Jul 10, 2023
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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
Prodigal Photographer Returns
by Doniphan Blair
The cover for Nicholas Blair's new book of photographs from powerHouse Books. photo: N. BlairPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
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. BlairAn 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. BairBecause 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. BlairHe 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. BlairCurrently, 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 EntertainmentPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
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 DisneyDisney 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. CollinsNew 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. BlairPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
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 IntelligencePLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
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. Blair1. 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. BlairAdvantages 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. Blair5
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 MeyersPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover rebuilding cineSOURCE's site.
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 colleaguePLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover rebuilding cineSOURCE's site.
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 was 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. BlairArticles, 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. BlairI 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. BlairThis 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: unknownDoniphan 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. BlairBL: 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. LucasPLEASE 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. BoswellIn 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 GroupAccording 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 SDUTAre 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 facilitating 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: unknownThis 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. KunisadaWhile 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: unknownBy 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: unknownEmpowered 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, 1814War 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: unknownBy 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: unknownMany 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 GhibliPLEASE 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. ForeNew 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. CameronMaking 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 LucasfilmPeople 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&MThe 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. BlairDESPITE 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. BlairMulticulturalism 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. SaidI 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. BlairBig, 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. BaillieFilmmakers 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. HopperHipster 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. BlairOakland 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. BlairPLEASE 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. BlairIt 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. BlairPLEASE 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 SadiqIndeed, 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. BlairEvery 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. BlairPLEASE 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. BlairAlthough 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. BlairAlthough 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. BlairIndeed, 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. BlairDespite 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. BlairIn 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. BlairNevertheless, 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. BlairPLEASE 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. BlairPLEASE 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 KurzenIndeed, 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. BlairLenore 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. BlairHe 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. BlairAaron, 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. BlairAaron’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. BlairThen 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. BlairWe 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. BlairApparently, 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 GhibliPLEASE 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. ForeNew 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. CameronMaking 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 LucasfilmPeople 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&MThe 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 Cohen
Animation grunt workers at their posts. photo: unknownPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
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 MagazineWell, 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 BlairTail 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. BlairPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
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. BlairPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
“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 Republican Spain sympathizers, probably communists, effected their release and renewed transport into 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 escalation. Meanwhile, Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were sending troops, pilots and tons of war materiel to Franco’s 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. BlairThat 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 letter 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. BlairNevertheless, 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. BlairThe 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
We Have Ukrainian Flags
cineSOURCE staff
WE HAVE UKRAINIAN FLAGS
for those who want to show support for the Ukrainian defense of their 30 year-old democratic tradition in the face of an autocratic colonialist invasion.
Flag Varieties and Prices
5 x 3 foot Sewn Polyester Flag Our cost: $10 Donation: $30
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12 x 18 inch Garden Flag Cost: $10 Donation: $20
To Get Your Flag, Contact cineSOURCE
510 220.2126 or
Pickup: cineSOURCE, West Oakland, 10am-10pm.
By Mail: Will include nominal shipping fee.
Donations Go To
Support Ukraine with Us
SUWU is an East Bay group organized by a few young Ukrainian-Americans who took it upon themselves to raise money and to travel to Ukraine to set up a highly efficient delivery system to help people in severe need.
They achieve this by A) buying all supplies in Ukraine, which both saves on shipping and stimulates the economy, and B) by setting up ad hoc shipment centers in living rooms and garages and having local volunteers package every thing from food staples to cleaning supplies and clothing.
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. MurayFirst 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. KahloFrida persevered, drawing on Diego’s ideas, encouragement and artistic friends not only to become his flamboyant very-Mexican wife but to excel at painting, almost single-handedly inventing the aggressively self-examined female art form, becoming art history's undisputed master of the self-portrait and, ultimately, eclipsing him.
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 a 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. RiveraCalled “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, patriarchal piece is two miles away at the San Francisco Art Institute. 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 800 Chestnut Street, which consists of an old monastery with bell tower in front and modern, angular cement building in back. There is no status update on the door but when I pushed it opened. In the small, arch-line, Moorish courtyard, the pool once full of gold fish and lilies was empty. It 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, following a proclivity for self-portraiture inspired by Frida. Instead of planting a magical tree with a sex goddess, however, Diego 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 local treasure until, about the mid-1970s when, ka-boom: 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 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 was 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: unknownA 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. RiveraExhibited 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 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 cultural-connection 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 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, uniquely female art. Georgia was also a great multiculturalist—her boyfriend was the New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who loved to argue, happened to be Jewish and had an overweening mother—and lover. Indeed, she was a intimate with the 30-something-year-old Juan Hamilton in her 90s.
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. BlairFor her part, Frida was said to have enjoy 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, romance and creativity, the perfect stage for Frida and Diego’s self-invention, sexuality and fantasy.
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. BlairContinued 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. BlairNext 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. BlairSomewhere 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. BlairOr 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. BlairThe 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. BlairThings 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• PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover travel expenses for this article.
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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. BlairKirill 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. BlairGiven 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. BlairYarema 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. BlairAcross 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. BlairGenocide, 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. GrosserPresident 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. BlairFifteen 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. BlairAs 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: #NeivanmadeAfter 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. GillesPLEASE 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. GillesThe 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. GillesIndeed, 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. BlairCharlie 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. BlairContinued 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. BlairDirk 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. BlairThe 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. BlairNext 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 McCarthyism!"
“We don’t worry about such bullshit!” interjected Andrii, “We have too many conspiracy problematics from Russia.”
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.
The Lviv youth debate team: (rt-lft) The 16-year-old Evelina, Andrii, Vasyl, Marion and Yaroslav. photo: D. BlairOr 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.
Stepping into Dizzy once, I found it empty except for Andrii and Vasyl arguing loud and fast and gesturing wildly. “What are you debating?” I finally interrupted. “Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome,” Vasyl said. “Which side are you on?” “Equality of opportunity.” “So Andrii is still a leftist?” “Sort of.” “Does Dizzy’s owner ever worry you’re driving away customers?” “No. He sits right there,” said Andrii, pointing to where I had seen a quiet, amiable fellow, by the name of Volodya, Vasyl told me. “I buy a coffee or two a day,” he added, “As do all our friends, which keeps Volodya in business.”
Indeed, Dizzy was often half full of their friends, working on laptops, chatting quietly, debating loudly or getting caffeinated. They were mostly young women like Maria, a sweet, smart and hardworking translator, to whom Vasyl would call out mid-sentence for help with a word in English, Anya, the elegantly-dressed, redheaded photographer, who did their photo shoots, or Zosia, an artist, graphic designer and adventurous spirit as well as Dizzy’s weekend barista, who once told me, “Lviv is all hippies."
Some of them were helping Andrii and Vasyl on their new 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 ruins of the 16th century Golden Rose Synagogue is one of Lviv's only Jewish memorials and a popular teen hangout. photo: D. BlairThe next day, September 26th, was Rosh Hashana, the beginning of Judaism’s high holy days, which I usually honor by going to a synagogue for a few hours, even though I'm agnostic. Although Lviv has one synagogue left, the Beis Aharon V'Israel, near the train station, which has been run for the last three decades by a lovely New York Hasidic rabbi and his wife, I decided to tour the city’s synagogue ruins, of which there are many. After searching online and extensively on the ground, I found the weathered plaque marking the largest, the Great Synagogue, now an empty lot with a small playground but a majestic colonnade of trees. I also found the Tempel Synagogue, no sign but again an empty lot, which suggests some respect for the half millennium when Lviv was almost one third Jewish.
Then I headed to my favorite, the Golden Rose Synagogue in Old Town, a wonder of medieval architecture from 1582 until August 1942, when the Nazis destroyed it, except for the floor and back wall. Aside from the memorial for the Jewish ghetto, which has a nice park on a main avenue with a menorah and large sculpture, the Golden Rose is Lviv's only Jewish memorial. It features extensive explanatory signage, in Ukrainian and English, and a modest row of waist-high black stones engraved with photos and quotes. One stone has a famous 17th century rabbi, Joel Sirkis, declaring, "[Lviv is] a grand and glorious city, full of scholars, writers and teachers... the source of wisdom and foundation of prudence."
In addition, for the last 30 years at least, the Golden Rose has been a hangout for teenagers, perhaps because there’s no one to chase them away. In all kinds of weather or times of day, up to a hundred kids of Lviv are at the Golden Rose, playing music, goofing around, flirting and drinking, sometimes to excess, sometimes relieving themselves in the destroyed sanctuary, since no toilet is readily available.
They breathe life into old stones, I find, which is why I had already visited the Golden Rose three or four times. And why I spent a few hours there the afternoon of Rosh Hashana, gazing into its grassy remains, reading about the Jews of Lviv and their annihilation, and thinking about my own mistakes and trespasses during the last year, which is the spiritual assignment of the last day of the ten-day holiday, Yom Kippur. "Were there any major errors I was missing?" I wondered.
The kids didn’t pay me much mind, despite my being over three times their age, until I felt a presence behind me: a short, stocky young man. Speaking decent English, Valter, 23, a soldier on leave from fighting near Kharkiv, invited me to drink with his buddies. I begged off, explaining I’d rather not since it was a Jewish holiday, but he kept repeating his invitation and, somewhere in there, noted his grandfather was a Nazi.
“A Nazi from Germany?” I asked, incredulous. “Yes,” Valter said. “Was he an OK person?” “Yes.” “Did he give you candy as a kid?” “Yes.” “Did he treat your mother well?” “Yes,” he said and added, tentatively, “It is weird. My grandfather fought the Russians. Now I am fighting the Russians.”
I looked into Valter's unassuming gaze. Facing physical death or the moral dilemma of dehumanizing the enemy is not a walk in the park at any age. Indeed, my Foreign Legion contact, Terry, tough as he claimed to be and over twice Valter's age, mentioned both of those difficulties. Finally, I said, “It’s good you are talking about it,” and gave him a hug, which he accepted. “Keep talking about it, I would say, just keep talking about it.”
Valter’s friends were Oras, six-foot-seven, about 20 and with an excellent command of English; Adriana-Maria, younger and blonde, who poured me a paper cup with some hard alcohol and an energy drink, which I held but didn’t sip, and two 14 year olds, Ruslan and Nazar, who attended high school nearby. The nattily-dressed and dark, shoulder-length haired Ruslan didn’t speak a word of English, but the skinny, scruffy and nerdy Nazar did, expressively if haltingly. Ruslan and Nazar seemed to be enjoying Lviv’s dreamy, vibrant youth scene, even in the middle of a deadly, disastrous war, which Valter must have had told them about, and to which they may have to eventually go.
Valter (cntr), a 23 year-old soldier, shows a drawing of him at the front by a 9-year girl, who gave it to him, and (lft-rt) Oras, Adriana-Maria and Ruslan, the Golden Rose Synagogue memorial, Lviv. photo: D. BlairIndeed, beyond the Golden Rose Synagogue, a brutal geopolitics was unraveling with alarming alacrity:
• Six days earlier, on September 20th, President Zelensky addressed the U.N. Assembly by video. “What is not in our formula? Neutrality,” he said. Later, he asked, “Why [is] the Russian military so obsessed with castration? What was done to them so that they want to do this to others?” but ended on a hopeful note. “We decided to provide humanitarian aid to Ethiopia and Somalia… additional amounts of our wheat.”
• The next day, Putin ordered the immediate mobilization of 300,000 soldiers and repeated his big lie: Russia will “liberate [the Donbas] from the neo-Nazi regime, which seized power in Ukraine in 2014 as the result of an armed state coup.” Russia will also defend itself, including territory incorporated after the upcoming “referendum,” by any means necessary, he said, voicing yet another nuclear threat, which started on February 28th, when Russia’s nuclear forces went on high alert.
• Within hours, there were arrests, riots and shootings at Russian draft centers, including authorities by draftees. Mostly non-Russian, they were well aware they will become part of the standard Russian strategy of throwing large numbers of troops against better -trained and -equipped opponents. Within days, up to a quarter million military-age men had fled Russia, choking airports and border crossings from Finland to Kazakhstan.
• On September 24th, the so-called referendum "asked" Ukrainians in Russia-controlled territory whether they wanted to become Russian, with soldiers going house to house coercing votes, even from 13 year olds. The same day, Zelensky announced that surrendering Russian soldiers “will be treated in a civilized manner, in accordance with all conventions,” while a United Nations panel reported that Russians had tortured civilians and raped children.
• Four days later, the referendum passed by a supposed 97% and, the following day, a video went viral of a Russian soldier surrendering after finding himself at the front without proper equipment, three days after being drafted off a street in Moscow.
• On September 30th, the Kremlin celebrated “Ukrainians rejoining the motherland” in Moscow’s Red Square with pop music performances, a military spectacle and speeches. “Western elites deny national sovereignty and international law," Putin said, using the common conspiracist trick of accusing enemies of one’s own crimes. "Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism,” he claimed before calling on Kyiv “to end the war that they unleashed back in 2014.”
• That same day, Zelensky stood on a Kyiv street empty except for a small desk on which he signed Ukraine’s official application to NATO.
That same night, the last one of September and a Friday, coincidentally (considering Andrii and Vasyl's magazine), 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 Bratyska's famous borscht, replete with its fabulous side dishes. photo: D. Blair 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.
“It is already World War Three,” according to some Russia analysts, like the preeminent English-American Fiona Hill, who was Trump’s Russia expert but provided damning testimony at his first impeachment, which was all about Ukraine, oddly enough. Indeed, it concerned Trump’s attempt to blackmail President Zelensky, whom Trump considered corruptible, but then Trump's exposure as corrupt by a Ukrainian-American, ironically, the U.S. Army intelligence officer Alexander Vindman, who listened in on Trump’s “perfect phone call.” Trump's scam—to withhold essential weaponry until Zelensky enacted or merely announced a phony investigation into President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, who was paid $11 million from 2013 through 2018 by the Ukrainian company Burisma—was probably suggested by his so-called Ukraine expert, Paul Manafort. Trump and company also repeated Kremlin conspiracy theories like Ukraine is not a real country, it is the most corrupt country in world, and it, not Russia, hacked the Democratic National Committee's emails in 2016.
Putin has worked with conspiracy theories his entire professional life, first as a K.G.B. agent, then as president. Shortly after his appointment, in fact, he blamed Chechens for the highly suspicious Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999 in order to start the Second Chechen War. Wars work well with the conspiracist formula that reality is an illusion, enemies are out to get us, and only I can save you.
“In my opinion, the reason [Putin is] at war in Ukraine is not a fear of NATO enlargement or because he’s trying to build a bigger Russian empire for his legacy,” remarked William Browder, who is from a famous leftist American family but became the biggest hedge fund manager in Moscow until he crossed Putin, on Ukrainian television (10/22/2022). Instead of following the zeitgeist shift to post-modern kleptocracy, Browder blew the whistle on corruption. After he was almost extradited to Russia from Spain, on a phony Interpol warrant, Browder developed the Magnitsky Act, which was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2012 and then by Canada and the European Union. It facilitates the sanctioning of foreign officials who violate human rights, and the freezing of their assets, and is named for Browder's lawyer, the Ukrainian-born Sergei Magnitsky. In 2009, the F.S.B., the successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., arrested, tortured and killed Magnitsky.
"I think he’s at war because he’s a dictator who has stolen so much money over the last 22 years from his people that he’s afraid the whole thing will explode,” Browder concluded. “I believe he started this war in Ukraine, very simply, to distract his people away from him towards essentially a fictitious enemy, the Ukrainian people.”
“After Crimea, his popularity was at 90 [percent] and so life was good for Putin,” noted the Russian economist Sergey Guriyev, now living in France (Global Economy Meeting, 1/12/23). “Then it started to come down—because of raising retirement age, because of pretty successful anti-corruption campaign, and social media campaign by the opposition, so his popularity came to 60 again—and so he thought it was time to do something like 2014, something like Crimea.”
Yet another 'art during war' piece depicting the Russian president, at Kyiv's Military Museum. photo: D. Blair Donald Trump has long allied with Vladimir Putin and other conspiracy theorists and promoted false narratives, from birtherism to election denial, but some of his followers have tired of the deceit, as indicated by Republican losses in the midterm elections. Putin, however, has state media and police and military power at his disposal, plus 70 years of classical Soviet indoctrination and 20 years of the modern Russian version. As it happens, the former's noble fantasies, propaganda and double speak was easier to deprogram than today's cyber-powered cynicism, grievance-baiting, what-about-isms and conspiracy theories, which complement the ubiquitous graft. The Kremlin elite believe they have crafted a powerful enough narrative and gravy train and conned enough people, in Russia and abroad, with the big lies of "Ukraine is Nazi" and "America overthrew Ukraine and is using it to destroy Russia," to legitimize yet another one of the region's prolonged bloodbaths, either in a years-long war or nuclear attacks.
As dawn breaks over Kryva Lypa, I finally realize what's been bugging me since Rosh Hashana.
When I was 12 years old, I did a school presentation about and solicited donations for Biafra, where two million people eventually starved to death in Nigeria’s civil war (1967-70). In 1983, I started reading the history and literature of the Holocaust and attending conferences, in an attempt to heal myself, my family and my community. To a limited degree, I spoke out about the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, as I wish more people had for European Jewry. My first published piece, “Interview with Bruno Lowenberg”, was about a Berlin bookman and survivor of Dachau and won a North-West Journalism Award (1983). I co-created “Our Holocaust Vacation” (2007), a documentary about my family’s return to Poland with my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, an Auschwitz survivor, which showed on PBS, and I edited her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption” (2021, Austin Macauley, available through all major outlets).
But I neglected Ukraine.
As the first of October brightens into a gray, rainy day, I realize: Not only did Obama and Merkel drop the ball on Ukraine, I had. When Russia voided the Budapest Memorandum by invading Crimea and the Donbas, there should have been more governmental sanctions—if not military intervention or at least arm shipments by the Memorandum's signees—but also people protests. That I didn’t recognize Ukraine's Woodstock-nation moment in 2014, nor its harsh repression by a colonialist overseer, or that I can't even convince some of my hard-left friends that is what has happened—even after telling them about my two-month encounter with Ukraine (my loud exchange with Lyudmila, an 80-year-old physics professor and Russian-Jewish-American, at a Hanukkah party in the Oakland hills, was embarrassing)—is a personal failure of grotesque proportions, given one of my life projects is to oppose genocide.
I only started reading Snyder and Applebaum after February 24th—ordering their books that very day, in fact—although I had read about and endorsed Snyder’s thesis, detailed in his “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” (2010), that both Germany and the Soviet Union sought to colonize and depopulate Ukraine. I raced through his “The Road to Unfreedom” (2018), even while taking 25 pages of notes, so gob smacked was I to learn that the American conspiracist movement, which I had been researching and opposing since 9/12, and writing and publishing on since June 2020 (see "Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs"), borrowed many of its methods and claims as well as hacked emails from Russia.
All authorities lie constantly is the radical, new Russian worldview, according to Snyder, who observes that, “[Russian] politicians first spread fake news themselves, then claim that all news is fake, and finally that only their spectacles are real,” on page 11 of “The Road to Unfreedom”. That they are both more honest about the spectacle and better at it is how they sell it simultaneously to a naive public as well as conspiracy professionals. In their post-truth world, as well as perpetrate endless conspiracy theories, they can erase bothersome facts, assuage enormous suffering through denial, and endorse evermore outrageous fantasies, including their hybrid of postmodernism, socialism, fascism and Russian traditionalism, which will save the world, they claim, from western imperialism, decadence and gender dysphoria.
I also gobbled up Applebaum’s “Twilight of Democracy” (2020), a precise, personal and comprehensive view of liberal democracy's decline in Europe. Poland's lurch to the right surprised me since it seemed to be doing a great job of integrating with Europe, when I visited in 2005, and it had made immense progress since 1997, when I was there filming "Our Holocaust Vacation". Applebaum had a ringside seat, since her husband, Radek Sikorski, was Poland's Minister of Defense from 2005 to 2007 (he also led the E.U.’s admirable attempt to mediate between the Maidanites and Yanukovych). She details how the Poles were overcome by “the politics of resentment,” polarization, anti-democratic practices and what has become a worldwide religion, conspiracy theories. “’[T]here was no such thing as an accident [to him],’” a friend of Applebaum told her about Lech Kaczyński, Poland’s president from 2005 to 2010, “’If something happened it was the machination of an outsider. Conspiracy is his favorite word.’”
Along with Snyder, Applebaum has long reported on related problems in Russia—notably in her books "Gulag: A History" (2004, Pulitzer Prize winner) and "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" (2017)—and foreshadowed or predicted the current catastrophe.
The goddess Berehynia on her column surveying the Maidan, including a field of Ukrainian flags honoring fallen Ukrainian and foreign fighters. 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 those conclusions can be psychologically devastating but we have to embrace the possibilities.
Nevertheless, 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 and they survive, 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.
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.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Dec 22, 2022 - 01:33 PM
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. BlairUkrainian 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. BlairKirill 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. BlairGiven 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. BlairLviv’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. BlairMilitant 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. BlairNo 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. GrosserUkrainian 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. BlairDirk 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. BlairAs 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
Posted on Dec 21, 2022 - 09:05 PM
The Benefits of Commemoration
by Doniphan Blair
Irena places a family photo on the monument at the mass grave in southern Poland containing her family, with her Uncle Nick and Cousin Stefan. photo: D. BlairPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
I COULDN'T STOP CRYING, ALMOST
since I arrived in Mszana Dolna, a resort town of 7,000 in the scenic foothills of southern Poland’s Carpathians Mountains, probably more tears than I had shed in the entire last 20 years. Not only is Mszana Dolna where my grandfather Mendel, grandmother Miriam, aunt Irena and uncle Salek Rotkopf were murdered by the Nazis, it is the site of an ambitious attempt to memorialize, remember and revive Polish Jewish history.
Called Sztetl Mszana Dolna (see Facebook page here), the project is led by Urszula Antosz-Rekucka, a theologian, high school ethics teacher and town resident, and supported by her daughter Rachela, son Jakub, and husband Mark but also the town’s mayor, Anna Pękała, her staff— notably the tireless, always smiling Agnuska—and other Mszanians, as well as some Polish NGOs.
My family—my brother Nick, daughter Irena, nephew Stefan and niece Willa—and I decided to travel to Mszana after my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, died last December 9th. We wanted to spread her ashes on her family’s mass grave but also be there on August 19th, just as we were in 1997 and 2005, to commemorate the killing of almost 900 people on that day in 1942.
We hadn't seen anyone at the site before, but this August 19th, which was a Friday, there was a crowd: Urszula, her daughter, who was translating, her husband, Mayor Pękała, and a few others, including a young Sztetl Mszana Dolna participant named Tomasz, I believe. He told my daughter he may have some Jewish roots and me that he was interested in art and was doing a lot of drawings.
That so many people showed up was no surprise. We had contacted them and told them we were coming. But it was also the 80th anniversary of the slaughter and the first meet-and-greet of an ambitious, multifaceted two-day event, which Urszula and her team had organized. It would start two days later, on Sunday, so as not to interfere with the Jewish Sabbath.
"As soon as I saw Urszula, I started crying," my brother told me.
The memorial for almost 900 people in Mszana Dolna, Poland, that the Blair family has visited since 1980, recently rebuilt by Sztetl Mszana Dolna. photo: D. BlairActually, we had only just found out about Urszula and the Sztelt project from Nick’s old friend John Glenn. Before driving up from Hungary with his new Hungarian wife, Judit, to chauffeur us around in his van, he had wisely thought to google “Mszana Dolna” and found Urszula’s page. “The pre-war Mszana Dolna was a typical shtetl where both Christians and Jews lived,” she writes in its heading, “We want to save the memory of it. Help me if you know anything.”
After Nick messaged her on August 18th, she responded almost immediately.
Although I was not as effected as my brother, initially, I was astounded to see the memorial, set in a small bosque on a picturesque hill two miles from town. Where there had been no sign and a dirt path into the small ravine, there was now a detailed sign at the road, a row of freshly planted trees, and a wide, 150-foot-long, brick walkway. Moreover, the memorial, built in 1946 by Jakub Weissberger, who had escaped to the east but whose entire family was slaughtered there, looked refurbished. In fact, it had been completely rebuilt the year before in an exact replica of Weissberger's original design.
“In memory of 881 Jews from the lower Mszana neighborhood murdered by Hitler’s thugs on August 19th, 1942,” Weissberger had the masons inscribe it, “Whose last words are the silence of this place.”
After our meeting at the memorial, which is called Pańskie, Polish for "our Lord's meadow," Uzrsula led us down the hill about a mile to the old Jewish cemetery. There they had built a brand new memorial honoring the four "small" mass graves geolocated by experts. Soon after our arrival, my brother told me that he felt our grandfather must be buried there. We know from a list provided to us by an older mayor of Mszana that Grandfather Mendel died before the August 19th, 1942 massacre, either of natural causes or, for some infraction or other, what can be called "bulletosis."
After the old Jewish cemetery, Urszula led us into town, behind a factory, to a third mass grave, interred with 22 Jewish youth. They had acquired a couple of guns, were planning an attack, and were probably ratted out.
Actually, we had already visited the Jewish graveyard and rebel's mass grave in 1997, while filming “Our Holocaust Vacation”, our documentary about our mother and our family, which played on American public television. We also met the mayor back then, having gone to the mayor’s office unannounced, cameras blazing. The mayor at that time, Antoni Rog, was undaunted. He calmly welcomed us in and started recounting the town's history, and opening its archives. He knew a lot about its Jewish aspect. Ultimately, he took a half a day off to show us around the graves, train yards and other sites related to the Holocaust in Mszana.
The Blair family, (lf-rt) Stefan, Willa, Nicholas, Doniphan and Irena, at the new memorial built by Sztetl Mszana Dolna at the old Jewish graveyard, where forebear Mendel Rotkopf is probably buried. photo: Kinga McInerneyBack then, the rebel memorial was in a thicket behind a factory, completely overgrown. Now the brush has been cleared and the memorial cleaned, but the factory remained, and the owner didn’t like people parking in his lot.
Generally speaking, however, the Mszanians have been extremely welcoming to my family—post-war, of course. In addition to Mayor Rog, there was Jadwiga, the woman who helped my mother and my father, Vachel, when they came the first time, in December 1980. They were sleuthing the lead of the postcard my mother received from her family in 1941—many postal services still operated during the war—which was postmarked Mszana Dolna. Jadwiga took them through the fields to the memorial and, when my mother started to cry, embraced her.
Jadwiga also invited them for a meal at her house, a quarter mile away, and did the same when they returned in 1997, along with me, my brother and his wife, Tania. We kept our cameras in their cases then, having decided to let my mother enjoy a quite chat in Polish with Jadwiga.
That was also when, walking back up the dirt path from the memorial, my father told me, “This is the last time I will be coming here. But I want to be cremated and my ashes brought here,” which we did in 2005 and why we decided to follow suit with my mother.
Although my father was an Ohio-born Protestant, he developed a strong affinity for his Jewish in-laws and their culture. His statements at the mass grave, notably “It’s a disgrace to civilization,” which we did film, are some of the more moving moments of “Our Holocaust Vacation”. When he died, we found his subway reading in his hand bag: Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz”.
I assumed I had Jadwiga’s last name and address in my address book, but unfortunately I didn’t. Before leaving New York, I should have looked through my mother’s address book, although we had trouble enough remembering her ashes and the required death certificate.
Somewhere between Pańskie and the Jewish graveyard, Urszula invited us to attend the two-day commemoration, which we were just then learning about. Alas, the rest of my family had a pretty tight itinerary, on route to Hungary, the birthplace of my brother’s mother-in-law and where my niece and daughter were flying back to America in four days. But I accepted. In fact, it was all expenses paid, I was amazed to find out, including meals and a room in the lovely hotel and spa Janda. Mszana is known for its mineral baths, massages and hiking.
Guests and onlookers at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the mass grave in Mszana Dolna. photo: D. BlairAfter meeting with Urszula, her family and the mayor, and our whirlwind tour, it was after five, and we hadn’t had lunch. They directed us to Mszana’s premier modern restaurant, The Perla, replete with a “veggie burger,” which Irena had: grilled vegetables on an organic bun with sweet potato fries. "Delicious," she said.
Then we headed back up to Pańskie and some serious sobbing.
Walking down the new brick path, Nick and Willa each carried a dirt-filled pot with the wild-looking flowers Irena found, while we were eating at the Perla, and thought Tonia would like. Although she also used Google Translate, Irena has some basic Polish, a famously difficult language, which she started learning in 1997, when she was 16 and hanging out on the streets of Lodz with the Polish kids.
By the time I took out my guitar and started singing “Si Mi Quieres Escribir”, the Spanish Civil War love song that Tonia and Vachel courted each other with, we were all crying. I was bawling so hard, the usually-reserved Stefan even came over from his father’s side to give me a hug.
After singing some of my mother’s favorite Yiddish and Spanish tunes and one Beatles song, “Help”, I read the long chapter about her family, “Miriam and Mendel”, from her book, “Love at the End of the World”, which was published when she was 95 and is available through all major bookstores. Just as when I read her chapter “Auschwitz” in the back of Birkenau death camp, her precise, poignant words conjured her spirit. This time her words also brought to life her family, noted John, who was sitting with Judit on a tree stump to one side of the grave.
By then the sun had set, and it was time to spread Tonia’s ashes, speak our piece, and do our family’s traditional meditation, a long “om.” Although I neglected to prepare, I decided to say how, no matter how difficult dealing with the Holocaust is, it was still easier than not dealing with it, largely addressing my nephew and niece, 23 and 21 respectively. Having visited Auschwitz two days earlier, Stefan and Willa were embarking on the noble quest of tackling that horrific history, as I could see be their many questions.
As tortuous as it may be, we can learn to move beyond the hate, nightmares and recrimination to a modicum of understanding. The love and beauty our family—as well as individuals across the entirety of humanity, including on the opposing side—have produced can sustain us through the darkest degenerations of humanity. In her moving, poetic statement, Irena said something similar.
People walking to the old Jewish cemetery in Mszana Dolna for the unveiling of the new memorial. photo: D. BlairIn fact, it was Miriam and Mendel’s love and my mother’s determination to build on it that led her to become the youngest nurse in the Lodz ghetto and work diligently, with almost no medicine and little food, to help heal. It also inspired her to explore romance and relationships with young men (some kissing but otherwise chaste) in the middle of history’s most massive outpouring of hate and death, including with a German pilot in the airplane factory in Freiberg, Germany. Despite the terrible trauma of losing her family and enduring Auschwitz and five and half years of total, genocidal war, that spirit of love, romance and hope somehow sustained her.
As she wrote in “Miriam and Mendel”, and I read through a blur of tears in the waning light: “My parents provided all they could but especially their ideas and their love. Although their names and identities will eventually disappear, their values will remain in my children and their children.”
As it happens, however, their names and identities will not disappear, due to the efforts of the Sztetl Mszana Dolna project. In fact, Urszula made a point of mentioning Miriam and Mendel and their experience, which she had only just learned of, as she did with the forebears of all the descendants in attendance, during the two days of commemorations, events and dinners.
It started on Sunday with a trip to the Jewish cemetery. I walked the mile and a half from town, carrying another pot of wild flowers to honor what we now believe is the grave of my grandfather. A Polish scholar living in Hamburg, where I assume she is married to a German, gave a dissertation on the cemetery, which has headstones dating back to the 17th century. She even translated some inscriptions from the Hebrew, which she reads but can not speak.
On the way back to town, I rode with the talkative Polish woman we met on Friday at the graveyard, where she was painting enamel black the cemetery fence in preparation for the event. Named Kinga, after the 13th century Polish queen who renounced royalty to become a good Samaritan nun, her last name is McInerney, since her husband is Irish—yet more intermarrying, although they're both mathematicians.
Kinga hails from an upper-class Polish family, which lost everything except a vacation home in Mszana, due to their obsession with art and painting. A devout but modern Catholic, who can’t abide the literalists, Kinga is fascinated with the stories of the Old Testament.
To fortify ourselves against the inclement weather, which was producing a light rain, we dipped into a sweet shop with her husband and two cute, precocious daughters. Then we went to the teach-in part of the Sztetl Mszana Dolna program. Held in Mszana’s open air marketplace by the river, there were kids' activities, like learning to write Hebrew letters, and adult explorations, like Urszula’s recounting of Mszana’s history.
Jakub Antosz-Rekucka translates for his mother, Urszula (lf), and a Polish scholar on Jewish culture at the old Jewish cemetery. photo: D. Blair“Mszana was co-created by Jews, who were a quarter of the population, some figuring among the community’s leaders,” she said, or something in that vein, a few times over the course of the weekend.
The market event climaxed with a performance of an excellent Klezmer band, which consisted of a woman singer/violinist and an accordionist and bassist. They did “Tumbalaliaka” and “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”, two songs Tonia and I used to sing together, although not with their jazzy overtones.
Afterwards, we repaired to Mszana’s famous “wine cellar” restaurant, a welcome relief since the temperature had dropped, and I was in shorts. Ironically, that was where we ate after filming in Pańskie in ’97 and found their large, fancy chairs funny.
The dinner was for about 50, including the musicians, the organizers and the descendants of the victims: Hanna, granddaughter of Jakub Weissberger, who built the original memorial, Saul, who recited the Kaddish, and his wife Denise from Florida, Svi and his wife and her two sisters from Israel, and others. As is Urszula’s modus operandi, she thanked everyone by name, cited a few details about their forbears and expressed preternatural warmth.
The actual commemoration was the next day. Since it started at 3:00, I had time see Antoni Rog, the ex-mayor, and his son Jakub. We met at the Perla, over another excellent meal. Rog looked great, after some shoulder surgery, although he still smoked, which remains popular in Poland. Now retired, he keeps busy taking care of his grandson, building him an elaborate play structure, but also helping resettle some of the 200 Ukrainian refugees housed in Mszana.
“Although we have taken in almost three million refugees,” he told me, Jakub translating, “We don’t have any refugee camps. They are mostly with families.” He also gave me some pessimistic prognostications on the war.
The commemoration at Pańskie was attended by well over 100 people, including over a dozen of the victim's descendants, three rabbis, two Hasidic brothers from the U.S. and one from Israel, the German consulate in Cracow, many other dignitaries, and dozens of interested Poles from the community. It featured the Israeli rabbi’s sonorous recitation of the Kaddish and an honor guard of Polish scouts, boys and girls.
It continued at the Jewish cemetery with the unveiling of the new monument, the rabbi doing “Psalm 23”, one of my favorites, and an open mic. I took the opportunity to thank the generosity and vision of Urszula and the other Mszanians, whom I noted had always treated my family well. As we were leaving the cemetery, Urszula grabbed my hand and held it as we walked back to the car, a silent but solid and deeply appreciated expression of solidarity and affection.
POlish kids learn how to write Hebrew at a teach-in at the town's open air market that included a history lecture and a Klezmir band. photo: D. BlairLater that evening, at the group dinner at the Mayor’s office, Urszula delivered an hour plus lecture, worthy of a PhD dissertation, on the Jews in Mszana. She went into detail on many of the families and figures, like Jakub Weisberger, who built the memorial and whose granddaughter Hanna was in attendance.
“He build the memorial,” Hanna had told me earlier, “so the Poles couldn’t say they did it, which is good—unless they were like Urszula,” she added.
Urszula also told the story of a Jewish man who moved to Mszana, fell in love with a Christian woman and married her, even though his family disowned him. Then, during the war, when it became apparent what was afoot, he convinced a gentile friend in Cracow to claim he had an affair with his wife, and write a letter to that effect, which would prove to the Nazis their daughter was not genetically Jewish.
The theme of deep intimate relations between Jews and gentiles, and how it formed Mszana, was one Urszula kept repeating. Apparently, it was something she had to work hard to uncover, as it was only recently Mszanians started to open up about it. Although Mayor Rog showed us in ’97 a book written by a Mszanian by hand about the war years, Urszula’s quest for living testimony had to wait until one elderly man began talking. Then others joined in.
Having become interested in Judaism and Jewish culture while studying theology at Cracow’s famed Jagiellonian University, Urszula hit upon her bold historical project around 2000.
Another amazing story she told concerned Mszana’s Catholic pastor, Father Stabrawa. Apparently, he had been somewhat antisemitic before the war, caught up in that evil spirit, which seized Poland in the 1930s, after Marshal Piłsudski, who was a dictator of sorts but friendly to the Jews, faded from power.
Once the war started, however, Stabrawa reconsidered his views and became friends with the rabbi of the synagogue across Mszana’s main square from his church. Indeed, his feelings and actions advanced so far, he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, about 60 miles away. He was executed on August 17, 1942, two days before the rabbi and his congregation were mass murdered at Pańskie.
I cracked a tear as Urszula related that story, which highlighted both her interest in Jew-gentile connections and her fearlessness in addressing Polish malfeasance, when she noted Stabrawa had been an antisemite. As it happened, I was in Auschwitz on August 17th and saw some priests carrying flowers to honor Stabrawa.
Urszula Antosz-Rekucka speaks with Hanna the granddaughter of Jakub Weissberger, who built the first memorial for the mass grave in 1946. photo: D. BlairIt is the redemptive journey through harsh opposition or radical change that really tugs the heart, rather than the steady path to sainthood. Indeed, the only time my mother cried during the filming of “Our Holocaust Vacation” was when she recalled her chaste but romantic interaction with the German pilot. He brought her silk stockings, no less! Although she really needed a loaf of bread, his gift reminded her that romance can bridge the impossible divide, which feeds the soul.
Since Urszula does not speak fluent English, her torrent of words were translated by her daughter Rachela but mostly by her son Jakub, a herculean task he enacted with humility, grace and passion. Indeed, I got to know Jakub in those three days, starting with sitting next to him at the first dinner on Saturday night. That was when he explained the noise from upstairs at the restaurant was a Polish wedding, which I snuck up to see for myself. It included blasting music, strobe lights, wild dancing and serious drinking.
Jakub started helping Urszula in his teens, about 15 years ago. Now he is taking his PhD at the 650-year-old Jagiellonian University, which his sister and father as well as mother attended. His dissertation: How Polish singers misinterpret Bob Dylan’s lyrics when singing his songs, which are popular there.
He also works for a medical journal specializing in the issues surrounding Auschwitz. In the early 1960s, it was the first to publish the Jagiellonian researchers who identified “survivor trauma.” American psychologists only followed in 1964.
At the commemoration at Pańskie, between bouts of translation, Jakub whipped out an accordion and played a haunting melody of his own composition. In the course of our time together, we had fascinating discussions about his mother, the Holocaust, current Polish politics, the Polish psyche, Dylan and Witold Gombrowicz (my favorite Polish author), often accompanied by Justina, his also very interesting and beautiful fiancée.
Doniphan with Antoni Rog, the old mayor of Mszana who befriended the family when they were making their movie 'Our Holocaust Vacation' in 1997, who now works placing Ukrainian refugees around Mszana. photo: Jakub RogWhat a weekend, from copious tears and transcendent truths to feelings of kinship and community and, perhaps most important, how to wield the redemptive power of commemoration. One week later, I am only beginning to absorb it, which is fortuitous for the next leg of my journey.
On Wednesday August 24th, I entered Ukraine.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Aug 27, 2022 - 03:32 AM
Planting a Tree with Ferlinghetti
by d’Arci Bruno
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, circa 1955, put his money where his mouth was in terms of literature, law and love. Photo: courtesy City LightsWith Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s passing, on February 22nd, 2021, when he was 101 years of age, the last of the big beats passed into history. Arguably not the movement’s greatest writer or painter, he was one of its greatest individuals, its strongest stand-up guy and its most responsible organizer.
Ferlinghetti started City Lights Bookstore in 1953, legally defended Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” from censorship prosecution in ’57, and helped hundreds of other authors, artists, friends and causes. While Jack Kerouac died at 47 from alcohol poisoning and bitterness, the Italian-Jewish American Ferlinghetti, who was orphaned as a child and raised by relatives in Europe, where he studied the classics and became a poet and painter, lived a long, lovely life, exemplifying the best of humanism as well as beat culture.
cineSOURCE has covered Ferlinghetti before, here and here. We’re honored to have the Bay Area artist d’Arci Bruno tell her story of how Ferlinghetti touched her life.
Author d'Arci Bruno beneath the famous Bixbee Bridge which marks the entrance to 'the real' Big Sur and is near the property of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Photo: courtesy d. BrunoIN 2005, I WAS LIVING WITH MY THEN BOY-
friend, Al, an Italian musician and designer, in the carriage house behind a famous musician, who knew quite a lot of artists, musicians and literati of note in the San Francisco Bay Area. The house was located in Bernal Heights and had a large, lovely garden, in which many parties were thrown, and it was there that we were lucky enough to meet many special and talented people.
I am not exactly sure on how Al met Mr. Lawrence Ferlinghetti or the subject of carpentry at his Big Sur cabin came up, but I do know that a work deal was sealed when it was discovered that Al and Lawrence’s son shared a name: Lorenzo. Kismet!
As Italians go, this was all that was needed to ensure all would be well. I was added to the mix as the “helper,” a good cook and organized camper, with many useful skills listed on my growing resume. I am also Italian, so there you go—perfetto!
At the time, I was the overworked manager and merchandiser of a popular women’s clothing store in Half Moon Bay owned by one of my best friends, Danette Pugliese, the bedraggled new mother of twin boys. I was also taking care of another best friend, Diane, who was losing her year-long battle with ovarian cancer. Hence, the prospect of spending two weeks of solitude in Big Sur sounded very appealing.
A plan was made to go to Lawrence’s property to scope out the needed work on May 7th—the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend, 2005—and meet Lawrence there on Sunday.
The drive down to Big Sur is a beautiful one, and it was a glorious sunny day when we set out down the coast. We stopped at the Carmel Highlands General Store for some snacks and a bit more gas—the Coast Highway is a bit desolate between the little settlements—and, by the time we got to the turnoff at the Bixby Bridge, we were ready for a beer and a snack.
After our refrishments, we had a gate code to figure out, halfway down the dusty dirt road, and another one at the property gate. Al was always nervous with codes and alarms, since he tends to set them off, but these went without a hitch. We were let into a sunny clearing surrounded by trees, with two darling, slightly rundown cabins sitting right next to each other.
I had to pee, so I went looking for the outhouse, down a short path through some trees. It was old, and the wood had turned dark and silver over time from the elements—a classic! I swung open the door and scanned for spiders and critters and installed the TP roll I brought. I left the door open to take in the view, which was peaceful, sunny and full of spring.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark inside, I began to notice visitor’s names carved into the wooden walls. Suddenly, one stood out—Jack Kerouac. Before that moment, I must confess, I had not really made the connection to where I was. But sitting there, with my pants pulled down, I was hit by a lightning bolt of historical awareness.
My mouth hung open in awe. I reached out and touched the name with my finger. I don’t know if it was actually carved by him, or done in homage or as a joke, but still—this WAS the place he stayed! It WAS here he wrote the book “Big Sur” (1962).
I ran back up the path to tell Al what I had found, and we began to explore the rest of the property. There were three structures in the compound: the Old West Hotel, which was Lawrence’s cabin, the Kerouac Cabin, located about 15 feet to the right, and another cabin across the clearing and up a short path, the Meditation Cabin. We were there to work on the Old West Hotel and the Meditation cabin.
The Old West Hotel is a two-story structure designed to look like the Old West, with a bedroom with a balcony on the top floor and a fireplace and main room on the bottom, with a wrap-around porch perfect for staying cool when the sun is high and playing guitar and drinking wine/whiskey when it gets low.
It was very charming on the outside, but bare-plywood, cold-bachelor, anti-chic on the inside. No heat, insulation or running water—rustica, molto rustica!
The Kerouac Cabin, on the other hand, was the opposite: very plain and square on the outside, but extremely charming—though completely rundown—on the inside. It had been overrun by mice and other crawly creatures over the years and had that musty, unmistakable rodent urine smell as soon as I opened the door.
Ferlinghetti in front of the 'cabin' he called the Old West Hotel, circa 1998. Photo: courtesy City Lights
It was dark and slightly damp (foggy, wet coastal air) but there was a stone fireplace, a little bed, dresser, some shelves and table and chair. The romantic me imagined living there: chopping wood for the fire, gathering berries for a pie, drinking tea by candlelight, while reading a good book in the evening—a little like Steinbeck’s Doc in “Cannery Row”.
I fell in love with it, but it was way beyond any modest help that I could give it, so I shut the door. But I could not for one minute imagine the surly, drunk writer who had made it famous ever living there, or loving it for what it was.
We unloaded the rest of our stuff from the truck and decided to go and find the beach while the sun was still out, shoving a couple of beers and the bag of chips into a backpack. We found a little path to Bixby Creek, where we could get water, and followed Lawrence’s directions to the beach by walking along the path at the end of the gated road, and then going down under the Bixby Bridge.
The first house directly behind Lawrence was a giant, modern concrete-and-glass monstrosity, with fancy landscaping going out to the surrounding poison oak, coastal trees and scrubby plants. It looked way out of place amidst the old vacation cabins and small older houses.
The path started off in the dark canopy of trees, surrounded by lush ivy and sloped gently downward, nestled next to the creek and winding through the canyon under the bridge to the beach. There was a funny, little altar near the end of the trail, a place where people tied and propped up things that they found on the beach. It was a fun and whimsical art gallery of sorts, and I enjoyed looking at all of the treasures.
Just after the “Treasure Tree,” the path opened up to the beach and view of the ocean right underneath the beauty of the bridge. Al and I poked around the whole area, skipped rocks, took off our shoes and sat on a log and drank the beers in the afternoon sunshine—heaven!
As the sun began to fade, we wandered back up the path and set about getting some food ready and sorting out our sleeping gear. The cabin was cozy warm from the fire we built, and the bottle of wine we shared did not hurt.
Bruno hard at work on the Old West Hotel. Photo: courtesy d/ BrunoI slept great, a heavy, dreamy sleep that you only get with crickets and fresh air. In the morning, I made some good strong coffee on my camp stove and we got ready to meet our host, who was due to arrive at 11 am.
I had never met Lawrence before, so I was a bit excited. I set about tidying stuff up, while Al got out his measuring tape and began to take notes regarding the job: insulating and covering the walls of the Old West Hotel with cedar tongue-and-groove—a live-in cigar box, I thought!
Mr. Ferlinghetti arrived right on time, with a big tree sticking out of his truck. He got out, waved and smiled and shouted, "Hello!" He grabbed a couple of Trader Joe’s shopping bags from his passenger seat and set them on the porch: tins of black beans, some tortillas and a few bottles of Two Buck Chuck Cabernet Sauvignon.
He was very spry for his age, which I guessed to be mid-80s. His eyes were pale and a bit watery, but they held a mischievous sparkle and you could tell that he liked to laugh and have a good time. He was tall and in good shape, which I think he must have owed to his spartan diet of beans, tortillas and wine. His handshake was firm and warm and he grabbed my offered hand with both of his at once.
This is going to be OK, I thought. I asked him if he wanted any lunch, and I fixed us all something while he and Al went over the details of what he wanted done. I called them over when lunch was ready and Lawrence opened a bottle of Chuck and began to tell us stories and tales about all the happenings in Bixby Canyon.
And then he asked me if I would like to help him plant a tree.
“The tree in your truck?” I asked. That was the only time I saw him vexed, as he began to talk about the changes happening in his backyard: the big modern concrete house, the noise, the trucks, the dust, the monstrosity of it all—progress in all of its ugly glory.
He wanted to plant a quick growing, bushy tree to block the view of the big, ugly house. He had bought a buckeye, and he told me a story about why this particular tree, but I can’t remember it now.
At the spot where he wanted to plant it, all I saw was fountains of poison oak spurting out of the ground and spilling off of the bushes. I asked him if he owned any dishwashing gloves, and lo-and-behold he scrounged a pair up. I began to gingerly snip and chop a clearing so we could dig a big hole. I was snipping away, using pruners with the long handles, to remove each offending piece. My only goal from that point on was TO NOT GET Poison Oak.
Al, in the meantime, was on the phone ordering supplies and finding out where to get what in the area, and making lists of lists, and more lists, of stuff we would need. Lawrence also wanted some work done on the Mediation Cabin—mouse proofing and stair fixing—so that had to be measured, too. Lawrence opened a second bottle of Charles Shaw’s finest and got a shovel.
Lawrence began to ask me questions about myself and offered me a glass of wine, which I declined until Operation Poison Oak was finished. He pulled up a stool and told me about his son and his friend’s visit to the cabin. I had noticed two surfboards at the Old West Hotel, one yellow and one purple. I imagined the boys carrying them through the woods on the windy trail to the sea for some fun on hot days.
I asked him about running the book store and we chatted a lot about that. I had been a customer for many years and told him that City Lights was always one of my SF Tour highlights when anybody came to town. We talked about the city changing and both got a little wistful.
I began to dig, mainly because I liked hearing his stories, and I wanted him to keep talking. I took him up on the offer of a glass of vino and we spent a good two hours chatting and flirting (thanks Chuck!) and taking turns digging. When the hole was big enough, Al helped him get the tree, and they put it into place. We replaced the dirt and went to the creek and got a couple buckets of water and gave it a good drink. I often wonder if the tree grew big and bushy enough to hide that awful house from his view.
After we were done planting the tree, we made a plan to begin work the following week, and we all left to go back home to the city. I never met Mr. Ferlinghetti again.
Ferlinghetti's guitar in the Wild West Hotel after Bruno and her boyfriend Al toungue-and-grooved the walls. Photo: d. BrunoAl and I worked hard for two weeks on the property. I removed quite a bit of poison oak but never got itchy once. We did a really nice job on the cabins, and I heard afterwards that Lawrence was very pleased with the result.
Every morning that I was there, I touched the name Jack Kerouac in the outhouse like a ritual. It was like touching history, and I am part of this history, even though hardly anybody will ever even know I was there.
Maybe the Buckeye remembers.
d’Arci Leigh Bruno Rhine is an artist, educator and all-around adventurer taking a break from the Bay Area in Seattle, who can be reached .
Posted on Jul 07, 2022 - 03:54 PM
Ukraine Fights for Freedom in Song, Film and Television
by Doniphan Blair
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Members of the Kalush Orchestra, winners of this year's Eurovision festival, in their trademark ethnic punk. photo courtesy: the Kalush OrchestraAMID THE DELUGE OF NEWS FROM
Ukraine, much remains hidden. One little known fact: Ukrainians fight so fiercely because they were slaughtered so mercilessly, literally eight times in the last century, from the Nazi invasion and Holocaust to the Soviet Revolution and fabricated famine (see cineSOURCE article).
Nor do we appreciate how they assuage trauma through art.
On top of Ukraine’s many museums, opera houses and folkloric art centers, there has been an explosion of youth culture, from bands and raves to skaters and fashionistas, and regular culture, from television shows and films to comedy clubs—even during the war—or Kyiv’s lauded PinchukArtCentre, four floors of contemporary art capped by One Love, the popular espresso bar.
In fact, a renaissance started after Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution, the ousting of a pro-Russia president in 2014 by months of street protests—not a US-financed coup, as some of my lefty friends continue to claim. It was precisely Ukraine’s robust, 60s-style democracy that drove "Pootie-Poot”—W’s pet name for the tyrant—so mad, he invaded Ukraine days after the closing of the Sochi Winter Olympics, his lavish showcase of Russian success.
In other words, the Russo-Ukrainian War is also an “art war,” pitting creativity, democracy and hope against cynicism, oligarchy and conspiracy theories.
No wonder Ukraine’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, “Stefanie” by the Kalush Orchestra, won on May 14th. Or “Klondike” by writer-director Maryna Er Gorbach took best director and grand jury prizes at Sundance and the Seattle International Film Festival, respectively. Or two months earlier, Netflix started streaming “Servant of the People”, a television series starring none other than Volodymyr Zalenskyy, the comedian who became president, first in fiction then in real life, a post-modern success story binding art and politics.
The Kalush Orchestra epitomizes Ukraine’s traditional combination of ancient and current, in this case folk music and hiphop, replete with a break dancer in an ethnic-art body suit, MC KylymMen, which means “carpet man.” Even though Eurovision is half decided by popular vote and Europeans had a pressing, nonmusical reason to support Ukraine, Kalush’s “Stefanie” was infinitely more authentic than England’s operatic extravaganza, Sam Ryder’s “Space Man,” or Spain’s third placer, a standard, Latin-rhythmed seduction song.
Written by front man Oleh Psiuk about his mother, “Stefanie" evokes motherland but doesn’t mention war, as per Eurovision's prohibitions against politics. The day after Russia’s invasion, in fact, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs the contest from the safety of Geneva, Switzerland, ruled Russian musicians could still compete. They recanted the next day.
