hands to work and your soul to God” was the single-sentence summary of Sufism by Naqshband, a 14th century Persian sheikh, whose conservative tariqa, the Naqshbandi, continues today and includes about four-fifths of modern Sufis.

Calling each other “friends,” Sufis gradually left their caves and meditation spots, took up professions and spouses, and formed tariqas and other fraternities, some of which provided community services, like hostels for travelers. This followed the lived example of Muhammad, who grew from orphan to camel train leader and family man and then prophet and general, although the Sufis interpreted his mosque-state to mean ethical deeds enacted by individuals or grassroot organizations. The Sufi surge powered by al-Ghazali and al-Qadiri was instrumental in rebuilding Islam after the Mongol Apocalypse, the 13th-and-14th-century invasions by Genghis Kahn and his minions which killed over 20 million people in Central Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and often ended high culture for generations. The Mongols were largely areligious, but some of Genghis’s grandsons converted to Islam after meeting traveling Sufi merchants. Many Mongols went on to accept Sufis, including Tamerlane, another mass murdering conqueror, who invited the renown Sufi poet Hafez (1325-‘90) to sit at his court. When Tamerlane took offense at one of his metaphors, however, the poet prudently snuck out of the palace later that night and fled.

The Sufi-led recovery from the Mongol Apocalypse was so spectacular, in fact, it begat the Sufi Renaissance. Essentially Islam’s second Golden Age, it was personified by Rumi (1207-’73), who was from Balkh, Afghanistan, a cultured crossroads city (turned spooky hamlet surrounded by dripping mud ruins by the time I got there, in 1972). The precocious, young Rumi enjoyed Balkh’s cosmopolitanism until around 1220 when his father, Bahuaddin, packed up the family and fled, just ahead of the Mongols (probably warned by traveling Sufis). After hiking 2,500 miles to Mecca and doing their Hajj pilgrimage, they settled in Turkey. Rumi became an Islamic judge and community leader but also prolific poet, adventurous mystic and one of the bestselling authors of all time—across both Islam and the West—as well as a brilliant romantic. Indeed, Rumi's one-sentence revelations include: “Love alone cuts arguments short, for it alone comes to the rescue,” or “To the ones who really see—the ‘chosen lovers’—love is a shattering, eternal light.”

Portrait of Rumi. illo: unknown, 17th century, Turkey

That brings Sufi saves to four: al-Ghazali, al-Qadiri, the post-Mongol resurrection and their golden age. Not only were there both Sunni and Shi’a Sufis, which helped pacify the sectarian war plaguing Islam since the day Muhammad died, there were Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Taoist and even Jewish Sufis.

Mediaeval Judaism’s greatest philosopher, Maimonides (1138-1204), was a rational deist who fled intolerant Spain for the Holy Land, became court doctor for Saladin (1137-1193), one of Egypt's most revered sultans, and wrote his masterpiece, "Guide for the Perplexed" (in Arabic), but his sons turned to Sufism, again no conversion. Enamored of the mysticism of their ancient prophets, they rebelled against Maimonidian logic, joined the burgeoning Sufi movement, and reinterpreted “The Bible” as a mystical treatise. Indeed, they pioneered the Jews' mystical reawakening, exemplified by “The Kabbalah”, a purportedly ancient Hebrew document actually composed in Spain and Southern France, starting in the 12th century, and Ottoman Palestine, a few centuries later. Ongoing interest in monotheist mysticism explains why there are still many Jewish Sufis today.

Sufi poets and philosophers proceeded to entertain and enlighten entire towns, regions and empires, even those ruled by tyrants persecuting them. They were inspired, assisted and periodically replaced by the many wandering Sufi sadhus, who paralleled the activists and hippies of the 1960s. Poetry was their rock and roll, but Sufis also excelled at music, dance and other arts, religion and mystical theory and practice, like chanting, “moving meditation” (circular walking or spin dancing) and other techniques for inducing spiritual rapture or ecstasy. Last but not least was their special sauce: romance, humor (some became court jesters), ironic insinuation and moral suasion, if not so much the legal variant, although many Sufis were Islamic scholars and judges.

Science became central to Islam, due to monotheism’s unified field theory, which provided an antidote to its dogma and was hailed by Muhammad, who recommended Muslims “Seek knowledge even to China,” and rationalist sects, like the Mu’taziles (9th century, Baghdad). Islamic science, in turn, became central to Western Civilization after Christians excommunicated scientists and destroyed libraries during the eight centuries of the Dark Ages. Muslim scholars incorporated the knowledge of classical Greece, India and China as well as developed a lot of their own, from algebra, algorithms and alchemy (all Arabic words) to astronomy, medicine and other sciences. After returning to rationalism in the 13th century, Christian intellectuals devoured books by the 11th century Uzbek, Ibn Sina, known as "the father of medicine" (for discovering germ theory and compiling one of history's greatest medical manuals) and the 12th century Spanish polymath, Ibn Rushd (known as Avicenna and Averroes in the West).

Although science provided little mass benefit until the Industrial Revolution, and the Sufis preferred revelation to rationalism, there were some Sufi scientists, notably Omar Khayyam (1048-1131). A Persian mathematician and astronomer as well as poet, Khayyam liked to investigate Sufism itself, including its theory of symbol hierarchies, using a code based on alcohol: tavern as the teacher's house, wine the teachings, grape revelation, etc. Such iconography worked well in Islam where drinking was common, despite scriptural prohibition, Sufism was sometimes forbidden, and the two also shared altered states of consciousness. In addition to imbibing real or metaphorical spirits, some Sufis used divination (through dreams or other means), supernatural healing and other esoteric practices, like smoking hash, Tantric sex, “malamati” (taming the ego by blaming oneself), or the "torture meditation" of the fakirs, like self-flagellation.

Long before al-Ghazali and al-Qadiri, Sufis were respected throughout the Middle East and from Persia to Spain, from where the troubadours brought Sufism into Europe (it also entered through the Balkans). Devoted to their beloveds and professions as well as sheikhs and saints, their mix of the sacred, romantic and pragmatic inspired right action, creativity and love. In fact, Sufis are said to have conquered more territory with the word than all of Islam's armies with the sword. By the time of the Sufi Renaissance, “friends on the path” were flourishing from Senegal and Timbuktu in West Africa to Samarkand and Malaysia in Central and East Asia, with outlying regions joining the movement for centuries.

“In the 1600s a Sufi teacher from the west of the Pamirs [Tajikistan] crossed into southern Xinjiang and Gansu [western China], where he preached with great success,” notes Valerie Hansen in her fascinating “Silk Road” (2012). “In the 1700s his successors travelled to Yemen, where they studied with Naqshbandi [Sufi] teachers. On their return, they were unusually influential… In time, the descendants of these Sufis became the Khoja rulers of Khotan and Yarkand [in western Xinjiang]… Under their influence, Xinjiang became fully Islamicized.” Unfortunately, the descendants of these Sufis, the Uyghurs, have had their culture decimated by Chinese authorities who, starting around 2015, incarcerated almost two million in “re-education” camps.

Indian Sadhu on bed of nails, Benares, India, circa1907. photo: unknown

The Sufi Downturn

The Sufis were so fresh and functional but also religious, they were often ushered into the inner sanctums of Islam’s ruling elites as poets, advisors or outright sovereigns, as in Xinjiang. Over the centuries, however, cultures lose their edge, especially when leadership is passed to the first-born instead of most talented, or the system is gamed by religious charlatans or Machiavellian politicians. Some Sufis indulged in excessive superstitions, rituals or bizarre practices, including fakir self-abuse (such as the cliché of sitting on a bed of nails), while others regressed to conservative Sunnism or acquiesced to tyranny. Most historians of Islam mention or acclaim the Sufi Renaissance, which flourished from the 13th to around the 17th century, and often longer. Indeed, India's last Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1837 to ‘57, started as a wandering Sufi poet. Alas, neither the historians of Islam nor the Sufis themselves say much, or anything at all, about Sufism’s decline, decadence or fueling of fundamentalist counterrevolutions. This is due to embarrassment, perhaps, as well respect and tact, but also because many brilliant Sufis remained hard at work, and they eventually wowed the West.

Translations of Rumi, Hafez and Khayyam started arriving in Europe at the end of 18th century, with talented teachers and musicians, like Inayat Khan, coming a century later, although the superstars didn't identify as Sufis. The Lebanese-American Kahil Gibran wrote and illustrated “The Prophet” (1923), which doesn’t mention “Sufi” but obviously draws on its themes and is still a bestseller (the Wallach Gallery's Partisan show had two lovely Gibran drawings). Meher Baba, a Zoroastrian from Mumbai, India, studied with a female Sufi from Afghanistan (who ran away to India on her wedding day), became known as a nonsectarian positivist for his mantra, “Don’t worry, be happy” (chalked on a board, because he took a vow of silence), and was chosen by Rabi’ah Martin to take over her Sufi Order (which still has a spectacular, art-filled temple in Orinda, California). The Russian-born George Gurdjieff hiked much of the Caucasus and central Asia as a youth, had many “Meetings with Remarkable Men” (as the title of his book, finally published in English in 1963, puts it), settled in Paris and taught Sufi practices but without naming them. Known as a trickster and fabulist as well as visionary mystic, lay psychoanalyst and ancient wisdom repository, Gurdjieff still has many disciples and a few organizations worldwide.

Alas, this Sufi success, too, concealed a problem: the rapid rise of Islamic fundamentalism. As Sufis came to the West, enjoyed its religious freedoms and cultural and financial opportunities, as well as the esteem of its intellectuals and some celebrities (notably American actor Edward G. Robinson and English author Doris Lessing), they didn’t complain, let alone write exposees, about Sufism being under attack by Muslim “reformers,” first the religious then the political. The Ottomans had the most Sufi orders of any society, from Rumi’s Whirling Dervishes to the Janissaries, a widely respected military unit, but Turkey’s founding father, Ataturk, outlawed them in 1925. They controlled the guilds and opposed his project to secularize society.

As it happened, the Ottomans had just spent a century fighting the Sufis’ worst nightmare, the army of Sunni “reformers” which began galloping out of the Arabian desert in the late-1700s. Called the Wahhabis, they were led by two Muhammads, the indefatigable preacher Wahhab and his wily warrior buddy, bin Saud. After the conquests of the prophet Muhammad, any Arabian warlord worth his salt needed a radical preacher. Determined to destroy anything they deemed un-Islamic, the Wahhab-Saud “jihad” was an understandable reaction to Ottoman corruption and archaic Sufism; it was not unlike other austere movements that emerged from the desert; and its back-to-basics theology and social activism paralleled the Protestants, two centuries earlier. After overturning Catholic corruption, hierarchies and antique rituals in some parts of Europe, the progressive Protestant Reformation unleashed a series of bloodthirsty sectarian wars and insane witch hunts, which lasted over a century and a half, and a fanatical evangelism, which is still with us today.

A bit like the Puritans who colonized Massachusetts, the Wahhabis prohibited all rituals not listed in “The Quran”, music, all art except poetry, grave stones, flags, birthdays, and displays of that primordial symbol of matriarchal power, the female body. Although “The Quran” directs “believing women to restrain their looks, and to guard their privates” (Surah 24:31), it says nothing about covering their hair, let alone face, only their breasts. Alas, Muhammad’s wives did cover their faces, voluntarily, to avoid arousing Muslim men living nearby, and conservative clerics used that and other obscure doctrinal precedent to periodically institute full veiling, starting about five centuries after Muhammad. They would blame war, pestilence and famine on the failure of women “to submit,” the root word which was expanded into “Islam” and “Muslim” through the Arabic language's system of adding syllables to build concepts. An aggressive advocate of this stern theology, Wahhab once killed a woman on the spot after she confessed to adultery.

The Ikhwan, a Wahhabi militia doing a raid in Transjordan, circa 1923. photo: unknown

The Wahhabis went on to murder many women accused or suspected of adultery, polytheism or witchcraft, but that's a socially destructive custom, only practiced by the most macho clans, while religious angst is more easily relieved by scapegoating minority sects, who know the will of God but still don't abide it. There was the Shi’a, an eighth of all Muslims, who followed additional rituals and worshipped their intellectuals (which was why they divided into so many subsects), the Sufis, about three percent of today’s Muslims but more back then, and smaller groups, like the Yazidis, who syncretized ancient polytheisms with Abrahamic monotheism. Although the Sufis were mostly Sunni, they liked to invent conscious-altering practices and refine them into rituals, as well as to not just pray to Allah but meet him.

The mystics of Islam were closer than their Abrahamic cousins, conceptually as well as geographically, to the ancient Asian theology of “becoming one with god,” even though that violates monotheism’s “no other gods before me” ordinance, according to conservatives. The Sufi saint Al-Hallaj was martyred by the Abbasids in 922 AD, despite being warned repeatedly and placed under house arrest, because he refused to stop claiming an intimacy with God. Allah is everywhere and in everything, of course—“As close as your jugular vein,” as the Islamic aphorism goes—but monotheism became dualistic after “God divided the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4), good from evil and other categorizations. Islam tried to fuse politics and religion, which suggests a joining with God, but nothing else. Hence, the Wahhabis considered Sufi devotion to their sheikhs and saints, which included fetishizing their cloaks, artifacts and graves as well as obeisance to their prescriptions, and their use of chanting, dancing, breathing or other techniques to achieve ecstatic states to be sinful and “shirk,” Arabic for idolatry.

The Third Middle East Secret: Matriarchies

Monotheism is metaphorically masculine and intellectual and, therefore, best contemplated at a distance, to shield supplicants from its infinite conceptual power as well as macho anger, while goddess worship is more emotional and down to earth. Goddesses are cosmic mothers whose grandmothers created the universe and can impregnate idols or infants with spirit, birth brand new gods and merge with their devotees psycho-sexually, as the Greeks and Romans did during their Dionysus and Bacchus festivals.

Sufi metaphysics derives from those fertility cults, according to a few scholars, which suggests why the Wahhabis were so opposed to women and Sufis, although goddess power also unveils a third Middle Eastern secret (after “Sufis saved Islam” and “Some Sufis became decadent”): matriarchies. Middle Eastern societies were almost entirely patriarchal, since the beginning of written history, according to most European, American or Arab academics, but a minority dispute this thesis by citing evidence of goddesses, queens, poetesses and other powerful women. Since gods are born from goddesses, as men are from women, even polytheist heavens headed by gods or societies ruled by men remain somewhat or largely matriarchal. It’s hard to quantify, since women often use wiles or private means, instead of public intimidation, brute force or other male strategies, like wannabe patriarchs. In point of fact, throughout the ancient patriarchies, women served as oracles and high priestesses as well as queens and counselors. Indeed, temples controlled by priestesses sometimes had ceremonies featuring ritualized sex and squads of sacred prostitutes, skilled in soothsaying and art as well as sex (as evidenced by Japanese "geisha"). More average matriarchs, meanwhile, controlled the home, local religious practices and activities related to food.

Rebelling against this status quo, the monotheist prophets were scandalized by the priestesses’ public sex, seduction of visiting dignitaries and manipulation of men through the biology of desire. So much so, they anthropomorphized entire populations as fallen women: “Jerusalem… committed her whoredoms with… all them that were the chosen men of Assyria… with all their idols she defiled herself,” (Ezekiel 23:4-7), or Babylon was “the mother of harlots and abominations of the Earth,” (Revelation 17:5). Similarly, the prohibition of human likenesses was logical to deter idol worship and the sensuality of matriarchal polytheism, as patriarchal monotheism was getting started (although Sunni Islam’s elimination of all figurative art was unprecedented, given the human need to self-identify and contextualize, in society and nature, through art.

Afghanistan's revered female poet, Rabi’a Balkhi, from the 10th century Balkh is honored by a sculpture in Russian-speaking central Asia. photo: unknown

Regardless of patriarchal claims, Islam is only 14 centuries old, and there is plenty of written references, folk tales and archeological evidence. Indeed, it is well documented that Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, was an older, wealthy businesswoman as well as his boss—a great matriarch, in other words! Or that Islam’s holiest building, Mecca’s Ka’aba, is still cared for by a clan called Guardians of the Old Women, since it once housed hundreds of polytheist idols. Although Muhammad destroyed them in 629 AD, he kept one, the Ka’aba Stone, to serve as the central icon for his new, idol-less faith. That abided the repurposing of older stories, beliefs, buildings and symbols, known as syncretism and practiced world-wide, but the stone was sculpted in the shape of a vagina, which helped retain memories of matriarchal times, especially after being touched by millions of Muslim pilgrims. The Ka’aba Stone is also called “al-Haram,” meaning “sacred” and “forbidden” simultaneously, which tells the story of its transition from polytheism to monotheism but also references the need to integrate opposites, a popular theme in Arab culture.

“I personally believe all the world is a matriarchy” is a single-sentence revelation from the respected American anthropologist Louis Dupree, in his exhaustive investigation “Afghanistan” (1973). Dupree presents an alternative view of that spectacularly misogynist society, unless you’re familiar with its history of queens, women warriors and poetesses (see “Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women’s Poetry”, by Afghan scholar Sayd Majrouh, 2010). According to Majrouh, who was killed by extremists in 1988, Afghanistan has a tradition of two-line poems, “landays,” used by men and women to communicate surreptitiously, often in the street (usually when the woman’s guardian is distracted), sometimes leading to true love but also wild sex in the fields. When their relatives come with knives and their lovers flee for their lives, however, the women often stand and die for their cause, a la Hashasheen, albeit for love and romance not hate or money.

One of the first great poetesses of the Sufis and the Persians, in general, is Rabi’a Balkhi, of 10th century Balkh. Rabi’a is revered to this day in Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere (albeit not Afghanistan, after it was retaken by the Taliban in August 2021), including having her name on institutions, because she fell madly in love with a slave, Bektash, was stabbed by her relatives, and penned her last poem in blood. In fact, Persian and Arab women were known for their romanticism, passion and libidos (the natural result after generations of matriarchy), as detailed by Geraldine Brooks in her groundbreaking book, “Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women” (1994).

Rumi’s father, Bahuaddin, also a great writer and Sufi as well as Balkhi, tells a tale from 12th century about “the husband of a woman who composes songs and sings them in public. One day he arrives home unexpectedly and finds her with another man. He storms out, vowing divorce. Later he remembers the prepared meals, the clean clothes, the warm bed and the excitement of living with a woman who sings beautiful songs she composes herself,” (“The Drowned Book”, 2004). Having so many smart sensual women in comparatively recent history offers an explanation why so many Muslims strive to control their female coreligionists: they hope it will help Islam evolve from “Jahiliyyah,” “the time of ignorance and chaos” (code for matriarchal polytheism), which still plagues them, into a law-abiding and functional monotheist civilization.

Muhammad could be a stern preacher and tough crusader on occasion, but it’s well documented he was a creative visionary, a pragmatic and responsible merchant, and a loving and dedicated family man—a well-socialized mystic, in other words. Indeed, he worshipped Khadija, who courted him, was probably his first love, birthed him six children, and taught him about the romantic traditions and tastes of Arab women. When asked about how to excel in that field, Muhammad recommended sending the beloved messages, as befits “The Messenger of God,” and implying love is a message from God. In love with her husband, Khadija rewarded his hard work leading her camel trains across the desert with an annual month’s vacation, when he would retire to a mountain north of Mecca and pray—one of his three favorite things, along with perfume and women—which became Islam’s month of daytime fasting, Ramadan.

Article continues at My Half Century With Islam, Part 2

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker who can be reached . Posted on Oct 26, 2024 - 12:21 PM
The Passing of Tony Reveaux
by Doniphan Blair

One of the few photos I could find of the recalcitrant Tony Reveaux. photo: T. Reveaux
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ANTHONY "TONY" REVEAUX, OUR DEAR
colleague here at cineSOURCE, passed the week of July 10, 2024. In keeping with his mild-mannered but mysterious demeanor, I am not sure of the exact date, reason or his age.

Tony was my most mellow writer at cineSOURCE, although I did eventually learn he was quite the force in indie and avant-garde film. He even had an acting part in Chris Marker’s renown “Sans Soleil” (1983), and he started the film studies department at UC Santa Cruz. In addition to teaching filmmaking and film history there, and starting its film festival, he taught at the SF Art Institute, where he received his MFA, and at San Francisco and Sonoma State universities.

A dedicated cinema analyst, Tony was the first film critic at the New Haven Register, in his youth. He went on to appear in Artweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Microtimes, Computer Currents, Visions, Newmedia, MediaDirect CD-ROM (Japan), Film Quarterly, TV Technology, Entertainment Design and Film/Tape World, where I first met him. Indeed, Tony was a person I consulted in depth before I started cineSOURCE in April 2008, after Film/Tape collapsed the year before.

Tony wrote dozens of articles for cineSOURCE, often examining the art film scene but with a calmness and virtuosity, as can be seen in this 2010 article, “Radical Light: Bay Area Alt-Film”.

Tony also published four books: “Cool Mac Clip Art Plus!”, “The Independent Film” (with Sheldon Renan), and “The Art of the Animated Film”. “How to do Everything with iMovie”, which he wrote with Gene Steinberg, remains available for $26.36. And he has one film listed at the Filmmakers Coop, the 12.5 minute “Peace March” (1976).

As if that wasn’t diverse enough, he worked on many festivals and did multimedia design for the Oakland Museum, SF Conservatory of Music and University Art Museum Berkeley among other locations. Not to forget he was part of the Orange Hat Club, a group of swimmers who plied the San Francisco Bay, including in February!

Tony is survived by a brother who lives in Connecticut. I am guessing he was in his mid-70s, since he moved some years ago into an independent living complex in San Rafael. Evidently, he had a cancer that spread slowly, and his old friend Jeanne Thomas flew in from Montana to help.

Thanks Tony, for your calm and illuminating insight—love you!

Posted on Aug 03, 2024 - 01:20 PM
Rubio’s New Feature on Painter Tamara de Lempicka
by Dave Fonseca

The poster for Rubio's new feature documentary. image: designed by Doreen Hemmati, painting courtesy Tamara de Lempicka Estate
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“I live life in the margins of society,” said Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980), a Polish painter who lived in France, the United States and Mexico. “The rules of normal society don’t apply to those who live on the fringe.”

Similar could be said for East Bay filmmaker Julie Rubio, whose latest work is a feature documentary, "Tamara: The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival.” The film will screen in its entirety at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, as part of the highly anticipated de Lempicka retrospective, which opens October 12, 2024. This event is expected to draw significant attention from art and film enthusiasts alike, providing a platform for Rubio's film to reach a diverse audience.

Rubio, whose debut feature “Six Sex Scenes and a Murder” was the feature article of cineSOURCE’s debut issue, in 2008 (see it here), has been involved in lots of projects since, as a director, producer and cinema activist. Indeed, she is the current president of the organization Women in Film San Francisco Bay Area (WIFSFBA).

"Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival" delves into the life and legacy of the iconic Art Deco painter, known for her bold, sensuous art and tumultuous life, characterized by resilience against the immense challenges of her time. Born in Moscow to a Jewish family, Tamara later married a Polish lawyer who became entangled in the upheavals of the Russian Revolution. Fleeing the war, they sought refuge in Paris, where they rebuilt their lives as refugees.

Her story is told through her artwork, focusing on her relationships with her family, lovers, and friends, as well as her Jewish heritage and its profound influence on her life, career, and indomitable spirit. Told through her never-before-seen 8mm home movies and groundbreaking newly-discovered birth and baptism certificates, the film reveals her true name, heritage, and identity for the first time and will change art history.

Rubio's film captures the essence of de Lempicka's journey, highlighting her artistic genius and struggle as a woman in a male-dominated world. Indeed, during her first exhibition in the early 1920s, she signed her paintings "Lempitzki," the masculine form of her name. After enjoying international fame in 1920s Paris, her star dimmed but she kept working prodigiously, and has enjoyed a revival in today’s art market, where she is considered one of the top female painters, along with Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Director and cine-activist Rubio with her new hero. photo: Jorgen Lilijefelt Wennstrom, painting courtesy Tamara de Lempicka Estate
Rubio is a prominent figure in the film industry, not only for her production and directorial work but cine activism. As well as "Six Sex Scenes", she directed the feature "Too Perfect" and short "Soledad is Gone Forever," while notable projects as a producer include the feature "East Side Sushi" (see cineSOURCE article) distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Company and Netflix, and "Oakland B Mine," "Del Cielo," "Everything is Temporary," and "Impression", which have also received acclaim and distribution.

As the president of WIFSFBA, she has been a vocal supporter of gender equality and has worked tirelessly to support the advancement of women in the industry. Indeed, her new film is a testament to that commitment to giving a voice to women's experiences. "The world is in a state of turmoil and desperately needs the stability and compassion that women's leadership can provide," Julie told me.

Following its screening at the de Young Museum, the film will undoubtedly be accepted to some major film festivals around the world. Given discussions are already underway with major distributors for both domestic and international releases, with an announcement coming soon, de Lempicka's compelling story will reach a broad and diverse viewership.

Rubio’s film is a crowning jewel in the current resurgence of interest in de Lempicka’s life and work. Other examples of this include an exhibition of the artist’s work at Sotheby's and the Broadway musical “Lempicka”, which opened in 2018, and has toured the country. Critics have pointed out the obvious influence of de Lempicka on the look-and-feel of the recent “Celebration” tour by Madonna, who is a collector of the artist’s work. The world is going through a “de Lempicka craze” and Rubio’s film captures the essence of the public’s current fascination with the Art Deco artist.

Participants in the film include de Lempicka's great-granddaughter Marisa de Lempicka, who provides an intimate peek into the world of this absorbing artist. Broadway star Eden Espinosa, who was nominated for a Tony Award for her role as de Lempicka in the musical, provides her insights during a comprehensive interview. Academy, Emmy, and Golden Globe Award winner Angelica Huston lends not only her distinctive voice as narrator, but also tells the wonderful stories about starring as Tamara in the Broadway play “Tamara”, and about wearing the de Lempicka jewelry that Jack Nicholson gave her the night she won her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for "Prizzi's Honor" in 1985.

Julie Rubio in the shot from 2008 which became the cover of cineSOURCE's debut issue. photo: D. Blair
Julie Rubio's "The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival" is more than just a film; it's a call to action for gender equality and the celebration of women's contributions to art and culture. Be sure to catch the screening at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco during the Tamara de Lempicka Retrospective Exhibition opening this fall. Witness a powerful narrative brought to life by a visionary filmmaker dedicated to making a difference.

For more information and updates, visit the Tamara de Lempinka documentary website or Instagram page, or the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco info on her show.

Dave Fonseca is a retired and recovering technical writer who now only writes about the things he truly loves. He can be reached .

Posted on Jun 13, 2024 - 08:57 PM
Incredible Animation about the Holocaust
by Karl F. Cohen

The gate of Birkenau death camp. photo: unknown
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A FRIEND RECENTLY SENT ME
information about a book on an animation subject I knew literally nothing about, animated films about the Holocaust: “Holocaust Representations in Animated Documentaries” by Liat Ateir-Livny. Since I couldn’t find much information about the book online, I wrote several scholars and asked if they were familiar with the book or the films it might discus.

Only one person was able to help, Tsvika Oren, who teaches animation in Israel. He sent me a short list. Since then I’ve found a few other works on the subject. Fortunately, many of the shorts can be seen on the internet and trailers are posted online for the features. Although I only discuss shorts in English or with English subtitles, I found a whopping 23.

Some people who survived the Holocaust are now willing to share their painful memories, but for decades most preferred not to discuss their painful past. I remember a cousin once asking our grandmother what life was like in Europe before she came to America. “Life was awful, why talk about that?” she replied. Indeed, I never heard her or my grandfather discuss what happened to their Jewish relatives and friends who didn’t leave Europe. My mother told me it was too painful and depressing for her father to talk about that subject.

Today there is a growing interest in revealing some of those horrors from the past, “lest we forget.” Obviously, we don’t want history to repeat itself, but there is an antisemitic tendency to repress or deny that it happened, while time is running out for the last survivors to speak out.

“Holocaust Representations” tells of the first who spoke out using animation. The oldest are two by a Holocaust survivor, a three-minute abstract experimental piece with no dialog from 1958 and a feature made in 1982. The only other 20th century examples were a feature from 1995 and a 1998 short. But then there was a growth of interest in the topic, and the next film was from 2010 and 11 of the 23 films discussed were released after 2021.

Most of the animators who addressed the topic had strong personal reasons to explore this unpleasant subject, which inspired them to focus on creating, meaningful works that are educational and not unpleasant to watch. I discovered impressive, well thought out works that show victims surviving and rising above adversity. While the Holocaust is a depressing topic, dealing with it personally, one victim at a time, and showing their struggle to survive highlights elements of hope and humanism.

It is commonly known that animation can distance somewhat a viewer from feeling too empathetic towards the suffering of film’s characters. Had these film been made with actors, certain sequences might be too uncomfortable to watch. Animation erects an aesthetic barrier from extreme discomfort.

Obviously, there is an audience who wants to discover the truth about our pasts, no matter how upsetting. “Finding Your Roots”, on Public Television and hosted by Henry Louis Gates (2012-on) has become one of the networks most popular primetime shows, based on researching the long-forgotten ancestors of the show’s guests, who are fascinated by the history no matter how painful.

Unless you are Native American, whose ancestors were hunted by soldiers or white settlers who either stole their land or forced them into reservations, you or your ancestors were once immigrants. In many cases they came to escape famine, extreme poverty, pogroms or to be sold into slavery. For many of the Jewish guests on the show it is all to common to hear Gates inform them of unknown relatives among the millions who perished in Hitler’s death camps.

The poster for 'Sarah and the Squirrel'. photo: Y. Gross
The Films

WE SHALL NEVER DIE, 1958, by Yoram Gross, Australia, 3:18 min. This is an abstract, experimental film that might refer to the Holocaust.

SARAH AND THE SQUIRREL (also called "Sarah" or "The Seventh Match),1982, by Yoram Gross, Australia, feature (various length, depending on the version). This is a low budget production and probably a labor of love that never receive the distribution Gross must have hoped for. Gross was a Polish Jew and during WWII his family was on Oskar Schindler’s list; however, they chose to escape from being caught by moving several times from one hiding place to another. Mia Farrow provides the voice of the girl. Go here to see the trailer or the full the feature.

The film is about young Sarah who lives alone in a forest after her family is captured and taken to a concentration camp. She witnesses a group of Polish resistance fighters trying to blow up a railroad bridge, but they are captured. She decides to destroy the bridge, even though she lacked the tools to do it. To pad out the story Gross added some Disney touches such as her becoming friends with several animals of the forest and there is a great fire that might have been inspired by “Bambi”.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, 1995, 1 hour, 42 minutes, Japan. This is a gorgeous feature directed by Akinori Nagaoka, made for a juvenile audience, which won an award at the Chicago International Childrens’ Festival.

SILENCE, 1998, by Sylvie Bringas and Orly Yadin, 10:28 min. A Holocaust story inspired by the life of Tana Ross. Her mother was taken to Auschwitz in 1942 and she never saw her again.

OVERNIGHT STAY (or "Übernactung" in German) 2009, by Daniela Sherer, USC, 8:26 (trailer only). A woman recalls her memories of the Holocaust.

I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, 2010, by Ann Marie Fleming, 15 min. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

SEVEN MINUTES IN THE WARSAW GHETTO by John Oettinger, 2012, 8 min (clip only, full short can be rented for $2). This stop-motion puppet film is set in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. The dark gothic tones symbolize the brevity and suffering of a boy by the cracked skin of the puppet. He is in the middle of the brutal world of the Holocaust. Based on an actual event, it is quite different than most Holocaust films as it does not offer a feeling of relief at the end.

In the film the boy peeks through a hole in the ghetto wall and sees a carrot lying on the sidewalk just on the other side. He tries to pull the carrot through the hole, unaware that two SS men are following his every move.

“Seven Minutes in the Warsaw Ghetto” received a Special Mention at the Annecy Film Festival and has won other awards. It was shown by more than 120 international film festivals including: Palm Springs, Edinburgh, Dubai, Hiroshima and the London Animation Film Festival. .

Image from 'Children of the Holocaust: Ruth'. photo: Z. Whittingham
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST: RUTH, 2014, BBC by Zane Whittingham, 6:23, UK, cutout animation. Although shown at the Annecy animation festival in 2014, unfortunately, this short is no longer available online.

SILENCE or "Aufseherin" in Germany, 2016, by Wilbert van Veldhuizen. 5:30. Based on a true story about a young woman in the Dutch resistance who is arrested by the Nazi police in 1944.

STRINGS, 2017, by Erin Morris, Falmouth University, UK, 3 min, animated mainly on TV Paint. Inspired by the work of Amnon Weinstein who restores violins from the Holocaust so that they can be played as a symbol of hope. A handsome work of art with curved lines that flow to the music. The images formed by the lines are visual symbols that the viewer is left to interpret. Some images suggest buildings of the concentration camps, a few might refer to violin strings breaking, or are they a reference to violence or death?

THE NUMBER ON GREAT-GRANDPA’S ARM, 2017, Amy Schatz. Holocaust History/HBO. Opening footage sequence, 1 min.

LA STELLA DI ANDRA E TATI, 2018. Rosalba Vitellaro and Alessandro Belli. Art Dir. Annalisa Corsi. A very attractive trailer in color is online, 1:45 min. Story of an Italian child who endured the Holocaust. A longer promo in Italian, more clips and people talking about the film is here.

Image from 'Where is Anne Frank'. photo: A. Folman
WHERE IS ANNE FRANK, Ari Folman. Belgium, 2021, 99 min. Kitty, the imaginary girl that Anne wrote to in her diary, seeks out the deceased Anne which results in her inspiring a wave of modern social justice for refugees. “Folman uses a well-known story from a fresh angle while powerfully placing it in the context of the horrific tragedy that surrounds it” (from IMDB). Variety said, the “Waltz With Bashir” (2008) director examines the Jewish author's legacy, speculating on how she might feel about the mistreatment of refugees in Europe today.” Previewed at the Cannes Film Festival.

VOICES IN THE VOID, 2021, 18 min. As a teenager, Rabbi Bent Melchior went into hiding with his family to escape Nazi deportation. In his own words, he tells a story of heroism and survival, and of the regular Danish people who took exceptional steps to save their neighbors.

CHARLOTTE, 2021, by Tahir Rana, Éric Warin. 92 min. France, Canada, trailer only. An independently produced biography of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) who was killed in Auschwitz.

TWO TREES IN JERUSALEM, 2022, 27 min, trailer only, search for full piece. An animated documentary produced by Humanity in Action, profiles the remarkable history of Eberhard and Donata Helmrich, who together saved the lives of countless Jews during the Holocaust.

HOLY HOLOCAUST, 2022. Osi Wald and Noa Berman-Herzberg, 17 min. It is an unusual art experience, a conversation between two women who are close friends. The artwork is quite stylized and the conversation seems carefully structured rather than improvised. Towards the end of the long discussion, it shifts to what might be factual or a dream that relates to Nazi Germany.

Image from 'Where is Anne Frank'. photo: A. Folman
LETTER TO A PIG, 2022. Tal Kantor. Israel, 16 min, trailer. A Holocaust survivor reads a letter he wrote to the pig who saved his life. A young schoolgirl hears his testimony in class and sinks into a surreal daydream where she confronts questions of identity, collective trauma, and the extremes of human nature. Oscar and Annie nominations. 2024. MAKING OF LETTER TO A PIG, and MAKING OF LETTER TO A PIG, THE TECHNIQUE, and MAKING OF LETTER TO A PIG, THE CHARACTERS.

THE TEDDY BEAR, Benjamine Gruen, 2022, 12 min. The true story of Michael Gruenbaum, survivor of Terezin Concentration Camp. The film is narrated by Michael Gruenbaum, who survived two-and-a-half years in Terezin as a child. It is a biographic statement and includes how a homemade stuffed toy saved his life. The film is described as appropriate for middle school age children and older. The film was made by Michael’s grandson who went to the Rhode Island School of Design.

THE HOLOCAUST DEATH TRAIN, 2022, 6 min. the "Death Trains" were used to transport innocent Jewish families to the concentration camps.

MY FATHER'S SECRETS, 2023, directed by Véra Belmont, France, Belgium, 74 minutes, trailer only. “A heartrending yet deeply uplifting tale of remembrance, love and the triumph of the human spirit.” My Father’s Secrets is an intimate, thought-provoking film that focuses on a family’s journey to reconciliation after facing the trauma of the Holocaust. At 20 years old, Michel’s father returned to his native Belgium, marrying and fathering four children. The story is the family’s journey to understand their father’s past as they grow up. A deeply uplifting tale of remembrance, love and the triumph of the human spirit. Featuring the voices of Elliott Gould and others. Based on the autobiographical novel by author/cartoonist Michel Kichka.

Image from 'Humo'. photo: A. Folman
HUMO, 2023, directed by Rita Basulyo, Mexico, puppets, trailer only. A somber emotionally moving work of art about an innocent young boy in a concentration where nobody in his world comes back. Film is dedicated “to our lost children.” It is an adaptation of the illustrated children’s book Humo by Antón Fortes. It was nnominated for an Annie award for best short and made the short list of animate shorts nominated for an Oscar.

BAMISTARIM, 2023. Tamar Dadon-Raveh. 8 min. Two young Jewish girls talking on board a ship bound for Israel about their life during WWII. English sub-titles.

Closing Comments

History is full of horrible wars that have not made this a better world. I grew up admiring Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to teach us to do something that seems to be much harder to do, to turn the other cheek, to love thy enemy and to build a better world together. Could the war between Israel and Hamas have been prevented if the two had been seeking a peaceful resolution over the years instead of acting as powerful advisories full of hate? I hope that someday world powers will learn to give peace a chance despite all our differences. Until that happens a few good people will continue to create various forms of media, reminding us for the sake of humanity that we need to change our ways.

The book that inspired this article, “Holocaust Representations in Animated Documentaries: The Contours of Commemoration” by Liat Steir-Livny, was published by Edinburgh University Press, is 264 pages and the hardback is $110.00. It is also available as an eBook. It examines representations of the Holocaust, survivors and their descendants in animated documentaries. One promotion for the book says vast majority of animated holocaust documentaries marginalize the horrors and focus on bravery, resilience, and hope, instead.

One of my friends in Europe was surprised I was writing about this subject now. They commented these films have been shown frequently in animation festivals all over Europe. I replied, ”We don’t have festivals like you do.” Also, there is no entry fee to submit films to festivals in Europe, so why should European animators pay to enter festivals in the US?

Posted on Mar 10, 2024 - 05:26 PM
Will AI Destroy Animation?
by Karl F. Cohen

Astronaut talking to HAL, the computer in '2001: Space Odyssey'. photo: S. Kubrick
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AI HAS BECOME A HOT TOPIC, POSITIVE
and negative, and people are constantly speculating about its future. One friend told me, “Nobody is admitting that all the recent tech job layoffs are due to AI.” Is he correct? I needed to find out.

It seems there is a general belief that many companies will be able to use the new technology to enhance productivity and profit, but only a few people are asking how will it affect the workers.

Steve Lohr, who covers technology for The New York Times, was quite vague about that issue when he wrote on Feb. 1, 2024 that, “a new generation of artificial intelligence is poised to turn old assumptions about technology on their head. It will have its biggest impact on white-collar workers with high-paying jobs in industries like banking and tech.” He referred to a report that avoids saying the technology will do away with large numbers of jobs. Instead, he said, “Workers need to better prepare for a future in which AI could play a significant role in many workplaces that until now have been largely untouched by technological disruption.”

He did suggest some people may end up “building their AI replacements.”

Lohr also said, “There’s no question the workers who will be impacted most are those with college degrees, and those are the people who always thought they were safe.” He added, “Most experts expect that AI will mostly change jobs for the next few years rather than eliminate them — though that could change if the technology improves sharply.” He concluded saying workers will need “increased training to… adapt to a fast-arriving technology.”

More to the point, a discussion on “Philosophy Talk”, a radio show on KLAW on February 4th, 2024, focused on work created by artists. It suggested that some artists will be replaced, but AI will also influence workers to go beyond what they were capable of creating before AI existed. The speaker, Michael Frank, a Stanford professor, said that when it comes to making aesthetic decisions, AI will make mistakes including not being able to make the best subtle choices.

He believes AI is not capable at the present time to make those choices as there are endless possibilities of what our minds are capable of choosing and that AI is not that sophisticated. It works within a limited number of parameters. When he said AI isn’t capable of writing a book like “Moby Dick”, I flashed on it not being able to create a lovely film such as “The Man Who Planted Trees”.

Next, I asked Google, an older form of AI, what influence AI will have on animation. It replied, “AI can create more realistic characters, improve lighting and shading, and even add special effects. This can help animators to create more visually stunning animations. Overall, AI is having a major impact on the animation industry. AI tools automate tasks, generate content, and improve animation quality.”

I found one writer who feels AI will be quite destructive, and it may well wipe out jobs. A person (nicksaraev.com) posted on the internet “How AI Animation Will Decimate the Industry Within 5 Years”. He believes AI animation is already DEFINTELY BETTER than humans and many jobs will be replace by computers in less than five years. He predicts, “Animation models won't be perfect, at least not for the next few years, but they don't need to be.” The animation art used to illustrate the article is a far cry from Disney quality. They look like simple generic anime images.

Years ago, I remember hearing people claim that motion capture technology was going to replace animators. It was going to cut production costs and it would create a better-looking film. The technology turned out to be expensive and there was something about it that just didn’t look right, especially faces when they were not talking or moving. They looked dead. The technology is still in use at times, but it didn’t revolutionize animation.

AI-created image of mastodons. photo: OpenAI using their Sora
I suspect the doom and gloom writer is correct: some jobs will be lost to AI. However, most will be with companies trying to cut costs on small budget shows. In the past people tried to create low budget 3D computer animated features and most of those producers have moved on to other approaches to making a living.

If the first producers to use AI animation to tell a story, will it usher in a new direction for creative people to explore new directions in animation? What if it is used by low budget producers. Should we expect not particularly attractive looking work? Will the first uses just be seen as a novelty or will it be a marvelous introduction to an exciting new technology that will be further refined?

It is too early to know how successful AI will be as a production tool. My preliminary study suggests AI may prove useful for artists interested in using it. It might turn out to be better suited to helping writers grind out run-of-the-mill scripts. In time, it may prove capable of creating both cartoony as well as photo-realistic animation. The public is already quite comfortable in the non-realistic world of animation so, I would say, don’t expert Disney to replace its animators with AI, as it will probably turn out to be labor intensive to turn out quality work.

As far as the current state of AI, a video released in February, 2024, by the company OpenAI, using their still-in-development Sora system, shows are realistic extinct mastodon.

“Several giant wooly mammoths approach treading through a snowy meadow, their long woolly fur lightly blows in the wind as they walk, snow covered trees and dramatic snow-capped mountains in the distance, mid-afternoon light with wispy clouds and a sun high in the distance,” was the verbal prompt See OpenAI’s latest show reel, released a few days ago.

The new reel appears to be a considerable leap forward for generative AI technology. It can now create video footage from a photo, artwork or just text input (instructional prompts). The technology is also excellent at making smooth camera movement (pans, zooms, trucking shots, aerial shots) and one report said in some cases the shot can last as long as a minute.

While the system can do impressive things, it has trouble with some of the basics. For example, it can show a person taking a bite out of something, but when the mouth opens the something may still be whole and not show any teeth marks. The system has yet to learn cause and effect.

Lip synch is another basic problem for software engineers to master. Right now, they can make lips move on a still image of a person’s face, but the result is ridiculous looking. It will probably take a lot of computer power and time to create convincing images of people talking with all the facial muscles moving underneath the skin in a convincing way. Eye and head movements should look natural. The nuances of facial expressions may turn out to be a major challenge to mastered, and harder if the person is talking.

The day the amazing reel was released, the NY Times said, “OpenAI has completed a deal that values the San Francisco artificial intelligence company at $80 billion or more, nearly tripling its valuation in less than 10 months, according to three people with knowledge of the deal.” Microsoft had put $13 billion into the company so far.

The young company is already famous for creating ChatGPT. OpenAI is also known for a recent scandal where the board fired CEO Sam Altman because they thought he wasn't addressing the dangerous aspects of AI. A few days later Microsoft reinstated him, whereupon he fired some of his board.

OpenAI has told the press it is aware of the potential for its technology to be misused. As a result, the company has chosen to slowly roll out the tool while they “assess critical areas for harms or risks." For more on OpenAI go here.

None of the software is for sale at present and when it is available it may not prove to be very useful for someone with questionable intentions. Someday, perhaps soon, lip synch will be perfected enough to create realistic images of politicians making fake statements or other kinds of deceptive propaganda. Hopefully the government and/or industry will find ways to detect bogus uses of the technology and warn the public while it is being removed from the internet.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Mar 10, 2024 - 05:14 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: Mar 2024
by Karl F. Cohen

Images by Marcy Page who was honored February's Annie Awards in Los Angeles. photo courtesy: M. Page
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover travel expenses for this article.

Marcy Page Gets ASIFA’s Lifetime Award

Marcy Page, the former Californian and National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animation producer, was honored for her “unparalleled achievement and exceptional contributions to animation.” The Winsor Mccay award, named for the cartoonist and animator (1866-1934), was presented February 17th, at the 51st Annie Awards by ASIFA-Hollywood, the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association.

Born and raised in California, Marcy graduated from San Francisco State, taught there and worked at Colossal Pictures, the storied, Bay Area animation company. After meeting a man and getting married, she immigrated to Canada, where she joined the NFB in 1990, first as a director and associate producer and then as a producer.

She sought out eclectic and unusual productions and co-productions during her career as a producer with the NFB’s English Program Animation Studio, pushing the boundaries of the animation medium. Her NFB credits include two Academy Award-winning animated shorts, Chris Landreth’s “Ryan” (2004) and Torill Kove’s “The Danish Poet” (2006). She was also NFB producer on four more Oscar-nominated films: Kove’s “My Grandmother Ironed the Kings Shirts” (1999) and “Me and Moulon” (2014); Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s “Madame Tutli-Putli” (2007); and Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby’s “Wild Life” (2011).

The streets of a post-apocalyptic New York in popular new YouTube movie, 'Hazbin Hotel' by 31-year-old Vivienne Medrano.
Should Animation Be This Intense?

“Hazbin Hotel” by Vivienne Medrano, who is 31 and a graduate of the School for Visual Arts, New York, is so packed full of energy both visually and in the soundtrack that it may require multiple viewings to understand what is going on, see her Vivziepop channel here. The first piece, "Hazbin Hotel", is a 30-minute, post-apocalypse comedy with over 100 million views. I’ve been led to believe by a friend, who is tuned into what is hot in current internet culture, that Vivienne’s aesthetic is a prime example of a current trend. Indeed, she has 9 million followers and over a billion hits.

Vivienne writes she has been absorbing and creating animation from a young age. She is part of a highly talented new breed of independent artists that may exist with a generation gap between them and animators from the past.

“The new animators don't know there was even a history of animation,” I was told, “Just that if they don't go viral before they finish high school, they are over the hill. On the other hand, animators who know the history, never hear of the immensely popular animation going on in the internet.”

My informant added that if you ask a young internet animator what is the most viewed animation ever made the answer won’t be Mickey Mouse; but might be “Baby Shark.” See her Wikipedia.

Geraldine Fernández, a Colombian graphic designer, hoaxed her nation by claiming she workd on 'The Boy and the Heron'.
Colombian Animator Hoaxes Nation

A Colombian graphic designer scammed her nation’s media into believing she worked with the renown Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, on his recently released masterpiece “The Boy and the Heron”. Before the film opened, Geraldine Fernández Ruiz, a graphic designer at a company that produces glass and aluminum products, convinced major media outlets in Columbia that she drew a lot of the feature.

She claimed Miyazaki praised her work three times during the production and he referred to her affectionately as “the Colombian.” She worked for him for “over 20 months, I had to deliver 25 thousand frames, and those 25 thousand frames corresponded to a 10-second scene… It was a lot of work, but it was worth it, especially because Miyazaki was there.” Unfortunately, her math is BS. At 24 frames a second there are 240 frames in 10 seconds of screen time which might take a seasoned animator a week to draw.

Fernández's statements appeared in print and on the internet until somebody finally checked facts and—gosh!—found no mention of her in the film’s publicity or credits.

Finally, when Cartoon Brew heard about it, they contacted the film's U.S. distributor, GKIDS, who confirmed Fernández was not involved in “The Boy and the Heron”, although she continued to insisted everything was true but she couldn’t offer proof because of a non-disclosure agreement.

Eventually, retractions appeared in the press. El Heraldo said they trusted Fernández’s claims and apologized to printing her lies. The paper El Tiempo announced their fact check failure and hoped this will not happen again.

Finally in late January, Fernández sent out a long apology admitting she had fabricated her involvement. As the situation got out of control, it became increasingly difficult for her to retract her lies, she claimed. Oh, by the way, it turns out she has been accused of using other animation artists' work for her reel.

David Hilberman’s kids, Mark, standing, brother Dan and cousin Bernard, at the 1941 Disney animators' strike, a year after they released the artistic masterpiece 'Fantasia'. photo: D. Hilberman
Play About Disney Workers Unionizing

“Burbank” is a theatrical play about Disney artists’ efforts to unionize, which started in the late 1930s and led to the Disney Strike in 1941. It will get an off-Broadway run from March 12-24 and it be available to stream on the Thirdwing platform. Written by Cameron Darwin Bossert, the play focuses on the faceoff between Walt.

The strike saw 334 Disney employees walk out and picket and 303 employees remaining inside. Employees of the studio had numerous grievances, including low wages, salary cuts, arbitrary layoffs, and other issues. A review says, “It captures the anxiety that can grip a workplace amid a labor struggle, and the ruthlessness that can ensue on all sides.”

Disney Loses Suit with DeSantis

A federal judge dismissed Disney's lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis about who has the right to control development around the Walt Disney World Resort. The judge said Disney cannot sue DeSantis and his handpicked board that now controls the district in which the theme park operates. The statute granting the governor the authority to appoint every member of the tax district’s governing body is "facially constitutional" and cannot be challenged with a free speech claim. Nevertheless, the park is still the happiest place on earth!

From 'Steamboat Willie', the debut of Mickey Mouse, 1924, the copyright for which recently expired.
Disney CEO Upbeat

At the quarterly meeting for stockholders in February, Disney CEO Bob Iger painted a rosy picture of the company’s future. He reaffirmed that Disney’s streaming business will be profitable this summer, thanks to higher revenue per user and efforts to control costs.

The company, which is facing proxy fights with activist investors, said that its streaming business lost $216 million this quarter, down from a loss of $387 million last quarter, and less than $1 billion a year ago. He reported higher average revenue per user at Disney+, even as subscribers dipped slightly, following a price hike. Overall revenue was $23.5 billion, even from a year ago. The company expects to expand in all of its current physical locations, as well as in its cruise line.

Bob Iger bets the future of Disney will involve more games industry, in which they recently invested $1.5 billion. He says, “When I saw Gen Z and Gen Alpha and even millennials, and I saw the amount of time they were spending in terms of their total media screen time on video games, it was stunning to me, equal to what they spend on TV and movies.”

Mark Gustafson winning an Oscar in 2023 for Guillermo Del Toro’s 'Pinocchio'. image: courtesy M. Gustafson
Mark Gustafson Passes

Mark Gustafson, who co-directed Guillermo Del Toro’s Oscar-Winning “Pinocchio”, among many other achievements, has died. He was 64 and suffered a heart attack. Our condolences.

After he earned an art degree from Pacific Northwest College of Art (BFA, 1982), Gustafson joined Will Vinton Studios in Portland, Oregon and slowly worked his way up through the ranks.

Stringer’s ‘Crab Day’

Watch Ross Stringer’s masterful short, which uses minimal color and dialogue, “Crab Day” (2023), here. It won the 2024 British Short Animation Award, BAFTA.

(Lft-rt) Frank and Caroline Mouris’ Oscar-winning ‘Frank Film,’ Jan Svankmajer’s ‘Dimensions of Dialogue,’ and Norman McLaren’s Oscar-winning ‘Neighbors.’
Many Comments On Cohen’s Article

I was pleased that several people took the time to say they appreciated my article, “Help! I Love Animated Shorts”. Most were short comments like David Chai, who teaches animation at San Jose State, writing, “WOW! This is a great article! I’m looking forward to the next two!” A few were longer, more meaningful statements, like from Shirley Smith, who studied animation at SF State.

“I love this article,” Smith wrote. “It traces the fantastic journey that independent animations and animators made in my life. It was a dense string of a huge variety of events that were unique, profound and funny, and so very inspiring. When I invited my friends, they got so excited to see this kind of thing. Karl and Carol love these unique shows, and just ache for more. I hope Ron Diamond can get some momentum going again. I know in my heart that people can get addicted to this kind of stuff. I've seen it happen. My favorite films were always done by independents. They are so much more authentic. “

A very useful note came from John Hays, a former Colossal director and co-founder of Wild Brain. He pointed out a show I will add if this article is reprinted. He wrote “Excellent essay, Karl! First time I’ve seen the complex history of animated shorts put together in one place and you’re definitely the right guy to do it. Great way to stimulate discussion on a worthy subject.”

“One thing you might consider adding to the mix is MTV’s & (C)P’s “Liquid Television”. The episodic show was a pretty good effort at bringing animated shorts to the mainstream. Also proved to be a good launching platform for potential series pilots. Worked well for ‘Aeon Flux’ and ‘Beavis and Butthead’ at least.”

Sketch of the fourth complex Universal Orlando is building in Florida, in an attempt to compete with its larger rival, Disney.
Labor Crisis at Universal’s Theme Park

The press has revealed a serious labor crisis at Universal Studios’ theme park. Labor problems at the Disney theme parks are well-known. Now The Los Angeles Times reports a UCLA study says that Universal Studios’ theme park in Hollywood has serious problems. They make massive investment in attractions, but try to cut costs on the laborers who keep it running. Many workers in this profitable theme park are underpaid and struggle to pay rent and buy food. One worker is reported to say, “It’s a constant battle, tearing at us mentally.”

This Hollywood Reporter article included numerous stories about people struggling to survive. The study says 44% of the workers reported they worried about being evicted from their homes, while others said they have had to reduce the size of meals or skip them. A quarter of the workforce has used food stamps, food banks or other need-based food donation programs.

The survey interviewed 1,330 park workers in the two unions that represent most Universal Studios personnel, including people who dress up a film characters like Scooby-Doo, Gru, Hello Kitty and the Bride of Frankenstein. They also talked to ride operators, tour guides, carnival barkers, clerks, parking lot attendants, store clerks, cooks, bartenders and warehouse workers. I find it shocking that the unions don’t fight harder for livable wages.

The example of how desperate people are is summed up in this quote from the article, “I’ve seen people get fired because they take food out of the trash to eat it. [Management] lets them go because they say that’s still stealing.” Hard to believe!

Winner of SF Indie Fest

The Audience Award for Best Animation at the SF Indie Festival went to “The Grand Book” directed by Arjan Brentjes. It concerns a young woman living on the streets of a 1920s city but under constant surveillance and unable to be herself?

Miyazaki’s standard gaggle of powerful old women from his Annie-award-winning 'The Boy and the Heron'. photo courtesy: H. Miyazaki
The Annie Awards 2024

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” wins best commercial feature in the Annie Awards, the accolade presented by the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood. It was the shows' biggest winner in applause and by winning all seven categories in which it was nominated (best commercial feature, FX, character design, direction, music, production design, and editorial). “Robot Dreams” wins best independent feature at the Annie Awards. You can see the entire three-hour award ceremony online here.

“Robot Dreams” won best independent feature, and “War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko” was the best independent short. It also just won Spain’s Goya Award for Best Animated Feature.

Hayao Miyazaki’s masterful and popular “The Boy and the Heron” won Annies for character animation and Miyazaki’s storyboarding. It has won most of the critics’ awards. It also just won the Best Animated feature at the BAFTA ceremony in the UK “Nimona” had nine Annie nominations and it won for voice acting and writing.

Netflix’s “Blue Eye Samurai” won six Annies (for TV mature, FX, character animation, production design, writing, editorial). Three honorary Winsor McCay Awards were given. They went to legendary animator and director Charlotte “Lotte” Reiniger (posthumously), Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi; and National Film Board animator and producer Marcy Page.

The Iwerks Award (named for animator Ub Iwerks) for technical advancement was awarded posthumously to John Oxberry for his developing and producing the Oxberry animation stand that was used for many decades to shoot cell animation.

ASIFA Hollywood presented a well-run and nice looking three-hour long ceremony. If you want to see Marcy Page, who studied and taught at SF State and worked at Colossal Pictures before moving to Montreal, her appearance starts at one hour fifty minutes. It includes clips from her personal film "Paradisia" and clips of work she produced including the four films that received Academy Award nominations (two won Oscars). Ron Diamond introduces her.

Congratulations to ASIFA-Hollywood and their crew for a fine evening honoring animation. The show included clips for almost all the winners and a chance to see some of the talent who created it. It was also an interesting fashion show, from formal attire to white tennis shoes.

’Despicable Me’ Trailer Online

Take a look at the latest edition of Hollywood’s most financially successful animation franchise: the "Despicable Me" trailer. What does that tell us about popular taste?

Anime Your Way with Carlos

Calling all young creators! The Cartoon Art Museum is excited to host two free 90-minute anime workshops with comics artist and Anime Your Way founder Carlos Nieto III. It is a comprehensive step by step drawing program that teaches how to create and modify an anime character from scratch, regardless of drawing experience. Using simple shapes and easy to understand instructions, participants will gain the knowledge to create their very own unique anime characters. All materials are provided.

Join Carlos on Saturday, April 6, 2024—Kids (6-13): 1:00-2:30pm, Teens and Adult: 3:00-4:30pmat the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, Cartoon Art Museum, 781 Beach Street. Both workshops are free but advance registration is required; please visit here.

Image from 'They Shot The Piano Player' a feature by Spanish animators about a Brazilian pianist who disappeared in Argentina.
They Shot the Piano Player

“They Shot The Piano Player” follows a journalist trying to understand why a Brazilian Bossa Nova piano player was shot in Argentina. I was directed by Tono Errando, Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, the Spanish team known for “Chico and Rita”, the 2010 animated piece, an adult romantic drama, also about musicians.

Opening on March 1st at the Landmark Opera Plaza, San Francisco, it is an ambitious combination of classical animation—it’s completely hand-drawn—documentary—it actually happened—and political commentary, on Argentina's authoritarian regime in the 1960s.

ASIFA-SF Needs Volunteers

ASIFA-SF is a chapter of Association Internationale du Film d’Animation, which has over 40 chapters around the world. Now that we are supposedly post-Covid we hoped to bring back live events, but that isn’t happening yet.

To keep the chapter alive, until we can find volunteers to make live events and/or online programs, we are offering a free temporary membership. That will get you our monthly newsleteer free and free passes to whatever screenings ASIFA-SF members get invited to.

Please contact to get on our email list, and tell others to join. That will help us rebuild our mailing list. Thanks.

Animation Mentor Student Showcase 2023

Animation Mentor is an online animation school teaching character animation skills to students in over over 105 countries. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, it offers six core animation courses, in addition to Creatures and Maya Workshops. Students are mentored by experienced animators, professionals working in the animation industry, see their site.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Mar 09, 2024 - 12:51 AM
Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution
by Doniphan Blair

The author at the Golden Rose Synagogue memorial, a popular youth hangout in Lviv, Ukraine: guy giving gang signs is a refugee from Mariupol, where he witnessed terrible massacres, and the woman, Anne, is a pianist, who said she's never play Russian composers again. photo: D. Blair
• PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover travel expenses for this article.

• Although published in January 2023, this has good reportage on a variety of Ukraine issues and was picked up by Redaction Politics and Reader Supported News.

• For comments, use cineSOURCE's Facebook.

AFTER A TEN-HOUR HAUL IN HARD RAIN,
Dirk Grosser driving like an amphibious drag racer, the storm breaks, the sky clears, and we walk the five blocks from our funky hostel onto Ukraine’s main stage, Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square. It is a momentous feeling.

This is where it all began, both the massive, months-long protests in 2013, which stopped the kleptocratic, Russophile president, Viktor Yanukovych, and started what can be called Ukraine’s renaissance, and the escalatory overreaction. After the killing of over 100 protestors didn’t stop the movement, Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern provinces and, eight years later, the entire country, which is now Europe's worst war since World War Two. Putin had to attack the democracy developing on his doorstep simply because, if Ukrainians and Russians are so alike and integrated, as he keeps saying, Russians will want democracy, too.

Ukraine isn’t releasing casualty figures for security reasons, and the Russian Federation’s are unreliable, but total deaths have probably passed 400,000, according to recent estimates, notably by the renown historian, Yale professor and Ukraine expert and language speaker, Timothy Snyder. Ukraine may have suffered as many as 200,000 casualties, around half civilian, some of whom were also victims of torture. Almost a third of all Ukrainians have taken refuge, some four million abroad and eight million internally, with up to four million deported involuntarily into Russia. On October 10th, Russia began a strategic bombing campaign against infrastructure, which will kill many more civilians during the winter.

As it happens, the Russian tanks barreling down Ukraine’s highway M-07 toward Kyiv on February 24th, 2022, were also trying to get to the Maidan.

It is bigger than I expect, over two football pitches, with 19th century buildings on one side and modern ones on the other. This being Sunday—September 11th, oddly enough—and with the sky still full of dark clouds, the Maidan is empty save a smattering of soldiers on leave, tight-skirted women sipping Ukraine’s ubiquitous strong coffee, and vendors of patriotic, yellow-blue wrist bands with sad eyes. There are no soldiers on guard, as far as I can see, but scattered around like overgrown toy jacks are tank barriers, the so-called “hedgehogs,” or “yizhaky” in Ukrainian, some painted like child toys, others stacked like modern art. They are the only indicator of the war raging 250 miles to the east or south.

“There were many business people on Maidan,” I was told by Kirill, a handsome, bearded and genial 34-year-old, who directs and edits television commercials and is writing a romantic comedy—he loves old Woody Allen movies. I met Kirill a week earlier in Lviv, the quaint, cobblestoned café city in Ukraine’s west which serves as its San Francisco and is somewhat shielded from the war in the east. I’m omitting last names in the nightmarish event of a Russian takeover.

Kirill invited me to his place with a cordial “I have wine, beer and cannabis” and recounted his many days and couple of nights on the Maidan in 2014, to which he commuted from the south-eastern city of Dnipro, now under Russian bombardment. “I saw head of Ukraine’s Microsoft on Maidan. There were many older people,” he said.

The statue of Goddess Berehynia and an art show in Kyiv's Maidan Square, which remains a public space for free speech, despite the terrible war 250 miles away. photo: D. Blair
Ukrainian doesn’t have articles of grammar, so Ukrainians often omit them in English, including the “the” in their country’s former name, The Ukraine. “I still translate from Russian to Ukrainian to English,” admitted Kirill, who was raised speaking Russian, as were a third of his compatriots, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, part of Ukraine’s long tradition of being bilingual, trilingual or quadrilingual. Middle class Ukrainians often speak some or decent English, which they start studying in high school and continue while listening to rock. Kirill is a fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival, to which he was introduced by his father on cassette tape.

“There were even babushkas,” grandmothers in Ukrainian and Russian but also Yiddish, added Alena, Kirill’s girlfriend, who is in her early 20s, paints and is studying web design but could side hustle modeling. There were also priests, doctors, lawyers, teachers and entrepreneurs, although the vast majority were young people, not as many women as men, workers and students (including high schoolers), nationalists and anarchists, skinheads and hipsters.

Ukraine has a large cohort of tattooed-pierced, who wear their story on their skin: men with significant neck or face work, often referencing girlfriends, women with colorful “sleeve” murals and multiple piercings. A 40-something cashier at a small supermarket near where I lived for six weeks in Lviv, who had a ready smile when ringing me up, had a Chinese character on her neck.

“It was like a big family,” I was told by Artur, 22, whom I met on the Maidan six days later. Artur is a graphic designer, skater and fan of all things Californian, including the spiky hairstyle he sports. After two weeks battling baton-wielding police, the Maidan protestors settled into a few months of occupation, punctuated by marches, rallies and more police attacks. “There were big pots of tea cooking everywhere, people playing football, playing music, discussing politics, which I did not understand,” Artur explained, “I was only 14.”

“Then fighting started again. Yanukovych started shooting people. That really shocked us. We weren’t used to Ukrainians killing Ukrainians. That building was set on fire,” he said, pointing at a government office which protestors occupied and turned into a community center. “They restored it last year. Then Russia invaded Crimea.”

“Before Maidan, there was no Ukraine. After Maidan, there is a real Ukraine,” Artur concluded. “Most Ukrainians had friends on Maidan. Everyone knew we were no longer part of Russia, and we were a real country, a real democracy.”

It was called the Maidan Revolution or Euro-Maidan Revolution, because protestors gathered on the Maidan on November 21st, 2013, the very day Yanukovych cancelled Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the European Union in order to pivot to Russia, and they flew E.U. flags. The call to protest on the Maidan was first made by an Afghan-Ukrainian journalist, Mustafa Masi Nayyem, in a heartfelt Facebook post, which he closed with “Likes do not count.” After the killings, it became known as the Revolution of Dignity or simply the Revolution.

I saw photos of the martyred Maidanites on the fence of the National Art Museum. Called the “Heavenly Hundred,” they were a near even mix of youth and middle aged, working class and intellectual, albeit over 95% men.

Ukraine already had three democracy movements or revolutions, as they like to call them. The Granite Revolution of 1991 helped get out the 90% vote to secede from the Soviet Union. The less successful Ukraine Without Kuchma tried to oust Leonid Kuchma, the corrupt ex-communist, but he remained president until 2005, when he declined to stand for a third term. The 2004 Orange Revolution started after Yanukovych or his cronies tried to poison his opponent and steal the election but were stopped by Ukraine’s supreme court as well as the protests.

Kirill, a television commercial director, participated in both the Orange and Maidan Revolutions, of 2004 and 2014, respecitvely. photo: D. Blair
Kirill also participated in the Orange Revolution, when he was 16, which also involved fighting the police and camping on the Maidan in winter, but “It was not same,” he said.

Ukrainians continued to use mostly Russian in school, watch Russian television, and support Russophile candidates, including Yanukovych, whom they elected president in 2010, fair and square, even though he was a convicted criminal and notoriously corrupt—his son, a dentist, was one of the country's richest men. But Ukrainian politicians were often mired in corruption scandals; Ukrainians are understanding; and Yanukovych reinvented himself by hiring a hot-shot political consultant for a decade. That would be Paul Manafort, eventually Donald Trump’s campaign manager, a Russia security risk and a convicted fraudster.