This is the third time Ukraine took Eurovision gold, in fact, rather impressive for a 30-year-old country competing against 44 others, some with world-famous music industries like England. It was the eighth time, however, it triggered political controversy, according to a Politico article.
Dustups ranged from Ukraine’s 2019 nominee being forced out for having performed in Russia—the Russo-Ukraine War was five years old by then—to criticisms of the single-named Jamala, who won in 2016 with “1944”. About Soviets deporting to Siberia a quarter million of her people, the Crimean Muslim Tatars, “1944” obviously referenced Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, but EBU ruled it fact and history not politics.
Ironically, Ukraine’s first Eurovision win, in the spring of 2004, was with an utterly apolitical tune with nonsense lyrics. But a few months later, after a pro-Russia candidate tried to steal the election, street protests started and turned into the Orange Revolution. When Ukraine hosted the following year, as per Eurovision's tradition, and the Ukrainian band Green Jolly sang “No to falsifications, no to lies,” the EBU made them censor the fraudster’s name.
After Russia was excluded from this year’s Eurovision, its hackers tried to disrupt the vote, in standard Russian tradition, but failed, according to Italian police. Hours after Kalush’s closing performance, Psiuk kissed his girlfriend goodbye and flew home to join the army and Carpet Man. Already in uniform, he wasn’t even granted leave to perform at Eurovision.
With “Stefanie” booming through bunkers and trenches as well as clubs and headsets across Ukraine, Kalush’s efforts both artistic and military will help determine the outcome of the struggle. Sadly, its brutality and probable longevity convinced EBU to cancel the 67th Eurovision next year in Kyiv, and hand that role to runner-up England. On May 30th, Kalush sold their crystal microphone Eurovision trophy for $900,000 to WhiteBit, a cryptocurrency firm, to buy drones for the Ukrainian Army.
Oksana Cherkashyna, playing Irka, in front of her bombed out house in Eastern Ukraine, from the new Ukrainian movie “Klondike”. photo courtesy: Maryna Er Gorbach"Klondike”, by writer/director Maryna Er Gorbach and produced by a Turkish filmmaker, Mehmet Bahadir Er, who happens to be her husband, is an indie masterpiece, in the manner of Cronenberg’s 1996 “Crash”: spooky, realistic and artistic, but with the added slam of being pointedly political and matriarchal.
I was lucky enough to catch it at the San Francisco International Film Festival on May 1st, after racing across town to grab my pro-Ukraine T-shirt and convincing the Berkeley Museum Theater staff to let me in, even though I just lost my driver’s license, which was required for entry along with a vaccination card.
Gorbach uses a slow, dramatic build of human interactions, in perfectly framed shots, often filmed at the glowing height of magic hour, to portray the bloated-with-baby Irka trying to run a small farm with her gruff but loving husband, Tolik, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. That was where the war started in 2014 and today is the site of a World War Two-style artillery duel killing thousands.
Irka is played to smoldering, slowly empowering effect by Oksana Cherkashyna, in her first starring role, who showed up to the Berkeley Museum screening as if this was a regular film festival tour. Unfortunately, her co-star Sergey Shadrin, who rendered Tolik rather nicely, couldn’t make it, having died of natural causes shortly before the film’s final cut was finished.
“Klondike”, the title of which suggests the Russian invasion is a resource grab, starts in low light and mystery, in a 360-degree pan around a large, modestly-modern farmhouse which, we eventually realize, is missing its front, sheared off by a shell. Bit by bit, more and more war intrudes, from Russian soldiers appropriating livestock to a body from Malaysian Flight 17—shot down on July 17, 2014, by Russians not Ukrainians, as some Russophiles still say—landing on their doorstep, or a wing of the shot-down airplane being hauled away in the background.
There is also the dramatic and horrific denouement, which wraps up the story of the pregnancy, and the arrival of Irka’s brother, inspired by the Euromaidan Revolution a few months earlier, who shows up to bring her back to Kyiv for safety and a normal childbirth. One lovely bit has Irka filling the samovar for tea only to, when her brother and husband come to blows, douse them with boiling water, as Gorbach tightens the noose on a political, personal and character-driven story.
Gorbach graduated from the Andrzej Wajda School of Film Directing in Warsaw, Poland, after studying at Kyiv’s National Theatre and the Cinema & Television University. Barely 40, she now has four features under her belt, including “Omar and Us” (2019), about a Turkish soldier’s tough return to civilian life, written by hubby Mehmet, with whom she codirected two more, the 2013 “Love Me”, a lushly-detailed, trouble-in-paradise romance, and the comedy “No Ofsayt” (2009).
At the screening, Cherkashyna was beautiful and bubbly—so unlike her bedraggled Irka as to be unrecognizable—until I asked her if the filmmakers got push back from portraying successionist, Russian-speaking Ukrainians sympathetically. Humanizing villains is standard to drama but hard with war-torn audiences. A dark cloud descended and her explanation drifted through a few questions until she said something like, “I didn’t realize until this invasion that so many of my country people were heroes.”
She is one of them, of course, along with Gorbach, attempting to hold murderers accountable through imaginative storytelling in our new era of hybrid warfare, where we must fight cyberwar and conspiracy theories as well as tanks and missiles. Given the success of “Klondike”, Gorbach will undoubtedly go on to produce an epic about Ukraine’s underdog army and their Churchillian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who played the president in his production company's 'Servant of the People', in the apartment his character shares with his mother, niece and father. photo courtesy: Studio KvartalObviously, the most incredible art war achievement emerging from Ukraine, if not history in general, is how a comedian created a television show that launched him into the presidency just in time to become a fearless wartime president, a tricky turnaround he executed brilliantly.
Zelenskyy plays Vasily Petrovych Goloborodko, a high school history teacher, who is filmed ranting to a colleague about the upcoming election and how no one cares, “we always vote for the lesser of two assholes,” and he could do a much better job. When the kid with the phone camera uploads it and it goes viral, his students enter him unbeknownst in the presidential election.
“Servant of the People”, which ran for three seasons (2015-19) and 51 episodes, 40 to 90 minutes in length, is a sophisticated satire, dry humor marked by occasional absurdity and elevated by Zalensky’s excellent acting and resonant voice, skills which translated well to his war-time performance (see it on Netflix here).
It also includes a family sitcom, since Goloborodko, undoubtedly a joke name in Ukrainian, lives at home with his cabbie father, professor mother, and comely niece. Indeed, although the first episode opens with mysterious power players agreeing to let the Ukrainians choose their own president for once, its first major scene starts with Vasily’s father arguing in front of their flat, which wakes him up.
Realizing he is late for class, Goloborodko has to hustle to make coffee, iron his shirt, and usurp his niece to get a turn on the toilet. Indeed, it is there, reading peacefully, that he is interrupted by the arrival of the slick, statuesque Prime Minister Chuiko, played to perfection by Stanislav Boklan, and his entourage who inform Goloborodko he’s been elected president.
Even before that opening, however, the title sequence shows a Kyiv not unlike my hometown of Oakland, with ships and cranes, industrial and all-glass buildings, multi-laned freeways and bike paths, along which Vasily bikes to school—portraying a normalcy that makes the country’s collapse into total war that much more poignant.
While President Goloborodko is the central story, “Servant of the People” keeps flashing back to his life as a teacher or at home, where his family immediately starts leveraging his new position and income. Even though it periodically slips into farce or slapstick, Ukrainian life is satirized slyly, contrasting the opulence of being president and corruption of the oligarchs with an average honest man simply doing the right thing.
Ukrainian politics is skewered mercilessly, however, from an opposing candidate refusing to concede to the former president refusing to leave, hardly a joke in today’s America. The latter impasse leads to Episode 4’s tour de force climax as Prime Minister Chuiko tries to coax his old friend the ex-president—now drunk, dissembling and exhibiting the homoeroticism common but denied across Eastern Europe—to exit the presidential palace.
When Chuiko gives up, saying “Send in the SWAT team,” Goloborodko takes over, drawing on a technique he used to oust his predecessor at the high school: a hilarious pissing contest with each trying to out-quote the other with old sayings.
“Servant of the People” was so immediately popular, Zalenskyy and his production company produced a feature film, “Servant of the People 2” (2016), between season one and two. About President Goloborodko outsmarting the oligarchs in order to reform the country and get IMF aid, it gives the lie to claims that those aspirations were imposed by the West.
Zelenskyy is a talented producer as well as entertainer and actor, who started a comedy troupe, Kvartal 95, with his high school friends, and helped it grow into Studio Kvartal, the producer of famous film and television shows. He also toured Russia doing standup (he's a native Russian-speaker), won Ukraine’s “Dancing with the Stars” in 2006, and acted in eight movies.
Not only was “Servant of the People” smack on the nose, Zelenskyy campaigned for president by presenting his comedy act. While this oddly parallels Trump’s use of his “Apprentice” fame and character to win the American presidency, Zelenskyy clowned honestly and then put joking aside to voice sincere anti-corruption and humanist views, the very opposite of the cynicism and conspiracy theories of Trump and Putin. Indeed, Zelenskyy is the archetypal anti-Trump as well as anti-Putin, neither of whom can give let alone take a joke.
Ukraine also figured in the Trump Administration, of course, from Trump hiring to manage his campaign Paul Manafort, fresh from his years promoting pro-Russian Ukrainian candidates, to his blaming Russian election interference on Ukraine and the notorious “perfect phone call,” when he tried to blackmail Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for desperately needed military equipment. Zelenskyy held the American president at bay with comparative ease, however, given he was a good Jewish boy who got a law degree before venturing into comedy.
As if “Servant of the People”’s making-of story wasn’t spectacular enough, it morphed into the Servant of the People political party whose head has become an international hero, leading not only Ukraine’s storied defense against the most terrible tyrant of our time but a new enthusiasm for democracy, after it has been in decline from Hungary and Poland to Brazil and The Philippines. Yes, Zelenskyy needs high tech artillery and other supplies as soon as possible, but Ukrainian song, television and film is more than able to inspire his people as well as the rest of us, telling that story for the near future and perhaps all of time.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jul 07, 2022 - 02:34 PM
Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs
by Doniphan Blair
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Trump's speech on January 6th, 2020, will surely go down as one of the greatest public brainwashing performances in history, equal to Hitler at Nuremberg. illo: D. BlairWith all the recent revelations, from Trump's multipronged conspiracy and attempt to lead his armed militia's march on the capitol to the reemergence of Q on June 24th, this article, written for publication on January 6th, 2022, would be begging for an update if most of its basic facts didn't remain so pertinent.
PEOPLE WHO BLAME DONALD TRUMP'S
behavior on narcissism or authoritarianism often neglect to note his political career has been based entirely on conspiracy theories. Indeed, he endorsed birtherism, the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya, specifically to bolster his 2012 presidential run. It may seem like an odd plank for a political platform, but conspiracism had become popular on the left, after 9/11 and among the anti-vaxxers, and on the right, with prejudices and phobias dating back to the 1950s and beyond.
Moreover, Trump is the scion of a conspiracy theory dynasty. He was best friends with Roy Cohn, the notorious New York lawyer and fixer but also national player and righthand man of Senator Joseph McCarthy during his ‘50s witch hunt for communists and gays. McCarthy’s political career was also based entirely on conspiracy theories.
Whether or not there was a sexual relationship, Cohn knew McCarthy intimately. McCarthy’s big mistake was not destabilizing America during the darkest days of the Cold War, according to Cohn, nor being addicted to gambling, alcohol and morphine, but drinking his own Kool-Aid. Believing CTs is for followers, Cohn realized, while CT leaders must remain free to invent and adapt. They also have to avoid the self-destruction of believing their own lies.
It was love at first sight in 1973 when Cohn met the 27-year-old Trump, who was searching for a lawyer to beat a federal probe of his company’s racist practices. Along with hiring Cohn, Trump adopted his transactionalism and public tactics—attack first, counter attack twice as hard, never admit error or defeat, always blame someone, file endless law suits, delay or deny payments, don’t pay taxes, donate to politicians, and manipulate the media—but also his secret hand: conspiracy theories.
According to McCarthy’s latest biographer, the deep-digging Larry Tye, in “Demagogue” (2020), “The aging Cohn taught the fledgling Trump the transcendent lessons he had learned from his master, McCarthy—how to smear opponents and contrive grand conspiracies.”
After becoming birtherism’s celebrity spokesperson, Trump went on to develop “grand” conspiracy theories about Mexicans and Muslims, but he came to specialize in voter fraud. Conspiracy theories about election theft are comparatively easy to initiate since the vote counting appears hidden in back rooms or on hard drives. Indeed, immediately after the 2012 election, Trump tweeted that Barack Obama "lost the popular vote by a lot," even though he won by five million votes, and that the Democrats stole the election from Mitt Romney. At the 2016 Iowa caucus, he denounced Republican Senator Ted Cruz for ballot stuffing and, a few months later, insisted the Democrats would steal the general election if he won.
On Election Day 2016, Trump supporters scrutinized polling places and trumped-up minor irregularities, which was promoted as “Stop the Steal” by Republican trickster Roger Stone, Trump’s campaign manager but also an old friend and fellow disciple of Roy Cohn. Trump won, mooting that point, but still availed himself of the opportunity to accuse the Democrats of stealing the popular vote, simply because such claims abide a cardinal rule of conspiracy theories: reinforce them relentlessly.
Although his allies and opponents alike attributed his narcissism or fear of losing, four years later, he campaigned on the conspiracy-based proposition that Democrats would cheat again, and he claimed a “landslide” victory on Election Night. He then proceeded to mount one of the greatest false narrative indoctrination campaigns in history, despite having failed to show a shred of evidence for election fraud in scores of court appearances.
Trump debuted his CT team on November 19th, 2020, at the Republican Party headquarters, a foreboding sign for that venerable institution. In addition to his blundering but equally conspiratorial lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, it featured the fast-talking Sidney Powell and her elaborate stories about votes being changed by Venezuela, China and voting machine companies. Powell’s CTs came directly from influencers in QAnon, the dark-fantasy conspiracy cult, which had hit the news six months earlier and shocked many Americans with its strangeness and number of adherents.
Trump unveiled his own “in depth” conspiracy analysis on December 2nd. Although his speech was so lie-laden not even Fox News carried it, its repetitive, declarative sentences were a master class in public brainwashing. Trump’s CT was based simply on voting law changes and mail-in ballot fraud, but he allowed Powell to introduce elaborate international intrigues two weeks earlier to provide his fans a full-service CT emporium replete with the fantastic stories CTers love to entertain.
When Trump didn’t concede, many Republicans and most Americans were stunned, and they found his theories ludicrous. Alas, he had been working on CTs for years; he knew his audience intimately; and he persisted monomaniacally. Assisted by Republican politicians and lawyers but also dirty tricksters and CT professionals, from his old friend Roger Stone to America’s premier conspiracy monger, Alex Jones, who started the popular show “Infowars” and pioneered the theory 9/11 was an inside job, he easily convinced naïve Trumpers, radical rightwingers and mystical QAnons. Indeed, many of all three cohorts were overjoyed when he announced the Stop the Steal movement was back, and he was holding a rally for it in Washington D.C. on January 6th.
The Insurrection became America’s biggest political crisis since the Civil War and the largest crime scene outside of 9/11 but also proof of Trump’s CT powers. It fulfilled many of his predictions and provided a dramatic performance piece around which to build a “saving democracy” fantasy. As crazy as it was—and Republican leaders and Fox commentators were frantically begging Trump to call it off, to save their very lives or legacy not to mention their sanity—later that night, eight senators, led by Ted Cruz, and 139 representatives endorsed Trump’s Big Lie by refusing to certify the Electoral College vote.
Republicans unfamiliar with conspiracy theories and Trump’s ability to manage them were understandably nervous. Nevertheless, despite a year of investigations and exposes about January 6th, from the strongarming of Vice President Mike Pence and the adoption of the fake electors strategy to the many judgements or cases pending against him, Trump is still able to rationalize to partisans his behavior, using euphemism, misdirection, lies, threats and, of course, conspiracy theories.
The big problem facing Trump, Trumpers and their facilitators, as well as those of us attempting to understand and oppose them, is: Once people allow themselves to believe one unsupported conspiracy theory, it is almost impossible to unbelieve, and they generally adopt others, since CTs operate almost entirely in the imagination.
Actual conspiracies, in distinction to the made-up variant, are common among criminals and spies, and not uncommon with politicians, business people, religious leaders and lovers. At any given time, therefore, some people are scheming and others are watching and wondering what they are up to—conspiracy theorizing, in other words.
For the professional conspiracy theorist, however, finding actual conspiracies is secondary to influencing public opinion and accruing power. Moreover, the conspiracy they are actually interested in is the one they are perpetrating themselves, using the conspiracy theory itself. As CT professionals, they finetune it to their followers’ psychology, introducing child abuse accusations, for example, to trigger abuse survivors.
Of course, “conspiracy theory” is also a standard slur against any unproven hypotheses. In addition, fanciful notions are central to religion and art, and they figure in science, business and romance. But when esoteric ideas pertain to religion or love, they must be more spiritual than materialist to operate, and those involving art or business are generally recognized as fiction or speculation.
In politics, however, CTs masquerade as fact.
Trump is not stupid or crazy, despite all appearances. Hardly “a very stable genius,” as he once bragged, he does have emotional intelligence, cracked charisma, and mad publicity and law-skirting skills. In fact, he often outflanks rivals or enemies, particularly those who see him as an idiot, instead of idiot savant, or who fail to imagine the depths to which he can descend.
Largely on that account, Trump acquired a football team, three casinos and an airline, in rapid succession in the ‘80s, even as he bankrupted them with aggressive business strategies, mismanagement and profit skimming. He stayed one step ahead of catastrophe by hustling tax abatements and high-interest loans, by threatening to sue, and by spinning sales pitches and stories, like the notion he was a “disruptor,” who was actually improving a given business, or that his failures were actually successes.
Hence, it can be said that Trump’s middle-to-late business career was also based entirely on conspiracy theories. “It is literally all a fraud, his life,” summarized the hard-working investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, author of three revealing books on Trump, in a 2016 interview.
Once a CT leader convinces followers of their authenticity, facts become fungible, and they can say the opposite of what media or authorities report, what can be called “conspiracy mirroring.” Claiming innocence and that one’s opponent is a criminal monster may seem like a schoolyard tactic, but it is psychologically astute and can give an established narrative a new interpretation simply by flipping a few facts. Conspiracy mirroring is central to conspiracism, in fact, as George Orwell pointed out in “1984,” with his fascist state’s slogan, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Trump learned to manipulate media from Roy Cohn, who started feeding leads to gossip columnists as a teen and had three high school friends become media moguls. Trump used Cohn’s media connections but also roleplaying aliases to plant stories about himself and threats of law suits to repress reports portraying him poorly. He especially opposed those impugning his inflated worth, which he deflates in turn for taxes. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the tabloid National Enquirer, owned for decades by Cohn’s childhood chum, Generoso Pope, buried over 50 damaging stories, including a Playboy model’s detailed allegation Trump raped her.
“Bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity,” Trump explained in his “The Art of the Deal”, which became a bestseller for the mega-publisher Random House but was entirely ghostwritten. “Controversy, in short, sells.” Even the liberal press profits by covering Trump’s transgressions to excess, which provides their audience a popular schadenfreude but gives him free advertising.
Using his spectacle-making superpowers, Trump shifted from struggling real estate mogul to selling lifestyles, at first by licensing his pseudo-opulent brand to other developers. Then he ran beauty pageants, starred in a middling-popular reality television show, “The Apprentice”, and became a politician, starting with running for president, naturally, given his ego and ability to sell worldviews but also apprenticeship to Cohn.
Re-registering as a Republican, Trump tossed his hat into the ring a second time in 2011. Unlike during his brief 2000 campaign, as a pro-choice candidate with the Reform Party, he had a powerful trifecta of support mechanisms: the popularity of his show, the disciplinarian character he roleplayed on it, and the birtherism conspiracy theory. Although he soon realized Romney was a notably moral and capable Republican, and dropped out and endorsed him, he continued to explore his presidential ambitions through birtherism.
While modern life is based on science and facts, conspiracy theorists exploited a growing desire to oppose global, governmental or intellectual authorities and to embrace alternative views and fantasies. These interests started on the left, with the individualism, rebellion and truth questioning of the ‘60s, but were eventually adopted by the right and amplified by the digital age’s flood of information, social media algorithms, fake news and secretive side. The very year the internet blew up, 1995, so did rightwing conspiracism, with the white nationalist bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Newt Gingrich’s scorched earth takeover of Congress, Rush Limbaugh’s conspiracy theories about President Clinton, and the growth of evangelical millenarianism in the final days of the millennia.
Trump is not unique. Many of today’s political and cultural leaders are accomplished CT developers or manipulators, from Vladimir Putin to Fox commentators Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, or public conspiracy theorists, like Alex Jones and Q, the anonymous oracle behind QAnon.
Q’s bio has yet to be conclusively established, but there is strong evidence “he” is not a government insider with “Q-level clearance,” and there were a number of Qs, who usurped the group from each other. In point of fact, QAnon is not an actual cult or political movement but a “live action role playing game,” sometimes called an “alternative reality game.” A form of large group play, often based on scavenger hunts or costume play, LARPs were invented in 1996 by corporate creatives for use in advertising.
Q’s LARPing has been known since 2018 but has only been documented in full by one major news outlet, The Financial Times of London, in its 15-minute, October 15th, 2020, video, “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” That video has only been viewed on YouTube 80,000 times, as of this writing, which suggests that most people doubt something as earthshaking as QAnon could come from a LARP, run by a twenty-something on their phone. Nevertheless, journalists at The Washington Post and NBC News and researchers at Wikileaks and Cult Research Institute of New Jersey, who have investigated QAnon, have often used terms like “game-like” or “possible LARP.”
The most famous corporate LARP was “I Love Bees,” which promoted “Halo 2,” Microsoft’s megahit video game, in 2004. By that time, many gamers, hipsters and Burning Man attendees had started their own LARPs, some of which became popular or cult-like. By the time video games were grossing more than Hollywood films in 2010, gaming was dominating aspects of American culture. Meanwhile, the rest of us acquiesced to the internet’s intrinsic roleplaying and espionage, from inventing online aliases or dating profiles to making anonymous comments, snooping on each other, or fighting fraudsters.
Also around 2010, LARPs crossed into politics on 4chan, a bare-bones soc-med platform devoted to free speech and anonymity. Notorious for its porn and neo-Nazis as well as conspiracy theorists, 4chan also provided an internet commons for more normative rebels including Anonymous, the white-hat hacker association which started there.
In keeping with that nomenclature, people roleplaying intelligence agents turned leakers used aliases like FBIAnon and CIAAnon. Incorporating LARPing’s scavenger hunt and puzzle traditions, they encouraged followers to do their own research, decipher their cryptic posts, and uncover evermore conspiracies.
Indeed, CT proselytizing is itself a LARP. If you act the part of an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist, even though no one knows what you really believe, you can attract followers and attack opponents. LARPing increases audience participation, communication and innovation, along with in-group attachment. These abilities empower QAnon to operate far beyond the methods and hierarchies of traditional political movements, religious cults or conspiracy theory mongers.
Trump was probably not that aware of LARPing by name, but he was a pop culture maven who had been performing most of his life. Having roleplayed a politician since the late-‘80s and worked with Cohn and conspiracy theories even longer, he applied that expertise to his third presidential race, which he wasn’t actually trying to win, according to many observers, just build brand awareness for his declining empire.
After his dramatic descent of the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, he unveiled a colorful CT about evil Mexicans before a surprisingly large crowd of young people. They turned out to be actors paid $50 each, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Themes like “make American great again” seemed cliche, but he sharpened them with his three-decade-old refrain of “America is in danger” and “only I can fix it,” which is Conspiracy Theory 101. Indeed, “Things are not as they seem,” “Secret enemies are plotting,” and “Only I can save you,” i.e. only an authoritarian leader who knows the game can succeed, are the trinitarian tenets of conspiracism.
Running mostly for publicity, Trump was liberated to be irreverent and spontaneous. A seasoned performer as well as megalomaniac, he flourished on the campaign trail, especially against a lackluster field of Republican candidates, who knew nothing of his tactics, let alone how to counter them. Seeing his strongest opponent as the similarly-conspiratorial Cruz, Trump bombarded him with CTs, from the claim he stole the Iowa caucus to the one about his father helping Oswald kill Kennedy, no less. The liberal press took Trump literally, lambasting him for lying, but many Americans viewed his statements figuratively or plausible and not unlike those of other politicians.
After the election, Trump kept vote rigging in the news with allegations the Dems stole the popular vote and by forming the Commission of Electoral Integrity, which failed to find any significant evidence and soon closed. It seems silly until one realizes: Trump was carefully crafting a robust stolen-election conspiracy theory and cementing it deep into the American psyche, along with supporting notions like “lying press” and “deep state,” a cany insurance policy for his new-found career in politics.
Conspiracy theories had come a long way from the ‘50s. By 2016, they ranged from routine, like “Hillary Clinton is hiding a debilitating disease,” to unhinged, like PizzaGate or “most birds are surveillance drones,” which was started as a joke by the barely-20-year-old Peter McIndoe (as he admitted in December 2021).
In October 2016, Wikileaks published the emails of Clinton’s campaign chairperson, which were hacked by Russians six months earlier, and PizzaGaters “deciphered” them to “discover” a subterranean realm of Democratic devil-worshippers. Given Russian troll armies were promoting fake news favoring Trump, we had arrived at a free-for-all, cyber world war, where a conspiracist with online expertise could besmirch almost any one or thing.
By expressing fears creatively, CTers can join forces with hipster skepticism and reactionary prejudice to earn low-cost entry to community leadership and, if they excel in the disinformation marketplace, real political power.
Much like religious faith, CTs help people manage life’s vagaries. By replacing informed speculation with a simple explanation of hidden forces, CTs generate a form of low-level mysticism, hence their popularity among yoga teachers, massage therapists and other new agers. For the true believer, CTs relieve existential angst, boost status, and provide both a noble quest and base outlet for anger. The unfulfilled predictions and Kafka-esque claims can be disappointing or disgusting, and some truthers drop out, but the vast majority continue to enjoy their community’s ability to provide psychological relief, entertainment and defense against ridicule. And they are constantly re-energized by new theories, fostering inflationary levels of fantasy.
In such a competitive CT market, the original Q—a twenty-something living in Nevada named Manuel Chavez, according to The Financial Times, whose first post, in October 2017, promised that Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested—decided to incorporate not only PizzaGate but almost all previous conspiracy theories.
Although Chavez claimed he did it as satire, to expose those repeating his lies, he and the other Qs fashioned the first super conspiracy theory, based on the keystone concept America is controlled by a secret society of Satanic, pederast Democrat politicians and celebrities. As if that were not perverse enough, they added cannibalism. Strange as it sounds, it was an easy sell to evangelical Christians, who truck in those metaphors, but also radicals on the right or extreme left, who see opponents in different terms but similarly evil.
After Trump’s inauguration, rather than becoming more presidential, as advisors suggested and opponents hoped, he decided to govern through CTs. Cohn’s “ten commandments” guided how he broke with allies and international organizations, cozied up to Russia, started a trade war with China, and dominated the media with his dumpster-fire, news-making methods. Moreover, Trump kissed the conspiratorial ring on InfoWars in October 2016, telling Alex Jones “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down,” and began forwarding QAnon tweets only a few weeks after Chavez started roleplaying Q in late 2017.
Trump doubled down with the pandemic. Hoping to keep alive the economy, his main transaction on offer to Americans, regardless of loss of life, he used every CT in the book: deny, exaggerate, blame others, and discredit authorities, while floating evermore CTs. Sure, Trump vocally supported rapid vaccine development and quietly got vaccinated, but that didn’t stop him from proselytizing quack cures and Covid CTs. Indeed, they were the low-hanging fruit he could use to feed his overall CT indoctrination, which he ramped up as the election approached while returning to his big CT project: election fraud.
As Trump increased his conspiracism, and QAnons became a colorful contingent at his rallies, the person roleplaying Q decided to renounce leadership, one of the few big CTers in history to voluntarily relinquish a mass movement. In his 2021 HBO documentary, “Q: Into the Storm”, the ever-dogged director Cullen Hoback exposed the last Q as Ron Watkins, whose father owned 8chan and 8kun, the 4chan-like website where Chavez posted. Platform ownership gave the Watkinses upstream tech control.
Watkins denies this charge vehemently, but he was a well-known QAnon influencer; he resigned as 8kun’s administrator on Election Day, 2020; and Q stopped posting that day as well, except for four short posts. Watkins resurfaced as a “conspiracy theory analyst,” sometimes consulted by news organizations, and he supported the Insurrection, but he advised his followers on Inauguration Day, “We have a new president sworn in, and it is our responsibility as citizens to respect the Constitution.”
Having probably been Q for over three years, Watkins considers himself a CT grandmaster. Indeed, after years living unconventionally in the Philippines and Japan, he moved back to the United States and declared for Congress, as a Republican in Arizona. Watkins obviously assumes he can excel in a party where many leaders spout bizarre fictions, many voters believe them, and the best theorist often wins.
Trump also had the option of bowing out gracefully on Election Day, especially after most of his staff accepted he lost the election, but decided instead to launch his unprecedented CT indoctrination campaign. It provided hope to millions of QAnons desperate for guidance after Q stopped posting, turning Trump into the de facto Q.
Under pressure from his risky gamble and all the CTs flying around, Trump converted from Cohn’s roleplaying CT management to McCarthy’s full believer. Although it opens him up to delusion and his followers to mass psychosis, “true belief” binds CT leaders more tightly together with followers. While Trump didn’t seem to believe birtherism, 9/11, or most other CTs, he obviously believes his vote-stealing charges, at least his simple mail-in ballot version, and that he can run it for years for his own benefit, if not that of the Republican Party, let alone America.
Many QAnons were discouraged or distraught when Trump didn’t retake the presidency during the election, the Insurrection, the Inauguration, on March 4th (Inauguration Day until 1933), or an undetermined summer, fall or winter event, as predicted by QAnon influencers or nonaligned CT celebrities like My Pillow owner Mike Lindell, who is still insisting Trump’s reinstatement is but days away.
By the end of 2021, one QAnon contingent was holding a vigil for the long-dead John F. Kennedy Jr, who their influencers claimed would emerge from hiding to become Trump’s vice-presidential candidate in 2024. Another faction was insisting the pandemic and/or vaccine are a “plandemic,” a genocide organized by the deep state, even as the unvaccinated, including many anti-vax activists, expire in ever greater numbers. Others have joined fascist militias or believers in the “secret space program,” or its ontological opposite, the “flat earth.”
Adding insult to injury, a QAnon hero, lieutenant general, ex-National Security Advisor and convicted felon Michael Flynn, denounced QAnon as “total nonsense” and a “disinformation campaign” developed by the C.I.A. Then Alex Jones attacked Trump for supporting vaccines, although that is a standard Jonesian ploy to roll back Trump’s CT market share and augment his own.
Alas, Trump is the best coifed, most plainspoken and agile conspiracy theorist America has ever seen. Despite his many obvious errors, he makes the often hysterical and disheveled Jones, as well as the sleazy Cohn, country lawyer McCarthy, triple-agent Flynn or porn-addicted Watkins, look like pikers. By roleplaying a tough president, a jocular celebrity or a side show barker, often in quick succession, while winking at QAnon and white supremacists, Trump is running multiple conpiracist cohorts with amazing effectiveness, as exemplified by January 6th but also his spectacular rebound as the leader of the Republican party.
Nevertheless, many people still find it hard to believe Trump’s strategy is based largely on conspiracy theories, and the media doesn’t emphasize it. In The Atlantic’s otherwise excellent “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun” (12/6/21)), author Barton Gellman mentions conspiracy theories but only a couple of times.
In point of fact, Trump will go down in history as the CT master who almost pulled off the perfect conspiracy mirroring operation, using a CT about a stolen election to nearly steal an election, a tactic he will obviously repeat in the midterms, in 2024 and beyond. Along the way, he will make endless mirroring claims, like “The real insurrection was on November 3rd not January 6th,” and “They are making the Big Lie, not me.”
Given many Republicans have authoritarianism and CTing in their bones, a majority have come to believe—or they are roleplaying belief, or they don’t believe but have cravenly resigned themselves to—the notion of operating in the sweet spot between plausible deniability and CT psychosis. They hope that will provide the workaround to their party’s sinking voter rolls, inability to craft major policy, and abandonment of conservative values, even though the tactic is absurd on the face of it and risks destroying the Republican Party or even American democracy while literally driving many people crazy.
Like Trump, they drank the Kool-Aid. And it may take years of additional deaths from Covid, gun violence, opioids and amphetamines, or a low-intensity civil war—or for the progressives of either party to concoct a compelling enough counter narrative—for them to learn that lesson. Ironically, it is the one Roy Cohn tried to teach them: Believing unproven conspiracy theories is for chumps.
While believing conspiracy theories is a recipe for psychosis, preaching them without belief, as so many Republicans and rightwing media figures do, breaks all the basic social contracts, from simple honesty to the Golden Rule.
Truth and justice will probably prevail, as they have in the past. It may take years of suffering and a degradation of democracy worldwide, but history shows that Americans became fixated on CTs four times over the last two centuries, in about sixty-year cycles. Hence, the Republican embrace of deception and delusion should burn itself out, eventually, and inoculate us for the next half century, hopefully.
Posted on Jul 02, 2022 - 03:53 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner June ‘22
by Karl Cohen
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'Lightyear', Pixar’s new film, includes a same-sex kiss restored due to staff pressure after its removal due to Disney's problems with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. photo: courtesy PixarHollywood Reporter Applauds Pixar’s Return to Silver Screen
“[Lightyear] is a funny spinoff with suspense and heart, a captivatingly spirited ‘toon take on splashy live-action retro popcorn entertainment," according to The Hollywood Reporter. "The title character is given splendid voice by Chris Evans, balancing heroism and human fallibility with infectious warmth.” The reviewer nitpicks minor things and doesn’t feel "Lightyear" is a great film, but it sounds to me like a long-awaited, welcomed treat.
Jerry Beck, a noted animation historian who teaches at CAL Arts, said, “Saw Lightyear—loved it.”
Pixar’s ‘Lightyear’ banned in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
Disney has fallen foul of the censors once more. “Lightyear”, Pixar's Toy Story prequel spinoff movie, has been banned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and at least 12 other countries as the film includes a same-sex kiss! The scene was originally cut from the film, but reinstated following an uproar.
A statement from Pixar employees claimed that Disney had been censoring “overtly gay affection” and the company evidently agreed.
Apropos of this or nothing at all: A Pixar chief noted: "All of our films start out as disasters."
Disney Responds to Supreme Court Abortion Decision
Disney made a statement saying they are committed to financially supporting employees who need to travel out of state to seek abortion care. Hopefully they will also stop funding politicians who campaigned to take away reproductive rights.
Pixar Co-Founder Catmull joins Baobab Studios
Although it only started in 2015, Boabab Studios has already won nine Emmys.
Their credits include innovative virtual reality projects like “Invasion!”, “Crow: The Legend”, and “Baba Yaga”. They are working with Disney Branded Television on “The Witchverse”, an anthology series for Disney+ based on the “Baba Yaga” short. Their creative talent includes Erick Oh, Jony Chandra, Hayley Porter, Michael McCormick, Brian Tinsman and now Pixar co-founder and former Disney animation boss Ed Catmull.
Maureen Fan, CEO and co-founder of Baobab Studios says, “I have followed Ed’s work for years and am proud to welcome him to our board of directors. Ed’s leadership and innovative genius in the world of animation is unparalleled, and his insight will be invaluable as we imagine new characters and worlds, as well as an active role for our audiences inside of them.”
Catmull says, “I’m honored to join the board of directors of Baobab Studios and to be part of their creative journey. Baobab is at the forefront of telling incredible stories across mediums, and I look forward to supporting the entire team as the company evolves into the preeminent animation studio of the future.”
Catmull was an early pioneer of computer animation. He became the vice-president of George Lucas’ computer Graphics division called Lucasfilm in 1979 (part of ILM). In 1986, Steve Jobs bought Lucasfilm's digital division and founded Pixar, hiring Catmull, Lasseter and the rest of the gang to run it.
Pixar was acquired by Disney in 2006. He was president of both Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar from 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar, through 2019. During his tenure, the studios released several iconic films including “Big Hero 6”, “Frozen”, “Finding Nemo”, “Incredibles 2” and “Toy Story 4”, among others.
A scene from Signe Baumane’s latest and highly-praised film, "My Love Affair with Marriage". photo: courtesy PixarSigne Baumane’s New Film
Signe Baumane’s "My Love Affair with Marriage" opened in New York City to excellent reviews.
The visuals in “My Love Affair with Marriage” are being praised with words like “stunning,” “incredibly clever,” “deeply funny,” “socially conscious” and “a sharp satire.” One reviewer said, it was “reminiscent of German Expressionism” and called “an endearing beacon of hope.” In addition to excellent positive reviews in New York, the film won a jury prize for features from Annecy, animation’s most highly respected international festival.
Signe is from Latvia and lives in New York and this, her second animated feature, combines handsome miniature sets with dramatic theatrical lighting, with distinctive looking cel animation. It was over five years in the making and was well funded, thanks to money and support from several countries and a highly successful fundraising campaign. I’ll be writing more about this film after the first Bay Area screening is announced. One reviewer called it, “Essential viewing for all.”
Two Smurfs Go to Church
Two Smurfs suddenly appeared on pedestals about 18 feet above the entrance to the Sint-Gertrudiskerk church in the center of Ternat, Belgium in June. People loved seeing them there, thinking the church might be getting ready for a street fair.
Unfortunately, they became a short-lived attraction as the annoyed pastor had a crew remove Papa Smurf and Jokey. Nobody has confessed to creating the prank.
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 Jul 01, 2022 - 12:06 AM
US Government Forgives $6 Billion Student Debt
by Karl Cohen
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The Academy of Art became notorious for allegedly foisting immense loans upon unprepared students. photo: courtesy Academy of ArtFORMER FILM AND ANIMATIONS
students who will benefit from this act of forgiveness include people who went to the for-profit Art Institute chain of schools and the Academy of Arts, both which I have covered (see article "Academy of Art’s Disastrous Loan Program". (The San Francisco Art Institute is not involved because it is is a non-profit.)
Although the latest grant relief action, which was announced on June 22, is only a tiny fraction of the $1.7 trillion in student loan owed by 43.4 million Americans, it is one of many actions that will be needed to keep our nation’s economy going in the right direction.
Under President Trump, people who applied for debt relief from student loans were mostly turned down, but now President Biden’s Department of Education is coming to the rescue, knowing full well that, if they don’t do the right thing, the student loan crisis could cause an economic meltdown of the nation’s economy. The situation could become as bad or as worse as the subprime mortgage crisis that caused a recession in the economy in 2007, a slump that lasted at least until 2009 and malingered much longer.
The current round of debt relief is going to students who attended for-profit schools that promised great educations and job placement but failed to do so. For-profit schools saw the potential in making enormous profits by recruiting student with false promises. Recruiters were hired and trained to tell every prospective student whatever was necessary to get them to enroll in the supposedly fabulous education that would lead to a well-paying job.
Some students did have the aptitude needed to succeed and find high-paying employment, but others were accepted who weren’t qualified and failed. The recruiters were coaxed in how to deceive potential students into believing they would be great achievers if they only got the needed education at the school they represented. Yes, they sometimes knowing lied to people who didn’t have the needed abilities. That was well documented in a series of Congressional hearings into the abuses of the for-profit school industry.
To make it easy to attend the school, potential students were told they could take out loans that would be easy to pay back, as there were lots of great jobs awaiting them on graduation. I once knew a teacher who had a desk down the hall from such a recruiter. She said she cringed every time a prospective student showed their portfolio to the recruiter. My friend knew she would hear the recruiter make the same false claims that the potential student had wonderful samples of their work. That would often be followed by a discussion of how to get a great low-cost loan with no payments due until… not that long after, as the fine print explicated.
Moreover, many people misunderstood the small print accompanying the easy-to-obtain, low-interest-rate loan saying it absolutely had to be repaid. Indeed, there were almost no exceptions to that clause. Statistics have shown that students who attended less-expensive community colleges and state universities and had borrowed fairly small amount to get their education, were most likely going to be able to repay their loans. The area where the greatest repayment problems occurred were with former students who attended the more expensive for-profit colleges. Sadly, the government let schools abuse the system for several decades.
Senator Elizabeth Warren says the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis was caused by “deliberate policy decisions.” Fortunately, the nation finally has a president that is working to reverse the problem by creating an aggressive loan forgiveness program. He has already forgiven over $25 billion and, on June 22, added another $8 billion. Unfortunately, it took years of hearings to even understand the problem, while any action to correct it under Trump stalled. Now at last progress is being made to make partial or complete student loan cancellation.
The government is making slow, but steady progress. Student loan borrowers have obtained relief by filing “borrow defense claims” with the Department of Education. They should claim they were misled or defrauded when applying for student forgiveness. June 22nd’s proposed settlement will provide student loan debt relief to students from more than 50 mostly for-profit colleges.
If you or somebody you know might benefit from this information, they may need to apply by October for financial forgiveness.
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 Jun 30, 2022 - 12:08 AM
Ukraine’s Tragic, Complex History
by Doniphan Blair
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NOTE: Although published in May, 2022, this article's concise summary of Ukrainian history remains extremely relevant.
WITH UKRAINIAN CITIES BEING BOMBED
flat and tens of thousands killed, including in obvious war crimes, stopping Russia’s war and helping its victims are primary. To find a long-term strategy, however, we have to recognize Ukraine’s intricate history, multicultural breadth and monumental suffering, which is not well known. In fact, this is the NINTH major war, mass killing or genocide “event” Ukraine has endured in the last century.
Coveted for its flat, fertile “black” earth and lucrative trade routes, Ukraine has long been a “borderland”—which is what “ukraine” means and why it was called “The Ukraine”— between empires, which makes issues about N.A.T.O. almost inevitable. It is also Europe’s breadbasket, growing up to 30% of its wheat and meaning war will bring food scarcity.
Russian territorial claims date to Vladimir the Great of Kyiv, who actually was Ukrainian but started the Russian tribal confederation around 1000 AD and led its conversion to Christianity. But a millennium is a long time. The land was conquered in turn by Mongols, Poles, Lithuanians, Ottomans, Russians again, Soviets and Nazis.
Hence, Ukrainians range in ethnicity from majority Ukrainians and one third Russians to minority Poles, Jews, Cossacks, Greeks, Roma, Germans, Tatars and other Muslim and tribal groups, who intermarried to some degree. A multiethnic community is not an easy fit for nationalism, suggesting why some people accept Vladimir Putin’s postulate Ukraine is not an actual country.
Imperial Russia repressed Ukrainian culture, even outlawing its language, but its 19th century poets had romantic dreams of independence, like their counterparts in Poland, Greece and elsewhere. Taras Shevchenko was born an enslaved serf near Kyiv but became a folklorist and painter as well as poet and founder of modern Ukrainian literature.
Thus inspired, many Ukrainians fought a fierce, five-year war of independence during and after World War One, first against the Austro-Hungarians and Germans, with whom they made a separate peace, in exchange for massive amounts of wheat, and then in the bloody, chaotic Russian Civil War. Indeed, four different Ukraines operated between 1917 and ’22. Their west was eastern Poland, generating a zero-sum battle between two sets of nationalists, although the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918-19, with a mere 25,000 casualties, was a minor blip compared to the brutal world war or Russian Civil War. As if that were not enough, the 1918 influenza pandemic swept the planet and killed as many as 50 million people.
The Red Army, led by the Jewish Ukrainian Leon Trotsky, had to invade Ukraine three times to defeat an array of opponents in a kaleidoscope of alliances: Ukrainian nationalists, the White Army of czarists and Cossacks, the anarchist Black Army, and the peasant Green Army but also an English-French-Greek expeditionary force and armies from Germany, Poland and a half-a-dozen other countries. Many resorted to atrocities. Rationalizing that revolutions require killing, Lenin ordered his secret police to enact the “red terror,” which put hundreds of thousands to death. Although he finally relaxed a bit on the Ukrainians, he maintained a staunch opposition to their self-governance.
Despite the organizational limits of anarchy, the Blacks were popular, brought together Ukraine’s industrious peasants, worldly traders and dreamy intellectuals better than the Reds, and fought fiercely. One storied commander, Maria Nikiforova, was a seasoned revolutionary, gorgeous or ugly, depending on accounts, and possible user of cocaine, then popular among European literati. She fought valiantly, sometimes using terror tactics, until her capture by the Whites, trial and execution, along with her husband and fellow commander, in 1919.
After centuries of repression, Ukrainian Jews, Europe’s largest community after Poland, emerged as full citizens. The socialist Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917-20) made Yiddish an official language, many Jews joined the Russian Revolution, and a colorful Jewish gangster from the cosmopolitan seaport of Odessa, Mishka Yaponchik, became a Red general.
Alas, the modern practice of pogroming Jews also started in Ukraine, when 50 people were massacred in 1881 and another few thousand in 1903. In the Civil War, however, Jews were butchered by the thousands by all factions, including the Reds but mostly Ukrainian nationalists and the Whites. About 100,000 were killed in over 1000 incidents, a shocking development which set a tragic precedent for European Jewry, according to professor Jeffrey Veidlinger, author of “In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust” (2021).
The pogroms triggered some emigration, including the forbears of Bob Dylan and Noam Chomsky to the United States, but some two million Jews continued to live in Ukraine. They contributed disproportionately to its cultural renaissance in the 1920s as well as to building the Soviet Union. The horror of the pogroms was also eclipsed by the Revolution itself, which killed about nine million across the region, and the Russian famine of 1922, which added two to five million deceased.
Dominating Ukraine was central to Soviet strategy, given the proximity of the Russian and Ukrainian languages and histories and presumed Russian superiority—Ukrainians are known as “little Russians.” As Russia’s southern lands and sea ports and Europe’s eastern flank, Ukraine was more romantic, open, diversely civilized, and rich than its northern neighbor, making it the prize possession between feuding cousins. Stalin began arresting Ukrainian intellectuals en masse at the end of the ‘20s, the so-called “executed renaissance” and a tragic foretelling of what was to come. Ukraine soon suffered not one but two genocides.
Also in the ‘20s, Soviets tried to collectivize work. They were especially hard on the prosperous peasant farmers, or “kulaks,” and killed about a half a million nationwide. When Ukraine’s kulaks refused to nationalize their harvest in 1932, authorities confiscated it, triggering a years-long famine. While some blame communist central planning, boasting and paranoia, which led authorities to assume there was a surplus and that the farmers were hoarding, Stalin definitely wanted to break the kulaks and bourgeoisie but also Ukrainian dreams of independence.
Holodomor means “death by hunger” in Ukrainian but oddly parallels “holocaust,” from the Greek for “burnt offering.” While it’s tricky drawing comparisons to the Holocaust, which also hit Ukraine hard, the Holodomor rates. Death tolls range from three and a half to ten million, a horrific national trauma by any measure but exacerbated by its erasure by Soviet censorship and propaganda—indeed, many Russians deny it to this day—and international ignorance. Eventually investigated, it was finally recognized a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union by Russian institutions and the U.N.
Diana Soline Chornenkaya, a Ukrainian-Russian-American friend of mine, told me stories she heard from her grandmother, Vera, who was a teen during the manufactured famine and the descent of its sufferers into cannibalism. While visiting a friend, Vera was trapped by her mother, but the friend helped her escape. Another girlfriend, after giving birth, ate the infant to survive. Another girlfriend, while hiking to Kyiv, said, “I don’t feel well,” and lay down and died. There were bodies everywhere. Vera found babysitting work and safety in Kyiv but lost two younger brothers, other family and many community members.
Recent studies estimate four million Ukrainians were starved to death, with another six million lost to “birth deficits.” Ever resilient, Ukrainians attempted to recover and rebuild their society within the socialist system. Vera’s friend, who ate her newborn, went on to raise two healthy children, despite Soviet propaganda portraying them as cannibals or, conversely, claiming they faked the famine. Unfortunately, the Holodomor was immediately followed by more mass murder events.
Stalin’s “great terror” or “purge” started in 1936. About a million Soviet citizens were executed, sometimes after show trials, and many more were sent to the gulags, where a large percent expired. Some estimates put the Great Terror’s casualties at four million or more, including many Ukrainians, all for naught, since almost no conspiracies were uncovered. As if the Holodomor and Great Terror weren’t physically, socially and psychologically annihilating enough, World War Two started, making 1914 to ‘45 in Eastern Europe the most pernicious period in human history, bar none. It centered on Ukraine.
Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, the biggest invasion in history, brought blitzkrieg and total war to Ukraine but also the Holocaust in late-June ’41. In lieu of their practices in Western Europe and Poland, where the Nazis organized a comparatively efficient and discrete herding of Jews into ghettos, cattle cars and death camps, they used bullets and mass graves.
In two days in September, they slaughtered 34,000 Jews at Babyn Yar, a ravine in a Kyiv suburb, which is considered a record. Over 100,000 Christian Ukrainians and Russians soon joined the corpses. Around one and half million Ukrainian Jews were eventually murdered, including tens of thousands by Ukrainian police and nationalists, often affiliated with the powerful Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
The more radical wing of the O.U.N. was led by Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Germans before the war but was interred in a concentration camp during it for declaring Ukrainian independence. Despite the O.U.N.’s monoethnic authoritarianism, they tolerated a few Jews, especially as wives, while still practicing eliminationist nationalism. They butchered thousands of Poles and Russians, as well as many Jews, especially communists, although they moderated some of their policies after the war.
A polarizing figure among Ukrainians, Bandera has streets named after him and is honored as one of the nation’s founding fathers by many rightwingers but also some liberals, including to some degree by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish and a second-generation Holocaust survivor but recognizes Ukraine’s need for a big-tent society. The O.U.N. provides the grains of truth behind the “Ukraine is controlled by Nazis” conspiracy theory promulgated by Putin.
Yes, many Ukrainians joined the German army or Waffen SS, as did fascists from France and Sweden to Croatia and Romania, some helped murder Jews, and a few became notorious concentration camps guards in Poland, where they were sent because it was nearby. John Demjanjuk, who raised a family in Ohio before being deported in 1993 to Germany to stand trial, worked in three extermination camps, Sobibor, Majdanek and Treblinka, where he was known as the sadist "Ivan the Terrible." After the grotesqueries of the Holodomor and the Great Terror, it is understandable that many Ukrainians wanted to expel the Soviets by any means and win independence, even if just in Nazi Europe, as had the Croatians.
On the other hand, over a thousand Ukrainians are honored as “righteous gentiles,” by Israel’s Yad Vashem, and many more hid or helped Jews. Millions more joined the partisans or Soviet army, where four and a half million Ukrainians fought the Nazis in some of the most sanguineous battles of World War Two. A Ukrainian SS battalion of mixed ethnicity sent to fight the Allies on the Western Front killed their commanders and joined the French resistance.
Estimates differ but as many as 25 million Soviets died during the war, albeit only a third fighting, when they were sometimes sacrificed by commanders who marched them into unswept mine fields or fortified machine gun nests. The remainder was from disease and famine, due to Germans confiscating food, or being deported to Germany, where they were worked to death, plus Soviet reprisals against collaborators. Over a fourth of them were Ukrainian.
Stuck between the genocidal Nazis and mass murderous Soviets, Ukrainians suffered history’s greatest hell. I have long awarded that horrific honor to Poland, given its proximity to Germany, the presence of all the death camps, and that I am of Polish-Jewish descent, but we lost six million to Ukraine’s seven. From the Black Sea to the Baltic is called “bloodlands” by scholar Timothy Synder, in his 2010 book of the same name, because both Hitler and Stalin wanted to depopulate it. From 1932 to ’45, about 14 million civilians in a half-a-dozen countries were murdered.
For someone like me, who lives in California, which has had only one mass killing event in its history, the genociding of its first people, it is almost impossible to imagine the healing, rebuilding and kindness needed to recover from eight nationwide, years-long atrocities in a mere three decades: World War One, the Russian Revolution, the Red Terror, the Pogroms, the Holodomor, the Great Terror, World War Two and the Holocaust.
Ukrainians finally had peace at the end of the “great war.” Although nationalists kept up guerilla attacks, and were killed or deported by the thousands, and the Soviets carried on arresting people for “crimes against the state,” Ukraine became a central Soviet state. Indeed, it was the site of many civic projects, universities, factories, resort towns, heritage site cities, and nuclear missile silos and reactors, including Chernobyl, which suffered history’s worst melt down in 1986. It was also the birthplace of the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev and many intellectuals and professionals, many who moved to Moscow.