“We have victim mentality from so much suffering,” Kirill told me, referring to Ukraine’s annihilation by the Germans during World War Two, when six and a half million people died, about a fifth of the population, but also by the Soviets. Nine million Ukrainians and perhaps many more died during the Russian Civil War (1917-22), the Great Terror (1936-38), and the Holodomor, when Soviet authorities starved to death about four million people to punish supposed counter-revolutionaries. Denied to this day by some Russians and Russophiles, the forced famine of 1932 to ’33 had two more iterations, in 1945 and ‘47, I was surprised to learn from a young intellectual I met working in a Lviv coffeeshop, Andrii.

“After Maidan, all that changes,” Kirill said, his voice rising slightly. “We understand we can change our life, and our life is in our hands. It is not what some people do to us—we can do what we want!” No wonder Putin was petrified.

As I pondered their incredible achievement on the Maidan, I recalled that many Ukrainians revere Stepan Bandera, a 1940s-era independence fighter and the leader of the more violent wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who is controversial but widely considered Ukraine's political founding father.

“Bandera? We love him,” replied Kirill, the first Ukrainian with whom I felt comfortable enough to ask about him, which precipitated an argument. As the son of a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor, I was painfully aware that some O.U.N. members had mass murdered Jews, Poles and Russians, the kernel of truth in Putin’s “Ukraine is controlled by Nazis” conspiracy theory. In fact, O.U.N. members brazenly slaughtered a few thousand Jews right on the streets of Lviv, some not far from where Kirill and I were sitting, the day the German Army entered the city, June 30th, 1941.

Kirill and I parted even closer friends, however, able to discuss difficult subjects. The genocideers numbered around 12,000, I later learned, from one of Professor Snyder’s Yale lectures uploaded to YouTube, while almost seven million Ukrainians were in the Red Army fighting the Nazis, a ratio of almost 600 to one. And two and half million of them died.

Contradicting another Russian conspiracy theory—that "Ukraine is not a real country and never existed”—they've been fighting for independence since the end of World War One, over a century ago, when they declared a state. Unfortunately, World War One morphed into the Russian Civil War, which swamped Ukraine in a ferocious free-for-all between the nationalists, czarists, anarchists, peasants and three foreign armies as well as the communists, who had to invade three times and use extreme violence to prevail (for this author's survey of that history go here).

The author at Lviv's memorial to those murdered by the Soviets after its 1939 invasion: 48,867 Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish ethnic people. photo: D. Blair
Given that sanguineous, two-part slaughter and then the Holodomor, the Great Terror and World War Two, 1914 to ‘45 in Ukraine was the bloodiest period in one of the bloodiest regions in history. In a desperate bid to carve out a country, the O.U.N. planned to expel the Soviets by siding with the Nazis, on whom they would eventually turn, while some members murdered Jews, Poles and Russians, in keeping with the eliminationist nationalism then popular across Europe.

As the war's outcome became obvious, however, much of the O.U.N. had a change of heart. Driven by a rank and file devastated by fascism, totalitarianism and the resulting wars, the leadership whitewashed that history and liberalized their platform, while their guerrillas kept fighting the Soviets into the 1950s. After the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the O.U.N. reemerged, supported right-wing parties, and remained central to Ukrainian culture, including through songs, street names and posters celebrating Bandera. Indeed, their greeting, “Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava,” glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes, is still popular, and the army made it their official salutation in 2018.

Nevertheless, after the fall of the wall, when hard-right parties became popular across Eastern Europe, not much in Ukraine. In fact, only the Svoboda party passed the required five percent vote, and only in 2012, to take seats in the Rada, or parliament, a half mile from the Maidan. Although Svoboda has a Nazi-like insignia and started as an extreme ultranationalist party, it had moderated some of its positions by then and won 38 seats, eight percent of the Rada.

“There were not that many on Maidan who were extremists,” Artur told me. “And they were not that extreme, like extremists in U.S. or Germany. I know one.” Ukrainians often have friends across ideological divides, which can be fungible, I learned, and some O.U.N. officials were friends with, married to, or themselves Jews.

There were a few neo-Nazi skinheads on the Maidan, mostly part of the punk movement popular across the ex-Soviet bloc for its ability to express anger. The founders of Right Sector, a hard-right party, met on the Maidan, where they helped lead its defense against the police. Republican Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, visited the Maidan and met with Svoboda and Right Sector leaders—Nuland famously handing out cookies. Although Nuland was supposedly managing American manipulation of the Maidan, the scandal surrounding her leaked phone call was mostly about her saying, “Fuck the E.U.,” and wanting to work around the institution so beloved on the Maidan.

Despite the Maidan’s diverse and vocal right-wing, however, they were vastly outnumbered and overshadowed by its liberals, leftists and anarchists, which is a powerful faction in Ukraine, one of the few countries where anarchists have mounted major parties or armies. Indeed, Svoboda lost all of its seats in the fall 2014 elections, despite its high-profile participation on the Maidan.

“There were a lot of poets on Maidan,” interjected Roman, Artur’s friend and fellow skater, who hadn’t said much until then. There were also many hippies, replete with long hair and colorful clothing, a movement dating to the late-‘60s in Ukraine, especially in Lviv.

During the Soviet dark ages, Lviv’s hippies lived underground, sometimes literally. They hid out in Lichakiv, the enormous cemetery for World War One soldiers but also politicians, authors and artists, who were often honored with large tombs and sculptures. I toured Lichakiv with Yarema, a photographer and artist with a gentle manner and shoulder-length hair, who wanted his photo taken next to the tomb of the sculptor Mykhailo Dzyndra, with its impressive abstract piece. Lviv’s most famous son is arguably Leopold Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), a respected writer on Ukrainian and Jewish life as well as romance and eroticism (his name was borrowed for “masochism,” oddly enough, considering the longsuffering Ukrainians), but he is buried in Germany.

Yarema and I dined at the nearby Jerusalem, one of two Jewish restaurants in Lviv, which was almost a third Jewish until 1942, on a tasty mushroom-barley soup and gefilte fish, served by an interesting woman of color. I thought she might be Roma, given Jews and Roma sometimes ally on the edge of European societies, but Yarema learned her mother is Ukrainian and father Nigerian.

Yarema appears younger than his 31 years but has had gallery shows, teaches life drawing, does web development and carpentry, and recently produced a “jam festival” with friends, cooking kettles of fruit over a bonfire at his family’s run-down property outside Lviv, which he’s fixing into a small artists’ retreat.

Yarema, a photographer and artist, at the tomb of the sculptor Mykhailo Dzyndra, Lviv's Lichakiv cemetery. photo: D. Blair
Lviv’s hippie history was also recounted to me by Bhodan, a 24-year-old artist and illustrator, who has read Jack Kerouac and Carlos Castaneda but also Amnesia.in.ua, a Ukrainian website run by “enthusiastic ethnologists,” and discussed it with his elders, like the director of Lviv’s Artists Guild.

During the ‘70s and ‘80s, people involved in "samizdat," the Soviet bloc’s clandestine free-expression movement, used tapes to share music, and they held small, illegal performances. Lviv had its first music festival after glasnost in 1989, Chervona Ruta, named for a popular love song and meaning a species of flowers or perhaps "red regret." It featured punk, pop and communist-era acts and became biennial, while the city became known for festivals. A well-respected jazz festival, originally called Alfa, now Leopolis, has been mounted every June since 2011, although this year’s was postponed “until immediately after victory,” according to its website. There are some great local jazz players, notably pianist Igor Yusupov.

The hippies took over Virmenka Street, in Lviv’s closed-to-cars Old Town, where they still preside in cafes like the homey Facet, which fills the street with tables in summer, or the massive, multi-roomed Dzyga, built into the city’s mediaeval walls and now one of its premier jazz venues and art galleries as well as cafes. Yarema had a show there of photos from his Turkey road trip. Hippies also started going to the Carpathian Mountains, 250 miles south of Lviv, especially a waterfall called Shypit, meaning to whisper, “to camp out, play music and run around naked,” according to Bhodan, who hitchhiked there with his girlfriend a few years ago, for the summer solstice celebration.

“Up to one thousand people… gather and make a big fire and celebrate life, or whatever, using psychedelics, marijuana and music… There are little customs. No matter of the time, if you meet someone, they tell you ‘Good morning.’ Some people wake up in the evening because they were partying all night… You can join any small conversation with people you never met before—you can have heartwarming discussions.”

Considering the Maidan protesters' dedication to freedom and their months of street fighting, which culminated with police snipers shooting about 100 of their comrades, Yanukovych fleeing to Russia, and the Roda voting unanimously for fresh elections, they were enraged when Russia attacked Crimea on February 20th, 2014. Insignia-less and masked soldiers poured out of the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, which dates to 1772 and was being rented from Ukraine. Evidently, two pro-democracy revolutions in one decade was too much for a Kremlin turning autocratic under Putin. Crimea’s governor chose not to fight, since the state had become almost entirely Russian-speaking after the Muslim Tatars were deported to Siberia in 1944, and it had substantial autonomy from Kyiv.

Sanctions were levied and the ruble collapsed, but President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other western leaders accepted the conquest of Crimea as a real politic fait accompli. Citing its Russian-speaking population and Russia's lingering superpower status, they rationalized it was not worth significant protest or an escalatory arming of Ukraine, especially so soon after the disastrous Iraq War, and that stable relations would encourage Russian democracy.

Across Ukraine, there were also Ukrainian speakers, generally older and male, who opposed the Maidan and its related protests nationwide and supported Russophile politics. Some Russian speakers claimed discrimination by a Ukraino-centric establishment, but it's hard to distinguish valid complaints from opportunism or corruption by Russian patronage and conspiracy theories. In the eastern states of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian language speakers and some paid agents started separatist rebellions in April 2014, using small squads of ragtag fighters. But they soon obtained weapons from the Russian army, which quietly invaded four months later, even as Putin categorically denied to Obama’s face any involvement with the “little green men.”

A mohawked, middleaged soldier checks his phone in front of St. Michael's Cathedral, Kyiv. D. Blair
Militant Maidanites ran to the army or the paramilitary outfits organized on the Maidan by older veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War or younger Russian speakers, which belies allegations of widespread oppression. The latter were often soccer hooligans, also called “ultras,” or, to a lesser degree, white nationalists or punk intellectuals. The first commander of the now notorious-famous Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky, had a degree in history and decade experience organizing those three groups. The Azov debuted as a lightly-armed militia to oppose the separatists threatening Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city and next to Russia, but came of age in another large city, Mariupol on the Azov Sea, off the Black Sea, hence their name. After Ukrainian Army units in Mariupol proved poorly equipped and commanded, Biletsky led his fighters south and defeated separatists in open battle, in the summer of 2014.

More pacifist Maidanites often supported their friends and relatives who were fighting with supplies, equipment, medical or cyber services, or money. A journalist, Miriam Dragina, started a flea market, Kyiv Market, specifically to donate its profits to the army, which recalls the old joke: What if the library got funding and the army had to do a bake sale? Some simply bought sport rifles and drove to the front. The Azov and other independent brigades were integrated into army command by the end of 2014, but the war is still a very popular, anti-imperialist insurgency, much like the American Revolutionary War or Vietnam-America War, involving people from all walks of life and political persuasions. Almost everyone I met was helping supply a unit with food, automobiles, ammunition and more.

Another testament to Ukrainian democracy is the 2019 election of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish—as were two of Ukraine’s six other presidents—in a landslide 73% of the vote, due to his anti-corruption stance but also charmed life-follows-art story. Four years earlier, the accomplished comic, actor, writer, dancer and producer had created and starred in a hit television series, a combination sit-com and political satire with surrealist touches, “Servant of the People” (2015-19, available on Netflix). Zelensky plays a bumbling high school history teacher, living at home with his taxi-driving father and professor mother, whose students film him ranting against corruption. After it goes viral, they file the papers for his presidential run, which everyone regards as a joke until—spoiler alert—he wins and takes on the establishment with the help of family and friends.

Also appointing friends as ministers, the real-life President Zelensky, whose political party is called Servant of the People, had a shaky start. Despite successes countering corruption, he was accused of nepotism and favoring the oligarchs backing his large media company, and he made egregious accusations against his predecessor, which earned him low approval ratings. Doing his fictional character one better, however, Zelensky matured into a charismatic commander who refused to flee, rallied his constituents amid catastrophe, staved off defeat, and assumed a starring role in the ancient contest between democracy and fascism.

Also determined to stop Russian expansion are the 20,000 or so foreign fighters, notably the Georgians, whose nearby nation Putin invaded in 2008, due to their Rose Revolution five years earlier, and who have their own brigade, and the much more brutalized Chechens. Indeed, the Chechens endured not one but two vicious wars with Russia (1994-96 and 2000-01), which killed over 100,000 people, fully seven percent of their population. There are also fighters from America, Scandinavia, Britain and other regions, including an increasing number of Russians.

A small cadre of foreign volunteers covers the gaps in citizen care left by governmental and international agencies and Ukrainian self-help networks, often focusing on communities with emergency needs, helping disabled refugees and delivering lost pets, which can be considered therapy animals. Dirk and I met eight of them for beers at an upscale pizzeria, in the park next to Kyiv’s urban velodrome, a lighthearted but dedicated crew of Australians, Canadians, Europeans and one American.

Another democratic indicator is that the ultranationalists haven’t held a Rada seat since 2019, when Biletsky lost his, and Zhan Beleniuk became its first African-Ukrainian representative. A wrestler who took gold at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Beleniuk was number ten on the list for the Servant of the People party, which won 125 seats. The Azov, meanwhile, received funding from a Jewish oligarch, sacked a commander for antisemitic speech, and accepted Jewish fighters. Most importantly, they’re fighting to defend Ukraine against an imperialist invader committing genocide.

Genocide, as defined by the United Nations, is the attempt to eliminate a culture, language or nation as well as people. Russian intentions are clear, from their officials' overt references—“Ukraine is not a country”—to military actions: the bombing of civilian infrastructure and cultural institutions, the destruction of monuments, including to the Holodomor, the use of rape as a weapon of war, the deportation of children and young women into Russia to be Russified and estranged from their families, and the sadistic torture of civilians, using amputation and castration.

Oksana, who works as a recruiter for the Georgian Brigade, takes a selfie in front of a destroyed Russian tank in Lviv's Old Town. photo: D. Blair
No wonder the Azov enjoy nationwide adulation, notably the big banners honoring the “Azovstal Defenders” in downtown Kyiv, Lviv and other cities, for their second defense of Mariupol, from March 1st to May 20th, 2022, when they fought the Russians to the death.

“They are like gods!” I was told by Oksana, an effervescent woman of about 22, whom I met in Lviv, after offering to take her selfie in front of the city’s display of destroyed Russian tanks. Oksana studied computer programming but much prefers working as a recruiter for the Georgian Brigade.

The Stalingrad-like siege of Mariupol destroyed or damaged over 90% of the city’s structures and may have killed up to 85,000 civilians, according to recent reports, including almost 600 sheltering in a theater marked “children” in large letters on March 24th. About 3,000 fighters, some foreign, and 1,000 civilians, including children, retreated to the massive, Cold-War-era bomb shelters beneath the city-sized Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, which is owned by a Muslim-Ukrainian oligarch. As gangrene, black mold and starvation set in, under constant bombardment, including by thermobaric bombs, with only a few helicopters flying supplies in and wounded out, 20 feet above the water to evade Russian radar, the mostly Azov fighters endured for 11 weeks.

Mariupol’s Thermopylae cum “Blade Runner” cum reality TV show was watched by many Ukrainians on videos uploaded thru the Starlink satellite system, which was largely donated by Elon Musk and is also essential for operating drones and artillery. The siege ended when the surviving defenders received safe passage in exchange for a few high-profile Russian prisoners, although 53 Azov were murdered in a Donetsk P.O.W. camp on July 28th. They were killed by Ukrainian shelling, according to Russian officials.

“How did you grow up so healthy in such an environment?” I asked Kirill, the next time we hung out. “Was your father an optimist?” “Yes,” he said. “He was a good man, nice man. He liked rock music and was devout Christian. And he was Jewish.” Kirill only learned that fact after his father died and, just last year, that his mother is as well, a secret they kept iron clad due to Soviet and Ukrainian antisemitism.

Nevertheless, the secret Jewish parent or grandparent story is fairly common in Ukraine. I met many Ukrainians with Jewish heritage, and Kirill once joked, “Half of Lviv is half Jewish.” And Jews date to the eighth century, when the elites of the Khazar Empire converted to Judaism, over a century before the birth of either Ukrainian or Russian culture. Despite the many gruesome pogroms—by the Cossacks in the 17th century, which included extensive rape, the czarists in 1920, and the Nazi genocide of one and a half million Ukrainian Jews—and today’s small number of publicly professing Jews, about half a percent, they remained somewhat integrated and represented throughout the country. Indeed, Ukraine still has Europe’s second largest Jewish population: coming after Poland before World War Two, now following France.

President Zelensky, 45, hails from a modest city in central Ukraine and studied law before going into entertainment. Natan Khazin, a 50-ish rabbi from Odessa, Ukraine’s third largest city and historically Jewish, was on the Maidan and helped its fighters with his experience in the Israel Defense Forces. Khazin even calls himself a “Zhido-Bandera,” a Jewish follower of Stepan Bandera. Nayyem, the Maidan organizer of Afghan extraction, married a Jewish woman and is raising his children Jewish. Meanwhile, the annual number of antisemitic incidents in Ukraine is often less than in France or England.

Kirill adores his mother, as becomes obvious when he takes her calls with a dulcet “Yes, Mama?” In fact, he moved her to Lviv, and her own apartment, when he and Alena evacuated Kyiv in December 2021, two months before the war. “I was listening to BBC and your president,” he explained. Kirill thinks Zelensky may have to answer for why Ukraine was so unprepared for the invasion: “They were building roads, when they should have been building rockets.” “But only after the war,” he added.

A troupe of dancers proved the Maidan was a place of freedom of expression, despite the nearby war. photo: D. Grosser
Ukrainian women seem extra loving, as is often the case in oppressed communities. I noticed on the streets of Lviv and Kyiv how they cared for children, who often clutch stuffed animals, due to the anxiety of war, or walk with beaus, holding hands and laughing, or girlfriends, in pairs or groups, also holding hands and laughing or chatting animatedly while out for coffee. Or when they cry and hug. Many seem to be Eastern European romantics, cautiously hopeful in the face of adversity, a worldview I learned about from my Polish mother and on four trips to Poland, Ukraine’s sibling society (Lviv was Polish until the Soviet invasion of 1939).

Their literary romanticism, meanwhile, dates to the poet, painter and folklorist Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), who was born an enslaved serf near Kyiv but secretly read books and studied art and became the country’s cultural founding father, honored many times more than Bandera with street names, statues or on the currency, the hryvnia (pronounced “ravinia”). Other luminary local authors include Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), who became a titan of Russian literature by inventing “the grotesque," an essential genre for understanding Eastern Europe, Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916), whose tales of Jewish life inspired “Fiddler on the Roof” and Mark Twain, and Isaac Babel (1894-1940), also from Odessa and also Jewish, one of the Soviet Union’s most respected authors and journalists as well as modern stylists, until the secret police murdered him, in keeping with their grotesque tradition of problem solving through killing.

As Dirk and I walk out on the Maidan that glorious September 11th morning, I am struck by its large, open space but also strange structures, like the glass domes or comedic sculptures at its north end, where we entered, or the tall column capped by a figure in the distance. Despite the storm clouds, a wan sun shines, people are smiling, and there’s an eerie peace.

Unbeknownst to us on the Maidan at that moment, 250 miles to the east, around Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian Davids are on the march. Indeed, they retook more territory in days than the Russian Goliath conquered in months, driving the invaders into a panicked retreat and to abandon immense amounts of equipment and ammunition. President Zelensky announces this battlefield success that very evening, in his nightly national address, the first good news Ukrainians have heard since their storied defense of Kyiv, six months earlier.

“They used special forces, drones and ‘maneuverable warfare’ to get behind the Russians and spook them into running,” a military analyst on CNN explained on September 13th, although he forgot to mention their masterful military feint. For weeks, President Zelensky had been talking up a counterattack in the south on Kherson, the only regional capitol conquered in Russia’s most recent invasion, which tricked them into withdrawing troops from the north near Kharkiv. Already known as a brave and funny commander in chief, Zelensky was proving to be a brilliant one.

“We love our president,” Alena had told me with a smile, which suggested a romantic-sexual side to national struggle.

Zelensky pushed his generals to attack, even though the Americans kept vetoing their battle plans, as the two militaries computer war-gamed during the summer in Ramstein, Germany. They had to break the entrenched front lines before winter, obviously, as a frozen war of attrition would benefit better-armed Russians. But they also had to prove to citizens and allies alike that the cornucopia of donated war materiel was being put to good use. As of September 11th, the U.S. had provided about $19 billion worth, five times the annual allotment to Israel, including advanced HIMAR missiles and promises of much more, although that could be reduced or decimated by a Republican-controlled Congress.

Filmmaker/performance artist Dirk Grosser interviews a survivor of Russian war crimes with translator Nadia (standing) in Bucha, north of Kyiv. photo: D. Blair
Dirk and I thread our way across the six lanes of Khreshchatyk Avenue, Kyiv’s main shopping street, which intersects the Maidan, since we neglected to notice the pedestrian tunnel for that purpose. We ascend the Maidan’s block-wide steps and approach its centerpiece, the gold-plated column crowned by Berehynia, the Slavic fertility goddess. Only then do we see, in the middle of the square’s proscenium, the dance troupe. It consists of a dozen women, including one of color (Ukraine has a substantial Roma population as well as some African immigrants), two men and a camera crew. Between takes of turning, jumping and gesticulating, the dancers goof off and giggle, although still well aware of the fierce battles raging five hours drive east or south. Each one probably has a cousin or friend under shellfire, at the front or already in the earth.

Kyiv seems normal, except for the passport control on the roads entering town and at the train station, the sandbags and plywood around important buildings and statues, the machine gun nests at official entrances, and the occasional air raid sirens, which oblige museums to evacuate, but everyone else ignores. People laugh in the streets, and the restaurants are full—up to a 30-minute wait at the most popular—but few openly celebrated Zelensky’s announcement of battlefield success on September 11th, as was reported in the American press. Almost everyone I met was still nervous, some were traumatized, and a few were having panic attacks.

Fifteen miles north of the Maidan is Bucha, whose residents reported the first Russian war crimes spree. Bucha bore the brunt of Russian bloodlust because it was where their once-vaunted armor was ambushed by Ukrainian regulars but also townspeople tossing Molotov cocktails. The Ukrainians destroyed up to a dozen tanks and vehicles which triggered a 25-mile-long military traffic jam and ruined Putin’s plans for a one-week war. Amazingly, the Russian soldiers carried dress uniforms for a victory parade, while many officers booked reservations at Kyiv’s premier hotels and restaurants.

Dirk Grosser is of medium height, strong build and open demeanor. He favors plaid shirts and hiking boots, perhaps in deference to his practical people from the once-East German city of Dresden, where he lives in a three-story townhouse he renovated himself. On our deluge drive from Lviv to Kyiv, Dirk told me how he raced all night from Germany to Ukraine, after a late start due to house guests, to attend a seminar he organized about what artists should do during a war. A performance artist and filmmaker by profession, Dirk started doing small conferences in this vein after learning some of his leftist friends supported the Russian invasion. In addition, he was shooting a related documentary, tentatively titled “Exile”.

Amazed by Dirk’s ambition and hard work as well as interested in the cause, I volunteered to production assist: find translators, do second camera and the like. Three days after our first Maidan visit, we drove the M-07 north to the once-bucolic commuter town of Bucha. We set up next to its verdant central walkway in the outdoor tables of a fast-food joint, which had umbrellas to ward off the light rain.

Every person we asked had had harrowing experiences. “I was in a basement for weeks,” a towheaded, ten-year-old boy, riding around on his scooter, told us, “I was very scared.” After calling his mother on his smart phone, which almost all middleclass kids have, he said, “She doesn’t want me filmed.”

Between wiping her eyes, a thin, expressive, perhaps 50-year-old Roma woman named Nadia told us about the rapes, including of underage girls, the men trying to remove their military tattoos, a death sentence under Russian occupation, the summary executions, which sometimes included torture or amputation, and the often audible screaming. The interviews were conducted in Ukrainian, which neither Dirk nor I understand, but our translator, an aid organizer from Kyiv also named Nadia, provided periodic summaries in English. At the end of the interview, most of us were crying, and we all hugged Bucha Nadia.

Bucha’s streets were littered with bodies for weeks, since the residents were too fearful to collect them. The kill count now exceeds 450, almost 2% of the population but will probably go much higher. Mass graves full of civilians, some showing signs of torture, amputation and even castration, have been uncovered in the liberated towns around Kharkiv like Izium.

A colorful children's synagogue on the edge of Babyn Yar, where Nazis killed 90,000 Kyiv Jews and many others, is part of the Ukrainian attempt to use art to address suffering. photo: D. Blair
“We were given orders to kill everyone we see,” a Russian soldier told his girlfriend by phone from Bucha, according to call transcripts published by the New York Times on September 28th.

Evidently, the Kremlin intends to terrorize the Ukrainians into submission, including the ethnic Russians they're supposedly saving, and escape recrimination through propaganda and conspiracy theories. This strategy will work, they assume, by virtue of their long expertise with such subterfuges but also the current popularity of conspiracism worldwide and cyberspace's capacity for disinformation. Hence, the Russians keep claiming they're fighting Nazis, even as they become like Nazis. Despite the obvious hypocrisy, their repetition of big lies allows them to not only dodge the bad press but transfer it to their enemies.

As if on cue, when the Bucha story broke on April 1st, Russian diplomats and media figures began accusing the Ukrainians of lying and fabricating evidence, using actors, ketchup and Photoshop, a gaslighting calumny that many Russians and Russophiles continue to repeat ad nauseam today.

On our way back from filming in Bucha, to complete our atrocity tour, we stopped by Babyn Yar, the ravine four miles north of the Maidan better known by its Russian name, Babi Yar. This is where the Nazis, also compulsive conspiracy theorists, slaughtered some 33,700 Jews in two days, still considered a record. Now located in a large, popular city park, Babyn Yar features an imaginative, multifaceted memorial. Right on the ravine’s edge, in fact, is a two-sided synagogue adorned with colorful animals, clouds and Hebrew phrases, a fantasy version of a traditional Ukrainian synagogue. The walls are hinged and there is an oversized hand-crank, the guard showed me, which folds the entire structure into a 20-foot-tall wooden case, suggesting children’s theater or the Jewish need for portability.

Some people were probably offended when the Babyn Yar Memorial foundation—formed in 2017, after the Soviets downplayed the Holocaust for decades, with an all-star board chaired by the Russian-Israeli scientist and dissident Nathan Sharansky and featuring rabbis, artists and politicians—decided to build a psychedelic, fold-up synagogue to commemorate what is traditionally marked by dark stone memorials or anguished sculptures. I myself was confused. But as I walked around and mulled it over, I realized: This is where Ukrainian middle schoolers are brought to look down into that monstrous death hole and, if you want to get metaphorical about it, what the souls there see looking up. Surely a positive image of Ukraine’s millennia-old Judaism provides some solace.

Dirk and I hiked down the path behind the synagogue into the ravine, which must have been deep, given it now holds around 90,000 Jewish bodies, almost all of Kyiv’s pre-war Jewish population, and a similar total of Roma, Russian and Ukrainian nationalist bodies, an irony not lost on some Ukrainians. Dirk can be contrarian, but he readily joined me in a meditative “om” chant. As a Holocaust survivor’s son, who has long grappled with this apocalyptic nightmare, I felt a certain peace in Babyn Yar’s death hole: Ukrainians were finally healing from that national trauma using sophisticated art and psychology. Tragically, it was just in time for the next atrocity.

Babyn Yar’s memorial complex also has an eight-foot, dark stone menorah, which serves as its centerpiece, and a large, black stone wall, although unlike anything I’ve seen at other Holocaust memorials. Titled “Crystal Wall of Crying” and installed in 2021, it was designed by Marina Abramović, the legendary Serbian performance artist, and has dozens of large crystals, which glow with light and are embedded in the wall. A football pitch away, there is a large, circular, silver platform with a dozen silver pillars, each fitted with an eyepiece for viewing archival Holocaust footage—everything riddled with bullet holes. The Holocaust in Ukraine was largely by bullets. Neither “Psychedelic Synagogue” nor “Riddled Silver Pillars” are listed on the Memorial’s Wikipedia page, and I’ve yet to find their creators’ names or installation dates.

The 'Silver Pillars' piece at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial riddled with bullet holes, Kyiv. photo: D. Blair
“When Bucha happened, we were all crying,” I was told by Marina, a 20-something woman who works in the arts, including promoting her reserved painter boyfriend, and has an irrepressible laugh. “But we can’t stay that way. If we let them depress us, they will win.” Many Ukrainians told me they were depressed for a week or a month after February 24th but were energized by friends, the exigencies of war or Ukraine’s stoic tradition.

Marina, whom I met in Lviv but is also a refugee from Dnipro, which is half way between Kharkiv and Kherson and was being shelled as we spoke, just returned from the U.S., where she visited her mother in Minneapolis and could have applied for refugee status. “I saw only a few Ukrainian flags or signs of solidarity,” she said. “At a club, the singer said she wanted to dedicate the next song to those who have suffered. I thought she meant us, but she was referring to George Floyd.” Marina also spends all her earnings to support Ukraine’s economy.

“Some people say this being happy is wrong,” Kirill told me. “But my friends who are soldiers say, ‘We have to protect this. You must do your normal life because we are in stress, and sometimes we need to go enjoy this.’” Kirill’s friends reminded me of the Babyn Yar installations, which I came to see as suggesting we appreciate life even as we mourn mass death, learn about horrific history and fight fascism, which I also learned from my mother's experiences in the Holocaust and my father's during World War Two. The Ukrainians perfected this philosophy, evidently, over a century of being butchered mercilessly by the Soviets, Germans and now Russians.

“Some people outside the Maidan were angry with us, saying, ‘It was like a festival, not a protest,’” said the Ukrainian popstar Ruslana Lyzhychko in “Winter on Fire” (2015), an excellent documentary about the Maidan Revolution (available on Netflix). Ruslana, as she is known, was also a center-right Rada representative but fell in love with the kids of Maidan and became their celebrity spokesperson.

As the Maidan dancers prance and gambol across Ukraine’s main stage, with no official minders and only Dirk, myself and four or five others watching or filming, I realize I’m witnessing a minor miracle: Ukrainians expressing freedom, fancy and joy in the shadow of a gruesome, genocidal war. When they take a water break, however, I continue my exploration and wander up the steps to Berehynia, standing resplendent in the slight sun, gold leaf gleaming off her column and the foliage she holds above her head.

That’s when I notice, behind Berehynia’s column, the art show: two dozen, ten-foot-tall, artistic iron easels with pages from a graphic novel, "Dad" by Oleksandr Komiakhov, I find out by Google Translating a photo of the credit. The title page surprises me. It has a man and woman seemingly straight from the Burning Man festival: him heavily bearded, wearing a motorcycle helmet and holding a baseball bat; her with pierced lips and a furry cat hat and cradling a box of Molotov cocktails.

“If these are the mythical heroes of Ukraine,” I think, or something along those lines, “They really have achieved a certain free speech absolutism, and freedom in general, a democracy which enshrines art and ideas, which many Ukrainians have been enjoying for almost a decade… Many of the kids of Maidan must be in government by now.”

A street poster from Lviv is an example of the excellent, war-realted fine and graphic art in Ukraine's streets, galleries and museums. illo: #Neivanmade
“They are all phonies, patsies and spies!” would the rebuttal of many Russophiles and hard rightwingers but also some leftists, including friends of mine. Sandy Sanders, a neighbor, artist and seemingly decent guy, whom I’ve known for 20 years, denounced one of my heartfelt Facebook posts from Ukraine by insisting the Maidan Revolution was a “U.S.-financed coup” and the separatist struggle in the Donbas was a “neo-Nazi civil war.” Since he doesn’t seem like a Machiavellian manipulator, Sandy must be utterly unaware that he’s parroting Putin’s conspiracy theories, that people power is organic and hard to manipulate, or that fascist societies can't be paragons of liberty.

In fact, there’s precious little police presence in Ukraine, although martial law was declared on day one and they’re in a duel to the death with an adversary thrice their size and with a long resume of atrocity and spy craft. Indeed, three teams of pro-Russia Chechens tried to kill President Zelensky early in the war, the attack on Kyiv's secondary airport by Russian paratroopers and over 100 helicopters delivered special forces to decapitate the government, and they continue attempting to infiltrate spies, saboteurs and assassins, or to enlist them in sitio.

Nevertheless, in all of downtown Lviv, I saw only two soldiers standing guard (the 24-hour sentries at the central bank), while the nationwide curfew of 11 p.m., widely adhered to by Ukrainians, was barely enforced. On my many walks home at midnight or later, I saw few police patrols and no stops.

Five days after my first Maidan visit, I was stopped by a soldier who saw me take a selfie near a trainyard and demanded my phone and passport. I braced myself. “There is still a lot of corruption,” a few Ukrainians had warned me. Fifteen minutes later, however, I was chatting amicably in English with his commanding officer, who asked me to delete the photo and dismissed me with “Have a fun visit to Kyiv.”

Also defending Ukraine from Russian espionage is their “safe city” system, using surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence, Kirill told me. Amazingly, at the start of the war, Ukrainian cyber security held off the onslaught of Russia’s notorious hacker army. Others referred to their long, painful learning curve with Kremlin agents. “The K.G.B. killed my grandfather,” a long-haired Lviv waiter told me with a laugh, “It’s a sad story.”

As I review the Maidan's graphic novel, I am struck by the quality of Komiakhov’s drawings and visual storytelling but also that I’ll need a translator to make sense of it, so I circle back to Berehynia. Sitting next to her majestic column, surveying her sacred domain, the quarter-mile oval of Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, the name it was given after the 1991 Granite Revolution, I think about what Kirill, Artur and the others said, or I have read or viewed. Bit by bit, I begin to imagine how the Maidan looked eight years ago: teaming with tens of thousands of demonstrators—up to a million on some marches—waving signs and E.U. flags and chanting, “Ukraine is part of Europe!” “Together to the end!” and, after the police attacks, “Convict out!” directly at Yanukovych.

They also carried plastic sheets for the torrential rains. Within a few weeks, that plastic was woven into a sea of tents, barricades, lean-tos and kitchens, inhabited by a vast cross-section of Ukrainians, from tech workers and academics to dirty, young men carrying bats. One young man told me his dad went to the Maidan because “he always had to be in middle of everything,” while another said his dad promised to take him, but his mother intervened—he was only 14. The protesters discussed and debated, played guitars and drums, and DJed and danced, even though there was almost no alcohol on the Maidan. When temperatures plummeted and snow blanketed the vast encampment, they gathered around 50-gallon-drum fires.

As I ponder this critical history, about which I knew little before entering Ukraine on August 24th (its Independence Day from the Soviet Union, coincidentally), a moving moment from the Maidan Revolution—one I just learned about from the documentary “Fire in Winter”—comes to my mind.

After two weeks of protests, the Berkut riot police tried to clear the Maidan a second time. Their first attempt, on November 30th, 2013, merely shocked the protestors, who fought back fiercely or called their parents, some of whom joined them on the Maidan. The night of December 10th would be different, they realized, as they watched police buses pull up on Khreshchatyk Avenue and spit out hundreds of officers with helmets, shields and cement truncheons. As the women went to the proscenium for protection, some of the men—some wearing helmets, many carrying bats—went to face the Berkut. Meanwhile, a lone figure sprinted away, a theology student named Ivan Sydor.

The author with the military law student Diana (2nd fr rt) and her colleagues (lf-rt) Margherita, Christina and Maria. photo: D. Blair
As it happened, the official bell ringer for the 11th century Cathedral of St. Michael, on the hill north of the Maidan, was Sydor. Undoubtedly gasping for breath as he topped the belfry stairs around 1 a.m., he began ringing St. Michael’s bells furiously, as had his forbears during the Mongol invasion. Sydor rang for four hours and roused thousands, who ran to the Maidan, surrounded the Berkut and scared them off.

Thinking about Sydor’s desperate appeal, the Kyivers’ stalwart response and the bravery of the Maidan fighters, I pull my cap over my eyes, lest one of the dancers or Dirk see I’m crying.

Ukraine was much like Russia in the 1990s, devastated by “perestroika," the switch from central planning to a market economy, and plagued by bribery, mafias, assassinations and oligarchs, whose acquisition of immense wealth was inevitable. Whoever learned the tricks of post-Soviet capitalism first, from using armed gangs to seize industries to leveraging loans, manipulating laws or simply providing a decent product or service, made millions or billions. As Russia kept turning more authoritarian, corrupt and kleptocratic, however, Ukraine had three democratic revolutions, each of which increased to some degree political representation and economic opportunity and decreased corruption but especially the last.

As well as being pro -democracy and -Europe and anti -corruption and -authoritarian, the Maidan Revolution was sophisticated and centrist enough to galvanize a majority of Ukrainians. Indeed, it stimulated civic responsibility and cultural creativity, from governmental reform and motivated soldiers to music, fashion and art, and it unified Ukraine’s left, right and center. So much so, I took to remarking, “The Maidan is where Ukrainians fell in love with each other,” often to approving nods from Ukrainians.

I met another Maidan offspring extraordinaire at a bookstall in a Kyiv park, after its proprietor waved her over to translate. Clad in a camouflage uniform and cap, Diana, 22, seemed like a scout or soldier, if perhaps an officer, given her poise and long, single braid, in the Ukrainian fashion. Also from Odessa, a town laurelled for its multiculturalism and intellectuals as well as Jewish heritage, Diana and I were soon discussing current events.

“You get inspired to do something when your neighbor goes…” Diana said, gesturing wildly. “Boom?” I said. “Yes,” she said, “We learned a lot from our revolution.” “You mean Maidan?” “Yes,” she said, “We learned we can do great things. We learned that if a president doesn’t do what we want, we can take him out.”

After I invited Diana and her camo-ed colleagues, Margherita, Maria and Christina, to tea, she explained they were studying to become military lawyers. “Soon to be a growth industry,” I said, “In light of Russian war crimes,” to which Diana laughed loudly but her friends smiled politely. The Ukrainian Army is around one fifth women, some serving in combat.

“Ukraine is building a digital state,” I was told by Varvara, or Barbara, since the Ukrainian “v” is the western “b.” “It is more advanced than most of Europe—and I’ve been to Europe.” I met Varvara as she photographed food for the website of Cukor Black, a restaurant in Kryva Lypa, one of Lviv’s many courtyards or closed streets full of restaurants, bars and especially coffee shops. I was wolfing down a dish of their waffles, poached eggs, fish balls and arugula, all drizzled with crème fresh and accompanied by a delicious double cappuccino.

In fact, Lviv’s downtown and Old Town have more coffee shops per capita than any city I’ve ever seen, and a great cappuccino can be had from a kiosk on the streets of Kyiv for under a buck, thanks to the coffee craze that swept the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 1800s. Middleclass Ukrainians can be quite foodie, with tastes ranging from sushi and stir fry to pizza and pesto or borscht, pierogi and herring, which is also traditional Jewish food.

Varvara photographing food for the website of a restaurant in Kryva Lypa, Lviv's famous food courtyard. photo: D. Blair
“I have many friends who are programmers for German companies,” continued Varvara, whose half-dreadlocked, blonde bob gives her round face an idiosyncratic beauty. “All good restaurants have this,” she added, tapping my table’s QR code, which brings up the menu on a phone. Most patrons also pay by phone, I noticed.

Another burgeoning Ukrainian business is modelling, I was told by Hanna, whom I also met in Kryva Lypa, at the record and DJ equipment shop Vinyl Club. Two days before, I saw three fashion shoots in Old Town, when it was bathed in golden afternoon light, before the onslaught of autumn rains. Hanna, who is petit and favors the blond-but-approachable look, recently returned from a shoot in Portugal but has modeled all over Europe. “Ukrainian models are popular,” she said, “Because we work hard.” Also playing a part, I suspect, is that Ukrainians are romantic, select for beauty and intermarry.

'Meet the Kids of Maidan' continues here

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine pub Posted on Mar 02, 2024 - 02:48 PM
Radical Middle Eastern Art Blows My Mind
by Doniphan Blair

Classical nude from 1933 by Mahmoud Said (1897-1964), known as the founder of modern Egyptian painting. From an aristocratic Alexandrian family, he was the son of Egyptian Prime Minister Mohamed Saïd Pacha and uncle of Queen Farida of Egypt but no relation to Edward Said.
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ON OCTOBER 12th, 2023, FIVE DAYS AFTER
Hamas's deadliest-ever attack on Israel, New York’s Columbia University was rocked by students protesting in support of the Palestinians and a few counter-protesters. With helicopters hovering overhead and police at the ready, it was a tough moment for Minouche Shafik, the university’s Egyptian-English president. She closed the campus to the public, rejected “abhorrent rhetoric” and claimed that she embraced those on both sides “suffering great distress” from the rapidly expanding tragedy.

What Shafik didn’t do, but should have, was recommend the protesters walk a dozen blocks to see the groundbreaking show of modern Arab art at Columbia’s little-known Wallach Art Gallery, in the university’s new Manhattanville campus. Although some of the pieces were a century old, they were powerful enough to inspire the average viewer or challenge the more PC or Islamist. Indeed, a show of such artists in Gaza surely would have been shut down or worse by its theocratic rulers, Hamas.

“Girl in a Fishnet” was painted by the Egyptian Amy Nimr, as part of her application to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, when she was only 20. That was before she went to Paris and befriended famous Surrealists, and before fishnet stockings became popular, in the mid 1920s and '30s, respectively.
Titled “Partisans of the Nude”, amazingly enough, which is what the artists called their movement, the show was curated by Kirsten Scheid, a young but accomplished professor at American University in Beirut, Lebanon, where she did a similar show, and a visiting professor at Columbia and NYU. Well aware of the show’s implications, Scheid mentions some but avoids others in her catalogue and gallery notes, due to their radical nature but also her favoring of DEI and pro-Palestinian perspectives. In fact, some of the artists' themes and ideas contradict Columbia’s famous arbiter of all things Arab and Palestinian, Professor Edward Said (1935-2003), who was born in Jerusalem and schooled in Egypt before going Ivy League. In fact, Said’s “Orientalism” (1978) largely kicked off the multicultural revolution still roiling Western civilization.

Said didn’t cover the Partisans of the Nude artists in his comprehensive takedown of Europe’s misinterpretation, colonization and cannibalization of Arab culture, which I probably would have noticed, when I read “Orientalism” 20 years ago, given my interest in the nude as well as Arab culture. Indeed, I had never heard of The Partisans, despite my travels around and readings about the region, until I was strolling along 125th Street on October 18th, as the Columbia riots were raging, and saw a simple sandwich board for the Wallach Gallery. Columbia’s first official art gallery, the Wallach opened in 1986 on the main campus and moved to its new location in 2017, on the sixth floor of one of the university's many modernist buildings, which gentrified a once-derelict corner of Harlem.

After Cezanne by Hussein Youssef Amin, Egyptian (1894-1984).
I expected little, given the signage and location, but exited the bright, orange elevator into a wonderland of evocative images. Suddenly, I was catapulting back to my many months of travel across Islam, which were suffused with adventure and romance, including a brief affair with a Turkish girl, in Athens, Greece, who was gorgeous despite having bad acne.

As I wandered around the formidable show of 42 artists, I also recalled my readings on Arab culture, notably Fatema Mernissi (1940-2015), a Moroccan sociologist, who put her entire society on the couch and dared to delve into the subject of sex. In her best-known book, "Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society" (1975), Mernissi went so far as to predict that feminism would prove more revolutionary in Islam, due to its matriarchal and sex-positive roots, than in the West, where women were constrained by the repression and Puritanism of Catholicism and Protestantism.

A beautiful and evocative as well as surrealist piece by Abdullah Al Qassar, a Kuwaiti artist (1941-2003).
Mernissi was mistaken in that regard, as was Said, in his prediction that radical Islamism would soon fade away, but they were both brilliant intellectuals, attempting to forge an innovative East-West understanding, much like the Partisans of the Nude artists themselves, and were part of a mid-20th century liberalism then sweeping the Middle East. Although that tradition has been revived by the general move toward modernization as well as the Arab Spring, it is still largely eclipsed by the overweening patriarchy, nationalism, Islamism, extreme wealth in some quarters, and violence, not just against Israelis but Arab Christians, gays, women or members of minority Muslim sects, like the artistic Sufis.

After I surveyed Scheid’s show, I soon realized it was not just evocative and sensual but politically radical, comparable to Stravinsky’s 1913 “Rite of Spring”, which provoked riots in Paris. Indeed, her similar show in Beirut in 2016 was very vulnerable to attacks by extremists. Although that didn’t happen, many Arabs and others still feel the art is too provocative for public display. Regardless, it must be shown, according to Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, an Emirati writer, art collector and activist,whose Barjeel Art Foundation provided much of the show's art, simply because, “This is the most pivotal moment in the history of Arab art.”

"The Hamman", a fantastic environment I experienced the male version of in Turkey, painted here in 1958 by the female Lebanese artist Simone Baltaxe Martayan (1925-2009).
Although Scheid’s show notes are couched in the contemporary euphemisms of decolonialism and identity, she maintains a stridently innovative and diverse outlook, in keeping with the values of the Partisans of Nude artists themselves. She explains how they both embraced and rebelled against French and British culture and colonizers, who took over after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, a thesis exemplified by their adoption of the nude as a central subject and philosophy. Some even went so far as to form nudist colonies, but their interests were hardly prurient. Indeed, the nude seemed to serve them as a bold expression of honesty and emotion, hearkening back to the classical Greek understanding of the form but also a modern one (see cineSOURCE article "The Nude in the Age of Trump and Porn"). Unlike current western culture, where the nude has been MeToo-ed and taboo-ed, it symbolized for them revolution, the full exposure of the self and the truth, the final lifting of the veil or hijab, which Arab feminists burnt publicly in 1920s.

Another classical romanticized nude, this one by Georges Hanna Sabbagh in 1923, who was born in Cairo but moved to and became well known in Paris (1887-1951).
In fact, the bold artistry of the Partisans of the Nude movement proves the Arab efflorescence that might have been, forged by creative people transcending colonialism, Orientalism, racism, nationalism, sexism and religion—of the show's artists, nine were woman and one Jewish—while embracing the western positives of medicine and culture. Indeed, many of them attended art schools in France and Italy, which was where they studied the nude, mostly absent in Arabic art, and appropriated it to empower their own visions.

Their heady, cross-cultural miscegenation helped foster an Arab openness and creativity that attracted Western expats, from the radical American authors Paul Bowles and William Burroughs, who lived in Morocco, to the English Lawrence Durrell, who settled in Alexandria, Egypt, and dramatized its once-ethnically diverse community in his bestselling “The Alexandria Quartet,” starring the beloved Jewess Justine. There were also many westerners in Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East, home to almost half of The Partisans, and Cairo, which had almost the entire other half. I myself encountered some of the same spirit when I travelled around Islam in the early 1970s. Cairo also had a substantial Sufi community, including many westerners until the 1970s, when the radical Islamists started killing people, notably assassinating the liberal President Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel, in 1981.

"After the Bath" (1956) by Akram Shukri, (1910-1983), Iraqi artist and architect, who probably saw some Pollack paintings.
While the Partisans were mostly men, one fifth of Scheid’s show were women, and what a crew they were, in keeping with Mernissi’s prediction. Amy Nimr (1898–1974) was only 20 when she painted the striking and meta-themed “Girl in a Fishnet”—she’s trapped in an actual fishnet, not fishnet stockings, a double entendre Nimr might not have recognized, given fishnet stockings only became available in the 1930s. Nimr went to Paris and befriended famous Surrealists, including the notorious womanizer but also brilliant author and analyst of the nude, Henry Miller, although she painted “Girl in a Fishnet” much earlier, as part of her application to London’s Slade School of Fine Art. The painting protrays a provocative balance between personal vision and Surrealism—not yet invented—and her upbringing in Egypt, making it a truly modern masterpiece.

No wonder Nimr, later known as Amy Smart, after she married Walter Smart, an English scholar of Persian and Arabic culture, soon exhibited in Paris, including a solo show in 1926, and eventually hosted Cairo's premier literary salon. She befriended many of the region's artists and intellectuals, including Durrell, Mahmoud Sa'id, the founder of Egyptian modern art, Ahmed Rassim, who wrote a book about her, and members of a Partisans-like group Art and Liberty.

A truly avant-garde piece, considering the cubist aesthetic, wine, and mixed-race couple, by Iraqi Ismail Fattah (1934-1994), painted in 1961.
Sure, Nimr's father was a rich media mogul, she was educated in France and England, and she was exhibited by galleries in London and Paris, but she remained an aggressive artist, who painted Nubians and Bedouins, sometimes in the nude, and Egypt's soon-to-disappear Jewish community. Moreover, she switched to images of corpses and apocalypse, after her son was killed by a WWII-era landmine on a family picnic in the desert, themes she maintained in Paris, where she had to flee in 1952, after Gamal Nasser's takeover of Egypt.

Sophie Halaby (1906-1997), born to a Palestinian father and Russian mother in Jerusalem, was the first Arab woman to study art in Paris. The Lebanese Saloua Raouda (1916-2017) was famous for introducing abstract art to the Middle East. Huguette Caland (1931-2019), also Lebanese, became known for her erotic abstracts, which appeared in exhibitions around the world, especially after she moved to and wowed Los Angeles. Only one of The Partisans in the show was Jewish, Azar Abdulnabi-Shalem from Iraq, but many of their patrons were, since a million Jews lived across the Middle East until they were expelled in 1948.

One of the show's few male nudes done in 1920 by Georges Daud Corn (1886-1971), from Lebanon.
Also represented in the show are many of the Middle East’s most respected male artists, too many to list but including Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), the wunderkind artist and writer from Lebanon. Although he was a Christian, who moved with his single mother to Boston at age 13, Gibran drew on Sufi mystism and Arab romantic poetry for his “The Prophet” (1923), which still sells well a century later and helped inspire the humanist mysticism of the ‘60s.

Middle Eastern progressives have a tradition of studying in colonialist capitals. Long before Mernissi attended the Sorbonne in the ‘50s, the Arab activist and modernizer Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897) was hard at work there. Al-Afghani’s protégé, Muhammad Abduh was so inspired by the art he saw in Europe that, after he became Egypt’s Grand Mufti, he issued a fatwa allowing the depiction of people, which is prohibited by Islam, although he may not have expected nudes. “The Koran” enjoins women to cover their breasts, but says nothing about their hair or faces.

Said, meanwhile, took degrees from both Princeton and Harvard. While he rejected the European misinterpretation of Arab culture and was an active member of various Palestinian councils, he played and performed classical piano, not the oud, and was very much at home on Manhattan’s largely Jewish Upper West Side, suggesting he should have written a companion piece to "Orientalism", “Occidentalism”, about his own assimilation of European culture.

This painting by Saloua Raouda is one of the best pieces in the show, since it incorporates nude, abstraction, a comment on male gaze, and Arabic script, including an Arabic letter which looks like a breast.
The Partisans made similar intellectual leaps, from appropriating Cezanne or Jackson Pollack to integrating Arabic history, lore and script. Unfortunately, painters often rely on rich patrons, some were compromised by their involvement with decaying, corrupt societies, and their imagery was often too incendiary for widespread display. Although some adapted new political ideas, like the Bahraini Abdullah al-Muharraqi (1939-), who combined nudes with political or Palestinian themes, they were criticized and overshadowed, first by Arab nationalists and then religious zealots. The Partisan spirit, however, lives on in the cosmopolitan Arab cities of Cairo, Beirut or Dubai.

The implications of the Partisans of the Nude Show are obviously much more acute amid the horrific Hamas-Israel war and the increasing antisemitism and Islamophobia across the West, a testament to the transcendence of artists, regardless of ethnicity or class, which is why it embodied so much special meaning for me.

As it happened, I was 17 when I immersed myself in Arab and Muslim culture, a decade before I started studying my Jewish roots or my mother’s experience in the Holocaust. That was when I travelled for six months through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, where I stayed in Kabul for a month and toured Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and elsewhere for another. Then I visited northern Pakistan, not far from where bin Laden was captured—fantastically beautiful country—and India’s Muslim, desert state of Rajasthan, also fascinating. The people I met, and the thoughts and hashish they sometimes shared, affected me deeply, but so did the visuals. Indeed, the curving Arabic script, desert panoramas and colorful clothing inspired me to invent a painting style called “Abstract Arabic" and, combined with the ideas, a philosophy, “Abstract Aborigine.”

"Pregnancy"(1959) by Egyptian Hamed Abdalla (1917-1985), is an integration of Arabic language script into painting, which ties into my "Abstract Arabic" work.
Hence, when I saw the Partisans of the Nude show and realized I was not alone in my exploration, I was so thrilled, I raced home and posted a long review, “Enlightened Arab Art Show At Columbia University” on my Facebook page, one of the first reviews of the show available online. Although the curator, Kirsten Scheid, didn’t respond to my messages, I became friends with one of the gallery’s attendants, Daniel Austin, a lovely guy, dedicated artist and “partisan of the nude,” insomuch he draws and paints a lot of nudes (full disclosure: he did one of me).

Despite the importance of the show, only a few Columbia students made the effort to attend, and I saw less than half a dozen people the two times I visited. That increased somewhat, according to Austin, after a couple more reviews, including one by Yasmine Seale, for the website 4columns (see it here), which waxes a bit pedantic but does a decent job.

The New York Times finally covered it on December 14th, see “Spotlighting the Body in a Nascent Arab Art World”, an extensive review which does highlight the radical nature of the work, although it spends too much time trying to refute claims that Arab culture didn’t include nudes. Alas, coming out only a month before the show’s closing was not enough to inspire the stampede to the Wallach Art Gallery the Partisans of the Nude deserved.

"War Generation" (1970) by Abdullah al-Muharraqi (Bahrain, 1939-), is one of the few pieces of the Partisan of the Nudes show to be overtly political.
This is a tragedy, since so many Columbia students as well as young people and leftists worldwide tacitly or implicitly support Hamas, fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, who would oppress or murder modern Partisans of the Nude. Given the immense focus on Arab culture of late, if mostly political, it behooves us to know what their visionary artists were up to. Indeed, knowing one’s artistic roots is essential to evolving a more functional culture any where, but no where more so than in the Middle East.

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Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Feb 19, 2024 - 05:28 PM
Why Arab Liberals Support Israel
by Doniphan Blair

Dahlia Zaida, Egyptian activist now the executive director of the Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies. photo: courtesy J. Muhammad
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“All the Arab states that exist right now, they want to get rid of the Islamists,” noted Dalia Ziada on Yasmine Muhammad’s December 18th podcast. “At the beginning of the war, they were happy to see Israel doing this to Hamas.” Elsewhere in the podcast, she says: “I am 100% supporting Israel in its war on Hamas. I believe if Hamas is removed—Hamas and the other terrorist organizations—it will be good for the entire region.”

The 30-or-so-year-old Ziada is currently the director of Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania, which produces in-depth research on politics, economy and defense policy. Previously, she was a leading feminist and activist from Cairo, where her cohort strove to reduce female genital mutilation.

Although Egypt banned FGM in 2007, it continues clandestinely among two-thirds of Egyptian women, but the drop from over 95% is significant. The big problem confronting Ziada and other Arab Spring activists is power imbalances and police states, which killed almost a thousand people in Tahir Square, Cairo, in 2011, and compels people to accept lies and conspiracy theories. Immune to such subterfuge, however, are the region’s great poets, politicians and activists, from Lebanon’s still-bestselling author Kahil Gibran to Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel in 1978 and was assassinated by Islamists in ’81, and Dalia Ziada.

I was blown away by Zaida’s openness and logic, which is why I quote her at length below, but also her tragedy. After growing up in a stable, supportive family—the first child of a loving, military-engineer father—and a modernizing Egypt, where she attended good schools, she was overjoyed to join the international liberal coalition. It’s heartbreaking, therefore, to see the fresh-faced Zaida, a devout Muslim who covers her hair, have her progressive dreams under attack from the radical religious, the hard right and now hard left, and conspiracy theorists.

An ancient tradition in Islam, conspiracism was perfected and popularized in the 12th century by the Hashasheens, or Assassins, from Persia and then Lebanon. Indeed, the perennial bestseller of Cairo’s publishing industry, the largest of the 22 Arab nations, is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, the Russian forgery claiming Jews control the banks. In fact, Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian war lord who directed anti-Zionist violence, became the head of Islam in Jerusalem, and was the leading Arab supporter of Nazism, living in Berlin from 1942 to ’45, printed his own edition of “Protocols”.

“Then things escalated,” Ziada continued, about the current conspiracy mongering. “All this news coming from Gaza about people being killed… created an outrage in the Arab street. Outrage that is added to the anger that already existed from before, because of the mis-practices of the leaders of the Arab countries. For example, in countries like Egypt and Jordan, there is already a severe economic crisis.” The authorities start saying “all these lies and these slogans. And then they had to play along, not because they really believed, but they had to do so to protect their own seats—protect themselves.”

After defending Israel on social media, Ziada was attacked by Egypt’s radical Islamists, security services and media, a three-sided assault by the religious, the authoritarians and the conspiracists, although she also identifies a severe threat from the left. “I think that, somehow, I was used as a scapegoat in this game, unfortunately, for the Egyptian state to have this image.” Unbowed and obliged to go into hiding while in Egypt, Ziada continues her noble efforts, joining liberal activists from Ukraine to Iran and the Philippines who are standing up for democracy and freedom of speech.

“The only thing I am determined to keep using,” she says on Muhammad’s podcast, “is my voice,” and what a powerful and prescient one it is.
“Believe me, it is all related, what is happening in [the] Israel-Hamas war right now. It is very much related to what is happening in Sudan and Libya—all over the region. It’s all related. If you look at the main source of all these conflicts, you will find out that it is… between Islamists, on one side, and the secular nation states, on the other side. It’s like the core—the core, the core, the core—of all these conflicts. Of course, there are other layers… but this is the base.”

“I think it also something that the Western world has to be very careful about… This problem is now being exported to them, specifically by Islamists. Anyone can search for this. There is a text written by the Muslim Brotherhood [Hamas’s precursor, formed in 1928 Egypt] leaders in the United States in 1990s. It was discovered by federal investigations and is now released for the public to read. The Muslim Brotherhood had a clear plan about sabotaging the West from within—”

“The ‘One-Hundred-Year Plan’?” interjects host Yasmine Muhammad, who also has an astounding record of activism and amazing bio. The latter includes being abused by her Egyptian mother, being inspired by her pro-peace Palestinian father, and being forced to marry an al-Qaeda operative, after which she lived publicly fully covered by the “niqab,” including her face and hands. After escaping that situation, Muhammad got an education, began helping others in similar straights and penned the phenomenal “Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam”. Rejected by dozens of publishers for being too provocative, she self-published, and it became a bestseller, see podcast interviewing her.

“Exactly,” continues Ziada about the One-Hundred-Year Plan. “To sabotage the West from within, which means they had a clear vision… [W]hat they want to do [is] make these nation states—successful nation states in the West—collapse, so they can build their own Islamic caliphate upon the ruins of these nation states. This is what they have been doing in the Middle East for so long, ranging from Iran to Malaysia, all over the region, up to Hamas, up to Sunni Islamist organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and al-Qaeda, and so on.”

“In the West, they adopted the strategy of infiltrating into the Western societies and, like, putting their children, who would normally be second-generation citizens of these countries, into certain groups… so they can promote their ideas… One of the manifestations of this evil plan we are seeing happening right now in the reaction to the Israel-Hamas War.”

“All this twisted rhetoric about Hamas being a resistance movement, about being the heroes of, or champions of, the Palestinian cause, this for me is nonsense—nonsense! It has nothing to do with the truth. But this was being told to western news in the United States, in Europe, in universities, everywhere, by their Muslim fellows, by their Islamist—I would say—fellows, who are saying this on purpose, to promote some lies, to ally [westerners] on the side of the evil, rather than being on the side of the good.”

“It’s really shocking to see that people in the US, for example, in American universities, who are women, who belong to the LGBT community, are supporting Hamas! They don’t even understand that if they lived under Hamas and the Shari’ah Law, they will be immediately killed, just for being an LGBT person, you know. It’s crazy. It’s crazy! So, when you see how brainwashed they are, you will be shocked—but there is a reason for that.”

“Islamists have been preparing for this moment for so long. That’s why we are seeing this extreme international polarization around the issue [of Hamas], although [what happened on October 7th] is very clear. We have a group of terrorists who attacked civilian people in their homes, on a holy day. They attacked people in their pajamas, you know; they raped women; they killed children. They arrested toddlers even, and kidnapped them, and [held] them for over a month, and tortured them.”

“It does not even need to [be] argue[d] about: It is a clear case of terrorism. And there is a state responsible about these civilians, which is the Israel state. It reacted like any other state in the world would react when it is faced by a terrorist, when it is attacked by terrorist organization like Hamas.”
“But, actually, Hamas twisted the whole rhetoric and made it appear like the Israeli government woke up one day and decided just to kill some Palestinians, just out of the blue, just because they think the Palestinian number is increasing. I know it sounds like a joke, but it was said in our media, the Egyptian media and the Arab media, by reputable analysts.”

“At the beginning of the massacre and the attack by Hamas, I was reading the Arab news… so I thought, like, as they were saying, ‘It was just a clash between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants,’ which happened every now and then… no big deal. But two days later, I was invited [to an event] organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel and the Ministry of Defense, and it had journalists from all over the Arab world. More than 300 people were attending: journalists, activists, researchers. And they showed us the actual footage of what happened, like videos collected from the cameras of the houses, from the streets of the kibbutz where the massacre happened, and where the music festival was attacked.”

“They showed us, like, the real scenes of this horrific, horrific attack and, at that time, I felt, like, anger. I was so offended by the many lies that the Egyptian and the Arab media was promoting about the issue … “

“To be honest, regardless of religious background or nationality or anything, I related to these women, who were brutalized and were raped and murdered and mistreated simply because they are Jewish women, or because they are Israelis. It’s not an excuse! And all these children.”
“They killed the animals, like dogs and cats—they killed them! They burnt houses. They didn’t let any sign of life... It was an attack on humanity. This massacre was an attack on humanity—not only on the Jewish or Israeli people—it was an attack on humanity.”

“So I thought, I should stand up. And I have a following on social media, so I thought ‘OK, [that’s] the first place I can do that.’ As long as our media is lying, I will go and say the truth. And I did that… and actually, of course, expectedly, I received a horrible backlash from the many trolls on social media.”

“I thought, ‘OK fine, it will take two or three days, and it will go away, as usual,’ because it happened to me many times. But soon after it was picked by… the state-sponsored media in Egypt. By state-sponsored, it is REALLY state-sponsored: the state dictates everything that is being said in this station! So being attacked by these media stations, the state itself is against me.”

“In the beginning, I said, ‘Perhaps this is not the case. They made a mistake or something, but it [was] increasing. Once and again, the attack is increasing, to the extent that some members of [the Egyptian] Parliament appeared on these TV stations to call me a traitor—to call me a traitor!—to call me a threat to Egypt’s national security.”

“And here is the irony. Here is someone like me, who is a liberal thinker, while all the radicals… [who] are cheering for Hamas, cheering for the Muslim Brotherhood and supporting the Salafists, are NOT a threat to Egypt national security! Which is so ironic.”

“So, I thought, ‘OK, it will [blow] over,’ but, unfortunately, it didn’t. I started, like, to have death threats coming to my phone, and radical Salafists going to my mother’s house and looking for me and asking, like, to have my address or my phone number, like, to kill me, and things like that.”

“Thank God, it went well and my mother wasn’t hurt or anything, but it was really scary. So, I contacted people in the authorities in Egypt, and I said ‘Guys, I need protection.’ Their reaction, unfortunately, was, ‘We are sorry, we cannot really protect you.’ I said, “Is it because I oppose Hamas?’ They said, ‘No, not really. It is because you support Israel in its war on Hamas.’ So the words ‘support Israel’ was for them the sin, the big crime I committed. They wouldn’t mind me being killed by some fanatic in the street just because I said, ‘I support Israel,’ which is crazy because Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel that has been in place for forty years,” established by another advocate of Egyptian liberalism, President Sadat (1918-1981).

Zaida is well aware of what I only recently realized: We are in a four-way war against the radical religious and nihilist conspiracists as well as the hard right and left, four extremists groups brought together by a perfect storm and now joining in a kaleidoscope of alliances, all determined to end the 81-year-old liberal order.

Hence, Russia is allied with Iran, finances France’s fascist National Party, and is supported by MAGA, QAnon and other American conspiracists. Hamas, part of Iran’s colonization of the Middle East, is revered as anti-colonialist by the American hard left, many of whom will vote third party on November 5th, 2024, perhaps helping to elect Trump, a hard-right conspiracist also worshiped by America’s radical religious.

Liberal and “Peace Now” Israelis, meanwhile, have been whipsawed from protesting their authoritarian government through most of 2023 to having their children butchered and raped at a music festival and fighting a brutal two-front war against a religious death cult and their hard left and hard right allies in the West.

Welcome to Four-Way War, which no one knows better than Egyptian liberals. In fact, they have been struggling for human rights, democracy and improved economies since Muhammad Abduh, who studied with his Sufi uncle, became the liberal Mufti of Egypt in 1899. Sadly, they have received little respect or even press. In fact, innumerable Arab liberals have been murdered by war lords, authoritarians and fanatics, a story little known in the West and denigrated or erased locally.

As pro-Palestinian groups marched in Columbia University on October 10th, I was 12 blocks away, visiting the University’s new Wallach Gallery (615 W. 129th), and learning about an incredible Arab art movement, through the show “Partisans of the Nude: An Arab Art Genre in an Era of Contest, 1920-1960” (open ‘til January 14). A daring group of men and women (about 20%), containing Muslims of all sects, Christians and a few Jews, they painted a modern Middle East, free from authoritarianism and theocracy. It was so liberal, in fact, they called themselves the Partisans of the Nude see my review.

Even as Middle Eastern issues became fighting words on Columbia's campus, the Partisans of the Nude show languished unreported, unrespected and unattended. Even though supporting Hamas was all the rage among the city’s radicals, students and hipsters, this fabulous show of Arab art was virtually empty during my two visits, and it was only reviewed two months later by a couple of members of New York's large press corps.

And, when they finally got around to the Partisan of the Nude show, they didn’t recognize its full significance. In fact, those artists proved the need and strength of liberalism in Arab culture, which has been denied by critics both in the East and the West, but was previously exemplified by the tolerant, artistic Sufi Muslims.

Indeed, Ziada is one of many Arab liberals to defend Israel. There is also Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas's founders and the subject of the excellent documentary, “The Green Prince” (2014) see my article and Luai Ahmed. An outspoken and visionary Yemini-Swedish YouTuber, Ahmed tweeted on January 5th: “If you are pro-Hamas today, you would have been pro-Hitler in the 1930s. Both Hitler and Hamas kill Jews and gays simply for being Jews and gays.” Among women liberals there is the brilliant, brave and beautiful Yasmine Muhammad, and many others, although Ziada remains especially stellar for her sincerity, steadfastness and Muslim values.

In my dark night of the soul, which started this October when I learned that many of my friends were chanting “From the River to the Sea” on marches and many actually did want to end Israel, my heart was warmed by the stalwart progressives of the Middle East. Realizing their number was larger than I once thought, I felt reassured that classical liberalism—which we all love so much, even the protestors, as indicated by their reliance on those freedoms—would endure, despite the chaotic, confusing and perhaps catastrophic Four-Way War in which we're now embroiled.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 10, 2024 - 01:09 AM
On Islam, Arabic Art and Afghanistan: What I Learned on my Journey to the East
by Doniphan Blair

Scene from Doniphan Blair's 6 min video 'Islam, Arabic Art and Afghanistan'. photo: D. Blair
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Although my mother survived Auschwitz, I always felt Jewish, and I stand with Israel, I came up and developed my first big ideas as an Arabist. See my six-minute video 'Islam, Arabic Art and Afghanistan.

It started with a bang when I went overland from Turkey to India in 1972, age 18. My journey east and back can-opened me to a cascade of cultures, people and landscapes. I became an "India freak," as indicated by my dress, behavior and new spiritual ideas, but I was also fascinated with Arab culture: the alphabet, hiking across the desert to pet a baby camel, exploring ancient mud cities, like Herat, Afghanistan, or smoking spectacular hash with an enlightened tea man.

Upon return, I read the Sufi poets and about the Persian Hashasheens. The visionary Arab seemed closer to my New York mysticism and cowboy shamanism than the ascetic Indian sadhus who eschewed sex. Five years before I embarked on my Holocaust studies, in 1983, I had invented a painting style called "Abstract Arabic." Those experiences were central to Ancient Currents Gallery, which I started with my brother and other members of the Modern Lovers Commune in San Francisco in 1976.

A drawing by Doniphan Blair from 1972 when he was in Afghanistan. illo: D. Blair
Our idea was to feature tribal art, art by artists from the global south, or "Western" artists influenced by those experiences, which I tried to capture with the concept "Abstract Aborigine," meaning we are all intellectuals and native to this planet. Until 1988, we did over 100 shows and performances, from New Guinea sculpture and South American weavings to the Indian painter Om Prakash Sharma, a poetry reading by Bob Kaufman or the Art War, Anti-Art and Fuck Art shows. While we lacked the backing to blow up, we showed some great art, explored important ideas, attracted a following and developed universalist experimental identities, stand in stark contrast to contemporary identity politics.

Although our neighbors in the now fashionable Upper Fillmore district of San Francisco sometimes complained, the world-travelers and global south artists we hosted loved us, as did the coterie of Black musicians who would come by to jam in our sound room as well as blow gage and enjoy the vegetarian feast we served nightly for a decade and a half.

Growing up Christian and Jewish, from a poor New York neighborhood while attending a deluxe private school, playing Little League as the only white kid in Harlem, I was ingrained with the multicultural exploration that flourished while doing Ancient Current. I developed three different "Abstract" painting styles: Arabic, which featured aggressive scribbles of color streaking through landscapes, Aborigine, which boiled shapes down to archetypes that often puzzled together, and Buddhist, which featured mandala-like compositions. It also fostered a radical centerism, a place of equilibrium, between moral relativism, since things are different in different cultures, and universal law and agreed-upon reality. While never the twain shall meet was the standard philosophical line of some of the classicists and postmodernists, I had met many people, mostly men, in Asia, I had looked into their eyes and felt their humanity, no matter how different from my own it might be.

Since neither Ancient Currents nor my painting took, although I kept painting, doing a well thought out series of ten or more every few years, there was not need to examine the ideas behind my work, until the mid-2010s. First, the Me Too movement called into question the validity of my Nude Series, started around 2010. I was exploiting women with my male gaze, a couple people implied or said outright, even though, my naked women, enshrined in the interlocking Arabic script patterns I had been building on for 40 years, obscured their genitalia and rendered them bejeweled. As cultural Marxism and Identity Politics emerged on top of Me Too, I realized that all my early work in India and South America, as well as with Ancient Currents and in my writing and image making there after could be called cultural appropriation or piracy or bowdlerization.

Fortunately, I was recently in New York City and happened to stumble upon an art show at Columbia University's Wallach Gallery (up until Jan 14) called Partisans of the Nude. And the Middle Eastern artists on display confirmed my 50 year-old experiment in radical multicultural art and philosophy, the painting style I called "Abstract Arabic" and the philosophy "Abstract Aborigine."

Indeed, at this terrible juncture of ideology, action and history, I would like to honor the progressive Muslims and Arabs of the last century, their culture and its effect on me. It’s not easy to articulate after Hamas’s barbaric attack, given the cheering by the hard left and hard right, and the hard military response by Israel, but I have to force myself, given the absence of other people offering creative, centrist or radically multicultural views.

Another Blair drawing, this time of the Rainbow Express, the hippie bus he road from Istanbul to Kabul in 1972. illo: D. Blair
My journey to the East started slowly, with tales from literature and world travelers, but it exploded beyond anything I could imagine as I disembarked in Turkey, in September 1972. The onslaught of sights, sounds and smells, especially in Izmir’s vast whorehouse district, triggered an avalanche of newness and oldness, otherness and innermost me, which eviscerated my 17-year-old psyche.

The stimulation kept increasing as I toured Istanbul, including one night with a pack of dogs, visiting mosques, tea shops, steam baths and hippie hotels, notably the Utopia, where I slept on the roof. It was there I first bought Turkey’s psychedelic green hashish, met friends I’m still close to, and boarded a hippie bus for Kabul, Afghanistan. Called the Rainbow Express, naturally, it cost $35.

As we crossed into Iran, my eyes were swamped by Arabic script, which ate like an acid into the squareness of western letters and ideas. In the mountains north of Tehran, actual acid did much the same. Down that path, I found Sufism, the non-sectarian, artistic and mystical wing of Islam, and “abstract Arabic,” a way of seeing which I incorporated into my art.

My “Abstract Arabic” body of work ranges from ink drawings to abstracts, essays, and nudes, paintings of naked women, which might be applauded by the Middle East’s most radical art movement of the 20th century, the Partisans of the Nude.

A Blair painting, done in Brazil six years after he was in Afghanistan, typifying his 'Abstract Arabic' style. illo: D. Blair
Some might people might critique me as a drug tourist, Orientalist or cultural appropriator, but that would require that they discount the hotel men happy to have tourists of any sorts, the hotel boys dancing wildly to my guitar, or the Asian guy in the desert with whom I shared a silent philosophical discussion, while the 20 others riding in the small Soviet truck stopped to pray to Allah.

If sometimes a bit stoic, the Afghans I met were almost entirely welcoming, except for the Kabul cabbie with a knife. Afghanistan in the early 1970s was a golden age, a few told me. Tragically, a few years later, they too descended into a hell cycle, which went for 43 years and was worse than the 75 years endured by the Arabs and Israelis.

The mud and dome architecture also enthralled me, after my youth in square New York City apartments. It reached an apogee at the Taj Mahal, which I visited with Mac—we drove 2000 miles together in his VW van—and two French junkies, who liked to argue about cooking. Its domes, pools and jewel-encrusted walls were crafted by Sufi artisans from the Moghul empire, the last emperor of which was also a poet, musician and mystical wanderer.

Although I feared becoming a full mystical wanderer myself, I adopted some of their ways: sleeping on the streets of Bombay, stopping at temples to pray, riding the asphyxiatingly-crowded trains, and eating the spicy street food, which was delicious but brought dysentery and worms.
I was also inspired by the Hashasheens, a literary reference I heard before I went to India from Mick Jagger’s character in the film “Performance”. A 12th century cult which used "macho” monotheism, hashish and the notion that “Nothing is real, and everything is permitted,” they came to be called Assassins, since they were also suicide hit men. Indeed, they terrorized Central Asia and the Middle East for centuries, using misinformation and roleplaying, much like today’s conspiracy theorists, and exaggerated violence, much like today’s radical Islamists.

After driving with Mac into the mountains of Pakistan to buy hash—, $1 a pound—near where bin Laden was assassinated, we crossed India to the hippie haven of Goa, for three-months vacationing and hash vending on the beach. The trip took a hard turn, however, after I got hepatitis and was robbed, but the ideas and inspiration kept in flooding in. So I staggered on, journeying through Rajasthan, Benares and Kathmandu, and returning to the West through the Afghan desert in the summer of ‘73.

And I continued journey after I returned, exploring Arab, Islamic, Persian, Turkish and Indian culture. Despite being Jewish, my half-adopted culture fit in fine with the multiculturalism of Manhattan and San Francisco, where I moved, although it did take me years to decipher what I experienced.

Everything changed after 9/11. I felt obliged to speak up for Arab and Muslim liberals, artists and Sufis, since so few in the media or elsewhere, including on the left or in Islam, were doing so. My “Art Fatwa” (October, 2001), “East Actually Does Meet West” poster (2001), and essay, “What Happened to the Sufis of the Middle East?” (2004), didn't earn much acclaim, but those pieces remain central to my oeuvre and a testimony to the benefits of a journey to the East.
In fact, it was only after 9/11 that my professional studies started, as I raided the book shelves of the Afghan grocery stores of Fremont, California, buttonholed Sufi teachers at retreats and bought every last Sufi book at the world-renown Moe’s Books in Berkeley. After satiating myself on their insightful poetry and advanced philosophy, I tackled the Sufi’s little known history.

I also inhaled Arab scholarship, from the famous Palestinian-American Columbia professor, Edward Said, who lived two blocks from my New York apartment, to Fatema Mernissi, the brilliant Sorbonne-educated Moroccan, and Richard Burton, the 19th century English explorer turned Sufi. If you want a literary magic carpet ride to race you from Arabia’s first poet-prince, Imruʾ al-Qais, to “1,001 Arabian Nights”, I recommend the monumental “Night & Horses & the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature”, edited by Robert Irwin.

What happened to the Sufis of the Middle East after 9/11 became the big mystery I had to solve, both to honor progressive Muslims but also my life work in the realm of Abstract Arabic. I made some startling discoveries, notably that the Sufis saved Islam three times—in al-Ghazali’s theology, after the Mongol devastation, and again in the Sufi Golden Ages—but they couldn't repeat that after 9/11. They feared the fury of the fundamentalists, who had been riding out of the Saudi Arabian desert since the 18th century and killing them.

And now we have the Hashasheens reborn as Hamas, also deeply devoted to the suicide strike. Indeed, Hamas perpetrated hundreds of suicide bombings during the Second Intifada (2000-05) and pushed their entire community onto the chopping block on October 7th.

I am from a refugee family, and I stand with all refugees, but only their right to a safe haven and citizenship not return, which would be insane for the 100 million refugees since WWII. Tragically, the radical Islamists made Israel a religious issue not a land swap between the 750,000 Palestinian and 900,000 Jewish refugees of 1948. And they besmirched the Palestinian cause by slaughtering Sufis, women, artists and Christians as well as Jews. Indeed, the Mufti of Jerusalem al-Husseini directed his thugs to murder many members of the liberal Nashashibi family in the 1930s and spent World War Two in Berlin lobbying for the Holocaust, including plans to set up a death camp in Palestine.

Nevertheless, Muslim and Arab liberalism started with Muhammad. It flowered with the massive Sufi movements, which fostered golden ages in Baghdad, Persia, India, Turkey, Morocco, Timbuktu and elsewhere. It gained power in the 20th century, typified by Said, Mernissi and the Partisan of the Nude artists but also the enormous Arab Spring protests, a dozen years ago.

Yes, the Israel Defense Force had to become brutal after 75 years of existential war with their neighbors, although statistically they remain one of the most pacifist armies on record. Meanwhile, the fact that so many educated, liberal and leftist Americans and Europeans support radical Islamists, at the expense of the Sufis, artists, Christians and women, not to mention Jews, suggests they are unfamiliar with Arab poetry, Sufi philosophy, Partisan of the Nude art or my “Art Fatwa.”

The Middle East is home to the oldest societies on earth, making them some of the most corrupt on earth. Reducing corruption is the radical Islamists’ main virtue, which endears them to impoverished and traumatized Arabs and Muslims. But monotheism means we're all equal, created by one god, which also requires democracy, so we can all worship in our preferred manner. Indeed, we’re already one scabrous, digitally-connected, world constituency, voting with our feet, if not at the ballot box.

So you tell me: will we follow the Islam of the Sufis or the Hashasheens? Posted on Dec 26, 2023 - 02:01 AM
Did Arabs and Jews Like Each Other in 1948?
by Doniphan Blair

Jewish and Arab boy, Palestine, circa 1960s. photo: A. Bulshetski
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While Nazi loathing is legion, less well known is that many Germans loved Jews. “Every German stallion needs a Jewish mare,” advised “Iron Chancellor” Bismarck, the founding father of Germany; antisemitism was much higher in 19th century France than Germany, where Jews and Germans intermarried at a phenomenal rate; and German Jews won more Nobel prizes than any other group in history, suggesting a little-noted truth: When people come to love the Jews, others feel left out, threatened, compelled to destroy.

Jewish immigration to Palestine was a long litany of colonialism, exploitation and ethnic cleansing, according to some of my pro-Palestine friends and likeminded pundits, but a compelling, contradictory story is told by Bartley Crum in his 1947 book, “Behind the Silken Curtain”. A liberal Republican lawyer from San Francisco, who defended blacklisted Hollywood figures and Paul Robeson, among other progressive causes, Crum was on the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the fact-finding officials dispatched to the Middle East to investigate the “Jewish Question” and take public testimony. Although Crum cites controversial private views throughout, he really gets rolling exposing little known stories in Jerusalem, in his twelfth chapter, which is titled “Mr. Effendi, Do Not Believe All You Hear” (effendi: person of high status).

I have edited Crum’s text for flow (indicated by ellipses), added some emphasis (in ALL CAPS) and historical parentheticals, and included twenty pages of text, since it is so worth reading.

Chapter 12 of 'Behind the Silken Curtain' starts as follows:

Wherever possible between and after hearings I spoke with the younger Arabs—Palestinian counterparts of my friend Tewfik in Cairo. Educated at the American University in Cairo and in Beirut, and some at Oxford, most were extremely wealthy. Though they stemmed from the effendi stratum of Arab society, it was my feeling that, given a free hand, they would become socially progressive. They made it clear, however, that in Palestine, the political scene was dominated by the Mufti [Amin al-Husseini] through Jaamal Husseini.

[Historical Note: The al-Husseini ruling family produced many of Jerusalem’s mayors and muftis. Amin al-Husseini was forced to step down as Mufti, meaning head Muslim cleric, because he led the Arab Revolt (1936-39), but he retained the title of Mufti.]

Arabs meet with Jews in Jerusalem, circa 1932. photo: unknown.
The younger Arabs appeared strongly influenced by Mrs. Antonius… [Katy Antonius was the daughter of a Christian Lebanese-Egyptian newspaper magnate, the wife of an esteemed Palestinian intellectual AND the lover of Palestine’s British commander. She was also Jerusalem’s premier salon leader and party host.]

I was perplexed to discover that, despite [Katy's] antagonism toward the Jews, several of her proteges believed that the key to the Palestine problem was not keeping the Jews out, but urging them to enter and build the old Greater Syria. This, it was explained to me, would utilize Jewish brains and Jewish capital. But there was little they could do about it because the Mufti, and the older effendis and cadis [learned men] maintained that the Zionists were in league with the British. They preached that it was impossible to get rid of the British unless they got rid of the Zionists. This they translated into keeping the Jews out.

Unquestionably, definite fear and hatred of the Mufti existed among Arab opposition families in Palestine. They expected his return to the Middle East [from house arrest in Paris, for being a Nazi collaborator] but doubted he would come immediately to Palestine because of the blood feuds still raging between many of the leading Arab families and the Husseinis.

I explored this subject with a member of the Nashashibi family [also the source of Jerusalem mayors, including Raghib al-Nashashibi, 1920–‘34, whose wife was Jewish], who called on me at the King David Hotel. Seated in the luxurious lounge of the hotel, listening to the teatime chamber music, he told me his cousin, Fakhri Nashashibi, a second -ranking member of his clan, had been killed in Baghdad in 1941 by the Mufti’s men.

“We have never avenged his blood,” he said. “Sooner or later we shall catch up with the Mufti.”

I told him of the Mufti’s record, as I had come upon it in Nuremberg. I said I was convinced of his guilt as a war criminal. [In fact, Amin al-Husseini was an avid antisemitic conspiracist and Nazi collaborator, who published the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", moved to Berlin for the last three years of World War Two, lobbied for the Holocaust, did radio broadcasts to recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Russian front, served as spymaster for the Axis’ Middle East department, and made plans to set up a death camp in Palestine.] I hoped sooner or later to see him tried, I assured him.

“You will wait a long time,” [the Nashashibi] said soberly. “I have lived in Palestine my whole life. My family has been here for generations. We know the ways of the British in such matters. You will see—the Mufti will be allowed to escape from Paris and then he will turn up in Saudi Arabia or some near-by Arab state and presently come back to power again.” He gave me the background of the long-standing feud between the two families and explained how strenuously his family had been seeking to rid Palestine of the Huessenis’ deathlike grip.

The cover of Crum's 'Behind the Silken Curtain'.
[The English attempted to prosecute Amin el-Husseini for instigating attacks on Arab liberals and Jews, but both the Brits and the Nashashibis thought that appointing him Mufti, after he lobbied for the position in 1922, “might temper Hajj Amin’s intransigence.”]

“It was the old story of appeasement,” Nashashibi told me now, “and like all appeasement, it proved a major error. As soon as Hajj Amin [hajj: honorific for one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca] came to power, he was as intransigent as ever. He purged the Arab leadership of every Arab that threatened his domination, and I do not exaggerate when I say that the Mufti’s gangs simply ELIMINATED BY MURDER HUNDREDS of his political opponents,” (my emphasis). The Mufti, he added, was publicly charged with “direct responsibility” for the murder of 28 men, all distinguished Palestine Arab leaders, in an affidavit entitled “Voice from the Arab Tombs of Palestine,” published in Cairo on January 2, 1939, by Sheik Ali Yassin, who had escaped to Egypt from Palestine. “The Mufti is a great problem for us, as you can see,” he added.

As to the question which brought the [Anglo-American] Committee to Palestine—Nashashibi’s solution, which I heard with some surprise, was partition. His reasons were these: the Jews could have an independent democratic state with a Jewish majority; second, the Arabs could have a large Arab state comprising Trans-Jordan and the Arab-populated parts of Palestine, all under King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan; and third, the British would be eliminated, which is what both Jews and Arabs wanted.

“From a dynastic point of view, we Nashashibis would like to see that solution,” he said. “[Jordan’s King] Abdullah has no love for the Mufti, and if Abdullah were to reign over greater Trans-Jordan he would put the Mufti in his proper place. Our family fortunes would prosper, because we have always enjoyed excellent relations with the Hashimite dynasty to which Abdullah belongs.”

He added: “Of course, these things cannot be said in public. Should you quote me specifically—” He brought the edge of his hand, fingers outstretched, against his neck in a vivid chopping motion. “’Helas!’ I would be finished.”

Later I reported his prediction on the Mufti to [Reginald] Maningham-Buller [a Conservative member of the English Parliament also on the Committee]. “I am afraid someone has been pulling your leg, old fellow,” he said good-humoredly. “I don’t think the Mufti will ever be allowed back in the Middle East.” [In point of fact, the Mufti returned to Cairo a year later, in August 1947, and continued his anti-Zionist and pro-Fascist work until his death in Beirut in 1974.]

Another Arab of influence with whom I discussed Middle East politics was Yussef D… Mr D. greeted me in French rather than in the Middle Eastern fashion and began our discussion by saying that he thought of Wendall Willkie [the 1940 Republican presidential candidate who toured the Middle East in 1944 and was a friend of Crum] as his ‘grand ami’—a man who really understood that all men were brothers.

He told me that the Arab world, even at the top, was far from unwilling to co-operate with the Jews. The entire Middle East needed the intelligence, ingenuity, and productive capacity they represented. Coming from an Arab dignitary this rather startled me, although I knew from conversations with [Chaim] Weizmann [the Russian biochemist who became Israel’s first president] and other Jewish leaders, and from my own examination here, that the relationship between the Arabs and the Jews—save when someone else was looking—was good.

Hasidic brothers, the land purchase document, and the Arab seller, circa 1935. photo: unknown.
Mr D. cited the vast unsettled and undeveloped areas in the Arab world. “You must not forget that the Middle East was the cradle of civilization and in Roman times the granary of the world. It once held millions of people and boasted great civilizations.” I asked him what he thought the needs were. First, he said, was education. For centuries, the Arab people had no opportunity for education. He took me to the window of his suite and pointed to the distant hills which were being reforested by Jewish settlers.

“Whether the present Arab leadership likes it or not,” he said, “we must realize that what the Jews are doing in Palestine must be done for the whole Middle East, if we are to take our rightful place in the community of nations.” Again I expressed some surprise at these conciliatory words, but he remarked, “You should not think what I say strange. I was a friend of Wendell Willkie.” He drew a wallet from his pocket and showed me snapshots taken of him and Wendell together. “I believe in peace with our neighbors. When I look at the Middle East, I think of it as a great customs union, a great trading area. Therein lies our hope...”

Our conversation veered to democracy. “Our people are unfortunately not ready for democracy as you know it,” he said. “We have a parliament, but no real freedom. We have the forms of democracy but not the substance. Take, for example, Lebanon. It is a republic. It has a parliament. But out of the 55 members of that parliament, not one represents the farmers, the artisans, or the workers. They are all wealthy landowners, lawyers or merchants. That is why we can have the forms of democracy but not its substance. We can get the substance of democracy only by raising the living standard of all of our people, by education and by developing the land. That is why I believe in irrigation and electric-power projects in this area…”

He lit a cigarette and thought somberly for a moment. “I say to you honestly, Mr. Crum, I am sick at heart. I have seen my own people telling your committee lies. You must not believe what they say to you in public—they say what they feel they must say for public consumption, but I assure you many of them are neither as recalcitrant or as belligerent [toward the Jews] as they appear!”

“If they were sure that Britain and America wished the Jews and Arabs to get together, we would. But they are not convinced, these Arab leaders: they wish to maintain their position of power, and they know that depends on keeping to the [British] Colonial Office line.”

I interrupted, “You mean the witnesses who appeared before us?” He said, “Yes, you must not believe what most of them say to you in public.”

Topside Arab leadership, he said, was extremely cynical about Western civilization. They used democratic catch phrases because they thought it pleased the Western world. In his opinion real democracy could come to the Middle East only though economic development of the whole area in co-operation with the Jewish community of Palestine. Medical needs were all important, he added. Disease was appalling among his people. “They desperately need education so they will better understand that the modern world offers them a better life…”

He concluded by emphasizing that the fundamental Arab error was in not sitting down with the Jews. Unfortunately, he said, the Jews, too, were guilty of this error and sometimes fell into the trap of thinking of the Arabs as their enemies.

Jewish and Arab Jerusalemites chat, circa 1938. photo: unknown.
There is no question that this man heads a school of thought in some Arab countries which has not been able to speak out. At this date I still do not feel free to reveal his name.

I tried to see as much of Palestine as I could, and the necessary facilities were given to me. One afternoon I came into the King David lobby to find a tall, dark Arab youth of about 24 waiting for me. “Mr. Crum?” he asked, and put out his hand. “I am Michael. I am to be your chauffer. I am a Christian, sir. I am named after a saint. I have a wife and a coming baby. I live in Bethlehem, and I have a hard time to make a living…”

“Michael, I want to know what the common man thinks,” I said…

Michael said apologetically that he did not want to be involved in such matters, but that some of the Arab Christians—perhaps one in five Palestinian Arabs were Christian—felt the presence of the Jews in Palestine helped safeguard them. The Christians had been persecuted by the Muslims long before the Jews, he said.

“Then Michael, what is the truth about trouble between the Arabs and Jews?”

Michael spread his hands. “Sir, I am interested in making enough money for my wife and my baby that is coming… I know I am an attractive man but where am I to go? I am limited. My father, my grandfather, his father, and his grandfather before him all lived in Bethlehem. I must live there, too. That is not right. A man should be able to move. I speak English, Arabic, Hebrew—but what good does it do me?” He explained that as an Arab Christian, he was viewed with suspicion by Muslim Arab officials, and said that he could not get visas to foreign countries such as the United States or West Africa [where the Lebanese mercantile class was well-established]… He could go to another Arab country, if he wished, but I am afraid my life would be even more difficult to make…”

“Do your friends read about politics?” I asked. “Do they know what is happening? Are they interested?”

“It is not easy to say, sir, that they are interested. We sit in the coffeehouse and we hear what the radio tells us, and we talk about what is taking place, but we have no power, my friends and I. The common man here is not important. He does not vote, no one asks him anything. A wise man does not become deeply caught in matters in which he can do nothing.”

Michael possessed a natural dignity of his own. He enjoyed himself where and how he could. He was not above becoming pleasantly intoxicated on Palestinian brandy, which he obtained in Richon-le-Zion, a Jewish village…

I found it interesting to discuss morals with him. In this he was as fatalistic as in other things. “You know, Jerusalem is a pure city, sir,” he told me. “We do not permit any houses of women within the boundaries of the city… here they are on the outskirts.”

As we drove through the country… I attempted to see Jewish and Arab life both in the whole and in detail; upon its average economic level and among its poor and its rich. I visited many Arab villages with Michael as my translator.

On one trip [fellow Committee members] Crick, Sir Frederick, and I entered the town of Beisan… [A]pparently the Arab Higher Committee had been there before us, for [there were] placards in English, reading “Bring the Mufti Back” and “Support the White Paper” [the 1939 English edict which prohibited almost all Jewish immigration and contributed to the Holocaust]…

Bartley Crum, the San Francisco lawyer who was member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and wrote the groundbreaking 'Behind the Silken Curtain' (1947). photo: D. Halsman
Numerous sheiks welcomed us in their colorful robes, and there was much gracious and ceremonious bowing. We found these village Arab leaders extremely nationalistic. An Arab Roman Catholic priest was also present, and he expressed in the strongest terms his opposition to the Jews. I told him that I, too, was Roman Catholic, and recalled to him the clear stand of our Church on antisemitism…

[Crum’s extensive travels brought him from Nazareth, Jericho and Haifa to orange groves and shipbuilding shops as well as monasteries, mosques and Biblical sites.] I visited Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus [in Jerusalem], not far from the Hebrew University, and was impressed by this medical institution, whose medical staff and nursing corps are unquestionably among the finest in the world. Later at the hospital’s outpatient clinic in the heart of modern Jerusalem, I saw Arab mothers bringing their children for treatment.

[I visited Tel Aviv,] a thriving city of 200,000… with tree-shaded boulevards, opera and theater, with playgrounds and modern schools, with buses and apartment houses. [My tour guide] told us how the city’s character had changed from that of a residential suburb [of the old city of Jaffa], in which trade was barred, to that of Palestine’s commercial center, following the 1921 Arab riots, when Jews were compelled to move their shops out of Jaffa. In 1936, an Arab general strike [led by Amin al-Husseini] which paralyzed port activities in Jaffa, led the Jews to develop a port of their own.

[Crum attended a play and visited construction sites and a Jewish family living in what “might have been an apartment in San Francisco,” except for] a small nephew recently rescued from the concentration camps… and his arm, just above the wrist showed the same purple band [of tattooed numbers] I had become so familiar with in Germany and Austria.

[He visited a kibbutz] where perhaps 350 men, women and children lived… This agricultural settlement seemed to present an excellent example of how smoothly Palestine Jewry fits into life in Palestine. Nearby was a monastery, and not far was an Arab village. The secretary of the kibbutz was about 30, wearing khaki trousers and a shirt open at the neck, and spoke English with an accent.

“I came from Yugoslavia ten years ago,” he told me. “My wife came with me. Our family believed that the Jews had no future in Europe: that we must return to the soil, that we must make a nation or be lost…”

I asked him if they had experienced any trouble with the Arabs.

“Our problem here is clear,” he said. “We must get along with our Arab neighbors. We do get along with them. They get along with us. When we drilled our well, the first to take water from us was the Arabs who lived nearby. Let’s go there for a moment,” he said…

As we passed a large lumber shed, I peered in. Two boys about sixteen were working with an electric buzz saw. They were making wooden marionettes in preparation for a children’s show they were to give in a few days.

“Are you surprised?” my companion asked, smiling.

I said I was. Somehow the thought of a marionette show in the middle of this “troubled” country seemed bizarre…

Orthodox Jew and Arab friend in Jerusalem's Old City, circa 2000. photo: unknown
Once in the Arab village, we came upon a kibbutz member adjudicating a dispute between two Arabs, and I was gratified to learn he had been a lawyer in Berlin. During the Arab disturbances of 1936-’39, the Secretary told me, many Arab villagers warned their Jewish neighbors of attacks. More Arabs were killed by Arab raiders, principally because the Arab villagers refused to give up men, donkeys, and food requisitioned by the Arab mercenaries [recruited by the Husseinis, often from Syria and Egypt]…

[Crum details the vibrant kibbutz life, notably the Secretary's explanation of how romance and marriage were more advanced on the kibbutz than in town, due to the absence of heirarchy both between women and men but richer and poorer men. Then he asks if they received any child survivors of the Holocaust. Since they had, he learns how they were slowly introduced to the new way of life. Crum especially enjoyed the kibbutz’s Children’s House, where children lived apart from their parents under the care of young women, noting “one of my pleasantest half-hours was spent in this child’s world in the middle of Palestine.”]

“As for money, it has no value here with the collective,” [the Secretary said.] “We have food, we have lodging, we have clothes… We each receive items such as toothpaste, soap and razors. We are all mature here. We do not ask for more than we need. We do not take advantage of each other.”

“But what about your young women? Do they wear identical dresses?” I asked. “The girls wouldn’t stand for it back home.”

He laughed.

“Yes, we recognize that, and so we have a few different styles of dress. The women choose what they like and, of course, they can sew or decorate it according to their wishes…”

[Crum concludes his kibbutz chapter with, “It is always difficult to draw conclusions on the basis of brief study, but the kibbutz movement seemed to me a striking contribution to modern life.” His next chapter concerns the Israeli freedom fighters, the Hagenah, the spies trailing him and the disagreements between the Committee’s English and American members, all of which is fascinating but I omit because it doesn’t illuminate Arab-Jewish relations. He jumps back into that topic, however, in Chapter 16: “Arab vs. Jew: ‘On the Top Level’”.]

[Crum starts by introducing Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham, His Majesty’s chief executive in Palestine and his problems, but also Cunningham’s predecessor] Field Marshal Viscount Gort, who had resigned his position in Jerusalem in 1945, shortly before his death. Gort had given his illness as the reason for his resignation, but there were many in Palestine who said that Gort had been unwise enough to let his heart rule him: he had become pro-Jewish [while most English authorities were pro-Arab, some did favor the Jews], and he simply could not carry out policies, particularly after the war ended and thousands of Jewish refugees pleaded to enter Palestine, which he knew would add to the bitterness and the anguish of Palestinian Jewry. Whatever the cause, there was no doubt that Gort was one of the most popular High Commissioners Palestine had ever had…

Sir Alan [Cunningham] struck me as a worthy successor to Lord Gort. Possessing an air of great gentleness and kindliness, he was not at all military in manner. If he had a free hand, I am convinced the Arab-Jewish problems in Palestine would be enormously simplified. He was one of the few British officials I met in whom I found a sympathetic understanding of both Arab and Jewish positions.

“I have tried hard to get both Arab and Jewish leaders together,” he said. “I have attempted it at government receptions, which you might say are really command performances. But”—he smiled wryly—“within a short time you’d discover the Arab and Jewish leaders on opposite sides of the room, afraid to speak to each other in public, especially in front of British officials.”

“Yet I know from my own confidential reports that in day-to-day activities, the Jews and Arabs of course see each other and get along well.” [Crum broached delicate topics like the British arrest of many Jews and Arabs, the need for American troops or the ability to absorb 100,000 Jewish immigrants, which Cunningham largely sidestepped. Crum] left Government House with the feeling that Sir Alan himself favored partition as a solution but with a far more generous territorial allowance to the new state of Judea [i.e. Israel—evidently, Crum was unaware of the new state’s intended name].

[At the Government House meeting with Cunningham, Crum encountered Anthony, a Franciscan monk from Vermont, who invited him to cocktails at his monastery. There, another monk told Crum how the Arab and Jewish children were friends at the Franciscan school.]

“Would you say the struggle between Arabs and Jews is at the top level only?” I asked.

He nodded. “On the top level,” he said, “there is no question of it.”

Into my mind flashed the words of Viscount Samuel, the first High Commissioner of Palestine [who was Jewish but nonsectarian and even appointed al-Husseini Mufti], as he sat before us in London, quiet, informed, his hands folded on the small table before him, and summed up the problem.

“I think if you could get a political settlement at the top, things would shape up very differently at the bottom. I do not think the bottom people wish to quarrel; at the top they rather like it.”

In London, critics of the Jews in Palestine had charged that the Arabs were paid far less than the Jews and this caused difficulties among the two peoples. [At Committee hearings] I had heard the testimony of Mrs. Goldie Meyerson, spokeswoman for the Histadruth, the General Federation of Jewish Labor, who told us, from the first day of Jewish work in Palestine, the Histadruth had never ceased to work for mutual aid and co-operation with Arab workers.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meyerson, who had grown up in Milwaukee [also the childhood home of Golda Meir, Israel’s fourth prime minister, 1969-74] and become the first woman leader in the Palestine labor movement, “we recognize two different standards of wage levels in Palestine. It is not a happy situation and the record will show that we have worked constantly to raise the Arab level to the Jewish, or we face the possibility of bringing the Jewish down to the Arab. We don’t want this. We are building a country, a civilization, a way of life, and we don’t want a master race, with a people of much lower standard of living among us. We want our young people to grow up in an environment of high cultural standards, not only within the Jewish communal settlements, but in the neighboring Arab villages, in the streets of Jerusalem, in the streets of Haifa—everywhere.”

In the ‘20s, the Jewish employers and workers urged the Mandatory [Mandatory Palestine, established by the League of Nations and lasting 1920-’48] to establish minimum wage legislation for all workers, Arab and Jewish, in Palestine, she testified. This was not granted. The Jewish Agency repeatedly requested blanket wage increases to Jewish and Arab policemen and Jewish and Arab civil servants. This was refused.

I myself learned that much of the difficulty of raising the Arab standard of living lies in the OPPOSITION OF THE ARAB EFFENDI [my emphasis] to having Arab workers reach the same wage levels as the Jewish workers. This policy has been recognized by the Mandatory itself; even in government work a wage differential is maintained by the Mandatory between Arab and Jewish workers.

I built up my conclusions slowly. Walking through the streets of Jerusalem, I would come upon an Arab having an English letter read to him by a small Jewish school child. I found that Arabic was taught in all the Jewish secondary schools and even some of the elementary ones, while every agricultural settlement had at least one Arabic teacher. Down at the Dead Sea, Arabs and Jews worked in harmony. [Despite the wage differential,] the Arabs received almost double the wages paid Arabs in Egypt performing comparable work. In Haifa, Jews and Arabs are together members of the town council and the mayor is Jewish: both Jews and Arabs collaborate on numerous government boards, committees, and trade and commerce organizations. In the citrus industry, one of Palestine’s great industries, Jewish and Arab orange growers cooperate.

I discovered that basically their common success depended on their common efforts. In Jerusalem, for example, if Jews were to patronize only Jewish shops, and Arabs on Arab shops, both would suffer.

Arab governments invite Hebrew University professors to formulate schemes of improvement, and officials and students from neighboring Arab countries work in Jewish research institutions and laboratories. I thought it paradoxical to learn that the very Arab leaders who attack the Jews send their wives and families to Hadassah Hospital, an institution made possible only by the Zionist endeavor.

In rural areas of Palestine I found the Arabs looking upon the Jews with great respect. Farmers themselves, they regarded with approval these [Jewish] people who worked the land so earnestly, who were ready to stay up all night with a sick lamb, and whose of values toward the simple things of earth—planting, harvesting, irrigating—were like their own. These Arabs might be told time and again by political leaders that the Jews were a foreign people, alien to Palestine and its ageless way of life: but they saw the evidence of their own eyes that these men and women were ready to endure great hardship, live in malarial country, fight nature with all their energy—and they understood this.

THE BASIC TRUTH OF ARAB-JEWISH LIFE IN PALESTINE IS THAT POLITICAL CONFLICT ON HIGH LEVELS DOES NOT AFFECT THE RELATIONS AMONG MEN ON THE STREET [Crum’s emphasis].

I could find no conflict of interest. The nearer an Arab village was to a Jewish colony, the better its economic, social and health conditions. There is no question that the Arabs of Palestine are better off than those of any other Arab country. The birth rate of the Palestine Arabs is higher, the death rate lower: an Arab laborer in Palestine is paid higher wages and lives a better life than his opposite number in Egypt or in Iraq, although they have no problem there of Jewish immigration or “Zionist invasion.” It is precisely because of this better life in Palestine that tens of thousands of Arabs from neighboring Arab countries have been attracted to Palestine, crossing the border from Syria, Trans-Jordan, and Egypt—and they are still coming.

Yet despite this lack of conflict of interests, despite this lack of hatred and animosity in everyday life, in spite of the signs of neighborly friendship I had seen myself, apparently a feud exists on the higher levels.

I became almost obsessed with this question of Arab-Jewish relations. Left alone, I was told by both peoples, they would get along. And slowly this same conviction grew in me, and slowly it became definite truth to me that at every turn, whether covertly or overtly, whether by design or through ignorance, pressures were at work on both peoples to keep them if possible at each other’s throats.

It is obvious that there were two vested interests militating against a Jewish-Arab understanding. Two distinct groups, for reasons of its own, are opposed to a Jewish Palestine. The Arab kings and the effendis form the first group. British imperialism represents the second—and both, in that “passive alliance” cited by Dr. Einstein [earlier in the book], were now acting as one against a common enemy.

Pan-Arabism as a solid united force of the Arab world was more myth than truth. [As it happened, the United Arab Republic, which included Egypt, the Gaza Strip and Syria, only existed from 1958 until 1961.] The community of interests of the kings, sheiks, and effendis in the various Arab lands is unquestionably the main force of the Arab states in their fight against Zionism. And in this united front, the Arab masses are unprotected. What we have here is a class interest of state rulers, landowners and officialdom. To them, as distinct from the multitudes of the Arab peoples, Zionism’s social and technological innovations are a threat because they mean lifting the masses from their ignorance and serfdom...

[Crum’s remaining 70 pages covers why the Brits are so determined to keep the Arab establishment on their side—to help preserve their empire—public works that could help the Middle East and a chapter entitled “Arab Adventure”, about when Committee members flew to Syria and Iraq, where the authorities’ attempt to impress them with scenes of “happy Jews” backfired.]

If, in centuries past, the Arabs had been hospitable to the Jews, this was now the 20th century, and we were in an era of growing nationalism and xenophobia in which the Jew, the perennial stranger, was the first and most helpless victim. The result of Arab nationalism today was to denationalize the Jews and break any connection they had with Jews elsewhere—particularly in Palestine. At the same time, Arabs nationalism did not permit the Jew to become assimilated in the Arab states, so that he was, as it were, GROUND BETWEEN TWO STONES [my emphasis]. In Iraq for example, Zionism was high treason. Every Iraqi Jew’s passport was stamped “Not Valid for Palestine…”

[Fifty-seven pages later, Crum’s final paragraph concludes:] We cannot have peace, I am convinced, with a Middle East divided, half Fascist, half democratic. Palestine symbolizes the crossroads, not only for our foreign policy but the world. Which way will we choose?

My Conclusion

Although Crum's conclusion was prescient, he provides an even more important perspective by observing and officially documenting, in "Behind the Silken Curtain" and the Anglo-American Committee report, the cooperation between the Jewish immigrants and the majority of Palestinians, from the urban working classes, who were getting better wages and medical services, to farmers living near kibbutzes or wealthy liberals, like the Nashashibis, who were happy to have modern civilization arrive in Jerusalem and Haifa as well as Tel Aviv. Alas, "[t]he community of interests of the kings, sheiks, and effendis in the various Arab lands" vehemently opposed the Jewish pioneers, as Crum emphasizes when he states it "is unquestionably the main force of the Arab states in their fight against Zionism." Many of his findings indicate exactly how these vested Arab interests were threatened by the emergence of a Jewish nation at the geographical choke point between the two enormous land masses of the 22 Arab countries.

As rulers of a region plagued by poverty, lack of education and powerful religions, the Arab aristocracy knew they could conjure easily anti-Zionism and antisemitism, based on monotheist devotion, conspiracy theories and millennia living as neighbors with Jews—proximity naturally breeding contempt, envy and scapegoating. Hence, only three years after World War Two and the Holocaust, which not only killed six million Jews but about 60 million others and generated a similar number refugees, rightwing Arab leaders felt they could destroy Israel and mounted two wars: the civil war of 1947, led by al-Husseini and often involving mercenaries, and Israel's War of Independence in '48, after invasion by the armies of Egypt, Jordan (including the English-run Arab Legion), Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It killed between 10,000 and 20,000 people, including one percent of all Israelis, but that was microscopic in the sanguineous 1940s, and a fragile peace was reached in under a year.

While Israel is still one of the smallest nations in the world, with only 8,550 square miles, in 1948 it was almost half that. Nevertheless, that would have been enough to allow it to become the center of the "'great trading area,'" the French-speaking liberal Mr D. hoped for. Tragically, a flourishing Middle East, benefiting from Jewish know-how, investment and socialist as well as capitalist and democratic expertise, would threaten the Arab aristocracy's chokehold on the peasant populations.

Hence, although the Arab establishment voted for Israel by proxy when they expelled over a million Arab Jews—and that became a standard land swap with the 750,000 Arabs forced out by the Israelis—they wanted their cake and to eat it, too. They endeavored to destroy Israel through Machiavellian politics and conspiracy theories and by refusing to accept in their midst Palestinian as well as Jewish refugees. With the connivance of the United Nations, they created the poison pill of the eternal Palestinian refugee. Hence, unlike any other refugee in human history, many of the descendants of those Palestinians remain refugees today. The Arab ruling class and rightwing was soon joined in this effort by the emerging Arab left and radical Islamists. They combined refugee intransigence with conspiracy theories like the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which claims Jews control the banks, and European and Islamist antisemitic notions, which portray the Jews as communists, capitalists or evil monsters.

In point of fact, Israel is infinitely more legitimate than colonial nations like the United States, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico or Australia, given those invaders genocided the indigenous people and stole the vast majority of their land and none of their forbears ever lived there. Israel, meanwhile, was tiny, the Jews were its ancient inhabitants, had both immigrated and emigrated over the millennia, and had always maintained a presence in Jerusalem, which had been conquered around 40 times but never made the capital of another empire simply because everyone knew it was Jewish. In addition, they purchased about 10% of Israel from the Ottomans and helped their neighbors in agriculture, jobs, medicine and education.

Finally accepting those Zionist achievements and inherent legitimacy, much of the Arab ruling class made their peace with Israel. Jordan did so secretly in the early 1970s, Egypt, in 1978, and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords on September 15, 2020. Nevertheless, they refused to address the refugee tragedy, freeing Palestinians up to become citizens of their countries. Hence, the poison pill planted by Husseini and the intransigent Arab aristocracy—denying the Palestinians refuge and citizenship in the 1950s—has come to dominate Palestinian politics as well as the anti-colonialist Left and antisemitic Right.

Indeed, those sentiments inspired Hamas, well aware they were losing validity and that the leading Arab nation, Saudi Arabia which took over from Egypt in the '70s, was about to join the Abrahamic Accords. Knowing their audience's fears and phobias, Hamas elected to make not just a powerful military attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, but a grotesque, over-the-top transgressive one, which they proudly broadcast on social media for all to see. Their gamble paid off. Indeed, the anti-Zionist efforts of the old Arab hegemony were still in effect, as indicated by the enormous protests, starting on October 8th and continuing for months across many major cities of the West. Whether their sacrifice of Gaza and terrible traumatizing of the Gazans as well as Israelis, and the coming backlash against their supporters in western academia and progressive communities will prove to their benefit will take decades to unravel, let alone prove.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Nov 23, 2023 - 03:04 AM
Conspiracy Theory Patterns in the Trump Era
by Doniphan Blair

Senator Joseph McCarthy (rt) and his main assistance, lawyer Roy Cohn, circa 1954 Senate hearings
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WE LIVE IN A GOLDEN AGE OF
conspiracy theories, from Donald Trump's siren song about stolen election to radio host Alex Jones’s three decades of hoarse yelling about “deep state attacks” on the Twin Towers and Sandy Hook, or basketball player Kyrie Irving’s towering confusion about the shape of the earth. But are there any rules governing their propagation and can we learn to slow or stop them?

Conspiratorial conjecture can be a fun parlor game, of course, since anything not vetted by science or journalism can be labelled—or mislabeled—a conspiracy theory, and speculating about your neighbors’ or government’s secrets is innately human. Indeed, it is cousin to police work, novel writing and even science.

If storytellers keep to hypotheticals or areas where they have experience or expertise, like their communities or professions, conjecture and even allegation are normal. But when narrative leaders insinuate that far-flung claims are facts, or they try to establish the conspiracy mongers’ standard ground rules—by stating some form of “Things are not what they seem,” “Secret enemies are plotting,” and “Only I can save you,” usually in that chronology—they are expertly weaponizing people’s imaginations, a central strategy of fascism and violation of human relations.

Enshrining a lie is a coup d’etat of the mind, in fact, the very opposite of the civilized values of truth and justice but also almost all tribal or warrior codes, which often start with a version of “A human’s word is their bond.” Violating that fundamental social agreement leads not only to mistrust and societal breakdown but irrationalism, scapegoating and mob rule as well as, if left to fester, mass psychosis and, inevitably, mass murder.

Conspiracy theories have been with us since Socrates warned against politicians acting like sweet shop proprietors who provide what people want to hear. In addition to their ancient provenance, such subterfuges are inherently modern, and always accelerate after leaps in communications technology, when early adopters can take full advantage. After the invention of the printing press, Protestant fanatics initiated centuries of witch hunting. After the 18th century success of the newspaper and novel, pseudo-historians exploited their tropes to report that a handful of liberal Germans, who called themselves the Illuminati, organized and managed the French Revolution, a conspiracy theory which 15% of American voters still believe, according to a 2019 Business Insider poll.

Also still with us are “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which was concocted in 1903 by the Russian secret police but elevated to a core belief by Nazis exploiting the new technology of radio. Hitler listed his conspiracist rules in “Mein Kampf” (1925), notably the “big lie,” while Goebbels emphasized repetition. Also abiding the primary conspiracist dictums, Hitler insisted bourgeoise reality is false, Jews and communists are plotting, and he’s Germany’s savior, but his magnum opus was: lie so large average folk simply can’t fathom you’re prevaricating.

“Agitations” was an old term for conspiracy theories revived by German scholars of the Frankfurt School, who fled the Nazis to Chicago, to describe the accusations of American populists, like the isolationist and antisemitic Nazi-sympathizer Father Charles Coughlin. In the 1950s, the CIA adopted “active measures,” a pro-active conspiracism popular among intelligence agencies, especially Soviet, which involved sneaking theories or alternative worldviews into regular media or culture.

The Soviet’s great active measures achievement was feeding false reports about AIDS being a CIA bio-weapon to kill people of color to Indian and Italian newspapers, from where they eventually spread. The CIA’s: publishing a subtly anti-Soviet Russian novel, “Doctor Zhivago”, and placing copies where they would be found by Soviet diplomats and artists visiting Europe, which turned it into a bestseller both at home and in the West, not to mention a Nobel Prize for its author, Boris Pasternak.

Modern American conspiracism arrived with Coughlin, whose weekly radio show had 16 million devoted listeners, but he was dwarfed by Senator Joseph McCarthy, who eventually used the new medium of television, although the camera didn't love him. McCarthy fomented four years of fearmongering with his claim that “Communists are out to destroy us and are hiding everywhere,” including throughout the U.S. Army. He even went so far as to accuse the revered General George Marshall, a consummate application of the big lie theory, which he mastered studying “Mein Kampf.”

McCarthy’s fellow Republicans had the backbone to terminated his reign of terror in 1954, and he duly drank himself to death. But his methods were continued by his assistant, Roy Cohn, although they disagreed on some CT law. The under-educated, small-town McCarthy, also an avid gambler and morphine addict, felt that to fully establish a theory one had to first convince oneself. The highly educated and cynical Cohn rejected that, maintaining that the master conspiracist should only roleplay belief, in order to adjust the theory as needed but also avoid losing touch with reality.

There have been many conspiracist movements since the McCarthy Era, from the moon landing hoax and Satanic Panic in 1980s to the 9/11 “Truthers” and today’s QAnon, which remains popular, even though its anonymous leader largely stopped communicating after acknowledging Trump lost the 2020 election. The most successful conspiracy theory in American history, however, is the election rigging claim and anti-deep state movement started and led by Trump.

Trump’s expertise derives directly from Cohn, who came to serve as counsel for high society New York figures and Mafia dons, but also as a corrupt fixer, expert at bribing judges and placing or squashing newspaper stories. After they met in 1973, Trump became both Cohn’s client and a devoted disciple, who abided his mentor's tactics religiously: attack first or counterattack twice as hard, file endless law suits or counter suits, delay or deny outright paying debts, donate generously to politicians, and manipulate reporters like a pack of dogs, by withholding, bargaining with or gorging them on juicy gossip.

Given Cohn expertise with conspiracy theories, it is highly likely he told Trump, that if he goes into politics, start by attacking election integrity, the perfect electoral insurance policy. In 2012, Trump tweeted Barack Obama "lost the popular vote by a lot" and, four years later, denounced Ted Cruz for ballot stuffing in Iowa, while often insisting the Democrats would rob him of the election, if he won. When he actually did just that, if only through the Electoral College, instead of turning the page and becoming presidential, as so many of both parties hoped, he demonstrated his dedication to the Nazis' repetition and big lie rules by accusing the Democrats of rigging the popular vote. For emphasis as well as to prove his minions' servility, he insisted they exaggerate the size of his inauguration crowd.

In addition to his proclivity for the outright lie, Trump spouts conspiracy theories constantly, simply to see what sticks and to get an early start on the required brainwashing. An experienced showman, he is adept at roleplaying the tough politician or religious Republican, the carnival barker or friendly guy, which enabled his seduction of politicians and power brokers but also the downtrodden, in desperate need of a like-minded defender. He’s manipulated the media for over fifty years, fashioning and planting provocative stories, often breaking the bounds of believability or propriety but protected by his endless disclaimers, qualifications and innuendos as well as the First Amendment.

Indeed, his election fraud opera was a tour de force in CT propagation, starting with how he seeded the ground for years. Then he announced “Frankly, we did win this election,” on Election Day night, and achieved an apogee on December 2nd, with a speech so lie-laden even Fox News declined to air it. Viewed by millions on social media, however, it was a master class in repetitive, declarative sentences, building from minor imagination stretches to full-blown conspiracism, agitation and brainwashing, tricks he pushed even further in his 70-minute speech near the White House on January 6th. When he concluded with, “[I]f you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” he triggered his minions to march off like golems and attempt America’s first coup.

Trump achieved this despite the absence of virtually any voter fraud, whatsoever—conspiracy theories usually rely on a shred or two of evidence—despite most of his associates rejecting his allegations, and despite his recent criminal indictments. As his cases go to trial, he will obviously do daily brainwashing sessions from the courthouse steps.

Indeed, Trump is heir to the Cohn and McCarthy lineage of conspiracy theory masters, and he is friends with many others: Republican trickster Roger Stone, who also studied with Cohn, Alex Jones, America’s conspiracy king, who claimed 9/11 was an inside job on the day of, and Putin, who learned active measures in the K.G.B. and applies them constantly. In fact, Trump borrows freely from their conspiracy stories and laws, although he has also developed many of his own.

“Bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity… Controversy, in short, sells,” according to his “The Art of the Deal” (1987), which actually explains why his legal jeopardy is bolstering his popularity. Having established the CT ground rules—the news is fake, we’re under attack, and only he has the inside dope and guts for truthtelling—Trump can divert the massive media coverage of his crimes to flip the script. This is a standard conspiracist technique, also called mirroring, which is a hybrid of fake news, the big lie and active measures. Indeed, Trump’s election fraud scam was the dictionary definition of conspiracy mirroring: trying to steal the election by accusing the Democrats of stealing it.

When Trump calls Biden “crooked Joe,” or claims, “He’s the most corrupt president in our history… And this country will die if we have to go through another four years of this guy” (as he did in a September 29th fund raising video), he’s mirroring what some Democrats are saying about him. Mirroring enlists to ones side ideas already in the zeitgeist by inverting them through the principle of fake news. This allows Trump to insist all the accusations are “a partisan witch hunt” by the “Crazed Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Marxists, and Fascists,” (August 27th tweet).

As Trump and the media fan the dumpster fire of an under-indictment presidential campaign, he’s betting he can create enough chaos to drive to his ranks the Republicans who sat out 2020, Democrat-estranged minorities, leftists turned QAnon, and any of the almost one third Americans who still believe his false narrative about election fraud, according to a recent Monmouth University poll.

Trump’s media spectacle sucks the air out of the primary race, leaving opponents little airtime, a strategy he will carry to the general, although Biden’s detailed denunciation on September 28th, his first to mention Trump by name, shows he will challenge that with his own strong statements, although Trump has the advantage.

He is already attacking major American institutions, from the Constitution itself to the intelligence services, disavowing their reports, armed forces, threating General Mark Miley, or the Department of Justice, vituperatively defaming prosecutors and judges. While this may seem counterproductive, self-incriminating or catastrophic to the mainstream press, regular conservatives or even Trump’s own lawyers, it works wonders burnishing his anti-establishment credentials with disenchanted Americans.

It's the sixties all over again, in fact, but instead of civil rights activists and anti-war protestors revolting against the government, those in the street of late are Trumpers, conspiracists and white supremacists. Indeed, it is the biggest challenge to American democracy since the Civil War, as many pundits have noted, although often while neglecting to cite Trump’s advanced conspiracism, which leaves his methods and our current situation mysterious. Most people simply can’t wrap their heads around the notion that Trump is attempting to overthrow the American ethical as well as political system simply to stay out of jail and solvent.

No magic bullet or dramatic turn of events will convince Trump’s MAGA cult that he isn’t “the greatest of all presidents,” given conspiracism’s amazing ability to reverse losses through magical thinking and script flipping. Extracting his fangs from their neck will only come through time and hard-fought contests at the polls, the courts and in the streets, by security services and counter protesters. Trump’s power will eventually peter out, although he will retain one world title: history’s greatest conspiracy theorist, far exceeding his forbearer McCarthy or ally Putin, who had to launch Europe’s largest war since World War Two to establish his false narrative.

For our part, we can more strictly police truth, both in the media and CT parlor games, and understand that conspiratorial conjecture assuages trauma, inferiority complexes and father hatred, where one transfers that anger to a more palatable figure. It will require discussion and empathy not lectures and shunning, to reintegrate conspiracists into rational, rule-of-law society, unless they have committed actual crimes. We will also have to pass laws against intentionally false public pronouncements and enforce United States Code 2383, which forbids people who mount insurrections from holding office.

Posted on Nov 03, 2023 - 05:01 PM
Cohen Cartoon Corner Oct ‘23
by Karl Cohen

Scene from 'The Inventor". photo courtesy: Capobianco/Granjon
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The Inventor Getting Good Reviews

It’s a delightful stop-motion feature directed by Jim Capobianco. A graduate of Cal Arts, a former Pixar employee with a long list of credits on Pixar features, he received an Oscar nomination for writing “Ratatouille”.

"The Inventor" is suitable for both adults and children. “The movie is marvelous, in a way: It's enchanting to see Leonardo drifting along in a reverie as his sketches fill the screen and sweet Renaissance-style music decorates the soundtrack.” Kyle Smith, according to the Wall Street Journal but corraborated by others.

“Oftentimes da Vinci is pleasantly lost in the cosmos of his mind, what Willy Wonka called ‘Pure Imagination.’ The target audience of “The Inventor” will surely relate.” San Francisco Chronicle

“A history lesson told with tongue-in-cheek wit, this animated tribute to Leonardo da Vinci is as peculiar as it is delightful.” Todd Jorgenson, Cinemalogue

“Funny, sincere, and moving.” Jackson Murphy, Cartoon Scoop

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 74% based on 35 reviews. Their Critics Consensus said, ‘A beautifully animated history lesson, “The Inventor” seems somewhat uncertain as to which audience it's trying to reach, but it remains amusing and often engaging.”

Poster for 'My Love Affair With Marriage'. image: courtesy S. Baumane
My Love Affair With Marriage Toured with Director

“My Love Affair With Marriage” by Signe Baumane had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and went on to screen at over ninety film festivals worldwide. It won twenty three awards including the Grand Prix at the Animafest Zagreb and a major prize at Annecy. It begins its West Coast tour with Signe appearing in person at screenings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and other cities.

“My Love Affair With Marriage” follows Zelma on her 23-year quest for perfect love and lasting marriage. She is a spirited young woman determined to find love in the bewildering world. Told from a woman’s point of view, the film blends historical, biological, social, and emotional arcs with a lively sense of humor and musical numbers. This animated film for adults tackles the issues of love, gender norms, domestic violence, fantasies, and toxic relationships to propel a woman's journey toward independence and liberation.

The film has a remarkable innovative look that combines hand drawn animation with dramatically lit 3D miniature sets and effects. It is an international co-production of companies in Latvia, the United States and Luxembourg, and it took seven years to complete. Baumane wrote, directed, and animated the film. Kristian Sensini from Italy composed 24 songs and wrote the score. Yajun Shi of China animated the biology sections. Dagmara Dominczyk voiced Zelma and Matthew Modine is an executive producer and plays "Bo", one of Zelma's husbands.

Signe’s award-winning animated feature will play in San Francisco at the Vogue Theatre, October 16, with Signe doing a Q&A. The date is firm, but she will not know the starting time until early October. She also knows she will be in the area from about Oct. 15 – 20 and she will do a Q&A in San Jose and at the Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol (details to be announced later). For updated screening details or trailer

Critics On My Love Affair With Marriage

"Latvian filmmaker Signe Baumane quietly delivered one of the best female resistance films of the year — and it's animated. It's a wonderful surprise in a movie already filled to the brim with them. It's a sprawling story that follows the life of Zelma (voiced by Dagmara Dominczyk), a girl who is destined to walk down the much-tread path of her ancestors to be married to a man and taken care of.

But the more she grows up and experiences new things, including bullies at school and terrible boyfriends, the more she realizes that what's destined for her may not be for her. Her body even resists the thought of such conformity.

“My Love Affair With Marriage” is an exuberant and complex movie about the journey to female rebellion," notes Candice Frederick, in HuffPost.

"Funny, moving, and visually stunning throughout, it's easily one of the most distinct animated films I've seen in quite a while and it serves as a needed reminder that animation is an art form that can be used for more than family-oriented narratives." – Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com

"A joyfully exuberant piece of work that manages to conduct some serious examination of human behavior whilst always being nothing less than gloriously entertaining. Many of its themes of gender, identity and conformity also seem incredibly timely." – Laurence Boyce, Cineuropa

"This film is something special. It's unafraid to reveal our innermost thoughts, fears, hopes, regrets, mistakes, and dreams. It celebrates unfiltered authenticity with clever writing and delightful visuals. It's an outstanding feminist film that will undoubtedly win over audiences everywhere." – Liz Whittemore, ReelNewsDaily

"One of the best movies of the year. Signe Baumane's film is absolutely brimming with life, wonder, exploration, grief, trauma, longing, love, and so much more to the point where you could easily argue that this is the most expressive film in years." – Caillou Pettis, Caillou Pettis Movie Reviews

For those who have more contained ideas about animated films, “My Love Affair with Marriage” will doubtless make them think twice about the medium's endless possibilities. This is a deeply funny, socially conscious sharp satire with heart." – Josh Batchelder, Josh at the Movies

"Right from the start, Signe Baumane's animation proves it has earned a place in the hallowed halls of raw storytelling. Rough, storybook-sketched 2D characters are layered on top of highly texturized stop-motion backgrounds, detailing every paint stroke, scrape, sometimes even mold spore. And the imagery is just the start." – Victoria Davis, Animation World Network

Animated Features Released In October

“Girls und Panzer das Finale, Part 4” (Japan) opens Oct. 6
“Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match” (US) opens Oct. 17
“Johnny Puff: Secret Mission” (US, Spain, Italy) opens Oct. 20
“Lendarys” (France, Canada) opens Oct. 26
“Digiman Advednture 1L The Beginning” (Japan) opens Oct 27
“Justice League X RWBY Suoedr Heroeds and Huntsmen: Part Two” (US) Oct. 31

Scene from Bill Plympton’s new feature, the musical-comedy-western 'Slide'. photo courtesy: B. Plympton
Cohen's Review of the Mill Valley Festival

The festival included six new animated features and 18 animated shorts by both well know directors including Hayao Miyazaki, John Musker, and Bill Plympton and new emerging talent. They range from family films to far out experimental work. The festival ran from October 5 to 15 see details.

Plympton in Person with a New Feature

Bill Plympton’s new feature, "Slide", is a musical comedy western. Plympton describes the film as being about a logging town where “there’s a lot of lumberjacks, fishermen, and fog…and corruption. A mystical Clint Eastwood-type cowboy gets rid of the bad guys with his music.”

Bill’s growing up in the rural regions of Clackamas County, Oregon, influenced his creating “Slide.” Another influence was the old country music Plympton’s father liked, such as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Patsy Cline. “I played a lot of slide guitar when I was younger,” he says.

ASIFA-SF’s Nancy Phelps saw a rough-cut screening of the film at Annecy. She told me she really enjoyed the film. "I think that Bill’s new feature is his best one ever and the music is great.”

Animation can be a time-intensive labor of love and “Slide” is no exception. “I did every drawing on this film,” Plympton says.

“It’s about 40,000 drawings. It’s pretty-rare, but for me, it was a joy. It took me seven years. COVID made it difficult to finance.” For that financing, Plympton turned to Kickstarter. 593 backers pledged a total of $84,145, slightly above the campaign’s goal of $77,800.

Earlier this year the roughcut of “Slide” was shown out of competition at the Annecy Festival in France. Now, the just-completed film has been shown at 2023 Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology, and the Woodstock Film Festival in late September.

Plympton says, “If Mel Brooks became a cartoonist, and Clint Eastwood too, and they made a film together, it’d be something like 'Slide'.” See trailer.

Robot Dreams Delightful Celebration

“Robot Dreams” Spain, France, 2023, 103 mins, directed by Pablo Berger is remarkable in several ways, including it not having spoken dialog. The film is a tale of friendship set in 1980s Manhattan. It is based on Sara Varon’s graphic novel about a lonely dog who purchases a robot. They bond and go off and have a wonderful time in a city populated by funny anthropomorphized animals. It is a tale of inseparable friendship that has its ups and downs. It becomes a tragicomedy that resonates with themes of acceptance, diversity, and enduring companionship.

It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the grand prize at the 2023 Annecy International Animation Festival. (This is not the 1988 feature of the same name that is based on short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov.)

Master Animation Class with John Musker

John Musker, a legendary animator, screenwriter, director, and producer is one of the creative talents behind some of the most iconic and beloved animated classics including “Aladdin”, “The Little Mermaid”, and “Moana”.

He gave an inside look into the process of his newest venture, his independently made short I'm Hip. It includes caricatures of animation colleagues, friends, and family. He will share his insights and wisdom about writing and directing animation. I’m Hip is about a self-absorbed cat in a jazzy song and dance film in which he proudly and comically proclaims his “hipness” to the world. The world is less convinced than he is. Recommended for all ages.

The Boy And The Heron by Hayao Miyazaki

The highly anticipated film from the legendary Academy Award-winning Hayao Miyazaki (co-founder of Japan's celebrated animation house, Studio Ghibli) has received outstanding reviews in Japan. Released as Kimitachi wa Do Ikiruka (translated as How Do You Live), the film is an original story written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, produced by the Oscar®-winning Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki, and features a musical score from Miyazaki's long-time collaborator Joe Hisaishi.

They Shot the Piano Player

2023, Spain, France, 103 minutes, by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal (the genius duo behind Chico & Rita) is an upbeat, bold work that follows Jeff, a New York music journalist voiced by Jeff Goldblum, on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of a young Brazilian piano virtuoso, Francisco Tenório Júnior. The resulting musical feature is not only an homage to the life of Tenório Jr. but also a celebratory origin story of the bossa nova musical movement, capturing a fleeting time bursting with creative freedom at a turning point in Latin American history in the ’60s, just before some South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina fell under totalitarian regimes.

The film casts some of música popular Brasileira’s greatest figures, from João Gilberto to Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Vinicius de Moraes, Paulo Moura, and others, all of them giving heartfelt testimony to the enormous talent and vision that Tenório Jr. had and shared with them. Jeff Goldblum’s work as the main character and narrator “encapsulates the passion that seeps through the luminous animation.” The film takes us on a vibrant journey to the heart of a music that would change history forever, and shares the tragic story of a musician whose life was cut far too short.