But when the Soviet Union dissolved by Russia in 1991 and a plebiscite was held over 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence, despite 30% being Russian speakers. Although they elected to lead them a Communist Party apparatchik, the vast majority welcomed improved consumer goods, democracy and the opportunity to join the European Union or perhaps N.A.T.O., perfectly understandable given their horrific history. Betting on peace, their new legislature renounced nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and the U.S., no less, as per the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
Like all former Soviet states, Ukraine endured the dislocating turmoil of “perestroika” economic reform, from disappearing staples to widespread corruption and the vast industrial looting of the oligarchs, which was almost inevitable given the difficulty of transitioning to capitalism and how people close to power could easily and quickly take advantage of it. “Glasnost” brought welcome freedoms of expression and movement but also a confusing cacophony of news and political parties, from communists and nationalists to reformers, charlatans and conspiracy theorists.
Like Russia, Ukraine had assassinations. In 2000, the muckraking journalist and publisher of an anti-corruption news site, Georgiy Gongadze, was murdered. Four years later, there was an attempt on the life of reform candidate Viktor Yushchenko using poison. An ancient Russian tradition, Russian agents think poison is undetectable and plausibly deniable, despite easily traceable toxins and their trademark use of them.
The poisoners were not identified, but Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the electoral fraud noted by local and foreign observers. Although Yushchenko was up double digits in the polls, his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, the anointed successor of the disgraced previous president and himself known to be corrupt, won by three points. Thousands of young people joined peaceful strikes, sit-ins and marches in what was called the Orange Revolution, the second of Eastern Europe’s half-a-dozen “colored revolutions,” after neighboring Georgia’s in 2003.
Ukraine’s young democracy pulled through when its Supreme Court ruled for Yushchenko, who recovered, although his face was disfigured for years, and set about integrating Ukraine with the West. His wife is Ukrainian-American. He also compromised with the former communists and Russophiles by appointing as his prime minister none other than Yanukovych, despite Yanukovych’s accusing him of being a Nazi during the campaign.
In point of fact, Yushchenko was embraced by Ukraine’s Jewish community of about 150,000, Europe’s second largest after France; his mother hid three Jewish girls during the Holocaust; and his father was a Red Army soldier incarcerated in Auschwitz.
The Orange Revolution was opposed by older people, Russian speakers and conservatives, as well as those concerned that Ukraine’s dream of joining N.A.T.O. was prohibitively provocative, even though all of its neighbors to the west, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, had by 2004—not to mention by an increasingly belligerent Russia. Putin began killing journalists and opponents in 2006, airing “lost empire” grievances the following year, and launching brutal wars, supposedly to protect Russian minorities, starting in Georgia in 2008.
While Yushchenko walked that tightrope, Ukrainians flip-flopped. In the next election, they handed power back to Yanukovych, after his makeover and aggressive campaign headed by American political consultant and future Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Yanukovych slowed his predecessor’s reforms, emphasized religion and honored nationalist heroes like Bandera, even as he favored all things Russian. When Yanukovych refused to ratify a treaty with the European Union and joined the Eurasian Economic Union established by Russia, which offered him an enormous aid package, Ukrainians took to the streets yet again.
It was called the Revolution of Dignity or Maidan Revolution, after the Kyiv’s central square—“maidan” means independence—which was occupied for months in late 2013. The massive “Euromaidan” protests were driven by a new wave of nationalist youth, including some skinheads but also hipsters and progressives. “Young people realized that they needed to do something for themselves and not depend on the government,” according to Miriam Dragina, a journalist who launched the Kyiv (flea) Market a year later to raise funds for the Ukrainian Army, which by then was fighting Russians in the country’s east.
Yanukovych got his allies in parliament to pass laws restricting the protests, but they only increased. Indeed, demonstrators were joined by older people, including veterans and Jews, while younger activists occupied government buildings across Ukraine. After a few were killed on January 18th, 2014, the entire opposition, from the rightwing Right Sector to the anti-corruption Maidan People's Union and various student groups, organized a “peace offensive” on February 18th.
With columns of protesters advancing on the Rada Parliament, which was about to vote on rewriting the constitution, a suitable-for-cinema struggle ensued. Protesters threw Molotov cocktails and paving stones and stormed buildings, setting some alight, including the office of a pro-Russia party. Police responded with batons, stun grenades, tear gas and, finally, bullets, mostly fired by snipers. Over a hundred demonstrators were killed, along with a dozen police. Yanukovych fled to Russia.
Outraged by so much ‘60s-style democracy on his doorstep as well as Ukrainian interest in joining Europe, Putin called it a coup, claimed it was fomented by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and ordered an invasion. By February 27th, unmarked and masked Russian troops emerged from the massive Crimean naval port, leased by Ukraine to Russia, and captured strategic locations across that state. In nearby Odessa on May 2nd, rightwing activists trapped pro-Russian counter-protestors in a building, spray-painted it with swastika-like symbols and set it alight. Forty-two died. Four months later, Russophile Ukrainians and out-of-uniform Russian soldiers seized parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk states, starting a war which killed 14,000 people from 2014 to ’22 and remains the main battle front today.
Among those fighting the Russians is the Azov Brigade, who are labelled neo-Nazi for their swastika-like logo, connection to an ultra-nationalist party, and white supremacist leaders and members, approximately a fifth of their total. Alas, the Azov is not unlike some American militias, and Ukraine has freedom of speech. Moreover, they are fighting to defend their nation’s government not against it, as with some American militias, and they reportedly came to accept some Muslim and Jewish fighters. The Azov Brigade also earned immense respect by being among the fiercest defenders of Mariupol during the April 2022 battle to the death with Russian forces.
The vast majority of soldiers fighting the 2014 Russian invasion, however, were typical young men, including some anarchists and artists, who were also inspired to defend their nation during the Maidan Revolution, which galvanized Ukrainian youth and a spirit of renewal. Indeed, culture in general and youth culture in particular exploded.
Kyiv and most other cities saw increases in coffee houses, clubs, galleries and youth hostels, earning buzz on the world traveler circuit as Eastern Europe’s new Prague. Ukraine’s myriad cultural institutions expanded, while established music, art and film scenes developed avant-gardes. Famously beautiful women made it a go-to location for ad agencies. Good facilities at lower cost attracted students from Africa, Asia and the U.S.
One artist riding that wave was the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukrainians love comedy, especially gallows’ humor, due to their brutal history. A talented producer as well as entertainer and actor, Zelensky started the popular comedy troupe Kvartal 95, won Ukraine’s “Dancing with the Stars” in 2006, toured Russia doing standup (he’s a native Russian speaker), and founded Studio Kvartal, a successful film and television company. After appearing in eight movies, he starred in the hit TV series, “Servant of the People” (2015-19), about a teacher whose anti-corruption rant was filmed by his students, went viral, and propelled him to the presidency.
“Servant of the People” was so spot on, life followed art, and Zelensky was soon president himself, after winning over 70% of the vote in 2019, the biggest landslide in Ukraine’s young democracy. During the campaign, Zelensky didn’t emphasize that he was Jewish or that most of his father’s family died in the Holocaust. But that and the fact that no ultra-nationalist parties got enough votes to earn representation in the Rada, indicates most Ukrainians have matured beyond antique notions of nationalism toward those of a modern, multicultural state. Moreover, the Euromaidan Revolution also inspired changes in banking law and military organization.
Shifting from entertainment to politics is not easy, however, and Zelensky’s approval ratings slid to almost 30%. Accusations of nepotism emerged after he appointed fellow entertainers to head ministries. As a studio head, he had dealt with media oligarchs, leading people to wonder why he didn’t sanction them, save for obsessively attacking his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko. One of Ukraine’s biggest oligarchs, the so-called “chocolate king,” Poroshenko was charged with multiple counts of corruption and fled the country.
Zelensky also entered into bizarre negotiations with the president of the United States, who allied himself with Putin but also right-wing Ukrainians, due to his campaign manager Manafort. Indeed, he claimed Ukraine was completely corrupt and tried to blackmail Zelensky into digging up dirt on the Bidens by withholding weaponry essential to the ongoing war with Russia. Zelensky held his own, however, having studied law before going into comedy. Moreover, despite also coming to politics from entertainment, he is Trump’s opposite, morally, temperamentally and politically.
Everything changed on February 24th as Zelensky evolved into a leader of historic proportions, and Ukrainians of all political persuasions and ethnicities—from anarchists to nationalists, from Jews to descendants of Cossacks—joined together. Three decades of democracy inspired both a profound love for each other and revulsion at returning to Russian autocracy. Even Poroshenko flew back to help.
In addition to drawing on all aspects of society, Ukrainians are fighting with every conceivable weapon. Their army, redesigned into nimble squads of equals by the old defense minister, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, has mastered small force tactics, handheld missiles and drones. Their young Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, is using everything from hackers and YouTube live streams to cryptocurrency, TikTok influencers, texting Russian soldiers or calling their families. Diplomats and parliamentarians reach out relentlessly. Zelensky addressed almost one national congress a day in March, the Grammy Awards on April 2nd, and the United Nations on April 5th.
“They cut off limbs, cut their throats,” Zelensky told the U.N. General Assembly from Kyiv, referring to the atrocities reported on April 2nd from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. “Women were raped and killed in front of their children. Their tongues were pulled out only because their aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”
When rebuttals of “false,” “staged” and “fake dead bodies” were made by Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the U.S., they proved how Russia, which they say is standing up to the decadent West, maintaining Christian values and rooting out Nazis, is in free fall. In addition to suffering deindustrialization, depopulation, emigrating young people and intelligentsia, and severe alcohol and heroin addiction, Russians are suffused with “false narratives.”
More than friends or allies, Putin and Trump are fellow high priests in the cult of conspiracism, the former drawing on conspiracy theories dating back to the czarist police’s “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the Soviet’s “Tanaka Memorial,” the latter as a disciple of Roy Cohn and Joseph McCarthy. Indeed, Putin and Trump are not just helping each other by influencing elections or dismantling N.A.T.O., they are encouraging their bases to believe the two biggest Big Lies in recent memory: the election steal and Ukrainian Nazis.
Many more Buchas will tragically emerge, as Putin tries to terrorize Ukrainians, Europeans, and the world into accepting his conquest in lieu of World War Three, meaning we have arrived at Ukraine’s ninth mass murder event in a century. Within mere months, it trashed the country, begot dozens of war crimes, and killed tens of thousands.
One conciliation prize: Ukrainians have the spirit, unity and leadership to prevail. Indeed, democracy, although it comes later to violence then fascism, can unify a diverse population, which can sustain a long struggle. Although they will pay a terrible price—and we must accelerate all possible efforts to offset that—they will either become a Christ among nations or win not only their freedom but help restore democratic ascendancy and lead us out of the cynical, conspiratorial and authoritarian age advocated by Putin and Trump.
Posted on Jun 15, 2022 - 07:43 AM
2200 Gang List
510 220.2126. Doniphan Blair 320
Posted on Mar 24, 2022 - 11:41 AM
The Scientific Origins of Star Wars
by Celik Kayalar
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Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) bellies up to the bar in the new 'Solo' (2018) part of the 'Star War' series. image: G. LucasTHERE'S A THROUGH LINE FROM THE
great Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung to Han Solo, Princess Leia and Jaba the Hutt in George Lucas’s masterpiece movie-saga, the “Star Wars”.
Dr. Carl Jung, an early protege of Sigmund Freud who later broke with him, inspired Professor Joseph Campbell of “Follow Your Bliss” fame, as well as the author of “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (1949) and “The Hero’s Journey” (1990), and the star of “The Power of Myth” (TV Series with Bill Moyers, 1988).
The famed filmmaker George Lucas was, in turn, inspired by Professor Campbell in creating his “Star Wars” saga (Lucas Films, Northern California, now owned by Disney, Hollywood). Indeed, Lucas has noted many times that his script drew heavily the “hero's journey” story.
The hero’s path is generally thought to go like this: call to adventure, supernatural aid, mentor/helper, challenges/temptations, the abyss, revelation/transformation/atonement, and return.
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) at age 49. image: B.S. WiseAlthough I discussed this on July 18, 2020 at my WebSeries’ Facebook site [Facebook.com/TheTraffick/], I’m revisiting this fascinating and a now archetypal insight here, while adding a new wrinkle.
Jung is the father of the original idea of “collective conscience,” which led to his proposal of “archetypes,” such as hero, trickster, shadow, etc, which he thinks exist in every culture throughout history. Being a big Jung fan myself, I started thinking about the possible connection between the concept of collective conscience and the “universal grammar” idea of the distinguished linguist and MIT professor, Noam Chomsky, who happens to be a friend.
Both ideas are universal. Hence, I thought they could be rooted in the DNA of all humans, regardless of culture, geography and history (i.e. innate or nature, not nurture). In other words, both collective conscience and universal grammar could have the same basis in the human brain’s physiology and biology, which evolved through a common Darwinian natural selection process.
When I mentioned this idea to Chomsky about two years ago, he was very intrigued; said he never thought of it; nor was it ever pointed out to him before. Surprised by his admission, I attributed his disconnect mainly to his well-known aversion to “Hollywood” as well as mysticism in general.
Painting portraying Jung and his life by author Celik Kayalar. image: C. KayalarI believe this Jung-Chomsky connection is worth exploring further by linguists, evolutionary psychologist, psychiatrists, philosophers, and even artists and filmmakers.
Much to be done; many bridges to be built.
Celik Kayalar is a PhD. bioscientist as well as filmmaker, painter and educator, who runs Film Acting Bay Area in Berkeley, California. You can learn more about him here or reach him .
Posted on Feb 23, 2022 - 01:35 PM
Tonia Rotkopf Blair: Holocaust Survivor, Matriarch, Author
by The Blair Family
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Tonia Rotkopf Blair, Brazil, 1949. photo: unknownAfter this general obituary, a short version of which is in The NY Times, Doniphan Blair provides a personal remembrance.
TONIA ROTKOPF BLAIR DIED ON
December 9th, 2021, at 96, at home and surrounded by love, after a life so varied it seemed like nine. Starting in another era and enduring the Holocaust, she traveled through Europe and South America before settling in New York City and becoming a beatnik, homemaker, administrative assistant, Columbia graduate and, finally, writer.
Indeed, her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption”, was published in 2021. She was also the subject of the 2007 documentary “Our Holocaust Vacation” made by her sons and shown on PBS. Both feature her unique perspective on kindness and relationships during the Holocaust.
Born in Lodz, Poland, to Mendel and Miriam-Gitla Rotkopf (nee Sonenberg), who were socialists and secular Jews, Tonia was raised in one room without plumbing or electricity, along with older sister Irena and younger brother Salek. Poor but not deprived, they attended the progressive Yiddish Medem Schul.
After the German invasion, Tonia became the youngest nurse in the Lodz ghetto’s Lagenitska Hospital, which saved her from deportation with her family. They were all killed in 1942, in Mzsana Dolna, southern Poland. Despite this tragedy and the world war raging around her, she remained a teenage woman, who fell in love and learned about romance.
After the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, she was shipped to Auschwitz and survived three weeks there. She was then sent to work in an airplane factory in Freiburg, Germany, where she was reunited with her best friend and fellow nurse, Bluma Strauch. Liberated from Mauthausen camp, Austria, by the Americans, they crossed to the Soviet side.
Returning to Lodz and finding no Jews but plenty of anti-Semitism, they hitchhiked back to the West and got nursing jobs in a refugee hospital in Landsberg am Lech, Germany, for almost two years. After moving to Paris, they travelled to La Paz, Bolivia, where Bluma had brothers. Continuing solo, Tonia lived with a wealthy cousin in Rio de Janeiro, right on Copacabana beach, another one of her varied lives. She finally arrived in Manhattan in 1950, where she felt right at home and started school, studying art, and working as a secretary.
Tonia at age 3 (far right), with her mother Miram, sister Irena and four Plonski cousins, 1928, Lodz, Poland. photo: professionalAs an au pair for filmmaker Sidney Meyers, she met Vachel Blair, a cinematographer, veteran of the Spanish Civil War and WW II, and a gentile. They shared interests in multiculturalism, art and social justice.
After marrying and having two sons, they moved to Morningside Gardens, an experimental, integrated housing project near Columbia University. Tonia became an administrative assistant at the Interchurch Center and then Teachers College. She also went back to school, attending Columbia and graduating at 62 with a Sociology degree.
They bought a fixer-up country house and travelled extensively to visit their sons in California but also Brazil, Israel and Poland, where a 1980 journey awoke Tonia's ability to discuss the Holocaust. She also attended the second international gathering of Holocaust survivors, in Washington DC, in 1983, and joined a child survivor group, NAHOS.
After her husband died, in 1999, Tonia became part of a writers’ workshop taught by Susan Willerman and wrote some 40 stories longhand. Recognizing the strength of her style and insight into the female side of war, a son edited them and secured publication with Austin Macauley.
Tonia continued to travel until 2013, often to visit a son or granddaughter or attend a NAHOS gathering. After entering an assisted living facility in 2019, the pandemic inspired her family to bring her home. Taken care of principally by her granddaughter, she lived the last of her nine lives in comfort and community and passed peacefully, from complications due to Alzheimer’s.
She is survived by two sons and three grandchildren.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair, with her sons, Nicholas (lft) and Doniphan (rt), circa 1970. photo: Vachel BlairDoniphan's Personal Remembrance
My mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, who resisted the Nazis with kindness, who travelled the world to find her people in New York, and who endured my teen years with permissiveness, died a month ago. Although she was 96, and we had the luxury of time and she the privilege of passing at home, her death is a gaping hole, freighted by the abyss of the Holocaust and the immensity of the love.
My mommy—our tribe’s great matriarch—is gone.
Sometimes depressed, she put a brave face on it, and I grew up feeling very cared for, adored, and safe. I thought this was standard mothering until I noticed deficiencies among some friends.
Since I had to break free early to start my own wandering, it took me decades to recognize her achievement, powered by a long tradition of humanism and romance, Jewish, Polish and female. Indeed, the atrocity that stained her, me, you, European history, was mitigated by her firm belief in humanity's general goodness.
I long knew she’d endured unworldly horror, including losing her family and surviving Auschwitz. Family lore has my younger brother and me racing into the living room, waiving wooden blocks with drawings of guns—we were forbidden toy guns—and yelling “We are going to kill a lot of Germans and run away.”
But the Holocaust wasn't taught in school in the '60s and she didn't mention it much, so I knew no details except pleasant stories about making a friend or getting a meal.
Through those anecdotes, I learned she travelled a long, hard road after the war, including hitchhiking across Eastern Europe, living in a garret in Paris, sailing to South America and settling in Bolivia, all with her best friend and fellow nurse Bluma. After La Paz, Tonia lived with her second cousin Manashe Kryzepicki, who had become a banker in Rio de Janeiro, which generated many evocative tales of wealth, art and vacations in the jungle.
I didn't realize the half of it until I visited Rio and Manashe's wife Hilda, with whom Tonia became close, told she often went to the beach where she would be surrounded by young men. Then it dawned on me: My own mother was an attractive young woman on a great adventure. After a year there and another in Miami, she settled in New York City and became what I now see was a beatnik, given she took up drawing and guitar and attending art and film shows, especially after meeting my father, Vachel Blair.
Tonia and her husband Vachel Blair, circa 1954. photo: Vachel BlairAlthough quite different—Jew-gentile, quiet-garrulous, immigrant-American—they shared interests in art, adventure and socialism, and adored each other. As a cinematographer, he sometimes worked out of town, including two months shooting a documentary in the South Seas, leaving her to parent two rambunctious boys.
My mother's quest, I eventually learned, was carrying through the darkness the light of familial and romantic love, typified by the Blake poem she liked to recite, which ends, “Remember that in former times love, sweet love, was called a crime.” She remained so innocent, one of my parents' friends, a real beatnik named Jay Bell, would ask her to leave the room when he told dirty jokes.
I got more glimpses of robust femaleness when we returned to Poland, in 1997, and shot the film "Our Holocaust Vacation" (see trailer). I saw how romantic and loving the Poles were, especially the women, who had to help their men endure life between two oppressive super powers. “I don’t know why I have such a weakness for Polish men,” Tonia said during that trip.
I finally realized the extent of her female power, however, when I edited her book, “Love at the End of the World”. Over a dozen stories, especially those from the middle of war to marrying my father in 1954, involve or feature men and romance, from distance and chaste to fireworks.
Tonia working as nurse holding her best friend Bluma Strauch's daughter Hanna, 1947,Landsberg am Lech, Germany. photo: unknownIn "The Good Germans" she recalls secretly flirting with a young German pilot. He brought her silk stocking, the most romantic gift of the day, although food would have been better. “Dr. Nabrinski" is about going on a date to the opera after the war. Another is titled, simply “Men Who Fell in Love with Me”.
The most striking story, however, is “Stefan” about being shipped out of the Lodz ghetto in a jammed cattle car and meeting a young man. They recited poetry and kissed until the train arrived at its unknown destination: Auschwitz. Given that was the first story she wrote for the writing class she joined in 1999, it seemed be an experience she wanted to highlight, or attempt to emblazon in literature.
Even in that horrific period, Tonia pursued the young woman’s sacred troth of studying and enacting romance. It was not a magical shield, but it nudged some people, including some Germans, toward respecting life.
It took me ten years to get Tonia to tell me about her first lover, who is mentioned but not named in her story “The Russians”. A Christian Pole about her age, also liberated from Mauthausen camp in Austria, Stanislav was quite the romantic. He wrote her poems, two of which she carried to New York, and caught a fawn in the forest for her to pet for her 20th birthday.
Tonia was also an adventurous aficionado of books, art and film, who would scour the NY Times for interesting work. Her dedication once brought my father, me and her to the Film Forum for the US premiere of “Will It Snow for Christmas?” (France, 1996). Afterward, my father and I teased her about its slow pacing and lack of professionalism, until it dawned on us: It was a masterpiece about female life, family and betrayal.
Tonia with a copy of 'Love at the End of the World', published by Austin Macauley in May 2021. photo:D. BlairWhen it came to actual adventure, like when my brother and I starting hitchhiking around the North-East when we were 14 and 15, Tonia would worry—undoubtedly extensively—but we didn't know, because she put on that brave face. She didn’t want her issues to limit us. And she was a great adventurer on road trips with my father to Maine or Florida, or with me to the hinterlands of California or Mexico.
As Tonia got older, she assumed the role of a mature matriarch, enjoying her status, including the teasing she missed dishing out as a shy girl in a dark age. But that didn’t eclipse the young matriarchal magician, who uses romance, beauty and dreams, especially when I read her book to her.
Her last year and half was a spectacular blessing. My daughter Irena and brother Nick brought her home to her Manhattan apartment from an assisted living facility in New Jersey, where she was confined to her room due to Covid. Indeed, Irena had carefully set up fully professional care taking, replete with hospital bed, all the needed supplies and a comfort cat, Etsu. She even created a TikTok channel about her.
Her last months were like a second infancy. Along with my sister-in-law Tania and many dedicated friends and caretakers, we joined in feeding her, reading to her, playing her favorite songs or discussing favorite topics, like “Who wrote The Bible?” We would rejoice when she ate well or had a good day, not so bothered by the back pain from being wheelchair bound or the increasing mania of Alzheimer's.
It was a fantastic, final chapter to a long, intricate and loving life, one which had long outdistanced the Holocaust. "I don't think about it anymore," she told me.
Tonia salutes the photographer's (and your) health, circa 2017. photo: N. Blair When it ended, on December 9th, 2021, Irena led us in a home vigil, including her Peruvian prayers and death doula techniques, our tradition of chanting "om" and the Jewish "sitting shiva." Finally, her physical body was taken to the lab, to which she had donated her brain for Alzheimer's research, and a few days later to be cremated, a family tradition started by my father. We accompanied it every step of the way.
Now, in my moments of loneliness or despair, I recall the power that carried her through the fires and fired her tenderness and love. It is enough to enable me, her, us, to carry on those noble dreams and flourish.
Thanks mom, Tonia, grandma, Tunia, cool chick, Tonuska.
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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 Jan 13, 2022 - 04:10 PM
The QAnon Game, Conspiracy King Trump and Us
by Doniphan Blair
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The author near Roswell, New Mexico, on his six week journey around the American West during the 2020 election. photo: D. Blair This was going to be our feature article in November 2020, posted from Texas, since I was driving around rural America researching it. Unfortunately, cineSOURCE had a malware attack on Election Day, so we published it on our Facebook page. Then I decided to update it and sell it as an article or book.
AS IF THE QANONYMOUS FOLKS DIDN'T
didn’t have enough on their plate these past few weeks — their hero Trump defeated, their oracle Q mistaken, their webmaster Ron Watkins quit — The Financial Times released a video on October 15th, “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” It details how QAnon, a movement with as many as fifteen million people, depending on how you calibrate participation, started as a live-action, role-playing game, or LARP.
The Financial Times’ scoop on the origins of the right-wing phenomena, which also has social, spiritual and commercial aspects, has yet to be corroborated by other major news outlets. But it was prefigured by Wired Magazine in a September 22nd article about Adrian Hon, a computer game designer, who observed QAnon adheres to the common LARP format of scavenger hunt.
“Deep state propaganda,” would probably be the response of most QAnons. Nevertheless, it is common knowledge that their three-year-old community is guided by piecing together clues posted by “Q,” supposedly an intelligence officer with “Q-level clearance,” which refers to working with nuclear secrets, now more likely a live-action, role-playing master.
Also called “alternative reality game,” or its ungainly acronym ARG, the LARP was pioneered in California by Wizards of the Coast to promote their video game “Netrunner” in 1996. The Wizards needed advertising magic since video gaming had blown up that decade, adding three dimensionality, role-playing — from becoming a medieval knight in “Final Fantasy: IV” (1991) to a “first person shooter” in “Doom” (1993) — and “massively multiplayer online role-playing games,” or MMOs, with the arrival of widespread access to the World Wide Web.
Live-action role-playing was the next logical step. A cool combination of storytelling, technology, play and actual human beings, LARPs were adopted by ad agencies and media production companies, to advertise movies as well as games, but also gamers, hipsters and attendees of Burning Man, who developed their own.
LARP-like activities are universal among children, of course, but they are not common in adulthood, outside of games like Dungeons and Dragons, the acting profession, sex, crossdressing, criminality and undercover police or espionage work. This stimulates intense interest.
In the 1990s, European anarchists came up with “Luther Blissett,” a “multiple-use name… used to organize pranks, media stunts, and hoaxes,” according to Wikipedia. Although this doesn’t seem like the work of Blisset, “he” did publish a novel in 1999 titled “Q.”
A sample of the multi-generational and -cultural folks interest in the QAnon conspiracy theory, circa July 2020.. photo: unknownI covered a LARP for cineSOURCE magazine in 2012. It was created by Jeff Hull, who consults on game theory for nonprofits like Greenpeace and co-founded Oaklandish, an art movement and clothing line with a store in downtown Oakland. Hull calls his LARPs “participatory arts projects” and had just completed “The Jejune Institute.” An excellent documentary on the year-long endeavor called “The Institute” (2013) was directed by Spencer McCall.
In 2008, Hull and his crew attracted more than 7,000 people to their faux Jejune office in a San Francisco office building, using paper flyers with tear-off phone numbers posted on poles. Combining high tech and old school, Jejune “officials” provided about five hundred participants clues in maps, props built into public property and post cards, which led to a protest by 250 people, exploring Oakland’s underground sewage system and solving the mystery of Eva, a punky, young runaway.
Sensing Jejuners might get too involved — “jejune” means naïve, simplistic or superficial, by the way — Hull brought them back to earth at their last meeting by explaining everything openly, after which they had a good laugh over tea and cookies.
Q took “his” LARP in the opposite direction, toward increased mystery, control and politics, when “he” began posting on 4chan, an anonymous, freewheeling forum for hackers, outlaws and pornographers, during the Trump Administration’s first year.
By the mid-2010s, there were all sorts of roll-playing games, from the multiplayer online games to real-life, dress-up fantasies — like “the furries,” people who wear animal costumes — private sexual ones or an online variant called the “anons,” such as CIAAnon, which was orchestrated by an imaginary spymaster.
Q — or what turns out to be a number of Qs, as control of the game was contested — came to widespread attention after an early post announced the impending arrest of Hillary Clinton. It didn’t happen, of course, but fulfilling predictions was not as necessary as expressing the fantasies suggested by Trump’s campaign chant, “Lock her up.”
“When you offer people a story that validates some core beliefs or resonates with their view of the world — or view of their imagined word — it has a life of its own,” Hull told me, when I called him on November 13th. “Suddenly you have followers who are activated by this content in a way that is entirely unpredictable.”
Logically labeled QAnon, Q’s LARP integrated right-wing conspiracy theories, Trump’s embattled presidency, his accusations against “the deep state,” and PizzaGate, the CT popular during the last election. QAnon validated core beliefs not only of aggrieved Republicans but some folks on the far left.
In case conspiracy theories had not yet intruded on your life, those four, long years ago: PizzaGate exploded across the web in October 2016 after a New York City lawyer and white supremacist tweeted he had evidence that Anthony Weiner, the disgraced Democratic congressman and soon-to-be-divorced husband of Clinton’s assistant, was part of a pedophilia ring. Already busted for sexting, the tellingly-named Weiner would do two years for sending a 15-year-old girl “dick pics.”
The author finds a perfect writing retreat in an in-law building behind a friend's house in Tucson, Arizona. photo: D. Blair From one pervert who happened to be a Democrat, a pedophile ring was born. It was built from clues “deciphered” from the emails of John Podesta, the Democratic Party Chairman, which were hacked by Russians in March 2016 but only made public by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, a month before that Election Day, coincidentally.
PizzaGaters became so convinced Clinton and her colleagues were Satanists running a child sex ring out of a DC pizza parlor, a North Carolina man raced up in December 2016 and peppered a locked door in the back with rounds from an AR-15 assault rifle (no one was hit) to free the children trapped in the basement (which did not exist). He got four years.
Expanding from PizzaGate, QAnon includes Obama and other leading Democrats, celebrities, like Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey, and one banker (George Soros). It also has them commit much more lurid crimes AND run the deep state.
“Why so over-the-top,” you might ask? Well, if a story like PizzaGate is gobbled up, the next conspiracy theory has to be more titillating to win adherents.
Hence, Trump was recruited by military brass to run for president and take down the cabal. Plus, he would soon reveal the entire sordid saga, order mass arrests and heal the nation.
Along with its dystopian views, QAnon promises peace, love and happiness, through what they call “The Great Awakening,” people waking up to the truth and standing up to the ruling elites of Satanists, pedophiles and cannibals (derived from the claim they ingest children’s blood). That utopia is now on hold due to Trump’s near miss of a second term.
Admittedly, “only a fraction of [QAnons] believe the conspiracy theory’s most outlandish claims,” according to an article in Wired’s October 6th issue, which cites a recent poll. Some people may even see them as metaphors for corruption and decay, not actual fact.
Nevertheless, “some 56% of Republicans believe that QAnon… is mostly or partly true,” reported Forbes Magazine on September 2nd, providing plenty of belief to go around. QAnon-related Facebook pages leapt over 600% after the Covid-19 shutdowns in March 2020, when many people were fearful, frustrated and desperate for explanations.
QAnons are known for their aggressive proselytizing, getting friends and family to swallow the “red pill” (of difficult knowledge, from “The Matrix,” 1999). This is to bring them onboard the secret squad that will save the world, or, from a more practical perspective, to protect themselves from intrusions on their fantasy life. QAnon evangelists includes YouTube advisors, book authors, swag manufacturers — hats, flags, shirts — and outright scammers.
Their theories have also been multiplying. The pandemic is a hoax but the new 5G networks are causing the disease, although the vaccines will be fraudulent, in accord with the anti-vaxxers. John F. Kennedy Jr didn’t die in 1999, when his plane crashed in the ocean with two women onboard: he’s been hiding, will soon go public, declare war on the cabal and take over from Pence as vice-president.
QAnons are admonished to do their own research, which allows them to role-play cryptologists and academics, while the movement itself fosters dreams of heroism and revolution in the face of confusion, ridicule and catastrophe.
QAnon enthusiasts at a Trump rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, in 2018. photo: unknown Top researchers are considered the movement’s saints and called “bakers,” for their expert analysis of Q’s “bread crumbs.” Although they disagree on the details, pretty much all pre-existing CTs — chemtrails, 9/11, the moon landings, Kennedy and Roswell — are considered factual, which makes QAnon the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories.
Unlike a 9/11-conspiracy theorist, who can only bore you to death at a party, QAnon was categorized a domestic terror group by the FBI, in April 2019. That rating stems from the 2016 PizzaGate attack, a June 2018 Nevada police standoff with an armed man who blocked the roadway on the Hoover Dam his armored vehicle, and a murder.
In March 2019, a New York Gambino family boss was killed by a QAnon-addled kid, who thought the CIA had corrupted the Mafia (instead of vice versa, as in the Kennedy-assassination conspiracy).
QAnon’s absence of actual violence is outweighed by its size, up to fifteen million people, its influence, from Trump rallies and Save the Children marches to extensive indoctrination, in person, through the web and now overseas, and its members’ violent view of what is happening right now, hidden away.
Over a year after the FBI assessment but only two weeks before Election Day 2020, Facebook, Twitter and, to a lesser degree, YouTube closed down most of the tens of thousands of accounts related to QAnon, which digital activists had been requesting for years.
Instead of algorithms favoring vetted sources or hiring enough people to manage more detailed review, those platforms were programmed to send viewers more exciting examples of their interests and what is trending worldwide. If someone searches for “QAnon,” their inboxes are eventually inundated by related material, which can lead depressed, anxious or otherwise susceptible people down the so-called “rabbit hole,” Alice’s way into Wonderland.
The same week QAnon was blocked from social media, it was sanctioned by the House of Representatives, every member except for 18, most of whom cited free speech concerns. They can now discuss those issues with their new QAnon colleagues.
In fact, QAnon had two victories among its losses on Election Day. Out of almost 100 candidates adhering to aspects of QAnon, who ran for posts across the country, the Republican congressional candidates Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and gun-fanatic Lauren Boebert of Colorado won their races. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted, on November 12th, that both women had withdrawn fealty to Q, but Boebert only distanced herself and Greene didn’t even bother.
“QAnon is not just on the internet anymore; it’s in the US Capitol,” emphasized Kailyn Tiffany, a journalist with The Atlantic, which published the first major expose of QAnon in May 2020, albeit three years after its emergence.
“It is not just a conspiracy theory anymore; it’s a voting bloc. And it is not going anywhere.”
Although most major news outlets covered QAnon from 2017, aside from The Atlantic, they didn’t start in depth investigative reporting until August 2020, which generated some frenzied catch-up but little actual news. Now that the movement has become of such public concern, however, even staid financial news organizations are taking it seriously and doing good research.
Also on Election Day, Business Insider, a respected site since 2007, referred to QAnon as a game but didn’t elaborate. Their article was investigating Q’s identity through an in-depth analysis of “his” clues, so-called “Q drops.”
Business Insider fingered Ron Watkins or his father Jim, who owns Q’s current hoster, 8kun. Q moved from 4chan to 8chan, when the former instituted some censorship. After Watkins bought 8chan, they morphed it into 8kun last year, after bad press from posting racist manifestos, notably by the New Zealand and El Paso mass murderers (51 in March 2019, 23 in August 2019, respectively).
Ron Watkins emphatically rejects such accusations. But, after years’ hard labor in the outlaw internet, he quit 8kun on Election Day, supposedly to devote more time to his wife and favorite hobby, woodworking, as it happens.
Coincidence is not causality, of course, but Q, too, went silent on Election Day after noting, “Trust the plan not the polls.” QAnons were overjoyed when Q returned on November 12th, but “his” Q-drop, “Nothing can stop what is coming,” was not that informative.
As if that wasn’t bad enough for the symbol-obsessed QAnons, two weeks earlier was the debut of “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” Produced by The Financial Times, which is based in London and “the leading global business publication” (by its own account), the 16-minute video was directed by Izabella Kaminska, a star reporter and the editor of their award-winning web division, FT Alphaville.
That QAnon is a rogue LARP will have enormous implications for its FBI task force, researchers studying cults and anyone observing with trepidation its mercurial rise and excessive fantasy. If we hope to crack its code and come up with counter measures, how it emerged and operates is critical intel.
“Is QAnon a Game” is a fantastic first step, which I will examine below (see it on YouTube here), but it was overshadowed by real-life events, as so often happens in Trumpian times: a bitter presidential campaign, voting made difficult by both the pandemic and Trump Administration, and the lingering, unresolved aftermath.
Although the administration finally opened up to the Biden transition team on November 23rd, Trump didn’t concede, which could still lead to the Supreme Court, a constitutional crisis, fighting in the streets or a coup, according to extremists on the right and left.
Trump remains adamant he won in a landslide, that there was vast voter fraud and that American democracy is under attack by an enormous, octopussian conspiracy, directed by “the deep state,” another conspiracy theory Trump endorses. It may also be the Satanist pedophiles identified by QAnon.
Trump has winked at QAnon a couple of times, notably his August 18th news conference. After insisting he knew nothing, he admitted, “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me… If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”
Trump typically avoids outlandish conspiracy theories, like 9/11 or aliens, but he has built his life around devious deals and outright lies; he suspects the same from others; and he is a trained trafficker in conspiracy theories.
In fact, his main mentor after his father was Roy Cohn, the rancid New York lawyer who entered the public eye as an assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy, fabricator of the allegation that the US government was riddled with communists, the conspiracy theory which tore apart America in the ‘50s.
Along with obstructionist legal strategies, Trump learned from Cohn how to use conspiracy theories to introduce doubt, sow fear and threaten enemies, while maintaining distance and deniability — in fact, not even believing the theories themselves.
It is no coincidence then that Trump kicked off his political career by promoting the Birther conspiracy, his presidential campaign by accusing Mexicans of coming to America to rape and rob, not find work, and his presidency by claiming Clinton won the popular vote by having her minions plant three million fake ballots.
Another conspiracy theory Trump has advanced by endless repetition is that the liberal media was distorting and fabricating so much about him and his administration, they were “fake news.” Conversely, only he could provide an honest assessment, and he came to be revered by supporters for his candor and authenticity.
Republicans have long been the paranoid party, from McCarthy to Nixon and their obstinate opposition to President Obama. After the 2012 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, conspiracy theories flourished about Secretary of State Clinton, even after the Republican-led congressional investigations found them baseless.
Even so, most conservatives still can’t conceive that Trump’s go-to strategy is conspiracy theory. Jeff Flake, a Never Trumper one-term senator from Arizona remains perplexed, even though he noted on November 20th, “He probably didn’t believe [Birtherism] but knew some Republicans would.”
Most Republicans see Trump’s conspiracy obsessions as the character flaw of a political outsider and narcissist, who can’t bear to lose because his brand is based on winning and fantasy. Actually, winning through fantasy is the main benefit of conspiracism and Trump. Before becoming president, of course, he was the star of the reality television show, “The Apprentice” (NBC, 2004–17).
Trump has indoctrinated his 88 million Twitter followers with his own tweets and those forwarded from others, including QAnons. By identifying clandestine criminality everywhere, he stokes fear and presents himself as the only viable savior, a boast repeated ad nauseam during his presidential campaign.
Trump has supported 29 conspiracies, according to Wikipedia, from global warming is a hoax to the deep state, which emerged from the Left, or foul play in the deaths of Vince Foster and Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile and Democrat, which reflects the kernels of truth CTs use to build on.
Trump almost always piggy-backs on other conspiracy theorists — Birtherism was the invention of a Chicago gadfly attacking Obama in 2004 — but his piece de resistance is entirely his own: The Democrats can only win in 2020 if they steal the election. Many of us laughed when he started hyping that one, not realizing he was a conspiracy theory master.
Even at the 2016 Iowa caucus, Trump claimed Ted Cruz stole votes. To solidify his Clinton-votes conspiracy, he established the Voter Fraud Commission in May 2017, an apparent exercise in futility, especially after it died eight months later due to absolutely no evidence. But Trump was playing the long game. He prepared the Clinton-votes conspiracy in anticipation of his 2016 defeat and, after winning, switched it to shore up his CT strategy for 2020.
Cohn would be proud. His acolyte Trump has done an A-plus job of making his voter-fraud conspiracy theory stick, even as Republican and Democrat officials testified “it was the most secure vote in American history,” the courts threw out almost all cases, and more and more celebrity Republicans and business people begged him to concede.
Regardless of America’s respectful transfers of power dating back to Washington, the majority of ranking Republicans and rank-and-file are still standing by Trump, although his followers are famous for taking him figuratively, not literally. Hence, Secretary of State Pompeo, Senator McConnell and others imagine they’re indulging his inability to process loss, even as they grossly underestimate him, as did New Yorkers and Democrats before them.
Trump’s low-brow demeanor and even idiocy serve to conceal an elevated emotional intelligence and ability to manage chaos. While it is confusing for most people, Trump has learned to take advantage of chaos, what some have called “creating controversy and watching it play out.”
Secret consultants didn’t help Trump win in 2016 or take over the Republican Party, since he generally rejects advice in favor of “gut feelings,” as he calls it. Indeed, he has developed a technique of pitching ideas, no matter how stupid, reading the room, crowd or media, and, if he feels a benefit is to be gained, plowing forth. While this system hasn’t been that effective in business or international negotiations, it worked well in reality television, celebrity culture and a political party drained of ideas and ethics.
Although the Biden Administration has started to get briefing, meetings, office space and funding, Trump’s insistence he will still prevail through the courts, even though his legal efforts have been a farce rejected out of hand by conservative Republican judges, perplexes many right-wingers, while liberals ridicule it as a scam for donations. Few recognize they are being out-chaos-ed.
Sure, Trump looks frazzled and is laying low, mostly playing golf, watching TV and tweeting frenetically, with few public events since Election Day. He’s in toughest con of his life, searching frantically for a way through, and weighing a possible end-run around all imaginable norms.
Given Trump’s long reliance on conspiracy theories, I doubt he will leave the West Wing without attempting to harness the biggest CT in American history, especially since its adherents see him as their savior.
The first real toe in this water came on November 12th, the same day as Q’s reappearance. Trump tweeted IN ALL CAPS a conspiratorial claim QAnons took from a far-right cable news channel and had been trying to get to him for a week: “Dominion Voting Systems, a company that makes voting machines, ‘deleted’ millions of Trump votes,” (as reported by NBC News).
Although the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency dismissed it, QAnons reject representatives of the deep state and were ecstatic. 70% of all tweets about Dominion, including the proposition Venezuela’s leaders Chavez and Maduro used its equipment to rig their elections, were coming from Q-related accounts. There’s also renewed chatter about how they should stop mourning Trump’s loss and resume their work to save America.
QAnon prayers were answered on November 19th. Since all his more reputable lawyers had quit, Trump made Giuliani captain of his legal team tackling the voter-fraud conspiracy. Giuliani in turn tapped his top associate Sidney Powell, who ranted about Dominion’s diabolical deeds, how Georgia’s Republican governor colluded with the CIA to steal the election, and concluded, almost in tears, with “stick to the plan,” Q’s catch-phrase.
She was fired two days later, indicating Trump did one of his gut feeling pitches, read the room and backed off QAnon, although perhaps not permanently.
Powell is the second senior Trump administration official to come out completely Q, after Michael Flynn, for whom she also provides legal counsel. Briefly Trump’s National Security Advisor, until his removal for failing to admit meeting with Russians and arrest after the Mueller Investigation, Flynn posted to YouTube — on July 4th, 2020, no less — his recitation of the QAnon pledge: “Where we go one, we go all.”
Flynn’s complete pardon by Trump on November 25th, will be seen by QAnon as another affirmation of their cause.
“Taken at face value, at the heart of Q is an effort to generate distrust,” notes Kaminska, at the beginning of “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?”
“Whether it as a state disinformation campaign or something more spontaneous, it is hard to say. Simplifying it, as most of the media currently does, as a far right conspiracy that worships Trump and believes his opponents are Satanic pedophiles, probably misses the point.”
With that deserved dig at mainstream media, Kaminska sets out to decipher QAnon’s methods, history and roots, an epic as fascinating as it is frightening.
Her biggest download comes from Adam Curtis, who became her primary source. A reputable English documentary filmmaker, he has made almost a film a year since 1983, often focusing on social control by big money or computers but not conspiracies. Curtis has done his research and has been doing performance pieces about QAnon.
Conceptually, he traces it back to ’60s radicals Kerry Thornley (1938–98), his childhood chum Greg Hill, and their founding of Discordianism, a parody religion which worshipped chaos. Eventually, an author and ‘zine and magazine publisher, Thornley was also a seminal hippie whose Army buddies happened to include Lee Harvey Oswald.
Thornley and Hill started “Operation Mindfuck,” which involved sending to the Forum page of Playboy Magazine, a progressive periodical at the time, anonymous letters promoting the Illuminati conspiracy theory.
As you may recall from Conspiracy Theory 101 (soon to be required in college), the Illuminati were a secret, 18th century subsect of the Masons in Bavaria, who attempted to advance society through science and democracy. But instead of armchair radicals, a couple of popular books by conspiracy theorists of the day portrayed them as the hidden hand behind the French Revolution.
In Operation Mindfuck, Thornley, Hill and late addition Robert Anton Wilson claimed the Illuminati were involved in almost every war, revolution and assassination since 1789, an exaggeration so egregious they assumed no intelligent person would believe it.
In fact, they thought their Illuminati story could be used as a form of mass psychology, exaggeration as “aversion therapy,” to heal the “paranoid style in American politics,” left over from ‘50s’ McCarthyism and Red Scare and identified by Richard Hofstadter in his respected book of the same name (1964).
Thornley didn’t go when he was subpoenaed to the Kennedy-assassination conspiracy trail in New Orleans, but he told all in his book, “Oswald” (1965), which supports the “lone gunman” theory.
Later in life, however, hard luck, government interference and reading the “dual state” analysis of European lefties Ernst Frankel and Franz Morgenthau, who postulated democracies need fascist substructures to function in the modern era, turned Thornley toward conspiracism.
Hints also emerged that he was mistaken about Oswald. That the Kennedy assassination might have been a Mafia conspiracy is suggested by Oswald’s murder by a low-level but in-debt mafioso, Jack Ruby, and government documents declassified in 2017 (with one last dump postponed to 2021 by Trump, as it happens).
Despite Thornley’s disenchantment, his anti-conspiracy ideas were advanced by others, notably Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007). A prolific author, agnostic mystic, Berkeley activist and friend of Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, Wilson happened to be the Playboy Forum editor who published Thornley’s letters.
Not only did they become close friends, Wilson was anointed the saint of Discordianism by Thornley, who loved statements like, “Belief is the death of intelligence,” or “You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.”
In turn, Wilson and his Forum co-editor, Robert Joseph Shea (1933–1994), fictionalized Thornleyism into an 800 page, award-winning, sci-fi bestseller, which Wilson called “a fairy tale for paranoids.”
“The Illuminatus! Trilogy” is a tour de farce as well as force — the inserted exclamation point giving it away — which surfs from a New York City cop thriller through sex, drugs and mysticism to aliens, monsters and even post-modern asides to the reader. There’s also plenty of conspiracy, including a scene set in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, home to the historical Illuminati.
Wilson and Shea considered conspiracy an intellectual stress test, which fortified your morality and humanity, if you didn’t take it literally, but condemned you to confusion, fear and hate, if you did. Neglecting, however, to recall H.L. Mencken’s observation that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” their attempt to cure “the paranoid style in American politics” backfired completely.
Ask around, you’ll find widespread belief in the Illuminati. Indeed, we’re in a golden age of conspiracy theories, with more conspiracists and theories per capita than any time in history.
A similar series of shifts and reversals happened to QAnon.
According to Kaminska, the LARP was concocted by Manuel Chavez, AKA Defango, of Nevada. A likable but lackluster YouTuber, Chavez posts his “Citizen Zone” reports almost daily, rarely tops a thousand views, and has little Q qualities, in content or charisma. He is, however, known to smear people with accusations of pedophilia.
“[Chavez] claimed he created Q as an alternative reality game mostly for the LOLs,” narrates Kaminska, “but also to smoke out bad journalists in the alternative media space,” to see who reported his stories as truth, another stress test or satire like Operation Mindfuck.
Alas, Chavez lost control of Q to Thomas Schoenberg, who might be a musician but is obviously a brilliant programmer — since he largely scrubbed himself from the web — and a LARP master. In fact, Schoenberg sharpened his skills by usurping another internet game, Cicada, which involved riddles, puzzles and advanced or esoteric theorems.
That plot twist is detailed by Kaminska’s other main informant, Jim Stewartson, an Emmy-winning producer and creative technologist out of Los Angeles (according to his LinkedIn profile), who is also well versed in LARPs.
Schoenberg wanted to “radicalize smart people” through Cicada and QAnon, according to Stewartson, using complex challenges and codes and intriguing stories and images. Alas, he drifted into transgressive topics, including Nazism and the CT Himmler formed a secret mystical sect, supposedly extant today. Schoenberg also emphasized the deep state.
Chavez and Schoenberg remained comrades-in-conspiracy, according to possible Nevada State racketeering charges (reported by SDNY.org). They started a company using “targeted chaos,” bots and smear campaigns to defame opponents for clients, one of which was right-wing activists planning to surveil the family of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee employee murdered in July 2016. Rich was about to spill the beans on Satanist pedophiles, or it was a robbery gone bad, according to police.
As sophisticated and shadowy as Schoenberg might be, he, too, lost control of QAnon, out-programmed by a party with greater access, perhaps Jim or Ron Watkins, although Q’s identity remains a mystery.
While the Qs were battling, there was also a struggle among “his” hosters. When Q’s original hoster, 4chan, began banning some discussions in 2018, “he” migrated to 8chan, the creation of Frederick Brennan (1994-).
A talented young programmer and graphic designer, Brennan is wheel-chair confined, due to severe brittle bone disease, and dreamt up his libertarian site while tripping on mushrooms in 2013. A year later, Jim Watkins saw Brennan in an Al Jazeera documentary and recruited him to The Philippines to run his internet empire. Watkins had either bought out or commandeered 2channel, a Japanese pornography site, leading to wealth and child pornographer accusations. Brennan sold 8chan to Watkins in 2015 but continued to work for him, until their falling out three years later.
The fight for QAnon outlines a William Gibson-esque, sci-fi thriller, although it can only be produced in 2030, after we have recovered from the real-life game being played across America and increasingly England, Germany, Brazil and elsewhere.
Stewartson lays out those twists and turns calmly and professionally in “Is QAnon a Game,” but his article on Medium.com, published in August, is significantly more aggressive and explicit.
“QAnon is a death cult preparing for mass violence,” he writes. “It is being run by a group of theocratic fascists, ruthless grifters and literal sociopaths in conjunction with Russian intelligence. Each of these actors is equally hell-bent on creating as much chaos as possible leading up to the election.”
That wake-up call was too inflammatory for Kaminska, but she references it in her section on spy service dropouts or expellees. They form a large cohort of injured cyber warriors, scammers trying to monetize state secrets and nation-state spies, according to Steve Hassan, an ex-intelligence officer she interviewed.
The Russians’ 2016 election interference did not repeat in 2020, since Putin — also an expert in managing conspiracy theories — had no need. His efforts to generate distrust were already being enacted by unwitting double agents.
I doubt Putin is literally running Trump. Although he may have blackmail material, the so-called “Pee tape,” it is immaterial since Trump is a metaphysical “Manchurian candidate,” no brainwashing or blackmailing needed. In this way, Trump is a bit like James Jesus Angleton, the CIA counter-espionage chief during the 1960s, writ large. Angleton tore the agency apart searching for high-level moles, based on McCarthy’s claims of communists, clues from an unstable Soviet defector and his own paranoia.
Trump’s devotion to conspiracism automatically partners him with Putin, since it is essentially a religion. Instead of a monotheist universe ruled by a just, benevolent lord, they believe in a dog-eat-dog, Darwinian world, run by like themselves or even more evil parties, whom they must stand against, hence, the Satanist angle.
The little guy watching the elephants fighting understandably interprets it as “the global cabal theory,” according to the best-selling Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, who finally revealed his analysis on November 20th.
The most critical issue not covered by Kaminska in her brief 16 minutes, in my opinion, is the collapse of community consciousness. Society has been long been atomizing, due to alienation, distancing, digitization, mechanization and fake news, to which we can add pandemic isolation and infection fears. But it began in the ‘60s.