Rosa and the Stone Troll

Rosa is a little insecure and dutiful flower fairy who always lived alone in her rosebush. More than anything she dreams of having a friend, but she is scared of everything and never dared to go out to the Summerland to meet one. One day the cool and adventurous butterfly Silk crosses paths with Rosa and they immediately become friends despite their differences. Silk wants to go on adventures in the Summerland and Rosa just wants to stay in her safe bush. But when Silk is kidnapped by an evil Stone Troll, Rosa lets go of her fears and set out on a dangerous journey to save her best friend. See trailer.

Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds

The artwork in the trailers is quite “trippy.” Agnès, the neighbor of Juliette (4 years old) and Carmen (8 years old), writes children's books that take place in a fantastic world, The Kingdom of the Winds. The two sisters discover a passage between their world and this extraordinary universe. Once there, the two girls take the appearance of cats, and discover the existence of Sirocco, this terrifying character able to control the wind.

Animated Shorts

The short program "Monster, Movies and the Moon" includes "Operation Frankenstein". Three siblings decide to create their own Frankenstein monster after finding parts of a discarded mannequin. But will you give life to your creation when you're seven years old and can only count on the help of your two older siblings? See trailer.

New Moon An imaginative surrealist journey of young Jay Jay and his mother Edie. Their inner-city dreams are illuminated by the new moon accompanied by the magic of Aretha Franklin playing on a summer's eve on a transistor radio in a backyard in West Philadelphia. Weirdo Could Jasmine and her middle-school frenemies be humanity’s best chance at stopping a monster invasion?

Short Program: Vive el Cine Infantil!

As part of MVFF’s ¡Viva el cine infantil! is a program for families including younger viewers. It celebrates Spanish-language and Latinx films. These are kid-centric animated and narrative shorts. Ages 6+

In “Cleo & Nina", Sara is 5 years old and loves the stories of her grandmother, Nina. They live in different countries, therefore they have not seen each other in a long time. Sara constantly asks her mother to call Nina to hear "the best stories in the world." The short film is an animated documentary that illustrates the telephone conversation in which Nina tells Sara the story of Cleo, her pet pig when she was a child.

“With a Wool Ball" is set in the hills of northwestern Argentina, where a girl spends the winter in her hut. She weaves colored ponchos and goes in search of her friends, native animals of the area, to keep them warm with her wool and to invite them to her hut to drink mate together and warm up with a story and a song.

In “Mist", (Niebla) Nicolas is a kid who has moved with his parents to the suburbs near to an ancient fog forest. The place takes on a new meaning when he starts to have mysterious encounters with native animals. He will discover a forest full of life and will understand the importance between humans and nature.

“La Calesita" is a heartfelt story of the beloved Argentinian merry-go-round operators who have dedicated their lives to providing fun and happiness to children and their neighborhoods. This is a story of perseverance and community above the individual.

Short Program: The Circle Game

The program includes “The Innocent Bystander”, an affectionate tribute to the late San Francisco musician Dan Hicks, and “Starling” made by people who work at Pixar.

“Starling” stars a mischievous star spirit travels home to Istanbul to celebrate her birthday with her family one last time. After being blown off course, she must maneuver through the city before time runs out. The film was created by Pixar employees: Mitra Shahidi, director and writer, US 2023, 9 min. Producer Jessica Heidt; Editor Ayse Arkali; Cinematographer and Composer Andrew Jimenez; and Animation Supervisor Holger Leihe.

Short Program: Youth Works

A collection of peer-reviewed, youth-produced short films that showcases an international cohort of storytellers who span genres from animation to documentary, comedy, horror, and drama. Seven of the thirteen works are animated. The animated works are:

“My Sisters in the Stars: The Story of Lee Yong-Soo” covers a woman born in Daegu, Korea in 1928 under Japanese occupation. She was taken away from her home at the age of 14 by the Imperial Japanese Army and forced into sexual slavery on the front lines of the Pacific Theater in World War II. She is one of 11 remaining known “comfort women” survivors in Korea, a system that claimed more than 200,000 women and girls from Japanese-occupied territories throughout Asia from 1932 to 1945.

The short film “Burnout” shows the childlike creativity that fuels our ideas and how that can turn sour if expended in large bursts too quickly. The narrative is the journey of finding where creativity begins and the conflict of creative expiration through the concept of burnout.

Nancy Phelps wrote me, “’Burnout’ was made by our good friend Dario who was one of the original founders of the KLIK festival. It is the true story of his burnout and during the making of the film his producer suffered burnout and is moving from her native The Netherlands to Budapest to become a poet.”

In “Mountain Man” the eponymous hero battles an antagonist made of stone amidst a harsh winter landscape. Good thing he’s a skilled skier.

In “Room” a teenager struggles with depression and social anxiety, expressing it by locking himself in his imaginary room where his life plays out. The film is shown from the boy’s perspective in his “room” showing how real-life events affect him in it. Since the pandemic began, many teenagers have experienced feelings of isolation and some of them still struggle to overcome their depression even after the pandemic subsides as this boy can't get out of his psychological lockdown.

A man remembers his past and his memories shape his choices in “Yesterday, Again”.

In “Better Late Than Never”, two cousins arrive at Grandma's Day of the Dead celebration and wait for their Tia Carmen to arrive with the food.

Nightmare Before Christmas

One or more theaters in the Bay Area are likely to be showing this annual favorite before Halloween.

The 13th Annual Albany Filmfest 2023

The festival ran from October 12th to 15th at the Rialto Cinemas Cerrito, 10070 San Pablo Ave, El Cerrito. In the program Seeing/Believing, Sat, Oct. 14, 10am, they will present seven eclectic short docs and narrative films “that look at believing what we don’t see, believing what we do see, and believing in what we see in ourselves.”

Two of them are animated. They are Sepe Rafiei’s Bunny is Missing (Celine's cat, Bunny, is missing, prompting a desperate search that leads to an unexpected discovery) and Laurel Eisenmann’s 3 AM (one night, a girl struggles to differentiate the parallel worlds of her dreams and reality as they begin to overlap). For information see program.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Nov 03, 2023 - 01:23 PM
The Girls Making Ghost Town
by Doniphan Blair

Debra in a scene from 'Ghosttown'. photo: Jennifer Juelich
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FOR THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, AS
the world awoke to issues of gender identity, it is often important to look back on a time when expressing one’s identity wasn’t accepted as it is now. Even though it continues to be challenging for many to open up to family and friends, there was a time in the not-so-distant past, when it was entirely unwelcomed by many, especially in rural America and that is theme of an ambitious short film now in pre-production.

Written and directed by local Bay Area filmmaker Jennifer Juelich and co-produced by actor Kari Wishingrad, “Ghost Town” tells a story of a woman, Angie, who returns to her hometown after 30 years and reconnects with a childhood friend, forcing her to question her life, love and sexual preference.

The film opens with Angie and her husband Gary attending her mother's funeral, and the sadness and uneasiness that involves, but soon involves Angie’s childhood friend, Zoey, with whom she had a secret, adolescent affair.

It was a relationship that Angie herself had initiated but ended, due to the era's climate of intolerance, and, after moving away, repressed in exchange for a safe, conventional life. Zoey ultimately confronts Angie about that choice and what it may have cost her emotionally.

Even though baby boomers enjoyed an era promoting individuality and sexual expression, not all were able to embrace that ideal. “Ghost Town” explores those themes of reaching middle age and reflecting on youthful decisions, choices often shaped by fear of retribution.

Juelich and Wishingrad feel their film is unique in that it focuses on a time when society's view on sexuality were changing, yet many still felt the weight of an earlier morality, especially in certain parts of the country. Their hope is to expose how intolerance and bigotry of a community can often create a lifelong fear for those most vulnerable.

Another scene from 'Ghosttown'. photo: Jennifer Juelich
Hoping to create a visual poem for those who have lost their way, "Ghost Town" is their first film as co-producers but have worked together on many films as writer/director and actor. They met when Juelich was casting a supporting role for her feature film “Neon Sky”, a local indie hit about a traveling carnival family, and Wishingrad ended up getting a part.

When Juelich brought her the script for “Ghost Town” several years back, Wishingrad found it compelling and immediately wanted to play the character of Zoey and, eventually, decided to co-produce as well.

Juelich has a degree in creative writing and has written and directed six shorts (“Legacy”, “An Honest Man”, “Cross Town”, “Northern Lights” and “Airspace”) and two features (“Love Doll” and “Neon Sky”). They have been accepted in several film festivals, including the local Sonoma International Film Festival, Tiburon Film Festival and most recently the San Francisco Indie Film Festival. She has also authored many short stories, given fiction is a true loves, and recently attended the Squaw Valley Screenwriter’s Workshop.

Wishingrad began her performing career at an early age, having grown up in New York City, attended a performing arts grammar school and seen many Broadway productions. She has performed in numerous plays and musicals throughout her life, both here in the U.S. and in France. She was in the award-winning Bay Area play “Tokens: A Play on the Plague”, produced by Whoopi Goldberg, written by David Schein, and directed by Robert Ernst.

For over 23 years, Kari has performed in dozens of films, many of these films finding critical acclaim on the film festival circuit. She’s also appeared in numerous TV shows, National commercials, print advertisements, and her smooth voice has been heard in numerous commercial, animation and corporate productions.

Filmmaker Jennifer Juelich (let) and producer and actor Kari Wishingrad. photo: Jennifer Juelich
This short will ultimately be used as a proof-of-concept to produce a full-length project on the subject, expanding not only on the story but adding additional characters and their struggles to come to terms with their past choices and how to move forward.

Currently, they are in pre-production and have launched a Seed & Spark funding campaign. If you are interested, please help. They plan to begin shooting in the fall of 2023 at a farmhouse and other locations around Sonoma, CA.

Posted on Nov 03, 2023 - 12:44 PM
Nicholas Blair: Prodigal Photog Returns
by Doniphan Blair

The cover for Nicholas Blair's new book of photographs from powerHouse Books. photo: N. Blair
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NICHOLAS BLAIR, WHO GOT HIS MFA
from the now-defunct San Francisco Art Institute forty years ago and co-directed the innovative Ancient Currents Gallery, returns to San Francisco to launch his new book, “Castro to Christopher: The Gay Streets of America, 1979-1986”. It documents the enthusiastic emergence of queer culture in that period but also its tragic decimation by AIDS/HIV. The book release interview/party will be at Fabulosa Books (489 Castro St, SF), at 7pm, Tuesday, July 11th.

Blair got interested in photography as a kid. "We would discuss composition, lighting, and the image’s narrative,” Blair writes on his website about his father, Vachel Blair (see article), a cinematographer, who studied film in Paris on the GI Bill. “In particular Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘The Decisive Moment’.”

He also learned to do dark room work in high school from renown documentary photographer Melissa Shook—“I was a thorn in her side,” he recalled—but didn’t begin his life-long dedication to street photography until returning from a year’s travel in South America. That was when a friend, Anna Reinhardt, lent him the small, professional Leica camera once belonging to her father, Ad Reinhardt, the abstract painter but also dedicated world traveler.

A highly personal and mystical photograph from Haiti, 1984. photo: N. Blair
An early, interesting body of work emerged from Blair’s trip to Mexico in 1977. It was shown at Ancient Currents Gallery, which operated at 2205A Pine Street, San Francisco, from 1976 to 1987, under the tripartite mandate to display tribal art, artists from the Global South and American artists influenced by those aesthetics. While in Mexico, Blair collected the yarn paintings of the Huichol tribe, near Nayarit, Mexico, which became Ancient Currents’ bestselling show.

He lived in the commune behind the gallery, the Modern Lovers, where he built a dark room. A community of eight to fifteen people, it was dedicated to the arts and to a balanced lifestyle, including serving a healthy vegetarian dinner every night to all comers, which it did for over a decade.

After the 1978 murder of Harvey Milk, a city council member but also photography store owner, and the political upheaval across San Francisco, but especially in the Castro neighborhood, Blair realized something important was happening and set about documenting it.

By that time, he had become involved in the San Francisco Art Institute, introduced by his friend Larry Bair, who studied with Gary Winograd in Texas and came to San Francisco specifically to study with Henry Wessel, both nationally recognized photographers. After auditing Wessel’s classes, Blair applied to and was accepted in the SFAI Masters degree program, although he didn’t graduate high school or college.

Blair and Bair, who eventually came out as bi, would go out almost every weekend and some weekdays, avidly shooting all over San Francisco but coming to focus on the gay scene. Studying with Hank and Larry, he writes on his site, “I [perfected] a method of candid street photography that entailed pre-focusing the camera before quickly bringing it to my eye and releasing the shutter.”

Start of his 1980 hitchhike to Mexico, with then girlfriend Pammie Congdon, doing street photography and collecting Huichol tribal art. photo: L. Bair
Because he was from New York and periodically returned, he also started shooting Manhattan’s Christopher Street, the nearby pier on the Hudson River, Provincetown, Massachusetts, and other gay meccas.

Some have noted that Blair is not gay, hence an outside observer to the community. But the Modern Lovers had gay residents, including Nancy “Strut” Hedeen, the actual founder of Ancient Currents, and the gallery’s dedication to tribal culture helped develop ideas on how to accept a community on its own terms while still exploring a personal vision.

Unfortunately, Blair moved back to New York before his extensive body of “gay work” could be edited and printed, let alone shown at Ancient Currents, where he became the curator of photography. He did, however, organize shows for some great local photographers, notably Linda Conner, Jack Fulton and Larry Sultan. He also published pieces in San Francisco’s gay newspaper, Bay Area Reporter, where he had a weekly series, the national gay magazine, The Advocate, and the French magazine Gai Pied Hebdo.

Although he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Jerome Foundation, and his work was eventually collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Brooklyn Museum and Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, he had limited success getting a teaching position and shows in the 1980s. Hence, he decided to follow his father into cinematography and was soon traveling the world for CARE, National Geographic, the Disney Channel and other outfits. Shooting stills during his off-time, he garnered great images in Haiti, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and elsewhere.

Filming in Brazil for a documentary about indigenous healing techniques, 2004. photo: D. Blair
He also started doing more commercial work and producing his own investigative documentaries. The latter included “Culture of Crash”, about the demolition derbies enacted each summer at county fairs and completed in 1998, and “Our Holocaust Vacation”, about his mother, a Holocaust survivor, which was shown over 500 times on PBS between 2008 and 2011.

The "gay book project," meanwhile, languished until 2019, when he dusted off his boxes of negatives and started the years'-long project of scanning and sorting. With the help of Gary Halpern, another SFAI photographer, whom he actually met in South America in 1974, and John Glenn, a New York video producer for whom he shot a lot of projects, he created a book proposal and a book, which, after many submissions, was picked up by powerHouse Books, a premiere photo book publisher.

It has gotten glowing reviews, notably in The Guardian, from the New York music and art critic Jim Farber, who also interviewed Blair at New York’s Rizzoli Books in June, for his book release there. Farber has commented on a couple of occasions that Blair’s outsider status drew him away from focusing on the pretty boys, who might have caught a gay photographer’s eye, and towards the graphics and overall content, including the many lesbians in those scenes.

A striking photo from 'Castro to Christopher' shows Blair's ability to document difficult moments: this one at a Castro pride parade in the early '80s. photo: N. Blair
Currently, Blair, 67, continues to run a video production company in New York, while living on its Upper West Side. He also travels extensively, often to visit his son, Stefan, 25, who works for MicroSoft in Seattle, or help his daughter, Willa, 22, set up house for her first job, after graduating from Binghamton University, as an archeologist for the Forest Service in Oregon.

Overall, “Castro to Christopher” is a triumph of both Blair's dedication to street photography but also Ancient Currents' innovative ethos about investigating tribal cultures as equals. His next book project will cover either his eye-opening trip to India in 1978 or similarly scintillating life at the Modern Lovers commune.
Posted on Jul 11, 2023 - 10:39 AM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner July 2023
by Karl Cohen

A scene from 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse'. photo: courtesy Marvel Entertainment
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Spiderman Subversion

"Spiderman" was censored for having a subversive image, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Indeed, the new blockbuster feature “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has been “blocked from release in the United Arab Emirates after failing to pass local censorship laws. The film has apparently fallen foul of the country’s censors due in part to the blink-and-you-miss-it protect trans lives poster featured in the background of one frame, according to a source familiar with the situation.”

The film debuted on June 22nd across the Middle East and has grossed $569,613,989 worldwide as of this writing, June 29th.

Super Mario Bros. Billion Dollar Feature

Also as of June 29th, the film “The Super Mario Bros”, based on a video game, has grossed over $1.346 billion worldwide, passing “Frozen”, “Minions” and “The Incredibles” on the list of billion dollar hits.

What does the success of this film tell us about the American taste in animation?

Happier times at SFAI's lovely Moorish front garden, replete with goldfish pond. photo: D. Blair
The SF Art Institute Tragedy Continues

After the April bankruptcy filing of the SF Art Institute, its gorgeous campus, located in the city’s prestigious Russian hill neighborhood, has been listed for sale, albeit without a price. That is because it is contingent on whether the building includes Diego Rivera's fantastic mural, “The Making of a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City” (1931), appraised at over 40 million.

Although the University of San Francisco planned to acquire the school in 2022, as with the many other merger deals negotiated over the years, it never came through. Evidently, SFAI is too avant-garde for more modest institutions to handle.

Sale price would have to include the $450,000 in back rent on its 800 Chestnut location and $750,000 at its graduate school in Fort Mason, an albatross initiated by an innovative dean, Ella King Torrey, who tragically committed suicide in 2003, at age 45.

The notion that no silicon billionaire wants to buy the campus of 93,000 square feet, replete with bell tower, a library, two galleries, a theater and a rooftop amphitheater with phenomenal views, is a testimony to their lack of fore- or in- sight and poor harbinger for their ability to deal with AI.

Indeed, the land parcel's back yard could easily accommodate an apartment building, solving the student housing problem, while a design department could continue Steve Jobs innovative leadership in that field for Silicon Valley. Imagine if, in 1870, Paris decided to save money by closing its École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

Disney Economics 101

Hollywood’s economic guiding principal was made quite clear by Michael Eisner before he joined Disney. When he was the president of Paramount Pictures from 1976 to 1984 he wrote an infamous internal memo that stated his belief that, "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective."

Eisner was head of Disney from 1984 to 2005 and guided it through the historic period now known as "the Disney Renaissance."

The ol' Disney homestead in the Hollywood hills. photo: courtesy Disney
Disney House for Rent, Only $40,000

The house Walt Disney built in 1932 for his wife Lillian and family in Los Angeles is now for rent, only $40,000 a month. Although a bit pricey, it is well preserved and has the same home theater where Disney screened his dailys.

How Big Is Cricket to Disney

For Disney when they lost the streaming rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches, they lost several million subscribers to Disney+ in India. That sent the company in a panic, so they started to cut expenses including current shows that don’t have high ratings. They also become more critical about taking on new projects.

Nevertheless, they still have an impressive number of subscribers, some 157.8 million of them, to be precise.

And those subscribers will now get to enjoy 28 newly restored classic Disney shorts. Rarely seen, groups of this incredible old animation will appear monthly.

Disney and Florida Cage Fight

Disney and Florida are in a high-stakes legal fight as Governor DeSantis opposes their support of equal rights for LGBTQ people and has attempted to curtail benefits to the company. Since the judge assigned to the case ruled against DeSantis in a similar First Amendment case, he wants a different judge. If DeSantis doesn’t win he will probably appeal it to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where more than half of the judges were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

While DeSantis loves throwing red meat to his base, Florida in general suffers. Not only is Disney fantastically popular with international tourists, Floridians enjoy it.

Moreover, Disney has cancelled a proposal to build a billion-dollar college campus in the state. Indeed, the project was going to attract 2000 employees. Hence, DeSantis’s anti-gay stand will cost the state tax revenue from both income they would have gotten from the construction project and the taxes employees new to the state would have paid.

Adult Swim Developments

Adult Swim is bringing back old favorites, including ‘Dexter’s Lab,’ and ‘Courage the Cowardly Dog’. The new programming block will begin August 28th on Cartoon Network at 6 PM, Monday through Friday. The lineup will also include "Dexter’s Laboratory", "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" and "Ed, Edd n Eddy".

Frame from Vince Collins's 'Retina Psykosis'. photo: V. Collins
New from Collins

Vince Collins's brand new "Retina Psykosis" is a mind bender. Vince has been making experimental animated shorts since the 1970s and his latest film is beyond far out. Check it out here

Posted on Jul 10, 2023 - 03:42 PM
The Vachel Blair Issue
by Doniphan Blair

Vachel Blair, enjoying a train ride in Poland, in 1997. photo: N. Blair
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NOTE: There are five articles or stories by or about Vachel Blair listed at the bottom.

AS I HELP CLOSE UP MY PARENT'S NEW
York apartment and sort through my father’s archives, I feel his presence quite closely, certainly more than the last decade, as he faded from mind after dying in 1999, perhaps more than ever.

That's because I'm reading his notes, articles and old letters, including from his girlfriends and two wives, many of whom were passionately in love with him. That reveals more than one can glean from a father-son relationship, even though he was a generous father and we became good friends after I came of age.

Indeed, those personal revelations allow me to see Vachel Lindsay Blair as he really was: a young man in a brutal fight for democracy in Spain, an intelligence officer in World War Two, when he did "bomb run" photography, wrote stories about the airmen, and made friends in Egypt, Libya and Italy, a dedicated student of film in New York but especially during his year in Paris at the Ecole Technique de Photographie, and as a filmmaker coming up in New York.

Reading his resumes, job application letters, discussions of film projects and thumbing through many scripts, I learned the answer to what I thought was a lack of ambition. He had tried to market himself as a director in New York but eventually realized the market was very competitive, he didn't have the necessary slick, New-York style, and he was a good technician.

So he devoted himself to editing and then cinematography, filming everything from Colt-45 commercials to state visits by foreign dignitaries, including the King of Nepal, who went mountain lion hunting in Nevada. Along the way, he occasionally did shoot/direct, like during his two-month adventure in the South Seas, making a film about vaccinating people in Tonga for the World Health Organization. He also filmed the Queen of Tonga and befriended many people, including a certain Suzy, whose letters I both read and read between the lines.

Vachel was also quite the author. Having studied political as well as library science at Cleveland's Western Reserve University, he wrote some articles after returning from Spain (see Clevelanders Fighting and Dying in Spain), and over 1000 stories about the 98th Bombardment Group of US Army Air Corps (see Life and Death in the Air: A Bombing Run Goes Bad), and dozens of scripts.

Here is some of his pieces about his war experiences and my article on what he did in the Spanish Civil War:

Notes on Achieving World Peace

Vachel wrote this a few months after the end of World War Two, as if sketching out a speech. He was 30.

Life and Death in the Air: A Bombing Run Goes Bad

In this story for the 98th Bombardment Group, Vach captures the horror but also all-in-a-day's-work aspects of Captain Taylor's harrowing, roller-coaster attempt to get his B-29 back to base after bombing a bridge in northern Italy.

While Flying in a B-24 Over Fortress Europe

He wrote this flying in a bomber squadron crossing the Mediterranean to bomb sites in Italy in 1944. As an intelligence officer in a US Army Air, his duties included crawling out over the open bomb bay and filming the bombs as they dropped, writing stories about the airmen for intelligence and publicity purposes, and doing publicity photography.

My Father’s Spanish Civil War

As the title suggests, this is my article about his experience fighting for a few months in the Spanish Civil War in 1937, witnessing the full brunt of its death and destruction, age 22. Sadly, his fellow "green" American recruits and the Republican Spaniards were up against Franco's well-trained soldiers armed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Clevelanders Fighting and Dying in Spain

This article, co-written with his high school buddy Marty Miller, had the subhead "Local youth, back from the front, gives first-hand account of those battling for the [democratic] Loyalists." It was published by The Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 21, 1937.

Posted on Jun 18, 2023 - 06:10 PM
Notes on Achieving World Peace
By Vachel Blair

Sergeant Vachel Blair. photo: USAAC Intelligence
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NOTE: This is from three pages Blair jotted down, as if sketching out a speech, a few months after V-Day for World War Two, when he was 30.

Do you believe a man should be judged for merits alone? That’s what the Bill of Rights has shown to be the only practical thing to do. Prove it.

1. Children believe the world revolves around them. They cannot imagine how other people feel, for a while. Some people never do. (Children jeering a hunchback: cruel.)
2. Wisdom of the ages is in the Bill of Rights. No one has a monopoly on the wonders of the world. Give every man the break you want.
3. How worthy a man is has nothing to do with his name, or where he came from.
4. Like to act superior, chiefly? Indicates inferiority.

Here’s an Irishman. He’s your friend. OK, if you are Irish, you say “Great fellow.” Now change his face and his name only, everything else stays the same. He’s Hardwick—English. Same man. Is your attitude the same? Should be. Same with Jewish, and all minority groups.

2

It’s to our best interest to watch everything that went toward making the war.

Blair was studying film in New York when Pearl Harbor happened in December 1942, and bought this copy of the NY Times, around then making arrangements to enlist. photo: D. Blair
1. Political and economic welfare of all nations. (The Great Depression, 1929-30, and tariffs)
2. Fascism anywhere, being incubated, or war anywhere.
3. The losers [Germany/Japan/Italy]: Make a real democracy.
4. Learn the problems of our neighbors, learn to known them and appreciate their good qualities. All nationalities have their good and bad points. They have their rights and the right to live just as minorities in our country. (We’re just lucky to be Americans.) It’s to our advantage to know and appreciate these people.
5. We “muddled through” the last war.

3

1. Bring it down to the level of the individual: What I can do personally.
2. Strike at the marrow, the “I’m out for myself” view. Narrow self-interest is impractical, it won’t work.
3. Bring in the airplane and the new smallness of the world.
4. We must A: Take responsibility, not drift. B: See the other guy’s point of view. C: Recognize that our welfare is bound up with world’s welfare.

Nobody is superman. We have our way of life, but once in a while it’s good to see other lives. We go motoring in the country for a change, and appreciate it.

Blair witnessed the cutting edge of modernity, flying in B-24 bombers, and was at an Army Air Corps base in New Mexico, headed for the Pacific theater, when the war ended. photo: D. Blair
Advantages of various nations: We’ve got the plumbing. Italians, the musicians and the food, and the French, fashion, food, art. Chinese, philosophers and ancient civilization, English, dependability.
Russia: a “new world.” Pluck and suffering during the war.
Germany: skilled craftsmen, order, precision.
U.S.A.: mass production
Mexico and Latin America: romance

We can see these nationalities right in the USA. Makes life interesting.

4

What to do personally?

1. Support the UN.
2. Don’t permit fascism to rise again.
3. Study what other nations have to contribute to the world.
4. Bring back our responsibility toward the world. It’s not good business, good sense, or practical to save a few $ in self-interest and lose the peace. If it costs a little to maintain the peace, OK. The bill will be 1/1,000,000 what it will cost us the next war, when cities will look like this: __________ [flat].

It’s up to us as individuals. Not the guy next door. You. Let’s not wish our way this time because our luck has run out.

When Blair bought this newspaper, announcing the end of the war in Europe, he didn't know his future wife was just emerging emaciated from an Austrian concentration camp. photo: D. Blair
5

We made mistakes after the last war [WWI]. We have the responsibility of world leadership. We may have war thrust upon us, but we want to make sure we have done everything possible to prevent it. We have the most to lose. The mistakes of the last war, we’ve recognized them.

1. Didn’t join the League [of Nations]—[Instead] UN membership
2. Hawley-Smoot tariff—[Instead] reciprocal trade
3. Archangle [an Artic Ocean Russian town at the center of diplomacy in 1945], non-recognition of Russia—Recognized
4. Manchuria [the Japanese invasion of]—stopping oppression, [allowing] British [war] loan, and feeding Europe.

But for the grace of God we might have lost the atom bomb race. Germany had plans to hit N. Y. City. We have one more chance. Narrow self-interest will bring war down upon us.

Posted on Jun 18, 2023 - 05:26 PM
Tonia and Vach Song Book

Tonia Rotkopf Blair and Vachel Blair, around the time of their marriage, 1954, New York City. photo: Sidney Meyers
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Si Me Quieres Escribir
From the Spanish Civil War, circa 1937
(NOTE: We did 3 bars each line instead 4 because Tonia did it that way)

intr Dm / / / AM / / / Dm / / / (2-2beats)
Si me/ quieres escribir ya sabes mi paradero. (2x)
Dm / / / C / Bb / / / A /
En el friente de Gandesa, primera línea de fuego. (2x)
2) Si te quieres comer bien, barato y con bueno forma
En el friente de Gandesa alli tiene una fonda
3) A lo entrada de la fonda hay una moro Mojame
Que te dice pasa pasa si te quieres para comer
4) El premier plato que te dan hay granadas rompadoras
La segunda des metrallas para recordar la memorias
5) Si ti quieres conquistar, espera la brigada Washington
Si los gringos llegaran puedemos vamos a ganar un monton

Summertime
by George Gershwin, 1920s

Am Dm Am
Summertime,  And the livin' is easy 
Am Dm E
Fish are jumpin' And the corn is high
Am Dm Am  
Your daddy's rich And your mamma's good lookin' 
Dm E Am
So hush little baby Don't you cry  

2) One of these mornings You're going to rise up singing 
Then you'll spread your wings And you'll take to the sky  
But until that morning There's a'nothing can harm you 
With your daddy and mammy standing by

3) Granton Mountain and the summer is foggy
But the nights are clear and the moon is bright
The coyote and bear have come back to the mountain
and little baby is going to be all right

Mama, Ya Zhulika Lyublyu

Russian WWII Song
Dm Gm Dm
1) Mama, ya locheka loblyu, mama, ya locheka hochu
Gm Dm
Loche viso kopro viyev, nove dingo zareb diev
Am7
Mama, ya loche kaloblyu
2) Mama, ya doctora loblyu, mama, ya doctora hochu
Vrač delaet mnogo abortov, i platjat očen’ horošo
Mama, ya doctora kaloblyu
English
3) Mama, I love the pilot, mama, I want the pilot
The pilot flies oh so high, makes lots of money in the sky
Mama, I love the pilot
4) Mama, I love the doctor, mama, I want the doctor
The doctor makes lots of abortions and gets paid extra portions
Mama, I love the doctor

Oyfn Pripetshik
Old Yiddish Song

Ch) DM AM Dm F C F
d e f# / / e g f# e d
Oyfn pripetshik, brent a fayerl, Un in shtub iz heys,
“Obdem primpichuck brent a fayer oo”
(2x) Gm Dm Am Dm
Un der rebe e kleyne kinderlekh, Komets alef beys

2) Zog me kinderlekh, tirer kinderlekh, zog me nokh a mol
zog me nokh a mol e tirer nokh a mol, komets alef beys

(my translation)
On the hearth therein, there a fire burns, and the house is warm.
And the rabbi there is teaching little kids to learn the alphabet.

Tell me children, my dear children, tell me once again
Tell me once again, my dear children, to learn the alphabet

Tumbalalaika
Eastern European Love Song
Am E7
VS1: Shteyt a bocher, shteyt un tracht,
E7 Am
tracht un tracht a gantze nacht.
Am F Dm Am
Vemen tsu nemen un nit far shemen,
Dm E7 Am
Vemen tsu nemen un nit far shemen
Am E7
CH: Tumbala, tumbala, tumbalalaika,
E7 Am
Tumbala, tumbala, tumbalalaika
Am F Dm Am
tumbalalaika, shpiel balalaika
Dm E7 Am
tumbalalaika - freylach zol zayn.
VS2: Meydl, meydl, ich'vel dir fregen,
Vos ken vaksn, vaksn on regn
Vos ken brenen un nit oyf hern?
Vos ken BENKEN, veynen on treren?
CH
VS3: Narisher bocher, vos darfstu fregn?
A shteyn ken vaksn, vaksn on regn.
Libeh ken brenen un nit oyf hern.
A harts kon benkn, veynen on treren.

ENGLISH
A young man is standing, standing and thinking
Thinking and thinking the whole night thru
Whom to invite, whom not to offend
Whom to invite, whom not to offend
Ch, Play, play, play the balalaika
Play, play, play the balaliaka
Play the balalaika, sing the balalaika
Play the balalaika, bring joy to all
Girl, oh girl, to you I would ask,
What can grow without the rain
What can burn without an end
What can break, and cry without tears.
Foolish lad, why do you want to ask,
A stone can grow, and grow without rain,
Love can burn and never end,
A heart can break, and cry without tears.

Hay Que Mulher Bonita
Brazilian pop song circa 1948
C G
Hay que mulher bonita hay que mulher shorosa
G F G F C
Si yo appanio so Diablo hay que noche soniarosa,
C G
Ela pasa avenida, elagante toda prosa,
G F G F C
Con zapato todo branco e vestido cordarosa
C G
A soltera fica tonta, a casada eviajosa
G F G F C
Solo hombres son gritando ‘Salve, salve Dona Rosa.

English
Oh what a beautiful woman, oh what a lovely woman,
If I could grab the Devil what a night we could have,
She goes down the avenue, elegant in all her prose,
With her shoes all white and her well chosen clothes,
The single women gets dizzy, the married are envious-a
Only the men are shouting ‘Hail, hail Dona Rosa!’

We Shall Overcome chords
by Peter Seeger (No More Auction Block For Me., words by Reverend Charles Tindley 1950s

C F C F C
We shall overcome, We shall overcome
F Am D G D G
We shall overcome some da-aaaay
F C
I know that deep in my heart
F C
I do believe
F C G C
We shall overcome some day

2. We shall walk together
3. We shall sing together
4. We shall all be free

Posted on Jun 17, 2023 - 12:44 PM
Life and Death in the Air: A Bombing Run Goes Bad
By Sgt. Vachel L. Blair, Cleveland, Ohio

Captain Jack Taylor next to his B-24 bomber, notice its female logo and successful strike count, as well as Cpt Taylor's relaxed demeanor, cigarette and loafers. photo: V. Blair or intelligence officer colleague
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Second Lieutenant John A. Taylor, of the 98th Bomb Group, has just completed his Airmedal Mission [perhaps his 25th]. It was a full day for the pilot of the “Buzzin' Two Duzzin’.” Here’s what happened:

Lt. Taylor was flying number four position [in a formation of 10 to 30 planes] over one of those Brenner Pass Bridges [in the Italian Alps], that’s hot even at 40 below. Just after “bombs away,” he saw a direct hit by flak blast off the whole tail assembly of the lead ship. Dodging debris and at the same time losing his number two engine to flak, he saw something make a six-inch hole in the right windshield. Nobody was hurt.

While he was trying to feather his No. 2 prop, No. 1 and No. 4 ran intermittently. The plane dropped out of formation while he tried to make them behave. He gave instructions for the gas to be shut off from the shot-out No. 2 but, in the excitement, fuel was cut from No. 1, which didn’t help much to speak of. By that time, the plane was losing altitude at a phenomenal rate. Lt. Taylor decided there was only one obvious move to make: he rang the bell and the boys hit the nylon [parachutes].

Before everyone took off from the flight deck, however, a little technical problem came to Lt. Taylor’s attention: He had eyes on his chute and his harness, too, but he seemed to be missing a snap in there somewhere. Someone had taken the wrong chute, and left his own snap-type job in another part of the ship.

One of the boys went back and found his back pack, tossed it up on the flight deck, and suddenly Lt. Taylor was alone in the rumbling old war bird with bomb-bay doors, nose-wheel doors, and hatches open for inspection.

B-24 Liberator bombers, similar to the ones that flew from south of Venice to the Battle of Brenner Pass, here heading to Germany from England.
At about 4,000 feet and still going down, he slipped out of the pilot’s seat to try out the chute for size and found it too small to buckle the leg straps. While he was thus occupied the plane, with auto-pilot out, couldn’t resist a temptation to pull up into a stall. Lt. Taylor moved to catch the controls but his misfit parachute harness, which was too short to buckle, was long enough to catch on one of the goddamn radio knobs.

As if to confound all plans of destiny, he reached out with one hand and jammed the wheel forward, for a dive to regain flying speed. The plane dropped like an elevator with cables cut. About this time Lt. Taylor figured he could use a three-day rest leave at Capri pretty handily. Somehow he managed to disengage his chute and pull the ornery warhorse out at 200 feet, leveling at 330, with one windmilling [busted] prop.

That taken care of, and not without a certain amount of relief, he began to look around for a likely spot to set her down. He spotted a field. While he was making his pattern [circling to finding a landing strategy], he found that No. 1 and No. 4 prop governors began to respond, at that warmer lower altitude.

“Things were going so well by that time—relatively, that is—I decided to head for home and see how far I could get.” He turned the gas back on to No.1 to see if it would run better; that gave him three good engines and one unfeatherable prop. With these improved living conditions, he pounded down "the hill" toward Venice, flying at fence-top height for fighter protection.

Vachel Blair told me that the Air Corps was very democratic: You could argue your way out of flight assignments and, after taking off, the crew essentially voted whether to do the mission. If they decided to turn back—because of faulty machinery or the vote—they would drop their bombs in the Mediterranean (you can't land loaded), but sometimes one remained and killed them. photo: V. Blair or intelligence officer colleague
“I could see the ‘Ities’ [Italians] scurrying for ditches in every direction,” he said. “Every once in a while, I’d pull her up to 50 ft., twist her around a bit, so I could see if any fighters were on my tail, and then let her back down.”

As the picturesque city of canals and gondolas came up, he swung around town to avoid the flak without noticing St. Marks Cathedral, the great Renaissance masterpiece. He did give Venice harbor a 50 ft. inspection, however.

“I was afraid the subs in port there would 'up' [their antiaircraft guns] on me, but they didn’t. All the flack I got from the area was way above the plane.”

Once out on the Adriatic at 10 ft, with the bracing salt air coming in the nose-wheel door, Lt. Taylor thought it about time he took over the radio operator’s portfolio. He dialed “Big Fence,” “Green G-George, please give me a heading for Ancona or the nearest emergency field.”

“Green G-George,” came the reply, “Steer 225 degree.”

That heading didn’t look quite right to Lt. Taylor. “And besides,” he added, “That word ‘steer’ sounded phony. I called for identification and they didn’t say a word. Then I really cussed them out. I said, ‘You dirty —.’”

Anyhow, he really cussed them out with vernacular reserved for such emergencies. He gained altitude a little after he had come down the Adriatic a safe distance. Within sight of land, he contacted the real “Big Fence,” located the field, made his pattern and lowered his [landing] gear without trouble.

Air Corps mechanics working away on a 'war bird' named Raunchy, who is an actual dragon. photo: V. Blair or intelligence officer colleague
“From my seat I couldn’t tell whether everything was locked, but by that time I wasn’t worrying much.” As it turned out, everything was locked when he eased the big bird in on a good landing. Destiny gave him a break.

A truck came out to pick up the crew. “Where is everyone,” the driver asked.

“I’m it,” said Lt. Taylor, “There ain’t no more.” Well, what the hell, that’s enough to make anyone’s eyeballs drop out.

Now that we see it can be done, the streamlined “Taylor System” of manning Liberator [B-24] Bombers might be widely adopted. Lt. Taylor may do for heavy bomb groups what Henry Kaiser did for shipbuilding. Who said there isn’t efficiency in the army?

NOTE: From November 6, 1944 to April 25, 1945 United States Army Air Corp flew 6,849 sorties B-25s and B-29s in the "Battle of the Brenner".
Posted on Jun 11, 2023 - 10:23 PM
Two Proposed Articles on Jewish History

Bruno Loewenberg, in the centerpiece photo from the feature interview in The Clinton Street Quarterly, 1982. photo: D. Blair

I would like to propose two articles for readers interested in Jewish or European culture and history, subjects amplified by the Russo-Ukraine War and the current popularity of conspiracy theories:

The Jews of Ukraine: A Long, Complicated, Partially Hidden History

Jews and Moneylending: A Long, Complicated, Largely Hidden History

When I visited Ukraine in the fall of 2022, I was surprised by the amount of Jewish people, or their children and grandchildren, and culture. Striking examples of the latter are the “psychedelic synagogue” at Kyiv's Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial and emerging research on the Cossacks.

IMG_4278.jpeg

“There existed Jewish Cossacks,” reported Russian historian Saul Borovoi (1903-1987), according to Brian Horowitz in The Librarians (6/23/2021). “In his view, two kinds of Jews lived among the Cossacks. One group consisted of Jews who converted to Russian Orthodoxy and joined as fighters… [O]ther Jews, as Borovoi documented, simply moved to the [Cossack lands] to serve as traders and commercial agents for Cossack landowners, as their coreligionists did for landowners in Poland.”

This cries out for investigation, given Ukrainians see their national origins in the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the 17th century Cossack rebellion, but some Jews consider it the first Holocaust. New population studies indicate it didn’t kill as many as once thought, however, and it was motivated more by political struggle than religious hatred, since Jews served the Polish empire as merchants, tavern operators and moneylenders.

I have long been fascinated by Jewish moneylending, simply because the subject was glossed over by historians and erased by society, both Jewish and gentile, except the conspiracy theorists. “Don’t ‘Jew’ me” shocked me, when I first heard it, on my first trip to the American West, as did the history of moneylending, when I first read about it, while studying the Holocaust in the 1980s (my mother was a Polish Holocaust survivor).

Raised among Jewish intellectuals and institutions, I found this lack of historical self-awareness scandalous. Indeed, I have almost 20 books on the history of the Jews, many with that title, mostly written by Jews, few with sections on moneylending and none with adequate ones, except for James Parkes's "The Jew in the Medieval Community” (1938). Moreover, moneylending is central to civilization, its first financial instrument.

With the recent increases in conspiracy theories and threats and violence against Jews, my curiosity has been eclipsed by desperation. We must finally and fully shine a spotlight on this long, convoluted and sometimes perverse history, starting with the Biblical prohibitions and the Christian workaround, making Jews their retail lenders. That no one did so in 19th century Ukraine or America in the 1950s is understandable. That the Jews-control-the-banks conspiracy theory remains rampant, however, is on us.

An important endeavor for journalism today, I believe, would be to rectify that millennia-long reportage failure by commissioning and publishing a number of editorials, introductory articles and well-researched longer pieces on Jewish moneylending, the Jews of Ukraine and related subjects.

Modesty aside, I'm a good candidate to write some of them.

In addition to my seven weeks in Ukraine, which produced "Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution” (2023), my resume features 40 years of Holocaust-related writing, starting with "Bruno Lowenberg: Artist and Survivor” (Clinton Street Quarterly, Portland, Oregon), which won a North-West Journalism Association Award in 1982. Other work includes "Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed” (2015), "Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained” (2018) and "The Benefits of Commemoration” (2022).

I also did research at the Holocaust Center of Northern California, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, and San Francisco State University, where I studied with Konnilyn Feig, and ad hoc investigating while co-directing the PBS-shown documentary, “Our Holocaust Vacation” (2007), shot mostly in Poland, editing my mother’s book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption” (2021), and attending over a dozen Holocaust survivor conferences.

Thanks in advance for your timely attendance to or involvement with these proposals,

Cordially,

Doniphan Blair Posted on Jun 08, 2023 - 09:33 AM
Recent Articles by D Blair
by Doniphan Blair

Bruno Loewenberg, in the centerpiece photo from the feature interview in The Clinton Street Quarterly, 1982. photo: D. Blair
Articles, Proposed or Pending

In January 2022, I began a concerted effort to get my articles published outside of cineSOURCE. Here's scorecard of the situation:

Sent Out May 2023

Proposal for two articles about Jews of Ukraine and Jews and Money lending

Sent Out in January 2023

"Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution" was published by Redaction Report and Reader Supported News

This article documents my trip to Ukraine (August 24-October 9, 2022), with a focus on what young intellectuals think, telling the story of what happened during the Maidan Revolution of 2014, and the history of Ukraine’s Jews and neo-Nazis. It concludes with my encounter with Lviv's vibrant youth scene and being in an air raid—inspiring both hope and fears of nuclear war. (16,800 words, completed 1/15/23).

Send Out in January 2022

Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis

"My Father’s Spanish Civil War" 2,800 & 1,200 words, 3/4/23. Using quotes from my father’s letters, I explore his difficult experience fighting for Republican Spain in 1937 with a shorter survey of his World War Two experience, notably flying in B-24 bombers, and a concluding paragraph on Ukraine.

"The Benefits of Commemoration" 3,600 words, 8/28/22. While travelling to Poland to put my mother’s ashes on her family’s mass grave, I encountered a moving three-day event of Poles honoring and remembering the Jews of their town and their destruction.

"How to Fight the Conspiracy Theory Plague" 2,000 & 1,000 words, 8/15/22. A summary of how conspiracy theories have infected America’s right wing and how to oppose it, focusing on the efforts of Adam Kinzinger.

"Conspiracy Mirroring: A Schoolyard Psy-Op Goes High Tech" 1,850 & 900 words, 7/8/22. Unique insight into the common conspiracy theorist trick: accusing their opponents of committing the same crimes they are perpetrating, and its evidence from fake news to false flags.

"Ukraine Fights for Freedom in Song, Film and Television" 2,300 words, 6/7/22. A survey of Ukrainian culture focusing on the winners of the 2022 Eurovision Song contest, Kalush Orchestra, Zelensky’s television show, “Servant of the People”, and an award-winning film, “Klondike", about a pregnant woman running a farm in the middle of the Donbas war.

"Ukraine’s Complex, Tragic History” 4,100 words, 5/10/22. A brief, enlightened review of Ukrainian history, focusing on the little-known killing of as many to 20 million Ukrainians from 1914 to 1945, and culminating with success of the Maidan Revolution, Zelensky’s election and the Russian invasion.

"Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs" 4,400 & 2000 words, 1/6/22. An expose of Trump’s extensive conspiracism, from spouting conspiracy theories to training with “the most evil man in New York,” Roy Cohn, and the origins of QAnon as a live-action roll playing game.

"Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis" 11,300 words, 12/20/21. The author starts by examining the six murders that transpired around his building in 2020, then his 30 years in Oakland, Oakland’s history, its many police scandals, the Black Lives Matter movement and more.

SHORT VERSIONS OF LIST

"My Father’s Spanish Civil War", "Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution", "The Benefits of Commemoration", "How to Fight the Conspiracy Theory Plague", "Ukraine’s Complex, Tragic History”, "Conspiracy Mirroring: A Schoolyard Psy-Op Goes High Tech", "Ukraine Fights for Freedom in Song, Film and Television",
"Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs", "Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis"

"My Father’s Spanish Civil War" 2,800 & 1,200 words, 3/4/23.
"Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution" 16,800 words, 1/15/23.
"The Benefits of Commemoration" 3,600 words, 8/28/22.
"How to Fight the Conspiracy Theory Plague" 2,000 & 1,000 words, 8/15/22.
"Conspiracy Mirroring: A Schoolyard Psy-Op Goes High Tech" 1,850 & 900 words, 7/8/22.
"Ukraine Fights for Freedom in Song, Film and Television" 2,300 words, 6/7/22.
"Ukraine’s Complex, Tragic History” 4,100 words, 5/10/22.
"Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs" 4,400 & 2000 words, 1/6/22.
"Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis" 11,300 words, 12/20/21.

(First symbol: • sent out to publishers, * published my ‘zine)

* My Father’s Spanish Civil War, 2,800 & 1,200 words, 3/4/23. Using quotes from my father’s letter, I explore his experience fighting for Republican Spain, with a shorter survey of his World War Two experience, and a concluding paragraph on Ukraine.
• * Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution, 16,800 words, 1/15/23. I document my trip to Ukraine August 24 to October 9, 2022 with a focus on what young intellectuals and hipsters think, the hidden history of Ukraine’s Jews and neo-Nazis, and what actually happened during the Maidan Revolution of 2014, concluding with a contemplation of nuclear war.
* The Benefits of Commemoration, 3,600 words, 8/28/22. While travelling to Poland to put my mother’s ashes on her family’s mass grave, I fell into a fantastic event of Poles honoring and remembering the Jews of their town.
• * How to Fight the Conspiracy Theory Plague, 2,000 & 1,000 words, 8/15/22. A summary of how conspiracy theories have infected America’s right wing and how to oppose it, focusing on the efforts of Adam Kinzinger.
• * Conspiracy Mirroring: A Schoolyard Psy-Op Goes High Tech, 1,850 & 900 words, 7/8/22. A unique analysis of the common trick that conspiracy theorists use: accusing their opponents of committing the exact same crimes they are perpetrating.
* Ukraine Fights for Freedom in Song, Film and Television, 2,300 words, 6/7/22. A survey of Ukrainian culture focusing on the winners of the 2022 Eurovision Song contest, Kalush Orchestra, Zelensky’s television show, “Servant of the People”, and an indie film about fighting in the Donbas, “Klondike”.
• * Ukraine’s Complex, Tragic History, 4,100 words, 5/10/22. A brief, enlightened review of Ukrainian history, focusing on the little known murder of up to 20 million Ukrainians from 1914 to 1945, and culminating with success of the Maidan Revolution, Zelensky’s election and the Russian invasion.
• * Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs, 4,400 & 2000 words, 1/6/22. A little reported expose of Trump’s conspiracism, from spouting conspiracy theories to training with “the most evil man in New York,” Roy Cohn, and the origins of QAnon as a live-action roll playing game.
• * Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis, 11,300 words, 12/20/21. The author looks at the six murders around his building in 2020, then his 30 years in Oakland, then Oakland’s history, its police scandals, the Black Lives Matter movement and more.
Posted on Jun 07, 2023 - 12:43 PM
The Shock of an Oakland Shooting
by Doniphan Blair

An artist's rendering of the shooter on 7th Street, across from the Bart Station, 6/1/23. illo: D. Blair
I SAW MY FIRST SHOOTING LAST
Thursday, June 1, in front of the BART station in West Oakland. It happened so fast, five shots in quick succession, there wasn’t time to be afraid, let alone hit the dirt. A guy in a white jacket and earbuds crossed the street without turning his head as the shooter blasted away behind him.

No one was hit but seeing my first muzzle flash at about 100 feet, across from a train station, at eight in the evening, with over 100 people milling about, was shocking and a bit traumatizing. Before that, I had only heard shots, sometime quite close but still not visible.

The young, hoodied shooter seemed to be “responding” to an altercation in front of a liquor store, although his attack was obviously premeditated, given the escape car at the ready, which peeled off after he leapt in. The cops arrived about five minutes later.

About 40 Oaklanders have been murdered so far this year, meaning we’re on track to equal or excel the 119 murders of 2022, almost double pre-pandemic years. Indeed, Oakland has been surfing some rough times since the pandemic.

There was the firing of yet another police chief—LeRonne Armstrong, whom I liked, and who grew up a dozen blocks from me—the clearing of West Coast’s biggest homeless encampment—Wood Street, a rough scene eight blocks from me—the loss of Oakland’s last sports franchise—the Athletics baseball team is moving to Las Vegas—and a ransomware attack. That crippled the city for almost two months.

Despite the difficulties, the brand-new, very young mayor, Sheng Thao, 37, previously a city councilor, is doing a good job, evidently drawing on insights gleaned from her disadvantages.

There’s no point in mentioning gender, given Oakland has had women mayors for the last 12 years, but Thao is a child of Burmese immigrants and suffered spousal abuse and homelessness. She’ll need all that and more to beat the next catastrophe: the budget shortfall, run up by her sisters-in-arms, the biggest in Oakland’s history.

Thao gave a spectacular interview recently to The SF Examiner (5/30/23). She didn’t mention Armstrong, whom she fired for not coming clean on a rogue cop investigation, a tricky choice, since the cop was part of the Chinese-American community and Armstrong was revered by African-Americans.

Nor did she mention the obscene murder rate, although she concluded, “That’s what keeps me up at night: to really figure out how we get more resources for young people. How do we make them feel special? How do we make them feel seen?”

Yes, it’s a rough situation motivated by boys wanting to role play men and sexual selection—there’s often a woman involved. From my perspective, it can only be abated by honest talk and action, in other words moving beyond ideological tropes to rational action. Posted on Jun 05, 2023 - 12:16 PM
Bruno Loewenberg: Artist and Survivor
by Doniphan Blair

Bruno Loewenberg, in the centerpiece photo from the feature interview in The Clinton Street Quarterly, 1982. photo: D. Blair
This article, a reprint from the summer 1982 edition of the Clinton St. Quarterly, Portland, Oregon's premier art and idea periodical, won a North-West Journalism Association Award in part because it was some of the first Holocaust material published in the region.

ONE AFTERNOON IN OCTOBER [1981],
an elderly gentleman came into Ancient Currents Gallery in San Francisco and plopped a stack of color photos down on my desk. Why this venerable man would select this gallery, known for our primitive, international and modern artists influenced by the tropics, baffled me. Soon I made an appointment to see more work in person. There, in a living room crowded with work by Mr. Loewenberg as well as lithographs by Chagall, Dali, Miro and Picasso, we sat comfortably downing rounds of schnapps while the artist, aided by quips from his wife, Lisbeth, conversed his way around nearly a century of creative living.

Suddenly, I realized the connection. I had been so busy looking into and gathering works that interrelate modern and "primitive" art, I hadn't realized that here was a patriarch in the very same field, a fellow quite modern but also of a tribe ... a tribe I share through my mother, who like Mr. Loewenberg, is one of the few members to carry our heritage, as it should be, from ancient to current.

The Jews were the first tribe to decide to enter Western Civilization and still maintain their codes. It wasn't until the 1900s that the "middle ages" were lifted from the shoulders of European Jewry. There were still pogroms as late as 1920, but in Germany the "Rights of Man" had finally filtered across the border and for a generation life seemed to open up. Jews could vote, hold office, and create their own world and art, which they did wholeheartedly, both in ethnic forms, such as the Yiddish Theater, and as major components of the Expressionists, Dadaists, Surrealists and Fantastic Realists.

It is my conviction that this change in the arts, and its obvious symbolic effect on society, was instrumental in fueling the paranoid classicist backlash arch-typified by Adolph Hitler. More schizophrenic than the average politician, who generally condones all backroom debauchery, Hitler sported some of the most small-minded aesthetics in all of Europe. The cure he instituted for his ailing fatherland was severe cultural amputation, but imagine how enraged he must have been when his "Decadent Art Show," designed to indicate the degeneration of post-1900 art, was popular among his fellow Aryans. What undoubtedly disturbed him the most in modern art was the tendency of artists to express two sides of things, equally and simultaneously (like Picasso's noses), a concept abhorrent to a schizophrenic for whom division is the basic nature of life.

As the noose of cultural control tightened around Middle Europe, the creative minds had to work faster and better. Some saw the "endgame" of such rigid cultural competition and fled; others, not so fortunate, survived through the strength of their inner vision. My personal need to understand how this could be done by sensitive souls and how they could maintain their awareness led me to encourage Mr. Loewenberg to speak on such topics. It is a delicate subject that I wouldn’t broach with the toughest “survivor” because to probe the subconscious, where such things are absorbed, would be like opening “Pandora’s Box,” unless that man is one who employs his subconscious daily and is accustomed to unearthing its contents for use in his art. Such a man, who has cultivated his awareness and dealt with the difficulties in his own mind, might be able to give us a clue how such artistic energy became the power for many to weather the dark night of Western Civilization and perhaps prove the psychic nature of creativity.

As a man who expresses himself with paint, he was sometimes uncomfortable with the precise nature of the written word. I assured him, though, as an artist, not a historian, he would be better able to paint a realistic picture of an epoch, though only forty years behind us, that had become an irreparable cipher to mankind due to its monstrous nature.

A Conversation

Bruno Loewenberg: I don’t even know when I began painting. I was always drawing, even as a boy… they were humorous drawings. I don’t know how great the influence of my father was. He was a ship’s chandler [outfitter]. I remember him having a big book into which he painted with water colors. He painted all the incoming and outgoing ships but only their funnels… a white funnel with a blue field, a golden star and the company’s insignia… I observed him always.

No one can say for sure what is the very source of their artistry. Courage of super-human dimension is necessary to present your own concept, free of all conventions. In the end art is freedom. It makes you free to think, to feel, to do your own thing. I did one of my best paintings in half an hour. Sometimes I did a beautiful painting and destroyed it.

Art is the preservation of our childhood, of fairy tales, of myths and ceremonies. Art is the growth to manhood, to grow up into the computerized world of adults. The symbiosis of both parts harmoniously is art. Everyone manages that more or less… the executive playing with miniature railroads. The fantastic world of dreams is the nucleus of our artistic creations.

To walk into nature, to feel nature, to be nature provides you with the essential means to create. Go and do it! The universe creates the music but the human heart performs it. There must be sense, a meaning in a painting, or it is all craziness. Sure the artist is crazy… he must be crazy because he cannot accept everything he sees. He has to bend it into another creation. This why Cezanne is so great, he changed the picture of the world and nature.

There is an intriguing similarity between a painting and human life. In life you move from place to place, according to your adventurous impulse. At each station you grow larger, on the way to each you destroy many things of which you are not aware, which are essential for the continuation of your life.

I was born in Stettin, which is now a Polish city, on the Oder River, which is like San Francisco, on the sea.

Bruno's first wife, Clara Muller, a cabaret dancer, circa 1933. photo: unknown
Doniphan Blair: So you grew up on ships?

BL: I grew up almost on ships, yes. My father paid for my education himself.

DB: Was that at a Jewish school?

BL: No. I attended the so-called ‘gymnasium,’ which is a preparatory school for the university.

DB: But you never went to university, what did you do?

BL: I became a book man after I left school.

DB: How did you sell the books?

BL: I first started in books as an apprentice… My father brought me to a bookshop and they took me and I had to learn for three years. Without those three years you could not be a book man in Germany, no. Here you can be a book man from one day to the next.

DB: Were most of the people [involved with books] Jewish?

BL: No, everything Jewish was hidden.

DB: Did they know you were Jewish?

BL: Of course, they must have known, they only had to look at my name—Loewenberg. Do you know where the name Loewenberg comes from? In the Middle Ages the Jews were not permitted to live in the city, so to live somewhere they had to have someone who took them over, who protected them. And one of the famous dignitaries, a count who took care of my ancestors, was a fellow by the name of Graf… Count Von Loewenberg. All the Jews living under his protection took the name. This is how we have all the Silversteins, the Appelbaums, flowering names, they are all Jewish.

DB: Was there much antisemitism when you were working in the bookstore among the people in the shop?

BL: Don’t ask too much, you see it opens a gook for me. My life with antisemitism is a special chapter; I don’t know where to begin.

DB: Well, just tell us a few things to give us an idea.

BL: Sure, the Germans without being antisemitic is not a thing that you can say. That is what made it so easy for the Germans to overrun the Jews.

DB: So you never met a German who was not antisemitic?

BL: Oh, many! My first wife, she wanted to be Jewish. She kept telling me, but I had to tell her…. It’s not a question of a little water or something. You just have to be… born.

My friend Tepper… he is not only a friend but a book man like myself. He was a book man at one time in the shop where I worked. Then he opened his own shop and became very successful. When everything was over [the war] he became a supervisor of the city. We visited him, and he led us to various places of which he took care. There were some memorials erected to the memory of the people who attempted to kill Hitler. It was the house where they were executed, the [would-be] murderers of Hitler. He took care of making a temple out of this place. He was instrumental in bringing these buildings to be a monument in German history… my colleague Tepper.

DB: When were you married?

BL: From 1922 to 1929. My wife worked as a singer in the cabaret. A nice girl, but we were young… she still lives in Berlin… she’s 82. We still communicate.

DB: How about the fact she was gentile?

BL: All my friends were Aryan. Nobody asked, like America… a free country. Not until Hitler came; Hitler made an issue out of it and what an issue. He had his men working for that. Since I told you I was not politically minded… a non political person is a non-fighter… I let it go.

Hitler was there, he had his say, he took his life. He did the right thing. He delivered mankind from one of the most horrible criminals there was. Fortunately, mankind did not have to come with trial against him. He made the trial himself, by killing himself. That is enough for me.

DB: Did any of the artists know what was happening?

BL: No… not until it was too late. They were very naïve. This one woman wanted to introduce me to Goebbels [Joseph, the Minister of Propaganda], whom she knew, as if talking with me, a beloved friend of hers, a human being, would make a difference.

DB: Did you go?

BL: No.

DB: They thought they could change politics with art?

Bruno at his work desk, in house in San Francisco's Sunset neighborhood. photo: D. Blair
BL: Yes. I want to tell you a story. One time we were having a party, everyone was drinking on a side street in Berlin. Across the street, a small street, was another house, where arrived a truck of S.S. men and they rounded up all the people from the house. We continued to have our fun. Some of us made jokes even… ‘What are those people doing? They must have done something.’ Politics was always very unsafe. I always heard stories, we didn’t know, we thought it was politics.

DB: But the art scene was still safe, even with the Dadaists or whoever?

BL: Sure, of course… until Hitler. Then he had his ‘Enarte Kunst’ [Decadent Art] show. All the moderns had to participate, his showing of the decadence of the arts. The artists had only one advantage: they were not Jews. I knew them all from when I had the bookstore. They all came into the bookstore. I sold many of their works, engraving and lithographs by a very good Berlin publishing house. Everyone was buying them. They were reasonably priced, etchings by whomever was having a big show, the newest thing. I put up small exhibitions in my shop.

DB: Like who?

BL: [Karl] Schmidt-Rotluff… [Max] Pechstein, [Karl] Hofer, Otto Mueller, [Max] Bechman.

DB: Who bought these works?

BL: Oh, business people with a high life style, but they a certain instinct, a nose for where they could find art. I once had Teniers… I think, the Elder—a Dutch painter. So, I took it to this guy, the owner of Lysol—you know it is a German company? He looked at it for a long time… I waited. Then he gave it back to me. He said he couldn’t buy it. And he told me from then on I should know he never buys anything for less than 50,000 marks. So the next time I come… remember.

DB: How about the artists, how did they live?

BL: Well, we were in coffeehouses mostly. It was a big enclave, all these cabaret people were coming up from Vienna and opening theaters. Everyone was in the coffeehouses… [Berthold] Brecht was there. Always talking… some of them were very poor.

There was this one painter, a friend of mine… Hoextner, a drug addict. His clothes were ruined. He used to go around in the cafes from table to table asking each person ten cents… ten cents until he had a dollar fifty, then he would run off to the pharmacy to buy drugs. Cocaine. They used to offer it to me… all the time. I never tried any, but it was everywhere, in the cafes, at all the tables. The artists would either accept it or ignore it.

Hoextner always had his equipment with him. He would inject himself in the leg, through the pants, in the café, and continue talking all the while. He lived in a bathtub—he took me there once. He walked in a stoop with a wild look on his face. Sometimes we would go to the museums and galleries… we would listen in on what people were saying and then say things to them. We had many arguments with the bourgeoisie. They would think we were crazy; we wore funny clothes. Everyone had one thing that they always wore. One guy had these funny spats, a hat, a scarf, on which one would depend.

DB: Sort of like hippies?

BL: Sure, just like them. And we hippies used to go out all the time. I think they were sort of scared of us all in the group. We used to go to the theater or to hear music. It was a very beautiful time. People were coming in from all over Europe… many artists. Some were very successful because Berlin had the quickest impulses.

DB: How about the thirties… during the inflation?

BL: Ha ha ha… you don’t know what inflation is. I was afraid to sell a book. Today 500, then the next day it is worth a thousand and next week a million.

DB: Did people help each other out during the inflation… was there sharing of food or something?

BL: No. I really don’t know how we survived. People left their houses in the city with a bag with whatever valuables and went out to the country where they would buy ham, eggs, spinach.

DB: Your wife was working in the cabaret then, so they must have continued?

BL: The arts were booming. The impulse to create is greater in people in time of danger. If you are threatened, you are extremely excited, your normal life is threatened and this impulse is the mother of art. If it is anormal time and you can anything you want at grocery store, then there is nothing to excite you. You don’t have any impulse to create. You are sitting there eating what you bought. But if you have to fight for it, you are careful; if you are careful, you have to be excited.

DB: Now you said in 1937-8, there was a lot of artistic activity going on around Berlin.

BL: You know where I was living, near the Kurfurstendamm [a famous Berlin avenue], where all the activities were. It was sort of an enclave. They even permitted one coffeehouse. Here the Jews could come in and have their coffee. The only place where there was no sign, ‘No Jews Permitted.’ It was a very nice coffeehouse. I went there everyday to have my coffee. In the enclave, if [the Nazis] wanted to change, they would have to change every shop, every theater, every cabaret.

DB: They would lose the business.

Lisbeth Loewenberg: But [the Nazis] did it anyway.

BL: Til a certain point, then came the time you could not see a Jew on the streets. They just took them off the streets to the concentration camps. Then came the ‘Crystal Night’ [Kristallnacht, Nov 9, 1938]. This was the reason for the famous ‘Crystal Night’ when they took everyone Jewish. Every shop was smashed to pieces.

DB: In Berlin?

BL: In Berlin and all over, in every city. Still, as you know, the Jews were not brought in silence. They are not silent. They made their jokes. They had nothing more to live by [financially]. They had their forced labor, digging or whatever, trying to live by these government stamps. At the end of the week, you received maybe 75 cents to live [by], but as the Jews say—

LL: You get used to your worries and learn to live with it.

DB: This is a general question: The Jewish people, do you see them as a more speculative people or are they more realistic?

BL: They are both.

DB: How about in terms of being dreamers, dreaming of something?

BL: I think they have every trait.

DB: They are not particularly pessimistic or optimistic? So even in the Berlin time or during the time in the camp you found the same thing, some were pessimistic and some were optimistic? There wasn’t a sort of general flow?

BL: Well, I would say fortunately, in every moment in our life, something takes over and helps you to continue your life [to] have the greatest pleasure out of life. If you come into a concentration camp or prison, your mind changes right away; you are no longer the old person. Where do I sleep? Where do I get my food? These questions get so majestic and go over you, so that all metaphysical questions disappear. You don’t ask would I live this life over again; there is no such questions. There were a few philosophers in the camp [Buchenwald, where Bruno was 1938-9], known philosophers, who managed to raise such a question. We dared and we had the strength to think about such metaphysics.

One of my friends was named Heinemann [Gustav, perhaps]. He was a very famous politician. He was in the German ‘Landtag’ [state parliament]. They caught him and he was there in the concentration camp. And we always managed to come together for work, to get the same handle on the same box of sand, to carry it up and down. And we talked sometimes, somehow metaphysical talks. But most of the time you have no other idea but to stay alive.

DB: But when you raised those metaphysical questions, what did you come up with? Blame for the German people? Or did you question why this was happening?