Fifty years ago, psychotropic and birth-control drugs, the freedom to choose your own identity and personal behavior, and other anti-establishment ideas were welcomed by many, including myself, as innovative developments for empowering individuals and improving society. It also fertilized the ground for out-of-control fantasy.
Our minds operate by constructing inner universes from our culture, experience and dreams, according to the ancient Hindu sages, who called our private worldviews “maya,” Sanskrit for illusion or magic. Their thesis was corroborated by Plato, with his cave shadows, and Descartes, who existed because he could think, but it was only integrated into Western canon by ’60s philosophers like Derrida and Said, who developed deconstruction and multiculturalism, respectively.
A vibrant fantasy world is mandatory for creativity and hope, as well as sexual satisfaction, but we still have to connect with our neighbors and societies through agreed-upon, shared realities, which was easier in simpler times.
The digital age made good on its promise of interconnectivity and information, but it divided us into unmediated groups, led by innocent influencers, experienced celebrities, full-on cult leaders or secret agents. With our lives more scheduled, monitored and machine-based, even as we are at loose ends, anxious and disconnected, many of us look to fantasy play with a like-minded community, just as children do or people in the ’60s did.
“This exact phenomena [of conspiracies] and the things going on with Trump is the reason I don’t do that kind of work right now,” Jeff Hull, the LARP master, explained to me. “Ten years ago, that was fun, that was playful. We were activating the public space in a way to turn people on to a whimsical reality.”
Hull noticed a change during his LARP “The Latitude,” which came after “The Jejune Institute.” It was a secret society where people shared personal information in a magical realist format. Although he only invited participants personally and managed it closely, of the 3,000 people involved, many came to view it as a religion, a few dozen became fanatics and a couple tried to take it over.
“Now playing with fact and fiction is scary,” concluded Hull. “There is no room for us to fuck around, to distort truth in that way. It is not a game any more.”
And so went the LARPs two-decade rollercoaster ride from advertising and “whimsical reality” to takeover by “theocratic fascists, ruthless grifters and literal sociopaths.” Stewartson’s assessment is hard to verify, but we are definitely in one of the most dangerous intersections of politics, culture, technology, espionage and mental health EVER!
To be sure, 2020 America is not 1930s Germany, barely out of a catastrophic war and depression, with only one decade of democracy under its belt, and obsessed with cabaret, homosexuality and drugs (OK, we do share the last three). Moreover, Trump is hardly Hitler, which cripples his capacity to enact a traditional coup, along with the fact that much of the military thinks he’s dishonorable and a draft dodger.
But a coup in consciousness is not farfetched. Up to a quarter of Trump’s 70 million voters support QAnon concepts; Trump is a master at manipulating conspiracy theories, which can flip a loss to a win through fantasy and repetition; and “Paradoxically, conspiracy theories have become the most effective community bonding mechanisms of the 21st century,” according to the respected columnist David Brooks (November 26th).
History’s greatest conspiracy kingdom, the Third Reich, was built on conspiracy theories about Jews: they betrayed Germany in World War I, controlled the banks, were taking over Germany, were seducing Christian women. CTs came to rule the regime as neighbors, friends and even children, as well as the Gestapo, SS, Abwher and the other intelligence services, spied on, denounced or threatened to denounce each other.
As crazy as Nazi thinking was, it is not as irrational, technically speaking, as some QAnon allegations: sex-slave children held in caves, reptilian alien overlords, time travel. Although they don’t believe every theory and most are not like Germans in thrall to Hitler, we have entered a conspiracy kingdom.
Until I viewed The Financial Times expose, I assumed QAnon was the work of a malevolent mastermind, who could be tracked and stopped. Seeing it as an interactive game, with multiple leaders, able to adapt like a virus and evolve evermore strange — but still enlist average Americans and folks on the far right and left — makes it a mob mentality of a higher order.
You see, I am Jewish and my mother is a survivor of the Holocaust, which was inspired by German conspiracy theories but also Europe-wide ones, notably “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Fabricated by the tsar’s secret police in 1903, “The Protocols” were purported to be the notes of a meeting of Jewish power brokers. Even though it was outed twenty years later as a plagiary, taken from a French satire with the word “Jew” switched in, it was taught as history in the Third Reich and many people believe “The Protocols” today.
QAnon seemed like those old obsessions in modern garb. Indeed, their claim that Democrats and celebrities are harvesting children’s blood for adrenochrome (a commercially-available adrenaline-derived medication), which they inject for alleged fountain-of-youth properties, brought to mind medieval accusations about Jewish people killing Christian children and using their blood for Passover matzo.
Of course, pushing rational limits is common to conspiracy theories. Since the creators are writing fiction, they want the most powerful stories, but which still ring true from existing narratives. Their struggle to tailor them to the dark corners of our collective consciousness makes QAnon a Rorschach test for our times.
Thornley and Wilson hoped to correct conspiracy fantasies through satire, by humorously tricking the mind back to rationalism.
Unfortunately, unlike the Johnson Administration (1963–68), which was trying to do some good and admitted some mistakes, the Trump presidency is full-on farce. Double unfortunately, most of the 47% of Americans who voted for Trump vigorously disagree, preferring to see him as a truth teller and corruption fighter, who will “make America great again” in a warranted second term.
One slip further down that rabbit hole is QAnon, which flourishes in direct relation to the delusions of Trump and Trumpers but also the actuality of the pandemic, the absence of functional fantasy, and the unintended consequences of LARPs, social media algorithms and postmodernism.
Two of the greatest satirists of our day are Steven Colbert and Seth Meyers, likable guys who’ve been eviscerating Trump for decades. Meyers hosted the Washington Press Club gathering in May 2011, which roasted Trump and featured President Obama’s hilarious takedown of Birtherism, which Trump pushed until 2015.
That was supposedly when Trump decided to run for president, although Obama notes in his new book, “A Promised Land” (released on November 18th), it may have come in 2010, when Trump offered to redecorate the West Wing and was politely refused.
Colbert, Meyers, Bill Maher and other comedy theorists have postulated that shaming humor
would destroy Trump. Alas, aggressively attacking Trump, Trumpers or QAnons plays into their perceptions of persecution by their intellectual, social or even metaphysical betters. Only Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che teases Trump with empathy, which can open a butt of ridicule up to the humanist realization, “We are all idiots.”
Since satire doesn’t work in a system-wide farce, sincerity, forgiveness and charity might, as naïve as that sounds.
Credible threats of or actual violence are crimes, which can be prosecuted. But QAnon operates mostly in the realm of cyberspace, free speech and fantasy and must be addressed there. Taking down QAnon pages or flagging disinformation is sensible, in a brick-and-mortar way, but it is reactive, minimally effective and hard to enforce.
“8chan is the only [online] platform featuring a full commitment to free speech,” insisted Jim Watkins in 2019, according to ABC News.
Although “8chan had banned nearly 48,000 users, deleted more than 132,000 posts and 92 discussion boards… [and] complied with 56 U.S. law enforcement requests,” Watkins explained, it is still “a one-of-a-kind discussion board where anonymous users shared tactics about French democracy protests, how to circumvent censorship in repressive regimes, and the best way to beat a classic video game… and a small minority of users post hateful and ignorant views.”
That’s surprisingly articulate for Watkins, who is accused of many nefarious deeds, including by his former programmer, Brennan, who must have some inside dope. Indeed, Brennan and Watkins are currently suing each other; their respective legal machinations have forced each other to flee The Philippines; Brennan has become a vocal critic of QAnon and a proponent of the postulate Watkins is Q or close to “him.”
2017 brought the debut of Parlor, the free speech Twitter, which opens with the inevitably intriguing disclaimer, IN ALL CAPS: “Warning!! This site contains adult materials or materials that may be considered offensive in some communities.” Then came Gab, MeWe and Rumble, two networks championing free speech and a libertarian video-sharing site, respectively.
It has been almost two decades since the start of 4chan and the dark web, suggesting we can’t rely on a strategy that depends on controlling speech. Plus there’s the argument against censorship. Prohibition pushes people underground, where they are harder to monitor, communication with outsiders is limited and their moral senses atrophy even further.
Perhaps QAnon should be considered a self-inflicted, society-wide psy-op, which reflects our malaise but could be countered by more enlightened, insightful and creative speech, dialogue and art. Such content could be amplified by sophisticated strategies, web influencers and regular folk, like suburban women or the Tiktok teens who swamped sites with hits to stop trolls.
The Conspiracy of Love — that there has always been a secret cabal of people working for good, even in terrible times — is a concept I proposed in articles and a performance piece of the same name. In the latter, I relate some of my experiences and research; I read from the Gettysburg Address and my mother’s book, “Love at the End of the World,” about being a romantic teenager in the Holocaust; and I conclude with audience dialogue.
Since I know only a couple of QAnons personally, I base my approach on many discussions with friends and acquaintances who believe 9/11 was an inside job. While I have only succeeded a few times, there’s always a way to maintain dialogue, propose fresh perspectives and translate them into terms acceptable by a given individual.
With Trump’s defeat, many QAnoner are starting to have doubts.
On November 9th, both the NY Times and Washington Post ran articles covering their election disappointment and fear they’ve been conned. Of course, unfulfilled predictions are common to CTs and other QAnons are recalibrating to fit, a standard practice among end-time cults.
I applaud Kaminska’s use of a few of her 16 minutes to examine how to heal conspiracy fanaticism, by interviewing an ex-Moonie cult member turned deprogrammer. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining relations, of not treating culters as enemies, of seeing delusion as a disease that can be cured.
“We have to step back from the demonization of each other and ask what role we can play in building social trust,” President Obama told an NPR interviewer on November 16th. We don’t have to encourage views or actions to accept people as human beings. We are, however, obliged to be more tolerant and understanding, if we hope to bring them back from the polarity brink or conspiracies of hate.
President-elect Biden personifies this quest with his big-tent tolerance, his Vice President-elect Harris (the first Black, woman AND second generation immigrant in that position), his calm attention to the details of the dangers facing America, his disregard of Trump’s defiance, and his reaching out to Republicans, even as they rebuff him.
QAnon blew up in the time of Corona and Trump, when people had time to kill and phobias to channel and he was fanning the flames of divisiveness, fear and conspiracism.
As those factors fade, so will the siren call of Q and T. It will be close, like the election, but we will eventually transit through Trump’s expertly assembled voting-fraud, media-misinformation and deep-state conspiracy theories.
At least that’s what we’re being assured by many public figures, including Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Russia (in a November 12th NPR interview). McFaul, who is from Montana and has Trump-supporting relatives and friends, pointed out that some of them voted for Obama and that radical right-wingers did almost nothing on Election Day.
The Proud Boys did appear in Washington DC on November 14th at the MAGA Million Man March — only attended by tens of thousands — which featured a Trump drive-by, QAnon speakers and fellow travelers. Despite a significant counter-protest presence, however, there were only 21 arrests and one serious injury.
“People are less polarized than it seems in the media,” I was told in New Mexico by a North Carolina man, who goes by the trail name Eternal and is hiking the 5,000-mile trail circuit of the western United States. “Most Americans vote red or blue depending on a few hot-button issues but are not fanatics.”
I was in Texas the week before Election Day and saw only a few pickup trucks flying big Trump flags and little of the thirst for violence that plagued 1930s Berlin.
Obviously, I need to get this right. One of the most pointed tragedies of the Jews of Europe was their intellectuals’ failure to analyze the Nazis adequately, despite having Freud and other psychiatrists and philosophers close at hand.
Trump’s attempt to split the country through conspiracy theories will surely continue through the Electoral College vote on December 14th and even Biden’s inauguration, perhaps to his possible 2024 presidential run. Naturally, he will also continue to wreak havoc with government regulations and employees, overseas relations and executive orders and pardons.
Although he will surely leave the White House on January 20th, he will probably re-join mass media and come to lead a grievance cult attempting to block all of Biden’s initiatives, as he did with Obama’s achievements, which could make the Tea Party seem tame.
This will serve as a second referendum on Trumpism, the final stress test of the Trump Era.
If we prevail, if Biden is able to rebind the factions, it will lead to legislative protections against demagogues, intellectual ones against conspiracists, and enthusiasm for the democratic process, which a majority of us just saved through increased voting and faith in our system as well as humanity.
If not, many Americans will continue to believe in Trump and some will go full QAnon, which could become even more popular if the group rejiggers its objectives, if Trump openly identifies with QAnon, or if he essentially becomes Q, who is more a concept than a person. QAnon could conceivably shift from being guided by a hidden character dropping cryptic clues to a well-known one tweeting IN ALL CAPS.
Yes, a lot of people are hurting emotionally, financially and spiritually. Yes, conspiracy theorists will keep exploiting that, inventing ever more insane notions, like QAnon is a CIA creation to identify radicals for future arrest.
We can’t correct role-playing, mind games by indoctrination, rationalism or even satire. It requires a change of heart in the believers but also in us. If we dismiss our opponents, they will dismiss us and their team doesn’t have the visionaries, psychiatrists or healers to make up the difference.
We have to bet on the Conspiracy of Love, which is where the radical multiculturalism of the new era meets the onrushing road.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jan 13, 2022 - 12:53 PM
Cinephile Confessions in the Time of Covid
by Alli Antero
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Helen (Helia Rasti) and Phineas (Douglas Allen) in Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur',. image: courtesy A. Alli BACK IN 2003, AFTER MAKING UNDER-
ground feature films for eight years, I sent a series of DVDs to various agents in Los Angeles. I was hungry for any feedback they might offer and for the off chance they might buy or find distribution for my movies.
Of the nine or so I contacted, only one replied; he actually called me on the phone! The agent said, “We love your work but your films are marketing nightmares. We wouldn’t know how or where to place them.” And then, the punchline, “Would you consider working within an existing genre?”
I thanked him for his feedback but no thanks, my creative processes wouldn’t work within any prefab format. In parting ways, he said, “Good luck. I mean that. Don’t take this the wrong way but your films are too original for the market.”
Too original for the market? That became my mantra for the next few days as I tried processing what it actually meant. WTF?! This was my wake-up call. It meant... Fuck LA, fuck genres, fuck agents and fuck their market politics. Whatever latent fantasy I harbored about “being discovered” or “hitting it big” or seeing my films achieve national release — all evaporated into the void.
In Alli's 'Vanishing Field', the Oracle (Nita Bryant) confronts Jacob on the astral plane. image: courtesy A. Alli I was now free to create on my own terms without any subconscious drive to impress or please anyone but myself. Over the next twelve years and seven features later, I was on a burning mission from God, or the Muses (sometimes, they’re the same thing), making films under oath of zero compromise and total artistic control.
I toured my movies up and down the west coast between San Francisco and Seattle paying my way by selling DVDs and splitting the admissions with the hosting venues.
After fifteen years of almost nonstop film and music production, my wife Sylvi and I were burnt out and in late 2015, we relocated from Berkeley, California, to Portland, Oregon. Portland is a city surrounded by forests; one of them, Forest Park is larger than Central Park, NY. Our daily forest walks gradually rejuvenated us to the point of finally considering a new creative project (Sylvi and I have been artistic collaborators since first meeting in 1989; it’s who we are and what we do).
Over the next four years, we reinvented ourselves through the creation of five experimental theatre productions, each one featuring text by my favorite poets: Rimbaud, Bukowski, Hilda Doolittle (HD), Blake, and Plath. What made these productions experimental was their visceral and physically ritualistic style of achieving extreme states for performers and audience alike. This approach was initially inspired by my early exposure to the paratheatrical work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski in 1977 and has been documented at paratheatrical.com.
Filmmaker, theater director and other arts worker Antero Alli. image: courtesy A. Alli This experimental theatre process came to an end when I could no longer find performers to meet the demands and standards I had set for myself. It also coincided with the end of a forty-year era of directing groups in these experimental theatre and ritual processes.
I was in my late sixties and had outgrown this part of myself. I needed to let go of something I had been clinging to. I decided to post all my films online as free views on YouTube and Vimeo, a giveaway compelled by a final renunciation of commercial gain for or with art. My gift to the world.
In the Fall of 2019, the Muses finally called with a vision about an astral-travelling subversive Zen monk. This triggered memories of a traumatic out of body experience I suffered in my early twenties, a shock that annihilated any previous identification with my physical body.
In my final experimental theatre production, “Escape from Chapel Perilous” (Dec. 2018), I invited a local Zen monk to play the disembodied spirit of a monk wandering the bardo between incarnations. A year later, in the Fall of 2019, I cast him as the astral-travelling Zen monk in my next film, “The Vanishing Field”.
He agreed and invited me to shoot the movie in the Zen monastery where he lived and worked along with other monks who agreed to appear in this chiefly improvised film. “The Vanishing Field” was completed over four months and received favorable reviews before its Portland premiere was covid-cancelled; it went straight to YouTube with my other films.
After “The Vanishing Field” was released, I wrote a book distilling the paratheatrical methods I had developed over the past four decades. The book was published as State of Emergence by Original Falcon Press in late 2020. I started wondering if the Muses of Cinema would ever call again. My life as a theatre director was over and I was feeling the earth and sky open up before me.
From Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur', Calliope (Cynthia Schwell) appears in a dream. image: courtesy A. Alli Sylvi and I continued our almost daily forest walks, along with our wonderful river walks. Besides its densely forested regions, Portland is bordered and contained by the great Columbia and Willamette rivers with nearby Mount Hood and Baker watching over us.
A year later, the Cinema Muses sent me my next vision about a writer who writes herself into a story with unexpected real world consequences.
This psychological romance of a woman falling in love with a figment of her imagination in a story she was writing ignited new fires in my ongoing obsession with mystical themes. Exploring a story of how the power of imagination shapes our experiences and our beliefs became my compass for navigating the Covid Bardo.
The term “Bardo” comes from the Tibetan Buddhist idea of an interim dimension between incarnations — when we die, our soul enters this limbo state, this bardo, where it drifts until incarnating, again, into the human condition.
“The Alchemy of Sulphur” was made over six months in 2021 during the challenging quarantine era of social distancing and masks. Four of the five actors were vaccinated and since most of the scenes were filmed outdoors at a nearby wildlife refuge, we were happy to play in a mask-free environment.
Moment from 'Soror Mystica: Ritual Invocation of the Anima'' a ParaTheatrical ReSearch performance, 2017: courtesy A. Alli Unless we’re shut down by covid or State regulations, as of this writing the world premiere of “The Alchemy of Sulphur” is scheduled for Sunday night November 7th at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland. This new film will be also posted on YouTube on November 11th.
For more details on any of the above, see my site Vertical Pool, or my book, "State of Emergence".
As a love slave to the Muses, Antero has helped them create fourteen feature art films and numerous documentaries and shorts since 1992 and be reached here
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 09:56 PM
What Happened to cineSOURCE?
by Doniphan Blair
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YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED CINESOURCE
hasn’t been in your inbox lately—we missed you, too, and happy new year!
In the middle of celebrating Trump’s defeat, on November 3rd, 2020, cineSOURCE was hit with a malware attack. Although we rebuilt our site, cineSOURCE had long been having difficulties—its software needs an expensive upgrade—and I was busy with other writing projects. Indeed, I had recently edited and got published the book “Love at the End of the World".
But we kept putting up articles, mostly on film festivals or by our regular authors Karl Cohen and Don Schwartz, which was good, since Don bowed out last month (see story). Thanks for your great work, Don!
I also wanted to keep covering our specialty subjects, notably the conspiracy theory movement and Oakland, both of which are in their most severe crises since the McCarthy ‘50s and Crack ‘80s, respectively.
Indeed, we featured an Oakland article or issue every April since cineSOURCE’s start in 2008. Sorry for running eight months late but please check out “Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis", and let us know your thoughts on cineSOURCE’s Facebook page.
I also lost my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, in December, peacefully at age 96, but she lives on in her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption", which was released by Austin Macauley in May, 2021. See her obituary here.
In addition to editing it, I included “Darwin and Love: What I Learned Making a Holocaust Movie", my own attempt to make sense of that history, which appears in this cineSOURCE here. We also include one of my mother’s stories, “Stefan".
I am honored to present a new cineSOURCE issue, with a dozen new articles, some by stalwarts like Don's Blog and Karl, who has three ( The Computer Game Problem,, the Academy of Art’s Loan Rip Off , and Cartoon Corner), and our “unhoused correspondent,” Eric Moseley's story. Others are by new authors, from the incredible indie filmmaker Antero Alli, who offers a perspective on his entire oeuvre (here), to the philosophy of filmmaker/painter/teacher Celik Kayamar (see article on detecting BS or Darwinian evolution) or filmmaker Leslie Streit (see her article).
Despite the red ink, headaches and hackers, cineSOURCE has been one of the best projects of my life, from starting it as a paper magazine in 2008 to it becoming my entree to film showings, filmmaker interviews and film festivals, but most importantly my master’s class in writing.
Hence, I have many more articles, books and podcasts in the hopper. So, if you enjoyed cineSOURCE over our last decade, please subscribe or support me on Patreon.
I will do my best to keep cineSOURCE going.
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 04:23 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Jan 22
by Karl F. Cohen
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Spiderman and love interest (Tom Holland and Zendaya) from 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' (2021). photo: courtesy Marvel/i>20 Million Risked Omicron to See Spider-Man
Ever since the pandemic brought movie going to a halt, Hollywood has been consumed with fear of the demise of the mega blockbuster industry. With the arrival of “No Way Home”, the new Spider-Man film, which 20 million people in North American risked the new Omicron variant to see on its opening night, there is hope for the future—if a film is colossal and exciting enough.
“No Way Home” took in an estimated $253 million over the weekend of December 17th, according to Comscore. That means about 20 million tickets were sold. Indeed, it was the highest opening-weekend in the 19-year history of the eight-film, live-action Spider-Man franchise. It was also the third highest weekend EVER in Hollywood records, behind “Avengers: Endgame”, with $357 million, and “Avengers: Infinity War” with $258 million.
“No Way Home”’s big weekend gross is impressive, but the film will need more weekends to break even. The film probably cost Sony and Disney at least $200 million to make, plus there was enormously expensive marketing campaign. Will Covid 19 could ruins the film’s success?
Unfortunately, the weekend was not good news for other big productions. Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley”, a lavish noir thriller with an all-star cast, opened in 2,145 North American theaters. It bombed and it probably cost Disney about $60 million to make.
Also, let’s hope that December 17-20th didn’t turn out to be a super-spreader disaster.
Scene from Erick Oh’s new film 'Namoo'. photo: courtesy E. Oh/i>Oh’s New Namoo Explores Life and VR
Erick Oh’s new Oscar contender is “Namoo”, Korean for tree, and the tree symbolically captures the beautiful and heartbreaking moments of his life. Oh created last year’s Oscar nominated “Opera”. He is from Korea and has worked at Pixar.
His new film is more personal and intimate than his last work. Oh was inspired to make “Namoo” while grieving the loss of his grandfather, and used his life as its centerpiece.
“I went on a journey to ask questions,” Oh told me. “I asked questions. Of course, I document my thoughts and provide a room for the audience to probe it and think about themselves too. That being said, I think I discovered a lot about who I am while making this film.”
The film shows the passage of time with changing color to represent the passing seasons. Oh says, “The tree is a symbol of your self-motivation that drives you internally, or it could be your unconsciousness with the tree and the guy interacting with each other. Sometimes tree gives stuff to him or takes away stuff or reveals something that he has forgotten. Sometimes he does something to the tree. That’s who we are. We keep talking or battling with our inner self and constantly making different decisions. That’s what makes life at the end of the day and who you are.”
“It forms in a heart shape when you meet the love of your life. Sometimes there’s a huge hole in the middle that probably represents those moments of emptiness. And then sometimes it goes super distorted, and it feels like everything’s falling apart. But after so many versions of your tree, you find a balance.”
Oh also commented that animating in virtual space and in real time with the Oculus headset was a new experience for him. Once he got up to speed, it saved him a lot of time. It took him a while to learn the “uninterrupted, 360-degree narrative flow of VR” but, fortunately, he had six experts to assist him.
The project began as a virtual reality experience created using the VR tool Quill, “which made transferring to a short much easier using the same animated workflow. One of the many reasons I was able to do VR was Quill software,” he said. “This enables artists to get into virtual space to draw and paint very intuitively. All the layers were done in Quill.” Indeed, the modeling, rigging, animating, shading, lighting are merged into one program
While the VR experience consisted of watching the tree grow in front of you, the short naturally contained a narrative flow that escalated with tension. “Thanks to Quill, the painterly, 2D-look was convincingly achievable in CG.”
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 Jan 10, 2022 - 04:16 PM
How Bad Are Video Games for Children?
by Karl F. Cohen
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The Girl Queen from Tencent Games popular game 'Honor of Kings'. photo: courtesy TencentUNTIL AUGUST OF LAST YEAR, I PAID
little attention to the video game industry.
Suddenly, however, I was reading all over about China cracking down on the game industry to combat child addiction to their products. Authorities were calling for parents, game developers and manufacturers to work together to combat the scourge of the game industry, which grossed $173 billion in 2021. Indeed, the stories were scary enough for game companies’ stock to tumble up to 10% in just a few hours. What was going on?
I read with amazement news articles that proclaimed, “No industry, no sport, can be allowed to develop in a way that will destroy a generation.” Several articles even called gaming “spiritual opium.” Chinese authorities were labeling e-sports and games the “opium of the mind” and digital games “electronic drugs.”
They called for more restrictions to prevent greater widespread addiction among children. One article claimed children were spending food money on games, and playing them for up to seven hours a day, resulting in their school grades dropping.
Tencent, a Chinese multinational entertainment company and the world’s biggest gaming developer (“Call of Duty: Warzone”, “Fortnite”, “League of Legends”), responded by saying new measures were needed to protect minors.
Tencent wanted to show they were socially responsible, but only suggested weak measures for another of their popular game, “Honor of Kings”. They did, however, support prohibiting kids under 12 from spending money on games and suggested limiting playing time to under 1.5 hours on weekdays and 2 hours a day on holidays and weekends.
The Chinese government responded to Tencent’s suggestions by issuing much tougher restrictions. Online gamers under 18 are now limited to only one hour on Friday through Sunday and on holidays. Play must be between 8 AM and 9 PM and is not permitted on Monday through Thursday.
Also facial recognition is becoming required to insure the player is 18 or older, to prevent children from using the IDs of adults to sign on. BBC news estimates China has “tens of millions of young gamers.” Tencent has also developed a facial recognition system to limit late-night gaming by children.
It is obvious the company admits their product is dangerous, so why doesn’t China take it off the market?
Both boys and girls are attracted to The Girl Queen from 'Honor of Kings'. illo: unknown The World’s Most Lucrative Market
“Honor of Kings” was the world’s top grossing game in 2019 and 2020. According to Tencent, it had the equivalent income of $22.7 billion in revenue from smartphone games and $6.9 billion from PC games. And gaming is just part of Tencent’s total revenue of $74 billion. Gaming has been called “the world’s most lucrative market.”
Wikipedia says, “’Honor of Kings’ is a multiplayer online battle arena developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by Tencent Games for the iOS and Android mobile platforms for the Chinese market.” Interestingly, downloading the app is free but to upgrade characters or costumes to advance levels, players must pay.
The BBC says the crackdown by Beijing is based on a reaction to the rapid growth of capital and technology and the potential adverse effect on the well-being of the country’s young generation. The government is also concerned about “celebrity fan culture and private tutoring,” and is trying to create “positive energy” and restore “correct values.”
Game companies do develop ways to addict players. Obviously, they make the games as exciting as possible, which entices players to return. And they offer additional incentives, including daily or weekly use-it-or-lose-it quests, login rewards for continuous streaks of play, season passes and other incentives. Explicitly or not, they want to dominate the lives of their players.
Computer Game Addiction Also Serious Problem in US
Playing computer games is fun for millions of people. When that pleasure becomes excessive, it can be annoying to others, but it doesn’t qualify as a computer game addiction unless other areas of a person’s life become adversely affected. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening to many players all over the world.
An industry of health professionals has developed to try and help those with this serious compulsive disorder. Indeed, it is now recognized as a mental addiction in the World Health Organization’s “International Classification of Diseases” (2018).
The lure of e-sports is quite enticing to many people. E-sports players who get involved with competitions can be rewarded with big money and titles like “pro” or "grand master." Successful individuals and teams can achieve fame. Some people wanting to be great e-sports players say they spend 8 to 12 hours a day in training.
Some of the games are what are called massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs), which are designed not to have a fixed ending, so new players can join in and others can leave or take a breaks as desired. Games often have levels of achievement that encourage you to try and rise in your ranking. Players of many games can earn points or “wealth” simply based on the numbers of hours they have spent playing. This fosters the concern that if you stop playing, you may fall behind other players.
Another kind of lure are the gaming programs that adopt gambling concepts. Instead of using chips some games let you buy or win things to put in your “loot box.” Other types of games, including e-sports, have people getting excited by betting money or things called “skins.” There are lots of other ways to wager online that don’t seem to be like old fashioned gambling. Software designers are on the search for new innovative concepts to get you involved.
Some of the avatars, that players use in a type of cos-play, from the popular 'Call of Duty'. photo: courtesy TencentSymptoms of Addiction
Symptoms of a computer addiction include not being able to quit, being upset or angry when you can’t play, thinking a lot about playing and believing that playing makes you feel better. Other signs that someone has a serious problem include the loss of other things you used to enjoy, having trouble with your job, relationships or schoolwork, and lying about the amount of time you spend on gaming. And there are physical symptoms that can develop from a sedentary lifestyle.
Treatment
Treatment programs at mental health clinics exist in the United States, China and other nations for people who spend way too much time doing things like playing games, web surfing or even online chatting. The treatments range from group therapy to one on one counseling and outdoor experiences called “wilderness therapy.” There are also more severe interventions including shock treatment and in China militaristic “boot camps.”
China has also established legal regulations. Prior to establishing the most recent rules, they had outlawed online gaming in 2019 for kids under 18 between the hours of 10 PM and 8 AM. There were also restrictions established in 2017 limiting the numbers of hours a kid could play on Tencent games.
If you type into your computer’s search bar “video game addiction treatment” you will find dozens of businesses offering the public their services. You may also find interesting statistics like “as many as 12 percent of boys and 7 percent of girls are addicted to gaming.” The number of kids playing video games is said to be 70 to 80%, and 41% say they spend too much time playing video games. In the United States, spending money on video games grew by 30 percent in the second quarter of 2020, to a record $11.6 billion.
Should the animation community and public be made aware of computer game addiction
I believe computer game addiction can be harmful to the player and possibly others close to that person. I don’t know what to suggest, except that friends or family of people with that condition do the necessary research and try to convince the player to understand their problem and seek help. Animation can be a great art and I hate seeing it used in a way that harms others.
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 Jan 09, 2022 - 03:00 PM
Honoring Don Schwartz
by Doniphan Blair
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Don Schwarz, circa 2010. photo: courtesy D. SchwarzCINESOURCE IS SADDENED TO REPORT the closing of “Dr. Doc”, our 13-year -running documentary column by Don Schwarz, who has been with the magazine since its founding in 2008. After doing almost 700 mini-reviews, and over 20 full interviews or articles—which makes him our most prolific author—Don is retiring due to the onset of aphasia. He intends to fight the word-and-meaning-scrambling disease with alternative therapies, with which he has long taken an interest in and worked with.
Indeed, Don holds multiple degrees, including a PhD in psychology and counseling, which allowed him to serve for 21 years as the director of the Trager Institute.
Fortunately for cineSOURCE, Don just finished a number of his doc blogs, which can be seen here, Dr. Doc. The last is fittingly named, “Into The Night: Portraits of Life and Death”. He also just did a great interview with the Greek-American filmmaker, Stavroula Toska, which can be seen here. Indeed, Toska thanked cineSOURCE as well as Don profusely on her Facebook page.
Since 1977, he has written for a variety of publications and projects, including The Pacific Sun, Marin County’s alternative weekly, and some film scripts. Moreover, as an actor he has been seen as an extra in a number of feature films shot in the Bay Area, starting in the 2000s.
A strong advocate for local film and TV production, Don was a member of the Scary Cow film cooperative, the storied indie film incubator, which was sadly forced to close during Covid. Other interests include music, his twin nieces, and promoting natural healing through scientific research.
Don got into film criticism writing for Film/Tape World, which flourished in the Bay Area from 1984 to 2007. Joining cineSOURCE right when it started in 2008, he became our most a dedicated film reviewer and writer, including 38 of his mini reviews in the last six months.
A quiet and modest man as well as careful observer and deep thinker, he lives in Marin County, and we wish him well.
Thanks for your great work, Don!
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 09, 2022 - 12:54 PM
Filmmaking in the Pandemic
by Leslie Streit
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A landscape that inspired and appeared in Leslie Streit's new film '95 Days'. photo: L. StreitLeslie Streit, who has made feature documentaries and short films, was challenged by the pandemic to make a film.
2020 and 2021 brought devastating drought conditions to the San Francisco Bay Estuary and its surrounding locations. This area is a delicate living ecosystem of marshland and wildlife. My film “95 Days” chronicles its journey from a lush spring through the progressive heat and dryness of summer when the lack of rain and humidity gives way to nearby wildfires. Using photos and videos taken from May to late August 2021, often overlaying imagery from archival sources, I documented a changing landscape that is at once colorful, abstract, poignant and threatened.
I live only minutes from the San Francisco Bay Estuary and spend spare time walking its trails and photographing its flowers, grasses and birds. To my eye the landscape translates as interesting lines, patterns and color fields punctuated by colors and textures beyond what the camera could ordinarily see. I've tried to capture those images in the hopes that others might see what I see. There is beauty even when there is damage to the land and even as climate changes before our eyes.
Although much of my work in the past 13 years has been focused on feature documentaries, “95 Days” was a return to my roots in visual and performance art which was often considered experimental. Working with my long-time editor and producing partner, Robin McCain, we chose to make every frame melt into the next one with changing color, depth perception and point of view. There are 3 sections accompanied only by music within the film’s 5 minute length. No dialog was needed to tell this story.
When it was time to send “95 Days” out into the world we found that the Covid pandemic and resulting turmoil it brought with it have radically altered our way of viewing content from live theater to virtual screenings.
The poster for '95 Days'. photo: L. StreitAs we start to come out of the pandemic it is still a time of great uncertainty. There are people who are desperate to socialize in real world situations and they are anxious to return to the experience of seeing film in a movie theater surrounded by a live audience. Recently I’ve received numerous invitations to preview screenings with live Q & As and live audiences inside an actual screening room.
On the other side Netflix, Apple, Hulu and many others are distributing theatrical films and series and have been producing their own big budget content. The big award shows (Emmys, Golden Globes, and Oscars) reflect the continuing importance of the streaming media providers well beyond the days of pandemic isolation. For many people this is still the best way for them to see movies.
There also seems to be a pandemic/post-pandemic trend for films to focus on content that reflects disturbing issues: disease, famine, politics, apocalypse, racism and inequality, gender issues, crime and corruption, mental illness, poverty. And an endless stream about the lives of celebrities has taken over the documentary scene as well as a looming fear that things we used to laugh about are now off limits.
But there are many new film festivals opening internationally and short films especially those about subjects like the environment and climate change are very much appreciated in many parts of the world. Our “95 Days” has already won several awards and special mentions in the only three months that it has been submitted to festivals. It has had a cross cultural impact—video art, stills, and music are universal.
Right now the short film format seems ideally suited for many things. Short films can be made with all levels of budgets – high to low – by individuals in isolation or crews and teams working together. They can be issue oriented, comedy, animated or many other genres, suitable for all age groups. Most importantly they can be self distributed. Festivals can program them in between longer films and audiences can see them comfortably on a variety of devices from television to mobile phones.
For the last many years I had only been creating short format films as teasers for feature films. But “95 Days” has changed my entire outlook on filmmaking. It is my invitation to enter a joyful world of experimentation and I think the experience of making “95 Days” has given me a new freedom to tell all kinds of stories going into the future.
"95 Days" went on to win a total of nine awards at international festivals including two for best female director and others for best experimental short and best film about nature and the environment.
Leslie Streit is a filmmaker, writer and producer, living in San Francisco who can be reached here
Posted on Jan 09, 2022 - 03:20 AM
Letter from Oakland, Part II
by Doniphan Blair
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One of Oakland's largest unhoused encampments, home to some, a den of thieves to others, is in West Oakland. photo: D. BlairContinued from Letter from Oakland, Part I
Indeed, Oakland is rich and talented enough to fix its problems, according to my neighbor Jermaine, who was raised in a Chicago hood by a drug-addicted mom. The gang war he witnessed from our loading dock comes from increasing lawlessness, he told me. Heading Jermaine’s fix-it list are the homeless encampments, which are common up and down the West Coast but over the top in Oakland, where they include fully 1% of the population. Although aggravated by gentrification, the homeless camps only started after the Occupy movement established that camping in public spaces would be tolerated, and then they distributed tents.
Many of the town’s biggest camps are in West Oakland. While they provide a release valve for society’s rebels or outcasts, they are rife with addiction, theft, sex abuse and the dangerous tactic of torching rivals’ tents, according to my friends who work with the unhoused as activists, social workers or firefighters, or who live nearby.
Oakland never burned during the nation-wide riots of 1964 through ’68, the last year because the Black Panthers advised against it. By the time Vice President Kamala Harris was born here in ‘64, it was becoming a remarkable multicultural and artistic city, the center of the Bay Area Figurative Movement (of painters) with a world-class art school, California College of Art.
Times were tough for Oakland's proletariat, due to downturns at the port and in many industries. Nevertheless, most residents still had access to elevated opportunities for friendships, education (the University of California at Berkeley is four miles down Telegraph Avenue from downtown Oakland) and employment. When the Rodney King riots erupted in Los Angeles in 1992 and spread to San Francisco and Berkeley, there were no riots in Oakland.
America’s history of slavery and ongoing racism are important subjects for study and debate, especially when contextualized within America’s democratic evolution, but making it the centerpiece of Oakland’s current catastrophe belies the obvious. Indeed, critical race theory can sometimes sound like a conspiracy theory—a monstrous unaddressed evil is sabotaging society—which is problematic in Trumpian times, when so many Americans believe his Big Lie about election fraud and other conspiracy theories.
In point of fact, Oakland has been a “chocolate city” for fifty years, having birthed the Panthers in 1966 and, in 1977, elected its first Black mayor, Lionel Wilson, another McClymonds High School graduate. He served for 14 years, the second longest term in Oakland history. (Panther co-founder Bobby Seale ran for mayor in ’72 and came in second out of nine.) And there have been two more Black mayors: Elihu Harris, 1991 to ‘99, and Ron Dellums, 2007 to ‘11.
While whites continued to hold the vast majority of power and African American Oaklanders dropped from 47% of the population n 1980 to 29% today, many people of color became city employees, entrepreneurs, politicians, professionals, artists, and professors, as was the case with Newton’s brother and Harris’s parents. They also became cops.
Ersie Joyner, who was still recovering two months later from the unbelievable 22 gunshots he survived in October, emerged from poverty in East Oakland to become a respected officer. He was involved in a police shooting a decade ago, for which the department paid a wrongful death settlement of $75,000, but he claimed he was confronting an assailant about to commit a murder. Not only did Chief Armstrong and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf praise Joyner highly after he was shot, he was an early advocate of defunding the police.
“My whole entire career I have been taught, I have trained, and I have worked towards eliminating gangs,” Joyner told a reporter from The Guardian in 2019. “That has failed miserably for us for decades.” For most of the last decade, Joyner led Ceasefire, Oakland’s anti-violence program, which is known nationally and was instrumental in reducing Oakland’s murder rate.
Ersie Joyner: ex-OPD captain and head of Ceasefire, a gang intervention program, as well as, more recently, cannabis entrepreneur and shooting victim. photo: courtesy TGTimeWhat Chief Armstrong is calling for—for Oaklanders to take to the streets and internet to militate against the slaughter—did happen in 2006, after murders jumped to 145, 20% over the previous year. Pastors, politicians and teachers walked the streets to send a strong personal and public signal. My graphic studio submitted a proposal for an ad campaign using photos of funerals and street memorials and the slogan “Murder is fun for the whole family,” although it wasn’t funded.
Little of that ilk has been organized of late, save for the OPD’s small march in July. I’m guessing activists assume such efforts would cast aspersions on last summer’s hard-won reforms, hand critics a wedge issue, and be of little use, due to ongoing systemic racism.
There is also the class question. Middle class African American families, from which many activists hail, famously give their kids “the talk,” about what to do when harassed by cops. Often left unmentioned is their more frequent lectures on thugs and gangs. Indeed, they have to fight harder on that front, since some of their kids like to prove themselves by running wild. Caught between those two mortal threats, they are understandably reluctant to get involved in gang abatement.
Defunding a police department, or reforming it and redirecting some monies, is direly needed in jurisdictions which militarized or failed to integrate their police or increase social services. But that doesn’t really describe the OPD, which has long had some innovative practices, including collaborating with activists and therapists, but has struggled to find sufficient funding for decades.
When the notoriously liberal but also pragmatic Jerry Brown served two terms as Oakland’s mayor in the 2000s, between his four respected terms as governor, he tried to expand the force by 100 officers. Many Oaklanders of color liked Brown and voted for his additional-police ballot measure, but the measure funding it was defeated. With 681 officers today, the department is about 50 officers below Brown’s hoped-for levels 15 years ago.
OPD was docked $14 million during BLM Summer, with another $22 million lost from pandemic-related tax revenue drops, equaling five and seven percent of its budget. In the meantime, OPD’s case-solved rate went from a half to a third, although Armstrong did shift six detectives to homicide, and he recently claimed the department had cracked ten murder cases. OPD fields up to 2000 911 calls daily, one of the highest calls-per-officer rates in the country. After hearing the shots that killed Rashad Brinson, I called 911 three times before getting through.
Although the city shifted another $18 million to social services in June 2021, it did allocate $38 million for more police academies, i.e. classes of recruits, to cover the perennially low levels and the many officers who are quitting. One academy will graduate in January 2022 and another in May. A big problem, however, is those recruits, an Oakland friend recently told me, since the vast majority are not from Oakland, let alone its inner city.
Be that as it may, the OPD has been comparatively well integrated for decades and now includes some Asian officers and members of the city’s artistic community. Jinho Ferreira (Black/Latinx), who rapped as “The Piper” while an OPD officer, also wrote the well-received, one-person play, “Cops and Robbers” (2012), which examines its opposing protagonists notably sympathetically.
Police killings, especially those resembling executions, instead of fog-of-war errors, are criminal, culturally corrosive and incendiary offences, naturally alienating people from authority and society and fueling the anger of volatile young men.
A June 2020 Black Lives Matter march passes in front of Blair's building on West Grand and Adeline, West Oakland. photo: D. BlairAccording to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Oakland-connected cops killed 102 people from 1970 to 2015. Of the 93 victims that could be racially identified, 97% were of color and around two thirds Black. But those police murders are still small, by factors of 30, 40 or more, compared to inner-community killing. Indeed, in those 45 years, over 3000 Oaklanders of color were killed by each other.
Moreover, fratricide is more difficult to process psychologically than outsider aggression since it hits in the home. While external enemies can be criticized aggressively and publicly, as demonstrated during BLM Summer, internal oppressors are often downplayed or denied. Then the repressed anger is transferred to a more palatable opponent, hiding the injury and making it harder to heal.
Oakland’s Black community has hundreds of churches, large and small, and their pastors and parishioners do a fantastic job. I have seen them hand out food, provide medical services, set up a community recording studio, and even save the elderly parishioners living next door to my building from a fire, before the arrival of the fire department. But to address our current crisis, which is aggravated by the two major crises of our era, the pandemic and Trumpism, they don’t have much street cred.
For that, the organizers of an “Oakland United Against Violence,” or similarly-named march, concert or social-work symposium could turn to Oakland’s many famous rappers or basketball stars. Or they could tap Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter (who was born in Oakland but moved to wealthy Marin County and returned at age 27), Angela Davis, the internationally-known thinker, professor and friend of the Black Panthers, or Boots Riley, the brilliant indie rapper turned filmmaker, who shot his masterful and scathingly satirical debut feature "Sorry to Bother You" around Oakland in 2017 (see cineSOURCE article).
Many of Oakland’s creatives and entrepreneurs have the skills to organize concerts, clinics or neighborhood fitness or media centers, preferably located on or near crack corners. Or to contribute fresh ideas. The Oakland Occupy drew denizens from all walks of life and hoods to fruitful encounters and discussions in front of the mayor’s office. Alas, Mayor Jean Quan, a woman, Asian and longtime activist, was unable to find a way to channel that energy or hybrid it with city services.
“Blindspotting”, another excellent Oakland indie feature, which builds an interracial bromance into a political and operatic epic, was written by and stars Oaktown homies and old friends, Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, the latter fresh off his New York star turn as Thomas Jefferson in “Hamilton” (see cineSOURCE article). Filmed largely in West Oakland, also in 2017, they set their white cop’s murder of a Black man on West Grand and Adeline, my corner. Alas, there have been no police murders here in the last three decades, while well over 150 of my neighbors in a few block radius have killed each other.
“Blindspotting”, “Sorry to Bother You” and other recent films artfully address police killings and institutional racism, but when it comes to Oaklanders butchering each other, it’s slim pickings. Nevertheless, there were a couple of spectacular, low-budget films wading into that morass, notably “Licks”, which is slang for the corner liquor stores the film’s protagonists like to rob, and “Everyday Black Man” by my friend Carmen Madden.
“Licks” was directed in 2012 by Jonathan Singer-Vine, a white, Jewish twenty-something from Berkeley whose Oakland friends, some living deep in the hood, obviously loved the project and worked incredibly hard on it. With a largely amateur cast, they produced a striking, professional film which delves deep into thug life.
Big John, played by Steve Joel Moffet Jr., is one of the toughest characters in 'Licks', the groundbreaking Oakland movie by Jonathan Singer-Vine. photo: courtesy J. Singer-VineSinger-Vine made the proprietor of his “lick” Black for story telling purposes, but the vast majority of corner liquor store owners are Arab-Americans, often Yemeni, which typifies Oakland’s advanced multiculturalism. Due to the demand for credit and prevalence of alcoholism, Blacks are disadvantaged running liquor stores in their own communities, but Yeminis are Muslims whose culture discourages drinking. A friendly, well-adjusted group, but also quite traditional, even though many of their grandfathers immigrated in the ‘70s, the Yemini-Americans are also very well-armed.
For thirty years, I have known the members of the extended family which owned and worked in my corner lick, where Rashad Brinson was killed in October. Indeed, their saga is central to local gossip, giving me a leg up at local gatherings. In addition to brandishing weapons to defend themselves on many occasions, they have shot a few assailants, and one, Willy, accidentally shot himself (he survived).
“‘Licks’ is so studded with the N-word and local slang, like ‘whip’ for car, as to be almost unintelligible,” I wrote in my 2017 review of the film for cineSOURCE. “[I]ts denigration of women—many of its protagonists are pimps, although they adore their mothers and grandmothers—makes it almost unwatchable.” But also accurate, it would seem.
When Singer-Vine finally found a distributer, the suits wouldn’t release “Licks” unless he cleaned it up—the commercial wing of the PC police. He refused, hence its four-year delay before appearing on Amazon Prime in 2017. “Licks” still hasn’t gotten proper promo or viewing, even around Oakland, despite its elevated insights (see it here). As is commonly known, as well as well confirmed by research, people respond to honest stories about their issues.
In contrast, “Everyday Black Man”, shot in Oakland in 2009, was by a woman about men. Madden, who is African American and grew up mostly in Oakland’s suburbs, started as an actress and became an accomplished teacher, writer and director. “Everyday Black Man”, her first feature, tackles the even thornier subject of corruption among community leaders (see it here). Although the story follows another Black lick owner and his hiring of a Black Muslim man, who turns the store into a front for drug dealing, Oaklanders knew Madden was referencing the murder of Chauncey Bailey.
A well-regarded reporter and the editor of The Oakland Post, who was African American, Bailey was killed downtown in 2007 by a paid assassin with a long gun. He was about to publish another article exposing the criminal activities of the owners of the once-popular Your Black Muslim Bakery. After the hit man turned state's evidence, they got life without parole.
Many of Oakland’s progressive elite also oppose full freedom of speech, if it reflects poorly on a disenfranchised community. Almost 20 years ago, Ron Dellums, the first Black congressperson from Northern California, who was also an anti-war activist and socialist, and the mayor of Oakland in the late ‘00s—as well as a West Oaklander who attended McClymonds—led the campaign to cancel “Gentlemen of Leisure”, a proposed television series.
It was based on “American Pimp”, the critically-acclaimed 1999 documentary about West Coast pimps, many from Oakland, by the Hughes brothers, who are Black. To have been shot in Oakland, the show was supported by Madden and other creatives and would have been a feather in the cap of the city’s fledgling film business, perhaps even paralleling what “The Wire” (2002-8) did for Baltimore.
But “Gentlemen of Leisure” would not have looked good for the airbrushed Oakland Dellums and other city elders were trying to sell gentrifiers to revive Oakland’s tax base. (Mayor Brown said he would build 10,000 dwellings, Mayor Dellums 100,000.)
Oakland is cursed by the California conundrum of being comparatively rich, beautiful and liberal, which makes its poverty, ugliness and repression more grotesque. That very quality, in fact, drives its disadvantaged to more extreme anger, envy and ambition. As the poorest of the fabulous cities by the bay, Oakland is an automatic loci of crime, simply because ambitious poor people will always sell two very popular products and services: drugs and sex. As painful as that is for my more bourgeois or politically-correct neighbors to contemplate, it requires in-depth exploration through research, sociology and art.
The Oakland mayor's office put up lackluster billboards, while more creative submissions were rejected. photo: D. BlairProstitution has long been a popular profession in semi-matriarchal societies, where it is not as stigmatized, and all oppressed groups are semi-matriarchal, since the men are injured, removed or absent. In addition, many tribes are semi-matriarchal, including in West Africa, traditions which helped African Americans endure the destruction of the family during slavery.
The “talented tenth” of Black men rebuilt their personal patriarchies through hard work, the arts or professions, but the less skilled looked to boom towns, like Oakland during World War II, to become fully vested family men. As those jobs waned, they suffered, while women joined the workforce, sometimes with notable success. The revival of matriarchal traditions is largely why out-of-wedlock births are now hitting historical highs among African Americans and why the lure of becoming a gangster, with increased reproductive opportunities, is so attractive. It also seems many of the inner-communal killings are jealousy driven, as appears to have been the case with the young man killed behind my building on June 25th, 2021. During the pandemic, many murders were inspired by watching rivals have fun on social media.
It is no surprise that Oakland became the center of Northern California’s enormous legal as well as illegal marijuana industry, which is mostly white owned (even though the legacy busines until 1980 was largely Black and Latino). Oakland has Harborside, one of the biggest weed stores in the world, Oaksterdam University, the world's first cannabis college, and many related classes, services and stores, from supplies and equipment to dispensaries and manufacturing.
Indeed, retired-Captain Joyner now runs the Joyous Recreation and Wellness Group, a cannabis edibles manufacturer, located in an unmarked warehouse four blocks from my house. Since the cannabis industry, which started legalizing in the US in California in 1996, is still not permitted banking services, its workers often carry large amounts of cash. This led some journalists to speculate Joyner was not a random robbery victim.
With Oakland an ongoing prostitution and drug center, people assume some of its police simply must be on the take, an opinion which increased after the OPD’s spectacular sex scandal of 2016. That imbroglio was made even more memorable when Mayor Schaaf, who had been special assistant to Mayor Brown and assumed office in 2015, fired three police chiefs in one week.
Captain Sean Whent had been doing a decent job for three years, according to “The Force” (2017), a documentary by Emmy-award-winning Oakland filmmaker Peter Nicks, which has some good clips on Armstrong. Nicks's previous film, the acclaimed “The Waiting Room” (2012), was about the emergency room at Oakland’s main hospital, Highland, which is known nationally for its gunshot surgery miracles. (I was waiting for treatment once when a young Black man was wheeled in, bleeding but bragging into his phone, “I was shot, I was shot.”)
Unfortunately for Nicks, he wrapped principal photography just before the story broke about a suicide, a murder, and dozens of cops being involved with a 17- then 18-year-old woman of color with an hourglass figure, known by her assumed name, Celeste Guap. As it happened, Ms Guap’s mother was an OPD dispatcher and had many friends on the force, including Officer John Hege, who helped her escape an abusive husband and was beloved by Guap. Both were devastated when Hege was one of the four Oakland cops killed that same day in 2009.
Coercion by powerful figures and child sex abuse were the issues raised by Guap’s lawyers to win her $1 million dollar settlement from the city, and they remain her talking points today, but the actual affair was probably a bit more, well, Oakland.
The story starts with a white, increasingly-disturbed rookie cop named Brendan O’Brien, whose Latina wife committed suicide, after they argued about him possibly having an affair. But her family thinks he killed her, and ex-OPD detective Mike Gantt agrees. Indeed, he was pushed off the case by department brass protecting their own, he says, and he filed a related claim against city officials. The intricate evidence was reported at length in The East Bay Express, by Darwin Bond Graham and Ali Winston (see it here), but the facts remain somewhat ambiguous to me.
Celeste Guap (her working name): a young Oakland woman who had family friends and boyfriends in the Oakland police and was also a sex worker. photo: courtesy C. Guap's Facebook pageAt any rate, O’Brien was exonerated and went back to work. A year after his wife died, he encountered Guap on International Boulevard, the Latinx neighborhood where she liked to sex work, since her family is Nicaraguan. Guap was being harassed by her pimp and hailed a passing patrol car. “He saved me,” she said of O’Brien, although he didn’t bring her to one of the many related social services or turn her over to a guardian, as recommended by Oakland’s progressive sex trafficking directives. Meeting again two weeks later at a taco truck, no less, they started dating. She was 17, he mid-20s.
Whether the relationship was coerced or consensual, we won’t know until Guap does a podcast, book or movie, but there must have been some romance, given the rumors and fantasies that started flying around. Indeed, Ms Guap became the object of rapt attention of dozens of police officers from departments around the Bay Area, an adulation she evidently enjoyed.
After a months-long, half-bromance, half-serial orgy, O’Brien killed himself after Guap threatened him—during a drunken phone call from Puerto Rico, where she was vacationing—that she would reveal she was screwing lots of cops. Instead, O’Brien’s suicide note brought that fact to the attention of authorities.
As soon as Mayor Schaaf heard, she fired Chief Whent. But when she tried to replace him with a lieutenant captain, it came out he recently had an extramarital affair. When her second appointee realized he wouldn’t fare well in the spotlight and resigned, Schaaf took over managing the department herself, through the mayor’s office. Eventually, her staff recruited from Spokane Anne Kirkpatrick, whom Schaaf must have hoped would help with the OPD’s testosterone problem.
The scandal was enormous, involving cops from as far as Livermore and San Francisco. Yet the OPD only expelled four officers, suspended seven, and left a dozen unidentified. The released version of the department’s long internal report, completed in 2019, is over half redacted. Eyebrows shot up again when officials running the flawed investigation were promoted, and two incriminated officers stayed on the force. They had had sex with Guap and texted lascivious notes to fellow cops, but after she turned 18.
Guap’s mother told a retired cop who was a family friend about the abuses, but he didn't report it. Alameda County filed numerous charges, but almost all were eventually dropped.
The OPD’s 2016 sex scandal is one back story illuminating an aspect of Oakland’s descent into violence. Another is the Black Panthers.
The Panther’s three founders, Newton, Seale and late-arriving but brilliant and already-published Eldridge Cleaver were visionary, hardworking and innovative. In a spectacular bit of political theater, they took over the California capitol, in Sacramento, in May 1967, brandishing their trademark long guns (see cineSOURCE story). As well as providing inspiration and ideas to Black people across America and then the world, they started a children’s breakfast program, newspaper, medical clinic and other essential services. Along the way, they were confronted by relentless attacks from authorities and infiltrators but also Newton’s proclivity for violence.
After two juries failed to reconvict Newton on appeals of his cop-killing conviction, he was freed in 1970. Picked up from San Quentin Prison by his close friend Bert Schneider, a Hollywood producer in a white Cadillac, he was driven to a heroes’ welcome in Oakland, where he hopped on a car, stripped to the waist and exhorted revolution. Newton proceeded to tour the nation, China and elsewhere as America’s most acclaimed revolutionary. After another arrest, for allegedly murdering two women, he fled to Cuba but returned and was found innocent again.
In 1980, Newton earned a PhD from U.C. Santa Cruz with his easy-to-research thesis “The War Against the Panthers”, although, by that time, he had long been a gangster. Vying to become Oakland’s top pimp daddy, he took up residence in a fancy penthouse overlooking Lake Merritt and the Oakland court house, where he spent so much time. Even while maintaining his grueling schedule of writing and public appearances, he led a hard-nosed crew which allegedly extorted protection money from bars and other businesses, ran coke, to which he became addicted, and pimped some Panther sisters.
“I probably would have killed Huey myself,” remarked his erstwhile-best-friend Seale. Newton was finally murdered in 1989, about a mile from my building, a few months after I moved in. It was considered a standard Black-on-Black attack until it came out he had been killed by a member of a rival revolutionary group, the Black Guerrilla Family, in a coke deal gone bad.
Memorial to Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers, who grew up and died in West Oakland. sculpture: Dana King photo: D. BlairAlthough Newton is honored in many books, classes and murals around the country, not a single monument was erected in his home hood of West Oakland for fifty years. When the Panthers held rallies at DeFremery Park, the crowds were mostly white kids from Berkeley, San Francisco and the Oakland hills. The Black middleclass families, of which there were many in West Oakland’s beautiful Victorian houses, opposed the Panthers’ sex and drug use as well as radical politics, and struggled to keep their kids away.
A friend of mine, Rick Moss, told me how the mother of a friend of his stridently blocked their attempt to join the Panthers’ San Francisco chapter in the ‘70s. As the director of Oakland’s African American Museum and Library, Moss mounted a Panther show in 2016 to commemorate their 50th anniversary but edited out Newton’s “posturing and showboating.”
Of course, the Oakland chapter of the Panthers was under constant attack by FBI double agents, through its notorious Cointelpro program, as well as by pseudo-revolutionaries, hustlers and local cops, which put them under immense pressure and fomented paranoia. Nevertheless, Newton was egregiously violent. Indeed, his revolutionary hero status and gun-slinger style—which Cleaver captured in his iconic portrait of Newton sitting on an African wicker throne, holding a spear and a gun—contributed to African American gun culture, which ballooned in the ‘70s and led to thousands of deaths.
A small mural of Newton appeared on a West Oakland side street in 2017, but it hardly compares to the deluxe, bronze bust of him without a shirt—Newton liked to strip to the waist to show off his prison pecs and play the rock star, even though that is an odd pose for a radical thinker—which was dedicated in October 2021. Organized by his widow Fredrika and sculpted by Dana King, the golden statue sits in the wide greenway in the middle of Mandela Avenue, a block from where Newton was murdered. The city also named the nearby 9th Street Dr. Huey P. Newton Way.
Before the statue was placed, its stone plinth and accompanying sign were defaced by graffiti tags and the words “fraud” and “fuck you.” Fredrika didn’t call the police, which community members are loath to do, but the community did identify the young male taggers, who apologized, saying they didn’t know what the rock was for. They also helped with the cleanup.
Except for its proximity to where Newton was murdered, the plaque does not reference his gangsterism. While he achieved many successes and wrote a substantial body of work, including the plaque’s quote—“I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people”—actions speak louder than words when it comes to ethical instruction.
Some of my Oakland friends, as well some radicals, rappers and thug culture aficionados, or actual thugs, are expressing renewed reverence for Newton in statements, songs and T-shirts. But is he an appropriate hero for young Oaklanders? Imagine hearing Newton venerated while growing up but learning his unexpurgated biography in college, say, especially if you lost friends or relatives to gun violence. As with the great writer Gertrude Stein, another larger-than-life Oaklander with feet of clay (she was revealed to have collaborated with French Nazis), we have to examine our heroes and forbearers honestly, just as our woke friends are doing with Columbus and Jefferson.
Would Newton applaud Oakland’s new radicalism or lawlessness? Or would he recognize the US is under attack by entirely different revolutionaries, the Republicans and conspiracy theorists who are threatening democracy and whose policies are decimating poor communities, white as well as Black. Indeed, poor whites are plagued by opiate and amphetamine addiction, the deaths from which doubled during the pandemic to over 93,000 in 2020, and the anti-vax movement and QAnon conspiracy theorists, which have led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths.
An Oakland muralist, who uses the nom de art 'Yellow Peril', salutes a Black Lives Matter march, June, 2020. photo: D. BlairBack in Oakland, there are so many car break-ins on some streets, residents pot their trees with broken glass. Graffiti bombing is rampant, with celebrity taggers coming from out of town. A few Black men have taken to wearing their pants so low around their thighs, a prison style proving thug bona fides, they could serve as runway models for the fancy underwear they now wear. There are enormous “side shows,” street parties attended mostly by African Americans, involving automotive performances, like doing “donuts” or “ghost riding the whip,” where drivers walk alongside their coasting vehicles. Side shows tie up traffic, frighten locals and sometimes trigger violence.
The latest innovation by Oakland gangsters is brazen assaults by large groups, like the gang of 50 found burglarizing buildings in West Oakland. On November 19th, 2021, stores around San Francisco’s premier Union Square were looted by a “flash mob” wielding crowbars, smashing glass cases and teargassing security guards. A day later, the high-end Nordstrom store in the Oakland suburb of Walnut Creek was swamped by 80 “shoppers” who suddenly metamorphosed into smash-and-grabbers. On NPR on December 20th, California Attorney General Rob Bonta explained how the thieves coordinate on social media like crime syndicates and sell stolen goods in online markets, which are failing to police themselves.
Similar attacks have transpired from large Home Depot stores to small marijuana dispensaries, despite increases in security personnel and Bay Area counties joining to share information and policing duties. And they are spreading across California and the US.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, well-armed caravans marauded across Oakland and two people, who attempted to mount a defense, were murdered. Retired-OPD sergeant Kevin Nishita, who was Japanese-American but had an interracial family, was working as a security officer for a KRON 4 camera crew, covering a rob-mob incident, when gunmen tried to steal their cameras. Nishita intervened and was shot to death.
Twenty-eight-year-old Erik Davis, an African American from Los Angeles, who had lived in Oakland for a few years and was known for his affable personality, was also shot and killed for confronting brazen thieves, this time those breaking into cars in a public setting. Indeed, it was 3 pm, Thanksgiving Sunday, on an avenue alongside Lake Merritt, a hundred yards from the city’s popular promenade.
Those two murders, combined with the flash mob attacks, two bullets fired directly at police, and the Thanksgiving weekend's tsunami of 911 calls brought OPD to a fever pitch that required calling in off-duty cops. “We were entirely overwhelmed with the staff we had, even by bringing in those officers,” said Barry Donelan, the OPD union’s president, who is white. He also wrote an op-ed piece in The East Bay Times warning how low morale threatened the force with complete collapse.
Mayor Schaaf, for her part, thanked serving officers profusely on camera, offered new recruits a $50,000 signing bonus, and said she would petition Governor Gavin Newsome, another Jerry Brown acolyte, for more resources. Around December 10th, she appealed for more state police and technology, including license plate readers on freeway ramps.
Vice Mayor Kaplan, meanwhile, developed MACRO (Mobile Assistance Crisis Responders of Oakland), the city’s response to clamors for police alternatives, which will be run through the Fire Department. With an emphasis on recruiting community members with lived experience, it intends to provide “an effective civilian response option,” according to an October 20th press release, although it is just a 15-member pilot program. A friend of mine, who used to live in West Oakland and does body work, herbalism and activism, applied but said his odds were slim due to over 1000 applicants.
Also starting around Thanksgiving, Guillermo Cespedes, head of Violence Prevention, organized Town Nights, events held in four parks in tough hoods on four successive weekends. Combinations cook-outs, clothing giveaways, pickup basketball games and community gatherings, they seemed successful, despite the skepticism voiced by Chief Armstrong and others that such festivities could reach violent individuals. The plan is to do a lot of Town Nights in the summer, when violence is the highest, according to the SF Chronicle (12/31/22). Armstrong also announced the allocation of 40 additional officers to East Oakland, where three-quarters of the murders transpire.
Despite the murders and robberies, Oakland’s always-multicultural, often-hipster and sometimes-marijuana-fueled party continued. The week after Thanksgiving, I attended my first First Friday art crawl since the pandemic. Now organized by Oakland First Fridays (.org), it restarted in October. As usual, it was fun, intercommunal and occasionally visionary, with some great people, performances and art but a fraction of its once-enormous crowds.
Street memorial for 28-year-old Cameron Windom, Oakland's first murder victim of 2022, killed by a 23-year-old after an argument at 34th and Hollis, a half a mile from Blair's building. photo: D. BlairRace is a large part of the American story. But making it the central theme impugns our robust multiculturalism and egalitarianism, which is especially strong in Oakland, a young city with less hierarchy and racism and more artists, activists and intermarriage than Albuquerque, Nashville or Detroit. Despite the gangsters among our police and radicals as well as illicit-activities entrepreneurs, Oakland’s recent renaissance and current crop of artists, progressive politicians and decent cops suggest we can solve our killing-each-other problem.
As well as prevent the murder of more Rashad Brinsons, Lai Dangs or John Heges, Oakland could provide guidance to other communities. For that to happen, however, even more Oaklanders will have to join their neighbors across cultural, racial or class lines, and develop even more innovative methods in education, social work and the arts, as well as policing. Lecturing or arresting will not mollify enraged neighbors willing to seek satisfaction through the barrel of a gun, we have to inspire and offer alternatives.
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To see the author's article on Black Lives Matter from July 2020, go here.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Jan 08, 2022 - 03:15 PM
Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis
by Doniphan Blair
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Oakland police carefully count the 73 rounds discharged on October 15th, 2021, right behind author Doniphan Blair's building in West Oakland. photo: D. BlairJump to Part II here
ON OCTOBER 20TH, SHORTLY AFTER
sunset, I was at my desk in West Oakland, California, when I heard that telltale, deep-throated sound—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—six shots, very loud, in front of my building, or so it seemed.
I crept to my window. No yelling or tires screeching, traffic passing normally. I called the police, although some of my Oakland friends say never do that, due to the Oakland Police Department’s long record of abuse, corruption and murder. After two busy signals, I got through.
I went into my hallway. A young Chinese woman, who moved into the building last year and goes by Jasmine, since she thinks no one can pronounce "Mengjiao," her Chinese name, and a friend were coming up the stairs, chatting. Had they heard shots? “No, we just parked and must have missed them.” Did they know about lying down when they hear shots nearby? “Yes, of course,” Jasmine said, laughing.
It turned out Rashad Brinson, a 28-year-old African American man, had been murdered in front of our corner liquor store. That makes him at least the twelfth person killed there in my 32 years living here. Brinson was "unhoused," i.e. homeless, so he didn’t get the traditional street memorial with flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, and tea candles spelling out his name, like most young Black murder victims in Oakland. But at least we have his name.
Brinson was killed in a drive-by shooting for no apparent reason, it turned out, which surprised me, since I assumed he was a casualty of a turf war over the crack corner a block away. Indeed, less than a week earlier, on October 15th, that corner was hit with a military-style assault in broad daylight, although no one was actually hit.
My space is on the far side of the building and I was in a storage room, so I didn’t hear the 73-round barrage fired right behind our parking lot, which must have sounded like a war. About an hour later, however, I did notice the cops had closed all three west-bound lanes of West Grand Avenue, which runs along the side of my building. A bit rich, I thought, until I got closer and met another new neighbor, an African American man named Jermaine, who saw the entire incident from our loading dock.
A car pulled up and out stepped a 20-something African American man with an assault rifle and a few teenagers with pistols, who seemed scared, Jermaine said. They went to the corner and started firing toward the crack corner a block away, hitting mostly cars, including one belonging to Jermaine. He waited over two hours, while the cops marked where those 73 shells landed, to see if they wanted his eyewitness account. They didn’t. It is no longer unusual for shootings in Oakland to involve dozens or hundreds of rounds.
A street memorial for a young man killed around June 25th, 2022, in DeFremery Park, where the Black Panthers used to gather. photo: D. BlairOakland is not unique. Murders leapt up across America during the pandemic, 30% on average, although that figure is 47% in Oakland since the prior year the city had an extra low murder rate. Nevertheless, if we look at Albuquerque, Nashville and Detroit, three cities slightly larger than Oakland, which have tiny, medium and large Black populations, respectively, we see that Oakland’s 2019-21 per capita murders are similar to Albuquerque’s and Nashville’s and about one third of Detroit’s. But neither Albuquerque, Nashville nor Detroit is located on the prestigious San Francisco Bay.
The killing increase is obviously due to pandemic-driven poverty, isolation and depression, which also added to the suicide rate, and the ability to move around masked. But there are many other factors, like Trump’s machismo and rejection of rule of law. Although African Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic, some Black men support Trump; their numbers increased about 6% from 2016 to 2020 (see BBC report); and they included figures like superstar rapper Kanye West.
Five days after those kids bullet-sprayed my street, there was a shootout at a gas station about a mile away, also in broad daylight (1 pm, October 20). It killed Desoni Gardner, also known as “Li’l Theze,” since the 20-year-old from Vallejo, 25 miles away, was a rapper. He was also African American.
Gardner’s crew wounded the man who shot him, Ersie Joyner, a retired captain in the Oakland Police Department, also African American. The station’s security cameras showed them rifling Joyner’s pockets, making it a robbery until Joyner whipped out his gun. But one of my Oakland friends thought it might have been a vendetta against a dirty cop.
Four months earlier, on June 25th, a young man was murdered on that same street behind my building, due to an altercation between a father and his baby momma’s current boyfriend, according to my neighbors who heard it. The dispute involved a child and someone getting in or out of a car, they said, although they were unsure of who murdered whom. My neighbor Hannah, an emergency room doctor and white, heard the shouting and shots and ran down to see if there was anything she could do. There wasn’t.
Within a day or two of that murder, a young man was killed six blocks away on the basketball court in DeFremery Park, where the Black Panther Party used to hold rallies. The Panthers started in West Oakland in 1966. The closest court to my building, I have been playing there for three decades almost without incident. Going to shoot around a few days later, I was surprised to see a street memorial courtside, although the candles were scattered by then, and I couldn’t make out the name. I called the OPD to see if they knew the names of those two young men. They didn’t.
Six months earlier, in January, four miles from me in East Oakland, Dinyal New lost both her teenage sons, Lee Weathersby (13) and Lamar Broussard (19), within three weeks of each other. Horrific tragedies by any measure, they were especially egregious since there was no apparent motive for either murder. There were no arrests, since community members are reluctant to “come forward,” i.e. snitch, and murders are hard to solve without motives or eyewitnesses, even by the best-funded police departments. Lee and Lamar did get street memorials, however, as part of the rituals enacted by the kids, families and communities to address the trauma of losing so many, so young.
Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who took over at the beginning of the crisis in 2021, is from West Oakland. photo: courtesy OaklandsideIt’s not just young men. On January 22nd, the house of LeShawn Buffin, a 52-year-old grandmother, was bullet sprayed for no reason. She died. On October 6th, the same thing happened to the car of a man who got into an argument with another motorist. His 15-year-old niece died. On November 8th, the passengers of two cars were having a firefight as they hurtled down Interstate 880 in Oakland and accidentally hit an Asian-American toddler. He died.
Many of Oakland’s young men are extremely angry, obviously. Not mature enough to control their rage, minor disputes often trigger major arguments, which easily escalate into shootings, since so many are packing guns. Sure, they are casually taking a life and throwing away their own, if arrested and convicted, but they are desperate for what the killings provide: elevated status and self-expression. It gives voice to their own immense trauma. In this way, the inner-city killings parallel America’s increasingly frequent mass shootings, although those are perpetrated almost exclusively by angry white men.
“It’s like a war zone,” said Oakland’s Deputy Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong at LeShawn Buffin’s funeral, according to the San Francisco Chronicle article of February 2nd. “We’re seeing a huge increase in the number of high-powered firearms.” The killings don’t follow identifiable trends, Armstrong said, in terms of gang violence or victims’ race or age, which is another frightening new national trend.
Random killing also increased in Albuquerque, which has a 3% African American population, ruling out that subgroup’s cultural factors. The randomness appears to be driven by the chaos of the pandemic and Trumpian times, plus the new availability of “ghost guns.” Assembled at home and with no serial numbers, ghost guns are impossible to trace.
“She was a loving mother to her daughters and grandchildren,” said Armstrong, also African American, who was a family friend of Buffin and called her his “god sister.” “She was a caring person in the community, who would open her home to help anyone. She will be truly missed.”
Armstrong was born and raised in West Oakland, where he lost a brother to gun violence. He attended McClymonds High School, six blocks from my building, and asked to be sworn in there, a nice nod to our hood, when he was appointed chief of police, shortly after Buffin’s funeral.
Armstrong has had a stellar career since joining the OPD in 1999, both as an officer and advocate of progressive policing. An early participant in Ceasefire, Oakland’s highly innovative violence intervention program, he led the Stop Data Collection Project, which cut police stops of African Americans by over half, and has participated in numerous national programs and classes, and taught some himself.
Chief LeRonne Armstrong and his predecessor, Anne Kirkpatrick, who came to Oakland in 2017 from heading Spokane's police force. photo: unknownOn April 8th, 2021, Chief Armstrong was the only law enforcement official invited to Washington D.C., for the announcement of new executive orders on gun control, where he met with President Biden. Armstrong succeeded the three-year-tenure of Anne Kirkpatrick, who headed the Spokane, Washington, police department but was way out of her league in Oakland—for perfectly understandable reasons, not merely because she is a woman and white.
“It’s just overwhelming,” said Guillermo Cespedes, the head of Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention, who has a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, according to the same SF Chronicle article. Cespedes was an anti-gang activist and city official with that portfolio in Los Angeles, which has many gangs, including Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, the vicious El Salvadorian super-gang. “These have been the most difficult conditions I have ever worked under.”
For over a year, Oakland residents have been hearing—if not seeing, if they don’t live in the hood—their city descend into chaos: a lot more sirens, shots and helicopters. There were other indicators: stores not stocking shelves due to shoplifting, people running red lights, the respected 170-year-old Mills College, which borders on a tough hood, announcing it would close (it will continue in diminished capacity under Northeastern University, Boston), and increased attacks on Asians.
For comic relief, Oakland’s entire school board was forced to resign after some of its members bitched out parents for pleading with them to open the schools, saying, “Parents wanted their babysitters back” and “more time to smoke cannabis.”
Most Oaklanders see their city is in distress, although many are reluctant to discuss it. Why bring each other down with useless complaining? And the threat is comparatively small if you are white or if you don’t run with drug dealers or argue with road-ragers. To add insult to injury, you never know where people stand on the intricate issues involved, meaning a discussion can easily slip into politically-incorrect territory.
On a few occasions, I have been criticized for opining on the affairs of my hood because I am white. Skin color, speech and other cultural attributes do form large parts of our first impressions of each other, but to privilege them above the overall relationship or our ethics or insights, or to value racial categories and histories more than shared humanity and equality is a big mistake, I feel.
I learned this philosophy from my neighbors growing up in New York City across the street from Grant Houses, one of the tougher projects in Harlem, and playing in the Harlem Little League, during the riots of the summer of 1964, and in the Pop Warner football league, where I was the only white kid. I have also called West Oakland home for almost half my life, which provided me some unique experiences: mostly fun, a few harrowing, many revealing.
Politically correct self-censorship proved problematic when Trump’s China-insulting and race-baiting helped trigger unprecedented attacks on Asians. Residents of Oakland’s large Chinatown endured a rash of robberies, beatings and a few murders.
A graffito in praise of Molotov cocktails by a member of Oakland's large anarchist community. photo: D. BlairIn July 2020, a 32-year-old Vietnamese-American man, Quoc Tran, was shot in neighboring “Vietnamtown” when his driving annoyed a handsome, 25-year-old Oaklander with a long rap sheet. Tran died from his injuries 16 months later. In March 2021, Pak Ho, a 75-year-old man originally from Hong Kong, died two days after being shoved down during a robbery by a man whose arrest record indicated he targeted elderly Asians.
Significantly stranger, Lai Dang, a 58-year-old man of Chinese heritage, was murdered in cold blood seven blocks from my house in broad daylight on January 11th, 2021, for no apparent reason. Surveillance videos and witnesses indicate a father and son were driving through West Oakland, stopped to urinate, spotted Dang, shot at him, ran him down and killed him—open season on Asians. They were arrested four days later in Tracy, 50 miles from Oakland, and held without bail.
That the anti-Asian assailants were almost entirely African American men was usually omitted from news reports or statements by representatives of the Asian community. Excluding racial descriptors is an understandable attempt to limit implicit bias or the fear some Asians have of African Americans, while allowing Asian spokespeople to maintain people-of-color solidarity. But it puts potential victims at a disadvantage doing threat assessments; everyone was already talking about the races of the individuals involved; and to pretend that is not a relevant fact is a fantasy. Some of the attackers also appear to have mental health issues.
Along with discussions about inadequate health care, institutional racism, endemic poverty, and pandemic-driven job loss and school-dropout rates, we need to broach the subject of Black Lives Matter. Considered the biggest activist movement in American history, Black Lives Matter helped inspire fantastic changes in corporate, media and overall culture, in America and around the world. In Oakland, many residents readily adopted its tenets, joined marches and posted BLM signs on their properties or vehicles. But there were also negative repercussions: reduced police services, the partial destruction of downtown, increased tribalism.
Focusing on racial justice issues, without fortifying it with democratic successes, in a mixed and egalitarian community like Oakland, pushes people to tribe up and displace their grievances onto the “other.” A problematic position in general, this is more dangerous in Trumpian times, given the racialized fearmongering of Trump and many Republicans. Moreover, once othering is established as a practice, it can be applied to internal divisions.
Othering people from different hoods, gangs, races and social classes is one factor fomenting Oakland’s murder spree. Another is: after a prosperous period diminished the need for gangsterism, a new generation of thugs is taking the opportunity to accrue power. Throw in political upheaval, which put the police on their back foot and reduced morale and leg work along with funding. Last but not least, a scofflaw spirit is sweeping America, from ex-president Trump on down.
“If multiculturalism can’t work in Oakland, with so many activists and artists of all races and mixed races, as well as the immense number of social services and political organizations, what hope is there?” I’ve heard a few Oaklanders say, or something like that. Indeed, Oakland has to take a leadership position in this regard, given it is one of the most racially-mixed cities on the planet, with a 29% Black, 27% white, and 21% Latinx population, according to the 2020 census. In addition to its plethora of talent, Oakland is comparatively wealthy.
Illegal dumping in front of Stay Gold Delicatessen, one of West Oakland's best as well as few beer/sandwich shops. photo: D. BlairThe 16% of Oaklanders who are Asian are disadvantaged by their large number of recent arrivals and English-limited elderly, and their lack of thugs or martial artists, who could help with community defense. Ad hoc accompaniment of old people shopping and patrols soon began, but Chief Armstrong asked them not to arm—one man was arrested for brandishing a weapon at attackers—and said the OPD could provide protection. Many Asians fear it can’t, however, and that “Oakland has become the wild West.”
Local newspapers with limited budgets, like The Oakland Post or The East Bay Times, were slow to cover Oakland’s civic collapse, although the latter has done excellent longform reporting on the OPD, as has Berkeley’s left-centric Pacifica Radio station, KPFA. Colorful crime stories out of Oakland have long made Bay Area or national news but the new, unprecedented levels were not emphasized until recently. When I began mentioning the rash of murders around my building, a few friends dismissed it as typical—“Oakland bats last against gentrifiers,” as one put it—but some longtime neighbors said it is the worst they have ever seen.
In November, Rebecca Kaplan, a liberal council person and Oakland’s vice mayor, was talking up her initiative to cleanup illegal garbage dumping, which is a notorious blight across West Oakland. Then she moved on to the huge homeless crisis. While both are terrible, they hardly compare to the slaughter, although all three can be connected through the “Broken Windows Theory.”
Some progressive pundits and friends of mine blame the OPD for not doing enough to investigate crime in the hood, despite the 10% budget cuts, and for retaining bad officers. In fact, the OPD remains under the Federal supervision imposed in 2012, as part of the 2003 trial of a gang of corrupt cops. In 2016, the department was rocked by another massive scandal, when over a dozen officers were found exploiting a young, woman-of-color sex worker. That precipitated three police chiefs in one week.
Be that as it may, the primary person addressing Oakland’s killing crisis is Chief Armstrong, who was opening press conferences at the end of 2021 with over two minutes of silence, one second for each lost Oaklander. “We can be vocal about certain things, but I just don't understand why this community cannot be vocal about 100 lives lost," Armstrong said on September 21st, on the occasion of Oakland’s 100th killing in nine months, almost as many as the entire previous year.
"We can scream and yell about anything the police department does wrong but, in this time, we can't speak up about what's plaguing all of us—and that's gun violence.”
On July 10th, between 60 and 200 people joined the OPD’s march, “Stand Up for a Safe Oakland,” around Lake Merritt, the large lake which serves as the town’s centerpiece and site of its intercommunal Sunday promenade. The small march ended up at a lake front park, which became Black Oakland’s weekend gathering spot and street fair during the lockdown. It was also where seven people were shot, one fatally, three weeks earlier during Juneteenth, the celebration of liberation from slavery, which President Biden declared a federal holiday that very day.
Also on July 10th and at the lake, the Anti-Police Terror Project had organized a car caravan and barbecue. Shouting ensued.
A family enjoys the weekend street fair favored by Black Oaklanders that emerged during the pandemic on Lake Merritt and featured minimal masking and social distancing. photo: D. BlairOaklanders responded to the anti-Asian violence with a 1000-strong, mostly-Asian showing at a park near Chinatown on February 13th, 2021. Black activists joined with their Asian counterparts, especially after the March 16th mass murder of six of Asian women and two others by a white man in Atlanta, Georgia. But Asian and Black activists broke over whether to support or defund the police.
It is not lost on the kids or gangbangers as well as Chief Armstrong or many Asians that in 2020 there were dozens of BLM marches, which attracted tens of thousands of people and crisscrossed Oakland, to protest the brutal police killing of George Floyd thousands of miles away but not for Lai Dang, the Chinese-American murdered near my house.
The root cause of inner-community violence is institutional racism, poverty and poor services for kids of color, which can’t be solved by additional police, according to proponents of BLM tenets. Indeed, Albuquerque, Nashville and Oakland have one officer for every 550 to 625 residents, while Detroit, where the murder rate is three times Oakland’s, has twice that, one cop per 300. Hence, we have to switch our policing, education and social work, according to defund-the-police supporters, and accept some collateral damage until it takes effect.
Oakland’s murder rate almost doubled in 2021, from its record low of 72 in 2019, a level only last seen from 1998 to 2001 or in the ‘70s, to 137. Although mortality peaked in 1992, with 165 killings, comparing the crack epidemic to today is like contrasting apples and oranges, given Oakland’s recent renaissance. The 2010s were probably the city’s most prosperous decade since the ‘40s, including for many low-income locals—if they weren't displaced by gentrification, of course.
Along with pushing up rents and homelessness, gentrification brought hundreds of new businesses, many of them restaurants, which provided jobs as well as places to get a decent bite. There were also scores of new music venues and art galleries, welcome outlets for local artists, including those driven here by the much higher rents in San Francisco, which has been occupied by overpaid techies. The first Friday art crawl, started in 2006 by the Art Murmur gallery association, blew up over five years from a few hundred to over 20,000 attendees. The majority were Oaklanders enjoying each other’s company, but the bridge and tunnel crowd’s copious eating and drinking, if not art buying, turned it into a cash bonanza.
Gentrifiers can be disgusting and destructive, of course. Unscrupulous house-flippers preyed on impoverished families. High rents exacerbated the homeless crisis. Foodies drove up taco truck prices. Black families were forced out to distant suburbs, like Tracy or Vallejo, where they sometimes felt like foreigners. I had to bitch out white new home owners, on a couple of occasions, for whining about petty thievery which bordered on racism. Didn’t they look around before plunking down a half a million dollars, say, for their house?
Other times, it’s tone deafness. Two blocks from me, in the opposite direction from the crack corner, is a brewery and pub called Ghost Town after the nearby neighborhood. Alas, Ghost Town didn’t earn its moniker by having a quaint, old graveyard (see cineSOURCE interview with a local activist).
Oakland hasn’t become a hot art market, except for a couple established galleries, like the nationally-known Creative Growth, which features artists with developmental disabilities. But the galleries often have work by, and a few are run by, people of color. Ditto the scores of vendors with tables, booths or trucks that feature everything from art and handicrafts to fashion and food. There are also performers doing music, magic, juggling or “fire arts,” since Oakland is home to many organizers and enthusiasts of the world-famous desert festival, Burning Man.
Oakland's famous First Friday art crawl/street fair, which drew a diverse crowd of 20,000 before the pandemic, restarted in October, 2021. photo: D. BlairA buddy of mine from art school, who is also a West Oakland neighbor, Richard Felix (white/Jewish), sets up large canvases and pots of paint, which attract Black middle schoolers from Ghost Town, only a few blocks away, alongside white suburbanites and tattooed-piercers. Indeed, those six blocks of Telegraph Avenue had become a fantastic monthly carnival, impressing even seasoned world travelers, until the pandemic shut it down.
In the last decade, West Oakland became imminently livable. Once a food desert, it now has Mandela Foods, a Black-owned, collectively-run, organic grocery store in its 12th year, haute cuisine like Korean fusion or Middle Eastern, or the unfortunately-named but airy and pleasant Ghost Town Brewing.
Oakland also has a burgeoning film scene, which I tried to cover and support in this magazine, cineSOURCE, which I started with some friends in 2008.
After Oakland’s decade-long boom, I assumed it could endure the pandemic. I was inspired when I walked around Lake Merritt on March 26th, 2020, one week after the statewide shelter-in-place order was issued, which I covered in a cineSOURCE article, "Oakland in the Time of Corona". My socially-distanced fellow strollers were Black, white, brown and even Asian, which is not always the case; they were straight and LGTBQ, bolstered by Oakland’s large lesbian community; some were even bridge-and-tunnelers. Surely, we were creative, resilient and tolerant enough to handle Covid-19, I thought. Alas, the Oakland promenade didn’t include a few critical groups.
Although the vast majority of Oaklanders masked up, helped their neighbors and eventually got vaccinated, the economic shutdown and switch to online teaching hit poor Black kids especially hard, feelings aggravated by political upheaval. As amazing as BLM’s achievements have been in white-dominated towns, industries or police departments, the combination of illness, poverty, protest and reduced police services proved catastrophic for Oakland.
Protests have been popular in Oakland since 1946, when a city-wide strike by 146 different unions, against discriminatory hiring of African Americans, shut the city down. By nightfall, however, it had become a party, with union officials getting bars to put their jukeboxes on the street, where interracial dancing ensued.
Oakland was long been known for its adventurous, artistic and activist working-class types, typified by its premiere native son, author and socialist Jack London. During the Depression and war, it attracted poor Blacks from Texas and Louisiana and poor whites from Oklahoma, and vice versa. A rugged and less-educated population, that immigration fed the Black Panthers, on one hand, and the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, also based in Oakland, and the police force, on the other.
In the ‘60s, there were demonstrations against the draft and for Huey P. Newton, a co-founder of the Panthers, who was from West Oakland and convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing a cop a mile from my house. More recently there were large protests against the murder of Oscar Grant by a BART (subway) cop, in 2009, and during the Oakland Occupy, two years later. In addition to outraged activists and sympathetic liberals, recent demonstrations have attracted rowdy young men who are Black, and sometimes associated with gangs, or white, and sometimes associated with Black Bloc, an anarchist movement, or suburban hooligans.
After one night of looting, on May 29, 2020, the dozens of other Oakland marches protesting George Floyd's killing were peaceful, even festive. photo: D. BlairOn May 29th, during Oakland’s first march protesting George Floyd’s murder, those two male cohorts and a smattering of women broke hundreds of windows and looted at least a hundred stores across downtown Oakland and in neighboring Emeryville, where the malls have more goodies. One of my radical friends was almost gleeful as she insisted it was a legitimate expression of rage, a minor inconvenience for shoppers, and an insurance write-off for stores. But the looters also broke into small, Black-owned businesses, according to my research and an article cowritten by my friend Aqueila M. Lewis-Ross for Oakland Voices, a respected site.
Some marchers tried to stop the looters, I was told by the Palestinian-American owner of The Twilight Zone, a large smoke shop on Broadway, Oakland’s main march route, who had over $70,000 of glass cases and inventory smashed. Some marchers also came back the next day to help him clean up, he said.
Unfortunately, a year and half later, downtown Oakland, which the city has been struggling to revive for 30 years, remains partially boarded up. Those boards are covered with magnificent murals by local artists, which are sometimes toured by tourists, but many businesses are not coming back; some people have moved out; and that one night of destruction—almost all the other dozens of marches were completely peaceful—ended some much-needed jobs.
One Black Lives Matter march I attended was organized by the Oakland Black Officers Association, then headed by Armstrong. It consisted almost entirely of people of color, in contrast to most of Oakland’s other BLM marches, which were often largely white, and it had elegantly-dressed women in front belting out gospel. Armstrong didn’t speak at the central police station on 7th and Broadway, where the marches often ended, but the officers who spoke did an artful job of explaining their competing concerns.
Alas, neither they nor most other BLM spokespeople seemed to find the sweet spot between aggressive activism and sophisticated civil society development, an error in the time of Trump, I believe. Indeed, the general discourse of the Black Lives Matter movement was suffused with talk of white people in blanket terms, without the balancing spirit of equality and goodwill established by King and Obama as well as Lincoln and Jefferson.
All humans are created equal; judge not by color of skin but content of character; there are not two Americas. In addition, defining people through DNA is a slippery slope; shame is not a stable motivator; and multiculturalism is about accepting people from groups you don’t like, not just allies.
“All Lives Matter” is considered racist for good reason. Who is to tell anyone what to call themselves? The BLM organization started in 2012, long before the national movement. And “All Lives Matter” was adopted by racists in a mimic-and-ridicule game.
But, of course, all lives do matter. And that would have been a better name for the movement by virtue of its emphasis, right in the name, on building a cooperative community instead of protecting one tribe. All lives matter would have better modeled equality, in contrast to fetishizing privilege or adjudicating racism. If organized by African Americans, it would have implicitly conveyed the message “Stop murdering Black people” and tacitly included Black-on-Black violence.
Most BLM activists do not mention, let alone emphasize, Black-on-Black violence, as far as I know. They seem to feel that broaching the subject in the same breath as state violence would be a copout, whataboutism or straight up racism. It is certainly true that everyone fights with their family and neighbors more than strangers, and those commonplace crimes need increased investigation and abatement by the police and community.
Speakers from a BLM march of Black police officers and their families, in front of the Oakland Police Department's central station. photo: D. BlairNevertheless, Black-on-Black violence does kill massively more people than the police. And it has played a major role in traumatizing both African Americans, who have lost a horrific number of family and friends per capita, and police of all races, who fear a well-armed, trigger-happy citizenry. In 2009, an African American parolee, trying to evade arrest and automatic return to prison, killed four officers within as many hours in East Oakland, surely shocking even the most enlightened cops.
The longstanding conflict between police and African Americans is a direct result of slavery, systemic racism and endemic poverty, but it is often aggravated to an extreme by the need of both parties to obtain respect in the moment of confrontation. While policing is based on respect, so is the self-esteem of many men, and some women, who have little else.
Growing up as a white kid in Harlem, I have been mugged over a dozen times. Hitchhiking as a hippie through thousands of miles of redneck country, I was stopped by cops dozens of times and jailed a few. Along the way, I learned to respect the powerful players, be they muggers, cops, gangsters, border guards, convicts or rednecks, while maintaining a semblance of dignity. Groveling invites abuse from deranged machos of any profession or race.
Even a minor gesture can escalate an average traffic stop or thug encounter into suicide by cop or mugger. If we research the interactions leading to cop killings, I think we will often find some trigger of disrespect. Indeed, that is also what leads to most Black-on-Black murders. Yes, American laws and culture entitle us to speak our minds, but it is ill-advised to play disrespect chicken with deranged machos.
The flats of Oakland were thought to be pretty tough in the 1970s, when I was living in hippie San Francisco. But I knew and visited a couple there, an enormous, ripped Black guy named Wetback, who was from a California border town, favored red bandana headbands and had done time—although he didn’t mention it much and our chats were more about Buddhism, fitness and weed—and his young, white girlfriend, Donna, the daughter of a police officer. They seemed to accord both sides respect, while enjoying the already-developing, hipper side of Oakland.
If you treat people with basic respect, typified on the street by a glance and nod in passing, they will often return the courtesy. When confronted by thugs or muggers, if you honor them with warrior status, while remaining calm and respectful, as difficult as that might be, you usually get a pass. If not, just hand them your wallet, while casually asking for a few bucks back to get home or buy milk. One time, I stepped into my corner liquor store on a Saturday at midnight, a massive mistake, I realized upon seeing it was full of severe-looking Black men. When one said loudly, “How’s it going?” I responded at a similar volume, “Slick as a dick,” and won a wry smile from him and some of his crew.
Oakland did have a corrupt white mayor in the early ‘60s, John Houlihan. A nationally-known expert on urban issues and a liberal Republican, he presided over the construction of the Oakland Museum and other major projects but had to resign during his second term for embezzling. He served two years in prison.
Oakland had a large Ku Klux Klan chapter until 1924, and racist sympathizers long after. In the ‘60s, the OPD was only 2% Black, notoriously harsh, and its officers often tormented and sometimes killed men of color, which inspired the formation of the Black Panthers in 1966.
Huey Newton deduced his innovative tactic of police monitoring in the Merritt College law class of Edwin Meese, eventually Reagan’s Attorney General, no less. It consisted of following patrol cars, observing their stops at a legal distance, advising detainees of their rights, and standing by with legal long guns, in case problems arose. Until California repealed open-carry a year later, neither side fired a single shot. Respect.
BLM marchers listen to speakers at an amphitheater on the edge of Lake Merritt, Oakland lovely' centerpiece and intercommunal promenade. photo: D. BlairThere was a cabal of corrupt cops, the Riders, which preyed for years on West Oaklanders. After I moved here in 1989, I often saw Black men face-down and spread-eagle on the pavement during cop stops. As part of the OPD’s 2003 settlement for the Riders’ abuses against 119 plaintiffs, who received almost $11 million total, it was put under federal management.
Despite these correctives, some of my Oakland friends suspect there are still bad cops, that the court-appointed monitor is benefiting somehow, or that the nine-citizen police commission, which was established in 2016 and can discipline officers, direct policy or sack a chief, is still mired in Oakland’s old patronage political system.
On the other hand, Oakland is in Northern California, a center of progressive politics, environmental beauty and immense wealth. In addition to state assistance, Oakland has an enormous number of not-for-profits, faith-based social services, art organizations and political-activist groups. Although Oakland is the most income polarized of any Bay Area city, with a substantial number of hill dwellers in large houses with bay views, they often help with the philanthropies.
Article continues here.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 07, 2022 - 01:32 AM
Academy of Art’s Disastrous Loan Program
by Karl F. Cohen
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The Academy of Art provides a massive presence in downtown San Francisco, through its 32 properties. photo: courtesy the Academy of ArtTHE SF CHRONICLE RAN A FRONT
page story on November 5th about how the Academy of Art, San Francisco’s largest art school, made millions off of convincing students—including some who were unqualified to attend the school—to take out government loans to fulfill their dreams of becoming successful artists.
The long article, about how the school finally settling the case that dragged on for 12 years, ended with: “Meanwhile, The Chronicle spoke with 17 former Academy of Art students who had independently contacted the paper after reading stories about the lawsuit. Students were not part of the suit, but protecting their interests is why the government regulates recruitment schemes.
Of those ex-students, 12 said they owed more than $50,000 in student loan debt, including eight above $100,000.
One of them was Shaun Dunn, a 2019 graduate who earned two degrees from the Academy of Art over many years, including a master’s degree in animation and visual effects. Unable to find a job in his field, Dunn, 40, owed more than $431,000 in student loans.
The Academy’s recruiters were egged on by school officials, who allegedly dangled Hawaii trips and pay hikes to get them to be more aggressive.
Dunn said he felt tricked by the school, which he described as persistently urging him to stay even though he couldn’t afford it and enticing him with promises of a lucrative career.
“’It’s ruined my life,’ Dunn said.”
Academy of Art officials declined to comment for that story.
Where’s a reputable, responsible and creative Bay Area art school when we need one?
Oh yeah, we let the Art Institute close last year.
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 Jan 05, 2022 - 06:38 PM
SF Docmaker Takes Red Nation Feature Award
by Renée Alexander
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Humberto Concepción Pérez, a farmer from Oaxaca State, Mexico, in Gustavo Vazquez-Orozco's new doc 'Los Guardianes del Maíz'. photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-OrozcoSAN FRANCISCO FILMMAKER GUSTAVO
Vazquez-Orozco recently brought home the Best International Documentary Feature Film award from the 26th Annual Red Nation International Film Festival in Hollywood.
Having known him for years, I decided to call him up and ask him about the film, “Los Guardianes del Maíz” ("The Keepers of Corn"), which I was privileged to see an advance copy of. It combines scenic views of rural life in Southern Mexico's La Chinantla region with in-depth interviews of indigenous farming families, food sovereignty activists, agricultural organizers, and genetic scientists.
“Los Guardianes del Maíz” explores the resiliency of corn-growing communities and the fragile systems that secure their survival in the face of threats from corporate colonialism, toxic chemicals, climate change, and even Coca-Cola. Ultimately, it reveals the interdependent relationship between corn and humans, which have cultivated each another, as it were, over hundreds of generations.
The film will screen on April 9, 2022 at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th Street, in San Francisco’s historic Mission District. It is a collaboration with Executive Producer Jonathan Barbieri, an artist and alcohol spirits producer Vazquez-Orozco met 45 years ago, while both were students at the San Francisco Art Institute. Vazquez-Orozco is a professor in the film and digital media department at UC Santa Cruz.
The film has shown in numerous festivals around the world, including the Seattle Latino Film Festival, International Multicultural Film Festival in Australia, Festival de Cine Amazonia del Plata in Argentina, SUNCINE Environmental Film Festival in Spain and Mexico, Sustainable Living Film Festival in Turkey, in Canadian festivals and elsewhere.
I caught up with Vazquez-Orozco recently by Zoom.
Vazquez-Orozco (center), Executive Producer Jonathan Barbieri (right) and Online Producer Yira Vallejo (left). photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-Orozco cineSOURCE: Who would you say is the hero of this film?
Vazquez-Orozco: The heroes and heroines of the film are all the members of the traditional indigenous communities in Oaxaca [Mexico]. When I would ask a question, such as ‘What do you think about this or that...' consistently the answer was, ‘I don't speak for myself, I speak for my community.'
While the film surveys traditional indigenous agriculture, as a model that can be applied where industrial mono-cropping failed, it is also about people. It explores the cultural continuity that links today's corn farmers in Oaxaca [State, Mexico] to their pre-colonial ancestors.
In the course of our three-year journey, we learned that—even under the stress of bio-piracy, the aggressive promotion of glyphosates [fertilizers], natural disasters, broken promises and the incursion of Maruchan instant soups and Coca-Cola—traditional farming communities have be
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. FioreHis 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
Prodigal Photographer Returns
by Doniphan Blair
The cover for Nicholas Blair's new book of photographs from powerHouse Books. photo: N. BlairNICHOLAS 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. BlairHe 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. BairSome 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. BlairThe "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. BlairOverall, “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 EntertainmentSpiderman 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. BlairAfter 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 DisneyThe 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. CollinsVince 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. BlairNOTE: 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 IntelligenceNOTE: 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. Blair2. 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. BlairRussia: 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. BlairWe 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 MeyersSi 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 colleagueSecond 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 was 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.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 colleagueAs 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 colleagueA 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. BlairI 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. BlairIn 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. BlairThursday, 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. BlairONE 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: unknownBL: 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. BlairDB: 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. LucasFOR 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. BoswellAlas, 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“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)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 SDUTAlas, 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 facilitating 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: unknownAs 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. KunisadaThe 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: unknownConflating 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: unknownWhile 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, 1814Indeed, 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: unknownJapanese 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: unknownAlas, 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: unknownKnowing 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 GhibliAnimated 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. ForeMark 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. CameronJames 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 LucasfilmThe 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 MuseumSan 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&MIn 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. FleischerYou 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. FleischerAlison 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. BlairIndeed, 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. BlairWhile 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. SaidAlas, 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. BlairThe 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. BaillieWas 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. HopperDennis 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. BlairLetter 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. BlairIT'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. BlairI 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. BlairFourteen 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. BlairAs 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. BlairWhen 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“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 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. BlairIt 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 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. BlairIT 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. BlairWithin 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. BlairI 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. BlairAt 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. BlairTo 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. BlairElle 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. BlairIndeed, 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. BlairTHE 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“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 KurzenWhat 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. BlairAaron 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. BlairIndeed, 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“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. BlairAfter 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. BlairThose 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. BlairAfter 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. BlairIn 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“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. BlairAs 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 GhibliAnimated 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. ForeMark 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. CameronJames 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 LucasfilmThe 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 MuseumSan 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&MIn 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. FleischerYou 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. FleischerAlison 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 Cohen
Animation grunt workers at their posts. photo: unknownMicrosoft 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. BlairDearest 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 MagazineYou 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 BlairFor 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. BlairWHEN 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“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 Republican Spain sympathizers, probably communists, effected their release and renewed transport into 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 escalation. Meanwhile, Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were sending troops, pilots and tons of war materiel to Franco’s 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. BlairVach 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“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. BlairHis 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“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 letter 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. BlairPerhaps 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 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 archiveAny 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 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 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 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. BlairI 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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SUWU is an East Bay group organized by a few young Ukrainian-Americans who took it upon themselves to raise money and to travel to Ukraine to set up a highly efficient delivery system to help people in severe need.
They achieve this by A) buying all supplies in Ukraine, which both saves on shipping and stimulates the economy, and B) by setting up ad hoc shipment centers in living rooms and garages and having local volunteers package every thing from food staples to cleaning supplies and clothing.
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. MuraySAN 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. KahloSome 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 a 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. RiveraIf “The Allegory of California” is matriarchal, Diego's companion, patriarchal piece is two miles away at the San Francisco Art Institute. 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 800 Chestnut Street, which consists of an old monastery with bell tower in front and modern, angular cement building in back. There is no status update on the door but when I pushed it opened. In the small, arch-line, Moorish courtyard, the pool once full of gold fish and lilies was empty. It 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, following a proclivity for self-portraiture inspired by Frida. Instead of planting a magical tree with a sex goddess, however, Diego 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. KahloHer 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 local treasure until, about the mid-1970s when, ka-boom: 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 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 was 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: unknownWhile 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. RiveraI 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 cultural-connection 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 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, uniquely female art. Georgia was also a great multiculturalist—her boyfriend was the New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who loved to argue, happened to be Jewish and had an overweening mother—and lover. Indeed, she was a intimate with the 30-something-year-old Juan Hamilton in her 90s.
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. BlairDespite 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, romance and creativity, the perfect stage for Frida and Diego’s self-invention, sexuality and fantasy.
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. MurayWho 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“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. BlairIn 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“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. BlairAndrii 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“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. BlairImagine 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• 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.
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. BlairUkraine 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. BlairUkrainians 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. BlairAs 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. BlairYarema 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. BlairMilitant 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. BlairNo 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. GrosserAs 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. BlairDirk 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“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. BlairIn 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: #NeivanmadeAs 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. GillesYET 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. GillesPlaying 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. GillesIndeed, 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. GillesThe 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. BlairCineSource: 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. BlairHere 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. BlairJust 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. BlairThis 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 RodriguezYeah. 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. BlairUkraine’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. BlairY.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. BlairWhile 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. BlairIt 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. BlairIn 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“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. BlairAndrii 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 McCarthyism!"
“We don’t worry about such bullshit!” interjected Andrii, “We have too many conspiracy problematics from Russia.”
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.
The Lviv youth debate team: (rt-lft) The 16-year-old Evelina, Andrii, Vasyl, Marion and Yaroslav. photo: D. BlairStepping into Dizzy once, I found it empty except for Andrii and Vasyl arguing loud and fast and gesturing wildly. “What are you debating?” I finally interrupted. “Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome,” Vasyl said. “Which side are you on?” “Equality of opportunity.” “So Andrii is still a leftist?” “Sort of.” “Does Dizzy’s owner ever worry you’re driving away customers?” “No. He sits right there,” said Andrii, pointing to where I had seen a quiet, amiable fellow, by the name of Volodya, Vasyl told me. “I buy a coffee or two a day,” he added, “As do all our friends, which keeps Volodya in business.”