BL: Very difficult to answer such a question. If you are 13 months in concentration camp, you have how many days? Almost 400 to come up with metaphysical questions. Questions that have nothing to do with your naked life, these I call metaphysical.

DB: This fellow, the politician, as someone in the German political structure, did he offer any reasoning or philosophy behind what was happening?

BL: No. We talked about living writers, poets and so forth. He knew under no circumstances he would come out of the camps alive. Because they swore he would die in the camp. There was a whole company of Viennese artists, actors, in the same part I was living. All the famous actors from Vienna were sitting there darning socks.

One day I got a horrible pain like sciatica, so they sent me to this place were I could sit. This was not great. They only sent me there because if I could not do anything worthwhile for the camp, at least I could darn socks. There we were all sitting, all the Viennese artists. Mr [Fritz] Grünbaum [popular cabaret artist], Farkas Beda Loehner, [Hermann] Leopoldi [composer]… cabaret people, all very sad, no one was laughing. There was a sign there which you found near the door, ‘Only the birds are singing.’

DB: Who put that there?

BL: The authorities—Hitler.

DB: Because they knew there were artists there?

BL: So that nobody had the idea to sing. Could be that someone starts to sing, ah, ah, no such thing—only the birds are singing. Ha ha, I must laugh if I think about it. But I am sitting here telling you about the camp. I should smash the [tape] machine. I didn’t have the idea to tell you about the camp. It was forbidden to me. They swore if I ever told anything about the camp that they would send an undersea boat to catch me on the high seas. They would get me anywhere; I was not supposed to speak about it… This they told me as I was leaving.

DB: So there was absolutely no artistic expression amongst these cabaret people? Did they ever sing, was there any small theater? Any [art] form?

BL: No songs, we had no songs. The birds never sang. We had an orchestra, a band. There were professional musicians among the thousands of prisoners, and they formed the band. And every afternoon they played when you came back from work; we came through the big gate to our various barracks where we lived, but before we went to our barracks, the whole camp had to be standing on the parade place to make roll call, every afternoon about 5 o’clock. There was music. On this side there were whipping posts. If you were marked for punishment, you were strapped in on a wooden horse on one side and there would stand an S.S. man with a big whip, and on the other an S.S. man would count one . .. two . . . till 25. It happened every day, and during the punishment of the poor fellow, who was very badly hurt, we saw their bottoms all cut, and during their punishment the damn orchestra played the famous band song, popa… pie… da… die. There we had song, we were not only suffering, ha ha.

DB: I was thinking, was there nothing amongst the people privately?

BL: No, there was no private connection, not even in discussion, not a talk. Silently we were sitting there, not talking.

IB: There were no [religious] services?

BL: No! How could you? This is a company, over which is spread a dark cover, a dark thin blanket of dark material, over your head, over your body, and there you will live all day and all night! Only sadness.

DB: So that dark blanket extinguished all expression of art?

BL: All expression. Terrible.

DB: I was wondering if there was any artistic reflection of that experience?

BL: My face here [referring to his painting ‘Ecce Homo’ on the wall] is from the life in the camp. It makes you bloated. You see everybody was blistered off, everybody had sick faces. And the clothes you had . . . you could not recognize a person who comes out of the camp. I never met a person who was in the camp. I don’t know who was ever in the camp, because we were all naked. Maybe it’s illusion. Maybe I dreamt it—nobody saw me there. Did you see me there? No. My wife didn’t see me. It’s all an illusion. Hitler is an illusion.

DB: Some people are trying to say that now. There are historical groups trying to establish that fact. But in a U.S. court of law it was ruled that it is not an illusion. There really were camps. An historically established fact.

BL: And you should think that a story like Hitler’s would be an atom bomb and change the whole of mankind, somehow opposite the Jews. No, not at all; it didn’t take away from antisemitism .. . not a bit. You think we left antisemitism? I have nothing to represent of my family, no one. All my aunts, all my uncles, all my nephews, all my nieces, all my cousins there were all killed, all of them. My sister and her little boy, they were all killed in concentration camps. I have nothing to represent my family.

DB: But your sister was the one who got the ticket for you to get out?

BL: She got a ticket for me, and then she was taken to the concentration camp.

DB: Why didn't she get out, too?

BL: I don’t know; that is another question. Why didn’t I get out before? I was warned, I was repeatedly warned, by well-meaning persons, and I didn’t get out. One day I was sitting in the coffeeshop, having coffee, and this fellow sitting next to me turns and says, ‘Listen, you should not even go home to get your things; you should just leave as fast as possible.’ I looked at him as if he were crazy. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Because we are planning to do terrible things.’ ‘How can you do these things?’ I asked, and he replied only, ‘We are developing ways.” But you can’t go out, if you live in a city that is your home. Better not to mention these things.

DB: You don’t think it is important for the young people of today to know these things?

BL: What good is it?

DB: Maybe the whole world can learn from the mistakes. We as human beings…

BL: Try, try, you are young enough.

DB: So, you didn’t follow politics much in those days?

BL: Unfortunately, I am completely unpolitical, apolitical entirely.

DB: Is this from your own nature or a philosophy?

BL: No, my nature. To live in peace, it is an illusion. I have the illusion, I live in peace. I don’t want any arguments. I don’t want to know another man is a Christian. I am invited tomorrow afternoon at six o’clock by a very nice fellow; he is from Lebanon. He was at his window today and he calls over, we always greet, and asks if I can come over tomorrow for a glass of wine. Ho ho ho, with the greatest of pleasure, for a glass of wine I will come over at six o’clock. I don’t want to know if he is Lebanese, if he is anti-Jew or what. Leave me alone. We are human beings; let me have my glass of wine… that is all I want. I think a person who loses the basic naivete and spontaneity can hardly be called young. To be creative he needs these two basic qualities, and if you are able to maintain these traits you stay young to create your own work . . . independent of old age.

DB: One time during our conversation, you said you went into the concentration camp as if you were a ‘puppy.’ Somehow the same naivete and spontaneity you seem to feel carried you through them. Am I correct?

BL: Oh yeah, it has a lot to do with survival because the reality of things doesn’t touch you. At least not as much as your own fantasies. Your own image of your own self, they are stronger. You eat once a day in the concentration camp; you get a bowl of soup—no meat, but you eat this soup with great hunger, eager to have it, on long tables. If somebody died, the same moment he died everyone was grabbing his bowl.

In the camp, after this operation, when they cut open my hand—you can still see here—and they took out the pus and then they threw me… out of a back door into a field, with twenty or thirty people all with bandaged arms and legs. There was no anesthesia, nobody had any. They operated as you were, in full consciousness . . . they cut you up everywhere.

As I came out into this field where everyone was sitting, I had to start work. Because in the concentration camp, it is forbidden to have time to rest. This is the principle. They make you work even if you are drowsy. They gave me a basket of twigs and some sharp glass splinters which you took between your knees, and with your one free hand you had to shave the skin off the limb; this is what you had to do. There was another basket where you put the shavings.

All this you had to do but all this kept you very healthy. I never was hungry. I never was… I never desired more than a bowl of soup. It is still my habit here in San Francisco. When we go to the restaurant, I order a bowl of soup. It’s good enough for me, wonderful, clam chowder. Who thought clam chowder in the camps? Nobody.

Now this all makes you strong… If you want to become 91 years old, take a hard life on you. A life of a Spartan warrior. You have to take such a life, then when you become old you will never be sick… For there is no reason to be sick because there is nothing unhealthy that you are doing… working.

If you are 91 years old, you have many thoughts of dying; everybody older thinks of dying. I am not willing to die… to extinguish my consciousness. I’m not willing to give this up. But the question is, what ability do I have to influence this? Everyone wants to die in their sleep, a wonderful death.

Okay, this is a book written by Michel Georges-Michel [French painter and writer, 1883-1985]; he wrote about all the artists of the twenties in Montmartre and about [Marcel] Vertes, a great German painter. Vertes was close to the circus. He made some studies of aerial acrobats. There was a young girl, he invited her up to his studio. They had the following talk—now I will tell you what life is, right away!

‘When you are up there suspended between life and death, I suppose it must be an exhilarating and terrifying moment in spite of your being used to it?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘We are just used to it as you say.’

‘But you talk to each other, don’t you? I saw you talking last night when you stopped for a second.’

‘Oh, that was nothing.’

‘I’m sure you said something.’

‘It wasn’t anything. My partner said there is a coat that a woman was wearing in one of the boxes. He said it was fur, and I thought it was monkey. When we were on the ground again, we found out which one of us was right.’

That is what life is! In a moment, you are hanging between life and death—which you always do. Any moment you are between life and death… and you are having such conversations. I love this book.

Historical Note

Bruno was born on December 16th, 1890, and died on October 29th, 1986, at 95. After his sister's petitioning got him released from Buchenwald, he sailed from Marseille to Shanghai, the only place on the planet that would accept Jews without visas. He lived there the entire war, in the famous foreign enclave, managing a lending library on Ward Road which also did lectures and shows. Despite the Japanese occupation, he was able to tour some of China, including Kaifeng, where Jews had lived centuries prior.

In Shanghai, he met and married Lisbeth, when she was around eighteen. She had fled Vienna with her mother and father, although he died of cancer in Shanghai. She worked as a secretary.

In 1948 they emigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco, where Bruno opened a bookstore on Polk Street and Lisbeth worked for Collier's magazine and then as the accountant at the JCC. Although Bruno's show at Ancient Currents Gallery, in April 1983, didn't sell any paintings, it was a successful display of his work, it had a well-attended opening, and initiated the gallery director, Doniphan Blair, into researching and writing about the Holocaust. Posted on Jun 02, 2023 - 12:03 PM
The Future of Holograms in Film
by Doniphan Blair

Princess Leia appears as a hologram in 'Star Wars', 1977. photo: courtesy G. Lucas
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

FOR THE LAST 46 YEARS, WE HAVE
been searching for holograms, true holograms, the next level to the one of Princess Leia in “Star Wars”. That was when she delivered to Obi-Wan Kenobi a fantastic ethereal message, a glowy phosphorescent image, compliments of the Bay Area’s Industrial Light & Magic.

Today, May 4th, is a big day for punster Star Wars fans—May the Fourth Be With You—and nearly 46 years since “Star Wars” debuted on May 25, 1977. Hence, it is high time to figure out what happened to the hologram, which many of us believed would peppering performances and art galleries as well as films by this time.

In point of fact, hologram-like apparitions have been with us a long time. Indeed, the “Pepper’s Ghost”, using a half-silvered surface to reflect an apparition-like person in a dark room to the side of the performance, was developed in 1862 by the English scientist John Henry Pepper. It was soon deployed in theaters, circuses, carnival side shows and even churches for ghost-themed plays and then movies, where it became a staple trick shot in the early 1900s.

From 1977 to 2023, quite a few films have continued the Star Wars/Pepper’s Ghost technique, showing us amazing footage of sci-fi futures with hover crafts to floating gardens or massive cityscapes. In lieu of holograms, however, they use CGI, light tricks or dynamic props.

Diagram of how a Pepper's Ghost works: the viewer looks into the left scene and sees the partially reflected by the half-mirror, marked by blue, reflecting the scene to the right. illo: courtesy A. Boswell
In the 1983 James Bond vehicle, “Never Say Never Again”, he plays a holographic video game with his psychotic adversary, while in the television show “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1991) Scotty was trapped in the holograph-like sphere. “Oceans Twelve” (2004) had a holographic Faberge Egg, for the ruse to steal the real one from The Louvre, and other hologram star turns can been seen in “Total Recall” (1990), "Minority Report" (2002), and "Blade Runner 2049" (2017).

Alas, in our ever-changing media landscape, where everyone is looking for the next big thing, holograms have yet to deliver, let alone dominate.

That would disappoint my high school painting teacher and mentor Aaron Kurzen, who was fascinated by holograms. Although the hologram was invented in the 1940s and came of age in 1960, with the invention of the laser, holograms entered popular imagination when Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-British physicist, finally won the Nobel Prize for it in 1971. Kurzen got into it around 1980 and had shows of his pieces.

Will films shot in 3D soon make their way to holography? Will that be the latest, greatest way to get viewers off couches in front of enormous flat screen televisions and back into theaters, fitted with fantastic holographic projection devices?

Sadly, we are simply not there yet. When you factor in the physical space needed—a desktop holographic device is like a large blender—you notice that currently machines are are best suited for single objects or figures. Even bigger machines generally keep the background black or white and require objects to come in and out of frame.

But, like “Star Wars”’ fans who continue to believe, the hope for holographic optimization remains, for a new canvas upon which artists and techies can paint, sculpt and morph a new form of art.

A desktop hologram device. photo: KeyShare Innovation Group
According to longtime cineSOURCE associate Randy Gordon, who was working on Sony PlayStation video games in the ‘90s and is now becoming a holographic media advisor, his moles in the industry say the hologram is due for a major expansion in films, art and performances.

“The immersive nature of the hologram is a compelling,” he says, “It is the evolutionary next step in sculptural visuals. While film and gaming holograms may be lagging, there are innovative and immersive developments that will fill the gap while we patiently await the next leap in holography."

So what is new and exciting right now? Gordon points to Transfix which started in Las Vegas on April 21st and runs through September. Transfix presents large installations by the most innovative artists of our day and is arguably the world’s largest immersive art experience. Its holographic-like presentation features over 50 interactive, kinetic pieces by artists from around the globe. The four-acre space includes artist-designed bars and a multi-level labyrinth filled with sculptures, projections and sonic experiences, many mind-bending.

There is also the nearly complete, billion-dollars project in Las Vegas called the MSG Sphere, a collaboration between MSG (Madison Square Gardens) and The Sands Hotel. Billed as "unparalleled entertainment" and "a revolutionary venue to enjoy immersive shows," The Sphere will soon showcase rock royalty Bono and The Edge of U2, who will take up residency in September . We can assume something spectacularly holographic will happen, like massive holograms emanating from The Sphere.

At the more modest end of the spectrum, a life-size hologram will be deployed as part of the private screenings of the new film “Mayan Revelations: Decoding B'aqtun“. A visually inspiring and archeologically fascinating film, directed by filmmaker and author Elisabeth Thieriot, it covers her research in southern Mexico and Guatemala on end-of-the-world conspiracy theories drawn from the Aztec and Mayan calendars.

In between, there will be increasing hologram use, for surprise, novelty, branding and storytelling. But it will be mostly around the edges and in novelty acts until the next hologram technology, featuring the abilities my art teacher Aaron Kurzen dreamt of, emerges and drives it to center stage.

Posted on May 04, 2023 - 11:47 PM
Romanticism and Its Discontents, East and West
by Doniphan Blair

The love-inducing cherubs we see every February have been part of our romantic culture since ancient times. image: detail of Raphael's 'The Triumph of Galatea' (1514)
ON VALENTINE'S DAY OUR THOUGHTS,
positive, negative or agnostic, often turn to romantic love.

A high art with a low object, romantic love was developed by many societies across the globe to bring together two very different people by integrating emotions, intellect and biology—a tough gig by any measure. With the widespread outing of sexual impropriety and crime, the flowering of transgender consciousness and our ever-increasing idiosyncrasies, it’s getting harder and evolving faster than usual.

Admittedly, romantic theory, romanticism or Romanticism, as the classical Western version can be called, suffered major setbacks since the latter's Golden Age in the 19th century. That was when the English poets Byron, Shelley and Keats, among others, and novelists like Jane Austen, internationalized it from its German roots, turning Gothic tendencies toward enjoying nature, suicidal crushes and ennui to a more mature, adventurous and liberating passion.

Indeed, English Romanticism came to be considered the natural conclusion to The Enlightenment, since it provided a fecund workshop for free thinkers and a poetic style for America, with its oversized individualism and dreams of justice as well as natural kingdom—until it came under attack.

First were the French romantics, whose love expertise could not be denied; then came the Darwinists and pragmatists, who considered it impractical, even though Darwin’s second theory essentially explains romanticism; and finally there was the alienation and pollution of the Industrial Revolution. Soon following was the 20th century’s orgy of war and mass murder, much of it orchestrated by ersatz German romantics, who failed to grasp their own forbears’ insight into love and humanism.

Naturally, this generated widespread pessimism and cynicism, especially with the added threat of nuclear annihilation. Only twenty years after Auschwitz, however, the poets, dreamers and kids doubled down on 19th century Romanticism with an even more ambitious movement personified by The Beatles, notably their great cliché but even greater universal truth: “All you need is love.”

Regardless of those amorous achievements, romantic satisfaction remains a moving target. Although they sang of true love in the ‘60s, within a decade about half of all marriages were ending in divorce. Despite the benefits of liberated sex and revived romanticism, joining two very different people suffered the deprecations of the modern and then the digital age: atomized communities, physical isolation, attention deficit disorder and an obsession with machines.

With the emergence of the world wide web and, a decade later, smart phones, we now have near-universal access to "the tree of knowledge," albeit one swamped in triviality, fraud and porn. The latter jumped a brave-new-world level in January 2018 when Realbotix, out of San Diego, California, debuted its artificially-intelligence, able-to-converse and anatomically-correct female machines.

Realbotix, a San Diego company, debuted its lifelike and chatty sexbots in January, 2018, according to San Diego Union Tribune (9/13/17). photo: courtesy SDUT
Are we now due another radical romantic shift? Are the aesthetics and systems of yesteryear even viable? Can personality tests and big data—AKA dating apps—provide a better way to, if not true love, at least sustainable companionship, including reproducing the next generation? Indeed, reproduction has dropped precipitously in many advanced societies, making some form of activist romanticism mandatory for their continuance.

Alas, the ancient ways won’t go quietly into the night. Even as each generation must develop its own sexual mores, music, dance and other art, romantic behavior which leads to procreation follows guidelines dating back to the animals, even insects.

Long before the romance novel slew the hero narrative on the fields of literature, love was provisioning the brave souls standing against patriarchal panegyrics and epics. Italy probably had a third-century martyr named Valentinus, who healed the sick and joined the lovelorn, but he was hardly the first to highlight the work of the heart. Romantic love is well-represented in “The Bible”, from Adam and Eve, who were “naked in the garden and not ashamed,” to “The Songs of Solomon”, eight matriarchal love poems, hiding in plain sight in the middle of that Ur-patriarchal text.

Romantic love also figures highly in Hindu scripture and ancient Persian, Chinese and Arab poetry, as well as much tribal lore, but nowhere more so than in Japan, where a sophisticated romanticism emerged in the 11th century, a few hundred years before its European equivalent.

Japan is also where we find romance's biggest reversal. Starting in the 1980s, census takers, psychologists and sociologists started documenting a decline in Japanese childbirth and sex. Sometimes called the "celibacy syndrome," it came from overwork, the education of women, or their ongoing oppression, or—conversely yet again—the end of traditional culture, according to various hypotheses.

Given Japan created a classical romanticism centuries before the West and experienced its modern crisis a few generations earlier, perhaps it can illuminate the love-life travails of over-worked bourgeoisie or over-individuated hipsters elsewhere. To effect that translation, how does Japanese romanticism compare and contrast with similar desires and dreams in the West?

Sexual revolutions are nothing new, as we can see from the ‘60s but also antiquity. While pre-history can not be known, which makes Matriarchy Theory controversial, there’s ample archeological evidence indicating patriarchies emerged from older matriarchies during the onset of civilization. (Nonetheless, some 5% of societies continued as overt matriarchies and significantly more as covert ones.)

Early human communities must have gathered around adept grandmothers, given their cultural control, the child’s maternal attachment and the inability to verify fatherhood. If men wandered around hunting and were not fully aware sex led to babies, as the evidence indicates, they simply could not know the sons on which to build a patriarchy until women told them about the birds and the bees.

Naturally, pre-historic matriarchies were more peaceful, but their very success stimulated growth and systems inevitably atrophy over time. Indeed, agriculture and cities, which women helped start, require an ever-increasing buy-in from men to do all the extra work of farming, building and fighting. While hunter-gatherers are on the job only a half-a-dozen hours daily and herders can easily flee overwhelming force, farmers labor from dawn until dusk and are viscerally driven to defend their investment.

A Roman copy of Praxiteles's 'Aphrodite of Cnidus', surprised at her bath, considered the seventh wonder of the world. photo: unknown
This made a gendered revolution inevitable, while inspiring early romanticism: men will fight for families they now know they have; women will give love and its results to those who help their families; culture evolved precisely to encourage such exchanges.

As patriarchies emerged, however, they had to compete with neighboring patriarchies, compelling them to not only fight but develop their stories, rituals and art, and finally forcing a full break with matriarchal worldviews.

The ancient Greek men earned their stripes through long wars, epics about long wars and even more prodigious scientific investigation. Often left unmentioned is that they turned their romantic ideation on each other—homosexuality—which interrupted a central female power at its root.

Not coincidentally, the Greek's founding epic stars the gorgeous and independent Helen, evidently their last matriarchal queen. If Helen’s primary husband, Menelaus, stood by when she eloped with Paris, the handsomest man in the world, which is catnip for queens, there would have been no new philosophy to dramatize in "The Iliad”.

For the Greeks to evolve from their Bronze Age, warlord-priestess partnership to a cutting-edge patriarchy, with an army able to stop the enormous Persian Empire—twice in a single generation (5th C BCE)—some men had to assume full political as well as fatherly responsibility.

Since fatherhood starts with paternity awareness and matriarchal queens are free and regent, Menelaus had to fight for Helen, drag her home and lock her in the kitchen, if only mythically.

"The Iliad” debuted a patriarchal shift and host of heroes—Menelaus’s older brother Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus—but also the competition, infighting and jealousy endemic among men. Fortunately, they also invented pure rationalism, or philosophy, and the ten-year war ended with a symbol of sophisticated intellectual thought: the Trojan Horse.

Homer’s second book, meanwhile, covers Odysseus’s fantastic journey AND desire to return home to his wife, Penelope, both basic romantic concepts. Indeed, even as the Greeks reveled in their gendered revolution and exploration, they preserved their matriarchal knowledge base.

Women remained oracles and priestesses; they were idealized as Athena, the goddesses of wisdom AND war; and they were portrayed as intelligent and empowered—despite being stark naked—in the masterful statues Praxiteles started sculpting, also in the 5th C BCE, not coincidentally. As an inducement, women were allowed some freedoms, notably the annual celebration of Dionysus, which featured heavy drinking and orgies.

The more-ancient Hebrews, however, prohibited homosexuality and fostered patriarchal troth through even longer books, monotheism and circumcision. Despite the covenant-with-god or hygiene explanations offered by rabbis and scholars, cutting off the tip of the penis is obviously both a literal and symbolic deterrent to “dick thinking” and goddess worship.

Monotheism was the perfect faith for patriarchy, given a fertility goddess will inevitably birth more gods, and it granted men suzerainty not only over their children, women and houses but the entire universe, previously considered female. Moreover, its literacy and intellectual discourse fed civilization.

Despite the Greeks’ spectacular achievements in math, science, philosophy, democracy, architecture, art, theater, shipbuilding, sports AND armed forces, their failure to formulate a unified field theory, as did the Jews, condemned Hellenism to all but disappear by the 5th C CE, although aspects continued in the Roman and Byzantine empires, and in Islamic civilization.

The Hebrews, meanwhile, preserved their prior matriarchal culture in the character of Eve, "the mother of ALL living things," who obtained wisdom from the snake, an obvious symbol for both the phallus and research into how reproduction works, the obligatory first study of a self-conscious species.

Amaterasu coming out of her cave, by Utagawa Kunisada, the most commercially successful artist in 19th C Japan. image: U. Kunisada
While men had to be granted dominion in “Genesis”—it was a patriarchal text, after all—Adam is hardly the great warrior or genius, given he both blames Eve AND depends on her for knowledge. Moreover, many of the following Biblical stories tell of powerful women, and the Jewish Sabbath is essentially a matriarchal holiday, run by and for women (Christian women work on their sabbath, Jewish women do not).

The Japanese had a similar matriarchy-to-patriarchy transition. Like the Greeks, they developed a robust warrior class, which veered queer to veto pussy power. Indeed, they also defeated invasions by a neighboring super-power twice in one generation: the Mongols (1274 and 1281 CE). As with the Jews, they continued to honor women in the family and culture but more so in their religion, a fully female polytheism, unlike the Greek pantheon led by Zeus.

The supreme being of Japan’s ancient Shintoism is the sun goddess Amaterasu. While only a small percent of modern Japanese practice Shintoism (less than half are religious, the vast majority Buddhist), it remains the nation's cultural foundation; a female priest crowns each new male emperor, who is mythically descendent from Amaterasu, and its cultural and psychological effects continued to permeate.

With Japan’s unification, in the 3rd C CE, and its importation of new ideas (Confucianism, Buddhism) and tools (writing) from China, it entered its classical period. Capitalizing on the new cultural opportunities, women known as Saburuko began selling their services as entertainers and artists as well as prostitutes, a powerful trifecta since Shintoism eschewed sexual shame and featured sacred prostitution, as in ancient India and the Middle East.

Classical culture climaxed a couple of times but massively in the early 11th C with “The Tales of Genji”, by Murasaki Shikibu, a noblewoman. Nominally centered on Genji, the son of an emperor and a lowly concubine, who was reduced from royalty to commoner, it concerns a near-endless series of relationships with women, some seemingly incestuous, others generating offspring, all exploring feelings, etiquette, court culture and the power of love. This was a quantum leap from the quests, conquests and imposition of rules men had been recording since the invention of the technology of writing.

In fact, "Genji" was the world’s first “novel” or “romance,” terms originally interchangeable in Latin-derived languages. (Romance's first syllable, meanwhile, references Italy’s founding tribe, city and empire, although Rome did little to advance its eponymous philosophy until Dante.)

“Genji” generated a romantic revolution, replete with the incessant exchange of poetry (often just two lines), enumerable love affairs (often clandestine), and art and aesthetics featuring affairs of the heart and imagination. In part because Shintoism has no central text, “Gengi” seemed to provide a powerful, indigenous worldview around which society could gather. The genre continued in Lady Sarashina’s “As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams” (11th C) and “Confessions of Lady Nijo” (14th C), among others.

The Greeks wrote little poetry and less about love, preferring the physicality and drama of theater. Sappho (7th C BCE), their only full-fledged romantic poet, was an educated woman, probably even a matriarch, from the island of Lesbos, which gave name to that gendered worldview, though she was also passionately bisexual. Not much Sappho survived Hellenism's civilizational collapse, only a few thrilling lines, “For love is the military power which no soldier or sailor can withstand,” among them.

The Christians, for their part, attempted to outlaw male lust, which empowered both the fertility faiths and violent men, with a cult of chastity. By venerating Christ’s virgin mother Mary, they enshrined matriarchal wisdom and love as well as a hoped-for restraint, although they took centuries to establish a celibate priesthood, and until today to start enforcing it.

Removing religion from society’s tumult was a logical defensive technique also used by the Greeks, Hindus and others, although it was considered anti-life by Protestants, Jews, Muslims and most eastern religions including Shintoism. Despite the sexual repression, Christianity was intensely romantic, with a handsome personal deity who loves you and will forgives all your sins, not to mention its promise of eternal life and unbreakable, sacred bond with the procreative partner.

Two troubadours from Avignon, one playing the popular nine-stringed lute, circa 1350. image: unknown
By the time Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) declared his devotion to Beatrice to become Italy’s first romantic poet, southern France and northern Italy had fallen for the Cathars, a Christian sect elevating asceticism, purity, pacifism and female feelings but also a second cosmological force, Satan. For that reason, the Catholics declared them a heresy and attacked them in the bloody Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), destroying their defenders and massacring their civilians, including their poets and musicians, eventually called troubadours.

Conflating love of the Lord with that of the beloved, the troubadours advocated for both a public Christian devotion and a private sexual one, in keeping with the Jewish, Muslim and Sufi poets of neighboring Spain's first Golden Age (9-11th C). Fleeing the Albigensian Crusade, the troubadours crisscrossed Europe, singing of love and freedom, which uplifted the peasants but transported the queens and knights, whose illicit love was more sacred than marriage, they claimed, since it was given freely.

Japan also fostered clans of skillful knights, the samurai, who joined with empowered women, if not queens. Their warlords finally took over in the Edo Period (1630-1868), installing the shogun and closing Japan to the outside world, although Zen mystics, artists and women continued expanding its intellectual horizons. “Life of an Amorous Woman” (17th C) by Ihara Saikaku, a man, combined humor, sex and love to showcase a more masculine romanticism. Becoming the "Gengi" of its day, it kicked off the fantastic "floating worlds" period.

In Europe, troubadour feminism was eventually subsumed by the morality of the Protestants, who often covered women’s bodies and outlawed dancing, music and drink, much like modern radical Islam. Japanese women, however, carried on as influential writers, performers and priestesses, as well as lovers, while wearing their favorite finery and consuming their share of sake.

Combining traditional skills with pithy conversation and exquisite taste were the geisha, Saburukos times ten, many from fallen samurai families. In fact, their robes, the kimono, derived from the dress of the samurai’s gay adjuncts, suggesting an amazingly queer-tolerant, gender-competitive society. Gay men also contributed extensively to the arts, naturally, and controlled outright the popular Kabuki theater, which prohibited women.

The geishas were the queens of the Floating Worlds of Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka. But, unlike the denizens of other red-light districts world-wide, they blended male fantasy and gratification with their society’s highest arts, generating yet again the earth’s most advanced romanticism at that time.

Isolated from the real world, like the island of Japan itself, the Floating Worlds were divided from day labor but also the home, which was controlled by women, in the Confucian manner. Until recently, most Japanese men’s salaries were sent directly to their wives, compelling them to beg for booze money when on benders, a once-common sight Saturday nights across Tokyo.

Bit by bit, the men took over public life, but not creatively enough to save Edo society, which atrophied in the late 18th C. Eventually, the young samurai began to rebel, although they were divided between expelling the European traders and missionaries, who had trickled in, or embracing them and going modern. The choice was made in 1853 by the black gunships of Commodore Perry, who forced open Japan to American trade, in a catastrophe of national shame and unequal treaties.

But, as with the 3rd century imports from China, it triggered new thinking and tool use, and a determination to become equal to the invaders, leading to the Meiji Restoration. Named for Emperor Meiji, who took the throne at fourteen and ruled from 1868 to 1912, he may have contributed little. Meanwhile, a wily band of oligarchs steered Japan through years of crisis and rebellion, ended samurai feudalism and instituted a constitutional monarchy with a diet. They also achieved an amazing technological leap.

At the same time, the first schools for women were starting; some women were still prominent, like author Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-96), geisha Sada Yacco (1871-1946), and poet and feminist Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), the first tp translate "Genji" to modern Japanese. Others developed their own foreign affairs. Nine months after Perry, there began to appear mixed-race kids, starting in the main Yankee port of Yokohama, while many Japanese became fascinated with American culture.

The famous modern geisha Sada Yacco, who updated its traits and styles, circa 1900. photo: unknown
Empowered by western equipment and ideas, which they started studying zealously in the newly-opened universities, and their refocused patriarchal zeitgeist, the Meiji Restoration triggered an outpouring of male energy so massive the Japanese built an industrialized society in ONE generation. While much manufacturing was still done in huts, they soon fielded a fully mechanized army, even more astounding given their gun prohibition during the two centuries prior to Perry (because they allowed commoners to kill samurai).

While Emperor Meiji wrote poetry about peace, the oligarchs preferred the European playbook of power politics and raw materials extraction, colonizing Korea in 1873, invading northern China in 1885 and then annexing Taiwan. While not that remarkable in a century of European colonization of the Far East, Japan's victory over Russia in 1905 shocked Moscow elites, who blamed the Jews, and surprised the world.

Meanwhile, their refined romanticism continued, exemplified by Sada Yacco, who modernized geisha styles and became the Prime Minister’s mistress and then an admired actress, touring the US and Europe, where Japanese culture had, in turn, become a fad.

Japanese homosexuality, pornography and prostitution also continued apace, as detailed in Mori Ogai’s fascinating “Vita Sexualis” (1909). On top of explaining how he grew into a well-read modern man and doctor—the surgeon general of the Japanese Army, in fact—Ogai recalls many youthful adventures and societal secrets.

One is how almost every Japanese attic held an old book of sexy wood prints, if you could only ferret it out, although Ogai was initially confused when the men pictured seemed to have three legs. While the Greeks idealized small, symmetrical penises, Japanese artists preferred the exaggerated erections typical of matriarchal phallus shrines, which the women depicted in the woodcuts appeared to enjoy immensely, along with the occasional orgy or bestiality.

Those books included work by some of Japan's greatest artists, who found porn a lucrative side gig. Katsushika Hokusai, the early 19th C painter of the famous “Great Wave Off Kanagawa”, also did “Dreams of the Fisherman’s Wife”, which graphically portrays her intimate enthusiastic involvement with an enormous octopus.

By the 1920s, the films of Yasujiro Ozu, the books of Junichiro Tanizaki and Japan’s emerging democracy were showcasing a highly hybrid culture, which, as we can now see, is a Japanese specialty. Alongside the traffic jams, fanatic photo hobbyists, “modern girl” flappers and importation of all other things Western, from whiskey to classical music, they preserved Shinto rituals, emperor worship and extensive indigenous culture, including a healthy fish diet (making the Japanese some of the most long-lived people on the planet).

“Tanizaki is a special case,” noted the English-American author Pico Iyer, who married a Japanese woman and lived there for decades, in his “Nymphets in the New Japan” (New York Review of Books, 6/8/17). “Part of what gives his work their often lurid fascination is the gusto with which the novelist indulges his delight in everything girlish,” perhaps a vestige of romantic matriarchies. “The other part, is that he so unflinchingly measures the cost of such obsessions,” the male moral backlash.

Alas, military success inflates male egos. After decades of skirmishing around northern China and internal Japanese assassinations, corruption and power grabs, the militarists took over and decided to demonstrate their resolve by seizing China’s northern-most province, Manchuria (1931).

Japanese imperialism was romanticized by many in the East and some in the West as a necessary push back against Western imperialism, but not so much after the "Rape of Nanking," which killed up to a quarter-million civilians in 1938. Indeed, Japanese fascism, racism and emperor- and warrior-worship, as well as extreme violence, already evidenced an out-of-control patriarchy, which new reports of torture, grotesque medical experiments and mass murder only confirmed.

'Dream of the Fisherman's Wife’, by Katsushika Hokusai, considered Japan's greatest 19th C artist. image: Hokusai, 1814
War was opposed by Japanese communists, Buddhists and pacifists, like George Ohsawa (inventor of macrobiotics), as well as some women and artists. The great naval commander Admiral Yamamoto was so opposed to the invasion of China and, later, attacking the United States, he was subject to assassination attempts. Emperor Hirohito publicly recited an anti-war poem by his grandfather, Meiji the Great. But it was not enough to offset sixty years of unparalleled patriarchal as well as industrial and military success.

Indeed, the vast majority of Japanese intellectuals endorsed the war effort. Even the pioneering poet and feminist Akiko shifted from her staunch pacifism after the First Battle of Shanghai (1932) and endorsed "bushido," the ancient samurai code of honor, (although some say an exaggerated version was popularized in the late 19th century), even calling on the Chinese to embrace Japanese domination, despite the butchery.

Japan allied with Germany and Italy in 1940, and proceeded to conquer most of China and much of South-East Asia, including England’s super fortress in Singapore. After invading New Guinea, they threatened Australia and snuck across the ocean to surprise attack the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, in late 1941.

"We have awoken the sleeping giant," noted Admiral Yamamoto, while Zen master Kodo Sawaki predicted, "Our homeland will be destroyed, our people annihilated.” Nevertheless, most of the military and elite believed that the combination of a devastating sneak attack and their control of all the forward islands of the western Pacific would deter an American response.

Nor was there a course correction six months into the war when the US Navy sank four of Japan's five aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway. With half the US population and less than a fifth its industrial capacity, many knew that was the war’s turning point, although Japan fought on valiantly and viciously for three more years.

All warrior groups tend towards fanaticism and death cults, but Japan’s was aggravated by its ancient romanticism, which fostered Kamikaze fighters and a proclivity for dreaming ridiculously large, not unlike its ally, that other romantic innovator, Germany.

Even the impending invasion of Japan, which threatened thousands of civilians as well as the fanatics fighting to the death, or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which instantly killed almost 100,000, was not enough to inspire surrender. Emperor Hirohito finally forced his commanders to do so after an aborted coup and the vaporizing of a second city, Nagasaki, which suggested a tsunami of slaughter to come.

Conquest sharpens the mind. But unlike in Germany, where there was extensive hand-to-hand combat and rape throughout the country, and Nazism was outlawed postwar, Japan's occupation was less severe, the emperor was reinstated and samurai-worship continued among ex-military and some intellectuals.

Yukio Mishima (1925-70) began as a very creative author, who happened to be gay and was an aficionado of Japan's female culture. Indeed, he was raised by a powerful matriarch, his paternal grandmother; he adored "The Tales of Genji"; and, along with his highly literary novels, plays and essays, he wrote romance novels, which were very popular among women.

But he eventually became obsessed with samurai values, including “seppuku,” the self-disembowelment used to restore honor, which he himself resorted to after his failed coup attempt in 1970. Mishima provides a veritable roadmap on how romantic worldviews, masculine fantasy and patriarchal failure can precipitate a grievous imbalance.

The alpha girls of modern Japan like to indulge colorful and eccentric tastes, in fashion and elsewhere, Tokyo, circa 2005. Image: unknown
By the 1930s, Japanese women were largely locked in their kitchens, uneducated and unable to keep up on the news. The deprivations of war, destruction of their cities and grotesquerie of the nuclear bombs must have come as a terrible shock, especially to the romantically inclined. Although women were allowed to vote in the elections of 1948, and entered the educational and labor force with enthusiasm, they had another easily available recourse to voice their dissent: ending their unqualified devotion to phallocentrism.

Japanese creativity reemerged right after the war, in an obvious attempt to process it. Indeed, there were over a half-a-dozen major art movements, from Gutai, led by Jiro Yoshihara, to the international Flexus movement, which included many women, notably Yoko Ono, an established artist long before she met John Lennon.

Geishas also continued, if in a diminished state. The funeral procession for Admiral Yamamoto, who was shot down after the Americans cracked the Japanese codes and tracked his flights, passed in front of the house of his beloved geisha, Kawai Chiyoko. The renown Mineko Iwasaki had her story fictionalized by American author Arthur Golden in his bestselling “Memoirs of a Geisha” (1997), in the first person no less (she sued and received a settlement).

Today, women are well represented in the arts; Yayoi Kusama, an abstract painter and sculptor, draws high prices in New York’s elite art market; and pop music is often pointedly female. Japan has many girl bands but also mature women musicians, like the one-named singer Nora and her salsa band, Orquesta de la Luz, which won awards and fans worldwide, from the 1990s on.

But when I asked a Japanese woman friend about her nation’s romanticism, she replied, “You mean like mothers for their children?” She appeared unfamiliar with classical Japanese literature, even though she was well-educated, her father was an intellectual, and her mother encouraged overseas travel and study. Evidently, as she was boarding her first international flight, they didn’t hand her a copy of "Tales of Genji”.

Moreover, her mother was not that into sex, she said; she herself praised women who rejected its thrall; and she was not that interested, even though she was a dedicated free spirit, who loved to play guitar and sing loudly while sitting in the sun, naked.

On the other hand, she accepted her sister, who was a “night worker,” which includes escort services or full-blown prostitution. Prostitution is strictly regulated in Japan, as befits the descendants of Shinto priestesses and geishas. Full penetration usually involves the yakuza, the Japanese mafia and apparent banner bearers of samurai values. Evidently, even as one sector of Japanese society recoils, another is immersed in the senses, prostitution flourishes and Japan has an internationally-famous pornography business.

A Japanese man proposes in public, in a combination of kitsch, commercialism and traditional culture, circa 2010. Image: unknown
Many young Japanese men and some women enjoy it, as indicated by the popular, sexualized Mangas (long, bound comic books) and Anime (animated fantasy films), which often feature naive immature men and smart sexual women. Although oppressed, some young women like to flaunt their ability to blend innocence and salaciousness, fostering the “schoolgirl" phenomena, which includes seducing older sugar daddies, and a flamboyant wild girl tradition.

Alas, it is often largely fantasy. Despite the baby boom which naturally follows immense slaughters, as well as their ancient romanticism and modern geishas and sensuousness, it is evidently not enough to inspire the re-invention of a functional romanticism.

There is a geek cohort called “otaku” and the more extreme “hikikomori,” young people of both genders, but mostly men. The Hikikomori are agoraphobics who refuse to leave the house, let alone engage intimately with the opposite sex. While some asexuality is standard, not at those levels and not including so many average men who are in a relationship or are married

Many explanations have been offered for Japan’s celibacy syndrome, notably the social tendency to conform and work too hard, the absence of "touch culture," and the demise of traditional culture, or conversely, the malingering patriarchy and oppression of women, who still have to contend with extensive groping on trains and subservience in the office (see "Why Aren't the Japanese Fucking?", 2015, or "Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?", 2013).

Alas, few commentators have mentioned how the inheritors of a robust romantic tradition might have been injured by the toxic masculinity of World War II. Although Japan's fecund balance between matriarchy and patriarchy was declining by the 19th C, the trauma of war and defeat may have broken it, leaving the average Japanese guy, or salary man, without a functional male role model, a modern Zen master, say.

There is nothing more painful than patriarchal collapse. Although the Greeks invented 95% of early Western Civilization, their power reached its zenith with Alexander the Great and the nation is now economically weak with a low birthrate (1.33 per woman, even less than Japan’s 1.44, circa 2016).

The Hebrews, for their part, only conquered the world of ideas, until the advent of Israel in 1948 and its military success. Despite its limited scope and low casualties, compared with neighboring conflicts, they too have been tarred as rabid patriarchs. Meanwhile an apparent gender equity has enabled the country to go gangbusters economically and reproductively (3.11 per woman, compared to the US’ 1.8).

Japan remains a very vibrant society, the third largest economy in the world. They recovered from the "bubble economy" and corruption of the 1990s, and their cars and cameras remain king. In addition to studying and working hard, the Japanese pursue all sorts of arts, hobbies and studies, sometimes from faraway, like the young people adopting the Chicano culture of Los Angeles, other times from within, like Buddhism or becoming a geisha.

Japanese romanticism continues despite the depredations—note the cherry blossoms in the background, indicating an ancient spring celebration honoring women and geishas. photo: unknown
Admittedly, refreshing romanticism is a tough gig. As the people who invented its earliest manifestation, I assume the Japanese will eventually get their mojo back, probably with increasing input from the now-effervescent Koreans they once conquered (see "The Story of K-Pop".

Knowing the Japanese expertise at expropriation, they will undoubtedly draw on many other sources as well. Perhaps they will even open Japan not just to foreign goods and innovation but people, wide-scale immigration, which they need to offset their population decline.

Balancing the needs of men and women, as well as practical business and fantasy romantic dreams, requires constant innovation and update. Japan may be a case study of similar problems in the West, after the recent exposure of criminal masculinity or the modern era's chilling of romance. Hopefully, however, the Japanese will eventually iron out their long twisting tale of love and art, while we can all look back on our fascinating romantic roots and create a fresh romantic future.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Apr 14, 2023 - 08:00 AM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner Mar 2023
by Karl Cohen

'My Neighbor Totoro' (1988), the Japanese animated fantasy film written/directed by Hayao Miyazaki is certified as top 100 film. photo: courtesy Studio Ghibli
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

Animated Features included in Sight and Sound’s top 100 Films

The distinguished films are two by Hayao Miyazaki, “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988) is number 74 and “Spirited Away” is 75. This is an acknowledgment that animation is an important art. The poll has been conducted since 1952, once a decade by the British film magazine. Roger Ebert once described the survey as “by far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies, the only one most serious movie people take seriously.”

An cell from Mark Fore's new animation . photo: courtesy M. Fore
New Mark Fore Animation Is Online

Mark is an animator who turns out weekly controversial cartoons that are socially responsible shorts. He has addressed the exploitation of railroad workers by corporations, corporations trying to pay zero taxes, there are ugly caricature of Trump and lot of other themes. See his site here

Why Glas Animation Festival Left Berkeley?

The Shattuck Theatres closed last year and now the Regal Theatres on Shattuck, the last commercial movie theatres in downtown Berkeley is closing. (The Regal has filed for Chapter 11 as rents were going up, attendance went down due to Covid, etc.). The only movie theatres left open in Berkeley are the Pacific Film Archive and the Elmwood—a truly astounding demise of theatrical cinema in our day.

A Na'vi (extraterrestrial humanoids living in the jungles of Pandora) teaches his son the way of the warrior. photo: courtesy J. Cameron
Making Obscene Amounts of Money

James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” has become the third highest grossing films of all time. It is now number 3 in the top three greatest box office champions. In the number one and two spots are the first “Avatar” of course—it took in over $2.9 billion—and Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame”, a near second with almost $2.8 billion. Cameron’s “Titanic” meanwhile holds the fourth place, with a worldwide gross of $2.3 billion.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” has taken in almost $2.3 billion so far. The film’s budget was said to be over $400 million with another $200 million was spent on advertising and promotion. Rotten Tomatoes reports “Avatar: The Way of Water” only has a 77% rating from the critics based on 315 reviews, but fans gave it a 93% rating.

Trigger Warning: ‘Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey’

This isn’t a cute, animated feature about the beloved bear but, rather, a noisy, low-budget, live action; horror film full of screaming women. It opened on Valentine Day with lousy reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reports only 5% of the reviews by critics were favorable and only 49% of the audience liked it. Apparently, it isn’t scary or funny—the title’s not bad, however.

'The Madelorian' poster for the new Star Wars movie. photo: courtesy Lucasfilm
People Still Love ‘Star Wars’ Brand

The trailer for the third season of Lucasfilm’s “The Mandalorian” drew a record 83.5 million views in its first 24 hours after premiering on January 16th, during the NFL wild card playoff game, no less.

A Disney Stockholder Is Trying to Fight the Man

Nelson Peltz, an activist investor, is waging a proxy battle against the Disney Company. He is seeking a seat on the board and a say in the company’s strategy. Disney responded by releasing a slideshow outlining its argument against Peltz. They say he “does not understand Disney’s businesses, and lacks the skills and experience to assist the board in delivering shareholder value in a rapidly shifting media ecosystem.”

Disney has acknowledged that some of the things Peltz is pushing for are taking place, including implementing a cost-reduction plan and “streamlining our organizational structure to enhance productivity.”

Peltz has a history of challenging the leaderships of companies that he has invested in and he is described as a Trump supporter. After January 6th, however, he apologized for having backed Trump.

CEO Leaves Disney Wealthy

Bob Chapek was fired as Disney’s CEO but left a very rich man, having earned $24.2 million in compensation for the last fiscal 2022 year he worked. (It ended Sept. 30, 2022.) In addition, Disney says his severance package is valued at $20.4 million.

Disney’s Slims Down

Disney is going on a diet and laying off a whopping 7,000 people, although that is only 3.6% of their global workforce. It will save them $5.5 billion. I guess they needed to keep up with the other top US corporations to maintain investor satisfaction. After all they only made 1.28 billion dollars in the last fiscal quarter and that was below the estimate of $1.43 billion analysts had expected to make.

Gosh, that made people unhappy?!? As if that were not enough, Iger reminded everybody but especially investors, they are producing more big cash cows, including sequels to “Toy Story”, “Frozen” and “Zootopia”. They are also streamlining operations to make their business more efficient.

Auction Houses Sell Millions in Animation Art

Auction houses grossed $22 Million in 2022 selling animation art, much of that total came from Heritage Auction in Texas. Their recent “The Art of All Things Disney Animation Art Signature® Auction” took in more than $3.4 million in a four-day sale. Most of the money was spent on buying works from the golden age by Mary Blair, Eyvind Earle, and Carl Barks. The works were put up for sale by collectors and studio archives. Only a small percentage of the pieces come from the artists who created the work.

An Edward Gorey illustration. courtesy: Cartoon Museum
Cartoon Museum Features Edward Gorey

San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum hosts an Edward Gorey menagerie featuring original artwork, limited edition serigraphs, and other rarely-seen works created by celebrated author and artist Edward Gorey. Open from 11 am to 5 pm at 781 Beach St, San Francisco, it will be up until July 9, 2023.

M&M Candies Subjected to Right Wing Attacked

The much-beloved–by-all M&M “spokescandies,” the official mascot of the candy company, have been attacked by right-wing political and media spokespeople. Rightwing pundits have attacked the lovable different colored animated candies with stupid, twisted and devious comments.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson did his ridiculous best to carry on this bullcrap by claiming he's a champion of victims of cancel culture. Early in 2022 he started attacking the M&M spokescandies, perhaps to drive them off the air. Other commentators at Fox joined the attack and came up with more stupid comments, reflecting their racism and other negative thoughts about non-whites.

M&M's popular spokescandies. photo: courtesy M&M
The pundit Kat Timpf is reported to have called Ms Green “an opportunistic, evil bitch” and warned that people “run from women like the green M&M.” Fox’s Martha Mac Callum was reported in the Guardian to have said that the all-girl packaging that the candy company had released in honor of International Women’s Day was a distraction that left the US vulnerable to its communist enemies.

In late January 2023 the maker of M&M candies held a press conference and announced they decided to take “an indefinite pause from the spokes candies”. Had the Fox pundits won? A few days later the NY Times asked, “Was the recent decision to sideline its spokes candies a response to cultural backlash, or just an elaborate stunt leading up to the Super Bowl? Wired Magazine also suggests M&M’s marketing department is intentionally trolling Carlson and that the candies will make a triumphant appearance during the big game.

Both The NY Tines and The Guardian view the right-wing media attack on what should be irrelevant parts of our national culture, as an entertaining distraction to the real ills of our society, from schools and public libraries feeling in some states they have to censor what books are on their shelves to the rise of hatred of minorities and hate crimes. Indeed, mass murders are now commonplace. I find these pointless, silly attacks on those colored candies are indicative of the sad state of spiteful dumb political rhetoric by right wing media today. See more info here

Mindless AI Generates Animated Show

There is a mindless artificial so-called “intelligence” generating an animated show. “Nothing, Forever” is pathetic looking, I kid you not! The technology has a long way to go, although this is probably the extremely crude beginning of something. The program is “Seinfeld-like” and streams 24 hours a day, amazingly. It is written voiced and animated by robots! See it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6mD9YzVbZI

A cell from Max Fleischer's short 'Bimbo’s Initiation', 1931. photo: courtesy M. Fleischer
The Delights of Bimbo, Fleischer’s Cartoon Star

You might enjoy rediscovering “Bimbo”, by Max Fleischer (1883-1972) an American animator, director and studio founder, who was born Jewish in Kraków, Poland. Although he developed Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman, Bimbo was his first sound cartoon star. If you have enjoyed seeing Disney’s earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, you might also enjoy the Fleischer Studio’s Bimbo. His world was full of amazing surreal gags.

I am excited about Bimbo, since a friend just informed me that a rare Bimbo cartoon, “Ace of Spades”, 1931, is now online. Until recently, only a short fragment was available online. Seeing it made me realize that Fleischer’s Bimbo was put in a more complex situation than Mickey, and that Max’s stories were closer to real life then Walt’s plots, which were often set in imaginary, fairytale like worlds. While Mickey was a goody-two-shoes and Peg Leg Pete was a melodrama villain, Bimbo in “Ace of Spade” is a card shark who cheats at gambling but is also a lovable scoundrel.

Seeing the newly posted cartoon led me to watch Bimbo in “Barnacle Bill”, 1930. Bill is a horny sailor who jumps ship, rushes to see his girlfriend (or possibly a wife) and “gets it on” with her. Satisfied, he dumps her and goes back to the ship. The film implies he has a girlfriend or wife in every port.

Bimbo’s first cartoon, “Hot Dog”, 1930, is even more blatant. He is cruising a city street that has a series of women standing by the curb. He tips his hat at each one. Was he looking for a hooker? He picks up the wrong woman and a cop arrests him.

In the most famous Bimbo show, “Bimbo’s Initiation”, 1931, Fleischer achieves full surrealism as Bimbo falls down an open manhole and lands in a bizarre world run by a secret society. But each time a hooded character asks him, “Do you want to be a member,” he says, “No.” That results in a series of outrages and possibly life-threatening things happening to him. Finally, discovering that the hooded character is a sexy, early version of Betty Boop, Bimbo grins and says, “Yes.”

Indeed, “Bimbo’s Initiation” was voted #37 in the book “50 Greatest Cartoons” (1994), by Jerry Beck, who polled a thousand members of the animation industry.

Bimbo’s stellar career was cut tragically short in 1934 when mandatory censorship was imposed on the film industry. They objected to Betty Boop having a dog for a boyfriend. Oh no, that implies bestiality!

All these pre-code shorts are online. Also check out “Swing You Sinners!” 1930. It takes place in a graveyard. Another gem is “Up to Mars”, 1930. It is a delightful, bizarre space adventure.

In 1931 as Betty Boop was becoming more popular Bimbo and Koko become secondary characters. Among her greatest hits are “Minnie the Moocher”, 1932; Betty as “Snow White”, 1933; “Is My Palm Read”, 1933 and “Chess Nuts”, 1933.

Scene from Canadian Alison Snowden and David Fine’s 'Animal Behaviour'. photo: courtesy M. Fleischer
Delightful Oscar-Nominated Animal Behaviour Deserves Applause

Alison Snowden and David Fine’s short. “Animal Behaviour”, which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada received an Academy-Award nomination in 2018. About a group psychotherapy session, it is full of amusing surprises. See it here.

Enjoy Historic Bay Area Footage

If you enjoy seeing incredible historic film footage of the Bay Area? SF State has a large archive that preserves 6000 hours of TV news film, documentaries and other footage produced in the Bay Area and Northern California in the from the Twentieth Century. Lots of it can be seen free here.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Apr 13, 2023 - 09:33 PM
cineSOURCE Turns 15, Bets On Radical Multiculturalism
by Doniphan Blair

Randy Gordan (cntr) and Doniphan Blair (lft) collaborated on an article at the Sonoma International Film Festival. photo: D. Blair
DESPITE OUR SMALL BUDGET AND STAFF—mostly me but with essential help from Karl Cohen, see his new animation survey, Randy Gordon, read his film review of a new San Francisco indie, and a few other great Samaritans—cineSOURCE has been quite successful. Not only was our 15th birthday on April Fool's Day, we had a massive year.

Indeed, my Ukraine article, "Meet the Kids of Maidan", was one of cineSOURCE's most popular—despite the stiff competition, see our "Best Of" list below—and it was picked up by two news sites, including Northern California's respected Reader Supported News.

Thus inspired, we decided to mount a GoFundMe campaign to rebuild our site, which needs it after 15 years, and to cover my next reporting trip to Ukraine, also desperately needed, given continuing confusion about the war in the progressive community, see "Twilight in Ukraine”.

cineSOURCE merits your support, I feel, because it keeps punching way above its weight. Along with some media reporting, it provides investigative journalism, like “Kerner Collapse: Hubris, Hustle or Outright Scam?” or "Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis”, and big ideas, like "The Tribe Versus Civilization Manifesto” or our theory of radical multiculturalism, first mentioned in 2020.

Blair with a young man from Mariupol (2nd lft) and Anne, a pianist who said she'd never play Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff again, Golden Rose Synagogue ruins, Lviv. photo: D. Blair
Multiculturalism is a critical concept for a modern society. Indeed, it has been pushing us with incredible power ever since scholars like Edward Said began producing revolutionary analysis, like his “Orientalism” in 1978, a brilliant critique of colonialist aesthetics. What’s missing, however, is a self-reflective, universalized multiculturalism.

While Said proved that western views of other societies were perverted by implicit bias and perspective, he neglected to note the next level of understanding, despite his obvious ability to do so. As a prominent Palestinian spokesperson but also a Columbia professor, classical pianist and New Yorker, he knew about code switching and "occidentalism," the inverse of Orientalism.

All societies have travelers, traders, artists or intellectuals who mix, match or monetize their diverse cultural influences, often more than they or their historians care to admit. Moreover, there is always intermarriage, the ubiquitous bridging of gendered cultures that inevitably accompanies societal mixing. Despite pervasive prejudice, most humans are well aware that both genes and cultures need variation to avoid inbreeding.

As it happened, I grew up three blocks from the Saids in New York, albeit in a completely different world, or should I say worlds. While his place overlooked a park and was part of the Columbia University neighborhood, my family's 13th-floor apartment looked out on a tough housing project and was in Harlem.

Edward Said's groundbreaking 'Orientalism', the 25th anniversary edition. photo: courtesy E. Said
I knew nothing of Palestinian issues until my late teens, but my building was an apogee of integrating other cultures, with many notable Blacks and Jews, while my own family was a delicate balance of European Jewish and all-American values. Given I also played baseball in the Harlem Little League, attended an elite private school, and my best friend was from an upper middle class Greek-American family, a day in my life was a vertiginous slalom through vastly varying cultures and economic strata.

Alas, they were all part of the overarching culture of New York, which I was eager to escape by the end of high school.

Five years of world travel provided me a profound immersion in the other. As well as hitchhiking across America ten times, I traveled the back country of Afghanistan and India, hiked the wilds of Guatemala, Bolivia and Brazil, and slept on the streets of Athens, Mumbai and Rio. Although I made a few rookie orientalist mistakes, they were far outweighed by the incredible experiences, enlightening moments and fantastic people with whom I became friends.

They included urban professionals and artists but also street hippies, rural farmers and indigenous people as well as other world travellers. “In my region of Mato Grosso [Brazil]," my friend Tepe Kahok told me, "Every tribe has at least one European member and one has a French chief,” reflecting a common openness in isolated places to foreign input.

In fact, it wasn't that hard to integrate those rational perspectives with my New-York-City, melting-pot, center-of-civilization worldview. Eventually, those views inspired my search for the sweet spot between science and spirituality, classicism and avant-garde, tribalism and civilization as well as acknowledging the equality of all races, tribes, religions and nationalities.

Radical multiculturalism, I find, serves as a common sense foundation from which to tackle the big issues of our day: extreme identity politics, the epidemic of conspiracy psychosis, the Ukraine crisis, the nurture/nature controversy and more.

Thanks for reading and please help us get these ideas out. If there ever was a time to support cineSOURCE, it is now.

Indeed, with your help of our GoFundMe campaign, cineSOURCE can produce another 15 years of articles like:

Director László Nemes accepts his 2016 Oscar for 'Son of Saul', about 'life' in a death camp. illo: D. Blair
Big, Complicated Issues

The Black Panther Filmography
Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed
Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution
Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs
The Tribe Versus Civilization Manifesto
Darwin and Love: What I Learned Making a Holocaust Movie
Romanticism and Its Discontents, East and West
My Father's Spanish Civil War

Alt-filmmaker Bruce Baillie, a good friend of cineSOURCE, surveys the sky in a film, circa 1998. photo: B. Baillie
Filmmakers and Artists

Was Hitchcock a Misogynist or a Feminist: See Chart
The Jew and the Cowboy: Saul Zaentz and Creedence Clearwater
Leader of the Wolfpack Revealed: Crystal Moselle
Bruce Conner: A Filmmaker/Artist's Cracked Vision
Rob Nilsson: Enfant Terrible, Old Master of the Indie
In Memoriam: Alt-Filmmaker Bruce Baillie”
Aaron Kurzen: Art Master, Nice Guy, Wild Surrealist
Om Prakash Sharma: Painting, Post-Colonialism and Tantra
Should We Re-Censor Henry Miller?
Quest for Heartfelt Film and the Santiago Rizzo Interview
Interview with Roger Guenveur Smith: H. Newton, History and More

Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in 'Easy Rider', 1968. photo: D. Hopper
Hipster History

Dennis Hopper: A Wild Life of Art, Success and Sorrow
Summer of Love Shows, Movies & Festivals Beg the Question: What Went Wrong with Hippie Intellectuals?
Brief History of Modern Lovers Commune and Ancient Currents Gallery
Finally, cineSOURCE’s Weed Report
Cine Collectives Come Back, Finally!
Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place

Oakland police carefully count the 73 rounds discharged on October 15th, 2021, right behind cineSOURCE's building in West Oakland. photo: D. Blair
Oakland Stories

Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis
Sorry to Bother’ Busts Wide Open Oakland Cine
Oakland’s One-Man Social Service
Four Indies Out of Oakland, Some with Bullets
DeWolf Smokes Monster Oakland Joint Film

Researching Conspiracy Theorists

Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs
Conspiracy Mirroring: A Schoolyard Psy-Op Goes High Tech
Anti-Jewish Conspiracies & Conspiracy of Love

Film Stories

Tippi Hedren: The It Girl Interview
Feminist Makes Movie about Boys and Babies plus Interview
Steady as She Films: Panzica's America's Cup Doc
East Side Sushi Sweeps California
Predicting the Future Thru Film: The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
‘The Green Prince’ of Peace Documentary

Prejudice

Black Lives Matter and Oakland
Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained
Feras Fayyad: Fighting the Syrian Regime Thru Film
CAN ALL BE FORGIVEN? Art, Sufism and Radical Islam

Avant-Garde and Esoterica

Film Manifestos: Hot or Just Hot Air
Interview with Tobias Schneebaum: Artist, Author, Cannibal?
The Nude in the Age of Trump and Porn

Posted on Mar 31, 2023 - 10:25 PM
Twilight in Ukraine
by Doniphan Blair

Perhaps the only Ukrainian flag in West Oakland is at cineSOURCE studios. photo: D. Blair
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

IT'S A LITTLE ODD WATCHING SPRING
arrive in California—taking hikes, celebrating Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom—while there are almost no Ukrainian flags on the streets and respected California intellectuals, from Medea Benjamin on the left to Eric Weinstein on the right, recommend we ditch Ukraine to the Russian wolf.

When I started studying the Holocaust in the 1980s, the first piece to emotionally destroy me was the televised version of “The Wall” (1982), from John Hershey's book of the same name (1950) about the Warsaw ghetto uprising. I saw it on a black and white television in the front room of the San Francisco commune where I lived.

Director Khachatur Vasilian (lft) and producer Alex Denysov of the Ukrainian short 'Human', now on the festival circuit, see cineSOURCE article. photo: D. Blair
After about an hour, a strange feeling welled up in my chest. It burst at the line, “I just don’t understand why no one does anything,” or something like that. I started crying and then convulsing due to the pain in my chest. Evidently, I was releasing a lifetime of repressed feelings, which I had absorbed from my mother, an Auschwitz survivor, who didn't talk about it. Nor did anyone else when I was growing up in a Jewish neighborhood of New York in the 1960s.

I sobbed in place as "The Wall" continued its descent into depravity. Someone put a hand on my back, but not much was said. My friends were undoubtedly in shock, too, both from watching "The Wall" and not having seen me or many other men in such a state.

Eventually, one grows accustomed. I did, as I studied at the Holocaust Library of Northern California and attended conferences, starting with the international survivor gathering in Washington D.C. in 1983, although a piercing detail or a poignant juxtaposition of regular life with hell would still devastate me.

One perspective I found particularly tragic, which I heard about from my mother but also read about and saw in newsreels, was that of the Jews of Eastern Europe before the war, trying to build a regular life, few suspecting what was coming.

Ukrainian flags on Kyiv's Maidan Square with names of fallen soldiers, including from the International Brigade. photo: D. Blair
That’s what I feel like now about Ukraine.

Fourteen months into the mass murderous war, we have entered a twilight world between a clarion call against evil and the human tendency to become oblivious. As this invasion and war fade into the background, just as Russia's 2014 invasion and war did, we grow accustomed and accepting.

Putin is relying on the Russian capacity to withstand and inflict pain, a sort of society-wide sado-masochism, which he assumes will last longer than western interest in supporting Ukraine. Indeed, from Ron DeSantis and Victor Orban on the right to hard leftists or pragmatic leaders across the global south, many agree: We have to accept the Ukrainian genocide, they say, as an ugly but legitimate means of Russia reestablishing their "community" and strategic defense. This rationalization parallels those made by both fascists and communists after Germany invaded Poland in 1939.

Yes, most Californians and progressives worldwide support Ukraine but not quite enough. The Ukrainian flag flying in cineSOURCE's window is the only one I have seen in West Oakland, a four-square-mile area full of hipsters and liberals.

A flyer protesting 'endless wars' and 'bloated Pentagon war budget' produced by progressives who want to end support for Ukraine. photo: D. Blair
It is only when an overwhelming majority of Americans and people worldwide visibly support Ukraine that Putin and his enablers inside and beyond Russia will see that their path to a functional future is not through imperialism and genocide.

As the descendant of a Holocaust survivor, I can tell you: The attending trauma of surviving, the guilt of standing by and the psychosis of participating in the destruction of Ukraine will be immense and difficult for our descendants to digest.

Which is why I beg of you: Please join me in doing what we can to help Ukraine.

If you want to start by flying a flag, see cineSOURCE's Ukrainian flags. We got them by partnering with an incredible aid group composed of young, California-based Ukrainians, Support Ukraine with Us, to which you can also contribute directly.

Bold action in the face of daunting difficulties can redeem us.

Posted on Mar 31, 2023 - 10:23 PM
Sonoma International: The Little Festival That Went Big
by Doniphan Blair and Jay Randy Gordon

Author enjoying some sun, rare during California's recent rainy season, in Sonoma, one of his favorite California film festivals. photo: D. Blair
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

When I first drove out to Sonoma to attend its international film festival in 2009, I assumed it was a glorified advertisement for the town’s eating and drinking, which are fantastic. I was disabused of that notion utterly the following year when Robin Williams, the late, great Bay Area comedian, interviewed the actress Laura Hutton with uncanny intimacy, while eviscerating himself and teasing the audience, at the town's lovely Sebastiani Theater.

Although the Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF) did come to specialize in films about wine and food, it became so much more. In 2018, I caught “Quest”, an excellent, Oakland coming-of-age story (see cS article), and that trend toward innovative programming was on full display this year, the festival’s 26th iteration, which ran from March 22nd to the 26th.

Kevin McNeely, who ran SIFF for almost two decades with his colleagues Ginny Krieger and Chay Woerz and programmer extraordinaire Steve Shor, and pulled off a pitch-perfect transition last year by passing the torch to Krieger. As the new executive director, she brought in artistic director Carl Spence, of Seattle and Barcelona fame, and the experienced PR person Jill Golden, who are obviously doing a fantastic job, as evidenced by the films.