Indeed, Dizzy was often half full of their friends, working on laptops, chatting quietly, debating loudly or getting caffeinated. They were mostly young women like Maria, a sweet, smart and hardworking translator, to whom Vasyl would call out mid-sentence for help with a word in English, Anya, the elegantly-dressed, redheaded photographer, who did their photo shoots, or Zosia, an artist, graphic designer and adventurous spirit as well as Dizzy’s weekend barista, who once told me, “Lviv is all hippies."
Some of them were helping Andrii and Vasyl on their new 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 ruins of the 16th century Golden Rose Synagogue is one of Lviv's only Jewish memorials and a popular teen hangout. photo: D. BlairThen I headed to my favorite, the Golden Rose Synagogue in Old Town, a wonder of medieval architecture from 1582 until August 1942, when the Nazis destroyed it, except for the floor and back wall. Aside from the memorial for the Jewish ghetto, which has a nice park on a main avenue with a menorah and large sculpture, the Golden Rose is Lviv's only Jewish memorial. It features extensive explanatory signage, in Ukrainian and English, and a modest row of waist-high black stones engraved with photos and quotes. One stone has a famous 17th century rabbi, Joel Sirkis, declaring, "[Lviv is] a grand and glorious city, full of scholars, writers and teachers... the source of wisdom and foundation of prudence."
In addition, for the last 30 years at least, the Golden Rose has been a hangout for teenagers, perhaps because there’s no one to chase them away. In all kinds of weather or times of day, up to a hundred kids of Lviv are at the Golden Rose, playing music, goofing around, flirting and drinking, sometimes to excess, sometimes relieving themselves in the destroyed sanctuary, since no toilet is readily available.
They breathe life into old stones, I find, which is why I had already visited the Golden Rose three or four times. And why I spent a few hours there the afternoon of Rosh Hashana, gazing into its grassy remains, reading about the Jews of Lviv and their annihilation, and thinking about my own mistakes and trespasses during the last year, which is the spiritual assignment of the last day of the ten-day holiday, Yom Kippur. "Were there any major errors I was missing?" I wondered.
The kids didn’t pay me much mind, despite my being over three times their age, until I felt a presence behind me: a short, stocky young man. Speaking decent English, Valter, 23, a soldier on leave from fighting near Kharkiv, invited me to drink with his buddies. I begged off, explaining I’d rather not since it was a Jewish holiday, but he kept repeating his invitation and, somewhere in there, noted his grandfather was a Nazi.
“A Nazi from Germany?” I asked, incredulous. “Yes,” Valter said. “Was he an OK person?” “Yes.” “Did he give you candy as a kid?” “Yes.” “Did he treat your mother well?” “Yes,” he said and added, tentatively, “It is weird. My grandfather fought the Russians. Now I am fighting the Russians.”
I looked into Valter's unassuming gaze. Facing physical death or the moral dilemma of dehumanizing the enemy is not a walk in the park at any age. Indeed, my Foreign Legion contact, Terry, tough as he claimed to be and over twice Valter's age, mentioned both of those difficulties. Finally, I said, “It’s good you are talking about it,” and gave him a hug, which he accepted. “Keep talking about it, I would say, just keep talking about it.”
Valter’s friends were Oras, six-foot-seven, about 20 and with an excellent command of English; Adriana-Maria, younger and blonde, who poured me a paper cup with some hard alcohol and an energy drink, which I held but didn’t sip, and two 14 year olds, Ruslan and Nazar, who attended high school nearby. The nattily-dressed and dark, shoulder-length haired Ruslan didn’t speak a word of English, but the skinny, scruffy and nerdy Nazar did, expressively if haltingly. Ruslan and Nazar seemed to be enjoying Lviv’s dreamy, vibrant youth scene, even in the middle of a deadly, disastrous war, which Valter must have had told them about, and to which they may have to eventually go.
Valter (cntr), a 23 year-old soldier, shows a drawing of him at the front by a 9-year girl, who gave it to him, and (lft-rt) Oras, Adriana-Maria and Ruslan, the Golden Rose Synagogue memorial, Lviv. photo: D. Blair• Six days earlier, on September 20th, President Zelensky addressed the U.N. Assembly by video. “What is not in our formula? Neutrality,” he said. Later, he asked, “Why [is] the Russian military so obsessed with castration? What was done to them so that they want to do this to others?” but ended on a hopeful note. “We decided to provide humanitarian aid to Ethiopia and Somalia… additional amounts of our wheat.”
• The next day, Putin ordered the immediate mobilization of 300,000 soldiers and repeated his big lie: Russia will “liberate [the Donbas] from the neo-Nazi regime, which seized power in Ukraine in 2014 as the result of an armed state coup.” Russia will also defend itself, including territory incorporated after the upcoming “referendum,” by any means necessary, he said, voicing yet another nuclear threat, which started on February 28th, when Russia’s nuclear forces went on high alert.
• Within hours, there were arrests, riots and shootings at Russian draft centers, including authorities by draftees. Mostly non-Russian, they were well aware they will become part of the standard Russian strategy of throwing large numbers of troops against better -trained and -equipped opponents. Within days, up to a quarter million military-age men had fled Russia, choking airports and border crossings from Finland to Kazakhstan.
• On September 24th, the so-called referendum "asked" Ukrainians in Russia-controlled territory whether they wanted to become Russian, with soldiers going house to house coercing votes, even from 13 year olds. The same day, Zelensky announced that surrendering Russian soldiers “will be treated in a civilized manner, in accordance with all conventions,” while a United Nations panel reported that Russians had tortured civilians and raped children.
• Four days later, the referendum passed by a supposed 97% and, the following day, a video went viral of a Russian soldier surrendering after finding himself at the front without proper equipment, three days after being drafted off a street in Moscow.
• On September 30th, the Kremlin celebrated “Ukrainians rejoining the motherland” in Moscow’s Red Square with pop music performances, a military spectacle and speeches. “Western elites deny national sovereignty and international law," Putin said, using the common conspiracist trick of accusing enemies of one’s own crimes. "Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism,” he claimed before calling on Kyiv “to end the war that they unleashed back in 2014.”
• That same day, Zelensky stood on a Kyiv street empty except for a small desk on which he signed Ukraine’s official application to NATO.
That same night, the last one of September and a Friday, coincidentally (considering Andrii and Vasyl's magazine), 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 Bratyska's famous borscht, replete with its fabulous side dishes. photo: D. Blair 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.
“It is already World War Three,” according to some Russia analysts, like the preeminent English-American Fiona Hill, who was Trump’s Russia expert but provided damning testimony at his first impeachment, which was all about Ukraine, oddly enough. Indeed, it concerned Trump’s attempt to blackmail President Zelensky, whom Trump considered corruptible, but then Trump's exposure as corrupt by a Ukrainian-American, ironically, the U.S. Army intelligence officer Alexander Vindman, who listened in on Trump’s “perfect phone call.” Trump's scam—to withhold essential weaponry until Zelensky enacted or merely announced a phony investigation into President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, who was paid $11 million from 2013 through 2018 by the Ukrainian company Burisma—was probably suggested by his so-called Ukraine expert, Paul Manafort. Trump and company also repeated Kremlin conspiracy theories like Ukraine is not a real country, it is the most corrupt country in world, and it, not Russia, hacked the Democratic National Committee's emails in 2016.
Putin has worked with conspiracy theories his entire professional life, first as a K.G.B. agent, then as president. Shortly after his appointment, in fact, he blamed Chechens for the highly suspicious Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999 in order to start the Second Chechen War. Wars work well with the conspiracist formula that reality is an illusion, enemies are out to get us, and only I can save you.
“In my opinion, the reason [Putin is] at war in Ukraine is not a fear of NATO enlargement or because he’s trying to build a bigger Russian empire for his legacy,” remarked William Browder, who is from a famous leftist American family but became the biggest hedge fund manager in Moscow until he crossed Putin, on Ukrainian television (10/22/2022). Instead of following the zeitgeist shift to post-modern kleptocracy, Browder blew the whistle on corruption. After he was almost extradited to Russia from Spain, on a phony Interpol warrant, Browder developed the Magnitsky Act, which was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2012 and then by Canada and the European Union. It facilitates the sanctioning of foreign officials who violate human rights, and the freezing of their assets, and is named for Browder's lawyer, the Ukrainian-born Sergei Magnitsky. In 2009, the F.S.B., the successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., arrested, tortured and killed Magnitsky.
"I think he’s at war because he’s a dictator who has stolen so much money over the last 22 years from his people that he’s afraid the whole thing will explode,” Browder concluded. “I believe he started this war in Ukraine, very simply, to distract his people away from him towards essentially a fictitious enemy, the Ukrainian people.”
“After Crimea, his popularity was at 90 [percent] and so life was good for Putin,” noted the Russian economist Sergey Guriyev, now living in France (Global Economy Meeting, 1/12/23). “Then it started to come down—because of raising retirement age, because of pretty successful anti-corruption campaign, and social media campaign by the opposition, so his popularity came to 60 again—and so he thought it was time to do something like 2014, something like Crimea.”
Yet another 'art during war' piece depicting the Russian president, at Kyiv's Military Museum. photo: D. Blair As dawn breaks over Kryva Lypa, I finally realize what's been bugging me since Rosh Hashana.
When I was 12 years old, I did a school presentation about and solicited donations for Biafra, where two million people eventually starved to death in Nigeria’s civil war (1967-70). In 1983, I started reading the history and literature of the Holocaust and attending conferences, in an attempt to heal myself, my family and my community. To a limited degree, I spoke out about the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, as I wish more people had for European Jewry. My first published piece, “Interview with Bruno Lowenberg”, was about a Berlin bookman and survivor of Dachau and won a North-West Journalism Award (1983). I co-created “Our Holocaust Vacation” (2007), a documentary about my family’s return to Poland with my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, an Auschwitz survivor, which showed on PBS, and I edited her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption” (2021, Austin Macauley, available through all major outlets).
But I neglected Ukraine.
As the first of October brightens into a gray, rainy day, I realize: Not only did Obama and Merkel drop the ball on Ukraine, I had. When Russia voided the Budapest Memorandum by invading Crimea and the Donbas, there should have been more governmental sanctions—if not military intervention or at least arm shipments by the Memorandum's signees—but also people protests. That I didn’t recognize Ukraine's Woodstock-nation moment in 2014, nor its harsh repression by a colonialist overseer, or that I can't even convince some of my hard-left friends that is what has happened—even after telling them about my two-month encounter with Ukraine (my loud exchange with Lyudmila, an 80-year-old physics professor and Russian-Jewish-American, at a Hanukkah party in the Oakland hills, was embarrassing)—is a personal failure of grotesque proportions, given one of my life projects is to oppose genocide.
I only started reading Snyder and Applebaum after February 24th—ordering their books that very day, in fact—although I had read about and endorsed Snyder’s thesis, detailed in his “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” (2010), that both Germany and the Soviet Union sought to colonize and depopulate Ukraine. I raced through his “The Road to Unfreedom” (2018), even while taking 25 pages of notes, so gob smacked was I to learn that the American conspiracist movement, which I had been researching and opposing since 9/12, and writing and publishing on since June 2020 (see "Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs"), borrowed many of its methods and claims as well as hacked emails from Russia.
All authorities lie constantly is the radical, new Russian worldview, according to Snyder, who observes that, “[Russian] politicians first spread fake news themselves, then claim that all news is fake, and finally that only their spectacles are real,” on page 11 of “The Road to Unfreedom”. That they are both more honest about the spectacle and better at it is how they sell it simultaneously to a naive public as well as conspiracy professionals. In their post-truth world, as well as perpetrate endless conspiracy theories, they can erase bothersome facts, assuage enormous suffering through denial, and endorse evermore outrageous fantasies, including their hybrid of postmodernism, socialism, fascism and Russian traditionalism, which will save the world, they claim, from western imperialism, decadence and gender dysphoria.
I also gobbled up Applebaum’s “Twilight of Democracy” (2020), a precise, personal and comprehensive view of liberal democracy's decline in Europe. Poland's lurch to the right surprised me since it seemed to be doing a great job of integrating with Europe, when I visited in 2005, and it had made immense progress since 1997, when I was there filming "Our Holocaust Vacation". Applebaum had a ringside seat, since her husband, Radek Sikorski, was Poland's Minister of Defense from 2005 to 2007 (he also led the E.U.’s admirable attempt to mediate between the Maidanites and Yanukovych). She details how the Poles were overcome by “the politics of resentment,” polarization, anti-democratic practices and what has become a worldwide religion, conspiracy theories. “’[T]here was no such thing as an accident [to him],’” a friend of Applebaum told her about Lech Kaczyński, Poland’s president from 2005 to 2010, “’If something happened it was the machination of an outsider. Conspiracy is his favorite word.’”
Along with Snyder, Applebaum has long reported on related problems in Russia—notably in her books "Gulag: A History" (2004, Pulitzer Prize winner) and "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" (2017)—and foreshadowed or predicted the current catastrophe.
The goddess Berehynia on her column surveying the Maidan, including a field of Ukrainian flags honoring fallen Ukrainian and foreign fighters. photo: D. Blair “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 those conclusions can be psychologically devastating but we have to embrace the possibilities.
Nevertheless, 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 and they survive, 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.
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.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Dec 22, 2022 - 01:33 PM
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• 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“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. BlairUkrainians 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. BlairAs 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. BlairDuring 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. BlairMore 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“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. GrosserTheir 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. BlairKyiv 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. BlairEvidently, 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. BlairMarina, 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: #NeivanmadeIn 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. BlairThinking 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. BlairAnother 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
Posted on Dec 21, 2022 - 09:05 PM
The Benefits of Commemoration
by Doniphan Blair
Irena places a family photo on the monument at the mass grave in southern Poland containing her family, with her Uncle Nick and Cousin Stefan. photo: D. BlairI COULDN'T STOP CRYING, ALMOST
since I arrived in Mszana Dolna, a resort town of 7,000 in the scenic foothills of southern Poland’s Carpathians Mountains, probably more tears than I had shed in the entire last 20 years. Not only is Mszana Dolna where my grandfather Mendel, grandmother Miriam, aunt Irena and uncle Salek Rotkopf were murdered by the Nazis, it is the site of an ambitious attempt to memorialize, remember and revive Polish Jewish history.
Called Sztetl Mszana Dolna (see Facebook page here), the project is led by Urszula Antosz-Rekucka, a theologian, high school ethics teacher and town resident, and supported by her daughter Rachela, son Jakub, and husband Mark but also the town’s mayor, Anna Pękała, her staff— notably the tireless, always smiling Agnuska—and other Mszanians, as well as some Polish NGOs.
My family—my brother Nick, daughter Irena, nephew Stefan and niece Willa—and I decided to travel to Mszana after my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, died last December 9th. We wanted to spread her ashes on her family’s mass grave but also be there on August 19th, just as we were in 1997 and 2005, to commemorate the killing of almost 900 people on that day in 1942.
We hadn't seen anyone at the site before, but this August 19th, which was a Friday, there was a crowd: Urszula, her daughter, who was translating, her husband, Mayor Pękała, and a few others, including a young Sztetl Mszana Dolna participant named Tomasz, I believe. He told my daughter he may have some Jewish roots and me that he was interested in art and was doing a lot of drawings.
That so many people showed up was no surprise. We had contacted them and told them we were coming. But it was also the 80th anniversary of the slaughter and the first meet-and-greet of an ambitious, multifaceted two-day event, which Urszula and her team had organized. It would start two days later, on Sunday, so as not to interfere with the Jewish Sabbath.
"As soon as I saw Urszula, I started crying," my brother told me.
The memorial for almost 900 people in Mszana Dolna, Poland, that the Blair family has visited since 1980, recently rebuilt by Sztetl Mszana Dolna. photo: D. BlairAfter Nick messaged her on August 18th, she responded almost immediately.
Although I was not as effected as my brother, initially, I was astounded to see the memorial, set in a small bosque on a picturesque hill two miles from town. Where there had been no sign and a dirt path into the small ravine, there was now a detailed sign at the road, a row of freshly planted trees, and a wide, 150-foot-long, brick walkway. Moreover, the memorial, built in 1946 by Jakub Weissberger, who had escaped to the east but whose entire family was slaughtered there, looked refurbished. In fact, it had been completely rebuilt the year before in an exact replica of Weissberger's original design.
“In memory of 881 Jews from the lower Mszana neighborhood murdered by Hitler’s thugs on August 19th, 1942,” Weissberger had the masons inscribe it, “Whose last words are the silence of this place.”
After our meeting at the memorial, which is called Pańskie, Polish for "our Lord's meadow," Uzrsula led us down the hill about a mile to the old Jewish cemetery. There they had built a brand new memorial honoring the four "small" mass graves geolocated by experts. Soon after our arrival, my brother told me that he felt our grandfather must be buried there. We know from a list provided to us by an older mayor of Mszana that Grandfather Mendel died before the August 19th, 1942 massacre, either of natural causes or, for some infraction or other, what can be called "bulletosis."
After the old Jewish cemetery, Urszula led us into town, behind a factory, to a third mass grave, interred with 22 Jewish youth. They had acquired a couple of guns, were planning an attack, and were probably ratted out.
Actually, we had already visited the Jewish graveyard and rebel's mass grave in 1997, while filming “Our Holocaust Vacation”, our documentary about our mother and our family, which played on American public television. We also met the mayor back then, having gone to the mayor’s office unannounced, cameras blazing. The mayor at that time, Antoni Rog, was undaunted. He calmly welcomed us in and started recounting the town's history, and opening its archives. He knew a lot about its Jewish aspect. Ultimately, he took a half a day off to show us around the graves, train yards and other sites related to the Holocaust in Mszana.
The Blair family, (lf-rt) Stefan, Willa, Nicholas, Doniphan and Irena, at the new memorial built by Sztetl Mszana Dolna at the old Jewish graveyard, where forebear Mendel Rotkopf is probably buried. photo: Kinga McInerneyGenerally speaking, however, the Mszanians have been extremely welcoming to my family—post-war, of course. In addition to Mayor Rog, there was Jadwiga, the woman who helped my mother and my father, Vachel, when they came the first time, in December 1980. They were sleuthing the lead of the postcard my mother received from her family in 1941—many postal services still operated during the war—which was postmarked Mszana Dolna. Jadwiga took them through the fields to the memorial and, when my mother started to cry, embraced her.
Jadwiga also invited them for a meal at her house, a quarter mile away, and did the same when they returned in 1997, along with me, my brother and his wife, Tania. We kept our cameras in their cases then, having decided to let my mother enjoy a quite chat in Polish with Jadwiga.
That was also when, walking back up the dirt path from the memorial, my father told me, “This is the last time I will be coming here. But I want to be cremated and my ashes brought here,” which we did in 2005 and why we decided to follow suit with my mother.
Although my father was an Ohio-born Protestant, he developed a strong affinity for his Jewish in-laws and their culture. His statements at the mass grave, notably “It’s a disgrace to civilization,” which we did film, are some of the more moving moments of “Our Holocaust Vacation”. When he died, we found his subway reading in his hand bag: Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz”.
I assumed I had Jadwiga’s last name and address in my address book, but unfortunately I didn’t. Before leaving New York, I should have looked through my mother’s address book, although we had trouble enough remembering her ashes and the required death certificate.
Somewhere between Pańskie and the Jewish graveyard, Urszula invited us to attend the two-day commemoration, which we were just then learning about. Alas, the rest of my family had a pretty tight itinerary, on route to Hungary, the birthplace of my brother’s mother-in-law and where my niece and daughter were flying back to America in four days. But I accepted. In fact, it was all expenses paid, I was amazed to find out, including meals and a room in the lovely hotel and spa Janda. Mszana is known for its mineral baths, massages and hiking.
Guests and onlookers at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the mass grave in Mszana Dolna. photo: D. BlairThen we headed back up to Pańskie and some serious sobbing.
Walking down the new brick path, Nick and Willa each carried a dirt-filled pot with the wild-looking flowers Irena found, while we were eating at the Perla, and thought Tonia would like. Although she also used Google Translate, Irena has some basic Polish, a famously difficult language, which she started learning in 1997, when she was 16 and hanging out on the streets of Lodz with the Polish kids.
By the time I took out my guitar and started singing “Si Mi Quieres Escribir”, the Spanish Civil War love song that Tonia and Vachel courted each other with, we were all crying. I was bawling so hard, the usually-reserved Stefan even came over from his father’s side to give me a hug.
After singing some of my mother’s favorite Yiddish and Spanish tunes and one Beatles song, “Help”, I read the long chapter about her family, “Miriam and Mendel”, from her book, “Love at the End of the World”, which was published when she was 95 and is available through all major bookstores. Just as when I read her chapter “Auschwitz” in the back of Birkenau death camp, her precise, poignant words conjured her spirit. This time her words also brought to life her family, noted John, who was sitting with Judit on a tree stump to one side of the grave.
By then the sun had set, and it was time to spread Tonia’s ashes, speak our piece, and do our family’s traditional meditation, a long “om.” Although I neglected to prepare, I decided to say how, no matter how difficult dealing with the Holocaust is, it was still easier than not dealing with it, largely addressing my nephew and niece, 23 and 21 respectively. Having visited Auschwitz two days earlier, Stefan and Willa were embarking on the noble quest of tackling that horrific history, as I could see be their many questions.
As tortuous as it may be, we can learn to move beyond the hate, nightmares and recrimination to a modicum of understanding. The love and beauty our family—as well as individuals across the entirety of humanity, including on the opposing side—have produced can sustain us through the darkest degenerations of humanity. In her moving, poetic statement, Irena said something similar.
People walking to the old Jewish cemetery in Mszana Dolna for the unveiling of the new memorial. photo: D. BlairAs she wrote in “Miriam and Mendel”, and I read through a blur of tears in the waning light: “My parents provided all they could but especially their ideas and their love. Although their names and identities will eventually disappear, their values will remain in my children and their children.”
As it happens, however, their names and identities will not disappear, due to the efforts of the Sztetl Mszana Dolna project. In fact, Urszula made a point of mentioning Miriam and Mendel and their experience, which she had only just learned of, as she did with the forebears of all the descendants in attendance, during the two days of commemorations, events and dinners.
It started on Sunday with a trip to the Jewish cemetery. I walked the mile and a half from town, carrying another pot of wild flowers to honor what we now believe is the grave of my grandfather. A Polish scholar living in Hamburg, where I assume she is married to a German, gave a dissertation on the cemetery, which has headstones dating back to the 17th century. She even translated some inscriptions from the Hebrew, which she reads but can not speak.
On the way back to town, I rode with the talkative Polish woman we met on Friday at the graveyard, where she was painting enamel black the cemetery fence in preparation for the event. Named Kinga, after the 13th century Polish queen who renounced royalty to become a good Samaritan nun, her last name is McInerney, since her husband is Irish—yet more intermarrying, although they're both mathematicians.
Kinga hails from an upper-class Polish family, which lost everything except a vacation home in Mszana, due to their obsession with art and painting. A devout but modern Catholic, who can’t abide the literalists, Kinga is fascinated with the stories of the Old Testament.
To fortify ourselves against the inclement weather, which was producing a light rain, we dipped into a sweet shop with her husband and two cute, precocious daughters. Then we went to the teach-in part of the Sztetl Mszana Dolna program. Held in Mszana’s open air marketplace by the river, there were kids' activities, like learning to write Hebrew letters, and adult explorations, like Urszula’s recounting of Mszana’s history.
Jakub Antosz-Rekucka translates for his mother, Urszula (lf), and a Polish scholar on Jewish culture at the old Jewish cemetery. photo: D. BlairThe market event climaxed with a performance of an excellent Klezmer band, which consisted of a woman singer/violinist and an accordionist and bassist. They did “Tumbalaliaka” and “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”, two songs Tonia and I used to sing together, although not with their jazzy overtones.
Afterwards, we repaired to Mszana’s famous “wine cellar” restaurant, a welcome relief since the temperature had dropped, and I was in shorts. Ironically, that was where we ate after filming in Pańskie in ’97 and found their large, fancy chairs funny.
The dinner was for about 50, including the musicians, the organizers and the descendants of the victims: Hanna, granddaughter of Jakub Weissberger, who built the original memorial, Saul, who recited the Kaddish, and his wife Denise from Florida, Svi and his wife and her two sisters from Israel, and others. As is Urszula’s modus operandi, she thanked everyone by name, cited a few details about their forbears and expressed preternatural warmth.
The actual commemoration was the next day. Since it started at 3:00, I had time see Antoni Rog, the ex-mayor, and his son Jakub. We met at the Perla, over another excellent meal. Rog looked great, after some shoulder surgery, although he still smoked, which remains popular in Poland. Now retired, he keeps busy taking care of his grandson, building him an elaborate play structure, but also helping resettle some of the 200 Ukrainian refugees housed in Mszana.
“Although we have taken in almost three million refugees,” he told me, Jakub translating, “We don’t have any refugee camps. They are mostly with families.” He also gave me some pessimistic prognostications on the war.
The commemoration at Pańskie was attended by well over 100 people, including over a dozen of the victim's descendants, three rabbis, two Hasidic brothers from the U.S. and one from Israel, the German consulate in Cracow, many other dignitaries, and dozens of interested Poles from the community. It featured the Israeli rabbi’s sonorous recitation of the Kaddish and an honor guard of Polish scouts, boys and girls.
It continued at the Jewish cemetery with the unveiling of the new monument, the rabbi doing “Psalm 23”, one of my favorites, and an open mic. I took the opportunity to thank the generosity and vision of Urszula and the other Mszanians, whom I noted had always treated my family well. As we were leaving the cemetery, Urszula grabbed my hand and held it as we walked back to the car, a silent but solid and deeply appreciated expression of solidarity and affection.
POlish kids learn how to write Hebrew at a teach-in at the town's open air market that included a history lecture and a Klezmir band. photo: D. Blair“He build the memorial,” Hanna had told me earlier, “so the Poles couldn’t say they did it, which is good—unless they were like Urszula,” she added.
Urszula also told the story of a Jewish man who moved to Mszana, fell in love with a Christian woman and married her, even though his family disowned him. Then, during the war, when it became apparent what was afoot, he convinced a gentile friend in Cracow to claim he had an affair with his wife, and write a letter to that effect, which would prove to the Nazis their daughter was not genetically Jewish.
The theme of deep intimate relations between Jews and gentiles, and how it formed Mszana, was one Urszula kept repeating. Apparently, it was something she had to work hard to uncover, as it was only recently Mszanians started to open up about it. Although Mayor Rog showed us in ’97 a book written by a Mszanian by hand about the war years, Urszula’s quest for living testimony had to wait until one elderly man began talking. Then others joined in.
Having become interested in Judaism and Jewish culture while studying theology at Cracow’s famed Jagiellonian University, Urszula hit upon her bold historical project around 2000.
Another amazing story she told concerned Mszana’s Catholic pastor, Father Stabrawa. Apparently, he had been somewhat antisemitic before the war, caught up in that evil spirit, which seized Poland in the 1930s, after Marshal Piłsudski, who was a dictator of sorts but friendly to the Jews, faded from power.
Once the war started, however, Stabrawa reconsidered his views and became friends with the rabbi of the synagogue across Mszana’s main square from his church. Indeed, his feelings and actions advanced so far, he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, about 60 miles away. He was executed on August 17, 1942, two days before the rabbi and his congregation were mass murdered at Pańskie.
I cracked a tear as Urszula related that story, which highlighted both her interest in Jew-gentile connections and her fearlessness in addressing Polish malfeasance, when she noted Stabrawa had been an antisemite. As it happened, I was in Auschwitz on August 17th and saw some priests carrying flowers to honor Stabrawa.
Urszula Antosz-Rekucka speaks with Hanna the granddaughter of Jakub Weissberger, who built the first memorial for the mass grave in 1946. photo: D. BlairSince Urszula does not speak fluent English, her torrent of words were translated by her daughter Rachela but mostly by her son Jakub, a herculean task he enacted with humility, grace and passion. Indeed, I got to know Jakub in those three days, starting with sitting next to him at the first dinner on Saturday night. That was when he explained the noise from upstairs at the restaurant was a Polish wedding, which I snuck up to see for myself. It included blasting music, strobe lights, wild dancing and serious drinking.
Jakub started helping Urszula in his teens, about 15 years ago. Now he is taking his PhD at the 650-year-old Jagiellonian University, which his sister and father as well as mother attended. His dissertation: How Polish singers misinterpret Bob Dylan’s lyrics when singing his songs, which are popular there.
He also works for a medical journal specializing in the issues surrounding Auschwitz. In the early 1960s, it was the first to publish the Jagiellonian researchers who identified “survivor trauma.” American psychologists only followed in 1964.
At the commemoration at Pańskie, between bouts of translation, Jakub whipped out an accordion and played a haunting melody of his own composition. In the course of our time together, we had fascinating discussions about his mother, the Holocaust, current Polish politics, the Polish psyche, Dylan and Witold Gombrowicz (my favorite Polish author), often accompanied by Justina, his also very interesting and beautiful fiancée.
Doniphan with Antoni Rog, the old mayor of Mszana who befriended the family when they were making their movie 'Our Holocaust Vacation' in 1997, who now works placing Ukrainian refugees around Mszana. photo: Jakub RogOn Wednesday August 24th, I entered Ukraine.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Aug 27, 2022 - 03:32 AM
Planting a Tree with Ferlinghetti
by d’Arci Bruno
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, circa 1955, put his money where his mouth was in terms of literature, law and love. Photo: courtesy City LightsFerlinghetti started City Lights Bookstore in 1953, legally defended Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” from censorship prosecution in ’57, and helped hundreds of other authors, artists, friends and causes. While Jack Kerouac died at 47 from alcohol poisoning and bitterness, the Italian-Jewish American Ferlinghetti, who was orphaned as a child and raised by relatives in Europe, where he studied the classics and became a poet and painter, lived a long, lovely life, exemplifying the best of humanism as well as beat culture.
cineSOURCE has covered Ferlinghetti before, here and here. We’re honored to have the Bay Area artist d’Arci Bruno tell her story of how Ferlinghetti touched her life.
Author d'Arci Bruno beneath the famous Bixbee Bridge which marks the entrance to 'the real' Big Sur and is near the property of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Photo: courtesy d. Brunofriend, Al, an Italian musician and designer, in the carriage house behind a famous musician, who knew quite a lot of artists, musicians and literati of note in the San Francisco Bay Area. The house was located in Bernal Heights and had a large, lovely garden, in which many parties were thrown, and it was there that we were lucky enough to meet many special and talented people.
I am not exactly sure on how Al met Mr. Lawrence Ferlinghetti or the subject of carpentry at his Big Sur cabin came up, but I do know that a work deal was sealed when it was discovered that Al and Lawrence’s son shared a name: Lorenzo. Kismet!
As Italians go, this was all that was needed to ensure all would be well. I was added to the mix as the “helper,” a good cook and organized camper, with many useful skills listed on my growing resume. I am also Italian, so there you go—perfetto!
At the time, I was the overworked manager and merchandiser of a popular women’s clothing store in Half Moon Bay owned by one of my best friends, Danette Pugliese, the bedraggled new mother of twin boys. I was also taking care of another best friend, Diane, who was losing her year-long battle with ovarian cancer. Hence, the prospect of spending two weeks of solitude in Big Sur sounded very appealing.
A plan was made to go to Lawrence’s property to scope out the needed work on May 7th—the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend, 2005—and meet Lawrence there on Sunday.
The drive down to Big Sur is a beautiful one, and it was a glorious sunny day when we set out down the coast. We stopped at the Carmel Highlands General Store for some snacks and a bit more gas—the Coast Highway is a bit desolate between the little settlements—and, by the time we got to the turnoff at the Bixby Bridge, we were ready for a beer and a snack.
After our refrishments, we had a gate code to figure out, halfway down the dusty dirt road, and another one at the property gate. Al was always nervous with codes and alarms, since he tends to set them off, but these went without a hitch. We were let into a sunny clearing surrounded by trees, with two darling, slightly rundown cabins sitting right next to each other.
I had to pee, so I went looking for the outhouse, down a short path through some trees. It was old, and the wood had turned dark and silver over time from the elements—a classic! I swung open the door and scanned for spiders and critters and installed the TP roll I brought. I left the door open to take in the view, which was peaceful, sunny and full of spring.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark inside, I began to notice visitor’s names carved into the wooden walls. Suddenly, one stood out—Jack Kerouac. Before that moment, I must confess, I had not really made the connection to where I was. But sitting there, with my pants pulled down, I was hit by a lightning bolt of historical awareness.
My mouth hung open in awe. I reached out and touched the name with my finger. I don’t know if it was actually carved by him, or done in homage or as a joke, but still—this WAS the place he stayed! It WAS here he wrote the book “Big Sur” (1962).
I ran back up the path to tell Al what I had found, and we began to explore the rest of the property. There were three structures in the compound: the Old West Hotel, which was Lawrence’s cabin, the Kerouac Cabin, located about 15 feet to the right, and another cabin across the clearing and up a short path, the Meditation Cabin. We were there to work on the Old West Hotel and the Meditation cabin.
The Old West Hotel is a two-story structure designed to look like the Old West, with a bedroom with a balcony on the top floor and a fireplace and main room on the bottom, with a wrap-around porch perfect for staying cool when the sun is high and playing guitar and drinking wine/whiskey when it gets low.
It was very charming on the outside, but bare-plywood, cold-bachelor, anti-chic on the inside. No heat, insulation or running water—rustica, molto rustica!
The Kerouac Cabin, on the other hand, was the opposite: very plain and square on the outside, but extremely charming—though completely rundown—on the inside. It had been overrun by mice and other crawly creatures over the years and had that musty, unmistakable rodent urine smell as soon as I opened the door.
Ferlinghetti in front of the 'cabin' he called the Old West Hotel, circa 1998. Photo: courtesy City LightsI fell in love with it, but it was way beyond any modest help that I could give it, so I shut the door. But I could not for one minute imagine the surly, drunk writer who had made it famous ever living there, or loving it for what it was.
We unloaded the rest of our stuff from the truck and decided to go and find the beach while the sun was still out, shoving a couple of beers and the bag of chips into a backpack. We found a little path to Bixby Creek, where we could get water, and followed Lawrence’s directions to the beach by walking along the path at the end of the gated road, and then going down under the Bixby Bridge.
The first house directly behind Lawrence was a giant, modern concrete-and-glass monstrosity, with fancy landscaping going out to the surrounding poison oak, coastal trees and scrubby plants. It looked way out of place amidst the old vacation cabins and small older houses.
The path started off in the dark canopy of trees, surrounded by lush ivy and sloped gently downward, nestled next to the creek and winding through the canyon under the bridge to the beach. There was a funny, little altar near the end of the trail, a place where people tied and propped up things that they found on the beach. It was a fun and whimsical art gallery of sorts, and I enjoyed looking at all of the treasures.
Just after the “Treasure Tree,” the path opened up to the beach and view of the ocean right underneath the beauty of the bridge. Al and I poked around the whole area, skipped rocks, took off our shoes and sat on a log and drank the beers in the afternoon sunshine—heaven!
As the sun began to fade, we wandered back up the path and set about getting some food ready and sorting out our sleeping gear. The cabin was cozy warm from the fire we built, and the bottle of wine we shared did not hurt.
Bruno hard at work on the Old West Hotel. Photo: courtesy d/ BrunoI had never met Lawrence before, so I was a bit excited. I set about tidying stuff up, while Al got out his measuring tape and began to take notes regarding the job: insulating and covering the walls of the Old West Hotel with cedar tongue-and-groove—a live-in cigar box, I thought!
Mr. Ferlinghetti arrived right on time, with a big tree sticking out of his truck. He got out, waved and smiled and shouted, "Hello!" He grabbed a couple of Trader Joe’s shopping bags from his passenger seat and set them on the porch: tins of black beans, some tortillas and a few bottles of Two Buck Chuck Cabernet Sauvignon.
He was very spry for his age, which I guessed to be mid-80s. His eyes were pale and a bit watery, but they held a mischievous sparkle and you could tell that he liked to laugh and have a good time. He was tall and in good shape, which I think he must have owed to his spartan diet of beans, tortillas and wine. His handshake was firm and warm and he grabbed my offered hand with both of his at once.
This is going to be OK, I thought. I asked him if he wanted any lunch, and I fixed us all something while he and Al went over the details of what he wanted done. I called them over when lunch was ready and Lawrence opened a bottle of Chuck and began to tell us stories and tales about all the happenings in Bixby Canyon.
And then he asked me if I would like to help him plant a tree.
“The tree in your truck?” I asked. That was the only time I saw him vexed, as he began to talk about the changes happening in his backyard: the big modern concrete house, the noise, the trucks, the dust, the monstrosity of it all—progress in all of its ugly glory.
He wanted to plant a quick growing, bushy tree to block the view of the big, ugly house. He had bought a buckeye, and he told me a story about why this particular tree, but I can’t remember it now.
At the spot where he wanted to plant it, all I saw was fountains of poison oak spurting out of the ground and spilling off of the bushes. I asked him if he owned any dishwashing gloves, and lo-and-behold he scrounged a pair up. I began to gingerly snip and chop a clearing so we could dig a big hole. I was snipping away, using pruners with the long handles, to remove each offending piece. My only goal from that point on was TO NOT GET Poison Oak.
Al, in the meantime, was on the phone ordering supplies and finding out where to get what in the area, and making lists of lists, and more lists, of stuff we would need. Lawrence also wanted some work done on the Mediation Cabin—mouse proofing and stair fixing—so that had to be measured, too. Lawrence opened a second bottle of Charles Shaw’s finest and got a shovel.
Lawrence began to ask me questions about myself and offered me a glass of wine, which I declined until Operation Poison Oak was finished. He pulled up a stool and told me about his son and his friend’s visit to the cabin. I had noticed two surfboards at the Old West Hotel, one yellow and one purple. I imagined the boys carrying them through the woods on the windy trail to the sea for some fun on hot days.
I asked him about running the book store and we chatted a lot about that. I had been a customer for many years and told him that City Lights was always one of my SF Tour highlights when anybody came to town. We talked about the city changing and both got a little wistful.
I began to dig, mainly because I liked hearing his stories, and I wanted him to keep talking. I took him up on the offer of a glass of vino and we spent a good two hours chatting and flirting (thanks Chuck!) and taking turns digging. When the hole was big enough, Al helped him get the tree, and they put it into place. We replaced the dirt and went to the creek and got a couple buckets of water and gave it a good drink. I often wonder if the tree grew big and bushy enough to hide that awful house from his view.
After we were done planting the tree, we made a plan to begin work the following week, and we all left to go back home to the city. I never met Mr. Ferlinghetti again.
Ferlinghetti's guitar in the Wild West Hotel after Bruno and her boyfriend Al toungue-and-grooved the walls. Photo: d. BrunoEvery morning that I was there, I touched the name Jack Kerouac in the outhouse like a ritual. It was like touching history, and I am part of this history, even though hardly anybody will ever even know I was there.
Maybe the Buckeye remembers.
d’Arci Leigh Bruno Rhine is an artist, educator and all-around adventurer taking a break from the Bay Area in Seattle, who can be reached .
Posted on Jul 07, 2022 - 03:54 PM
Ukraine Fights for Freedom in Song, Film and Television
by Doniphan Blair
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Members of the Kalush Orchestra, winners of this year's Eurovision festival, in their trademark ethnic punk. photo courtesy: the Kalush OrchestraUkraine, much remains hidden. One little known fact: Ukrainians fight so fiercely because they were slaughtered so mercilessly, literally eight times in the last century, from the Nazi invasion and Holocaust to the Soviet Revolution and fabricated famine (see cineSOURCE article).
Nor do we appreciate how they assuage trauma through art.
On top of Ukraine’s many museums, opera houses and folkloric art centers, there has been an explosion of youth culture, from bands and raves to skaters and fashionistas, and regular culture, from television shows and films to comedy clubs—even during the war—or Kyiv’s lauded PinchukArtCentre, four floors of contemporary art capped by One Love, the popular espresso bar.
In fact, a renaissance started after Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution, the ousting of a pro-Russia president in 2014 by months of street protests—not a US-financed coup, as some of my lefty friends continue to claim. It was precisely Ukraine’s robust, 60s-style democracy that drove "Pootie-Poot”—W’s pet name for the tyrant—so mad, he invaded Ukraine days after the closing of the Sochi Winter Olympics, his lavish showcase of Russian success.
In other words, the Russo-Ukrainian War is also an “art war,” pitting creativity, democracy and hope against cynicism, oligarchy and conspiracy theories.
No wonder Ukraine’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, “Stefanie” by the Kalush Orchestra, won on May 14th. Or “Klondike” by writer-director Maryna Er Gorbach took best director and grand jury prizes at Sundance and the Seattle International Film Festival, respectively. Or two months earlier, Netflix started streaming “Servant of the People”, a television series starring none other than Volodymyr Zalenskyy, the comedian who became president, first in fiction then in real life, a post-modern success story binding art and politics.
The Kalush Orchestra epitomizes Ukraine’s traditional combination of ancient and current, in this case folk music and hiphop, replete with a break dancer in an ethnic-art body suit, MC KylymMen, which means “carpet man.” Even though Eurovision is half decided by popular vote and Europeans had a pressing, nonmusical reason to support Ukraine, Kalush’s “Stefanie” was infinitely more authentic than England’s operatic extravaganza, Sam Ryder’s “Space Man,” or Spain’s third placer, a standard, Latin-rhythmed seduction song.
Written by front man Oleh Psiuk about his mother, “Stefanie" evokes motherland but doesn’t mention war, as per Eurovision's prohibitions against politics. The day after Russia’s invasion, in fact, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs the contest from the safety of Geneva, Switzerland, ruled Russian musicians could still compete. They recanted the next day.
This is the third time Ukraine took Eurovision gold, in fact, rather impressive for a 30-year-old country competing against 44 others, some with world-famous music industries like England. It was the eighth time, however, it triggered political controversy, according to a Politico article.
Dustups ranged from Ukraine’s 2019 nominee being forced out for having performed in Russia—the Russo-Ukraine War was five years old by then—to criticisms of the single-named Jamala, who won in 2016 with “1944”. About Soviets deporting to Siberia a quarter million of her people, the Crimean Muslim Tatars, “1944” obviously referenced Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, but EBU ruled it fact and history not politics.
Ironically, Ukraine’s first Eurovision win, in the spring of 2004, was with an utterly apolitical tune with nonsense lyrics. But a few months later, after a pro-Russia candidate tried to steal the election, street protests started and turned into the Orange Revolution. When Ukraine hosted the following year, as per Eurovision's tradition, and the Ukrainian band Green Jolly sang “No to falsifications, no to lies,” the EBU made them censor the fraudster’s name.
After Russia was excluded from this year’s Eurovision, its hackers tried to disrupt the vote, in standard Russian tradition, but failed, according to Italian police. Hours after Kalush’s closing performance, Psiuk kissed his girlfriend goodbye and flew home to join the army and Carpet Man. Already in uniform, he wasn’t even granted leave to perform at Eurovision.
With “Stefanie” booming through bunkers and trenches as well as clubs and headsets across Ukraine, Kalush’s efforts both artistic and military will help determine the outcome of the struggle. Sadly, its brutality and probable longevity convinced EBU to cancel the 67th Eurovision next year in Kyiv, and hand that role to runner-up England. On May 30th, Kalush sold their crystal microphone Eurovision trophy for $900,000 to WhiteBit, a cryptocurrency firm, to buy drones for the Ukrainian Army.
Oksana Cherkashyna, playing Irka, in front of her bombed out house in Eastern Ukraine, from the new Ukrainian movie “Klondike”. photo courtesy: Maryna Er GorbachI was lucky enough to catch it at the San Francisco International Film Festival on May 1st, after racing across town to grab my pro-Ukraine T-shirt and convincing the Berkeley Museum Theater staff to let me in, even though I just lost my driver’s license, which was required for entry along with a vaccination card.
Gorbach uses a slow, dramatic build of human interactions, in perfectly framed shots, often filmed at the glowing height of magic hour, to portray the bloated-with-baby Irka trying to run a small farm with her gruff but loving husband, Tolik, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. That was where the war started in 2014 and today is the site of a World War Two-style artillery duel killing thousands.
Irka is played to smoldering, slowly empowering effect by Oksana Cherkashyna, in her first starring role, who showed up to the Berkeley Museum screening as if this was a regular film festival tour. Unfortunately, her co-star Sergey Shadrin, who rendered Tolik rather nicely, couldn’t make it, having died of natural causes shortly before the film’s final cut was finished.
“Klondike”, the title of which suggests the Russian invasion is a resource grab, starts in low light and mystery, in a 360-degree pan around a large, modestly-modern farmhouse which, we eventually realize, is missing its front, sheared off by a shell. Bit by bit, more and more war intrudes, from Russian soldiers appropriating livestock to a body from Malaysian Flight 17—shot down on July 17, 2014, by Russians not Ukrainians, as some Russophiles still say—landing on their doorstep, or a wing of the shot-down airplane being hauled away in the background.
There is also the dramatic and horrific denouement, which wraps up the story of the pregnancy, and the arrival of Irka’s brother, inspired by the Euromaidan Revolution a few months earlier, who shows up to bring her back to Kyiv for safety and a normal childbirth. One lovely bit has Irka filling the samovar for tea only to, when her brother and husband come to blows, douse them with boiling water, as Gorbach tightens the noose on a political, personal and character-driven story.
Gorbach graduated from the Andrzej Wajda School of Film Directing in Warsaw, Poland, after studying at Kyiv’s National Theatre and the Cinema & Television University. Barely 40, she now has four features under her belt, including “Omar and Us” (2019), about a Turkish soldier’s tough return to civilian life, written by hubby Mehmet, with whom she codirected two more, the 2013 “Love Me”, a lushly-detailed, trouble-in-paradise romance, and the comedy “No Ofsayt” (2009).
At the screening, Cherkashyna was beautiful and bubbly—so unlike her bedraggled Irka as to be unrecognizable—until I asked her if the filmmakers got push back from portraying successionist, Russian-speaking Ukrainians sympathetically. Humanizing villains is standard to drama but hard with war-torn audiences. A dark cloud descended and her explanation drifted through a few questions until she said something like, “I didn’t realize until this invasion that so many of my country people were heroes.”
She is one of them, of course, along with Gorbach, attempting to hold murderers accountable through imaginative storytelling in our new era of hybrid warfare, where we must fight cyberwar and conspiracy theories as well as tanks and missiles. Given the success of “Klondike”, Gorbach will undoubtedly go on to produce an epic about Ukraine’s underdog army and their Churchillian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who played the president in his production company's 'Servant of the People', in the apartment his character shares with his mother, niece and father. photo courtesy: Studio KvartalZelenskyy plays Vasily Petrovych Goloborodko, a high school history teacher, who is filmed ranting to a colleague about the upcoming election and how no one cares, “we always vote for the lesser of two assholes,” and he could do a much better job. When the kid with the phone camera uploads it and it goes viral, his students enter him unbeknownst in the presidential election.
“Servant of the People”, which ran for three seasons (2015-19) and 51 episodes, 40 to 90 minutes in length, is a sophisticated satire, dry humor marked by occasional absurdity and elevated by Zalensky’s excellent acting and resonant voice, skills which translated well to his war-time performance (see it on Netflix here).
It also includes a family sitcom, since Goloborodko, undoubtedly a joke name in Ukrainian, lives at home with his cabbie father, professor mother, and comely niece. Indeed, although the first episode opens with mysterious power players agreeing to let the Ukrainians choose their own president for once, its first major scene starts with Vasily’s father arguing in front of their flat, which wakes him up.
Realizing he is late for class, Goloborodko has to hustle to make coffee, iron his shirt, and usurp his niece to get a turn on the toilet. Indeed, it is there, reading peacefully, that he is interrupted by the arrival of the slick, statuesque Prime Minister Chuiko, played to perfection by Stanislav Boklan, and his entourage who inform Goloborodko he’s been elected president.
Even before that opening, however, the title sequence shows a Kyiv not unlike my hometown of Oakland, with ships and cranes, industrial and all-glass buildings, multi-laned freeways and bike paths, along which Vasily bikes to school—portraying a normalcy that makes the country’s collapse into total war that much more poignant.
While President Goloborodko is the central story, “Servant of the People” keeps flashing back to his life as a teacher or at home, where his family immediately starts leveraging his new position and income. Even though it periodically slips into farce or slapstick, Ukrainian life is satirized slyly, contrasting the opulence of being president and corruption of the oligarchs with an average honest man simply doing the right thing.
Ukrainian politics is skewered mercilessly, however, from an opposing candidate refusing to concede to the former president refusing to leave, hardly a joke in today’s America. The latter impasse leads to Episode 4’s tour de force climax as Prime Minister Chuiko tries to coax his old friend the ex-president—now drunk, dissembling and exhibiting the homoeroticism common but denied across Eastern Europe—to exit the presidential palace.
When Chuiko gives up, saying “Send in the SWAT team,” Goloborodko takes over, drawing on a technique he used to oust his predecessor at the high school: a hilarious pissing contest with each trying to out-quote the other with old sayings.
“Servant of the People” was so immediately popular, Zalenskyy and his production company produced a feature film, “Servant of the People 2” (2016), between season one and two. About President Goloborodko outsmarting the oligarchs in order to reform the country and get IMF aid, it gives the lie to claims that those aspirations were imposed by the West.
Zelenskyy is a talented producer as well as entertainer and actor, who started a comedy troupe, Kvartal 95, with his high school friends, and helped it grow into Studio Kvartal, the producer of famous film and television shows. He also toured Russia doing standup (he's a native Russian-speaker), won Ukraine’s “Dancing with the Stars” in 2006, and acted in eight movies.
Not only was “Servant of the People” smack on the nose, Zelenskyy campaigned for president by presenting his comedy act. While this oddly parallels Trump’s use of his “Apprentice” fame and character to win the American presidency, Zelenskyy clowned honestly and then put joking aside to voice sincere anti-corruption and humanist views, the very opposite of the cynicism and conspiracy theories of Trump and Putin. Indeed, Zelenskyy is the archetypal anti-Trump as well as anti-Putin, neither of whom can give let alone take a joke.
Ukraine also figured in the Trump Administration, of course, from Trump hiring to manage his campaign Paul Manafort, fresh from his years promoting pro-Russian Ukrainian candidates, to his blaming Russian election interference on Ukraine and the notorious “perfect phone call,” when he tried to blackmail Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for desperately needed military equipment. Zelenskyy held the American president at bay with comparative ease, however, given he was a good Jewish boy who got a law degree before venturing into comedy.
As if “Servant of the People”’s making-of story wasn’t spectacular enough, it morphed into the Servant of the People political party whose head has become an international hero, leading not only Ukraine’s storied defense against the most terrible tyrant of our time but a new enthusiasm for democracy, after it has been in decline from Hungary and Poland to Brazil and The Philippines. Yes, Zelenskyy needs high tech artillery and other supplies as soon as possible, but Ukrainian song, television and film is more than able to inspire his people as well as the rest of us, telling that story for the near future and perhaps all of time.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jul 07, 2022 - 02:34 PM
Why Trump and QAnon Are So Hard to Stop: Conspiracy Theories and LARPs
by Doniphan Blair
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Trump's speech on January 6th, 2020, will surely go down as one of the greatest public brainwashing performances in history, equal to Hitler at Nuremberg. illo: D. BlairPEOPLE WHO BLAME DONALD TRUMP'S
behavior on narcissism or authoritarianism often neglect to note his political career has been based entirely on conspiracy theories. Indeed, he endorsed birtherism, the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya, specifically to bolster his 2012 presidential run. It may seem like an odd plank for a political platform, but conspiracism had become popular on the left, after 9/11 and among the anti-vaxxers, and on the right, with prejudices and phobias dating back to the 1950s and beyond.
Moreover, Trump is the scion of a conspiracy theory dynasty. He was best friends with Roy Cohn, the notorious New York lawyer and fixer but also national player and righthand man of Senator Joseph McCarthy during his ‘50s witch hunt for communists and gays. McCarthy’s political career was also based entirely on conspiracy theories.
Whether or not there was a sexual relationship, Cohn knew McCarthy intimately. McCarthy’s big mistake was not destabilizing America during the darkest days of the Cold War, according to Cohn, nor being addicted to gambling, alcohol and morphine, but drinking his own Kool-Aid. Believing CTs is for followers, Cohn realized, while CT leaders must remain free to invent and adapt. They also have to avoid the self-destruction of believing their own lies.
It was love at first sight in 1973 when Cohn met the 27-year-old Trump, who was searching for a lawyer to beat a federal probe of his company’s racist practices. Along with hiring Cohn, Trump adopted his transactionalism and public tactics—attack first, counter attack twice as hard, never admit error or defeat, always blame someone, file endless law suits, delay or deny payments, don’t pay taxes, donate to politicians, and manipulate the media—but also his secret hand: conspiracy theories.