The two main leads from 'Joyland', out of Pakistan, the fabulous, deep Alina Khan (lf) and moody powerhouse Ali Junejo (rt). photo: courtesy Saim Sadiq
Indeed, each of the seven films I saw was strong and a couple were masterpieces, notably “Joyland” and “Master Gardener”. The latter is a deep dive into Pakistani family life and its remarkably robust cabaret scene, focusing on a young married man falling in love with a trans singer but also much more, including avant-garde cinematography by Joe Saade. Oscar worthy, it may bring home the gold for Pakistan as well as writer-director Saim Sadiq.

“Master Gardener” is the new heavy weighter from Paul Schrader, of “Taxi Driver” (1976) and “Mishima” (1985) fame. Bookended innocently enough by the daily journal entries of the eponymous gardener, it is an aggressive exploration of modern multiculturalism, a claustrophobic battle of sex, blood and ideology between a white patrician woman, played by Signorney Weaver, her gigolo-master gardener with a severely checkered past (Joel Edgerton), and her niece, a young half-Black woman (Quintessa Swindell).

The 26th SIFF also had two shorts from Ukraine: “Liturgy of Anti-Tank Obstacles”, about artists who switched to making tank obstacles, which I didn’t see, and “Human” (12 min), which I did, after meeting its director and producer at the smoking hot party on Saturday night.

Shuming He, who directed the smart, well written 'Ajoomma', appearing at one of Sonoma's smaller but nice theaters. photo: D. Blair
The other amazing features I saw were “Ajoomma” (90 min), the freshman film by Shuming He. About a retired Singaporean woman on an innocuous tour of Korea, it unfolds into a tightly scripted adventure riddled with Korean soap operas, music stars and Yakuza, as well as romance and fantasy.

Yet another international Oscar contender I saw was “Fathers and Mothers” (96 min), directed by Paprika Steen and starring Denmark’s biggest actors. It addresses claustrophobia, political correctness and hipster families in the context of a liberal but all-controlling private school. Its first reel is a tour de force of scathing satire building into absurd but fully motivated scenes.

I also caught two great documentaries: “Judy Blume Forever” an aggressive look into the life of the famous young adult author, from co-directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok, which includes some lovely animation, and “Little Richard: I Am Everything”. Produced with help from CNN Films and Sam Wenner of Rolling Stone Films (son of Jann), Lisa Cortés’ portrait of the queer icon, preacher and superstar is one of the best music documentaries I have ever seen. It showed how Little Richard inspired everybody from Bowie and Jagger to Tom Jones and Prince but didn’t get his due until 1997, 20 years before his death.

Funke Fatale, the smoking hot band, at Sonoma's Saturday night party. photo: D. Blair
Every step of the way at SIFF you find yourself stumbling across events, wine tastings and gallery openings, culminating in the always-stellar Saturday night party, this one featuring a great band, Funk Fatale, eats and people.

It was there I met the 29-year-old Ukrianian filmmaker Khachatur Vasilian and his even younger producer Alex Denysov, who are now based in LA. Both Russian-speakers, they are refugees from Mariupol and Crimea, respectively and reflected the melancholic (Vasilian) and buoyant (Denysov) side of Ukrainian personalities. Their film, “Human”, concerns a man who wakes up in a field naked and runs to a lighthouse in the distance, and uses no language.

Vasilian, who immigrated as a child from Armenia to Ukraine, was inspired by his cinematographer, Olexiy Bardadym, who brought him to the light house location, where he wrote the script in five minutes. An up-and-coming filmmaker to watch, Vasilian is already under attack from rightwingers at home and abroad for “My Young Prince” a short about a teenager who falls in love with an older man, the first Ukrainian film about coming out.

Filmmaker Khachatur Vasilian, of the short 'Human', and his producer Alex Denysov, both Ukrainian. photo: D. Blair
We talked for almost an hour in the back but then came out to enjoy the cream cake, champagne and fantastic stylings of Funk Fatale, in keeping with the noble Ukrainian tradition of balancing devastation with enjoyment.

Posted on Mar 31, 2023 - 09:53 PM
SF Art Institute: Remembrance and Legacy
by Doniphan Blair

Penelope Houston, of the famous local indie band The Avengers, studied at the Institute and remains a working artist as well as musician. photo: D. Blair
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

IT WAS A BITTERSWEET EVENT AT THE
Minnesota Project in San Francisco on March 26th: the coming together of almost 1000 students, teachers, administrators and supporters of the recently deceased San Francisco Art Institute. They hugged and chatted, enjoyed the food and drink and musical stylings of Penelope Houston and Mike Henderson—both longtime Institute associates—and supported the new legacy association.

Mostly, however, they came to commiserate the closing of a massive artistic power in the Bay Area since its humble origins in a Chinatown storefront, back in the 1860s when San Francisco was still the Barbary Coast. What that means is, between the drinking, fucking and gambling, many of the city’s residents were turning toward aesthetics.

A memorial to Fred Martin (1927-2022), a working artist who helped run the Institute for half a century. photo: D. Blair
Although they were loath to leave Chinatown, where they could stomp out smokes on the floor and there was plenty of good eating, their fine art society had almost 1000 paying members by 1874. So they made their way to various mansions, finally settling on Russian Hill, at 800 Chestnut Street, in 1926.

Within five years, Diego Rivera, the world-famous Mexican muralist (see cS story), was doing a massive piece there, now worth tens of millions. Within a couple of decades, a coterie of avant-garde painters had arrived, including Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko from New York, David Park and Elmer Bischoff from Oakland, and the photographer Ansel Adams. By the time I showed up, in 1974, the film department was a who’s who of alternative cinema: Larry Jordan, Bruce Connor, George Kuchar, Gunvor Nelson and more.

Scene from a film by George Kuchar, one of the Institute's most revered film teachers, next to the REsearch publication table, manned by V. Vale. photo: D. Blair
Although we assumed 800 Chestnut Street was an 18th century Spanish monastery replete with haunted Hitchcockian tower, it was actually built for the school. According to the San Francisco Planning Department: the “Spanish Colonial Revival style original building [was] designed by Bakewell & Brown and the 1969 Brutalist addition [was] designed by Paffard Keatinge-Clay.” The latter provided an angular, raw-concrete back building with plenty of skylights and fantastic views of the Bay.

I fell in love with SFAI intellectually as soon as I heard about it in 1971, and physically when I first visited in 1974. I visited again a month ago. The big green door was devoid of information but unlocked even though it was midnight. Though a bit sepulchral, I enjoyed the arched courtyard and mosaic pool until a guard ejected me.

Linda Conner (rt), an Institute photography teacher, cuts a rug to the sounds of Mike Henderson (bck), a long time Institute associate. photo: D. Blair
Indeed, I loved SFAI so much, I stayed for 16 years. Often taking only one course a semester, I would use the film equipment, learn from the aesthetic arguments—especially in the 1980s, when the Marxists and multiculturalists began decrying most art as “rich,” “racist” or “colonialist”—and enjoy the teachers. It was often me and the teacher against the class.

At the Minnesota Project event, it remained incomprehensible to most of us how such an incredible physical plant with such an avant-garde pedigree could be abandoned by one of the world’s richest cities, which has long prided itself on art. Indeed, the city just rebuilt its Museum of Modern Art, which only opened in 1995, with a complete makeover in 2016, to the tune of millions of dollars.

A William T. Wiley print, part of the auction to support the Institute's legacy association. photo: D. Blair
Despite some prodigious efforts to negotiate a resurrection of SFAI under the auspices of the University of San Francisco or other institutions—the University of California owns the fabulous building—nothing, nada, zilch.

To be sure, the meeting of money and art has long been a fraught fiesta, and the Institute’s party was a particularly wild one. It seems that Fred Martin (June 13, 1927- October 10, 2022), who was a working artist and devoted almost half his life to the Institute, was one of the few deans able to find that balance. Martin signed off on my graduation, when I finally decided to leave, after negotiating the acceptance of my late term paper with Raymond Mondini, the legendary art history teacher.

Jack Fulton, another one of SFAI's great photo teachers, contributed this piece to the silent auction. photo: D. Blair
In the 1990s, the Institute tried to play catch up by finally installing a computer lab—oddly late, given Silicon Valley’s presence 30 miles south—and bringing in an art star from the East Coast to run the joint.

Elle King Torre was a handsome, dynamic woman with a lot of energy and ideas. But she expanded the graduate school, signing an expensive lease at the height of the dot com boom, and removed the basketball hoop, which seemed a bit controlling. Eventually losing control, she embezzled money, picked up a coke habit and, tragically, killed herself.

From then on it was a series of grabbing one straw after another, from bringing in an African-English critic as dean or the many children of Asian wealth—lovely people in their own right but not that able to deal with the Institute’s issues. Sadly, the gentrification of San Francisco also drove up rents so far no other students could afford housing, while tuition itself skyrocketed.

Barbara Lu, a performance artist who fashioned an SFAI-branded bra from two masks. photo: D. Blair
Nevertheless, everyone I talked to who studied there, even in the naughts and teens, loved the place and felt they got a great education. To quote my Oakland neighbor, renown filmmaker Frazier Bradshaw, "I didn't learn a damn thing about how to make a movie at SFAI. But I learned a tremendous amount about what I had to say as an artist" (see cS article).

Indeed, the Minnesota Project event was full of happy, creative people, drinking, dancing, bidding on art—including a William T. Wiley print that went for $1,500—and talking about their next projects, one of which could easily be resurrecting the Institute, if a local billionaire only realized its value.

Posted on Mar 31, 2023 - 12:53 AM
SF International: Better Than Ever
by Doniphan Blair

Anne Lai, director of SFFILM for the last few years, including through the pandemic and a move. photo: D. Blair
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

THE IN-PERSON FILMS AND 70 LIVE
events of the San Francisco International Film Festival, which goes from April 13th to the 23rd, are a welcome relief, given the festival only came back partially live last year.

Incredibly diverse and edge-cutting, this year's SFFILM includes entries from Ukraine, notably “Mariupolis 2”, by a filmmaker killed on the job, and Oakland, with a documentary about its basketball great, Stephan Curry, directed and produced by local luminaries Peter Nicks and Ryan Coogler, respectively. At the March 22nd press conference, the stellar lineup was announced by the charismatic but laid-back Anne Lai, who helmed the festival through the last few difficult years, which included a pandemic and a move.

This year’s festival—the 66th, cue the spooky music—is the product of almost 100 programmers paring over 4,000 submissions from about 50 countries to 90 films. Although that’s about 75% of last year’s run, they didn’t want to depend getting massive amounts of people into theaters, and this year’s festival is also available on line.

“Going virtual did have benefits,” noted programming director Jessica Fairbanks. Last year, in fact, they got their biggest audience ever and over half the films were directed by female or non-binary filmmakers, with a similar split for those of color.

Although the lovely new office building on 9th Street is not as cool as their previous digs in Chinatown, it is more practical, with the Ninth Street Independent Film Center down the block and plenty of parking.

And they have room for Film House, the work space for filmmakers supported through their generous scholarship programs. As America’s longest-running festival, SFFILM is deeply committed “film as an art form and as a meaningful force for social change,” according to its site.

That spirit is desperately needed in San Francisco itself, as the city enters another period of radical change. After three decades growing into one of the richest cities in the world, the city is suffering from a houseless, mental health and thievery crisis—so leave nothing in your cars and be aware at night.

Nevertheless, San Francisco’s world-famous culinary, art and night life is still stellar, almost back from pre-pandemic levels, as illustrated by the festival. Viewed at the deluxe, vintage Castro and new Dolby and other theaters around the Bay—while based out of the CGV Cinemas at 1000 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco—SFFILM 66 is shaping into another fantastic festival.

Posted on Mar 31, 2023 - 12:48 AM
Aaron Kurzen: Art Master, Nice Guy, Wild Surrealist
by Doniphan Blair

Painter, sculptor, teacher and philosopher Aaron Kurzen, at his home in Stony Brook, Connecticut. photo: D. Blair
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

“YOU WERE LIKE A SHAMAN TO ME,"
I told the old man with a bushy white mustache and matching hair, shortly after we met outside the mayor’s office of the small Connecticut town near where he lived.

“A shaman?" he asked, incredulous, with a slight smile. "How could that be?”

“You were like Don Juan, the shaman from the Carlos Castaneda books I was reading at the time. You were mysterious. You didn’t reveal your opinions, and you forced me to imagine what they were.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he responded, without rancor. “I was hardly a shaman, and I told you exactly how I felt. I was always honest with you.”

The author and Kurzen, with whom he eventually came to feel very comfortable. photo: Estelle Kurzen
Indeed, I could recall him telling me, almost 50 years earlier, that I should put something really strange in one of my paintings. He suggested a semaphore—the signal alongside railroad tracks, he had to explain—and I obliged.

What 16-year-old doesn’t love surrealism and its dream fluency? Or a teacher who is calm and friendly as well as knowledgeable and dedicated, even if enigmatic. Alas, it took me years to realize: He was the perfect guide for someone like me, desperately trying to embark on the odyssey of art.

Little did I know, Aaron Kurzen (1921-2022) was an actual surrealist. He didn’t tell us, naturally, the other teachers honored that discretion, and he never showed anything around the school but, in point of fact, he was the primary disciple of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). A Parisian avant-gardist who moved to New York, Duchamp became the main precursor of surrealism when he stopped painting to make “ready-mades”, like the unmodified urinal and bottle rack he proclaimed as art. Aaron met Duchamp while still in his teens, it seems, introduced by the gorgeous, ethereal, almost albino blond, young woman he met immediately after moving from Minnesota to New York.

Kurzen in his studio, with one of his whimsical assemblages, a violin bug. photo: D. Blair
Lenore Dunn, AKA Saja, was already an actress and Vogue model but her day job was assisting an art collector, Walter Arensburg, who was a fan of Duchamp. Aaron and Saja married and proceeded to transmit those ideas as well as their romanticism to some of New York’s burgeoning crop of painters, like their friend Robert Rauschenberg.

Aaron pushed Duchamp’s idea-oriented aesthetics toward the sensual with his whimsical sculptures, which were assemblages of ready-mades: a screaming Hitler, his teeth rows of browned-out cigar holders, an enormous cockroach, composed of a violin, “Garlic Presstasaurus" ("Reconstruction" series, 1977), a small beast made from a garlic press, which he gave me.

He also gave me a holographic piece, a two-foot tall, eight-inch wide structure, with a light and spinning plastic film. Ever the futurist, Aaron had started working with holograms as an art form in the 1980s. That brought him to San Francisco, where there was a studio specializing in holograms and I happened to live.

More than anything, however, Aaron was a painter.

“You never let us see your paintings,” I told him, after we went inside the municipal building and reviewed the retrospective of his work on display, with three or four dozen pieces. The paintings ranged through his often changing and mixing of styles, from classical draftsman to postmodern Matisse as well as surrealism, and were interspersed with his sculptures, although nothing that large or aggressive. I would see those later at his house outside town, which he built from a salvaged military Quonset hut.

'Garlic Presstasaurus', a Kurzen owned by the author. photo: D. Blair
“I didn’t see a single one of your paintings or sculptures until I graduated. Nor did anyone I knew,” I kept complaining, after we sat on a bench at the end of the show. “When I finally saw them, I assumed you did that on purpose. You didn’t want us to see how wild they were and become crazed Dadaists before we were ready.”

Indeed, when I finally visited his New York loft, I was overwhelmed by a massive surrealist-abstract piece, about 20 by eight feet, hanging from the ceiling over the living area. Although fuzzy in my memory, it was an impressive attack of wild colors, shapes and realistic details, including an explosion of sorts, perhaps emanating from a figure, which sent shrapnel scattering across the entire canvas.

“That’s ridiculous. I wasn’t hiding them,” Aaron said, gesturing at the show. “You could have come by any time. I lived only a mile from the school.” That would be Dalton, once a radical refuge for poetic girls, creative boys and the offspring of intellectuals, now one of Manhattan’s most elite and expensive private schools.

“You never invited me. And I wouldn’t have thought to ask you, the art master, standing guard over the art room... in your coat,” the white lab coat he always wore, buttoned up and with a tie underneath. “So, you weren’t trying to be inscrutable?”

Kurzen's work ranged widely, the first on the left perhaps a self-portrait as a renaissance artist. photo: D. Blair
“No, not at all,” he said, with a chuckle. “I was just observing, enjoying, taking it all in.”

“I have always been relaxed about things. One time when I was three or so—this is a story my mother used to tell—she was wheeling me in a wagon down a street, in St Paul [Minnesota], where we lived.” His parents were European Jewish immigrants and his father was a tailor, hence an early interest in scissors and collage. “After a couple of blocks, she noticed I had fallen out of the wagon. She went back and there I was, sitting on the sidewalk, taking it all in.”

“You weren’t purposefully following a strategy, a way of teaching visionary art?” I continued, trying to find the answer to notions that had accumulated over the years—was he now doubling down by gaslighting me, I wondered.

“No, not at all,” Aaron repeated calmly, looking me in the eyes.

To be sure, Aaron had been my ally since before I knew he headed Dalton’s substantial art department.

Some of Kurzen's abstract work. photo: D. Blair
He admitted me to the life drawing class, although I was only in the eighth grade. Gazing on nude models and translating their images into lines was oddly therapeutic for my extreme horniness, inflamed by poetic girls. Ever vigilant to the equilibrium between vision and precision, Aaron would interrupt my reverie by dangling a yard stick in front of my drawing, to show how the model’s chin was above her knee, say, while in reality it was above her ankle—as he would prove by dangling it in front of the model.

After about a year hanging around the art room constantly and finally doing some serious paintings, Aaron invited me to join a private seminar on renaissance art, just me and my friend Nick Fain.

Already a mature cartoonist, Nick was known for "performative drawing." While we art roomers watched, he would render an oversized cartoon of the headmaster masturbating, for example, albeit only when Aaron wasn’t around, although he must have heard tell. Given his delicate dance between upstanding and avant, Aaron wouldn’t have risked his sinecure tolerating such disrespect of the school’s director, known to be a disciplinarian, a certain Donald Barr, father of the future attorney general, William.

We lingered for a long time at Kurzen's show, which may have been bittersweet, affirming his life work but confirming rejection by New York critics. photo: D. Blair
Aaron, Nick and I met only a half-dozen times—sitting on a bench to the side of the art room, pouring over the amply-illustrated, oversized, scholarly book Aaron would extract from his art closet—but that was enough study material for a semester, if not a lifetime. We learned about theories of proportion and composition, including the Golden Mean and “rabotna,” a term I have yet to see elsewhere (it means using the short side of a painting to divide the long side compositionly).

Those of us entranced by the odyssey of art spent long hours in the art room, working silently at easels or on canvases affixed to the wall or sitting around the central table, abiding Aaron’s assignments or enjoying his occasional comment, a process amplified by Dalton’s theory of education. Developed by Helen Parkhurst around 1919, the “lab plan" involved giving students monthly assignments and a free hour or two a day, the laboratory, to work individually or with a teacher. Along with the Matathias System, teacher-monitored student diaries, which is psychoanalytic as well as shamanistic, the Lab Plan is one of the most impressive pedagogical tools I have ever seen and worth universal adoption.

Kurzen and his 'baby' sister, Estelle, who lived nearby and with whom he took many of his meals. photo: D. Blair
Aaron’s mysterious method and encyclopedic knowledge were perfect for the Lab Plan, in fact, and he came to have immense influence on hundreds if not thousands of students, many of whom became artists.

After reviewing his retrospective, which really should have been in a New York City gallery or museum, not a country town's municipal office, we turned to mutual friends, mostly from Dalton, whom Aaron remembered with astounding detail. That amazed me, given he was 93 and his short-term memory was shot. During our phone conversation to arrange my visit, he had asked me about five times if I was coming and when. Regardless, he was completely cogent when it came to long-term memory and walked almost briskly, without a cane.

We went to lunch with his three-years-younger sister, Estelle, who had been relaxing in the back of the gallery, driving them in my car to her assisted living facility, where they often took their meals. “I like to eat with my little sister,” he said, smiling at her. “He doesn’t like to cook,” she teased.

Kurzen in front of his Quonset hut house, replete with many additions, including a studio out back and pier into his backyard marsh. photo: D. Blair
Then we went back to his Quonset hut house, which looked out on a flourishing marsh full of reeds, into which he had built a substantial pier. "You can see a lot of wild life," he said, when we walked out on it. The carpenter who built it showed up, coincidentally, a working-class hippie with whom Aaron had a jovial repartee.

In back of the house was his studio, all of which he called Zen Acre, in keeping with his last name but also philosophy. Both the house and studio were filled with incredible art, some by famous friends, and many sculptures, often larger and more aggressive than in the show, like the almost life-size woman wheeling a baby in a carriage, all fashioned from cooking implements.

A mother wheeling her assemblage child. photo: D. Blair
We talked nonstop. He inquired of my life and work, listened attentively, and looked intently at some phone images and the one large watercolor I brought. He talked about his life and work, notably in the ‘50s.

“I did not have that monomaniacal drive to succeed, like Bob,” Aaron said, referring to his friend Robert Rauschenberg. “And I wasn’t in his gay mafia,” he added, without rancor, providing a glimpse into the little-recognized queer power of olden days, particularly in male-only cohorts.

There must have been more to why he wasn't embraced by the New York critics, given his discipleship with Duchamp and immense oeuvre of satirical sculptures and imaginative paintings—not to mention romantic imprimatur by Saja, a poetic alpha female. Alas, our few hours together on that muggy summer day in 2014 didn't provide an opening for that exploration, especially after my exhaustive shamanism examination.

Kurzen en studio. photo: D. Blair
Apparently, Aaron was consummately heterosexual as well as evolved, able to balance the artist's self-focus with cohabiting with a powerful woman. I met Saja only once and for only a second, but she was obviously amazing. Her passing, comparatively young in 1999, must have been heart breaking for Aaron, probably made more acute by the fact they were childless. Eventually, Aaron connected with Beatrice Perry, the sculptor, art dealer and heiress, and lived with her in a mansion overlooking the Hudson River until her death in 2011.

As I learned about Aaron’s relationships, I could not help but think that his sophisticated male-female understanding was yet another side of the shamanism he so stridently denied, making him ever the excellent guide in the art warrior’s way.

Posted on Mar 30, 2023 - 10:59 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner Mar 2023
by Karl Cohen

'My Neighbor Totoro' (1988), the Japanese animated fantasy film written/directed by Hayao Miyazaki is certified as top 100 film. photo: courtesy Studio Ghibli
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Animated Features included in Sight and Sound’s top 100 Films

The distinguished films are two by Hayao Miyazaki, “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988) is number 74 and “Spirited Away” is 75. This is an acknowledgment that animation is an important art. The poll has been conducted since 1952, once a decade by the British film magazine. Roger Ebert once described the survey as “by far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies, the only one most serious movie people take seriously.”

An cell from Mark Fore's new animation . photo: courtesy M. Fore
New Mark Fore Animation Is Online

Mark is an animator who turns out weekly controversial cartoons that are socially responsible shorts. He has addressed the exploitation of railroad workers by corporations, corporations trying to pay zero taxes, there are ugly caricature of Trump and lot of other themes. See his site here

Why Glas Animation Festival Left Berkeley?

The Shattuck Theatres closed last year and now the Regal Theatres on Shattuck, the last commercial movie theatres in downtown Berkeley is closing. (The Regal has filed for Chapter 11 as rents were going up, attendance went down due to Covid, etc.). The only movie theatres left open in Berkeley are the Pacific Film Archive and the Elmwood—a truly astounding demise of theatrical cinema in our day.

A Na'vi (extraterrestrial humanoids living in the jungles of Pandora) teaches his son the way of the warrior. photo: courtesy J. Cameron
Making Obscene Amounts of Money

James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” has become the third highest grossing films of all time. It is now number 3 in the top three greatest box office champions. In the number one and two spots are the first “Avatar” of course—it took in over $2.9 billion—and Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame”, a near second with almost $2.8 billion. Cameron’s “Titanic” meanwhile holds the fourth place, with a worldwide gross of $2.3 billion.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” has taken in almost $2.3 billion so far. The film’s budget was said to be over $400 million with another $200 million was spent on advertising and promotion. Rotten Tomatoes reports “Avatar: The Way of Water” only has a 77% rating from the critics based on 315 reviews, but fans gave it a 93% rating.

Trigger Warning: ‘Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey’

This isn’t a cute, animated feature about the beloved bear but, rather, a noisy, low-budget, live action; horror film full of screaming women. It opened on Valentine Day with lousy reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reports only 5% of the reviews by critics were favorable and only 49% of the audience liked it. Apparently, it isn’t scary or funny—the title’s not bad, however.

'The Madelorian' poster for the new Star Wars movie. photo: courtesy Lucasfilm
People Still Love ‘Star Wars’ Brand

The trailer for the third season of Lucasfilm’s “The Mandalorian” drew a record 83.5 million views in its first 24 hours after premiering on January 16th, during the NFL wild card playoff game, no less.

A Disney Stockholder Is Trying to Fight the Man

Nelson Peltz, an activist investor, is waging a proxy battle against the Disney Company. He is seeking a seat on the board and a say in the company’s strategy. Disney responded by releasing a slideshow outlining its argument against Peltz. They say he “does not understand Disney’s businesses, and lacks the skills and experience to assist the board in delivering shareholder value in a rapidly shifting media ecosystem.”

Disney has acknowledged that some of the things Peltz is pushing for are taking place, including implementing a cost-reduction plan and “streamlining our organizational structure to enhance productivity.”

Peltz has a history of challenging the leaderships of companies that he has invested in and he is described as a Trump supporter. After January 6th, however, he apologized for having backed Trump.

CEO Leaves Disney Wealthy

Bob Chapek was fired as Disney’s CEO but left a very rich man, having earned $24.2 million in compensation for the last fiscal 2022 year he worked. (It ended Sept. 30, 2022.) In addition, Disney says his severance package is valued at $20.4 million.

Disney’s Slims Down

Disney is going on a diet and laying off a whopping 7,000 people, although that is only 3.6% of their global workforce. It will save them $5.5 billion. I guess they needed to keep up with the other top US corporations to maintain investor satisfaction. After all they only made 1.28 billion dollars in the last fiscal quarter and that was below the estimate of $1.43 billion analysts had expected to make.

Gosh, that made people unhappy?!? As if that were not enough, Iger reminded everybody but especially investors, they are producing more big cash cows, including sequels to “Toy Story”, “Frozen” and “Zootopia”. They are also streamlining operations to make their business more efficient.

Auction Houses Sell Millions in Animation Art

Auction houses grossed $22 Million in 2022 selling animation art, much of that total came from Heritage Auction in Texas. Their recent “The Art of All Things Disney Animation Art Signature® Auction” took in more than $3.4 million in a four-day sale. Most of the money was spent on buying works from the golden age by Mary Blair, Eyvind Earle, and Carl Barks. The works were put up for sale by collectors and studio archives. Only a small percentage of the pieces come from the artists who created the work.

An Edward Gorey illustration. courtesy: Cartoon Museum
Cartoon Museum Features Edward Gorey

San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum hosts an Edward Gorey menagerie featuring original artwork, limited edition serigraphs, and other rarely-seen works created by celebrated author and artist Edward Gorey. Open from 11 am to 5 pm at 781 Beach St, San Francisco, it will be up until July 9, 2023.

M&M Candies Subjected to Right Wing Attacked

The much-beloved–by-all M&M “spokescandies,” the official mascot of the candy company, have been attacked by right-wing political and media spokespeople. Rightwing pundits have attacked the lovable different colored animated candies with stupid, twisted and devious comments.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson did his ridiculous best to carry on this bullcrap by claiming he's a champion of victims of cancel culture. Early in 2022 he started attacking the M&M spokescandies, perhaps to drive them off the air. Other commentators at Fox joined the attack and came up with more stupid comments, reflecting their racism and other negative thoughts about non-whites.

M&M's popular spokescandies. photo: courtesy M&M
The pundit Kat Timpf is reported to have called Ms Green “an opportunistic, evil bitch” and warned that people “run from women like the green M&M.” Fox’s Martha Mac Callum was reported in the Guardian to have said that the all-girl packaging that the candy company had released in honor of International Women’s Day was a distraction that left the US vulnerable to its communist enemies.

In late January 2023 the maker of M&M candies held a press conference and announced they decided to take “an indefinite pause from the spokes candies”. Had the Fox pundits won? A few days later the NY Times asked, “Was the recent decision to sideline its spokes candies a response to cultural backlash, or just an elaborate stunt leading up to the Super Bowl? Wired Magazine also suggests M&M’s marketing department is intentionally trolling Carlson and that the candies will make a triumphant appearance during the big game.

Both The NY Tines and The Guardian view the right-wing media attack on what should be irrelevant parts of our national culture, as an entertaining distraction to the real ills of our society, from schools and public libraries feeling in some states they have to censor what books are on their shelves to the rise of hatred of minorities and hate crimes. Indeed, mass murders are now commonplace. I find these pointless, silly attacks on those colored candies are indicative of the sad state of spiteful dumb political rhetoric by right wing media today. See more info here

Mindless AI Generates Animated Show

There is a mindless artificial so-called “intelligence” generating an animated show. “Nothing, Forever” is pathetic looking, I kid you not! The technology has a long way to go, although this is probably the extremely crude beginning of something. The program is “Seinfeld-like” and streams 24 hours a day, amazingly. It is written voiced and animated by robots! See it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6mD9YzVbZI

A cell from Max Fleischer's short 'Bimbo’s Initiation', 1931. photo: courtesy M. Fleischer
The Delights of Bimbo, Fleischer’s Cartoon Star

You might enjoy rediscovering “Bimbo”, by Max Fleischer (1883-1972) an American animator, director and studio founder, who was born Jewish in Kraków, Poland. Although he developed Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman, Bimbo was his first sound cartoon star. If you have enjoyed seeing Disney’s earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, you might also enjoy the Fleischer Studio’s Bimbo. His world was full of amazing surreal gags.

I am excited about Bimbo, since a friend just informed me that a rare Bimbo cartoon, “Ace of Spades”, 1931, is now online. Until recently, only a short fragment was available online. Seeing it made me realize that Fleischer’s Bimbo was put in a more complex situation than Mickey, and that Max’s stories were closer to real life then Walt’s plots, which were often set in imaginary, fairytale like worlds. While Mickey was a goody-two-shoes and Peg Leg Pete was a melodrama villain, Bimbo in “Ace of Spade” is a card shark who cheats at gambling but is also a lovable scoundrel.

Seeing the newly posted cartoon led me to watch Bimbo in “Barnacle Bill”, 1930. Bill is a horny sailor who jumps ship, rushes to see his girlfriend (or possibly a wife) and “gets it on” with her. Satisfied, he dumps her and goes back to the ship. The film implies he has a girlfriend or wife in every port.

Bimbo’s first cartoon, “Hot Dog”, 1930, is even more blatant. He is cruising a city street that has a series of women standing by the curb. He tips his hat at each one. Was he looking for a hooker? He picks up the wrong woman and a cop arrests him.

In the most famous Bimbo show, “Bimbo’s Initiation”, 1931, Fleischer achieves full surrealism as Bimbo falls down an open manhole and lands in a bizarre world run by a secret society. But each time a hooded character asks him, “Do you want to be a member,” he says, “No.” That results in a series of outrages and possibly life-threatening things happening to him. Finally, discovering that the hooded character is a sexy, early version of Betty Boop, Bimbo grins and says, “Yes.”

Indeed, “Bimbo’s Initiation” was voted #37 in the book “50 Greatest Cartoons” (1994), by Jerry Beck, who polled a thousand members of the animation industry.

Bimbo’s stellar career was cut tragically short in 1934 when mandatory censorship was imposed on the film industry. They objected to Betty Boop having a dog for a boyfriend. Oh no, that implies bestiality!

All these pre-code shorts are online. Also check out “Swing You Sinners!” 1930. It takes place in a graveyard. Another gem is “Up to Mars”, 1930. It is a delightful, bizarre space adventure.

In 1931 as Betty Boop was becoming more popular Bimbo and Koko become secondary characters. Among her greatest hits are “Minnie the Moocher”, 1932; Betty as “Snow White”, 1933; “Is My Palm Read”, 1933 and “Chess Nuts”, 1933.

Scene from Canadian Alison Snowden and David Fine’s 'Animal Behaviour'. photo: courtesy M. Fleischer
Delightful Oscar-Nominated Animal Behaviour Deserves Applause

Alison Snowden and David Fine’s short. “Animal Behaviour”, which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada received an Academy-Award nomination in 2018. About a group psychotherapy session, it is full of amusing surprises. See it here.

Enjoy Historic Bay Area Footage

If you enjoy seeing incredible historic film footage of the Bay Area? SF State has a large archive that preserves 6000 hours of TV news film, documentaries and other footage produced in the Bay Area and Northern California in the from the Twentieth Century. Lots of it can be seen free here.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Mar 14, 2023 - 04:32 PM
Animation Labor Union Grows
by Karl F. Cohen

Animation grunt workers at their posts. photo: unknown
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Microsoft Video Game Workers Vote to Join Union

The successful organizing of about 300 employees at Microsoft’s ZeniMax, a game production company with studios in Maryland and Texas, is considered a major victory given the company has been non-union since it was founded. Microsoft acquired ZeniMax in 2020, and now it is the first Microsoft division to unionize, represented by the Communications Workers of America.

The unionization move at ZeniMax Media, which Microsoft acquired for about $7.5 billion, did not come about in the usual way, which is a union election run by the National Labor Relations Board. Instead, the company allowed workers to express their preferences by either signing a union authorization card or voting anonymously. Microsoft remained neutral throughout the union campaign and didn’t hold anti-union meetings or sending out messages that many companies do in their attempt to keep out unions.

It turned out that Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard, a much bigger game company, which is undergoing unionization. Two AB branches have already voted to join the union, a third is about to vote and two others are in the process of gathering signature cards. To avoid interfering with that election, Microsoft chose to remain neutral in ZeniMax’s.

Computer game employees have been complaining for decades about “crunch time”—working long hours as deadlines approach—and other grievances. They endure grueling stretches of work shortly before a title is released and sometimes they don’t get paid overtime. Many don’t try to unionize because they are hired as freelance artists and feel that suits them, while some get to work remotely, so they feel independent. They are still stuck with management giving them outrageous deadlines that keeps them working overtime for many weeks at a time.

Those who fought to unionize ZeniMax hope to change the company’s approach into one that promotes workers. Game companies often assign workers more responsibility, but it seems they can be arbitrary at times about compensation for the added work. The union also hopes to negotiate more flexible policies on remote work.

Nickelodeon Workers Try to Unionize

Nickelodeon has refused to recognize their production workers who voted to join the Animation Guild, so a vote run by the National Labor Relations Board is being held. Nickelodeon’s animation artists are already represented by the union, but not production managers, production coordinators, and other staff workers. Nickelodeon’s lawyers apparently want to challenge who is and who isn’t qualified to be in the union.

From my own experience years ago, if you were not part of the management/administrative staff, you could vote and join the union, if you won the election for recognition.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Mar 13, 2023 - 05:33 PM
While Flying in a B-24 Over Fortress Europe
by Vachel Blair

Patricia M. O'Connell, then Blair, met Vachel in the Library Science Department of Cleveland's Western Reserve and ran libraries, toured the country attending library meetings and married the director of New York's famous 42nd Library, John Corry, photo circa 1947. photo: V. Blair

Letter to Vachel Blair's wife, written in a notebook while on actual combat flight, from Benghazi Libya to Italy somewhere, 1944.

Dearest Patty,

My lady, I am going to put your St. Christopher’s Medal to a test. I’m sitting on the flight deck thinking of you as we collect the formation together before going to a lively target. Yo ho! It’s a target I have sentimental interest in although at one time I had occasion to be only 20 miles from it [the target, referring to a place in Italy]. But that was some years ago.

Anyway, off we go. We’re circling the fields as planes take off and join the formation. Now to give you some idea of our situation here on the flight deck you must get a Life Magazine and look at a cross section of one of our planes. As I sit here I’d knock three people down if I turned halfway around. At the moment I am just behind the pilot’s armor plate, and I can look down into the bomb bay at our bomb load, which is resting mean and quietly there with a paper tag dangling from each nose [cone]; swinging in the breeze.

Now I am looking over the pilot’s shoulder, Lt. Seitz here and he is a damn good flyer. Ahead is the squadron commander’s ship. All over the sky you can see stairsteps of planes, a formation here and another there. Swell day, lots of golden sunshine and blue sky.

Your little flashlight is coming in handy, for the [flight] engineer just borrowed it. Don’t forget to send more batteries will you?

These lads on the crew are damn fine fellows. Lt. Caravalho, the bombardier, is sitting right there reading a Newsweek, Sgt. Rushmore is sitting in front of me at the radio operator’s table, Mac (Kenzie), the engineer, is standing between the pilot and the co-pilot.

We’re now on our way to the target, which will take some time, by the way, and we’re gradually gaining altitude. It’s getting colder too. Guess I’ll take a look in the back end now, and see how the boys are doing at the waist guns.

Cutaway of the B-24 'Flying Fortress' where the author, as a bomb bay photographer, would sit behind the pilot, next to the radio operator. illo: Life Magazine

Well, back again after a trip to the tail. Boys are sitting around smoking, all set to go. Jake, a Jewish boy from around 105th st. and Superior in Cleveland, is there reclining, smoking a Camel. He takes a waist gun.

You know, Patty, it always strikes me as I look over one of those planes in flight, droning along and vibrating to the “quattro motore”, that these sky trucks are an invention of the devil. Here we are all loaded up with men, gas and bombs. I can readily understand how there may be times when the noble thoughts of democracy and freedom might be set aside sometimes just to get in a little worry about self-survival.

[The] formation is all around us here, and all over the sky, above and below, are the other swarms of planes. This will be quite an attack on the “Fortress of Europe” as they call it in the newspapers.

Damn! Brought along a chute that’s too small in the harness so I’ve just cut the back cushion out. Lucky we don’t intend to go down anyway. Confounded thing is “no bueno” fit. Often wondered what I would do with my specs if we bailed out. Any suggestions Patty? Maybe it—

(paragraph cut out, apparently by Vachel, as a marginal note from the censor, Captain Needham, says “Patty, I didn’t do this”)

—fighters while hanging in a parachute. Better to have 20/40 vision then!

It’s a beautiful sight outside. We’re riding high above a white cloud layer that looks like snow.

Flyboy from the 98th Bombardment Group with their mascot, a monkey—the army was a rather loose, democratic organization in Vachel's day. photo: Vachel Blair

Tail turret is out. “No Bueno.” We’re going up. “Gonna pull the pins,” says Caravalho, our bombardier, as he drops back into the bomb bay. Then we’ll be all set, Patty, to drop the load of lethal destruction upon the bastions of the Axis [and for Vachel to crawl out over the open bomb bay doors and film them].

For another one of Blair's stories from the war in the air over Europe go here.

Editor’s Note: When you are in turbulence while flying commercially, think of Vach. His main job on the B-24 ‘Super Fortress’ was to walk back from his seat behind the pilot, with no harness but oxygen and a parachute, as the B-24 bucked from the anti-aircraft fire, and use a top-viewing Rollie camera, which he had to hold upside down, to film the bombs as they dropped.
Posted on Mar 08, 2023 - 02:58 PM
Conspiracy Mirroring: A Schoolyard Psy-Op Goes High Tech
by Doniphan Blair

Caricature is the stock and trade of conspiracists like Putin and Trump. illo: D. Blair

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WHEN VLADIMIR PUTIN CLAIMS THAT
Ukrainians are genociding Russians while carpet bombing Mariupol, when Donald Trump accuses Democrats of stealing the election while leading a conspiracy to do so himself, when antisemites insist Jews are taking over the world as they plot the same, it can be called “conspiracy mirroring,” the conspiracy theory trick of accusing enemies of what one is doing. It may seem ineffective or immature, like the schoolyard taunt, “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,” but conspiracy mirroring turns out to be a sophisticated psy-op. It is also evident in the “false flag” accusation, another common conspiracist tactic.

“Always say about your opponent what you yourself are doing,” affirmed philosopher Jason Stanley, author of “How Fascism Works” (2020), in a PBS interview (1/6/22). “We are even seeing the fascist label thrown at Democrats. Projection is a standard propaganda tool, one that Hitler and Goebbels explicitly recommended.” Although Goebbels is credited with the concept, it largely comes from his claim that, "The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the [First World] war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing," (Nuremberg, 1934)

Timothy Snyder, a historian specializing in fascism as well as Ukraine, coined “schizo-fascism” for authoritarians who call their antagonists fascists, while YouTube commentator Brian Tyler Cohen noted about Republicans: “Every accusation is a confession.” Most precisely, French psychologist Roger Mucchielli coined the phrase "accusation in a mirror," in his 1970 book discussing defense against propaganda techniques. He notes how war perpetrators often proclaim their devotion to peace and accuse their enemies of warmongering. This strategy is sometimes enacted in tandem with false flag operations.

Generally speaking, conspiracy theorists build false narratives on an actual fact or two, but conspiracy mirroring allows them to both draw on stories about themselves, their allies or their antecedents, and get the jump on accusations by opponents, turning the latter into a he-said-she-said contest. This obliges the innocent party to play catch-up while they themselves appear to be doing the conspiracy mirroring.

By using their own presence in the collective memory but switching the story's protagonist, conspiracists kill four birds with one stone. They exonerate themselves and incriminate enemies, they re-enforce rule one of conspiracism, “Things are not as they seem,” and they explore their own psychology, by default. Mirroring may appear odd or insane to those unfamiliar with the venality of conspiracy theorists, but its ability to trade on long-known narratives, which they are suddenly revealing to be the opposite of what was assumed, is an effective way to convince people saturated with regular theories, who need grander conspiracy narratives.

The claim that Ukrainians are “Nazis,” however, is a standard conspiracy theory built on the fact that 80 years ago some Ukrainians did join the Nazis and some mass murdered Jews (for this author's survey of that history, go here). Never mind that so did other Europeans, including Russians, or that their number was small compared to the four and a half million Ukrainians who fought the Nazis or the six-and-a-half million Ukrainians who perished in the war, which makes Ukrainians some of fiercest anti-Nazis in Europe.

Another “Nazi fact” concerns Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, about a fifth of which were found by one survey to espouse white supremacist ideas. Again, many countries have that problem, from Putin’s mercenaries, the Wagner Group, known for Nazi ideologies and tattoos, to the American militias seeking to overthrow its democracy. The Azovs, on the other hand, have been fighting for Ukraine’s democracy since the first Russian invasion eight years ago and gave their “full measure of devotion” at the Battle of Mariupol, despite not having any representation in parliament, currently.

Although Russia is obviously the Nazi-like aggressor and Ukraine the young democracy, many Russians and better-informed folk worldwide have swallowed Kremlin propaganda, augmented by their masterful use of cyberwar and conspiracy theories as well as traditional propaganda, and capped by the magic of conspiracy mirroring, which taps into subconscious feelings about the region’s horrific history and channels it at their enemies. Ukrainians suffered terribly in the twentieth century from both the Nazis and the Soviets, who killed four million in the manufactured famine, the Holodomor, in 1932, and up to a million more in the Great Terror. Mirroring assuages that guilt, hence their ability to make even more absurd claims, like “Ukrainians attack themselves for publicity purposes.”

In March, Russia’s ambassador to the UN denounced Ukraine for developing chemical-biological weapons and planning their use, an inflammatory accusation which blew up across Twitter, Chinese media and QAnon. Such accusations probably indicate Russia’s own preparations for WMD use, noted some Kremlinologists, well aware of their traditional use of mirroring. On May 8th, a Russian state TV broadcaster “reported” that, if the West wins, Russians will be sent to camps and subjected to sterilization, even as Russian soldiers were rounding up and deporting up to a million Ukrainians, including many children, into Russia.

Mirroring is central to another CT strategy, the false flag operation, which is occasionally employed by states but beloved by conspiracists. The Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11 and the 2012 Sandy Hook Connecticut schoolchildren slaughter were committed by the “deep state,” according to America’s preeminent conspiracy theorist, broadcaster Alex Jones. As silly as it sounds, many conspiracists believe him devoutly. Indeed, Marjorie Taylor Greene rose to national prominence and won a Congressional seat in part by ascribing the 2018 Parkland Florida high school shooting to a false flag operation and her stunts harassing traumatized students on YouTube.

Again, the power of a pre-existing narrative is harnessed by revealing hidden malefactors in accord with the second rule of conspiracy theories: “Enemies are secretly plotting.” While appearing intellectually shallow, it is strategically and emotionally brilliant, able to provide simple answers and feelgood objects of rage by shifting a single fact in the narrative, the perpetrator’s identity.

Even the multiculturalism which allows Ukrainians to live as neighbors, colleagues and spouses with their large Russian and smaller Greek, Jewish, Muslim and tribal minorities, or to elect a Russian-speaking Jewish president in a 73% landslide, can be impugned by the adept conspiracy monger. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zalensky on May 1st saying Hitler “had Jewish blood” and “the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews.”

Russian state television went full flag-and-mirror show with the atrocities reported from Mariupol in March and then Bucha on April 2nd, claiming they were hoaxes using “crisis actors,” Photoshop or self-attacks. One Russian “investigative report” seemed to show a Ukrainian soldier confessing to raping a Russian woman and murdering her husband. Although it looked fairly primitive propaganda-wise, it is sufficiently believable and triggering in a region haunted by millions of murders.

Interestingly, Putin felt obliged to apologize to Israel’s prime minister for Lavrov’s antisemitism, suggesting the successful conspiracy theory master needs to constantly tend his concoction, but Lavrov’s Foreign Ministry was unrepentant, indicating how a regime can operate contradictory theories in tandem. In an online essay, the Ministry claimed Zelensky’s Jewishness is "not a guarantee against rampant neo-Nazism in the country," which it proved by stating some Jews collaborated with Nazis during the Holocaust, which is factually true even though their numbers were minimal compared to all other Europeans.

Russia’s tradition of fabricating false narratives dates back to the “Potemkin Villages,” built to impress Catherine the Great in the 18th century, and the czar’s secret police’s forgery of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” at the beginning of the 20th. Still one of the most successful conspiracy theories in history, it accused Jews of controlling the banks and, thereby, the world. Based on Russia’s immense achievements in the realm of disinformation, the Soviets established an all-consuming, propaganda-centric conspiracy kingdom or empire, if one includes the many fellow travelers among unrepentant communist, conspiracy theories or far rightwingers worldwide.

To be sure, some Russians were immune to the brainwashing and remained humanists, hence they were able to maintain their sanity and end Stalinism and then the Soviet Union—but not the scourge of conspiracism, that stains deeply a people’s sub and regular consciousness. Indeed, Putin’s carreer focused on concocting conspiracies as a KGB counterintelligence officer and, when he headed the KGB’s descendant, the FSB, for almost a year, he must have overseen which theories to cynically promote or naively believe. His spinmeisters—like the hipster Vladislav Surkov, who managed propaganda, false-flag political party organizing and was the Maidan Revolution, overseeing it for Putin—specialize in weaving cacophonies of claims so confusing that demoralized subjects have little choice but to select the seemingly safest.

“Russian propaganda is designed not to convince its audience that Ukrainians are Nazis and that Russia is waging a defensive war,” explained Masha Gessen, the Russian-born American journalist and author, who has interviewed Putin, in her New Yorker article about Russian propaganda (5/18/22), “but to muddy the waters, to create the impression that nothing is true.” In this manner, conspiracism incorporates not just fascism and nihilism but the credo of 12th century Persian assassins, “Nothing is real, and everything is permitted,” and Satanism, the exaltation of lying and amorality.

Mirroring is also integral to another CT strategy, which could be called “discredit their best.” By attacking an opponent’s most esteemed aspect, representative or subste, from day one and in the most extreme terms, conspiracists get the jump on propaganda’s repetition principle and establishing their enemies-are-plotting trope, a point made personal by alleging that a respected figure is, “in fact,” secretly evil. Without evidence other than Jeffery Epstein, QAnon followers insist that many prominent Democrats and celebrities worship the devil and practice pedophilia, which suggests a mirroring of the accusers’ traumas, and worse, as hard as that is to imagine.

The Nazis exemplified discredit-their-best operations when they “discovered” “evidence” incicating that Germany’s most honored author, Johann Goethe, had murdered his best friend, the writer Friedrich Schiller. Another master was Senator Joseph McCarthy, when he accused General George Marshall, who literary led the Allies to triumph both in war and a generous peace, of actually leading the communist conspiracy. Ever the good disciple, Trump smeared Senator John McCain’s military service, including five years in a prisoner-of-war camp.

Putin’s claim that “Ukraine is not a real country” is another regular conspiracy theory, based on Russia and Ukraine’s thousand years of shared history and Russia’s imperial colonization. But it is contradicted by Ukraine’s 19th century rebellions and five-year fight for independence right after World War One as well as the three recent nationwide democracy movements, the Granite, Orange and Euromaidan revolutions, in 1990, 2004 and 2014, driven by young people flooding the streets in largely peaceful protests. As Russia’s more tolerant and democratic cousin, Ukraine is ripe for “best discrediting.”

What is commonly called gaslighting draws on both enhanced and regular conspiracism to trick subjects into thinking not just that reality is askew and brimming with hidden enemies, but they themselves are certifiably insane.

Gaslighting on a grand scale emerges around the central CT strategy of “fake news,” which was perfected by the Nazis, who also coined the term. Not only do the conspiracists propagandize “alternative facts” or use conspiracy mirroring to flip accusations against them, they “claim that all news is fake, and finally that only their spectacle is real,” according to historian Snyder in “The Road to Unfreedom” (2018). Divorced from almost all social constructs but their own, conspiracy theorist use various forms of “enhanced methods” to push their victim-believers into a group hallucination.

Mirroring, flagging and discrediting work well as psy-ops by virtue of their ability to harness existing narratives but also conspiracists’ desires and underlying psychology. By projecting onto other individuals the crimes they have committed or are conspiring to commit or would support if committed by others—by displacing their internal feeling onto external forces—they simultaneously hide from and explore their own pathologies.

False narratives are often contradicted by overwhelming evidence or Occam’s Razor analysis, where the simplest solution is the most likely, and the conspiracy theorists’ Rube Goldberg plots seem patently absurd. But when theories are repeated relentlessly, with preternatural confidence and periodic updates and finetuning to fit psycho-politcial developments, they are surprisingly powerful to people who are susceptible.

Russian “[c]overage is repetitive not just from day to day, television channel to television channel; nearly identical stories appear in print and online media, too,” notes Gessen, pointing out the power of centrally-planned, authoritarian conspiracism. By pushing confusing stories, while rolling out more extreme revelations, even if only implied or conjectured, viewers are compelled to seek relief in cynicism, suspicion or full belief.

It’s a difficult game to understand, let alone oppose or defeat, especially in our current golden age of conspiracy theories, which has been supercharged by advances in information technology but also the innovations of the professional conspiracists. In addition to exploiting social media and conspiracy mirroring, they use aspects of gaming, which range from conspiracy culture’s spirit of play to the massive multiplayer online games that almost all teenage boys are addicted to or the hipster fad that started around the turn of the millennium: live action roleplaying games. That is how a master conspiracist, pretending to be a high-level government insider codenamed “Q,” used enigmatic pronouncements on an obscure libertarian message-board website to create QAnon, a millions-strong, international conspiracy theory-based movement, in three years.

Traditional virtues of honesty, self-awareness and social responsibility seem hopelessly outclassed against such sophisticated subterfuges, unless we, too, develop secret psychological weapons, like using empathy for their traumas to find game-changing insights which are convertible to tactics.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Mar 02, 2023 - 05:41 PM
My Father’s Spanish Civil War
by Doniphan Blair

Fighters in the Spanish Civil War. illo: D. Blair
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“WE COULD SEE THE DARK CLOUDS OF
fascism descending on Europe,” my father, Vachel Blair (1915-1999), told me when I was about 14 or 15. “Going to Spain was how you could fight it.”

When Spain’s armed forces rebelled against the five-year-old Spanish Republic on July 17, 1936, Vach, as his friends called him, was 21. About to become an Ohio college junior majoring in library science and minoring in political science, he was enjoying his summer vacation "riding the rails,” also called "hoboing." Traveling around America by hitching rides in or on boxcars or locomotives was common during the Great Depression. He may have read about the start of the Spanish Civil War in a newspaper or heard about it on the radio, which people sometimes blasted out their windows, or from woke hobos.

“I was socialist not communist,” my father explained to me a few times. “But the communists were the only ones organized enough to get you to Spain." From an American security clearance application he filled out in 1964, I learned the details of his enlistment.

"One morning late in 1936 I noticed an advertisement in the Cleveland Plain Dealer looking for volunteers to drive trucks in Spain. What they really had in mind, they said at an interview, was soldiering. At the age of 21, during the Depression, this seemed like a fine opportunity to escape the boredom of home and unemployment, to travel, and to see what war was really like behind the headlines, all prepaid.”

I was amazed by and immensely proud of my father’s independence, volunteerism and sacrifice, given his upper middle class, all-American heritage, but I never interviewed him in-depth on the subject, unfortunately. Indeed, I only learned the details recently, by reading a long article he wrote for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, "Clevelanders Fighting and Dying in Spain”, which featured a photo of him and a large illustration of Spanish fighters, published November 21, 1937.

Over a dozen young men from Cleveland made the journey in March, 1937, which wasn’t easy. After getting to France, they had to sneak into Spain. While hiding under the deck of a small fishing boat, Vach’s group of 13 Americans and 12 Canadians and Europeans was arrested by French authorities and incarcerated for a few days. In an earlier column, The Plain Dealer had reported their names, that "[t]hey refused to eat anything except salad and cheese, saying they were vegetarians," and that their leader, the 30-year-old Clevelander Joe Ballet, claimed they were tourists visiting Spain. Local French, who were republican Spain sympathizers and probably communists, effected their release and their renewed travel to Spain.

Of course, it was the communist Soviet Union that was arming Spain’s democrats and democratic England, France and the U.S. that was boycotting them—Vach’s passport was stamped “Not Valid for Travel in Spain,” in fact—theoretically to avoid escalating the war. Meanwhile, Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were sending troops, pilots and tons of war materiel to Franco’s fascist Nationalists.

“At least 15 Clevelanders were enlisted in the George Washington Battalion, in which I was an infantryman, and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the two American units of the International Brigade,” Vach writes. “[We] participated in this determined attempt to sever the Fascist line of communications with University City, the Madrid suburb held by Franco’s army. We saw our first front line service in the Brunete Drive and in four days—July 6 to 10 [1937]—we were initiated into all the horror the Spanish war had to offer. My closest friend was killed in that destructive baptism of fire.”

Vachel Blair's 1937 article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. illo: D. Blair
That was Roger Cornell, of 1886 E. 82d Street, Cleveland, the article notes, evidently as a community service. “Steve Kosjak, 978 E. 76th Street, was likewise killed in the attack… Roy Peters, 1741 E. 19th Street, died, needled by machine gun bullets. I saw Larry Friedman, a Cleveland College freshman, writhing on the ground, his stomach wrapped in bandages, waiting for a stretcher.”

Vach and his fellow green recruits of the Washington Battalion had joined the Lincoln Brigade, who had learned the unavoidable hard truths of war six months earlier in the Battle of Jarama. Together, they helped liberate the town of Villanueva de la Cañada. The Washington suffered so many casualties in the Brunete Drive, it was simply incorporated into the Lincoln. I remember my father telling me, with visible anger, how “macho” officers competing with each other had ordered them into ill-advised charges up the notorious "Mosquito Ridge," where they were cut down by Nationalist machine gunners.

The Lincoln was commanded by Oliver Law, an African-American from west Texas, until he died on Mosquito Ridge on July 9th. Law was succeeded by Robert Merriman, a UC Berkeley doctoral student from Eureka, California, who is thought to be the inspiration for Hemingway's hero in “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1940). Many fighters hailed from northern California, and San Francisco has one of America’s four monuments to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, downtown on its Embarcadero. I attended the 2007 dedication of the modest, square, structuralist display, with a lot of text and photos, by then-mayor Gavin Newsom. There was a decent crowd and a few elderly Brigaders.

Merriman died the following year, 1938, in the Aragon Offensive, when the Americans again took heavy casualties. The Nationalist were known for their take-no-prisoner tactics, but the Internationals were often used as shock troops. Hence, up to a quarter of the almost 60,000 died. For their sacrifice, they were decommissioned before the end of the war and given a hero's parade in Barcelona.

The night before the Brunete Drive began, Vach tells us that camped near by were “two battalions made up of former inmates of concentration camps and victims of oppression in the Balkans. Men were here who had tramped hundreds of weary miles with one thought in mind—to even the score a bit by taking a crack at the Fascists. Here, too, were liberty and wine-loving Frenchmen and Belgians (together in the Franco-Belge Battalion). English, Scotch and Irishmen, Czechs, Scandinavians, Canadians, Cubans, Poles and Italians and even a few Chinese, who had come half way across the world to fight western Fascism. We were truly the International Brigade.”

They were also kids marching into war. Two days before the battle, “It was July 4, and we were in a world which hadn’t more than the faintest connection with the world we had known. We wondered about you people back home. Were you planning picnics? All of us, with no noticeable exceptions, spent the afternoon writing letters to mothers, sweethearts, relatives and friends. The battalion mail box was stuffed, and not one letter even vaguely mentioned the attack. Not one of us wished to risk having our letters—possibly our last we would ever write—thrown out by the censor.”

Vach’s 3,000-word Plain Dealer feature (see the full text here) takes us deep into one battle in Spain, almost 90 years ago, but also the unchanging nature of global power politics and the primordial and inherently masculine “baptism of war,” replete with poetic touches, telling details and abject horror:

A short article about Blair and his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. illo: D. Blair
“We cleared our Russian rifles that morning… Each of us kept a French helmet, a gas mask, a grub sack with mess utensils, a canteen, a bandolier or cartridge belt and 200 rounds of ammunition, some of it stuffed in our pockets… Every movement, every moment had significance that day. But we were not downhearted—yet. I traded a pack of American cigarettes for a can of condensed milk, which was swiped by the British battalion’s cook… I can still see Roger Cornell, smiling as he doled out the spoonfuls to ‘Shorty,’ [Larry Friedman], ‘Smitty,’ our section leader, and two or three others.”

“The Lincoln Battalion came marching up and camped about 100 yards down the road… Their boys were not singing as much or as loudly as we. We were anxious to see what the front was like. Several fellows in our battalion, led by Milt Young, a Jewish boy from New York City, went over to the Lincoln. ‘You’ll see, you’ll see,’ they told Milt. This wasn’t sport to them.”

“We were in high spirits, tense, expectant when the order came that night to move. Some kind of history was being made here… All night we marched, walking beside the road much of the time, to permit the trucks to pass, stopping to rest once every hour for a smoke. The next morning, we arrived at our last encampment, ate our dry rations of bully [corned] beef and bread, and slept until late afternoon. Larry and I went down to the small, dirty creek just below us for a bath and a shave, Spanish style…”

“Everything was silent except the sound of marching feet heading to the front. We took turns carrying the company stretcher… We hurried east on the road until we reached our position for the attack, and started south down the slope toward the Fascist line, single file.”

“At our rear the sun rose from behind the snow-peaked Guadarrama Mountains, the hot, blistering Spanish sun… Three shells cracked over our head in rapid succession, the first shells we had heard in close range. They were from our own batteries, however… Shell after shell fell into the town bursting three at a time and leaving tall columns of smoke and debris.”

“We were approaching the range of the machine guns and their nervous rat-a-tatting… We would have to advance up a small valley toward the barricades. [Our] men were lying on the ground, waiting. Suddenly, a short, bronzed lad let out a yell, rose quickly and dashed forward for 25 yards before diving into some bushes. As soon as he yelled, the rest of us followed him. There were no given orders to charge. It is always spontaneous action. The men ran as far as they could in the four seconds it is estimated that it takes a Fascist to aim and fire again…”

Vachel Blair, in his U.S. Army uniform, about six years after he served in Spain. illo: D. Blair
“Frankly, each one of us was frightened. This was our first taste of gunfire—and it was aimed directly at us. I was down flat on my nose and stomach when a bullet dug into the earth eight inches in front of me… The towns barricades were less than 250 yards away from us, but all of that is uphill and bare of cover. We waited here in the hot sun… sniped at by riflemen in the tower of the town’s church. Two Moors [Moroccans fighting for Franco] added to our discomfort by wriggling down on the plain… and letting us have it, until we captured them bleeding from bullet wounds.”

His squad wasn’t central to the attack on Villanueva de la Canada that night because, when “[w]e were within 75 yards of the town… we heard the roar of triumphant Loyalist [Republican] troops as they charged into the town from the other side… Yells and revolutionary songs rang out in many languages. Cavalry and infantry intermingled as the troops marched by devastated, white-walled Spanish homes, some with black, empty doorways, others rosy with the glow of half extinguished fires… [W]e marched wearily toward Brunete and camped in an olive grove behind a brick farm house halfway… [D]uring the night the Spanish boys had laid down next to the Fascist dead under the wall of the farm house, perhaps believing them to be exhausted comrades.”

The next morning, “The call came to fall in. Brunete had been captured during the night and all morning trucks had sped down the road toward it. German aviators bombed us as we marched along on empty stomachs, killing six and wounding many. One bomb burst directly across from us as Carnell, Bready and I were falling on our faces.”

“That night Roger [Carnell] and I shared the same poncho. We were weary from marching in the hot sun and we were hungry. That was the last time Roger and I exchanged confidences. The next day he was killed on ‘Mosquito Hill’ without tanks to prepare the way and without adequate machine guns. Weary and exhausted, suffering from fatigue and hunger, we charged up that hill…”

“Carnell and I moved together as the company advanced into the bullet zone. At the signal cry, with several other men, Roger ran up a ridge to the right. A quick glance showed me there wasn’t enough cover there for another man. I scurried up to the left, flopping behind a tree. I was parked there, half way up Mosquito Hill, a Russian rifle in my hand, when a Spaniard ran up the ditch behind me, drawing additional gunfire as he came.”

“The middle of an attack may not be the best time to begin a conversation but we did talk there, throwing German, French and Spanish words together in order to understand each other. He came from the Lester Battalion, he said. I was down on my knees firing into clumps of bushes where Fascists might be lying, when he stood up."

Blair and his wife, Tonia Blair, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who supported the Spanish Republicans as a girl, 1962. illo: D. Blair
“’Shoot a little higher into those clumps,’ my companion directed. ‘Like this.’ ‘Down,’ I shouted in Spanish. He paid little heed. We were tired, more tired than ever before. The sun beat down fiercely. We were too exhausted to fear bullets.”

“Suddenly the Spaniard threw his arms around me. ‘Comrade,’ he yelled. Blood dripped from the seat of his trousers and his shirt was stained. I put my hand on his back to stop the blood. A bullet penetrated his body entering under the armpit and leaving through his back. I finally succeeded in slipping my first aid gauze under his coat, raised his garrison belt and tightened it to keep him from bleeding to death. Now to get him a stretcher. I ran down the ditch and jumped over a clump of bushes just in time as eight or ten bullets whizzed over my head.”

“There were no stretchers at the dressing station but young Larry Friedman was there, lying on the ground his stomach bandaged. ‘How are you making out, Shorty,’ I asked. ‘Do something,’ he moaned, ‘Do something.’ Now I needed at least two stretchers, one for Larry who was my friend.”

“Eventually we located some blankets, which were better than nothing at all. And then on our return we ran into the grub truck and stretchers. Loading bully beef cans, bread and cheese for our company on a stretcher, we located our lads, who had been without food for many hours. Larry had been taken away. I never saw him again.”

Vach left the Washington Battalion shortly after the Brunete Drive ended. Technically speaking, he deserted, since he hadn’t been decommissioned, perhaps explaining his reluctance to discuss the details of his Spanish Civil War sojourn, although foreign fighters are intrinsically volunteers. He was in Spain from March to August 1937. I got the impression, from his remarks over the years, that he concluded the Republican military was poorly organized and officered, and he would probably die there, like his friends Roger Carnell and Larry "Shorty" Friedman.

Instead, Vachel Blair returned to the United States in September, 1937, and reported what happened to the Cleveland community, notably in his Plain Dealer article. Six years later, he fought in World War Two, in the North Africa and Italy campaigns, serving in the U.S. Army Air Force as an intelligence officer and areal photographer. As such, he flew in six missions over southern Europe in B-24 bombers, which he also described in long, literary passages, as in this letter to his first wife, actually written while he was on a bombing run.

"Dearest Patty, My lady, I am going to put your St. Christopher’s Medal to a test. I’m sitting on the flight deck thinking of you as we collect the formation together before going to a lively target. Yo ho! ... Now I am looking over the pilot’s shoulder, Lt. Seitz here and he is a damn good flyer. Ahead is the squadron commander’s ship. All over the sky you can see stair steps of planes, a formation here and another there... Your little flashlight is coming in handy, for the [flight] engineer just borrowed it. Don’t forget to send more batteries will you?"

"You know, Patty, it always strikes me as I look over one of those planes in flight, droning along and vibrating to the 'quattro motore' [four motors symphony], that these sky trucks are an invention of the devil. Here we are all loaded up with men, gas and bombs. I can readily understand how there may be times when the noble thoughts of democracy and freedom might be set aside sometimes just to get in a little worry about self-survival..."

"It’s a beautiful sight outside. We’re riding high above a white cloud layer that looks like snow. Tail turret is out. 'No Bueno.' We’re going up. 'Gonna pull the pins,' says Caravalho, our bombardier, as he drops back into the bomb bay. Then we’ll be all set, Patty, to drop the load of lethal destruction upon the bastions of the Axis." What Vach withheld, due to self-censorship, was that his main job was to crawl out over the open bomb bay doors—wearing an oxygen mask but no safety strap—and film the bombs dropping and whether they hit the target. (See entire his letter here or his story about a bombing run gone bad here.)

As intense as World War Two was, Vach's brief Spanish Civil War experience, when he was 22 years old, remained foundational. Obviously, it was far beyond anything I witnessed traveling around American cities, the United States or the world, including my recent, modest foray into war reporting, "Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution". My father was much my superior in understanding war, or the way of the warrior, but he hid it from us, not wanting the attending horror, machismo and desperation to overshadow what he preferred to emphasize and provide: tolerance, optimism and support.

Doniphan Blair, in front of San Francisco's monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. illo: D. Blair
Nevertheless, most people in our circle knew he fought in Spain; he received the Lincoln Brigade’s newsletter and went to meetings into the 1990s (for more info, see the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives); and his Spanish volunteerism played a role in his grandchildren getting partial scholarships to a progressive private school in Manhattan.

Perhaps most significantly, when my father met my mother, Tonia Rotkopf, they bonded over the Spanish Civil War. As a young Jewish woman from a socialist family in Poland, she had learned the songs, collected donations for hungry Spanish children and knew about the politics. Indeed, some of her adoration of my father was a simple respect for the freedom fighters, who came from around the world to stop the fascists in Spain and a few years later went to Europe. Indeed, it was American troops, some tall, blond and Christian like Vach, who liberated her in Austria in 1945 from Mauthausen concentration camp.

My father, for his part, had long been friends with Jews, as we can see from his Spanish Civil War companions but also as far back as middle school, and, by college, he was a socialist. Going through his library recently, I came upon his "Black Book of Polish Jewry", a detailed expose of the onset of European atrocities, published in 1943 with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. "The Black Book" refutes the claim that little was known about the Holocaust until late in the war. The fact that Vachel had a copy reminds us that people of good will could inform themselves and take action, much as is now needed in Ukraine.

The Spanish Civil War eerily parallels today’s war in Ukraine. Much as the democratic Loyalists desperately fought the fascist Nationalists, the 30-year-old Ukrainian democracy is in a duel to the death with the Soviet Union’s successor state, Russia, which tragically turned fascist and imperialist. Spain and Ukraine was/is on the edge of democratic Europe and struggling to join its normative, modern world; both were one of the few countries where anarchists were organized enough to mount political parties and armies; both wars had/have dedicated international brigades; and both were/are vicious confrontations where, if democracy was/is defended, it could have saved/save us a lot of suffering.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Mar 01, 2023 - 05:58 PM
Clevelanders Fighting and Dying in Spain
By Vachel Blair as told to Martin H. Miller

Vachel Blair, in his U.S. Army uniform, about six years after he served in Spain. photo: Unknown
This article had the subhead of "Local youth, back from the front, gives first-hand account of those battling for the Loyalists" when it was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 21, 1937.

In the following article, Vachel Blair, 3028 Woodbury Road, Shaker Heights [Cleveland, Ohio], who recently returned from service in the George Washington Battalion, International Brigade of the Spanish government army, relates his experiences under fire in a major offensive.—Editor’s Note [from Cleveland Plain Dealer].

CLEVELAND WAS WELL REPRESENTED IN
the Brunete offensive [by the Spanish Republicans, 15 miles north of Madrid, in July, 1937]. The most extensive and thoroughly-planned drive of Loyalist Spain against Gen. Francisco Franco’s forces attacking Madrid.

At least 15 Clevelanders were enlisted in the George Washington Battalion, in which I was an infantryman, and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the two American units of the International Brigade [the Washington was eventually incorporated into the Lincoln]. They and Cleveland youths who served as truck drivers in the transportation division, participated in this determined attempt to sever the Facist [sic] line of communications with University City, the Madrid suburb held by Franco’s army.

Since I left the Washington Battalion shortly after the offensive ended, I can tell you only of the experiences of the Clevelanders in my company.

We saw our first front line service in the Brunete Drive and in four days—July 6 to 10—we were initiated into all the horror the Spanish war had to offer. My closest friend was killed in that destructive baptism of fire.

It was only the night before the attack came to a stop Roger Cornell, 1886 E. 82d Street [Cleveland] and I shared for the last time our ponchos, the squares of khaki which serve as raincoats in the day and sleeping covers at night.

Steve Kosjak, 978 E. 76th Street, was likewise killed in the attack. Roy Peters, 1741 E. 19th Street, died, needled by machine gun bullets.

I saw Larry Friedman, a Cleveland College freshman, writhing on the ground, his stomach wrapped in bandages, waiting for a stretcher.

Two days before the artillery opened the offensive by sending shell after shell down into the enemy town of Villanueva de la Canada, all of us were alive, encamped under the scrubby, thinly-foliaged olive trees some 12 miles northwest of Madrid.

'Clevelanders Fighting and Dying in Spain', was an long article written by Vachel Blair and published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 21, 1937. image: CPD archive

Any stray aviator flying over the rugged Spanish terrain would notice nothing unusual—we hoped—but around us in all directions were thousands of troops keeping cover. Near the Americans were two battalions made up of former inmates of concentration camps and victims of oppression in the Balkans. Men were here who had tramped hundreds of weary miles with one thought in mind—to even the score a bit by taking a crack at the Fascists.

Here, too, were liberty and wine-loving Frenchmen and Belgians (together in the Franco-Belge Battalion). English, Scotch and Irishmen, Czechs, Scandinavians, Canadians, Cubans, Poles and Italians and even a few Chinese who had come half way across the world to fight western Fascism.

We were truly the International Brigade, but the bulk of the 120,000 troops concentrated on this spot consisted of Spaniards. Forty thousand of them were to sweep down into the plain to the northwest of Madrid and take the strongly fortified Villanueva de la Canada.

The George Washington Battalion and 9,000 other members of the International Brigade were to circle in the southwest in the second contingent of 40,000 take Villaviciofa and attack the Fascist rear at University City.

The 40,000 Spaniard remaining were to head southwest smash through Brunete, continue south a few miles, and capture Navalcarnere, which is on the supply road to Franco’s University City salient. Once this was done, the Fascists surrounding Madrid would be either bottled up or, if retreating, might easily be routed as Mussolini’s troops were at Guadalajara.

It was July 4, and we were in a world which hadn’t more than the faintest connection with the world we had known. We wondered about you people back home. Were you planning picnics? All of us, with no noticeable exceptions, spent the afternoon writing letters to mothers, sweethearts, relatives and friends. The battalion mail box was stuffed, and not one letter even vaguely mentioned the attack. Not one of us wished to risk having our letters—possibly our last we would ever write—thrown out by the censor.

We cleared our Russian rifles that morning, and cut down on the equipment we would have to carry. Each of us kept a French helmet, a gas mask, a grub sack with mess utensils, a canteen, a bandolier or cartridge belt and 200 rounds of ammunition, some of it stuffed in our pockets.

Every movement, every moment had significance that day. But we were not downhearted—yet. I traded a pack of American cigarets [sic] for a can of condensed milk which was swiped by the British battalion’s cook. It tasted good, a spoonful at a time.

Vachel Blair, with his wife, Tonia Rotkopf, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor. photo: Nicholas Blair
“When we get back, we’ll each buy a can of this stuff and get good and sick on it,” Larry Friedman remarked.

I can still see Roger Cornell, smiling as he doled out the spoonfuls to Shorty [nickname for Friedman], “Smitty,” our section leader, and two or three others, including myself, who sat in a circle around the tin can nectar. It was good for four rounds.

Just at dusk trucks began to stream by us on the road at the edge of the camp, ammunition trucks, food trucks, ambulances, lorries, trucks of every description jammed with soldiers, trucks loaded with large artillery and anti-truck guns, and later giant Diesel [sic] trucks, each carrying a three-ton tank, covered with a tarpaulin. Their headlights were painted or papered to cut illumination to the point where German aircraft would not observe them.

The Lincoln Battalion came marching up and camped about 100 yards down the road. This battalion had helped thrust back the Fascists who almost severed the Madrid-to-Valencia highway on the Jarama Front back in January. Their boys were not singing as much or as loudly as we. We were anxious to see what the front was like.

Several fellows in our battalion, led by Milt Young, a Jewish boy from New York City, went over to the Lincoln.

“You’ll see, you’ll see,” they told Milt. This wasn’t sport to them. Nevertheless, we were in high spirits, tense, expectant when the order came that night to move. Some kind of history was being made here. The hillsides in the rolling, brush-covered country alive with the buzzing of voices as far as we could hear, and the coolness of the evening us once more comfortable and free, for eight hours at least, from the burning sun.

All night we marched, walking beside the road much of the time, to permit the trucks to pass, stopping to rest once every hour for a smoke. The next morning we arrived at our last encampment, ate our dry rations of bully beef and bread, and slept until late afternoon.

Larry and I went down to the small, dirty creek just below us for a bath and a shave, Spanish style, and found our battalion commander there ahead of us. “Food is coming up at dusk,” he told us. And it did—rice pudding and beans, lemons and beef and coffee, and even cigarettes, and we could take as much as we could eat.

We could hear the tanks, now off the trucks, rumbling toward the front on their own power. Once again everyone was excited, jumpy and very wide awake. Hurry, hurry! Tempers were short and several fights occurred when representatives of each section lined up with their buckets for grub. Fights over the place in line, fights over nothing, fights because each was afraid marching orders would come before his section could be fed.

A short article about Blair's involvement in the Spanish Civil War. photo: N/A
Three hours later, a half hour past midnight, marching orders did arrive. We tried to sleep in the meantime, but sleep was impossible. We merely lay on the ground and rested, not talking, thinking.

Cars began to pass us with their lights off. Everything was silent except the sound of marching feet heading to the front. We took turns carrying the company stretcher. Finally, at the dawn we saw another road parallel to the front, thousands of troops lined the road. Later I learned that over 110,000 men were here for an attack on 15 kilometers (nine miles) of the front.

We hurried east on the road until we reached our position for the attack, and started south down the slope toward the Fascist line, single file.

At our rear the sun rose from behind the snow-peaked Guadarrama Mountains, the hot, blistering Spanish sun. At 6 o’clock the artillery would open fire in order to “soften” the town for our first division. Behind the road we could see the guns and the gun pits. Eighteen miles to the southeast on this same road was Madrid. In front of us, three miles away, we could see our first objective, Villanueva de la Canada. Ahead of us to our left the Spaniards were already down the foothills, waiting for the opening artillery barrage before charging this strategic town.

Three shells cracked over our head in rapid succession, the first shells we had heard in close range. They were from our own batteries, however.

Gradually we made our way down the large gulches of the foothills. On the riddges, a quarter mile to our left and right, were rows of tanks, on in front of us and behind us thousands of men streamed single file down to the rolling plain.

Shell after shell fell into the town bursting three at a time and leaving tall columns of smoke and debris. The Loyalist aviation of twenty bombers and ten pursuit planes circled over the town in perfect formation, for now there were no big black puffs from German anti-aircraft guns. The planes circled twice over the town, dropping their deadly loads, and then speeding away along the front.

We were now in the rolling plain, only 500 yards away from the town. We were approaching the range of the machine guns and their nervous rat-a-tatting. Then, much to our surprise and chagrin, a runner reported that the first troops had been unable to take the town. We would have to advance up a small valley toward the barricades. The men were lying on the ground, waiting. Suddenly, a short, bronzed lad let out a yell, rose quickly and dashed forward for 25 yards before diving into some bushes. As soon as he yelled, the rest of us followed him. There were no given orders to charge. It is always spontaneous action. The men ran as far as they could in the four seconds it is estimated that the it takes a Fascist to aim and fire again.

Again we rose, and again we ran. Frankly, each one of us was frightened. This was our first taste of gunfire—and it aimed directly at us. I was down flat on my nose and stomach when a bullet dug into the earth eight inches in front of me. It may have been a spent bullet but that did not assure me.

Blair, his wife, Tonia, and sons Doniphan and Nick, circa 1972. photo: Unknown
along its edge. The towns barricades were less than 250 yards away from us, but all of that is uphill and bare of cover. We waited here in the hot sun, dug holes two feet deep in the sand for water, and poured the coffee-colored liquid down our throats, into our hair, and into our helmets.

An order comes to move south again. This new position is on a low ridge covered with wheat stubble. Here we were sniped at by riflemen in the tower of the town’s church. Two Moors [Moroccans fighting for Franco] added to our discomfort by wriggling down on the plain, perching themselves on a blanket and letting us have it, until we captured them bleeding from bullet wounds.

The general attack on Villanueva de la Canada is to take place at sundown. We place our packs and surplus equipment on the ground thinking we would return for them after the attack. We never did. Orders to move came at sundown. We were within 75 yards of the town when we heard the roar of triumphant Loyalist troops as they charged into the town from the other side. The ditches of the road retreat [sic] and the road south were filled with Fascist dead, which were later identified as mostly German. Yells and revolutionary songs rang out in many languages. Cavalry and infantry intermingled as the troops marched by devastated, white-walled Spanish homes, some with black, empty doorways, others rosy with the glow of half extinguished fires. The pungent odor of anise came from a dark, bomb-shattered café where a slight breeze rippled the sheet of canvas in the doorway.

After only a few moments in the plaza before the church, we marched wearily toward Brunete and camped in an olive grove behind a brick farm house halfway to Brunete. The next morning I got up to get a drink at the well and found that during the night the Spanish boys had laid down next to the Fascist dead under the wall of the farm house, perhaps believing them to be exhausted comrades.

The call came to fall in. Brunete had been captured during the night and all morning trucks had sped down the road toward it. German aviators bombed us as we marched along on empty stomachs, killing six and wounding many. One bomb burst directly across from us as Carnell, Bready and I were falling on our faces.

That night Roger and I shared the same poncho. We were weary from marching in the hot sun and we were hungry. That was the last time Roger and I exchanged confidences. The next day he was killed on “Mosquito Hill” without tanks to prepare the way and without adequate machine guns.

Weary and exhausted, suffering from fatigue and hunger, we charged up that hill, and would have taken it had we received adequate support.

Carnell and I moved together as the company advanced into the bullet zone. At the signal cry, with several other men, Roger ran up a ridge to the right. A quick glance showed me there wasn’t enough cover there for another man. I scurried up the left, flopping behind a tree. I was parked there, half way up Mosquito Hill, a Russian rifle in my hand, when a Spaniard ran up the ditch behind me, drawing additional gunfire as he came.

San Francisco's monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade on February 25, 2023, when a pro-Ukraine rally was held across the street. photo: D. Blair
The middle of an attack may not be the best time to begin a conversation but we did talk there, throwing German, French and Spanish words together in order to understand each other. He came from the Lester Battalion, he said.

I was down on my knees firing into clumps of bushes where Fascists might be lying, when he stood up.

“Shoot a little higher into those clumps,” my companion directed. “Like this.”

“Down,” I shouted in Spanish. He paid little heed. We were tired, more tired than ever before. The sun beat down fiercely. We were too exhausted to fear bullets.

Suddenly the Spaniard threw his arms around me. “Comrade,” he yelled. Blood dripped from the seat of his trousers and his shirt was stained. I put my hand on his back to stop the blood. A bullet penetrated his body entering under the armpit and leaving through his back.

I finally succeeded in slipping my first aid gauze under his coat, raised his garrison belt and tightened it to keep him from bleeding to death. Now to get him a stretcher. I ran down the ditch and jumped over a clump of bushes just in time as eight or ten bullets whizzed over my head.

There were no stretchers at the dressing station but young Larry Friedman was there, lying on the ground his stomach bandaged.

“How are you making out, Shorty,” I asked.

“Do something,” he moaned, “Do something.”

Now I needed at least two stretchers, one for Larry who was my friend.

Two Americans joined me in the search for stretchers. The bullet that wounded Larry had first pierced the hand of one of these boys before entering Larry’s body. We couldn‘t find our ambulance, and once we picked up a stretcher we were forced to return it. Eventually we located some blankets which were better than nothing at all. And then on our return we ran into the grub truck and stretchers.

Loading bully beef cans, bread and cheese for our company on a stretcher, we located our lads, who had been without food for many hours. Larry had been taken away. I never saw him again.

Back again we distributed welcome rations to the fighters. The company dug in in a ravine halfway up the hill. The attack had been stopped.

And that night under cover of darkness we searched among the bushes for wounded and missing comrades.

Editor’s Note: Vachel Blair went on to live in New York City as a cinematographer, marry a Jewish Holocaust survivor, have two sons and live to 84.

For more info about the American fighters, see the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

Posted on Mar 01, 2023 - 05:26 PM
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cineSOURCE staff

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Posted on Feb 22, 2023 - 06:44 PM
Frida and Diego in Love
by Doniphan Blair

'Frida and Diego with Gas Mask' was taken in 1938 by Nickolas Muray, a very handsome Hungarian photographer who soon became Frida's lover. photo: N. Muray
First published by cineSOURCE in December 2018, this updated article has important new info.

SAN FRANCISCO LOOMS LARGE IN THE
serpentine saga of Mexican artists Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), due to the gorgeous murals he painted here in the 1930s, her accompaniment on all three, including the one after their divorce, and their embodiment of titanic creatives in love. Indeed, they remarried here in 1940 and the city renamed the avenue leading to City College, site of Rivera's biggest Bay Area mural, Frida Kahlo Way.

Amidst our monumental MeToo realignment, it may be instructive to note that the petite Frida, shrunken further by childhood polio and a terrible street car accident, was obsessed with the 20-years older, 200-pounds fatter and extremely macho—he used to carry a pistol and once shot the record player at a party because he didn't like the song it was playing—as well as brilliant Diego.

This generated Frida's observation, “There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.” But also her recommendation to: “Make love, take a shower, make love again.”

Frida became infatuated with Diego at fifteen, watching him paint a mural at her high school. While he noticed her and her fiery demeanor, he thought she was eleven. Undeterred, Frida returned a few years later with a sheaf of paintings under her arm and proceeded to conquer the already-married and notorious womanizer’s mind as well as heart, suggesting that an empowered male needs an equally intense female—AND vice versa.

Mexico City was scandalized. Frida’s family rejected Diego, even though he was from a wealthy, old crypto-Jewish family and her father, Guillermo, was a German immigrant who should have been cool with that (her mother was "mestizo"). They called Frida and Diego "la ballena y la paloma," which means the whale and the dove or, alternatively, "el elefante y la paloma." Recent research indicates that Frida's father was, in fact, a Lutheran, not Jewish, but her proclivity for claiming he was of Hungarian-Jewish descent through the entire Nazi era makes her Jewish, as far as I am concerned.

'Frida and Diego' by Frida from 1937. image: F. Kahlo
Frida persevered, drawing on Diego’s ideas, encouragement and artistic friends not only to become his flamboyant very-Mexican wife but to excel at painting. Indeed, she almost single handedly invented aggressive self-examination through painting, a distinctly female aspect of the art form, and became the undisputed master of the self-portrait, ultimately eclipsing Rivera in art history.

Some paint snobs reject Frida for “unpainterly” brushstrokes, some Mexican nationalists for being half Jewish, or so they thought, and some feminists for sleeping with the enemy—not just Diego but quite a few powerful men, starting with Leon Trotsky, the Jewish communist from Ukraine who led the revolution until he was double-crossed by Stalin.

Regardless, Frida’s spirit, images and ideas of what it was to be a woman or an obsessively-honest artist or a dedicated Mexican were immensely innovative and powerful, which is why Diego adored her and probably would not be upset by her star-is-born turn.

Deigo was a man of many talents as well as appetites. Despite his communist convictions, he convinced capitalists across the United States to let him paint large murals in their buildings. He balanced fine art, illustration, politics and a respect for both working people and, to a degree, the businessmen that hired them.

His first triumph was the San Francisco Stock Exchange in 1930. Although now the City Club and not open to the public, the mural is well worth the effort of signing up for the informative, short and once-a-week tour (go here).

Diego's 'Allegory of California', at the SF Stock Exchange, was his first US commission, 1931—note the pressure gauge on lower left edge, behind the tree stump. image: D. Rivera
Called “The Allegory of California”, the smallish mural features lush colors and a floor-to-ceiling goddess, modeled on tennis star Helen Wills Moody and derived from Diego's re-imagining of the matriarchal Califia, the mythical Muslim queen, who also provided California its name. The overall theme is Californian industry, although he snuck in a couple of contrarian messages, like a sequoia tree stump or the pressure gauge, with its arrow in the red, in typical Rivera fashion (Frida was also a prankster). With its hills full of oil derricks, "Allegory of California" shows little of California's wondrous beaches, mountains and deserts, but Diego was probably too busy chasing California girls, like tennis-star Moody or film goddess Paulette Goddard, to go on scenic road trips.

If “The Allegory of California” is matriarchal, Diego's companion piece two miles away at the San Francisco Art Institute is patriarchal. Tragically, the venerable old institute went bankrupt in 2021, and the future of the mural or at least being able to see it is in jeopardy.

Around midnight last week, I visited the old campus at 800 Chestnut Street, which consists of an ancient monastery with bell tower in front and a modern, angular cement building in back. There was no status update on the door but when I pushed it open I could see, in the middle of the arch-lined Moorish courtyard, the pool, once full of gold fish and lilies, was empty. It was sad, spooky and devoid of life until I was accosted by a stereotypical guard barking "This is private property," although he did give me a contact person's name.

Aside from the incredibly stupid tragedy of San Francisco's monied elite, one of the richest communities in the world and supposedly art minded, letting its century-and-a-half old art institute perish, there is the problem of seeing Diego's mural, considered the lessor of San Francisco's famous three but still fantastic.

Called “The Making of a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City,” and completed in 1931, it is a bit larger than than "Allegory" and fully male metaphorically. Not only is the mural filled with a giant, white male laborer in blue overalls, it includes Diego himself, abiding an interest in self-portraiture obviously inspired by Frida. Instead of painting himself planting a magical tree with the Hollywood sex goddess Paulette Goddard, as in the four-times-as-big City College mural, symbolic Diego is hard at work, sitting on the scaffold in front of the painting, his enormous butt facing the viewer.

Alas, that was as self-reflective as Diego got, even as Frida was getting known for her tell-all canvases, one third of which are self-portraits, often full frontal nudes. Indeed, she garnered a New York show in 1938, where actor Edward G. Robinson bought four paintings, and she received great acclaim in Paris, where Andre Breton hailed her as a brilliant surrealist, a laurel she rejected.

Frida's 'The Broken Column', 1944, exposes her pain, body and vision, in equal measure. image: F. Kahlo
“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Her first Mexico show was only in 1954, just before she died, although she was able to attend in her hospital bed, receiving art lovers, regular lovers and courtiers, an experience she enjoyed immensely, in part due to her infatuation with doctors, disease and death.

“I hope the leaving is joyful,” she remarked, “and I hope never to return.” Diego passed three years later.

And so it was that Frida Kahlo, a slight slip of a half-Jewess—albeit in her mind only—was crowned queen of Mexican art, if not culture. And she remained a solely local treasure until, about the mid-1970s when, ka-boom: international Frida-mania.

It started in San Francisco, among art professors like the Art Institute’s brilliant Raymond Mondini, painters like the Mission District's dedicated René Yañez and the few collectors of Frida canvases, as well as an art-viewing public already familiar with the city's three Rivera murals and the romantic story of his remarrying Frida here in 1940.

Finally, after the Mexican Museum opened by the Bay in Fort Mason in 1975, it mounted a massive show, famous for its striking poster featuring a life-size photo of Frida in a blood-red scarf, taken by her lover, the extremely handsome Hungarian photographer Nickolas Muray.

Fridamania continued to expand inexorably in the ‘80s and ‘90s, mostly among women and Latinos, but also gays, the disabled and other oppressed groups. It culminated with the excellent 2002 film “Frida” by Julie Taymor and starring Selma Hyack (who is hardly a small-chested waif embodying Frida's body type but great otherwise). The massive San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art retrospective was organized here in 2008, and went on international tour.

A Frida nude, photographer unknown but undoubtedly her lover Nickolas Muray, around 1939. photo: unknown
A force of nature, like the artist herself, Fridamania continues apace today.

While Diego's City Club and Art Institute murals show nothing of Frida or their tumultuous marriages, the interested viewer will be pleasantly surprised by San Francisco’s third mural. At City College’s Diego Rivera Theater (50 Phelan Ave—now Frida Khalo Way) and properly open to the public, “Pan American Unity” (1940) is arguably Rivera's most spectacular project outside of Mexico, both in size, 22-feet tall and 75-feet wide, and its cast of characters, including a regally-attired Frida.

Unfortunately, right behind Frida, Diego painted himself planting a magical white tree with the actress Paulette Goddard. While Diego may have compared sex to urination and relieved himself with Frida’s sister, which precipitated their divorce in 1939, he was also extremely compelling to many alpha women. Goddard moved for a period to Mexico City, settling in a hotel across the street from Diego's studio.

By that time, Frida had already taken up with Trotsky, who arrived in Mexico in 1936, making the "Pan American Unity" mural another chapter in the Riveras' favorite parlor game: psycho-sexual brinksmanship. As for their community's political brinksmanship, Trotsy was attacked in May, 1940, by Frida and Diego's friend, the Mexican painter, muralist and Stalinist David Siqueiros, and killed three months later by a less effeminate assassin (Siqueiros was gay).

In 2021, City College loaned the 30-ton "Pan American Unity" mural to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, where it went on display on June 28th. The project took millions of dollars and all sorts of experts, from fresco folks to art handlers and truckers, who designed and implemented special cases with shock absorbers on trucks going five miles an hour for the seven miles to the museum.

A Frida nude by Diego, 1930, note the high heels. image: D. Rivera
Exhibited in a free gallery on the museum's first floor, the mural will be on view until January 2024. It is a unique opportunity to see a great and enormous work of art, and also fantastic curatorial work, but most importantly a testament to the massive psycho-sexual and artistic relationship of Frida and Diego. I just saw it myself the other day, and the "Pan American Unity" is magnificent, in a massive room with 60 foot ceilings, much more spacious than in City College. On one side of the room is a seven-tier, wooden amphitheater perfect for lectures, like the one I would be happy to give about the Frida-Diego romantic philosophy.

I would start by pointing to the middle of the painting, Diego's tryptic self-portrait of himself and Paulette behind the regally-attired Frida, alone at her easel and discussing how Frida and Diego mastered modern, fully liberated love, which embraces matriarchy-patriarchy, female-male, mind-body. In other words, they accepted each others' elevated gender characteristics of macho and femme as fascinating, beautiful and lovable.

Then I would turn to the even more important theme of the "Pan American Unity": radical multiculturalism. In point of fact, right next to his tryptic self-portrait, Diego has a young, innocent indigenous girl, one of his favorite figures and probably a stand-in for Frida, and a slightly older, blond-haired white boy. He probably symbolized Nikolas Muray to their in-crowd, but to us more average viewers simply a bold continuation of his cultural-interconnection theme, which is integrated throughout the piece. Indeed, the centerpiece is a hybrid of a Toltec god and a machine, very much a futuristic "transformer," for the kids of today.

Getting back to Frida and Diego's bedroom, as some might prefer over highfalutin' art criticism, she liked to torture him with tales about her many affairs with men, while he liked to brag to his buddies about her conquests of women. Those notches in her belt even included the other great woman painter of the day, Georgia O’Keefe, a seemingly-modest Midwesterner, who was also Frida’s artistic rival, since they were the first women to have fully articulated a uniquely female art. Georgia was also a great multiculturalist—her longtime boyfriend was the New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who loved to argue, happened to be Jewish and had an overweening mother—and a great lover. Indeed, in her 90s, living in Taos, New Mexico, she was allegedly intimate with the 30-something Juan Hamilton.

SF City College's mural features a glorious Frida (center) but also Diego and film star Paulette Goddard and a cute native girl and white boy, suggesting radical openness and multiculturalism. photo: D. Blair
For her part, Frida was said to have enjoyed Diego's "bedtime stories" about his many sexual romantic escapades. Aside from the subterfuge and sneaking around, there was the obvious overwhelming honesty portrayed in both artists' imagery and symbolism, especially their use of the naked female body, which stands in stark contrast to today's new Puritanism. Their self-portraiture however is right in line with today's selfie obsessed. How did this happen in Mexico?

Despite a conservative Catholic culture, Mexico rates very high on international surveys of male and female sexual excitement and satisfaction (notably the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Survey, 2006). Frida, for example, had her first lover at sixteen. Moreover, of course, Mexico City in the 1920s was a place of revolutionaries, of both the political and artistic kind. It was the perfect stage for Frida and Diego’s self-invention, sexuality and fantasy as well as disciplined creativity and dedicated love.

Here’s how Amy Fine Collins summed up Fridamania in Vanity Fair, after the publication of her very revealing diaries in 2013:

Frida enjoying a last laugh with her pet hawk at her home, the Blue House, Mexico City, circa 1941. photo: N. Muray
“Most pertinent to the diaries is an understanding of how the daughter of a lower-middle-class German-Jewish photographer and a hysterically Catholic Spanish-Indian mother became a celebrated painter, Communist, promiscuous temptress, and, later (during the diary years), a narcotic-addicted, dykish, suicidal amputee afflicted with a bizarre pathology known as Munchausen syndrome—the compulsion to be hospitalized and, in extreme cases, mutilated unnecessarily by surgery.”

Who said love, obsession and great art would be simple? When you consider how much Frida suffered through her injuries and dozens of surgeries, you multiply that by her rampant imagination and the experimentalism of the ‘30s, and lean the whole "mishigas" (Yiddish for craziness) against the gargantuan Diego, Frida, as one of the first truly feminist artists, never ceases to astound.

For more indepth analysis, see "Frida" (1983) by Hayden Herrera, or "The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera" (1963) by Bertram Wolfe. And be sure and catch “Pan American Unity” at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art before January 2024, at which point it goes back to City College.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Feb 21, 2023 - 03:02 PM
Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Revolution (Abridged Part II)
by Doniphan Blair

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Rodion, a Russian-speaking costume designer from the Donbas, was very happy with Ukraine's recent progress and very angry with his Russian relatives. photo: D. Blair
Continued from 'Meet the Kids of Maidan: Part I'

“What an incredible place, a cool architectural space, a symbolic place,” I muse, until I work myself up and start yelling to myself: “In the middle of a fucking genocidal war, the goddamn Ukrainians are so democratic, they don’t mind anyone coming to their central square and saying whatever the fuck they want—including the likes of Dirk, a half-crazed German performance artist!” During my five or six times on the Maidan, in fact, I don’t recall seeing a single soldier, police officer or even untoward stare.

The next day, Dirk and I bade each other adieu with repressed emotions. Suddenly involved in each other’s lives—we also took meals together and roomed in a deluxe, rococo one-bedroom on Pushkin Street ($24 a night and four blocks from the Maidan!)—we were unable to understand what that might mean in the middle of our generation’s most destructive and divisive war, now slicing through friendships, ideologies and countries as well as mass murdering Ukrainians.

It was 1 a.m. by the time I hit Lviv. The cabbie raced the three miles of curfew-cleared streets from the train station to downtown, which is next to Old Town, where I had a spartan room in a 19th century building. In Ukraine, what that usually means is the building's entrance, stairs and hallways are falling apart—a comment on undemocratic collectivism, perhaps—but, once inside an apartment, they’re nice, large, luxurious even, having been renovated by the actual owner. At Kirill’s, for example, which he rents for the equivalent of 400 bucks, we walked up three flights of decrepit stairs, along a pealing balcony, and into a lovely, high-ceilinged duplex with a wrought-iron staircase, which leads to a big bedroom with a claw-foot tub and view of the city.

And spotless. Ukrainians are hygiene freaks who take their shoes off at home and in some businesses, like dental offices, and put on slippers or disposable shoe coverings.

Donning my slippers and stumbling down the dark hall, past five other rented rooms, I was happy to see my small room and tiny bed, which obliged my toes to stick out the slats at the bottom, as well as the chair, desk and large window, which looked out on Kryva Lypa, Lviv’s well-known courtyard crammed with cafes, now deserted during wartime at 2 a.m.

Kryva Lypa means “crooked linden tree,” which is still here, three stories tall, right beneath my window and surrounded by a circular, wrought-iron bench often occupied by women laughing, hipsters arguing, parents rocking kids or soldiers enjoying peace. Instead of the tourist trap I had assumed Kryva Lypa to be, when I moved in, it’s an old bohemian hang- and hide- out, protected by its two access tunnels, which can be easily blocked. Indeed, Kryva Lypa is where Lviv’s first movies were shown in 1903 and hippies and punks first congregated.

An eight-foot, punk-era turntable sculpture still hangs in the brew pub Bratyska (“bratyar” means brothers), which features 30 beers on tap, including a tomato one I didn’t try, and a famous borscht I did, every day for a week, in fact, after catching a cold. Prepared daily by Pani Lida (“pani” means missus), the no-nonsense, middle-aged woman I saw taking smoke breaks on the front porch, the borscht was both tasty and had great sides: cloves of garlic and slices of onion and pig fat, in addition to the standard sour cream and dark bread. No wonder Bratyska is so popular with college students, especially from the National Academy of Art, two miles away.

“I’m taking the interior design curriculum but hate, hate it,” said Pauline, whom I met on Bratyska's porch and is tall and stunning, despite the acne she doesn’t hide with makeup. “It was the only department I could get into with my small portfolio. I only draw or paint sometimes. My passion is performance art.” “Oh, that’s cool,” I effused, trying to seem so myself, “A friend of mine just did a performance on the Maid—” but Pauline interrupted me. Her friends from the Academy, easily recognizable by their distinct dress and greetings, had arrived.

Ukrainian prayers for peace are joined by members of the Hare Krishna, seen here in Lviv's Old Town. photo: D. Blair
Next to the Bratyska was a well-appointed nightclub and jazz venue, which just reopened as a comedy club. “Lviv’s fourth,” I was told by the ticket taker, a twenty-something Ukrainian-American woman raised in Sacramento, which is near where I live in California, who moved back after the war started. “What can I say? Ukrainians love comedy,” she explained. “People under threat of death need humor?” I offered, " Perhaps the gallows humor thing," and, “Or they’re honoring Zelensky,” which finally got a laugh.

In fact, Zelensky did do standup around Kyiv, Ukraine and Russia, where he also acted in a number of films, including playing Napoleon in the Russian comedy feature “Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon” (2012). Although poorly reviewed and a box office flop, the film’s kooky plot or mere existence suggests that conquering Ukraine was not foremost on most Russians’ minds at that time. Meanwhile, Zelensky’s experience in Russia, from being a comic on the road to a more respected actor or his one meeting with Putin, provided him invaluable insight.

“We know for sure that we don’t need the war,” Zelensky pleaded with Russian listeners, during his February 23rd, eve-of-destruction broadcast. “Not a Cold War, not a hot war. Not a hybrid one. But if we’ll be attacked… if they try to take our country away from us, our freedom, our lives, the lives of our children, we will defend ourselves."

Across from Microbrew Bratyska, in one of Kryva Lypa’s access tunnels, is one of its lesser lights: Dizzy Coffee, a tiny shop with two tables and a small upstairs loft but a powerful interior design using Piet Mondrian's colored squares. After my late-night return from Kyiv, I dropped by Dizzy for a quick cappuccino but got into an in-depth discussion with the barista, Andrii.

Thin, dark haired and 23 years old, with a sweet face beneath a light beard, Andrii has a degree in economics and a penchant for machine-gun-fire speech and wild gesticulation. As I learned over the next few days, Andrii is the elder in a crew of voracious-reading, pop-culture-consuming and debate-loving kids, who also listened to their grandparents. It was Andrii, in fact, who informed me of the Holodomor’s three rounds—1932-3, ’45 and ’46-7—hands flying around the espresso machine for emphasis but not spilling a drop.

“My grandmother worked in bakery,” Andrii said, during our first chat, which went high speed between coffee customers for over an hour. “Soldiers came every day and took 90 percent of bread. It’s a problematic. It goes for few years after war.” The Soviets also murdered almost 300 Ukrainian writers in the 1930s—"Called 'executed renaissance,'” he told me—and kept killing intellectuals into the ‘70s.

“She was Jew, Holocaust survivor from Warsaw,” Andrii added about his mother’s mother. “Her name was Mandelbaum, popular Jewish name,” although his family didn’t find that out until perusing her papers after she died. As it happened, her husband was a member of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who had been arrested and did time in Siberia before they met.

“Did they know each other’s stories?” I asked. “They must have,” Andrii said, “They lived together for many years.” “Did they love each other?” “They must have, they had four children.” “Is your mother loving?” “Yes.”

Andrii, economist, historian and barista, at his post in Kryva Lypa's Dizzy Coffee, where he headed up a crew of young Lviv intellectuals. photo: D. Blair
Somewhere around then, into Dizzy’s cramped confines strode Andrii’s best friend, Vasyl, 22, all boots, skinny jeans and unkempt, curly black hair. A programmer for a German company, who does comparatively well, I learned when he told me about his life two weeks later, Vasyl grew up poor in one of the Soviet-style apartment blocks that speckle the suburbs of eastern bloc cities. When he was sixteen, he worked in a factory for eight months, learned not to romanticize proletariat life, and bought his first computer. He also plays classical piano, loves heavy metal and punk, often reads or listens to books on tape, and writes poetry. Andrii writes prose. Vasyl also told me about his grandparents, speaking almost as fast as Andrii but with less gesticulation.

“He was very, very against war,” Vasyl said about his grandfather, Mykhailo (Michael in Ukrainian). “He was born few years before the Great War and saw many terrible, terrible things as a kid: dead people, dead animals, bombed buildings, bombed streets, bombed whole cities, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera”—Vasyl’s trademark expression in English. Andrii’s is “problematic,” used as a noun.

“He wrote it all in his memoir, which I read, which was hard to read, because it is written by hand and had many strong statements. Some too strong for publication,” although that could be cleaned up by his daughter, Vasyl’s mother, a book editor. “He died last week,” Vasyl added, to which I offered condolences. “He had good life. He was 85. We will have cemetery thing on Sunday.”

Vasyl’s parents are religious, which is how many older Ukrainians addressed the terrible trauma of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism and genocide, although his mother is Jehovah’s Witness. “It was her way of rebelling against grandfather, who was Orthodox,” Vasyl explained. Somewhere in there, he noted that, “She and I are the only ones in our family to graduate from university,” although Mykhailo was a renown building crane operator.

“When the war started, Grandfather thought we should surrender, surrender right now, surrender as soon as possible,” Vasyl said, getting excited. “‘We are going to lose anyway,’ he kept saying, ‘And that will stop killing.’ But after a week, Grandfather changed his mind. ‘We have to fight,’ he said, ‘To stop killing in the future.’”

Andrii tried to enlist in the Ukrainian Army but was rejected and did extensive volunteer work near Kyiv. Vasyl didn’t bother, since he’s been plagued with health problems since childhood and figures he can contribute more in other ways. What he calls his “homemade NGO” recently bought a car, 70 pairs of socks and some shoulder bags for rocket-propelled grenades, which a friend drove across Ukraine to “their unit

For the next three weeks almost daily, Andrii, Vasyl and I embarked on a broken-field run across Western civilization, from “The Bible” and Plato to Poe and Crowley, the filmmakers Lynch and Tarantino, or the philosophers beloved by twenty-somethings worldwide: the Slovenian leftist Slavoj Žižek and the innovative evolutionary psychologist but also rightwinger from Canada, Jordan Peterson, both of whom Andrii and Vasyl find interesting but too extreme. One of them, I can’t remember which, read and enjoyed “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller, the other Gregor Von Rezzori’s “Memoirs of an Anti-Semite”, two of my favorite books.

At any moment, of course, we would switch to breaking news or reports from the front, which I was now getting from an American with a literary bent and checkered past who was fighting with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion near Kherson. Paid the same as Ukrainians, foreigners can reject orders or quit fighting. Over hours-long phone calls—one of which Vasyl listened in on—or text dialogues, Terry, 53, from upstate New York, regaled me with pithy stories about firefights or his international comrades: the short, gorgeous Norwegian of tribal Sana heritage, who was tough as nails and drove a Porsche, the Jewish woman medic from Texas, who hauled a wounded man almost twice her size to safety, or his close friend Paul Kim, 1997-2022, whose death devastated him. A Korean-American from Oklahoma, Kim was a dedicated democrat, an up-for-anything warrior, and perhaps the first ex-US military officer to die in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Dirk Grosser doing a performance piece on Kyiv's Maidan Square, on September 17, 2022. photo: D. Blair
Or we’d analyze Putin’s psychology, that of the leftists supporting him or the rightwingers opposing him. After beers at Bratyska one night, we retired to my meagre quarters, and Vasyl delivered a dissertation on Ukraine’s neo-Nazi punks: how they emerged from the punks of Russia, a society defined by its anti-Nazism, which makes those symbols an easy way to rebel; how a popular Russian punk musician moved to Kyiv and developed a following; how they want to destroy the state, like anarchists, not strengthen it, like actual National Socialists; and how it was better to keep talking to them rather than letting them stew in alienation.

Andrii and Vasyl were also collaborating on a magazine, Фрайдей найт. Pronounced “fraydey nayt” and meaning Friday night, it references an older magazine, Четвер (“chetver” meaning Thursday), edited by a popular modernist writer from the Carpathians, Yuriy Izdryk. Friday Night's logo—a slab of meat taped to a Ukrainian embroidery, a la Maurizio Cattelan’s "Banana" (Art Basel Miami, 2019)—was designed by Andrii’s girlfriend, Stasia (short for Anastasia), who is talented, bright-eyed, beautiful and, it so happens, blonde, and may be all of 20.

“Andrii will do more editing and content creation,” Vasyl said, “And I will do tech and funding. We will focus more on ideas, poetry and philosophy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, since war is already discussed everywhere.” The first issue will probably be printed in February, they told me, and be accompanied by a social media presence.

Some of Dizzy’s denizens were only 16, I was surprised to learn, and still in high school, where they’d read but didn’t quite get Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, one admitted to me. A few joined the debate club Andrii and Vasyl attended and toured with around Ukraine. They invited me to the club once, which met weekly at a youth center across Old Town, and debated in English, so I could participate. Watching Evelina, a tall, innocence-exuding, almost albino-blonde 16 year old defend the proposition “Is nostalgia beneficial?” in high-speed English—on top of hanging around Andrii, both her parents are lawyers—I thought, “My god, the kids of Maidan are getting younger, fiercer and more articulate!” No wonder Putin is petrified.

The last night of September is a Friday, coincidentally, considering Andrii and Vasyl's magazine, and the rain pisses down, as it has almost constantly for three weeks. I think of the soldiers. It must be brutal soaked to the bone, trying to move through swollen streams and muddy fields, especially when on the attack, as many Ukrainian fighters have been since a few days before the deluge started on September 10th.

My room is cold, and I have a bad cold, although it’s not Covid, I know, since I just took a test. Ukraine did not miraculously escape the pandemic, as it sometimes seems, it's just that Covid's mortal threat is far overshadowed by that of war. Hence, no one mentions it, unless someone actually gets sick, and only one in a thousand on the street masks.

The sirens start around midnight and howl for a half an hour straight, longer than the four or five other air raid signals I've heard in Ukraine. “Does that mean a real attack?” I text Andrii on Instagram, their preferred communication platform. “It’s bullshit,” he responds. “Should I go down to the basement?” “No. You will get sicker.”

The sirens wail intermittently until 4 a.m., long enough for me to entertain dark-night-of-the-soul scenarios: What if the Russians bomb Kryva Lypa to punish Ukrainian free thinking at one of its sources? “Kryva Lypa is old. Its buildings have big walls,” Andrii said earlier that day, tapping a wall, “Only direct hit breaks this.”

It strikes me as tragic but also absurd and then disgusting and grotesque that my new friends and I, the community of Kryva Lypa, the people of Lviv, the people of Ukraine, a burgeoning, nation-building democracy, are now ensnared in a modern, mass-murderous war.

Girl posing with a sculpture of their beloved 'babuskas' (grandmothers), Kyiv. photo: D. Blair
The all-clear siren sounds around 7 a.m., and I hear doors opening and chairs scraping as Kryva Lypa’s waiters and baristas start another business day during wartime. That's when my thoughts turn to the Maidan.

“If the Russians go nuclear,” it suddenly hits me, “The Maidan will surely be ground zero! If the Russians are already attacking libraries, memorials and other cultural institutions, they will obviously want to destroy the central symbol of Ukraine's independence movement.”

I feel like crying, but the tears don't come.

As horrific, unimaginable and destructive as nuking the Maidan will be for Russia, Europe and the world, as well as of course for Kyiv and the people of Ukraine, those are the Kremlin's stakes, which it has been raising since a few days after the war started. Given Russia's systemic corruption, poor weapons, untrained soldiers and tradition of extreme violence, there will eventually be nowhere else for them to go for a path to victory. Nuking the Maidan will be counterproductive, politically, strategically and militarily, most analysts agree, but more militant and angry Russians, like members of the white supremacist mercenaries, the Wagner Group, now central to Russia’s war effort, get a perverse pleasure from being world-class killers.

"Never Again" seemed like a reasonable goal when I was coming up, but history suggests there will always be more genocides, that all weapons eventually get used, and some sort of nuclear attack is just a matter of time. Contemplating that conclusion can be psychologically devastating but we have to analyze the possibility.

But the horror can't go on forever, history also indicates. Someday it will end, and Ukrainians will rebuild, restore and heal, as they did after the Holodomor, the Great Terror and the Nazis. Indeed, the kids of Maidan grew up hearing how their grandparents did exactly that, they just enjoyed three decades of democracy, which they refuse to renounce, and they love each other dearly.

It may take a decade or two to vanquish the Russian Federation, to give them enough death to inspire treaty adherence, to scrub Kyiv of radioactivity and reconstruct the Maidan in all its glory—to put Berehynia back on her golden pedestal—but Ukraine will survive, of that I suddenly feel certain, having gotten to know the kids of Maidan.

I lull myself to sleep in my tiny bed, which finally warmed up, imagining how the Maidan will look during its first Victory Day celebration, which I am determined to attend. I see happy faces, despite the horrific death toll and suffering, because surmounting that soul-crushing sorrow is an obligation of Ukraine's geographical-historical destiny. I hope my decades of Holocaust and mystical studies are enough to offset my own sadness and help them with theirs, especially when I see some of my Ukrainian friends and, if the road to peace is long, their kids. I also hope to meet an incredible crew of freedom fighters and lovers from around the world, including, I hope, anti-fascist Russians.

Drifting into dreamland, I fantasize about the speakers and performers on the Maidan’s proscenium for Victory Day. There will be some fantastic dancers, I assume, as well as performances and art shows around the square and across Kyiv and Ukraine. There will surely be seminars and conferences addressing how to restore a devastated economy, infrastructure and environment, augment psychological services or develop dialogues in polarized societies, which Americans would do well to attend. I also hope there will be presentations on the Roma crisis, LGBTQ rights and Jewish history tailored to Ukrainians.

I left Ukraine on October 9th, the sky still dark with impending storms. Eighteen hours later, the air raids in Lviv and Kyiv were real, as Russia began its strategic bombing campaign against power and water facilities. In Lviv, the missiles did not kill anyone directly but the electrical blackouts did. None of my friends were seriously affected—they claimed it was nothing new, or they posted photos of candle-lit dinners—but I felt I had deserted them.

Valter (cntr), a 23 year-old soldier on leave from the front, and his friends (lft-rt) Oras, Adriana-Maria and the 14-year-old Ruslan and Nazar, at the Golden Rose Synagogue memorial, Old Town, Lviv. photo: D. Blair
Things will get bad as temperatures drop, surgeons operate by flashlight, the elderly and young freeze, and World-War-One-style trench and artillery battles rage across the 500-mile eastern front. Meanwhile, the Kremlin keeps upping its ante: more infrastructure bombings, more relentless attacks, more soldiers mobilizing, more torturing of civilians, and more threats of their nihilist nightmare, nuclear holocaust.

Imagine what a populous, prosperous and peaceful country Russia would be today if they hadn’t killed so many of their own people as well as others. Despite their world-class literature, their leaders appear unfamiliar with a central fact of human history: If bullies were so successful down through the ages, we'd still be living in caves.

It will be tragic, it will be brutal, it will be genocide, even without the detonation of nuclear devices. Unfortunately, the efficacy of our ideas—and how they trickle down to civic society, culture, technology and discipline—are periodically tested by those who fantasize that extreme amorality and brutality can bring victory. Sadly, the only way to prove them wrong is by force of arms. During this difficult moment of historical transition to a digital, diverse and civil-rights-supportive world, the kids of Maidan may end up saving not only Ukraine but the spirit of democracy.
Posted on Feb 12, 2023 - 12:11 AM
Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Revolution (Abridged)
by Doniphan Blair

Young people hanging out at the Golden Rose Synagogue memorial in Lviv: Valter (cntr), a 23 year-old soldier on leave from the front, and (lft-rt) Oras, Adriana-Maria and the 14-year-old Ruslan and Nazar. photo: D. Blair
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AFTER A TEN-HOUR HAUL IN HARD RAIN,
Dirk Grosser driving like an amphibious drag racer, the storm breaks, the sky clears, and we walk the five blocks from our funky hostel onto Ukraine’s main stage, Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square. It is a momentous feeling.

This is where it all began, both the massive, months-long protests in 2013, which stopped the kleptocratic, Russophile president, Viktor Yanukovych, and started what can be called Ukraine’s renaissance, and the escalatory overreaction. After the killing of over 100 protestors didn’t stop the movement, Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern provinces and, eight years later, the entire country, which is now Europe's worst war since World War Two. Putin had to attack the democracy developing on his doorstep simply because, if Ukrainians and Russians are so alike and integrated, as he keeps saying, Russians will want democracy, too.

As it happens, the Russian tanks barreling down Ukraine’s highway M-07 toward Kyiv on February 24th, 2022, were also trying to get to the Maidan.

It is bigger than I expect, over two football pitches, with 19th century buildings on one side and modern ones on the other. This being Sunday—September 11th, oddly enough—and with the sky still full of dark clouds, the Maidan is empty save a smattering of soldiers on leave, tight-skirted women sipping Ukraine’s ubiquitous strong coffee, and vendors of patriotic, yellow-blue wrist bands with sad eyes. There are no soldiers on guard, as far as I can see, but scattered around like overgrown toy jacks are tank barriers, the so-called “hedgehogs,” or “yizhaky” in Ukrainian, some painted like child toys, others stacked like modern art. They are the only indicator of the war raging 250 miles to the east or south.

“There were many business people on Maidan,” I was told by Kirill, a handsome, bearded and genial 34-year-old, who directs and edits television commercials and is writing a romantic comedy—he loves old Woody Allen movies. I met Kirill a week earlier in Lviv, the quaint, cobblestoned café city in Ukraine’s west which serves as its San Francisco and is somewhat shielded from the war in the east. I’m omitting last names in the nightmarish event of a Russian takeover.

Kirill invited me to his place with a cordial “I have wine, beer and cannabis” and recounted his many days and couple of nights on the Maidan in 2014, to which he commuted from the south-eastern city of Dnipro, now under Russian bombardment. “I saw head of Ukraine’s Microsoft on Maidan. There were many older people,” he said.

Ukrainian doesn’t have articles of grammar, so Ukrainians often omit them in English, including the “the” in their country’s former name, The Ukraine. “I still translate from Russian to Ukrainian to English,” admitted Kirill, who was raised speaking Russian, as were a third of his compatriots, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, part of Ukraine’s long tradition of being bilingual, trilingual or quadrilingual. Middle class Ukrainians often speak some or decent English, which they start studying in high school and continue while listening to rock. Kirill is a fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival, to which he was introduced by his father on cassette tape.

Kirill, a television commercial director, participated in both the Orange and Maidan Revolutions, of 2004 and 2014, respecitvely. photo: D. Blair
“There were even babushkas,” grandmothers in Ukrainian and Russian but also Yiddish, added Alena, Kirill’s girlfriend, who is in her early 20s, paints and is studying web design but could side hustle modeling. There were also priests, doctors, lawyers, teachers and entrepreneurs, although the vast majority were young people, not as many women as men, workers and students (including high schoolers), nationalists and anarchists, skinheads and hipsters.

Ukraine has a large cohort of tattooed-pierced, who wear their story on their skin: men with significant neck or face work, often referencing girlfriends, women with colorful “sleeve” murals and multiple piercings. A 40-something cashier at a small supermarket near where I lived for six weeks in Lviv, who had a ready smile when ringing me up, had a Chinese character on her neck.

“It was like a big family,” I was told by Artur, 22, whom I met on the Maidan six days later. Artur is a graphic designer, skater and fan of all things Californian, including the spiky hairstyle he sports. After two weeks battling baton-wielding police, the Maidan protestors settled into a few months of occupation, punctuated by marches, rallies and more police attacks. “There were big pots of tea cooking everywhere, people playing football, playing music, discussing politics, which I did not understand,” Artur explained, “I was only 14.”

“Then fighting started again. Yanukovych started shooting people. That really shocked us. We weren’t used to Ukrainians killing Ukrainians. That building was set on fire,” he said, pointing at a government office which protestors occupied and turned into a community center. “They restored it last year. Then Russia invaded Crimea.”

“Before Maidan, there was no Ukraine. After Maidan, there is a real Ukraine,” Artur concluded. “Most Ukrainians had friends on Maidan. Everyone knew we were no longer part of Russia, and we were a real country, a real democracy.”

It was called the Maidan Revolution or Euro-Maidan Revolution, because protestors gathered on the Maidan on November 21st, 2013, the very day Yanukovych cancelled Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the European Union in order to pivot to Russia, and they flew E.U. flags. The call to protest on the Maidan was first made by an Afghan-Ukrainian journalist, Mustafa Masi Nayyem, in a heartfelt Facebook post, which he closed with “Likes do not count.” After the killings, it became known as the Revolution of Dignity or simply the Revolution.

I saw photos of the martyred Maidanites on the fence of the National Art Museum. Called the “Heavenly Hundred,” they were a near even mix of youth and middle aged, working class and intellectual, albeit over 95% men.

Ukraine already had three democracy movements or revolutions, as they like to call them. The Granite Revolution of 1991 helped get out the 90% vote to secede from the Soviet Union. The less successful Ukraine Without Kuchma tried to oust Leonid Kuchma, the corrupt ex-communist, but he remained president until 2005, when he declined to stand for a third term. The 2004 Orange Revolution started after Yanukovych or his cronies tried to poison his opponent and steal the election but were stopped by Ukraine’s supreme court as well as the protests.

Street musicians playing in front of the opera house, Lviv, Ukraine. photo: D. Blair
Kirill also participated in the Orange Revolution, when he was 16, which also involved fighting the police and camping on the Maidan in winter, but “It was not same,” he said.

Ukrainians continued to use mostly Russian in school, watch Russian television, and support Russophile candidates, including Yanukovych, whom they elected president in 2010, fair and square, even though he was a convicted criminal and notoriously corrupt—his son, a dentist, was one of the country's richest men. But Ukrainian politicians were often mired in corruption scandals; Ukrainians are understanding; and Yanukovych reinvented himself by hiring a hot-shot political consultant for a decade. That would be Paul Manafort, eventually Donald Trump’s campaign manager, a Russia security risk and a convicted fraudster.

“We have victim mentality from so much suffering,” Kirill told me, referring to Ukraine’s annihilation by the Germans during World War Two, when six and a half million people died, about a fifth of the population, but also by the Soviets. Nine million Ukrainians and perhaps many more died during the Russian Civil War (1917-22), the Great Terror (1936-38), and the Holodomor, when Soviet authorities starved to death about four million people to punish supposed counter-revolutionaries. Denied to this day by some Russians and Russophiles, the forced famine of 1932 to ’33 had two more iterations, in 1945 and ‘47, I was surprised to learn from a young intellectual I met working in a Lviv coffeeshop, Andrii.

“After Maidan, all that changes,” Kirill said, his voice rising slightly. “We understand we can change our life, and our life is in our hands. It is not what some people do to us—we can do what we want!” No wonder Putin was petrified.

As I pondered their incredible achievement on the Maidan, I recalled that many Ukrainians revere Stepan Bandera, a 1940s-era independence fighter and the leader of the more violent wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who is controversial but widely considered Ukraine's political founding father.

“Bandera? We love him,” replied Kirill, the first Ukrainian with whom I felt comfortable enough to ask about him, which precipitated an argument. As the son of a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor, I was painfully aware that some O.U.N. members had mass murdered Jews, Poles and Russians, the kernel of truth in Putin’s “Ukraine is controlled by Nazis” conspiracy theory. In fact, O.U.N. members brazenly slaughtered a few thousand Jews right on the streets of Lviv, some not far from where Kirill and I were sitting, the day the German Army entered the city, June 30th, 1941.

Kirill and I parted even closer friends, however, able to discuss difficult subjects. The genocideers numbered around 12,000, I later learned, while almost seven million Ukrainians were in the Red Army fighting the Nazis, a ratio of almost 600 to one. Two and half million of them died.

Contradicting another Russian conspiracy theory—that "Ukraine is not a real country and never existed”—they've been fighting for independence since the end of World War One, over a century ago, when they declared a state. Unfortunately, World War One morphed into the Russian Civil War, which swamped Ukraine in a ferocious free-for-all between the nationalists, czarists, anarchists, peasants and three foreign armies as well as the communists, who had to invade three times and use extreme violence to prevail (for this author's survey of that history go here).

The 'Heavenly Hundred' martyrs of the Maidan, shown here, were mostly shot by rooftop snipers. photo: D. Blair
Given that sanguineous, two-part slaughter and then the Holodomor, the Great Terror and World War Two, 1914 to ‘45 in Ukraine was the bloodiest period in one of the bloodiest regions in history. In a desperate bid to carve out a country, the O.U.N. planned to expel the Soviets by siding with the Nazis, on whom they would eventually turn, while some members murdered Jews, Poles and Russians, in keeping with the eliminationist nationalism then popular across Europe.

As the war's outcome became obvious, however, much of the O.U.N. had a change of heart. Driven by a rank and file devastated by fascism, totalitarianism and the resulting wars, the leadership whitewashed that history and liberalized their platform, while their guerrillas kept fighting the Soviets into the 1950s. After the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the O.U.N. reemerged, supported right-wing parties, and remained central to Ukrainian culture, including through songs, street names and posters celebrating Bandera. Indeed, their greeting, “Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava,” glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes, is still used, and the army made it their official salutation in 2018.

Nevertheless, after the fall of the wall, when hard-right parties became popular across Eastern Europe, not much in Ukraine. In fact, only the Svoboda party passed the required five percent vote, and only in 2012, to take seats in the Rada, or parliament, a half mile from the Maidan. Although Svoboda has a Nazi-like insignia and started as an extreme ultranationalist party, it moderated some of its positions by then and won 38 seats, eight percent of the Rada.

“There were not that many on Maidan who were extremists,” Artur told me. “And they were not that extreme, like extremists in U.S. or Germany. I know one.” Ukrainians often have friends across ideological divides, which can be fungible, I learned, and some O.U.N. officials were friends with, married to, or themselves Jews.

There were a few neo-Nazi skinheads on the Maidan, mostly part of the punk movement popular across the ex-Soviet bloc for its ability to express anger. The founders of Right Sector, a hard-right party, met on the Maidan, where they helped lead its defense against the police. Republican Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, visited the Maidan and met with Svoboda and Right Sector leaders—Nuland famously handing out cookies. Although Nuland was supposedly managing American manipulation of the Maidan, the scandal surrounding her leaked phone call was mostly about her saying, “Fuck the E.U.,” and wanting to work around the institution so beloved on the Maidan.

Despite the Maidan’s diverse and vocal right-wing, however, they were vastly outnumbered and overshadowed by its liberals, leftists and anarchists, which is a powerful faction in Ukraine, one of the few countries where anarchists have mounted major parties or armies. Indeed, Svoboda lost all of its seats in the fall 2014 elections, despite its high-profile participation on the Maidan.

“There were a lot of poets on Maidan,” interjected Roman, Artur’s friend and fellow skater, who hadn’t said much until then. There were also many hippies, replete with long hair and colorful clothing, a movement dating to the late-‘60s in Ukraine, especially in Lviv.

During the Soviet dark ages, Lviv’s hippies lived underground, sometimes literally. They hid out in Lichakiv, the enormous cemetery for World War One soldiers but also politicians, authors and artists, who were often honored with large tombs and sculptures. I toured Lichakiv with Yarema, a photographer and artist with a gentle manner and shoulder-length hair, who wanted his photo taken next to the tomb of the sculptor Mykhailo Dzyndra, with its impressive abstract piece. Lviv’s most famous son is arguably Leopold Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), a respected writer on Ukrainian and Jewish life as well as romance and eroticism (his name was borrowed for “masochism,” oddly enough, considering the longsuffering Ukrainians), but he is buried in Germany.

Yarema, a photographer and artist, at the tomb of the sculptor Mykhailo Dzyndra, Lviv's Lichakiv cemetery. photo: D. Blair
Yarema and I dined at the nearby Jerusalem, one of two Jewish restaurants in Lviv, which was almost a third Jewish until 1942, on a tasty mushroom-barley soup and gefilte fish, served by an interesting woman of color. I thought she might be Roma, given Jews and Roma sometimes ally on the edge of European societies, but Yarema learned her mother is Ukrainian and father Nigerian.

Yarema appears younger than his 31 years but has had gallery shows, teaches life drawing, does web development and carpentry, and recently produced a “jam festival” with friends, cooking kettles of fruit over a bonfire at his family’s run-down property outside Lviv, which he’s fixing into a small artists’ retreat.

Lviv’s hippie history was also recounted to me by Bhodan, a 24-year-old artist and illustrator, who has read Jack Kerouac and Carlos Castaneda but also Amnesia.in.ua, a Ukrainian website run by “enthusiastic ethnologists,” and discussed it with his elders, like the director of Lviv’s Artists Guild.

Lviv had its first music festival after glasnost in 1989, Chevrona Ruta, named for a popular love song, which featured punk, pop and communist-era acts, and the city became known for them. A well-respected jazz festival, originally called Alfa, now Leopolis, has been mounted every June since 2011, although this year’s was postponed “until immediately after victory,” according to its website. There are some great local jazz players, notably pianist Igor Yusupov.

The hippies took over Virmenka Street, in Lviv’s closed-to-cars Old Town, where they still preside in cafes like the homey Facet, which fills the street with tables in summer, or the massive, multi-roomed Dzyga, built into the city’s mediaeval walls and now one of its premier jazz venues and art galleries as well as cafes. Yarema had a show there of photos from his Turkey road trip. Hippies also started going to the Carpathian Mountains, 250 miles south of Lviv, especially a waterfall called Shypit, meaning to whisper, “to camp out, play music and run around naked,” according to Bhodan, who hitchhiked there with his girlfriend a few years ago, for the summer solstice celebration.

Considering the Maidan protesters' dedication to freedom and their months of street fighting, which culminated with police snipers shooting about 100 of their comrades, Yanukovych fleeing to Russia, and the Roda voting unanimously for fresh elections, they were enraged when Russia attacked Crimea on February 20th, 2014. Insignia-less and masked soldiers poured out of the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, which dates to 1772 and was being rented from Ukraine. Evidently, two pro-democracy revolutions in one decade was too much for a Kremlin turning autocratic under Putin. Crimea’s governor chose not to fight, since the state had become almost entirely Russian-speaking after the Muslim Tatars were deported to Siberia in 1944, and it had substantial autonomy from Kyiv.

Sanctions were levied and the ruble collapsed, but President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other western leaders accepted the conquest of Crimea as a real politic fait accompli. Citing its Russian-speaking population and Russia's lingering superpower status, they rationalized it was not worth significant protest or an escalatory arming of Ukraine, especially so soon after the disastrous Iraq War, and that stable relations would encourage Russian democracy.

The author at Lviv's memorial to those murdered by the Soviets after its 1939 invasion: 48,867 Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish citizens. photo: D. Blair
Across Ukraine, there were also Ukrainian speakers, generally older and male, who opposed the Maidan and its related protests nationwide and supported Russophile politics. Some Russian speakers claimed discrimination by a Ukraino-centric establishment, but it's hard to distinguish valid complaints from opportunism or corruption by Russian patronage and conspiracy theories. In the eastern states of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian language speakers and some paid agents started separatist rebellions in April 2014, using small squads of ragtag fighters. But they soon obtained weapons from the Russian army, which quietly invaded four months later, even as Putin categorically denied to Obama’s face any involvement with the “little green men.”

Militant Maidanites ran to the army or the paramilitary outfits organized on the Maidan by older veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War or younger Russian speakers, which belies allegations of widespread oppression. The latter were often soccer hooligans, also called “ultras,” or, to a lesser degree, white nationalists or punk intellectuals. The first commander of the now notorious-famous Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky, had a degree in history and decade experience organizing those three groups. The Azov debuted as a lightly-armed militia to oppose the separatists threatening Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city and next to Russia, but came of age in the large city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea, off the Black Sea, hence their name. After Ukrainian Army units in Mariupol proved poorly equipped and commanded, Biletsky led his fighters south and defeated separatists in open battle, in the summer of 2014.

More pacifist Maidanites often supported their friends and relatives who were fighting with supplies, equipment, medical or cyber services, or money. A journalist, Miriam Dragina, started a flea market, Kyiv Market, specifically to donate its profits to the army, which recalls the old joke: What if the library got funding and the army had to do a bake sale? Some simply bought sport rifles and drove to the front. The Azov and other independent brigades were integrated into army command by the end of 2014, but the war is still a very popular, anti-imperialist insurgency, much like the American Revolutionary War or Vietnam-America War, involving people from all walks of life and political persuasions. Almost everyone I met was helping supply a unit with food, automobiles, ammunition and more.

Another testament to Ukrainian democracy is the 2019 election of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish—as were two of Ukraine’s six other presidents—in a landslide 73% of the vote, due to his anti-corruption stance but also charmed life-follows-art story. Four years earlier, the accomplished comic, actor, writer, dancer and producer had created and starred in a hit television series, a combination sit-com and political satire with surrealist touches, “Servant of the People” (2015-19, available on Netflix). Zelensky plays a bumbling high school history teacher, living at home with his taxi-driving father and professor mother, whose students film him ranting against corruption. After it goes viral, they file the papers for his presidential run, which everyone regards as a joke until—spoiler alert—he wins and takes on the establishment with the help of family and friends.

Also appointing friends as ministers, the real-life President Zelensky, whose political party is called Servant of the People, had a shaky start. Despite successes countering corruption, he was accused of nepotism and favoring the oligarchs backing his large media company, and he made egregious accusations against his predecessor, which earned him low approval ratings. Doing his fictional character one better, however, Zelensky matured into a charismatic commander who refused to flee, rallied his constituents amid catastrophe, staved off defeat, and assumed a starring role in the ancient contest between democracy and fascism.

Another democratic indicator is that the ultranationalists haven’t held a Rada seat since 2019, when Biletsky lost his, and Zhan Beleniuk became its first African-Ukrainian representative. A wrestler who took gold at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Beleniuk was number ten on the list for the Servant of the People party, which won 125 seats. The Azov, meanwhile, received funding from a Jewish oligarch, sacked a commander for antisemitic speech, and accepted Jewish fighters. Most importantly, they’re fighting to defend Ukraine against an imperialist invader committing genocide.