According to McCarthy’s latest biographer, the deep-digging Larry Tye, in “Demagogue” (2020), “The aging Cohn taught the fledgling Trump the transcendent lessons he had learned from his master, McCarthy—how to smear opponents and contrive grand conspiracies.”
After becoming birtherism’s celebrity spokesperson, Trump went on to develop “grand” conspiracy theories about Mexicans and Muslims, but he came to specialize in voter fraud. Conspiracy theories about election theft are comparatively easy to initiate since the vote counting appears hidden in back rooms or on hard drives. Indeed, immediately after the 2012 election, Trump tweeted that Barack Obama "lost the popular vote by a lot," even though he won by five million votes, and that the Democrats stole the election from Mitt Romney. At the 2016 Iowa caucus, he denounced Republican Senator Ted Cruz for ballot stuffing and, a few months later, insisted the Democrats would steal the general election if he won.
On Election Day 2016, Trump supporters scrutinized polling places and trumped-up minor irregularities, which was promoted as “Stop the Steal” by Republican trickster Roger Stone, Trump’s campaign manager but also an old friend and fellow disciple of Roy Cohn. Trump won, mooting that point, but still availed himself of the opportunity to accuse the Democrats of stealing the popular vote, simply because such claims abide a cardinal rule of conspiracy theories: reinforce them relentlessly.
Although his allies and opponents alike attributed his narcissism or fear of losing, four years later, he campaigned on the conspiracy-based proposition that Democrats would cheat again, and he claimed a “landslide” victory on Election Night. He then proceeded to mount one of the greatest false narrative indoctrination campaigns in history, despite having failed to show a shred of evidence for election fraud in scores of court appearances.
Trump debuted his CT team on November 19th, 2020, at the Republican Party headquarters, a foreboding sign for that venerable institution. In addition to his blundering but equally conspiratorial lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, it featured the fast-talking Sidney Powell and her elaborate stories about votes being changed by Venezuela, China and voting machine companies. Powell’s CTs came directly from influencers in QAnon, the dark-fantasy conspiracy cult, which had hit the news six months earlier and shocked many Americans with its strangeness and number of adherents.
Trump unveiled his own “in depth” conspiracy analysis on December 2nd. Although his speech was so lie-laden not even Fox News carried it, its repetitive, declarative sentences were a master class in public brainwashing. Trump’s CT was based simply on voting law changes and mail-in ballot fraud, but he allowed Powell to introduce elaborate international intrigues two weeks earlier to provide his fans a full-service CT emporium replete with the fantastic stories CTers love to entertain.
When Trump didn’t concede, many Republicans and most Americans were stunned, and they found his theories ludicrous. Alas, he had been working on CTs for years; he knew his audience intimately; and he persisted monomaniacally. Assisted by Republican politicians and lawyers but also dirty tricksters and CT professionals, from his old friend Roger Stone to America’s premier conspiracy monger, Alex Jones, who started the popular show “Infowars” and pioneered the theory 9/11 was an inside job, he easily convinced naïve Trumpers, radical rightwingers and mystical QAnons. Indeed, many of all three cohorts were overjoyed when he announced the Stop the Steal movement was back, and he was holding a rally for it in Washington D.C. on January 6th.
The Insurrection became America’s biggest political crisis since the Civil War and the largest crime scene outside of 9/11 but also proof of Trump’s CT powers. It fulfilled many of his predictions and provided a dramatic performance piece around which to build a “saving democracy” fantasy. As crazy as it was—and Republican leaders and Fox commentators were frantically begging Trump to call it off, to save their very lives or legacy not to mention their sanity—later that night, eight senators, led by Ted Cruz, and 139 representatives endorsed Trump’s Big Lie by refusing to certify the Electoral College vote.
Republicans unfamiliar with conspiracy theories and Trump’s ability to manage them were understandably nervous. Nevertheless, despite a year of investigations and exposes about January 6th, from the strongarming of Vice President Mike Pence and the adoption of the fake electors strategy to the many judgements or cases pending against him, Trump is still able to rationalize to partisans his behavior, using euphemism, misdirection, lies, threats and, of course, conspiracy theories.
The big problem facing Trump, Trumpers and their facilitators, as well as those of us attempting to understand and oppose them, is: Once people allow themselves to believe one unsupported conspiracy theory, it is almost impossible to unbelieve, and they generally adopt others, since CTs operate almost entirely in the imagination.
Actual conspiracies, in distinction to the made-up variant, are common among criminals and spies, and not uncommon with politicians, business people, religious leaders and lovers. At any given time, therefore, some people are scheming and others are watching and wondering what they are up to—conspiracy theorizing, in other words.
For the professional conspiracy theorist, however, finding actual conspiracies is secondary to influencing public opinion and accruing power. Moreover, the conspiracy they are actually interested in is the one they are perpetrating themselves, using the conspiracy theory itself. As CT professionals, they finetune it to their followers’ psychology, introducing child abuse accusations, for example, to trigger abuse survivors.
Of course, “conspiracy theory” is also a standard slur against any unproven hypotheses. In addition, fanciful notions are central to religion and art, and they figure in science, business and romance. But when esoteric ideas pertain to religion or love, they must be more spiritual than materialist to operate, and those involving art or business are generally recognized as fiction or speculation.
In politics, however, CTs masquerade as fact.
Trump is not stupid or crazy, despite all appearances. Hardly “a very stable genius,” as he once bragged, he does have emotional intelligence, cracked charisma, and mad publicity and law-skirting skills. In fact, he often outflanks rivals or enemies, particularly those who see him as an idiot, instead of idiot savant, or who fail to imagine the depths to which he can descend.
Largely on that account, Trump acquired a football team, three casinos and an airline, in rapid succession in the ‘80s, even as he bankrupted them with aggressive business strategies, mismanagement and profit skimming. He stayed one step ahead of catastrophe by hustling tax abatements and high-interest loans, by threatening to sue, and by spinning sales pitches and stories, like the notion he was a “disruptor,” who was actually improving a given business, or that his failures were actually successes.
Hence, it can be said that Trump’s middle-to-late business career was also based entirely on conspiracy theories. “It is literally all a fraud, his life,” summarized the hard-working investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, author of three revealing books on Trump, in a 2016 interview.
Once a CT leader convinces followers of their authenticity, facts become fungible, and they can say the opposite of what media or authorities report, what can be called “conspiracy mirroring.” Claiming innocence and that one’s opponent is a criminal monster may seem like a schoolyard tactic, but it is psychologically astute and can give an established narrative a new interpretation simply by flipping a few facts. Conspiracy mirroring is central to conspiracism, in fact, as George Orwell pointed out in “1984,” with his fascist state’s slogan, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Trump learned to manipulate media from Roy Cohn, who started feeding leads to gossip columnists as a teen and had three high school friends become media moguls. Trump used Cohn’s media connections but also roleplaying aliases to plant stories about himself and threats of law suits to repress reports portraying him poorly. He especially opposed those impugning his inflated worth, which he deflates in turn for taxes. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the tabloid National Enquirer, owned for decades by Cohn’s childhood chum, Generoso Pope, buried over 50 damaging stories, including a Playboy model’s detailed allegation Trump raped her.
“Bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity,” Trump explained in his “The Art of the Deal”, which became a bestseller for the mega-publisher Random House but was entirely ghostwritten. “Controversy, in short, sells.” Even the liberal press profits by covering Trump’s transgressions to excess, which provides their audience a popular schadenfreude but gives him free advertising.
Using his spectacle-making superpowers, Trump shifted from struggling real estate mogul to selling lifestyles, at first by licensing his pseudo-opulent brand to other developers. Then he ran beauty pageants, starred in a middling-popular reality television show, “The Apprentice”, and became a politician, starting with running for president, naturally, given his ego and ability to sell worldviews but also apprenticeship to Cohn.
Re-registering as a Republican, Trump tossed his hat into the ring a second time in 2011. Unlike during his brief 2000 campaign, as a pro-choice candidate with the Reform Party, he had a powerful trifecta of support mechanisms: the popularity of his show, the disciplinarian character he roleplayed on it, and the birtherism conspiracy theory. Although he soon realized Romney was a notably moral and capable Republican, and dropped out and endorsed him, he continued to explore his presidential ambitions through birtherism.
While modern life is based on science and facts, conspiracy theorists exploited a growing desire to oppose global, governmental or intellectual authorities and to embrace alternative views and fantasies. These interests started on the left, with the individualism, rebellion and truth questioning of the ‘60s, but were eventually adopted by the right and amplified by the digital age’s flood of information, social media algorithms, fake news and secretive side. The very year the internet blew up, 1995, so did rightwing conspiracism, with the white nationalist bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Newt Gingrich’s scorched earth takeover of Congress, Rush Limbaugh’s conspiracy theories about President Clinton, and the growth of evangelical millenarianism in the final days of the millennia.
Trump is not unique. Many of today’s political and cultural leaders are accomplished CT developers or manipulators, from Vladimir Putin to Fox commentators Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, or public conspiracy theorists, like Alex Jones and Q, the anonymous oracle behind QAnon.
Q’s bio has yet to be conclusively established, but there is strong evidence “he” is not a government insider with “Q-level clearance,” and there were a number of Qs, who usurped the group from each other. In point of fact, QAnon is not an actual cult or political movement but a “live action role playing game,” sometimes called an “alternative reality game.” A form of large group play, often based on scavenger hunts or costume play, LARPs were invented in 1996 by corporate creatives for use in advertising.
Q’s LARPing has been known since 2018 but has only been documented in full by one major news outlet, The Financial Times of London, in its 15-minute, October 15th, 2020, video, “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” That video has only been viewed on YouTube 80,000 times, as of this writing, which suggests that most people doubt something as earthshaking as QAnon could come from a LARP, run by a twenty-something on their phone. Nevertheless, journalists at The Washington Post and NBC News and researchers at Wikileaks and Cult Research Institute of New Jersey, who have investigated QAnon, have often used terms like “game-like” or “possible LARP.”
The most famous corporate LARP was “I Love Bees,” which promoted “Halo 2,” Microsoft’s megahit video game, in 2004. By that time, many gamers, hipsters and Burning Man attendees had started their own LARPs, some of which became popular or cult-like. By the time video games were grossing more than Hollywood films in 2010, gaming was dominating aspects of American culture. Meanwhile, the rest of us acquiesced to the internet’s intrinsic roleplaying and espionage, from inventing online aliases or dating profiles to making anonymous comments, snooping on each other, or fighting fraudsters.
Also around 2010, LARPs crossed into politics on 4chan, a bare-bones soc-med platform devoted to free speech and anonymity. Notorious for its porn and neo-Nazis as well as conspiracy theorists, 4chan also provided an internet commons for more normative rebels including Anonymous, the white-hat hacker association which started there.
In keeping with that nomenclature, people roleplaying intelligence agents turned leakers used aliases like FBIAnon and CIAAnon. Incorporating LARPing’s scavenger hunt and puzzle traditions, they encouraged followers to do their own research, decipher their cryptic posts, and uncover evermore conspiracies.
Indeed, CT proselytizing is itself a LARP. If you act the part of an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist, even though no one knows what you really believe, you can attract followers and attack opponents. LARPing increases audience participation, communication and innovation, along with in-group attachment. These abilities empower QAnon to operate far beyond the methods and hierarchies of traditional political movements, religious cults or conspiracy theory mongers.
Trump was probably not that aware of LARPing by name, but he was a pop culture maven who had been performing most of his life. Having roleplayed a politician since the late-‘80s and worked with Cohn and conspiracy theories even longer, he applied that expertise to his third presidential race, which he wasn’t actually trying to win, according to many observers, just build brand awareness for his declining empire.
After his dramatic descent of the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, he unveiled a colorful CT about evil Mexicans before a surprisingly large crowd of young people. They turned out to be actors paid $50 each, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Themes like “make American great again” seemed cliche, but he sharpened them with his three-decade-old refrain of “America is in danger” and “only I can fix it,” which is Conspiracy Theory 101. Indeed, “Things are not as they seem,” “Secret enemies are plotting,” and “Only I can save you,” i.e. only an authoritarian leader who knows the game can succeed, are the trinitarian tenets of conspiracism.
Running mostly for publicity, Trump was liberated to be irreverent and spontaneous. A seasoned performer as well as megalomaniac, he flourished on the campaign trail, especially against a lackluster field of Republican candidates, who knew nothing of his tactics, let alone how to counter them. Seeing his strongest opponent as the similarly-conspiratorial Cruz, Trump bombarded him with CTs, from the claim he stole the Iowa caucus to the one about his father helping Oswald kill Kennedy, no less. The liberal press took Trump literally, lambasting him for lying, but many Americans viewed his statements figuratively or plausible and not unlike those of other politicians.
After the election, Trump kept vote rigging in the news with allegations the Dems stole the popular vote and by forming the Commission of Electoral Integrity, which failed to find any significant evidence and soon closed. It seems silly until one realizes: Trump was carefully crafting a robust stolen-election conspiracy theory and cementing it deep into the American psyche, along with supporting notions like “lying press” and “deep state,” a cany insurance policy for his new-found career in politics.
Conspiracy theories had come a long way from the ‘50s. By 2016, they ranged from routine, like “Hillary Clinton is hiding a debilitating disease,” to unhinged, like PizzaGate or “most birds are surveillance drones,” which was started as a joke by the barely-20-year-old Peter McIndoe (as he admitted in December 2021).
In October 2016, Wikileaks published the emails of Clinton’s campaign chairperson, which were hacked by Russians six months earlier, and PizzaGaters “deciphered” them to “discover” a subterranean realm of Democratic devil-worshippers. Given Russian troll armies were promoting fake news favoring Trump, we had arrived at a free-for-all, cyber world war, where a conspiracist with online expertise could besmirch almost any one or thing.
By expressing fears creatively, CTers can join forces with hipster skepticism and reactionary prejudice to earn low-cost entry to community leadership and, if they excel in the disinformation marketplace, real political power.
Much like religious faith, CTs help people manage life’s vagaries. By replacing informed speculation with a simple explanation of hidden forces, CTs generate a form of low-level mysticism, hence their popularity among yoga teachers, massage therapists and other new agers. For the true believer, CTs relieve existential angst, boost status, and provide both a noble quest and base outlet for anger. The unfulfilled predictions and Kafka-esque claims can be disappointing or disgusting, and some truthers drop out, but the vast majority continue to enjoy their community’s ability to provide psychological relief, entertainment and defense against ridicule. And they are constantly re-energized by new theories, fostering inflationary levels of fantasy.
In such a competitive CT market, the original Q—a twenty-something living in Nevada named Manuel Chavez, according to The Financial Times, whose first post, in October 2017, promised that Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested—decided to incorporate not only PizzaGate but almost all previous conspiracy theories.
Although Chavez claimed he did it as satire, to expose those repeating his lies, he and the other Qs fashioned the first super conspiracy theory, based on the keystone concept America is controlled by a secret society of Satanic, pederast Democrat politicians and celebrities. As if that were not perverse enough, they added cannibalism. Strange as it sounds, it was an easy sell to evangelical Christians, who truck in those metaphors, but also radicals on the right or extreme left, who see opponents in different terms but similarly evil.
After Trump’s inauguration, rather than becoming more presidential, as advisors suggested and opponents hoped, he decided to govern through CTs. Cohn’s “ten commandments” guided how he broke with allies and international organizations, cozied up to Russia, started a trade war with China, and dominated the media with his dumpster-fire, news-making methods. Moreover, Trump kissed the conspiratorial ring on InfoWars in October 2016, telling Alex Jones “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down,” and began forwarding QAnon tweets only a few weeks after Chavez started roleplaying Q in late 2017.
Trump doubled down with the pandemic. Hoping to keep alive the economy, his main transaction on offer to Americans, regardless of loss of life, he used every CT in the book: deny, exaggerate, blame others, and discredit authorities, while floating evermore CTs. Sure, Trump vocally supported rapid vaccine development and quietly got vaccinated, but that didn’t stop him from proselytizing quack cures and Covid CTs. Indeed, they were the low-hanging fruit he could use to feed his overall CT indoctrination, which he ramped up as the election approached while returning to his big CT project: election fraud.
As Trump increased his conspiracism, and QAnons became a colorful contingent at his rallies, the person roleplaying Q decided to renounce leadership, one of the few big CTers in history to voluntarily relinquish a mass movement. In his 2021 HBO documentary, “Q: Into the Storm”, the ever-dogged director Cullen Hoback exposed the last Q as Ron Watkins, whose father owned 8chan and 8kun, the 4chan-like website where Chavez posted. Platform ownership gave the Watkinses upstream tech control.
Watkins denies this charge vehemently, but he was a well-known QAnon influencer; he resigned as 8kun’s administrator on Election Day, 2020; and Q stopped posting that day as well, except for four short posts. Watkins resurfaced as a “conspiracy theory analyst,” sometimes consulted by news organizations, and he supported the Insurrection, but he advised his followers on Inauguration Day, “We have a new president sworn in, and it is our responsibility as citizens to respect the Constitution.”
Having probably been Q for over three years, Watkins considers himself a CT grandmaster. Indeed, after years living unconventionally in the Philippines and Japan, he moved back to the United States and declared for Congress, as a Republican in Arizona. Watkins obviously assumes he can excel in a party where many leaders spout bizarre fictions, many voters believe them, and the best theorist often wins.
Trump also had the option of bowing out gracefully on Election Day, especially after most of his staff accepted he lost the election, but decided instead to launch his unprecedented CT indoctrination campaign. It provided hope to millions of QAnons desperate for guidance after Q stopped posting, turning Trump into the de facto Q.
Under pressure from his risky gamble and all the CTs flying around, Trump converted from Cohn’s roleplaying CT management to McCarthy’s full believer. Although it opens him up to delusion and his followers to mass psychosis, “true belief” binds CT leaders more tightly together with followers. While Trump didn’t seem to believe birtherism, 9/11, or most other CTs, he obviously believes his vote-stealing charges, at least his simple mail-in ballot version, and that he can run it for years for his own benefit, if not that of the Republican Party, let alone America.
Many QAnons were discouraged or distraught when Trump didn’t retake the presidency during the election, the Insurrection, the Inauguration, on March 4th (Inauguration Day until 1933), or an undetermined summer, fall or winter event, as predicted by QAnon influencers or nonaligned CT celebrities like My Pillow owner Mike Lindell, who is still insisting Trump’s reinstatement is but days away.
By the end of 2021, one QAnon contingent was holding a vigil for the long-dead John F. Kennedy Jr, who their influencers claimed would emerge from hiding to become Trump’s vice-presidential candidate in 2024. Another faction was insisting the pandemic and/or vaccine are a “plandemic,” a genocide organized by the deep state, even as the unvaccinated, including many anti-vax activists, expire in ever greater numbers. Others have joined fascist militias or believers in the “secret space program,” or its ontological opposite, the “flat earth.”
Adding insult to injury, a QAnon hero, lieutenant general, ex-National Security Advisor and convicted felon Michael Flynn, denounced QAnon as “total nonsense” and a “disinformation campaign” developed by the C.I.A. Then Alex Jones attacked Trump for supporting vaccines, although that is a standard Jonesian ploy to roll back Trump’s CT market share and augment his own.
Alas, Trump is the best coifed, most plainspoken and agile conspiracy theorist America has ever seen. Despite his many obvious errors, he makes the often hysterical and disheveled Jones, as well as the sleazy Cohn, country lawyer McCarthy, triple-agent Flynn or porn-addicted Watkins, look like pikers. By roleplaying a tough president, a jocular celebrity or a side show barker, often in quick succession, while winking at QAnon and white supremacists, Trump is running multiple conpiracist cohorts with amazing effectiveness, as exemplified by January 6th but also his spectacular rebound as the leader of the Republican party.
Nevertheless, many people still find it hard to believe Trump’s strategy is based largely on conspiracy theories, and the media doesn’t emphasize it. In The Atlantic’s otherwise excellent “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun” (12/6/21)), author Barton Gellman mentions conspiracy theories but only a couple of times.
In point of fact, Trump will go down in history as the CT master who almost pulled off the perfect conspiracy mirroring operation, using a CT about a stolen election to nearly steal an election, a tactic he will obviously repeat in the midterms, in 2024 and beyond. Along the way, he will make endless mirroring claims, like “The real insurrection was on November 3rd not January 6th,” and “They are making the Big Lie, not me.”
Given many Republicans have authoritarianism and CTing in their bones, a majority have come to believe—or they are roleplaying belief, or they don’t believe but have cravenly resigned themselves to—the notion of operating in the sweet spot between plausible deniability and CT psychosis. They hope that will provide the workaround to their party’s sinking voter rolls, inability to craft major policy, and abandonment of conservative values, even though the tactic is absurd on the face of it and risks destroying the Republican Party or even American democracy while literally driving many people crazy.
Like Trump, they drank the Kool-Aid. And it may take years of additional deaths from Covid, gun violence, opioids and amphetamines, or a low-intensity civil war—or for the progressives of either party to concoct a compelling enough counter narrative—for them to learn that lesson. Ironically, it is the one Roy Cohn tried to teach them: Believing unproven conspiracy theories is for chumps.
While believing conspiracy theories is a recipe for psychosis, preaching them without belief, as so many Republicans and rightwing media figures do, breaks all the basic social contracts, from simple honesty to the Golden Rule.
Truth and justice will probably prevail, as they have in the past. It may take years of suffering and a degradation of democracy worldwide, but history shows that Americans became fixated on CTs four times over the last two centuries, in about sixty-year cycles. Hence, the Republican embrace of deception and delusion should burn itself out, eventually, and inoculate us for the next half century, hopefully.
Posted on Jul 02, 2022 - 03:53 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner June ‘22
by Karl Cohen
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'Lightyear', Pixar’s new film, includes a same-sex kiss restored due to staff pressure after its removal due to Disney's problems with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. photo: courtesy Pixar“[Lightyear] is a funny spinoff with suspense and heart, a captivatingly spirited ‘toon take on splashy live-action retro popcorn entertainment," according to The Hollywood Reporter. "The title character is given splendid voice by Chris Evans, balancing heroism and human fallibility with infectious warmth.” The reviewer nitpicks minor things and doesn’t feel "Lightyear" is a great film, but it sounds to me like a long-awaited, welcomed treat.
Jerry Beck, a noted animation historian who teaches at CAL Arts, said, “Saw Lightyear—loved it.”
Pixar’s ‘Lightyear’ banned in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
Disney has fallen foul of the censors once more. “Lightyear”, Pixar's Toy Story prequel spinoff movie, has been banned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and at least 12 other countries as the film includes a same-sex kiss! The scene was originally cut from the film, but reinstated following an uproar.
A statement from Pixar employees claimed that Disney had been censoring “overtly gay affection” and the company evidently agreed.
Apropos of this or nothing at all: A Pixar chief noted: "All of our films start out as disasters."
Disney Responds to Supreme Court Abortion Decision
Disney made a statement saying they are committed to financially supporting employees who need to travel out of state to seek abortion care. Hopefully they will also stop funding politicians who campaigned to take away reproductive rights.
Pixar Co-Founder Catmull joins Baobab Studios
Although it only started in 2015, Boabab Studios has already won nine Emmys.
Their credits include innovative virtual reality projects like “Invasion!”, “Crow: The Legend”, and “Baba Yaga”. They are working with Disney Branded Television on “The Witchverse”, an anthology series for Disney+ based on the “Baba Yaga” short. Their creative talent includes Erick Oh, Jony Chandra, Hayley Porter, Michael McCormick, Brian Tinsman and now Pixar co-founder and former Disney animation boss Ed Catmull.
Maureen Fan, CEO and co-founder of Baobab Studios says, “I have followed Ed’s work for years and am proud to welcome him to our board of directors. Ed’s leadership and innovative genius in the world of animation is unparalleled, and his insight will be invaluable as we imagine new characters and worlds, as well as an active role for our audiences inside of them.”
Catmull says, “I’m honored to join the board of directors of Baobab Studios and to be part of their creative journey. Baobab is at the forefront of telling incredible stories across mediums, and I look forward to supporting the entire team as the company evolves into the preeminent animation studio of the future.”
Catmull was an early pioneer of computer animation. He became the vice-president of George Lucas’ computer Graphics division called Lucasfilm in 1979 (part of ILM). In 1986, Steve Jobs bought Lucasfilm's digital division and founded Pixar, hiring Catmull, Lasseter and the rest of the gang to run it.
Pixar was acquired by Disney in 2006. He was president of both Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar from 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar, through 2019. During his tenure, the studios released several iconic films including “Big Hero 6”, “Frozen”, “Finding Nemo”, “Incredibles 2” and “Toy Story 4”, among others.
A scene from Signe Baumane’s latest and highly-praised film, "My Love Affair with Marriage". photo: courtesy PixarSigne Baumane’s "My Love Affair with Marriage" opened in New York City to excellent reviews.
The visuals in “My Love Affair with Marriage” are being praised with words like “stunning,” “incredibly clever,” “deeply funny,” “socially conscious” and “a sharp satire.” One reviewer said, it was “reminiscent of German Expressionism” and called “an endearing beacon of hope.” In addition to excellent positive reviews in New York, the film won a jury prize for features from Annecy, animation’s most highly respected international festival.
Signe is from Latvia and lives in New York and this, her second animated feature, combines handsome miniature sets with dramatic theatrical lighting, with distinctive looking cel animation. It was over five years in the making and was well funded, thanks to money and support from several countries and a highly successful fundraising campaign. I’ll be writing more about this film after the first Bay Area screening is announced. One reviewer called it, “Essential viewing for all.”
Two Smurfs Go to Church
Two Smurfs suddenly appeared on pedestals about 18 feet above the entrance to the Sint-Gertrudiskerk church in the center of Ternat, Belgium in June. People loved seeing them there, thinking the church might be getting ready for a street fair.
Unfortunately, they became a short-lived attraction as the annoyed pastor had a crew remove Papa Smurf and Jokey. Nobody has confessed to creating the prank.
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 Jul 01, 2022 - 12:06 AM
US Government Forgives $6 Billion Student Debt
by Karl Cohen
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The Academy of Art became notorious for allegedly foisting immense loans upon unprepared students. photo: courtesy Academy of Artstudents who will benefit from this act of forgiveness include people who went to the for-profit Art Institute chain of schools and the Academy of Arts, both which I have covered (see article "Academy of Art’s Disastrous Loan Program". (The San Francisco Art Institute is not involved because it is is a non-profit.)
Although the latest grant relief action, which was announced on June 22, is only a tiny fraction of the $1.7 trillion in student loan owed by 43.4 million Americans, it is one of many actions that will be needed to keep our nation’s economy going in the right direction.
Under President Trump, people who applied for debt relief from student loans were mostly turned down, but now President Biden’s Department of Education is coming to the rescue, knowing full well that, if they don’t do the right thing, the student loan crisis could cause an economic meltdown of the nation’s economy. The situation could become as bad or as worse as the subprime mortgage crisis that caused a recession in the economy in 2007, a slump that lasted at least until 2009 and malingered much longer.
The current round of debt relief is going to students who attended for-profit schools that promised great educations and job placement but failed to do so. For-profit schools saw the potential in making enormous profits by recruiting student with false promises. Recruiters were hired and trained to tell every prospective student whatever was necessary to get them to enroll in the supposedly fabulous education that would lead to a well-paying job.
Some students did have the aptitude needed to succeed and find high-paying employment, but others were accepted who weren’t qualified and failed. The recruiters were coaxed in how to deceive potential students into believing they would be great achievers if they only got the needed education at the school they represented. Yes, they sometimes knowing lied to people who didn’t have the needed abilities. That was well documented in a series of Congressional hearings into the abuses of the for-profit school industry.
To make it easy to attend the school, potential students were told they could take out loans that would be easy to pay back, as there were lots of great jobs awaiting them on graduation. I once knew a teacher who had a desk down the hall from such a recruiter. She said she cringed every time a prospective student showed their portfolio to the recruiter. My friend knew she would hear the recruiter make the same false claims that the potential student had wonderful samples of their work. That would often be followed by a discussion of how to get a great low-cost loan with no payments due until… not that long after, as the fine print explicated.
Moreover, many people misunderstood the small print accompanying the easy-to-obtain, low-interest-rate loan saying it absolutely had to be repaid. Indeed, there were almost no exceptions to that clause. Statistics have shown that students who attended less-expensive community colleges and state universities and had borrowed fairly small amount to get their education, were most likely going to be able to repay their loans. The area where the greatest repayment problems occurred were with former students who attended the more expensive for-profit colleges. Sadly, the government let schools abuse the system for several decades.
Senator Elizabeth Warren says the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis was caused by “deliberate policy decisions.” Fortunately, the nation finally has a president that is working to reverse the problem by creating an aggressive loan forgiveness program. He has already forgiven over $25 billion and, on June 22, added another $8 billion. Unfortunately, it took years of hearings to even understand the problem, while any action to correct it under Trump stalled. Now at last progress is being made to make partial or complete student loan cancellation.
The government is making slow, but steady progress. Student loan borrowers have obtained relief by filing “borrow defense claims” with the Department of Education. They should claim they were misled or defrauded when applying for student forgiveness. June 22nd’s proposed settlement will provide student loan debt relief to students from more than 50 mostly for-profit colleges.
If you or somebody you know might benefit from this information, they may need to apply by October for financial forgiveness.
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 Jun 30, 2022 - 12:08 AM
Ukraine’s Tragic, Complex History
by Doniphan Blair
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WITH UKRAINIAN CITIES BEING BOMBED
flat and tens of thousands killed, including in obvious war crimes, stopping Russia’s war and helping its victims are primary. To find a long-term strategy, however, we have to recognize Ukraine’s intricate history, multicultural breadth and monumental suffering, which is not well known. In fact, this is the NINTH major war, mass killing or genocide “event” Ukraine has endured in the last century.
Coveted for its flat, fertile “black” earth and lucrative trade routes, Ukraine has long been a “borderland”—which is what “ukraine” means and why it was called “The Ukraine”— between empires, which makes issues about N.A.T.O. almost inevitable. It is also Europe’s breadbasket, growing up to 30% of its wheat and meaning war will bring food scarcity.
Russian territorial claims date to Vladimir the Great of Kyiv, who actually was Ukrainian but started the Russian tribal confederation around 1000 AD and led its conversion to Christianity. But a millennium is a long time. The land was conquered in turn by Mongols, Poles, Lithuanians, Ottomans, Russians again, Soviets and Nazis.
Hence, Ukrainians range in ethnicity from majority Ukrainians and one third Russians to minority Poles, Jews, Cossacks, Greeks, Roma, Germans, Tatars and other Muslim and tribal groups, who intermarried to some degree. A multiethnic community is not an easy fit for nationalism, suggesting why some people accept Vladimir Putin’s postulate Ukraine is not an actual country.
Imperial Russia repressed Ukrainian culture, even outlawing its language, but its 19th century poets had romantic dreams of independence, like their counterparts in Poland, Greece and elsewhere. Taras Shevchenko was born an enslaved serf near Kyiv but became a folklorist and painter as well as poet and founder of modern Ukrainian literature.
Thus inspired, many Ukrainians fought a fierce, five-year war of independence during and after World War One, first against the Austro-Hungarians and Germans, with whom they made a separate peace, in exchange for massive amounts of wheat, and then in the bloody, chaotic Russian Civil War. Indeed, four different Ukraines operated between 1917 and ’22. Their west was eastern Poland, generating a zero-sum battle between two sets of nationalists, although the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918-19, with a mere 25,000 casualties, was a minor blip compared to the brutal world war or Russian Civil War. As if that were not enough, the 1918 influenza pandemic swept the planet and killed as many as 50 million people.
The Red Army, led by the Jewish Ukrainian Leon Trotsky, had to invade Ukraine three times to defeat an array of opponents in a kaleidoscope of alliances: Ukrainian nationalists, the White Army of czarists and Cossacks, the anarchist Black Army, and the peasant Green Army but also an English-French-Greek expeditionary force and armies from Germany, Poland and a half-a-dozen other countries. Many resorted to atrocities. Rationalizing that revolutions require killing, Lenin ordered his secret police to enact the “red terror,” which put hundreds of thousands to death. Although he finally relaxed a bit on the Ukrainians, he maintained a staunch opposition to their self-governance.
Despite the organizational limits of anarchy, the Blacks were popular, brought together Ukraine’s industrious peasants, worldly traders and dreamy intellectuals better than the Reds, and fought fiercely. One storied commander, Maria Nikiforova, was a seasoned revolutionary, gorgeous or ugly, depending on accounts, and possible user of cocaine, then popular among European literati. She fought valiantly, sometimes using terror tactics, until her capture by the Whites, trial and execution, along with her husband and fellow commander, in 1919.
After centuries of repression, Ukrainian Jews, Europe’s largest community after Poland, emerged as full citizens. The socialist Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917-20) made Yiddish an official language, many Jews joined the Russian Revolution, and a colorful Jewish gangster from the cosmopolitan seaport of Odessa, Mishka Yaponchik, became a Red general.
Alas, the modern practice of pogroming Jews also started in Ukraine, when 50 people were massacred in 1881 and another few thousand in 1903. In the Civil War, however, Jews were butchered by the thousands by all factions, including the Reds but mostly Ukrainian nationalists and the Whites. About 100,000 were killed in over 1000 incidents, a shocking development which set a tragic precedent for European Jewry, according to professor Jeffrey Veidlinger, author of “In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust” (2021).
The pogroms triggered some emigration, including the forbears of Bob Dylan and Noam Chomsky to the United States, but some two million Jews continued to live in Ukraine. They contributed disproportionately to its cultural renaissance in the 1920s as well as to building the Soviet Union. The horror of the pogroms was also eclipsed by the Revolution itself, which killed about nine million across the region, and the Russian famine of 1922, which added two to five million deceased.
Dominating Ukraine was central to Soviet strategy, given the proximity of the Russian and Ukrainian languages and histories and presumed Russian superiority—Ukrainians are known as “little Russians.” As Russia’s southern lands and sea ports and Europe’s eastern flank, Ukraine was more romantic, open, diversely civilized, and rich than its northern neighbor, making it the prize possession between feuding cousins. Stalin began arresting Ukrainian intellectuals en masse at the end of the ‘20s, the so-called “executed renaissance” and a tragic foretelling of what was to come. Ukraine soon suffered not one but two genocides.
Also in the ‘20s, Soviets tried to collectivize work. They were especially hard on the prosperous peasant farmers, or “kulaks,” and killed about a half a million nationwide. When Ukraine’s kulaks refused to nationalize their harvest in 1932, authorities confiscated it, triggering a years-long famine. While some blame communist central planning, boasting and paranoia, which led authorities to assume there was a surplus and that the farmers were hoarding, Stalin definitely wanted to break the kulaks and bourgeoisie but also Ukrainian dreams of independence.
Holodomor means “death by hunger” in Ukrainian but oddly parallels “holocaust,” from the Greek for “burnt offering.” While it’s tricky drawing comparisons to the Holocaust, which also hit Ukraine hard, the Holodomor rates. Death tolls range from three and a half to ten million, a horrific national trauma by any measure but exacerbated by its erasure by Soviet censorship and propaganda—indeed, many Russians deny it to this day—and international ignorance. Eventually investigated, it was finally recognized a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union by Russian institutions and the U.N.
Diana Soline Chornenkaya, a Ukrainian-Russian-American friend of mine, told me stories she heard from her grandmother, Vera, who was a teen during the manufactured famine and the descent of its sufferers into cannibalism. While visiting a friend, Vera was trapped by her mother, but the friend helped her escape. Another girlfriend, after giving birth, ate the infant to survive. Another girlfriend, while hiking to Kyiv, said, “I don’t feel well,” and lay down and died. There were bodies everywhere. Vera found babysitting work and safety in Kyiv but lost two younger brothers, other family and many community members.
Recent studies estimate four million Ukrainians were starved to death, with another six million lost to “birth deficits.” Ever resilient, Ukrainians attempted to recover and rebuild their society within the socialist system. Vera’s friend, who ate her newborn, went on to raise two healthy children, despite Soviet propaganda portraying them as cannibals or, conversely, claiming they faked the famine. Unfortunately, the Holodomor was immediately followed by more mass murder events.
Stalin’s “great terror” or “purge” started in 1936. About a million Soviet citizens were executed, sometimes after show trials, and many more were sent to the gulags, where a large percent expired. Some estimates put the Great Terror’s casualties at four million or more, including many Ukrainians, all for naught, since almost no conspiracies were uncovered. As if the Holodomor and Great Terror weren’t physically, socially and psychologically annihilating enough, World War Two started, making 1914 to ‘45 in Eastern Europe the most pernicious period in human history, bar none. It centered on Ukraine.
Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, the biggest invasion in history, brought blitzkrieg and total war to Ukraine but also the Holocaust in late-June ’41. In lieu of their practices in Western Europe and Poland, where the Nazis organized a comparatively efficient and discrete herding of Jews into ghettos, cattle cars and death camps, they used bullets and mass graves.
In two days in September, they slaughtered 34,000 Jews at Babyn Yar, a ravine in a Kyiv suburb, which is considered a record. Over 100,000 Christian Ukrainians and Russians soon joined the corpses. Around one and half million Ukrainian Jews were eventually murdered, including tens of thousands by Ukrainian police and nationalists, often affiliated with the powerful Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
The more radical wing of the O.U.N. was led by Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Germans before the war but was interred in a concentration camp during it for declaring Ukrainian independence. Despite the O.U.N.’s monoethnic authoritarianism, they tolerated a few Jews, especially as wives, while still practicing eliminationist nationalism. They butchered thousands of Poles and Russians, as well as many Jews, especially communists, although they moderated some of their policies after the war.
A polarizing figure among Ukrainians, Bandera has streets named after him and is honored as one of the nation’s founding fathers by many rightwingers but also some liberals, including to some degree by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish and a second-generation Holocaust survivor but recognizes Ukraine’s need for a big-tent society. The O.U.N. provides the grains of truth behind the “Ukraine is controlled by Nazis” conspiracy theory promulgated by Putin.
Yes, many Ukrainians joined the German army or Waffen SS, as did fascists from France and Sweden to Croatia and Romania, some helped murder Jews, and a few became notorious concentration camps guards in Poland, where they were sent because it was nearby. John Demjanjuk, who raised a family in Ohio before being deported in 1993 to Germany to stand trial, worked in three extermination camps, Sobibor, Majdanek and Treblinka, where he was known as the sadist "Ivan the Terrible." After the grotesqueries of the Holodomor and the Great Terror, it is understandable that many Ukrainians wanted to expel the Soviets by any means and win independence, even if just in Nazi Europe, as had the Croatians.
On the other hand, over a thousand Ukrainians are honored as “righteous gentiles,” by Israel’s Yad Vashem, and many more hid or helped Jews. Millions more joined the partisans or Soviet army, where four and a half million Ukrainians fought the Nazis in some of the most sanguineous battles of World War Two. A Ukrainian SS battalion of mixed ethnicity sent to fight the Allies on the Western Front killed their commanders and joined the French resistance.
Estimates differ but as many as 25 million Soviets died during the war, albeit only a third fighting, when they were sometimes sacrificed by commanders who marched them into unswept mine fields or fortified machine gun nests. The remainder was from disease and famine, due to Germans confiscating food, or being deported to Germany, where they were worked to death, plus Soviet reprisals against collaborators. Over a fourth of them were Ukrainian.
Stuck between the genocidal Nazis and mass murderous Soviets, Ukrainians suffered history’s greatest hell. I have long awarded that horrific honor to Poland, given its proximity to Germany, the presence of all the death camps, and that I am of Polish-Jewish descent, but we lost six million to Ukraine’s seven. From the Black Sea to the Baltic is called “bloodlands” by scholar Timothy Synder, in his 2010 book of the same name, because both Hitler and Stalin wanted to depopulate it. From 1932 to ’45, about 14 million civilians in a half-a-dozen countries were murdered.
For someone like me, who lives in California, which has had only one mass killing event in its history, the genociding of its first people, it is almost impossible to imagine the healing, rebuilding and kindness needed to recover from eight nationwide, years-long atrocities in a mere three decades: World War One, the Russian Revolution, the Red Terror, the Pogroms, the Holodomor, the Great Terror, World War Two and the Holocaust.
Ukrainians finally had peace at the end of the “great war.” Although nationalists kept up guerilla attacks, and were killed or deported by the thousands, and the Soviets carried on arresting people for “crimes against the state,” Ukraine became a central Soviet state. Indeed, it was the site of many civic projects, universities, factories, resort towns, heritage site cities, and nuclear missile silos and reactors, including Chernobyl, which suffered history’s worst melt down in 1986. It was also the birthplace of the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev and many intellectuals and professionals, many who moved to Moscow.
But when the Soviet Union dissolved by Russia in 1991 and a plebiscite was held over 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence, despite 30% being Russian speakers. Although they elected to lead them a Communist Party apparatchik, the vast majority welcomed improved consumer goods, democracy and the opportunity to join the European Union or perhaps N.A.T.O., perfectly understandable given their horrific history. Betting on peace, their new legislature renounced nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and the U.S., no less, as per the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
Like all former Soviet states, Ukraine endured the dislocating turmoil of “perestroika” economic reform, from disappearing staples to widespread corruption and the vast industrial looting of the oligarchs, which was almost inevitable given the difficulty of transitioning to capitalism and how people close to power could easily and quickly take advantage of it. “Glasnost” brought welcome freedoms of expression and movement but also a confusing cacophony of news and political parties, from communists and nationalists to reformers, charlatans and conspiracy theorists.
Like Russia, Ukraine had assassinations. In 2000, the muckraking journalist and publisher of an anti-corruption news site, Georgiy Gongadze, was murdered. Four years later, there was an attempt on the life of reform candidate Viktor Yushchenko using poison. An ancient Russian tradition, Russian agents think poison is undetectable and plausibly deniable, despite easily traceable toxins and their trademark use of them.
The poisoners were not identified, but Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the electoral fraud noted by local and foreign observers. Although Yushchenko was up double digits in the polls, his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, the anointed successor of the disgraced previous president and himself known to be corrupt, won by three points. Thousands of young people joined peaceful strikes, sit-ins and marches in what was called the Orange Revolution, the second of Eastern Europe’s half-a-dozen “colored revolutions,” after neighboring Georgia’s in 2003.
Ukraine’s young democracy pulled through when its Supreme Court ruled for Yushchenko, who recovered, although his face was disfigured for years, and set about integrating Ukraine with the West. His wife is Ukrainian-American. He also compromised with the former communists and Russophiles by appointing as his prime minister none other than Yanukovych, despite Yanukovych’s accusing him of being a Nazi during the campaign.
In point of fact, Yushchenko was embraced by Ukraine’s Jewish community of about 150,000, Europe’s second largest after France; his mother hid three Jewish girls during the Holocaust; and his father was a Red Army soldier incarcerated in Auschwitz.
The Orange Revolution was opposed by older people, Russian speakers and conservatives, as well as those concerned that Ukraine’s dream of joining N.A.T.O. was prohibitively provocative, even though all of its neighbors to the west, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, had by 2004—not to mention by an increasingly belligerent Russia. Putin began killing journalists and opponents in 2006, airing “lost empire” grievances the following year, and launching brutal wars, supposedly to protect Russian minorities, starting in Georgia in 2008.
While Yushchenko walked that tightrope, Ukrainians flip-flopped. In the next election, they handed power back to Yanukovych, after his makeover and aggressive campaign headed by American political consultant and future Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Yanukovych slowed his predecessor’s reforms, emphasized religion and honored nationalist heroes like Bandera, even as he favored all things Russian. When Yanukovych refused to ratify a treaty with the European Union and joined the Eurasian Economic Union established by Russia, which offered him an enormous aid package, Ukrainians took to the streets yet again.
It was called the Revolution of Dignity or Maidan Revolution, after the Kyiv’s central square—“maidan” means independence—which was occupied for months in late 2013. The massive “Euromaidan” protests were driven by a new wave of nationalist youth, including some skinheads but also hipsters and progressives. “Young people realized that they needed to do something for themselves and not depend on the government,” according to Miriam Dragina, a journalist who launched the Kyiv (flea) Market a year later to raise funds for the Ukrainian Army, which by then was fighting Russians in the country’s east.
Yanukovych got his allies in parliament to pass laws restricting the protests, but they only increased. Indeed, demonstrators were joined by older people, including veterans and Jews, while younger activists occupied government buildings across Ukraine. After a few were killed on January 18th, 2014, the entire opposition, from the rightwing Right Sector to the anti-corruption Maidan People's Union and various student groups, organized a “peace offensive” on February 18th.
With columns of protesters advancing on the Rada Parliament, which was about to vote on rewriting the constitution, a suitable-for-cinema struggle ensued. Protesters threw Molotov cocktails and paving stones and stormed buildings, setting some alight, including the office of a pro-Russia party. Police responded with batons, stun grenades, tear gas and, finally, bullets, mostly fired by snipers. Over a hundred demonstrators were killed, along with a dozen police. Yanukovych fled to Russia.
Outraged by so much ‘60s-style democracy on his doorstep as well as Ukrainian interest in joining Europe, Putin called it a coup, claimed it was fomented by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and ordered an invasion. By February 27th, unmarked and masked Russian troops emerged from the massive Crimean naval port, leased by Ukraine to Russia, and captured strategic locations across that state. In nearby Odessa on May 2nd, rightwing activists trapped pro-Russian counter-protestors in a building, spray-painted it with swastika-like symbols and set it alight. Forty-two died. Four months later, Russophile Ukrainians and out-of-uniform Russian soldiers seized parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk states, starting a war which killed 14,000 people from 2014 to ’22 and remains the main battle front today.
Among those fighting the Russians is the Azov Brigade, who are labelled neo-Nazi for their swastika-like logo, connection to an ultra-nationalist party, and white supremacist leaders and members, approximately a fifth of their total. Alas, the Azov is not unlike some American militias, and Ukraine has freedom of speech. Moreover, they are fighting to defend their nation’s government not against it, as with some American militias, and they reportedly came to accept some Muslim and Jewish fighters. The Azov Brigade also earned immense respect by being among the fiercest defenders of Mariupol during the April 2022 battle to the death with Russian forces.
The vast majority of soldiers fighting the 2014 Russian invasion, however, were typical young men, including some anarchists and artists, who were also inspired to defend their nation during the Maidan Revolution, which galvanized Ukrainian youth and a spirit of renewal. Indeed, culture in general and youth culture in particular exploded.
Kyiv and most other cities saw increases in coffee houses, clubs, galleries and youth hostels, earning buzz on the world traveler circuit as Eastern Europe’s new Prague. Ukraine’s myriad cultural institutions expanded, while established music, art and film scenes developed avant-gardes. Famously beautiful women made it a go-to location for ad agencies. Good facilities at lower cost attracted students from Africa, Asia and the U.S.
One artist riding that wave was the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukrainians love comedy, especially gallows’ humor, due to their brutal history. A talented producer as well as entertainer and actor, Zelensky started the popular comedy troupe Kvartal 95, won Ukraine’s “Dancing with the Stars” in 2006, toured Russia doing standup (he’s a native Russian speaker), and founded Studio Kvartal, a successful film and television company. After appearing in eight movies, he starred in the hit TV series, “Servant of the People” (2015-19), about a teacher whose anti-corruption rant was filmed by his students, went viral, and propelled him to the presidency.
“Servant of the People” was so spot on, life followed art, and Zelensky was soon president himself, after winning over 70% of the vote in 2019, the biggest landslide in Ukraine’s young democracy. During the campaign, Zelensky didn’t emphasize that he was Jewish or that most of his father’s family died in the Holocaust. But that and the fact that no ultra-nationalist parties got enough votes to earn representation in the Rada, indicates most Ukrainians have matured beyond antique notions of nationalism toward those of a modern, multicultural state. Moreover, the Euromaidan Revolution also inspired changes in banking law and military organization.
Shifting from entertainment to politics is not easy, however, and Zelensky’s approval ratings slid to almost 30%. Accusations of nepotism emerged after he appointed fellow entertainers to head ministries. As a studio head, he had dealt with media oligarchs, leading people to wonder why he didn’t sanction them, save for obsessively attacking his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko. One of Ukraine’s biggest oligarchs, the so-called “chocolate king,” Poroshenko was charged with multiple counts of corruption and fled the country.
Zelensky also entered into bizarre negotiations with the president of the United States, who allied himself with Putin but also right-wing Ukrainians, due to his campaign manager Manafort. Indeed, he claimed Ukraine was completely corrupt and tried to blackmail Zelensky into digging up dirt on the Bidens by withholding weaponry essential to the ongoing war with Russia. Zelensky held his own, however, having studied law before going into comedy. Moreover, despite also coming to politics from entertainment, he is Trump’s opposite, morally, temperamentally and politically.
Everything changed on February 24th as Zelensky evolved into a leader of historic proportions, and Ukrainians of all political persuasions and ethnicities—from anarchists to nationalists, from Jews to descendants of Cossacks—joined together. Three decades of democracy inspired both a profound love for each other and revulsion at returning to Russian autocracy. Even Poroshenko flew back to help.
In addition to drawing on all aspects of society, Ukrainians are fighting with every conceivable weapon. Their army, redesigned into nimble squads of equals by the old defense minister, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, has mastered small force tactics, handheld missiles and drones. Their young Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, is using everything from hackers and YouTube live streams to cryptocurrency, TikTok influencers, texting Russian soldiers or calling their families. Diplomats and parliamentarians reach out relentlessly. Zelensky addressed almost one national congress a day in March, the Grammy Awards on April 2nd, and the United Nations on April 5th.
“They cut off limbs, cut their throats,” Zelensky told the U.N. General Assembly from Kyiv, referring to the atrocities reported on April 2nd from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. “Women were raped and killed in front of their children. Their tongues were pulled out only because their aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”
When rebuttals of “false,” “staged” and “fake dead bodies” were made by Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the U.S., they proved how Russia, which they say is standing up to the decadent West, maintaining Christian values and rooting out Nazis, is in free fall. In addition to suffering deindustrialization, depopulation, emigrating young people and intelligentsia, and severe alcohol and heroin addiction, Russians are suffused with “false narratives.”
More than friends or allies, Putin and Trump are fellow high priests in the cult of conspiracism, the former drawing on conspiracy theories dating back to the czarist police’s “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the Soviet’s “Tanaka Memorial,” the latter as a disciple of Roy Cohn and Joseph McCarthy. Indeed, Putin and Trump are not just helping each other by influencing elections or dismantling N.A.T.O., they are encouraging their bases to believe the two biggest Big Lies in recent memory: the election steal and Ukrainian Nazis.
Many more Buchas will tragically emerge, as Putin tries to terrorize Ukrainians, Europeans, and the world into accepting his conquest in lieu of World War Three, meaning we have arrived at Ukraine’s ninth mass murder event in a century. Within mere months, it trashed the country, begot dozens of war crimes, and killed tens of thousands.
One conciliation prize: Ukrainians have the spirit, unity and leadership to prevail. Indeed, democracy, although it comes later to violence then fascism, can unify a diverse population, which can sustain a long struggle. Although they will pay a terrible price—and we must accelerate all possible efforts to offset that—they will either become a Christ among nations or win not only their freedom but help restore democratic ascendancy and lead us out of the cynical, conspiratorial and authoritarian age advocated by Putin and Trump.
Posted on Jun 15, 2022 - 07:43 AM
2200 Gang List
The Scientific Origins of Star Wars
by Celik Kayalar
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Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) bellies up to the bar in the new 'Solo' (2018) part of the 'Star War' series. image: G. Lucasgreat Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung to Han Solo, Princess Leia and Jaba the Hutt in George Lucas’s masterpiece movie-saga, the “Star Wars”.
Dr. Carl Jung, an early protege of Sigmund Freud who later broke with him, inspired Professor Joseph Campbell of “Follow Your Bliss” fame, as well as the author of “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (1949) and “The Hero’s Journey” (1990), and the star of “The Power of Myth” (TV Series with Bill Moyers, 1988).
The famed filmmaker George Lucas was, in turn, inspired by Professor Campbell in creating his “Star Wars” saga (Lucas Films, Northern California, now owned by Disney, Hollywood). Indeed, Lucas has noted many times that his script drew heavily the “hero's journey” story.
The hero’s path is generally thought to go like this: call to adventure, supernatural aid, mentor/helper, challenges/temptations, the abyss, revelation/transformation/atonement, and return.
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) at age 49. image: B.S. WiseJung is the father of the original idea of “collective conscience,” which led to his proposal of “archetypes,” such as hero, trickster, shadow, etc, which he thinks exist in every culture throughout history. Being a big Jung fan myself, I started thinking about the possible connection between the concept of collective conscience and the “universal grammar” idea of the distinguished linguist and MIT professor, Noam Chomsky, who happens to be a friend.