Oksana, who works as a recruiter for the Georgian Brigade, takes a selfie in front of a destroyed Russian tank in Lviv's Old Town. photo: D. Blair
Genocide, as defined by the United Nations, is the attempt to eliminate a culture, language or nation as well as people. Russian intentions are clear, from their officials' overt references—“Ukraine is not a country”—to military actions: the bombing of civilian infrastructure and cultural institutions, the destruction of monuments, including to the Holodomor, the use of rape as a weapon of war, the deportation of children and young women into Russia to be Russified and estranged from their families, and the sadistic torture of civilians, using amputation and castration.

No wonder the Azov enjoy nationwide adulation, notably the big banners honoring the “Azovstal Defenders” in downtown Kyiv, Lviv and other cities, for their second defense of Mariupol, from March 1st to May 20th, 2022, when they fought the Russians to the death.

“They are like gods!” I was told by Oksana, an effervescent woman of about 22, whom I met in Lviv, after offering to take her selfie in front of the city’s display of destroyed Russian tanks. Oksana studied computer programming but much prefers working as a recruiter for the Georgian Brigade.

The Stalingrad-like siege of Mariupol destroyed or damaged over 90% of the city’s structures and may have killed up to 85,000 civilians, according to recent reports, including almost 600 sheltering in a theater marked “children” in large letters on March 24th. About 3,000 fighters, some foreign, and 1,000 civilians, including children, retreated to the massive, Cold-War-era bomb shelters beneath the city-sized Azovstal steel works, which is owned by a Muslim-Ukrainian oligarch. As gangrene, black mold and starvation set in, under constant bombardment, including by thermobaric bombs, with only a few helicopters flying supplies in and wounded out, 20 feet above the water to evade Russian radar, the mostly Azov fighters endured for 11 weeks.

Mariupol’s Thermopylae cum “Blade Runner” cum reality TV show was watched by many Ukrainians on videos uploaded thru the Starlink satellite system, which was largely donated by Elon Musk and is also essential for operating drones and artillery. The siege ended when the surviving defenders received safe passage in exchange for a few high-profile Russian prisoners, although 53 Azov were murdered in a Donetsk P.O.W. camp on July 28th. They were killed by Ukrainian shelling, according to Russian officials.

“How did you grow up so healthy in such an environment?” I asked Kirill, the next time we hung out. “Was your father an optimist?” “Yes,” he said. “He was good man, nice man. He liked rock music and was devout Christian. And he was Jewish.” Kirill only learned that fact after his father died and, just last year, that his mother is as well, a secret they kept iron clad due to Soviet and Ukrainian antisemitism.

Nevertheless, the secret Jewish parent or grandparent story is fairly common in Ukraine. I met many Ukrainians with Jewish heritage, and Kirill once joked, “Half of Lviv is half Jewish.” And Jews date to the eighth century, when the elites of the Khazar Empire converted to Judaism, over a century before the birth of either Ukrainian or Russian culture. Despite the many gruesome pogroms—by the Cossacks in the 17th century, which included extensive rape, the czarists in 1920, and the Nazi genocide of one and a half million Ukrainian Jews—and today’s small number of publicly professing Jews, about half a percent, they remained somewhat integrated and represented throughout the country. Indeed, Ukraine still has Europe’s second largest Jewish population: coming after Poland before World War Two, now following France.

A troupe of dancers proved the Maidan was a place of freedom of expression, despite the nearby war. photo: D. Grosser
President Zelensky, 45, hails from a modest city in central Ukraine and studied law before going into entertainment. Natan Khazin, a 50-ish rabbi from Odessa, Ukraine’s third largest city and historically Jewish, was on the Maidan and helped its fighters with his experience in the Israel Defense Forces. Khazin even calls himself a “Zhido-Bandera,” a Jewish follower of Stepan Bandera. Nayyem, the Maidan organizer of Afghan extraction, married a Jewish woman and is raising his children Jewish. Meanwhile, the annual number of antisemitic incidents in Ukraine is often less than in France or England.

As Dirk and I walk out on the Maidan that glorious September 11th morning, I am struck by its large, open space but also strange structures, like the glass domes or comedic sculptures at its north end, where we entered, or the tall column capped by a figure in the distance. Despite the storm clouds, a wan sun shines, people are smiling, and there’s an eerie peace.

Unbeknownst to us on the Maidan at that moment, 250 miles to the east, around Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian Davids are on the march. Indeed, they retook more territory in days than the Russian Goliath conquered in months, driving the invaders into a panicked retreat and to abandon immense amounts of equipment and ammunition. President Zelensky announces this battlefield success that very evening, in his nightly national address, the first good news Ukrainians have heard since their storied defense of Kyiv, six months earlier.

“They used special forces, drones and ‘maneuverable warfare’ to get behind the Russians and spook them into running,” a military analyst on CNN explained on September 13th, although he forgot to mention their masterful military feint. For weeks, President Zelensky had been talking up a counterattack in the south on Kherson, the only regional capitol conquered in Russia’s most recent invasion, which tricked them into withdrawing troops from the north near Kharkiv. Already known as a brave and funny commander in chief, Zelensky was proving to be a brilliant one.

“We love our president,” Alena had told me with a smile, which suggested a romantic-sexual side to national struggle.

Dirk and I thread our way across the six lanes of Khreshchatyk Avenue, Kyiv’s main shopping street, which intersects the Maidan, since we neglected to notice the pedestrian tunnel for that purpose. We ascend the Maidan’s block-wide steps and approach its centerpiece, the gold-plated column crowned by Berehynia, the Slavic fertility goddess. Only then do we see, in the middle of the square’s proscenium, the dance troupe. It consists of a dozen women, including one of color (Ukraine has a substantial Roma population as well as some African immigrants), two men and a camera crew. Between takes of turning, jumping and gesticulating, the dancers goof off and giggle, although still well aware of the fierce battles raging five hours drive east or south. Each one probably has a cousin or friend under shellfire, at the front or already in the earth.

Kyiv seems normal, except for the passport control on the roads entering town and at the train station, the sandbags and plywood around important buildings and statues, the machine gun nests at official entrances, and the occasional air raid sirens, which oblige museums to evacuate, but everyone else ignores. People laugh in the streets, and the restaurants are full—up to a 30-minute wait at the most popular—but few openly celebrated Zelensky’s announcement of battlefield success on September 11th, as was reported in the American press. Almost everyone I met was still nervous, some were traumatized, and a few were having panic attacks.

Filmmaker/performance artist Dirk Grosser (right) interviews a survivor of Russian war crimes with translator Nadia (standing) in Bucha, north of Kyiv. photo: D. Blair
Fifteen miles north of the Maidan is Bucha, whose residents reported the first Russian war crimes spree. Bucha bore the brunt of Russian bloodlust because it was where their once-vaunted armor was ambushed by Ukrainian regulars but also townspeople tossing Molotov cocktails. The Ukrainians destroyed up to a dozen tanks and vehicles which triggered a 25-mile-long military traffic jam and ruined Putin’s plans for a one-week war. Amazingly, the Russian soldiers carried dress uniforms for a victory parade, while many officers booked reservations at Kyiv’s premier hotels and restaurants.

Dirk Grosser is of medium height, strong build and open demeanor. He favors plaid shirts and hiking boots, perhaps in deference to his practical people from the once-East German city of Dresden, where he lives in a three-story townhouse he renovated himself. On our deluge drive from Lviv to Kyiv, Dirk told me how he raced all night from Germany to Ukraine, after a late start due to house guests, to attend a seminar he organized about what artists should do during a war. A performance artist and filmmaker by profession, Dirk started doing small conferences in this vein after learning some of his leftist friends supported the Russian invasion. In addition, he was shooting a related documentary, tentatively titled “Exile”.

Amazed by Dirk’s ambition and hard work as well as interested in the cause, I volunteered to production assist: find translators, do second camera and the like. Three days after our first Maidan visit, we drove the M-07 north to the once-bucolic commuter town of Bucha. We set up next to its verdant central walkway in the outdoor tables of a fast-food joint, which had umbrellas to ward off the light rain.

Every person we asked had had harrowing experiences. “I was in a basement for weeks,” a towheaded, ten-year-old boy, riding around on his scooter, told us, “I was very scared.” After calling his mother on his smart phone, which almost all middleclass kids have, he said, “She doesn’t want me filmed.”

Between wiping her eyes, a thin, expressive, perhaps 50-year-old Roma woman named Nadia told us about the rapes, including of underage girls, the men trying to remove their military tattoos, a death sentence under Russian occupation, the summary executions, which sometimes included torture or amputation, and the often audible screaming. The interviews were conducted in Ukrainian, which neither Dirk nor I understand, but our translator, an aid organizer from Kyiv also named Nadia, provided periodic summaries in English. At the end of the interview, most of us were crying, and we all hugged Bucha Nadia.

Bucha’s streets were littered with bodies for weeks, since the residents were too fearful to collect them. The kill count now exceeds 450, almost 2% of the population but will probably go much higher. Mass graves full of civilians, some showing signs of torture, amputation and even castration, have been uncovered in the liberated towns around Kharkiv like Izium.

“We were given orders to kill everyone we see,” a Russian soldier told his girlfriend by phone from Bucha, according to call transcripts published by the New York Times on September 28th.

Evidently, the Kremlin intends to terrorize the Ukrainians into submission, including the ethnic Russians they're supposedly saving, and escape recrimination through propaganda and conspiracy theories. This strategy will work, they assume, by virtue of their long expertise with such subterfuges but also the current popularity of conspiracism worldwide and cyberspace's capacity for disinformation. Hence, the Russians keep claiming they're fighting Nazis, even as they become like Nazis. Despite the obvious hypocrisy, their repetition of big lies allows them to not only dodge the bad press but transfer it to their enemies.

A colorful children's synagogue on the edge of Babyn Yar, where Nazis killed 90,000 Kyiv Jews and many others, is part of the Ukrainian attempt to use art to address suffering. photo: D. Blair
As if on cue, when the Bucha story broke on April 1st, Russian diplomats and media figures began accusing the Ukrainians of lying and fabricating evidence, using actors, ketchup and Photoshop, a gaslighting calumny that many Russians and Russophiles continue to repeat ad nauseam today.

“When Bucha happened, we were all crying,” I was told by Marina, a 20-something woman who works in the arts, including promoting her reserved painter boyfriend, and has an irrepressible laugh. “But we can’t stay that way. If we let them depress us, they will win.” Many Ukrainians told me they were depressed for a week or a month after February 24th but were energized by friends, the exigencies of war or Ukraine’s stoic tradition.

Marina, whom I met in Lviv but is also a refugee from Dnipro, which is half way between Kharkiv and Kherson and was being shelled as we spoke, just returned from the U.S., where she visited her mother in Minneapolis and could have applied for refugee status. “I saw only a few Ukrainian flags or signs of solidarity,” she said. “At a club, the singer said she wanted to dedicate the next song to those who have suffered. I thought she meant us, but she was referring to George Floyd.” Marina also spends all her earnings to support Ukraine’s economy.

“Some people say this being happy is wrong,” Kirill told me. “But my friends who are soldiers say, ‘We have to protect this. You must do your normal life because we are in stress, and sometimes we need to go enjoy this.’” The Ukrainians perfected this philosophy, evidently, over a century of being butchered mercilessly by the Soviets, Germans and now Russians.

“Some people outside the Maidan were angry with us, saying, ‘It was like a festival, not a protest,’” said the Ukrainian popstar Ruslana Lyzhychko in “Winter on Fire” (2015), an excellent documentary about the Maidan Revolution (available on Netflix). Ruslana, as she is known, was also a center-right Rada representative but fell in love with the kids of Maidan and became their celebrity spokesperson.

As the Maidan dancers prance and gambol across Ukraine’s main stage, with no official minders and only Dirk, myself and four or five others watching or filming, I realize I’m witnessing a minor miracle: Ukrainians expressing freedom, fancy and joy in the shadow of a gruesome, genocidal war. When they take a water break, however, I continue my exploration and wander up the steps to Berehynia, standing resplendent in the slight sun, gold leaf gleaming off her column and the foliage she holds above her head.

That’s when I notice, behind Berehynia’s column, the art show: two dozen, ten-foot-tall, artistic iron easels with pages from a graphic novel, "Dad" by Oleksandr Komiakhov, I find out by Google Translating a photo of the credit. The first page surprises me. It is a man and woman seemingly straight from the Burning Man festival: him heavily bearded, wearing a motorcycle helmet and holding a baseball bat; her with pierced lips and a furry cat hat and cradling a box of Molotov cocktails.

“If these are the mythical heroes of Ukraine,” I think, or something along those lines, “They really have achieved a certain free speech absolutism, and freedom in general, a democracy which enshrines art and ideas, which many Ukrainians have been enjoying for almost a decade… Many of the kids of Maidan must be in government by now.”

A mohawked, middleaged soldier checks his phone in front of St. Michael's Cathedral. D. Blair
“They are all phonies, patsies and spies!” would the rebuttal of many Russophiles and hard rightwingers but also some leftists, including friends of mine. Sandy Sanders, a neighbor, artist and seemingly decent guy, whom I’ve known for 20 years, denounced one of my heartfelt Facebook posts from Ukraine by insisting the Maidan Revolution was a “U.S.-financed coup” and the separatist struggle in the Donbas was a “neo-Nazi civil war.” Since he doesn’t seem like a Machiavellian manipulator, Sandy must be utterly unaware that he’s parroting Putin’s conspiracy theories, that people power is organic and hard to manipulate, or that fascist societies can't be paragons of liberty.

In fact, there’s precious little police presence in Ukraine, although martial law was declared on day one and they’re in a duel to the death with an adversary thrice their size and with a long resume of atrocity and spy craft. In all of downtown Lviv, I saw only two soldiers standing guard (the 24-hour sentries at the central bank), while the nationwide curfew of 11 p.m., widely adhered to by Ukrainians, was barely enforced. On my many walks home at midnight or later, I saw few police patrols and no stops.

Five days after my first Maidan visit, I was stopped by a soldier who saw me take a selfie near a trainyard and demanded my phone and passport. I braced myself. “There is still a lot of corruption,” a few Ukrainians had warned me. Fifteen minutes later, however, I was chatting amicably in English with his commanding officer, who asked me to delete the photo and dismissed me with “Have a fun visit to Kyiv.”

Also defending Ukraine from Russian espionage is their “safe city” system, using surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence, Kirill told me. Amazingly, at the start of the war, Ukrainian cyber security held off the onslaught of Russia’s notorious hacker army. Others referred to their long, painful learning curve with Kremlin agents. “The K.G.B. killed my grandfather,” a long-haired Lviv waiter told me with a laugh, “It’s a sad story.”

As I review the Maidan’s graphic novel, I am struck by the quality of Komiakhov’s drawings and visual storytelling but also that I’ll need a translator to make sense of it, so I circle back to Berehynia. Sitting next to her majestic column, surveying her sacred domain, the quarter-mile oval of Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, the name it was given after the 1991 Granite Revolution, I think about what Kirill, Artur and the others said, or I have read or viewed. Bit by bit, I begin to imagine how the Maidan looked eight years ago: teaming with tens of thousands of demonstrators—up to a million on some marches—waving signs and E.U. flags and chanting, “Ukraine is part of Europe!” “Together to the end!” and, after the police attacks, “Convict out!” directly at Yanukovych.

They also carried plastic sheets for the torrential rains. Within a few weeks, that plastic was woven into a sea of tents, barricades, lean-tos and kitchens, inhabited by a vast cross-section of Ukrainians, from tech workers and academics to dirty, young men carrying bats. One young man told me his dad went to the Maidan because “he always had to be in middle of everything,” while another said his dad promised to take him, but his mother intervened—he was only 14. The protesters discussed and debated, played guitars and drums, and DJed and danced, even though there was almost no alcohol on the Maidan. When temperatures plummeted and snow blanketed the vast encampment, they gathered around 50-gallon-drum fires.

As I ponder this critical history, about which I knew little before entering Ukraine on August 23rd (its Independence Day from the Soviet Union, coincidentally), a moving moment from the Maidan Revolution—one I just learned about from the documentary “Fire in Winter”—comes to mind.

A street poster from Lviv is an example of the excellent fine and graphic art about the war in the streets, galleries and museums of Ukraine. illo: #Neivanmade
After two weeks of protests, the Berkut riot police tried to clear the Maidan a second time. Their first attempt, on November 30th, 2013, merely shocked the protestors, who fought back fiercely or called their parents, some of whom joined them on the Maidan. The night of December 10th would be different, they realized, as they watched police buses pull up on Khreshchatyk Avenue and spit out hundreds of officers with helmets, shields and cement truncheons. As the women went to the proscenium for protection, some of the men—some wearing helmets, many carrying bats—went to face the Berkut. Meanwhile, a lone figure sprinted away, a theology student named Ivan Sydor.

As it happened, the official bell ringer for the 11th century Cathedral of St. Michael, on the hill north of the Maidan, was Sydor. Undoubtedly gasping for breath as he topped the belfry stairs around 1 a.m., he began ringing St. Michael’s bells furiously, as had his forbears during the Mongol invasion. Sydor rang for four hours and roused thousands, who ran to the Maidan, surrounded the Berkut and scared them off.

Thinking about Sydor’s desperate appeal, the Kyivers’ stalwart response and the bravery of the Maidan fighters, I pull my cap over my eyes, lest one of the dancers or Dirk see I’m crying.

Ukraine was much like Russia in the 1990s, devastated by “perestroika," the switch from central planning to a market economy, and plagued by bribery, mafias, assassinations and oligarchs, whose acquisition of immense wealth was inevitable. Whoever learned the tricks of post-Soviet capitalism first, from using armed gangs to seize industries to leveraging loans, manipulating laws or simply providing a decent product or service, made millions or billions. As Russia kept turning more authoritarian, corrupt and kleptocratic, however, Ukraine had three successful democratic revolutions, each of which somewhat increased political representation and economic opportunity and decreased corruption but especially the last.

As well as being pro -democracy and -Europe and anti -corruption and -authoritarian, the Maidan Revolution was sophisticated and centrist enough to galvanize a majority of Ukrainians. Indeed, it stimulated civic responsibility and cultural creativity, from governmental reform and motivated soldiers to music, fashion and art, and it unified Ukraine’s left, right and center. So much so, I took to remarking, “The Maidan is where Ukrainians fell in love with each other,” often to approving nods from Ukrainians.

In addition to organizing seminars and shooting a documentary in Ukraine, Dirk planned a performance piece. He enacted it on September 17th, in the middle of the Maidan, on the same spot graced by the dancers, which was dry, since it hadn’t rained for over a day. As I filmed, Dirk arranged on the ground 20 posters for the “Kunst Krieg” (“Art in War”) conference he arranged a month earlier in Berlin, each poster emblazoned with the word “cancelled,” since that’s what happened, for reasons he didn’t fully explain. Then he began calling German galleries to reschedule the conference.

“You remember the Maidan Revolution, eight years ago? I am standing on Maidan Square right now!” he tells them before asking if they can host a one-session conference on artists and the Russo-Ukrainian war. After chatting with a baritone gallery owner, Dirk grins at me, shouts something unintelligible, and starts cleaning up. It takes him three trips to haul away the paving stones he used to hold his posters down in the autumn breeze and, eight years ago, the kids of Maidan lobbed at police.

As I pack up the camera tripod, sliding its legs together, it dawns on me: “I take the train to Lviv tomorrow, so this is my last time on the Maidan.” I look around: Berehynia smiling down from her column, the multi-colored pigeons (black, white and mottled), the smattering of Kyivers going about their day, and the regulars, the yellow-blue wrist-band vendors and two tourist-photo hustlers, one wearing a cartoon horse outfit, the other covered with tattoos and carrying two large, white show pigeons, to whom I nod, since I got some photos earlier.

'Meet the Kids of Maidan' continues here
Posted on Feb 11, 2023 - 07:23 PM
I’m Charlie Walker, A San Francisco Original
by Jay Randy Gordon

Poster for 'I'm Charlie Walker’ (2022). courtesy: P. Gilles
PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.

YET ANOTHER BAY AREA INDIE HAS
been picking up good reviews around the country—NY Times, Boston Herald and SF Chronicle—headed to Paramount Plus and available on many streaming platforms.

Called “I'm Charlie Walker” (2022) and starring action hero Mike Colter and the acclaimed Dylan Baker, it is a very green film. That's because it concerns when two Standard Oil tankers collided in the San Francisco Bay and dumped 800,000 gallons of crude, in January 1971, and the cleanup crews and now-well-known environmental groups which emerged to deal with it.

It is also a very Black film. Although written and directed by Patrick Gilles and produced by Mike Regen, who are white, “I'm Charlie Walker” is about a Black, former-Air Force entrepreneur, who barnstormed his way through the institutional racism — much more egregious 50 years ago than today— into a contract to clean up the beaches north of the Golden Gate Bridge and keep the peace between the mostly hippie crews and the oil men managers.

To do a thumbnail sketch of Charlie Walker, the entrepreneur who was born in Mississippi but raised and still residing in San Francisco’s new premier Black neighborhood, Bayview-Hunters Point, is a fool's errand, with yours truly as the fool, as you can see, if you skip ahead to his provocative interview below.

Suffice it to say, the film is based on his real life account, called “America is Still the Place” (2003), which he wrote while doing three years in Folsom, and the book is selling on Amazon for 35 dollars for a USED paperback, with new copies starting at $99!

The mere outline of the story is incredible—a feisty underdog overcoming racism, hippies, sex and drugs on the beach, rich white men getting their comeuppance, and, of course, everyone getting together to sing "Kumbaya" and save the planet. Director/writer Gilles was pretty brave jumping in, having come up through music videos, with only one previous feature under his belt.

That film, “Olive” (2010), which he co-wrote, directed AND shot, features Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes’s incredible wife, as well as star, and concerns a ten year-old girl with mystical powers who convinces people to appreciate life again. While a tad too metaphysical for CineSource’s reviewer, it was pretty amazing, especially having been shot on a Nokia phone.

'I'm Charlie Walker’ actor Charleston Pierce (2nd fr lft), who plays Charlie Walker's friend, and the real-life Charlie Walker (cntr), with some of the film crew. photo courtesy P. Gilles
The executive producer was Bill O’Keeffe, owner of a local commercial glass company, SaftiFirst, who also executive produced “I'm Charlie Walker”.

Playing Charlie Walker is the established actor Mike Colter, who has been cleaning up lately, including co-starring in the new "Plane" (2023) and television, "Marvel's Luke Cage" (2016-18), the Netflix hit “Jessica Jones” (2015-19) and “The Good Wife” (2011-15). He also has parts in “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) and “Men in Black 3” (both 2013), among others features.

Meanwhile, Dylan Baker, J. Edgar Hoover from “Selma” (2014), is the uptight oil man who eventually lets his hair down; the beloved local Carl Lumbly, well-known as Mark Petri from “Cagney & Lacey” (1981-88), plays one of Walker’s friends, Willie; and Steven Wiig, one of the hardest working and best bit part players in the Bay Area (“Sacred Blood”, “Yosemite” 2015, among others), renders Walker’s loyal accountant nicely; with other roles delivered beautifully by Safiya Fredericks, as Walker's Wife, and Monica Barbaro, as one of the prostitutes.

Even the Honorable Willie Brown (the former mayor of San Francisco) does a cameo as a cab driver, which he, in fact, was while studying law in the Bay Area in the ‘50s, a nice, inside joke since Charlie Walker used to drive for Brown and they remain close friends.

Aside from the above-the-line talent, the production is almost completely Bay Area. Director Gilles rented a big house on Dillon Beach, west of Petaluma, and, much as Walker did 50 years ago, “We would shoot all day and party all night in this beautiful beach house on the cliffs above the Pacific,” he told CineSource via email.

“This is a Bay Area indie film by all measures,” he continued, about the 22 day shoot. “The crew was local. Most of them worked on, or are working on, just about every project that shoots in the Bay Area. We used friends’ homes for locations, friends’ cars for period-correct vehicles, friends and family as extras and minor speaking roles.”

Mike Colter as Charlie Walker and the Honorable Willie Brown, who once drove cab, as his driver, in 'I'm Charlie Walker'. photo courtesy P. Gilles
“Our friends from Alice Radio [97.3] helped out. Sarah does the voice of the radio dispatcher/narrator. Vinnie and Uzette had on-screen roles as the 'King of the Hippies' and 'Super Hot Bar Girl,' respectively. Both my brothers Bob and John worked on the film. John's wife and kids show up. My wife and kids are in it.”

Indeed, the Monophonics, a popular local band from San Rafael, did most of the excellent period-sounding score.

Model coach and actor, Charleston Pierce, who grew up in Bayview-Hunters Point and has known Charlie his whole life, plays Charlie's friend; renowned lighting expert Bill Holshevnikoff handled lighting and cinematography; and Frank Simeone provided production and casting and appeaers on screen as one of the Tower oil men.

When the oil spill happened in 1971, Northern California’s biggest ever to-date, volunteers flocked to help. But no one was keeping tabs and when the oil company had to start paying them, that was a problem, especially since Charlie Walker was already feeding and housing many of them while trying to keep the peace.

Although the hippies didn’t believe him at first, the real-life Walker convinced them he was there to clean their beach AND get them paid, which means “we can’t have you guys roughing up oil people,” all of which provides a great, central drama for a film without gratuitous violence.

A secondary story concerns Walker putting together a paper trail to show expenditures. Some might call it embezzling or money laundering but when the Standard Oil (Tower Oil, in the movie) accountants found over $375,000 missing and Mr. Walker, in turn, "found" photos of Big Oil execs coking and whoring with the hippies, it was decided that the $375,000 was, in fact, money well spend on a job well done.

The party has arrived: (lft-rt) Dylan Baker, Steven Wiig, Mark Leslie Ford, Mike Colter and the women of the night, Hannah Rose and Monica Barbaro (far right), who recently blew up as Lt. Natasha Trace in the recent blockbuster 'Top Gun: Maverick'. photo courtesy P. Gilles
Indeed, some of it was simply creative entrepreneurialism like selling oil-tainted sand from the beach to road paving companies.

The execs cared little about West Marin, a backwater at the time, since its beaches were deemed too difficult to get trucks into and the cherry contracts all went to white truckers working between Ocean Beach and Half Moon Bay.

That the film has been cleaning up, as it were, at African-American-focused film festivals may be a testament to the paucity of good Black dramas, especially ones without murders, rap music or gangs.

Although Walker is an incredible character and the story is fantastic, it is has a few longueurs, notably the absence of dramatic foreshadowing for Walker’s secret photographing of the oil men with their hair down, which contradicts Hitchcock’s “Bomb Under the Table” principle.

There is certainly a bomb under the table when it comes to talking to Charlie Walker, who talks the talk AND walks the walk. Indeed, the film starts with an interview with the actual Walker and that footage could have run longer.

To find out more about this Bay Area icon, Mr. Walker agreed to meet me at his favorite cafe, Le Central, at 453 Bush Street in downtown San Francisco, a spot favored by literati, cognoscenti, celebrities and millionaires, of which Walker is/was all four.

When I walked in, Walker was at the tiny bar with none other than his close friend, the Honorable Willie Brown, once mayor of San Francisco (1996-2004) AND head of the California Senate (1980-'95), but also the state representative for the Western Addition when I lived there. An incredibly friendly guy, I thanked him for his service.

As we were settling into a table, in the small, low-ceilinged joint, Walker was hailing all the regulars, including San Francisco’s most famous haberdasher, Wilkes Bashford, who made Mayor Brown look so sharp, and Scott Farnsworth, Walker's favorite waiter for the last ten years, who joked that he wanted to audition for the movie and planned use shoe polish to play Charlie.

Charlie Walker, the subject and original author of his bio 'America Is Still the Place', at his favorite upscale eatery. photo D. Blair
Charlie Walker: We were number one.

CineSource: At the Harlem Film Festival?

In Austin, we were number one. In San Francisco, we were number one. Everywhere we go, we are number one. It’s a good movie.

What do you attribute that to, some sort of feeling that people are into now?

Yeah, and that nobody gets killed in the movie. You see, in all the movies we saw, they killed everybody but the audience. And people are tired of that.

It’s an uplifting story and it looks back on a fun time.

Yeah, a lot of shit went down that everyone is going to forget.

The depictions in the film of the partying, are they pretty realistic? You were working in the day—

And partying at night. 6 o’clock in the morning you had to get up.

But you were younger then and could do it?

Of course.

You were in the air force in Alaska?

Our home base in Fairbanks and then we flew reconnaissance in Korea and everywhere.

You were the only Black guy on the squad, I am guessing?

No, there were three of us.

My dad used fly on B-17s during the Second World War as an aerial photographer, scary shit.

I did aerial photography and sketching.

So you were an artist?

No, I don’t say that. I did what they taught me.

So they wanted photos and sketches, interesting. How did you segue into trucking and the cleanup thing?

Well, I did a lot of things but I decided, after I got out of the service, I wanted to be in the trucking business. I was really looking for a job driving but then I found out they didn’t let Black people into the teamsters.

Walker and his favorite waiter, Scott Farnsworth (in the mirror), about to pour a glass of wine on him. photo D. Blair
Here?

Here in San Francisco. So I went down to the Chronicle [newspaper]. The guy who was the manager and editor was man named Gilroy. I went down and said, ‘You haven’t got one Black driver, can I drive for ya’ll?’

He said, ‘No one ever came up here and asked—you are hired!’ That is how I got job, just like that.

So you have always taken the position that you are going to ask, that you are not going to be dissuaded by racism?

No, I don’t bother with it.

By the way, anything you say I will check with you.

I don’t care. Do what you want. If you ask me something I don’t want to answer, I will let you know right then and there. [Indeed, Mr. Walker made no changes to the proof CS sent him.]

I haven’t read your book but my associate Randy Gordon has [he said, 'It reads like a movie!'] and I saw the movie. I know you have a policy about being very open about anything, even illegal.

White people know everything, anyway.

You mean about Black people?

About Black people, yeah. The same attitude as during slavery, they still got it.

Really? That is your feeling? You feel the current Black Lives Matter is—

Bullshit. We have multi, multi, multi-millionaire Black people who will not come back around their own people, where they grew up, and invest.

You feel some of the responsibility is on the community to—

Yeah. Of course.

I was thinking perhaps it is more the Black Lives Matter people are a little spoiled because when you came up it was really tough.

Walker and Scott, the waiter, indulged in a running, meal-long banter, replete with racial teasing, widely considered politically-incorrect. photo D. Blair
No, it wasn’t like that. It was just that everyone knew their place, that was all.

Just because a person tells me, 'No,' that doesn’t mean the end of it with me. It might be the end of it with them but not with me.

The teamsters said, 'There was no getting in the union.'

Jack Golberg said, ‘That was bullshit.’ He was the head of the union. When I showed up, he said he had a meeting with all of them and said, ‘Don’t fuck with this guy [Walker].’ That was the end of it.

And when you were getting into the trucking and cleanup you had to do a protest. You parked your truck in front —

Right there on Leavenworth and Hyde, where they were bringing the dirt out of the tunnel for BART [subway] and wouldn’t let us work. They didn’t want Blacks on the job [although] they didn’t say it like that.

I had just gotten back from from overseas and I saw it like this: If these motherfuckers don’t want me in the union, I have been shooting at the wrong people. That’s how I feel.

We have to look at things differently. I see that today with young Blacks, they aren’t looking at it right.

What is their basic mistake would you say?

Their basic mistake is they sell drugs. Italians sold liquor and they took the money and invested it. We don’t do that. You get the money and the police come and take it.

Well, a few dealers invest. There is a guy in Oakland, Charles Cosby, the subject of ‘Cocaine Cowboys II’ [2011]. Some of these guys are entrepreneurs but they don’t have any place to do business so they go into drugs. But not many, you are right.

They are doing it wrong. There is nothing wrong with selling drugs ‘cause someone is going to buy it. If there is a market for it—no problem!

Exactly, and you yourself have been involved?

No, never sold drugs in my life. Didn’t find it necessary. When I got married, I had three daughters. I figured it like this: If I didn’t want my daughter to fuck with drugs, I didn’t want your daughter to.

I never had a taste for it. I snorted some cocaine but I wasn’t crazy about it.

I think it is overblown, to use a phrase, but a little weed—

I smoke weed, even today.

And when did you start?

When I was about 14.

Here in SF? Who was your first—

I don’t know. It was just there and I smoked some.

Walker with his old friend, the honorable Willie Brown, ex-mayor of San Francisco. photo D. Blair
You were talking about racism in San Francisco, but was San Francisco also a little more tolerant than other—

This is most racist town in California. They do not like Black people here. Chinese people don’t like us. Some don’t even speak to us.

The Black population of San Francisco has gone way down. I used to live in the Fillmore, Willie [Brown]’s old district, and they already tore down a lot of buildings but there was still a lot going on. I was able to hear some jazz, had some neighbors who were musicians. Now it is much, much less.

Look what happened. White people took our music, what little culture we had. Bands all got integrated but white bands don’t let Blacks work with them. If you don’t believe that look at the hillbillies that play music. They don’t have Black people in their bands.

There is one Black hillbilly band, I think. [Carolina Chocolate Drops]

Sure, there is always one.

There was some integration in the ‘70s, Sly and the Family Stone. What did you think about, in the ‘70s, the Black Panthers?

I knew all of them, Huey [Newton], Eldridge [Cleaver]. They never bothered me.

What were they like?

I was never friends on a social basis. I just knew them, seeing them in different places.

How did their ideas relate to your ideas?

No comparison. They wanted to fight; they didn’t want to make money. They wanted to beg. Like right now, there’s a place down the street called Glide Church. Taking Black people back a hundred years.

Because?

They feed people and expect nothing of them. I don’t want you to give me nothing. I would rather rob you than you give it to me.

That was your difference with the Panthers?

With everybody.

Well there are a few like minded, like Willie [Brown]. When did you first meet Willie?

When we were going to school around ’67. Willie Brown chose to stay out of it. He knows how to get something done, how to deal with white people. I [also] knew.

How did you learn that, from experience, your mom told you?

It is something you just learn, you don’t know how.

Was ‘I'm Charlie Walker’ the first film you were involved in? How did you enjoy that?

Yes. I thought it was humorous.

Steven Wiig, Johnson's accountant, and Mike Colter, Johnson (both seated) blowing 'gage' with the hippies, a practice the real Walker continues to this day. photo: Josie Rodriguez
I wish they had more of you in the movie. Were you on the set? As their consultant?

Yeah. Yes.

And the film turned out pretty much as you remember it?

Uh-huh, although they had to change some things around to make it appealing to white people.

Yeah? But the prostitution and drugs, that was happening —

Uh-huh, the nightlife.

And there would be hippies camped out on the beach and you would be hiring them in the morning?

Uh-huh, I got along with them.

Were they space out, drugged out? They worked?

They were cool to me. Everyone was happy because no one could get along with them but me.

Part of that working together is part of the appeal of the film?

Yeah.

But then, at the end, you kind of give it to the man, as well.

What do you mean ‘give it to the man’?

Well, you kind of blackmailed them.

That’s a white man’s vision of what I did. If I was white, you would say I am a business man. The problem with what you say is that you are white and you always look at anything we got we beat it out of them.

But that is the question, I was wondering when you were going to ask that. How do you beat something out of someone when you are doing business with them? It is a business deal, right?

I was under the impression from the movie that you had some documents on them—

Yeah, but that’s doing business. That’s the American way. That is all that is, the American business way. When a guy’s got you by your nuts and he wants something, he just reminds you of it. Then he gets what he wants.

All the American businesses do it like that but when Black people do it, they want to make you into a criminal. 'You beat him, didn’t you?' Hell no! I did a business deal with him.

I don’t remember the details from the film but my impression was—

I know what your impression was but I am just telling you, it was business deal. Strange of you to take that view.

Maybe I am misremembering the film.

It is not that. It is just your innate opinion of Black people.

I grew up in Harlem so—

Don’t make no difference: You are white.

That’s what a lot of people try to tell me.

You act like a white man, you look like a white man.

I know but having grown up on the streets, been mugged 20 times, dealt drugs—

But you never stopped being a white.

That is true, that’s true. But being white, that is the genetics of it. Then there is the culture and having had some of the culture of—

That is American culture, not the culture of one human being to another.

Color is a climatic thing, that is all. If you moved to Africa today, in the hot sun, and have a baby, he is not going to be as white as you.

I would hope I would have an African wife.

If you had a white wife, the baby would look different than both of you. The sun would do that, a climatic condition.

OK. So any other movie projects on the horizon?

I am writing another book.

You want to tell me a little about it?

[It’s titled] ‘The Perfect White Man’.

Is it novel?

Just like the other book.

Autobiography?

It was based on the truth but it was not an autobiography, it was about that incident, the oil spill.

This one will about the perfect white man. Like being here with you. You display a shady view of Black people. Either you don’t understand them or it is just the way you are.

OK. I was under the impression that there was some illegal activity by you depicted in the film.

It speaks for itself. Pat [Patrick Gilles, the director/writer] did a great job—

Of bringing your story to the screen? So none of his adjustments, his liberties—you’re happy with what he did?

He’s not like you or most white people. He takes it on face value of what it is I did. He’s a very, very intelligent and smooth man. But you got that everywhere. It makes no difference that he is white.

Any discussion of turning your new book into film?

I got someone who wants to buy it already.

What do you think of the general filmmaking scene in San Francisco?

I think that every Black [character] I see in movies is bullshit.

You have to look at what America is about. They never talk about that. Slavery set them up pretty good. You got people for 300 years with no damn nothing, then you let them out of slavery and don’t give them none of the proceeds and tell them, ‘Now go get your own.’

That is why I always say, ‘Slavery ain’t over.’ That is why there are so many problems. White people don’t want to admit how wrong they were and what to do about it. They think that they might have to give too much money.

What is too much money? They give other people money. [The Germans] gave the Jews money. They gave the Filipinos money, the Japanese did. But it is too good for Black people. You know what I mean?

Yeah, sure. That is pretty much central to the Black Lives Matter and some of the themes they are exploring.

No. You are putting it in another frame. I was willing to give my life for this country and to come to back to a country that says, just because you are Black, you can’t work, that’s a real wrong.

Sure.

So I think people are going to have to start to re-assess what this country is really about and where we fit in. White people will say I am mad about it but I ain’t mad. The reality is: That is the reality.

White people say everything belongs to them and they are right but when are they going to share it? They didn’t get there by themselves.

That is like having a wife and you get a million dollars and she was there taking care of the kids. Is any of that hers when you decide to get another woman?

Why, then, do you use the title for your book ‘America Is Still The Place’?

Cause it ain’t changed!

But that [title] sounds positive.

It is positive! It ain’t changed! America is still the place.

But it sounds like you are saying that America is still the BEST place.

It might say that to you. You may interpret it like that, that’s your right. But I don’t look at it that way.

But looking at the movie [it seems that way]. And that was the title of your book.

Yeah, I understand, I am just saying. I can turn that around to a negative but I would rather it be a positive.

Your story suggests that it is positive.

Yeah. You can [make] it here.

It is like when Ford made the first car, nice car, but a lot of changes have been made in that car since he first made it. You know what I mean? From telephone to camera. So you have to understand, things change.

So what would you say to young African-American entrepreneurs today, that America is still the place?

It is still the place if you got the money and get something with it and get away with it. It is still the place where white people are doing that. You got to figure out what you want to do and go about your business. It is still the place that America is for sale, right?

As a poor person myself—

It is for sale. You can buy anything you want.

Ah… I look at it a little differently but I understand.

How do you look at it?

Well, I look at California as a type of freewheeling place. I grew up in Harlem, going to Little League during the 1964 riots, cops everywhere, place burning down. But I also went to a fancy, rich, white private school. So I saw both sides and both sides were very closed but California is more open. Different things can happen.

They hate you out here but they don’t tell you they hate you like they do in the South.

You think so? I understand that but can you really compare? The South is so bitter and vicious and small.

The problem with you is that you don’t want to believe that. You want to believe that everything is alright. But it ain’t.

My mother is survivor of the Holocaust. Israel is about to experience another Holocaust. I am completely broke; I am bankrupt; my film magazine has not made a dime, I lost 50 thousand bucks on it. I am living in constant—

Fear?

Fear. But I am also living in California. I can drive to LA, camp on the way, interview some Hollywood folks, come back via Big Sur, and for 200 bucks have a fantastic vacation.

Those are the two sides of California I am talking about. I am guessing you have those two sides, too.

Now you think I am just a white guy and we are on two different sides but I am hearing you say that California is still very racist but also that it is still the place.

Right. But you know one day you might hit.

What? [café is very noisy]

Hit. H. I. T.

Maybe, I am hopeful, but I am not counting on it.

But you are still out there pitching.

I am an artist. I have 20 big ideas, and, until I go to the grave, I am going to keep on pitching, as you say.

One of my big ideas is about making movies by the Bay, little independent films, like what Pat [Gilles] and Bill [O’Keeffe] made with you. I find that is great.

This movie is going to be big. We are going to Los Angeles on the 4th to the 12th [of November].

That is fabulous. That is when you are going to find out something?

All the big wheels are going to be there. It costs $40,000 to get your movie in.

The American Film Market?

The thing of it is they got a rich, white man involved: Bill O’Keeffe. He ain’t gonna accept no.

How about some of the other incredible stories from that period? Remember the Marin Courthouse Takeover from 1970 with Jonathan Jackson.

I think that was crazy. I am not going to fight no losing battle.

You know Angela Davis?

Personally. I know all of them.

They proved that she bought all the guns that Jonathan Jackson used [in the Marin Courthouse Takeover]—

That’s what THEY say. If they made the mistake of letting her come in there with a gun, that’s their problem.

They say she had a gun in her hair but I don’t believe that.

They proved the paperwork for all the guns was in her name but she was acquitted. One of the jury members said, “All the state could prove is that she loved George Jackson, that she was a romantic.” It’s a pretty amazing story.

I am not going into the jungle to fight a lion with a switch [blade].

That is what you compare that to, you see it as a Don Quixote thing?

It’s stupid.

Now you did some time. Did you run into Black Guerrilla Army members in prison?

I was there three years, I took over. I had everything, all the dope and all the money.

Scott Farnsworth [the waiter interrupting]: Don’t look at me like that.

What did I do now?

Scott: You are looking at me like you are in love with me but I know you are not.

I love you darling.

Scott: I know. Are you going to have anything more? [All Charlie and I had was a lentil soup each.]

I am good.

I thought they were crazy, George Jackson and all them. I knew them. Like I know OJ Simpson.

When his momma died, I went to the funeral—she was a friend of the family. I told him. I said, ‘Hey man, the white people are going to kill you. If you want to die, do what you want, otherwise they are going to lock your ass up.’

He said, ‘Why do you say that?’ I said, ‘One of white man’s biggest hangups is white women. They don’t like that.’

He didn’t kill [Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman] and they know he didn’t. The people didn’t hear all the testimony and the press wouldn’t print the whole story. He didn’t do that; he couldn’t do that.

Yeah? He didn’t kill—

Hell, no. I know who did.

Do you want to tell me?

No. You know that was a ‘Colombian neck tie.’

Like piano wire?

That’s all that was. That boy [Goldman] was an athlete. He stood around and said, ‘When you get through killing her let me know I am ready for mine?’ No, it didn’t happen like that.

She bought dope on credit, didn’t pay the bill. He had been paying, he said, ‘I’m not paying anymore.’

Coke?

Yeah. ‘If you don’t pay we are going to kill that bitch.’ He said, ‘I am not paying,’ so they killed her. That’s all.

But he said he was going to search for the killer but—

They told him, ‘You better stay the fuck out of there.’

You are still in touch?

No. We never were friends, I just knew him when he lived in Protrero Hill. But I got common sense. I knew that he was going to be killed or locked up. What he did was a misdemeanor. Just like me.

How many Black people went to jail for perjury? That is what they put me in jail for, perjury, lying to white people, that’s all. My base case was perjury. The slave ain’t suppose to lie to the slave master, you know.

The [Folsom Prison] warden told me, ‘I don’t know why they sent you here. I don’t want you and no one else wants you so I am going to keep you. But if you start a problem, I am going to have you killed. Do what you want, but keep your nose clean.’

I did what I wanted but kept my nose clean.

But you said you dealt drugs in prison.

Look, drugs come in. I worked in the recreation department. If your woman brings some drugs in, I am not going to tell her, ‘Don’t leave them. Don’t put them over there under the flowerpot.’

And when the guy comes in, I say, ‘The flower pot or the heater.’ And that was it. You keep peace with everybody. It was very simple.

I knew all of them in there and most of them were dummies, most of the Blacks. They were dumb, that is why they were there.

[Senator Dianne] Feinstein told them, ‘I want a favor. I want you to take that n****r and lock him up.

Feinstein said that?

The warden told me that. I stopped her from doing what she thought would solidify her reelection: moving all the porno movies, clubs and everything to Bayview-Hunters Point. That was not good for my daughters and my wife or the Black women out there.

I said, ‘Naw, you’re not coming out here with that shit!’ I got with an Italian guy and we said, ‘We’ll burn ‘em down.’’ So that was it. She came to me one night and said, ‘Do me a favor.’ I said, ‘Naw, we ain’t gonna do that.’

Uh-huh. Now was there ever a fully developed mafia in San Francisco, Italian, Black, Irish?

Yeah, they were here but they didn’t bother me; I didn’t bother them. They all loved me. I knew how to make money. I knew how to do the trucking business. I knew how to do a lot of things. They fuck with you but I wasn’t scared

They never asked you for ten percent?

Naw, the only person who did that was Eldridge Cleaver. He asked all the Black bars and liquor stores to give him five percent of their income.

I said, ‘You come over to get your five percent and you will get a bullet with it. Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit!’ And that was the end of that.

Eldridge came to you personally?

Naw, I think it was Bobby Seale. I didn’t care, I just told him, ‘No!’

Have you see Bobby lately?

No.

He’s making a movie. I looked him up on Facebook, sent him a note, he responded, ‘I am very busy.’ He’s about 80.

Yeah, I know.

I said, ‘I would love to interview you a little about the history and the movie.’

Good for him.

But he never got back to me. Bobby seemed the most together of them.

He’s a dummy, all of them. They are not business-minded. You always got to have a business-minded person. Just like all of [the mafias]—Al Capone, the Godfather— had a Jewish guy who took care of the business. Someone’s got to look out for the business.

Huey knew a bunch of rich, white people down in LA and when he got out of jail he could have become business-minded.

He could have but he didn’t.

He decided to become a gangster that was kind of tragedy because he seemed like a very smart guy.

He never was smart, none of them. They got thrown in a position in life and once they got there they didn’t know how to handle it. White people get mad at me because, when I get thrown in a position, I know how to handle it.

And what are your basic tricks for handling that?

I just handle it. If I have to get a Jewish boy or a white boy to do what I need done, I pay him whatever he wants.

You just find a professional and pay him his hourly and get the job done?

Yeah. That is just common sense.

That’s good advice for anybody.

And with that Mr. Walker was on his way, leaving me with the bill of $71.24 for a beer, a glass of wine and two lentil soups, certainly the most I've ever paid for such a repas but, even with the generous tip for Scott, well worth it.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jan 20, 2023 - 05:18 PM
Meet the Kids of Maidan Part II
by Doniphan Blair

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Rodion, a Russian-speaking costume designer from the Donbas, was very happy with Ukraine's recent progress and very angry with his Russian relatives. photo: D. Blair

Continued from 'Meet the Kids of Maidan Part I'

Ukraine’s digital success was also extolled by Rodion, a high-cheek-boned, dark-complected, oft-smiling man, who works as a film costume designer and looks like he just did a shoot himself, given the black leather duster and ornamental earrings he was rocking. I met Rodion, his old friend Catherine, a jeweler, and her teenage son, glued to his phone, near one of Kyiv’s many large, low-rent flea markets, where they were looking for vintage jewelry.

“Everything government related, from getting identity documents to filing taxes, is now online,” Rodion said, over a cappuccino. “It is easy to start a business. Both Catharine and I have our own.” They also detailed how well their socialized medicine works, suggesting Ukraine could become a model for social services as well as free markets and democracy, a socialist-capitalist hybrid achieved on the cheap, given it is still one of Europe’s poorest countries.

“Ukraine has been improving since Zelensky became president,” Catherine said. “I feel like the government cares about me now.”

Out of the blue, however, they began venting bitterly about Russians, even though both are from mostly Russian-speaking families, as were many of the creative people I met. “We speak Russian at home but not on the streets after February 24th,” Rodion explained. “We had to flee eastern Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2014—supposedly to save us,” he added, shaking his head and looking grim.

Rodion and Catharine blamed average Russians, not just Putin, an opinion shared by many Ukrainians and dating from 2014, when their Russian friends and relatives, which many Ukrainians have, gloated over social media about Crimea, feelings now compounded by massive war crimes. Adding insult to injury, many of those Russians claim the evidence for those crimes was faked.

“The Russian teachers’ union sent volunteers to brainwash Ukrainian children,” noted Catharine. “Unpaid volunteers?” I asked. “Of course not!” interjected Rodion, “Nothing in Russia is without pay these days!”

At the very moment Catharine, Rodion and I were chatting on September 16th, Putin was at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, meeting with the Chinese and Indian presidents, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi. They told him—Modi to his face—they weren’t happy with his unnecessary war now threatening their economies and world food supplies, not to mention nuclear holocaust.

A week earlier, Kyiv had hosted its first conference since the war, an attempt to understand the war, in fact: the 17th annual Yalta European Strategy summit, named for the Crimean city where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill strategized the final defeat of Nazi Germany, in February 1945. A few months before, however, the Soviets had deported to Siberia all the Crimean Tatars, about a quarter million people, half of whom died, a small fraction of whom returned. Ukraine's democracy gave them full legal rights, but that ended with the Russian reconquest in 2014.

Some of those attending the Lviv Art Center's "Artists and War" conference, with Kerill (far left), Alem (3rd fr lft) and Dirk Grosser, who produced it (5th fr lft). photo: D. Blair

Dirk had organized two mini-conferences in Lviv, the second at the Lviv Art Center, which has classes, a small gallery and a nice café. Also about what artists should do during the war, it was attended by Kirill and nine others, including a Tatar-Ukrainian woman in her early 20s. Alem accentuates her wide-set eyes with aggressive makeup slashes, works for NGOs, and lives in Lviv, although she was raised in Washington DC and is also American. “People say it’s impossible,” Alem told us, “But my dream is to liberate Crimea.”

Y.E.S. is the brain child of Victor Pinchuk, an oligarch and philanthropist, who is sometimes called the Ukrainian George Soros, because he’s Jewish and supports culture, but rarely in the crazed conspiratorial sense. Indeed, the Pinchuk Art Center, a half a mile from the Maidan, is universally well regarded. Both Dirk and I found its contemporary collection impressive and its current show, “Russian War Crimes”, a tour de force of artists addressing war, Dirk’s subject. We lingered a long time in the substantial show, including the devastating video in the last room, a hurricane of quick-cut atrocity shots, sometimes using split screens, until we were interrupted by an attendant, who ushered us down to the street due to the air raid.

“Is there a bomb shelter we can go to,” I asked the guard in front. “No need, it was false alert," he said, laughing. "Insurance makes us evacuate everyone and wait for all clear.” “But what if there was an attack?” “The metro is right there and very, very deep.” Indeed, it was built for nuclear war.

In addition to organizing seminars and shooting a documentary in Ukraine, Dirk planned a performance piece. He enacted it on September 17th, in the middle of the Maidan, on the same spot graced by the dancers, which was dry, since it hadn’t rained for over a day. As I filmed, Dirk arranged on the ground 20 posters for the “Kunst Krieg” (“Art in War”) conference he arranged a month earlier in Berlin, each poster emblazoned with the word “cancelled,” since that’s what happened, for reasons he didn’t fully explain. Then he began calling German galleries to reschedule the conference.

The two-day Y.E.S conference was titled “Ukraine: Defending All Our Freedom” and featured banners with “I need ammunition, not a ride,” President Zelensky’s famous quip, which may have been written by his legendary media team. Hosted by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Y.E.S attracted to a hardened Kyiv basement some 400 international and Ukrainian notables, including Polish, British and American lawmakers, Google’s ex-CEO Eric Schmidt, who commended Ukraine’s digital prowess, and Professor Snyder, who emphasized the war was colonialist, which Europeans don't quite get, due to their own recent colonialism. Also in attendance was another one of our best and best-selling scholars of Ukraine and Russia, the journalist Anne Applebaum, along with General Wesley Clark, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and the Azov commander Serhii Tsisaruk.

After welcoming them, Victor Pinchuk noted we were witnessing the final collapse of the Soviet Union—“Dinosaur can take a long, long time to die and, during this time, he will try to drag us back to his prehistoric past”—before introducing President Zelensky.

"Russia is doing everything to break the resistance of Ukraine, the resistance of Europe, and the world,” Zelensky said, wearing his standard khakis and military-green T-shirt. “The 90 days ahead will be more crucial than 30 years of Ukraine's independence. These 90 days will be more crucial than all the years of the existence of the European Union. [This] winter will determine our future.”

Ukrainian prayers for peace are joined by members of the Hare Krishna, seen here in Lviv's Old Town. photo: D. Blair

“No negotiations with the Russian Federation regarding the end of the war are possible," Zelensky explained, since “There is no confidence that they will keep their promises.” In fact, Russia's invasion of Crimea and the Donbas violated the U.N. Charter’s Article 2 on sovereignty and the 1994 Budapest Agreement, which was signed by the U.S. and Great Britain as well as Russia and guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for giving up all of their nuclear weapons and much of their conventional ones. Less well known is the Battle of Ilovaisk in 2014 when the Ukrainians surrendered their weapons for safe passage but the Russians resumed shooting.

While fears of escalation are understandable, appeasement encourages rash action and agreement violation. A few weeks into the war, during negotiations hosted by Turkey, the Ukrainian delegates offered fresh security arrangements: Ukraine would stay non-aligned, Crimea negotiations would be postponed for 15 years, and the 2014 Donbas invasion would be addressed separately. In response, the Russian delegates called them Nazis and offered to withdraw from Kyiv, where they'd already been repulsed.

“We must fight," Zelensky continued at the Y.E.S. conference, articulating his ascent as Europe’s de facto wartime commander. “Endure the winter. Help those who are weaker. Protect those who need protection. Limit ourselves in what can be limited. And limit Russia in everything that should limit it. The unification of Europe is impossible without Ukraine." Most Ukrainians have wanted to join the E.U. for decades, and they even amended their constitution to that end in 2019. “It will be an honor for Europe to welcome our state," Zelensky concluded, "The state that wins!"

Dirk’s performance goes well. Standing in front of his colorful pile of “Kunst Krieg” posters, he calls the galleries, introduces himself politely and leaps into action—“You remember the Maidan Revolution, eight years ago? I am standing on Maidan Square right now!”—before asking if they can host a one-session conference on artists and the Russo-Ukrainian war. After chatting with a baritone gallery owner, Dirk grins at me, shouts something unintelligible, and starts cleaning up. It takes him three trips to haul away the paving stones he used to hold his posters down in the autumn breeze and, eight years ago, the kids of Maidan lobbed at police.

As I pack up the camera tripod, sliding its legs together, it dawns on me: “I take the train to Lviv tomorrow, so this is my last time on the Maidan.” I look around: Berehynia smiling down from her column, the multi-colored pigeons (black, white and mottled), the smattering of Kyivers going about their day, and the regulars, the yellow-blue wrist-band vendors and two tourist-photo hustlers, one wearing a cartoon horse outfit, the other covered with tattoos and carrying two large, white show pigeons, to whom I nod, since I got some photos earlier.

“What an incredible place, a cool architectural space, a symbolic place,” I muse, until I work myself up and start yelling to myself: “In the middle of a fucking genocidal war, the goddamn Ukrainians are so democratic, they don’t mind anyone coming to their central square and saying whatever the fuck they want—including the likes of Dirk, a half-crazed German performance artist!” During my five or six times on the Maidan, in fact, I don’t recall seeing a single soldier, police officer or even untoward stare.

Dirk Grosser doing a performance piece on Kyiv's Maidan Square, on September 17, 2022. photo: D. Blair

The next day, Dirk and I bade each other adieu with repressed emotions. Suddenly involved in each other’s lives—we also took meals together and roomed in a deluxe, rococo one-bedroom on Pushkin Street ($24 a night and four blocks from the Maidan!)—we were unable to understand what that might mean in the middle of our generation’s most destructive and divisive war, now slicing through countries, ideologies and friendships as well as mass murdering Ukrainians.

It was 1 a.m. by the time I hit Lviv. The cabbie raced the three miles of curfew-cleared streets from the train station to downtown, which is next to Old Town, where I had a spartan room in a 19th century building. In Ukraine, what that usually means is the building's entrance, stairs and hallways are falling apart—a comment on undemocratic collectivism, perhaps—but, once inside an apartment, they’re nice, large, luxurious even, having been renovated by the actual owner. At Kirill’s, for example, which he rents for the equivalent of 400 bucks, we walked up three flights of decrepit stairs, along a pealing balcony, and into a lovely, high-ceilinged duplex with a wrought-iron staircase, which leads to a big bedroom with a claw-foot tub and view of the city.

And spotless. Ukrainians are hygiene freaks who take their shoes off at home and in some businesses, like dental offices, and put on slippers or disposable shoe coverings.

Donning my slippers and stumbling down the dark hall, past five other rented rooms, I was happy to see my small room and tiny bed, which obliged my toes to stick out the slats at the bottom, as well as the chair, desk and large window, which looked out on Kryva Lypa, Lviv’s well-known courtyard crammed with cafes, now deserted during wartime at 2 a.m.

Kryva Lypa means “crooked linden tree,” which is still here, three stories tall, right beneath my window and surrounded by a circular, wrought-iron bench often occupied by women laughing, hipsters arguing, parents rocking kids or soldiers enjoying peace. Instead of the tourist trap I had assumed Kryva Lypa to be, when I moved in, it’s an old bohemian hang- and hide- out, protected by its two access tunnels, which can be easily blocked. Indeed, Kryva Lypa is where Lviv’s first movies were shown in 1903 and hippies and punks first congregated.

An eight-foot, punk-era turntable sculpture still hangs in the brew pub Bratyska (“bratyar” means brothers), which features 30 beers on tap, including a tomato one I didn’t try, and a famous borscht I did, every day for a week, in fact, after catching a cold. Prepared daily by Pani Lida (“pani” means missus), the no-nonsense, middle-aged woman I saw taking smoke breaks on the front porch, the borscht was both tasty and had great sides: cloves of garlic and slices of onion and pig fat, in addition to the standard sour cream and dark bread. No wonder Bratyska is so popular with college students, especially from the National Academy of Art, two miles away.

“I’m taking the interior design curriculum but hate, hate it,” said Pauline, whom I met on Bratyska's porch and is tall and stunning, despite the acne she doesn’t hide with makeup. “It was the only department I could get into with my small portfolio. I only draw or paint sometimes. My passion is performance art.” “Oh, that’s cool,” I effused, trying to seem so myself, “A friend of mine just did a performance on the Maid—” but Pauline interrupted me. Her friends from the Academy, easily recognizable by their distinct dress and greetings, had arrived.

Girl posing with a sculpture of their beloved 'babuskas' (grandmothers), Kyiv. photo: D. Blair

Next to the Bratyska was a well-appointed nightclub and jazz venue, which just reopened as a comedy club. “Lviv’s fourth,” I was told by the ticket taker, a twenty-something Ukrainian-American woman raised in Sacramento, which is near where I live in California, who moved back after the war started. “What can I say? Ukrainians love comedy,” she explained. “People under threat of death need humor?” I offered, " Perhaps the gallows humor thing," and, “Or they’re honoring Zelensky,” which finally got a laugh.

In fact, Zelensky did do standup around Kyiv, Ukraine and Russia, where he also acted in a number of films, including playing Napoleon in the Russian comedy feature “Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon” (2012). Although poorly reviewed and a box office flop, the film’s kooky plot or mere existence suggests that conquering Ukraine was not foremost on most Russians' minds at that time. Meanwhile, Zelensky’s experience in Russia, from being a comic on the road to a more respected actor or his one meeting with Putin, provided him invaluable insight.

“We know for sure that we don’t need the war,” Zelensky pleaded with Russian listeners, during his February 23rd, eve-of-destruction broadcast. “Not a Cold War, not a hot war. Not a hybrid one. But if we’ll be attacked… if they try to take our country away from us, our freedom, our lives, the lives of our children, we will defend ourselves."

"You are demanding security guarantees from NATO, but we also demand security guarantees. Security for Ukraine from you, from Russia and other guarantees of the Budapest Memorandum. [If there is war] nobody will have guarantees of security anymore. Who will suffer the most from it? The people. Who doesn’t want it the most? The people! Who can stop it? The people. But are there those people among you? I am sure.”

Across from Microbrew Bratyska, in one of Kryva Lypa’s access tunnels, is one of its lesser lights: Dizzy Coffee, a tiny shop with two tables and a small upstairs loft but a powerful interior design using Piet Mondrian's colored squares. After my late-night return from Kyiv, I dropped by Dizzy for a quick cappuccino but got into an in-depth discussion with the barista, Andrii.

Thin, dark haired and 23 years old, with a sweet face beneath a light beard, Andrii has a degree in economics and a penchant for machine-gun-fire speech and wild gesticulation. As I learned over the next few days, Andrii is the elder in a crew of voracious-reading, pop-culture-consuming and debate-loving kids, who also listened to their grandparents. It was Andrii, in fact, who informed me of the Holodomor’s three rounds—1932-3, ’45 and ’46-7—hands flying around the espresso machine for emphasis but not spilling a drop.

“My grandmother worked in bakery,” Andrii said, during our first chat, which went high speed between coffee customers for over an hour. “Soldiers came every day and took 90 percent of bread. It’s a problematic. It goes for few years after war.” The Soviets also murdered almost 300 Ukrainian writers in the 1930s—"They are called 'executed renaissance,'” he told me—and kept killing intellectuals into the ‘70s.

Andrii, economist, historian and barista, at his post in Kryva Lypa's Dizzy Coffee, where he headed up a crew of young Lviv intellectuals. photo: D. Blair

“She was Jew, Holocaust survivor from Warsaw,” Andrii added about his mother’s mother. “Her name was Mandelbaum, popular Jewish name,” although his family didn’t find that out until perusing her papers after she died. As it happened, her husband was a member of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who had been arrested and did time in Siberia before they met.

“Did they know each other’s stories?” I asked. “They must have,” Andrii said, “They lived together for many years.” “Did they love each other?” “They must have, they had four children.” “Is your mother loving?” “Yes.”

Somewhere around then, into Dizzy’s cramped confines strode Andrii’s best friend, Vasyl, 22, all boots, skinny jeans and unkempt, curly black hair. A programmer for a German company, who does comparatively well, I learned when he told me about his life two weeks later, Vasyl grew up poor in one of the Soviet-style apartment blocks that speckle the suburbs of eastern bloc cities. When he was sixteen, he worked in a factory for eight months, learned not to romanticize proletariat life, and bought his first computer. He also plays classical piano, loves heavy metal and punk, often reads or listens to books on tape, and writes poetry. Andrii writes prose. Vasyl also told me about his grandparents, speaking almost as fast as Andrii but with less gesticulation.

“He was very, very against war,” Vasyl said about his grandfather, Mykhailo (Michael in Ukrainian). “He was born few years before the Great War and saw many terrible, terrible things as a kid: dead people, dead animals, bombed buildings, bombed streets, bombed whole cities, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera”—Vasyl’s trademark expression in English. Andrii’s is “problematic,” used as a noun.

“He wrote it all in his memoir, which I read, which was hard to read, because it is written by hand and had many strong statements. Some too strong for publication,” although that could be cleaned up by his daughter, Vasyl’s mother, a book editor. “He died last week,” Vasyl added, to which I offered condolences. “He had good life. He was 85. We will have cemetery thing on Sunday.”

Vasyl’s parents are religious, which is how many older Ukrainians addressed the terrible trauma of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism and genocide, although his mother is Jehovah’s Witness. “It was her way of rebelling against grandfather, who was Orthodox,” Vasyl explained. Somewhere in there, he noted that, “She and I are the only ones in our family to graduate from university,” although Mykhailo was a renown building crane operator.

Vasyl (rt), another one of Lviv's young intellectuals, having a beer with Andrii at the popular Bratyska brew pub. photo: D. Blair

“When the war started, Grandfather thought we should surrender, surrender right now, surrender as soon as possible,” Vasyl said, getting excited. “‘We are going to lose anyway,’ he kept saying, ‘And that will stop killing.’ But after a week, Grandfather changed his mind. ‘We have to fight,’ he said, ‘To stop killing in the future.’”

Andrii tried to enlist in the Ukrainian Army but was rejected and did extensive volunteer work near Kyiv. Vasyl didn’t bother, since he’s been plagued with health problems since childhood and figures he can contribute more in other ways. What he calls his “homemade NGO” recently bought a car, 70 pairs of socks and some shoulder bags for rocket-propelled grenades, which a friend drove across Ukraine to “their unit.”

For the next three weeks almost daily, Andrii, Vasyl and I embarked on a broken-field run across Western civilization, from “The Bible” and Plato to Poe and Crowley, the filmmakers Lynch and Tarantino, or the philosophers beloved by twenty-somethings worldwide: the Slovenian leftist Slavoj Žižek and the innovative evolutionary psychologist but also rightwinger from Canada, Jordan Peterson, both of whom Andrii and Vasyl find interesting but too extreme. One of them, I can’t remember which, read and enjoyed “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller, the other Gregor Von Rezzori’s “Memoirs of an Anti-Semite”, two of my favorite books.

We lingered over Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”, which I hadn’t read, I was ashamed to admit, but knew of as the great farce of Russian literature. Bulgakov was from Kyiv, it turned out, and fought in the Russian Civil War, first for the czar, then the nationalists. His satire is so dry, according to Andrii and Vasyl, critics are still arguing whether Bulgakov was sending up or supporting Stalin.

“Satire doesn’t work with conspiracy theorists, because they take it literally,” I pointed out. "Are you familiar with ‘The Illuminati! Trilogy’ by Robert Anton Wilson?” “No,” said Vasyl. “It’s about a secret group called the Ill—” “We know about Illuminati!” “OK, great, and how ‘bout QAnon?” “Of course!” “Anyway, Wilson, he was only joking about the Illuminati, which is why he put an exclamation point in his title, but readers believed him anyway. Actually, he was trying to put people off believing in conspiracy theories, like McCarthyism... the communist scare in the '50s?" "Yes, yes, we know about McCarth