Both ideas are universal. Hence, I thought they could be rooted in the DNA of all humans, regardless of culture, geography and history (i.e. innate or nature, not nurture). In other words, both collective conscience and universal grammar could have the same basis in the human brain’s physiology and biology, which evolved through a common Darwinian natural selection process.
When I mentioned this idea to Chomsky about two years ago, he was very intrigued; said he never thought of it; nor was it ever pointed out to him before. Surprised by his admission, I attributed his disconnect mainly to his well-known aversion to “Hollywood” as well as mysticism in general.
Painting portraying Jung and his life by author Celik Kayalar. image: C. KayalarMuch to be done; many bridges to be built.
Celik Kayalar is a PhD. bioscientist as well as filmmaker, painter and educator, who runs Film Acting Bay Area in Berkeley, California. You can learn more about him here or reach him .
Posted on Feb 23, 2022 - 01:35 PM
Tonia Rotkopf Blair: Holocaust Survivor, Matriarch, Author
by The Blair Family
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Tonia Rotkopf Blair, Brazil, 1949. photo: unknownTONIA ROTKOPF BLAIR DIED ON
December 9th, 2021, at 96, at home and surrounded by love, after a life so varied it seemed like nine. Starting in another era and enduring the Holocaust, she traveled through Europe and South America before settling in New York City and becoming a beatnik, homemaker, administrative assistant, Columbia graduate and, finally, writer.
Indeed, her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption”, was published in 2021. She was also the subject of the 2007 documentary “Our Holocaust Vacation” made by her sons and shown on PBS. Both feature her unique perspective on kindness and relationships during the Holocaust.
Born in Lodz, Poland, to Mendel and Miriam-Gitla Rotkopf (nee Sonenberg), who were socialists and secular Jews, Tonia was raised in one room without plumbing or electricity, along with older sister Irena and younger brother Salek. Poor but not deprived, they attended the progressive Yiddish Medem Schul.
After the German invasion, Tonia became the youngest nurse in the Lodz ghetto’s Lagenitska Hospital, which saved her from deportation with her family. They were all killed in 1942, in Mzsana Dolna, southern Poland. Despite this tragedy and the world war raging around her, she remained a teenage woman, who fell in love and learned about romance.
After the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, she was shipped to Auschwitz and survived three weeks there. She was then sent to work in an airplane factory in Freiburg, Germany, where she was reunited with her best friend and fellow nurse, Bluma Strauch. Liberated from Mauthausen camp, Austria, by the Americans, they crossed to the Soviet side.
Returning to Lodz and finding no Jews but plenty of anti-Semitism, they hitchhiked back to the West and got nursing jobs in a refugee hospital in Landsberg am Lech, Germany, for almost two years. After moving to Paris, they travelled to La Paz, Bolivia, where Bluma had brothers. Continuing solo, Tonia lived with a wealthy cousin in Rio de Janeiro, right on Copacabana beach, another one of her varied lives. She finally arrived in Manhattan in 1950, where she felt right at home and started school, studying art, and working as a secretary.
Tonia at age 3 (far right), with her mother Miram, sister Irena and four Plonski cousins, 1928, Lodz, Poland. photo: professionalAfter marrying and having two sons, they moved to Morningside Gardens, an experimental, integrated housing project near Columbia University. Tonia became an administrative assistant at the Interchurch Center and then Teachers College. She also went back to school, attending Columbia and graduating at 62 with a Sociology degree.
They bought a fixer-up country house and travelled extensively to visit their sons in California but also Brazil, Israel and Poland, where a 1980 journey awoke Tonia's ability to discuss the Holocaust. She also attended the second international gathering of Holocaust survivors, in Washington DC, in 1983, and joined a child survivor group, NAHOS.
After her husband died, in 1999, Tonia became part of a writers’ workshop taught by Susan Willerman and wrote some 40 stories longhand. Recognizing the strength of her style and insight into the female side of war, a son edited them and secured publication with Austin Macauley.
Tonia continued to travel until 2013, often to visit a son or granddaughter or attend a NAHOS gathering. After entering an assisted living facility in 2019, the pandemic inspired her family to bring her home. Taken care of principally by her granddaughter, she lived the last of her nine lives in comfort and community and passed peacefully, from complications due to Alzheimer’s.
She is survived by two sons and three grandchildren.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair, with her sons, Nicholas (lft) and Doniphan (rt), circa 1970. photo: Vachel BlairMy mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, who resisted the Nazis with kindness, who travelled the world to find her people in New York, and who endured my teen years with permissiveness, died a month ago. Although she was 96, and we had the luxury of time and she the privilege of passing at home, her death is a gaping hole, freighted by the abyss of the Holocaust and the immensity of the love.
My mommy—our tribe’s great matriarch—is gone.
Sometimes depressed, she put a brave face on it, and I grew up feeling very cared for, adored, and safe. I thought this was standard mothering until I noticed deficiencies among some friends.
Since I had to break free early to start my own wandering, it took me decades to recognize her achievement, powered by a long tradition of humanism and romance, Jewish, Polish and female. Indeed, the atrocity that stained her, me, you, European history, was mitigated by her firm belief in humanity's general goodness.
I long knew she’d endured unworldly horror, including losing her family and surviving Auschwitz. Family lore has my younger brother and me racing into the living room, waiving wooden blocks with drawings of guns—we were forbidden toy guns—and yelling “We are going to kill a lot of Germans and run away.”
But the Holocaust wasn't taught in school in the '60s and she didn't mention it much, so I knew no details except pleasant stories about making a friend or getting a meal.
Through those anecdotes, I learned she travelled a long, hard road after the war, including hitchhiking across Eastern Europe, living in a garret in Paris, sailing to South America and settling in Bolivia, all with her best friend and fellow nurse Bluma. After La Paz, Tonia lived with her second cousin Manashe Kryzepicki, who had become a banker in Rio de Janeiro, which generated many evocative tales of wealth, art and vacations in the jungle.
I didn't realize the half of it until I visited Rio and Manashe's wife Hilda, with whom Tonia became close, told she often went to the beach where she would be surrounded by young men. Then it dawned on me: My own mother was an attractive young woman on a great adventure. After a year there and another in Miami, she settled in New York City and became what I now see was a beatnik, given she took up drawing and guitar and attending art and film shows, especially after meeting my father, Vachel Blair.
Tonia and her husband Vachel Blair, circa 1954. photo: Vachel BlairMy mother's quest, I eventually learned, was carrying through the darkness the light of familial and romantic love, typified by the Blake poem she liked to recite, which ends, “Remember that in former times love, sweet love, was called a crime.” She remained so innocent, one of my parents' friends, a real beatnik named Jay Bell, would ask her to leave the room when he told dirty jokes.
I got more glimpses of robust femaleness when we returned to Poland, in 1997, and shot the film "Our Holocaust Vacation" (see trailer). I saw how romantic and loving the Poles were, especially the women, who had to help their men endure life between two oppressive super powers. “I don’t know why I have such a weakness for Polish men,” Tonia said during that trip.
I finally realized the extent of her female power, however, when I edited her book, “Love at the End of the World”. Over a dozen stories, especially those from the middle of war to marrying my father in 1954, involve or feature men and romance, from distance and chaste to fireworks.
Tonia working as nurse holding her best friend Bluma Strauch's daughter Hanna, 1947,Landsberg am Lech, Germany. photo: unknownThe most striking story, however, is “Stefan” about being shipped out of the Lodz ghetto in a jammed cattle car and meeting a young man. They recited poetry and kissed until the train arrived at its unknown destination: Auschwitz. Given that was the first story she wrote for the writing class she joined in 1999, it seemed be an experience she wanted to highlight, or attempt to emblazon in literature.
Even in that horrific period, Tonia pursued the young woman’s sacred troth of studying and enacting romance. It was not a magical shield, but it nudged some people, including some Germans, toward respecting life.
It took me ten years to get Tonia to tell me about her first lover, who is mentioned but not named in her story “The Russians”. A Christian Pole about her age, also liberated from Mauthausen camp in Austria, Stanislav was quite the romantic. He wrote her poems, two of which she carried to New York, and caught a fawn in the forest for her to pet for her 20th birthday.
Tonia was also an adventurous aficionado of books, art and film, who would scour the NY Times for interesting work. Her dedication once brought my father, me and her to the Film Forum for the US premiere of “Will It Snow for Christmas?” (France, 1996). Afterward, my father and I teased her about its slow pacing and lack of professionalism, until it dawned on us: It was a masterpiece about female life, family and betrayal.
Tonia with a copy of 'Love at the End of the World', published by Austin Macauley in May 2021. photo:D. BlairAs Tonia got older, she assumed the role of a mature matriarch, enjoying her status, including the teasing she missed dishing out as a shy girl in a dark age. But that didn’t eclipse the young matriarchal magician, who uses romance, beauty and dreams, especially when I read her book to her.
Her last year and half was a spectacular blessing. My daughter Irena and brother Nick brought her home to her Manhattan apartment from an assisted living facility in New Jersey, where she was confined to her room due to Covid. Indeed, Irena had carefully set up fully professional care taking, replete with hospital bed, all the needed supplies and a comfort cat, Etsu. She even created a TikTok channel about her.
Her last months were like a second infancy. Along with my sister-in-law Tania and many dedicated friends and caretakers, we joined in feeding her, reading to her, playing her favorite songs or discussing favorite topics, like “Who wrote The Bible?” We would rejoice when she ate well or had a good day, not so bothered by the back pain from being wheelchair bound or the increasing mania of Alzheimer's.
It was a fantastic, final chapter to a long, intricate and loving life, one which had long outdistanced the Holocaust. "I don't think about it anymore," she told me.
Tonia salutes the photographer's (and your) health, circa 2017. photo: N. BlairNow, in my moments of loneliness or despair, I recall the power that carried her through the fires and fired her tenderness and love. It is enough to enable me, her, us, to carry on those noble dreams and flourish.
Thanks mom, Tonia, grandma, Tunia, cool chick, Tonuska.
To Leave Comments: go to where I posted this on Facebook.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jan 13, 2022 - 04:10 PM
The QAnon Game, Conspiracy King Trump and Us
by Doniphan Blair
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The author near Roswell, New Mexico, on his six week journey around the American West during the 2020 election. photo: D. BlairAS IF THE QANONYMOUS FOLKS DIDN'T
didn’t have enough on their plate these past few weeks — their hero Trump defeated, their oracle Q mistaken, their webmaster Ron Watkins quit — The Financial Times released a video on October 15th, “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” It details how QAnon, a movement with as many as fifteen million people, depending on how you calibrate participation, started as a live-action, role-playing game, or LARP.
The Financial Times’ scoop on the origins of the right-wing phenomena, which also has social, spiritual and commercial aspects, has yet to be corroborated by other major news outlets. But it was prefigured by Wired Magazine in a September 22nd article about Adrian Hon, a computer game designer, who observed QAnon adheres to the common LARP format of scavenger hunt.
“Deep state propaganda,” would probably be the response of most QAnons. Nevertheless, it is common knowledge that their three-year-old community is guided by piecing together clues posted by “Q,” supposedly an intelligence officer with “Q-level clearance,” which refers to working with nuclear secrets, now more likely a live-action, role-playing master.
Also called “alternative reality game,” or its ungainly acronym ARG, the LARP was pioneered in California by Wizards of the Coast to promote their video game “Netrunner” in 1996. The Wizards needed advertising magic since video gaming had blown up that decade, adding three dimensionality, role-playing — from becoming a medieval knight in “Final Fantasy: IV” (1991) to a “first person shooter” in “Doom” (1993) — and “massively multiplayer online role-playing games,” or MMOs, with the arrival of widespread access to the World Wide Web.
Live-action role-playing was the next logical step. A cool combination of storytelling, technology, play and actual human beings, LARPs were adopted by ad agencies and media production companies, to advertise movies as well as games, but also gamers, hipsters and attendees of Burning Man, who developed their own.
LARP-like activities are universal among children, of course, but they are not common in adulthood, outside of games like Dungeons and Dragons, the acting profession, sex, crossdressing, criminality and undercover police or espionage work. This stimulates intense interest.
In the 1990s, European anarchists came up with “Luther Blissett,” a “multiple-use name… used to organize pranks, media stunts, and hoaxes,” according to Wikipedia. Although this doesn’t seem like the work of Blisset, “he” did publish a novel in 1999 titled “Q.”
A sample of the multi-generational and -cultural folks interest in the QAnon conspiracy theory, circa July 2020.. photo: unknownIn 2008, Hull and his crew attracted more than 7,000 people to their faux Jejune office in a San Francisco office building, using paper flyers with tear-off phone numbers posted on poles. Combining high tech and old school, Jejune “officials” provided about five hundred participants clues in maps, props built into public property and post cards, which led to a protest by 250 people, exploring Oakland’s underground sewage system and solving the mystery of Eva, a punky, young runaway.
Sensing Jejuners might get too involved — “jejune” means naïve, simplistic or superficial, by the way — Hull brought them back to earth at their last meeting by explaining everything openly, after which they had a good laugh over tea and cookies.
Q took “his” LARP in the opposite direction, toward increased mystery, control and politics, when “he” began posting on 4chan, an anonymous, freewheeling forum for hackers, outlaws and pornographers, during the Trump Administration’s first year.
By the mid-2010s, there were all sorts of roll-playing games, from the multiplayer online games to real-life, dress-up fantasies — like “the furries,” people who wear animal costumes — private sexual ones or an online variant called the “anons,” such as CIAAnon, which was orchestrated by an imaginary spymaster.
Q — or what turns out to be a number of Qs, as control of the game was contested — came to widespread attention after an early post announced the impending arrest of Hillary Clinton. It didn’t happen, of course, but fulfilling predictions was not as necessary as expressing the fantasies suggested by Trump’s campaign chant, “Lock her up.”
“When you offer people a story that validates some core beliefs or resonates with their view of the world — or view of their imagined word — it has a life of its own,” Hull told me, when I called him on November 13th. “Suddenly you have followers who are activated by this content in a way that is entirely unpredictable.”
Logically labeled QAnon, Q’s LARP integrated right-wing conspiracy theories, Trump’s embattled presidency, his accusations against “the deep state,” and PizzaGate, the CT popular during the last election. QAnon validated core beliefs not only of aggrieved Republicans but some folks on the far left.
In case conspiracy theories had not yet intruded on your life, those four, long years ago: PizzaGate exploded across the web in October 2016 after a New York City lawyer and white supremacist tweeted he had evidence that Anthony Weiner, the disgraced Democratic congressman and soon-to-be-divorced husband of Clinton’s assistant, was part of a pedophilia ring. Already busted for sexting, the tellingly-named Weiner would do two years for sending a 15-year-old girl “dick pics.”
The author finds a perfect writing retreat in an in-law building behind a friend's house in Tucson, Arizona. photo: D. BlairPizzaGaters became so convinced Clinton and her colleagues were Satanists running a child sex ring out of a DC pizza parlor, a North Carolina man raced up in December 2016 and peppered a locked door in the back with rounds from an AR-15 assault rifle (no one was hit) to free the children trapped in the basement (which did not exist). He got four years.
Expanding from PizzaGate, QAnon includes Obama and other leading Democrats, celebrities, like Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey, and one banker (George Soros). It also has them commit much more lurid crimes AND run the deep state.
“Why so over-the-top,” you might ask? Well, if a story like PizzaGate is gobbled up, the next conspiracy theory has to be more titillating to win adherents.
Hence, Trump was recruited by military brass to run for president and take down the cabal. Plus, he would soon reveal the entire sordid saga, order mass arrests and heal the nation.
Along with its dystopian views, QAnon promises peace, love and happiness, through what they call “The Great Awakening,” people waking up to the truth and standing up to the ruling elites of Satanists, pedophiles and cannibals (derived from the claim they ingest children’s blood). That utopia is now on hold due to Trump’s near miss of a second term.
Admittedly, “only a fraction of [QAnons] believe the conspiracy theory’s most outlandish claims,” according to an article in Wired’s October 6th issue, which cites a recent poll. Some people may even see them as metaphors for corruption and decay, not actual fact.
Nevertheless, “some 56% of Republicans believe that QAnon… is mostly or partly true,” reported Forbes Magazine on September 2nd, providing plenty of belief to go around. QAnon-related Facebook pages leapt over 600% after the Covid-19 shutdowns in March 2020, when many people were fearful, frustrated and desperate for explanations.
QAnons are known for their aggressive proselytizing, getting friends and family to swallow the “red pill” (of difficult knowledge, from “The Matrix,” 1999). This is to bring them onboard the secret squad that will save the world, or, from a more practical perspective, to protect themselves from intrusions on their fantasy life. QAnon evangelists includes YouTube advisors, book authors, swag manufacturers — hats, flags, shirts — and outright scammers.
Their theories have also been multiplying. The pandemic is a hoax but the new 5G networks are causing the disease, although the vaccines will be fraudulent, in accord with the anti-vaxxers. John F. Kennedy Jr didn’t die in 1999, when his plane crashed in the ocean with two women onboard: he’s been hiding, will soon go public, declare war on the cabal and take over from Pence as vice-president.
QAnons are admonished to do their own research, which allows them to role-play cryptologists and academics, while the movement itself fosters dreams of heroism and revolution in the face of confusion, ridicule and catastrophe.
QAnon enthusiasts at a Trump rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, in 2018. photo: unknownUnlike a 9/11-conspiracy theorist, who can only bore you to death at a party, QAnon was categorized a domestic terror group by the FBI, in April 2019. That rating stems from the 2016 PizzaGate attack, a June 2018 Nevada police standoff with an armed man who blocked the roadway on the Hoover Dam his armored vehicle, and a murder.
In March 2019, a New York Gambino family boss was killed by a QAnon-addled kid, who thought the CIA had corrupted the Mafia (instead of vice versa, as in the Kennedy-assassination conspiracy).
QAnon’s absence of actual violence is outweighed by its size, up to fifteen million people, its influence, from Trump rallies and Save the Children marches to extensive indoctrination, in person, through the web and now overseas, and its members’ violent view of what is happening right now, hidden away.
Over a year after the FBI assessment but only two weeks before Election Day 2020, Facebook, Twitter and, to a lesser degree, YouTube closed down most of the tens of thousands of accounts related to QAnon, which digital activists had been requesting for years.
Instead of algorithms favoring vetted sources or hiring enough people to manage more detailed review, those platforms were programmed to send viewers more exciting examples of their interests and what is trending worldwide. If someone searches for “QAnon,” their inboxes are eventually inundated by related material, which can lead depressed, anxious or otherwise susceptible people down the so-called “rabbit hole,” Alice’s way into Wonderland.
The same week QAnon was blocked from social media, it was sanctioned by the House of Representatives, every member except for 18, most of whom cited free speech concerns. They can now discuss those issues with their new QAnon colleagues.
In fact, QAnon had two victories among its losses on Election Day. Out of almost 100 candidates adhering to aspects of QAnon, who ran for posts across the country, the Republican congressional candidates Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and gun-fanatic Lauren Boebert of Colorado won their races. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted, on November 12th, that both women had withdrawn fealty to Q, but Boebert only distanced herself and Greene didn’t even bother.
“QAnon is not just on the internet anymore; it’s in the US Capitol,” emphasized Kailyn Tiffany, a journalist with The Atlantic, which published the first major expose of QAnon in May 2020, albeit three years after its emergence.
“It is not just a conspiracy theory anymore; it’s a voting bloc. And it is not going anywhere.”
Although most major news outlets covered QAnon from 2017, aside from The Atlantic, they didn’t start in depth investigative reporting until August 2020, which generated some frenzied catch-up but little actual news. Now that the movement has become of such public concern, however, even staid financial news organizations are taking it seriously and doing good research.
Also on Election Day, Business Insider, a respected site since 2007, referred to QAnon as a game but didn’t elaborate. Their article was investigating Q’s identity through an in-depth analysis of “his” clues, so-called “Q drops.”
Business Insider fingered Ron Watkins or his father Jim, who owns Q’s current hoster, 8kun. Q moved from 4chan to 8chan, when the former instituted some censorship. After Watkins bought 8chan, they morphed it into 8kun last year, after bad press from posting racist manifestos, notably by the New Zealand and El Paso mass murderers (51 in March 2019, 23 in August 2019, respectively).
Ron Watkins emphatically rejects such accusations. But, after years’ hard labor in the outlaw internet, he quit 8kun on Election Day, supposedly to devote more time to his wife and favorite hobby, woodworking, as it happens.
Coincidence is not causality, of course, but Q, too, went silent on Election Day after noting, “Trust the plan not the polls.” QAnons were overjoyed when Q returned on November 12th, but “his” Q-drop, “Nothing can stop what is coming,” was not that informative.
As if that wasn’t bad enough for the symbol-obsessed QAnons, two weeks earlier was the debut of “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” Produced by The Financial Times, which is based in London and “the leading global business publication” (by its own account), the 16-minute video was directed by Izabella Kaminska, a star reporter and the editor of their award-winning web division, FT Alphaville.
That QAnon is a rogue LARP will have enormous implications for its FBI task force, researchers studying cults and anyone observing with trepidation its mercurial rise and excessive fantasy. If we hope to crack its code and come up with counter measures, how it emerged and operates is critical intel.
“Is QAnon a Game” is a fantastic first step, which I will examine below (see it on YouTube here), but it was overshadowed by real-life events, as so often happens in Trumpian times: a bitter presidential campaign, voting made difficult by both the pandemic and Trump Administration, and the lingering, unresolved aftermath.
Although the administration finally opened up to the Biden transition team on November 23rd, Trump didn’t concede, which could still lead to the Supreme Court, a constitutional crisis, fighting in the streets or a coup, according to extremists on the right and left.
Trump remains adamant he won in a landslide, that there was vast voter fraud and that American democracy is under attack by an enormous, octopussian conspiracy, directed by “the deep state,” another conspiracy theory Trump endorses. It may also be the Satanist pedophiles identified by QAnon.
Trump has winked at QAnon a couple of times, notably his August 18th news conference. After insisting he knew nothing, he admitted, “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me… If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”
Trump typically avoids outlandish conspiracy theories, like 9/11 or aliens, but he has built his life around devious deals and outright lies; he suspects the same from others; and he is a trained trafficker in conspiracy theories.
In fact, his main mentor after his father was Roy Cohn, the rancid New York lawyer who entered the public eye as an assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy, fabricator of the allegation that the US government was riddled with communists, the conspiracy theory which tore apart America in the ‘50s.
Along with obstructionist legal strategies, Trump learned from Cohn how to use conspiracy theories to introduce doubt, sow fear and threaten enemies, while maintaining distance and deniability — in fact, not even believing the theories themselves.
It is no coincidence then that Trump kicked off his political career by promoting the Birther conspiracy, his presidential campaign by accusing Mexicans of coming to America to rape and rob, not find work, and his presidency by claiming Clinton won the popular vote by having her minions plant three million fake ballots.
Another conspiracy theory Trump has advanced by endless repetition is that the liberal media was distorting and fabricating so much about him and his administration, they were “fake news.” Conversely, only he could provide an honest assessment, and he came to be revered by supporters for his candor and authenticity.
Republicans have long been the paranoid party, from McCarthy to Nixon and their obstinate opposition to President Obama. After the 2012 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, conspiracy theories flourished about Secretary of State Clinton, even after the Republican-led congressional investigations found them baseless.
Even so, most conservatives still can’t conceive that Trump’s go-to strategy is conspiracy theory. Jeff Flake, a Never Trumper one-term senator from Arizona remains perplexed, even though he noted on November 20th, “He probably didn’t believe [Birtherism] but knew some Republicans would.”
Most Republicans see Trump’s conspiracy obsessions as the character flaw of a political outsider and narcissist, who can’t bear to lose because his brand is based on winning and fantasy. Actually, winning through fantasy is the main benefit of conspiracism and Trump. Before becoming president, of course, he was the star of the reality television show, “The Apprentice” (NBC, 2004–17).
Trump has indoctrinated his 88 million Twitter followers with his own tweets and those forwarded from others, including QAnons. By identifying clandestine criminality everywhere, he stokes fear and presents himself as the only viable savior, a boast repeated ad nauseam during his presidential campaign.
Trump has supported 29 conspiracies, according to Wikipedia, from global warming is a hoax to the deep state, which emerged from the Left, or foul play in the deaths of Vince Foster and Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile and Democrat, which reflects the kernels of truth CTs use to build on.
Trump almost always piggy-backs on other conspiracy theorists — Birtherism was the invention of a Chicago gadfly attacking Obama in 2004 — but his piece de resistance is entirely his own: The Democrats can only win in 2020 if they steal the election. Many of us laughed when he started hyping that one, not realizing he was a conspiracy theory master.
Even at the 2016 Iowa caucus, Trump claimed Ted Cruz stole votes. To solidify his Clinton-votes conspiracy, he established the Voter Fraud Commission in May 2017, an apparent exercise in futility, especially after it died eight months later due to absolutely no evidence. But Trump was playing the long game. He prepared the Clinton-votes conspiracy in anticipation of his 2016 defeat and, after winning, switched it to shore up his CT strategy for 2020.
Cohn would be proud. His acolyte Trump has done an A-plus job of making his voter-fraud conspiracy theory stick, even as Republican and Democrat officials testified “it was the most secure vote in American history,” the courts threw out almost all cases, and more and more celebrity Republicans and business people begged him to concede.
Regardless of America’s respectful transfers of power dating back to Washington, the majority of ranking Republicans and rank-and-file are still standing by Trump, although his followers are famous for taking him figuratively, not literally. Hence, Secretary of State Pompeo, Senator McConnell and others imagine they’re indulging his inability to process loss, even as they grossly underestimate him, as did New Yorkers and Democrats before them.
Trump’s low-brow demeanor and even idiocy serve to conceal an elevated emotional intelligence and ability to manage chaos. While it is confusing for most people, Trump has learned to take advantage of chaos, what some have called “creating controversy and watching it play out.”
Secret consultants didn’t help Trump win in 2016 or take over the Republican Party, since he generally rejects advice in favor of “gut feelings,” as he calls it. Indeed, he has developed a technique of pitching ideas, no matter how stupid, reading the room, crowd or media, and, if he feels a benefit is to be gained, plowing forth. While this system hasn’t been that effective in business or international negotiations, it worked well in reality television, celebrity culture and a political party drained of ideas and ethics.
Although the Biden Administration has started to get briefing, meetings, office space and funding, Trump’s insistence he will still prevail through the courts, even though his legal efforts have been a farce rejected out of hand by conservative Republican judges, perplexes many right-wingers, while liberals ridicule it as a scam for donations. Few recognize they are being out-chaos-ed.
Sure, Trump looks frazzled and is laying low, mostly playing golf, watching TV and tweeting frenetically, with few public events since Election Day. He’s in toughest con of his life, searching frantically for a way through, and weighing a possible end-run around all imaginable norms.
Given Trump’s long reliance on conspiracy theories, I doubt he will leave the West Wing without attempting to harness the biggest CT in American history, especially since its adherents see him as their savior.
The first real toe in this water came on November 12th, the same day as Q’s reappearance. Trump tweeted IN ALL CAPS a conspiratorial claim QAnons took from a far-right cable news channel and had been trying to get to him for a week: “Dominion Voting Systems, a company that makes voting machines, ‘deleted’ millions of Trump votes,” (as reported by NBC News).
Although the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency dismissed it, QAnons reject representatives of the deep state and were ecstatic. 70% of all tweets about Dominion, including the proposition Venezuela’s leaders Chavez and Maduro used its equipment to rig their elections, were coming from Q-related accounts. There’s also renewed chatter about how they should stop mourning Trump’s loss and resume their work to save America.
QAnon prayers were answered on November 19th. Since all his more reputable lawyers had quit, Trump made Giuliani captain of his legal team tackling the voter-fraud conspiracy. Giuliani in turn tapped his top associate Sidney Powell, who ranted about Dominion’s diabolical deeds, how Georgia’s Republican governor colluded with the CIA to steal the election, and concluded, almost in tears, with “stick to the plan,” Q’s catch-phrase.
She was fired two days later, indicating Trump did one of his gut feeling pitches, read the room and backed off QAnon, although perhaps not permanently.
Powell is the second senior Trump administration official to come out completely Q, after Michael Flynn, for whom she also provides legal counsel. Briefly Trump’s National Security Advisor, until his removal for failing to admit meeting with Russians and arrest after the Mueller Investigation, Flynn posted to YouTube — on July 4th, 2020, no less — his recitation of the QAnon pledge: “Where we go one, we go all.”
Flynn’s complete pardon by Trump on November 25th, will be seen by QAnon as another affirmation of their cause.
“Taken at face value, at the heart of Q is an effort to generate distrust,” notes Kaminska, at the beginning of “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?”
“Whether it as a state disinformation campaign or something more spontaneous, it is hard to say. Simplifying it, as most of the media currently does, as a far right conspiracy that worships Trump and believes his opponents are Satanic pedophiles, probably misses the point.”
With that deserved dig at mainstream media, Kaminska sets out to decipher QAnon’s methods, history and roots, an epic as fascinating as it is frightening.
Her biggest download comes from Adam Curtis, who became her primary source. A reputable English documentary filmmaker, he has made almost a film a year since 1983, often focusing on social control by big money or computers but not conspiracies. Curtis has done his research and has been doing performance pieces about QAnon.
Conceptually, he traces it back to ’60s radicals Kerry Thornley (1938–98), his childhood chum Greg Hill, and their founding of Discordianism, a parody religion which worshipped chaos. Eventually, an author and ‘zine and magazine publisher, Thornley was also a seminal hippie whose Army buddies happened to include Lee Harvey Oswald.
Thornley and Hill started “Operation Mindfuck,” which involved sending to the Forum page of Playboy Magazine, a progressive periodical at the time, anonymous letters promoting the Illuminati conspiracy theory.
As you may recall from Conspiracy Theory 101 (soon to be required in college), the Illuminati were a secret, 18th century subsect of the Masons in Bavaria, who attempted to advance society through science and democracy. But instead of armchair radicals, a couple of popular books by conspiracy theorists of the day portrayed them as the hidden hand behind the French Revolution.
In Operation Mindfuck, Thornley, Hill and late addition Robert Anton Wilson claimed the Illuminati were involved in almost every war, revolution and assassination since 1789, an exaggeration so egregious they assumed no intelligent person would believe it.
In fact, they thought their Illuminati story could be used as a form of mass psychology, exaggeration as “aversion therapy,” to heal the “paranoid style in American politics,” left over from ‘50s’ McCarthyism and Red Scare and identified by Richard Hofstadter in his respected book of the same name (1964).
Thornley didn’t go when he was subpoenaed to the Kennedy-assassination conspiracy trail in New Orleans, but he told all in his book, “Oswald” (1965), which supports the “lone gunman” theory.
Later in life, however, hard luck, government interference and reading the “dual state” analysis of European lefties Ernst Frankel and Franz Morgenthau, who postulated democracies need fascist substructures to function in the modern era, turned Thornley toward conspiracism.
Hints also emerged that he was mistaken about Oswald. That the Kennedy assassination might have been a Mafia conspiracy is suggested by Oswald’s murder by a low-level but in-debt mafioso, Jack Ruby, and government documents declassified in 2017 (with one last dump postponed to 2021 by Trump, as it happens).
Despite Thornley’s disenchantment, his anti-conspiracy ideas were advanced by others, notably Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007). A prolific author, agnostic mystic, Berkeley activist and friend of Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, Wilson happened to be the Playboy Forum editor who published Thornley’s letters.
Not only did they become close friends, Wilson was anointed the saint of Discordianism by Thornley, who loved statements like, “Belief is the death of intelligence,” or “You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.”
In turn, Wilson and his Forum co-editor, Robert Joseph Shea (1933–1994), fictionalized Thornleyism into an 800 page, award-winning, sci-fi bestseller, which Wilson called “a fairy tale for paranoids.”
“The Illuminatus! Trilogy” is a tour de farce as well as force — the inserted exclamation point giving it away — which surfs from a New York City cop thriller through sex, drugs and mysticism to aliens, monsters and even post-modern asides to the reader. There’s also plenty of conspiracy, including a scene set in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, home to the historical Illuminati.
Wilson and Shea considered conspiracy an intellectual stress test, which fortified your morality and humanity, if you didn’t take it literally, but condemned you to confusion, fear and hate, if you did. Neglecting, however, to recall H.L. Mencken’s observation that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” their attempt to cure “the paranoid style in American politics” backfired completely.
Ask around, you’ll find widespread belief in the Illuminati. Indeed, we’re in a golden age of conspiracy theories, with more conspiracists and theories per capita than any time in history.
A similar series of shifts and reversals happened to QAnon.
According to Kaminska, the LARP was concocted by Manuel Chavez, AKA Defango, of Nevada. A likable but lackluster YouTuber, Chavez posts his “Citizen Zone” reports almost daily, rarely tops a thousand views, and has little Q qualities, in content or charisma. He is, however, known to smear people with accusations of pedophilia.
“[Chavez] claimed he created Q as an alternative reality game mostly for the LOLs,” narrates Kaminska, “but also to smoke out bad journalists in the alternative media space,” to see who reported his stories as truth, another stress test or satire like Operation Mindfuck.
Alas, Chavez lost control of Q to Thomas Schoenberg, who might be a musician but is obviously a brilliant programmer — since he largely scrubbed himself from the web — and a LARP master. In fact, Schoenberg sharpened his skills by usurping another internet game, Cicada, which involved riddles, puzzles and advanced or esoteric theorems.
That plot twist is detailed by Kaminska’s other main informant, Jim Stewartson, an Emmy-winning producer and creative technologist out of Los Angeles (according to his LinkedIn profile), who is also well versed in LARPs.
Schoenberg wanted to “radicalize smart people” through Cicada and QAnon, according to Stewartson, using complex challenges and codes and intriguing stories and images. Alas, he drifted into transgressive topics, including Nazism and the CT Himmler formed a secret mystical sect, supposedly extant today. Schoenberg also emphasized the deep state.
Chavez and Schoenberg remained comrades-in-conspiracy, according to possible Nevada State racketeering charges (reported by SDNY.org). They started a company using “targeted chaos,” bots and smear campaigns to defame opponents for clients, one of which was right-wing activists planning to surveil the family of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee employee murdered in July 2016. Rich was about to spill the beans on Satanist pedophiles, or it was a robbery gone bad, according to police.
As sophisticated and shadowy as Schoenberg might be, he, too, lost control of QAnon, out-programmed by a party with greater access, perhaps Jim or Ron Watkins, although Q’s identity remains a mystery.
While the Qs were battling, there was also a struggle among “his” hosters. When Q’s original hoster, 4chan, began banning some discussions in 2018, “he” migrated to 8chan, the creation of Frederick Brennan (1994-).
A talented young programmer and graphic designer, Brennan is wheel-chair confined, due to severe brittle bone disease, and dreamt up his libertarian site while tripping on mushrooms in 2013. A year later, Jim Watkins saw Brennan in an Al Jazeera documentary and recruited him to The Philippines to run his internet empire. Watkins had either bought out or commandeered 2channel, a Japanese pornography site, leading to wealth and child pornographer accusations. Brennan sold 8chan to Watkins in 2015 but continued to work for him, until their falling out three years later.
The fight for QAnon outlines a William Gibson-esque, sci-fi thriller, although it can only be produced in 2030, after we have recovered from the real-life game being played across America and increasingly England, Germany, Brazil and elsewhere.
Stewartson lays out those twists and turns calmly and professionally in “Is QAnon a Game,” but his article on Medium.com, published in August, is significantly more aggressive and explicit.
“QAnon is a death cult preparing for mass violence,” he writes. “It is being run by a group of theocratic fascists, ruthless grifters and literal sociopaths in conjunction with Russian intelligence. Each of these actors is equally hell-bent on creating as much chaos as possible leading up to the election.”
That wake-up call was too inflammatory for Kaminska, but she references it in her section on spy service dropouts or expellees. They form a large cohort of injured cyber warriors, scammers trying to monetize state secrets and nation-state spies, according to Steve Hassan, an ex-intelligence officer she interviewed.
The Russians’ 2016 election interference did not repeat in 2020, since Putin — also an expert in managing conspiracy theories — had no need. His efforts to generate distrust were already being enacted by unwitting double agents.
I doubt Putin is literally running Trump. Although he may have blackmail material, the so-called “Pee tape,” it is immaterial since Trump is a metaphysical “Manchurian candidate,” no brainwashing or blackmailing needed. In this way, Trump is a bit like James Jesus Angleton, the CIA counter-espionage chief during the 1960s, writ large. Angleton tore the agency apart searching for high-level moles, based on McCarthy’s claims of communists, clues from an unstable Soviet defector and his own paranoia.
Trump’s devotion to conspiracism automatically partners him with Putin, since it is essentially a religion. Instead of a monotheist universe ruled by a just, benevolent lord, they believe in a dog-eat-dog, Darwinian world, run by like themselves or even more evil parties, whom they must stand against, hence, the Satanist angle.
The little guy watching the elephants fighting understandably interprets it as “the global cabal theory,” according to the best-selling Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, who finally revealed his analysis on November 20th.
The most critical issue not covered by Kaminska in her brief 16 minutes, in my opinion, is the collapse of community consciousness. Society has been long been atomizing, due to alienation, distancing, digitization, mechanization and fake news, to which we can add pandemic isolation and infection fears. But it began in the ‘60s.
Fifty years ago, psychotropic and birth-control drugs, the freedom to choose your own identity and personal behavior, and other anti-establishment ideas were welcomed by many, including myself, as innovative developments for empowering individuals and improving society. It also fertilized the ground for out-of-control fantasy.
Our minds operate by constructing inner universes from our culture, experience and dreams, according to the ancient Hindu sages, who called our private worldviews “maya,” Sanskrit for illusion or magic. Their thesis was corroborated by Plato, with his cave shadows, and Descartes, who existed because he could think, but it was only integrated into Western canon by ’60s philosophers like Derrida and Said, who developed deconstruction and multiculturalism, respectively.
A vibrant fantasy world is mandatory for creativity and hope, as well as sexual satisfaction, but we still have to connect with our neighbors and societies through agreed-upon, shared realities, which was easier in simpler times.
The digital age made good on its promise of interconnectivity and information, but it divided us into unmediated groups, led by innocent influencers, experienced celebrities, full-on cult leaders or secret agents. With our lives more scheduled, monitored and machine-based, even as we are at loose ends, anxious and disconnected, many of us look to fantasy play with a like-minded community, just as children do or people in the ’60s did.
“This exact phenomena [of conspiracies] and the things going on with Trump is the reason I don’t do that kind of work right now,” Jeff Hull, the LARP master, explained to me. “Ten years ago, that was fun, that was playful. We were activating the public space in a way to turn people on to a whimsical reality.”
Hull noticed a change during his LARP “The Latitude,” which came after “The Jejune Institute.” It was a secret society where people shared personal information in a magical realist format. Although he only invited participants personally and managed it closely, of the 3,000 people involved, many came to view it as a religion, a few dozen became fanatics and a couple tried to take it over.
“Now playing with fact and fiction is scary,” concluded Hull. “There is no room for us to fuck around, to distort truth in that way. It is not a game any more.”
And so went the LARPs two-decade rollercoaster ride from advertising and “whimsical reality” to takeover by “theocratic fascists, ruthless grifters and literal sociopaths.” Stewartson’s assessment is hard to verify, but we are definitely in one of the most dangerous intersections of politics, culture, technology, espionage and mental health EVER!
To be sure, 2020 America is not 1930s Germany, barely out of a catastrophic war and depression, with only one decade of democracy under its belt, and obsessed with cabaret, homosexuality and drugs (OK, we do share the last three). Moreover, Trump is hardly Hitler, which cripples his capacity to enact a traditional coup, along with the fact that much of the military thinks he’s dishonorable and a draft dodger.
But a coup in consciousness is not farfetched. Up to a quarter of Trump’s 70 million voters support QAnon concepts; Trump is a master at manipulating conspiracy theories, which can flip a loss to a win through fantasy and repetition; and “Paradoxically, conspiracy theories have become the most effective community bonding mechanisms of the 21st century,” according to the respected columnist David Brooks (November 26th).
History’s greatest conspiracy kingdom, the Third Reich, was built on conspiracy theories about Jews: they betrayed Germany in World War I, controlled the banks, were taking over Germany, were seducing Christian women. CTs came to rule the regime as neighbors, friends and even children, as well as the Gestapo, SS, Abwher and the other intelligence services, spied on, denounced or threatened to denounce each other.
As crazy as Nazi thinking was, it is not as irrational, technically speaking, as some QAnon allegations: sex-slave children held in caves, reptilian alien overlords, time travel. Although they don’t believe every theory and most are not like Germans in thrall to Hitler, we have entered a conspiracy kingdom.
Until I viewed The Financial Times expose, I assumed QAnon was the work of a malevolent mastermind, who could be tracked and stopped. Seeing it as an interactive game, with multiple leaders, able to adapt like a virus and evolve evermore strange — but still enlist average Americans and folks on the far right and left — makes it a mob mentality of a higher order.
You see, I am Jewish and my mother is a survivor of the Holocaust, which was inspired by German conspiracy theories but also Europe-wide ones, notably “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Fabricated by the tsar’s secret police in 1903, “The Protocols” were purported to be the notes of a meeting of Jewish power brokers. Even though it was outed twenty years later as a plagiary, taken from a French satire with the word “Jew” switched in, it was taught as history in the Third Reich and many people believe “The Protocols” today.
QAnon seemed like those old obsessions in modern garb. Indeed, their claim that Democrats and celebrities are harvesting children’s blood for adrenochrome (a commercially-available adrenaline-derived medication), which they inject for alleged fountain-of-youth properties, brought to mind medieval accusations about Jewish people killing Christian children and using their blood for Passover matzo.
Of course, pushing rational limits is common to conspiracy theories. Since the creators are writing fiction, they want the most powerful stories, but which still ring true from existing narratives. Their struggle to tailor them to the dark corners of our collective consciousness makes QAnon a Rorschach test for our times.
Thornley and Wilson hoped to correct conspiracy fantasies through satire, by humorously tricking the mind back to rationalism.
Unfortunately, unlike the Johnson Administration (1963–68), which was trying to do some good and admitted some mistakes, the Trump presidency is full-on farce. Double unfortunately, most of the 47% of Americans who voted for Trump vigorously disagree, preferring to see him as a truth teller and corruption fighter, who will “make America great again” in a warranted second term.
One slip further down that rabbit hole is QAnon, which flourishes in direct relation to the delusions of Trump and Trumpers but also the actuality of the pandemic, the absence of functional fantasy, and the unintended consequences of LARPs, social media algorithms and postmodernism.
Two of the greatest satirists of our day are Steven Colbert and Seth Meyers, likable guys who’ve been eviscerating Trump for decades. Meyers hosted the Washington Press Club gathering in May 2011, which roasted Trump and featured President Obama’s hilarious takedown of Birtherism, which Trump pushed until 2015.
That was supposedly when Trump decided to run for president, although Obama notes in his new book, “A Promised Land” (released on November 18th), it may have come in 2010, when Trump offered to redecorate the West Wing and was politely refused.
Colbert, Meyers, Bill Maher and other comedy theorists have postulated that shaming humor
would destroy Trump. Alas, aggressively attacking Trump, Trumpers or QAnons plays into their perceptions of persecution by their intellectual, social or even metaphysical betters. Only Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che teases Trump with empathy, which can open a butt of ridicule up to the humanist realization, “We are all idiots.”
Since satire doesn’t work in a system-wide farce, sincerity, forgiveness and charity might, as naïve as that sounds.
Credible threats of or actual violence are crimes, which can be prosecuted. But QAnon operates mostly in the realm of cyberspace, free speech and fantasy and must be addressed there. Taking down QAnon pages or flagging disinformation is sensible, in a brick-and-mortar way, but it is reactive, minimally effective and hard to enforce.
“8chan is the only [online] platform featuring a full commitment to free speech,” insisted Jim Watkins in 2019, according to ABC News.
Although “8chan had banned nearly 48,000 users, deleted more than 132,000 posts and 92 discussion boards… [and] complied with 56 U.S. law enforcement requests,” Watkins explained, it is still “a one-of-a-kind discussion board where anonymous users shared tactics about French democracy protests, how to circumvent censorship in repressive regimes, and the best way to beat a classic video game… and a small minority of users post hateful and ignorant views.”
That’s surprisingly articulate for Watkins, who is accused of many nefarious deeds, including by his former programmer, Brennan, who must have some inside dope. Indeed, Brennan and Watkins are currently suing each other; their respective legal machinations have forced each other to flee The Philippines; Brennan has become a vocal critic of QAnon and a proponent of the postulate Watkins is Q or close to “him.”
2017 brought the debut of Parlor, the free speech Twitter, which opens with the inevitably intriguing disclaimer, IN ALL CAPS: “Warning!! This site contains adult materials or materials that may be considered offensive in some communities.” Then came Gab, MeWe and Rumble, two networks championing free speech and a libertarian video-sharing site, respectively.
It has been almost two decades since the start of 4chan and the dark web, suggesting we can’t rely on a strategy that depends on controlling speech. Plus there’s the argument against censorship. Prohibition pushes people underground, where they are harder to monitor, communication with outsiders is limited and their moral senses atrophy even further.
Perhaps QAnon should be considered a self-inflicted, society-wide psy-op, which reflects our malaise but could be countered by more enlightened, insightful and creative speech, dialogue and art. Such content could be amplified by sophisticated strategies, web influencers and regular folk, like suburban women or the Tiktok teens who swamped sites with hits to stop trolls.
The Conspiracy of Love — that there has always been a secret cabal of people working for good, even in terrible times — is a concept I proposed in articles and a performance piece of the same name. In the latter, I relate some of my experiences and research; I read from the Gettysburg Address and my mother’s book, “Love at the End of the World,” about being a romantic teenager in the Holocaust; and I conclude with audience dialogue.
Since I know only a couple of QAnons personally, I base my approach on many discussions with friends and acquaintances who believe 9/11 was an inside job. While I have only succeeded a few times, there’s always a way to maintain dialogue, propose fresh perspectives and translate them into terms acceptable by a given individual.
With Trump’s defeat, many QAnoner are starting to have doubts.
On November 9th, both the NY Times and Washington Post ran articles covering their election disappointment and fear they’ve been conned. Of course, unfulfilled predictions are common to CTs and other QAnons are recalibrating to fit, a standard practice among end-time cults.
I applaud Kaminska’s use of a few of her 16 minutes to examine how to heal conspiracy fanaticism, by interviewing an ex-Moonie cult member turned deprogrammer. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining relations, of not treating culters as enemies, of seeing delusion as a disease that can be cured.
“We have to step back from the demonization of each other and ask what role we can play in building social trust,” President Obama told an NPR interviewer on November 16th. We don’t have to encourage views or actions to accept people as human beings. We are, however, obliged to be more tolerant and understanding, if we hope to bring them back from the polarity brink or conspiracies of hate.
President-elect Biden personifies this quest with his big-tent tolerance, his Vice President-elect Harris (the first Black, woman AND second generation immigrant in that position), his calm attention to the details of the dangers facing America, his disregard of Trump’s defiance, and his reaching out to Republicans, even as they rebuff him.
QAnon blew up in the time of Corona and Trump, when people had time to kill and phobias to channel and he was fanning the flames of divisiveness, fear and conspiracism.
As those factors fade, so will the siren call of Q and T. It will be close, like the election, but we will eventually transit through Trump’s expertly assembled voting-fraud, media-misinformation and deep-state conspiracy theories.
At least that’s what we’re being assured by many public figures, including Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Russia (in a November 12th NPR interview). McFaul, who is from Montana and has Trump-supporting relatives and friends, pointed out that some of them voted for Obama and that radical right-wingers did almost nothing on Election Day.
The Proud Boys did appear in Washington DC on November 14th at the MAGA Million Man March — only attended by tens of thousands — which featured a Trump drive-by, QAnon speakers and fellow travelers. Despite a significant counter-protest presence, however, there were only 21 arrests and one serious injury.
“People are less polarized than it seems in the media,” I was told in New Mexico by a North Carolina man, who goes by the trail name Eternal and is hiking the 5,000-mile trail circuit of the western United States. “Most Americans vote red or blue depending on a few hot-button issues but are not fanatics.”
I was in Texas the week before Election Day and saw only a few pickup trucks flying big Trump flags and little of the thirst for violence that plagued 1930s Berlin.
Obviously, I need to get this right. One of the most pointed tragedies of the Jews of Europe was their intellectuals’ failure to analyze the Nazis adequately, despite having Freud and other psychiatrists and philosophers close at hand.
Trump’s attempt to split the country through conspiracy theories will surely continue through the Electoral College vote on December 14th and even Biden’s inauguration, perhaps to his possible 2024 presidential run. Naturally, he will also continue to wreak havoc with government regulations and employees, overseas relations and executive orders and pardons.
Although he will surely leave the White House on January 20th, he will probably re-join mass media and come to lead a grievance cult attempting to block all of Biden’s initiatives, as he did with Obama’s achievements, which could make the Tea Party seem tame.
This will serve as a second referendum on Trumpism, the final stress test of the Trump Era.
If we prevail, if Biden is able to rebind the factions, it will lead to legislative protections against demagogues, intellectual ones against conspiracists, and enthusiasm for the democratic process, which a majority of us just saved through increased voting and faith in our system as well as humanity.
If not, many Americans will continue to believe in Trump and some will go full QAnon, which could become even more popular if the group rejiggers its objectives, if Trump openly identifies with QAnon, or if he essentially becomes Q, who is more a concept than a person. QAnon could conceivably shift from being guided by a hidden character dropping cryptic clues to a well-known one tweeting IN ALL CAPS.
Yes, a lot of people are hurting emotionally, financially and spiritually. Yes, conspiracy theorists will keep exploiting that, inventing ever more insane notions, like QAnon is a CIA creation to identify radicals for future arrest.
We can’t correct role-playing, mind games by indoctrination, rationalism or even satire. It requires a change of heart in the believers but also in us. If we dismiss our opponents, they will dismiss us and their team doesn’t have the visionaries, psychiatrists or healers to make up the difference.
We have to bet on the Conspiracy of Love, which is where the radical multiculturalism of the new era meets the onrushing road.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jan 13, 2022 - 12:53 PM
Cinephile Confessions in the Time of Covid
by Alli Antero
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Helen (Helia Rasti) and Phineas (Douglas Allen) in Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur',. image: courtesy A. Alli ground feature films for eight years, I sent a series of DVDs to various agents in Los Angeles. I was hungry for any feedback they might offer and for the off chance they might buy or find distribution for my movies.
Of the nine or so I contacted, only one replied; he actually called me on the phone! The agent said, “We love your work but your films are marketing nightmares. We wouldn’t know how or where to place them.” And then, the punchline, “Would you consider working within an existing genre?”
I thanked him for his feedback but no thanks, my creative processes wouldn’t work within any prefab format. In parting ways, he said, “Good luck. I mean that. Don’t take this the wrong way but your films are too original for the market.”
Too original for the market? That became my mantra for the next few days as I tried processing what it actually meant. WTF?! This was my wake-up call. It meant... Fuck LA, fuck genres, fuck agents and fuck their market politics. Whatever latent fantasy I harbored about “being discovered” or “hitting it big” or seeing my films achieve national release — all evaporated into the void.
In Alli's 'Vanishing Field', the Oracle (Nita Bryant) confronts Jacob on the astral plane. image: courtesy A. Alli I toured my movies up and down the west coast between San Francisco and Seattle paying my way by selling DVDs and splitting the admissions with the hosting venues.
After fifteen years of almost nonstop film and music production, my wife Sylvi and I were burnt out and in late 2015, we relocated from Berkeley, California, to Portland, Oregon. Portland is a city surrounded by forests; one of them, Forest Park is larger than Central Park, NY. Our daily forest walks gradually rejuvenated us to the point of finally considering a new creative project (Sylvi and I have been artistic collaborators since first meeting in 1989; it’s who we are and what we do).
Over the next four years, we reinvented ourselves through the creation of five experimental theatre productions, each one featuring text by my favorite poets: Rimbaud, Bukowski, Hilda Doolittle (HD), Blake, and Plath. What made these productions experimental was their visceral and physically ritualistic style of achieving extreme states for performers and audience alike. This approach was initially inspired by my early exposure to the paratheatrical work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski in 1977 and has been documented at paratheatrical.com.
Filmmaker, theater director and other arts worker Antero Alli. image: courtesy A. Alli I was in my late sixties and had outgrown this part of myself. I needed to let go of something I had been clinging to. I decided to post all my films online as free views on YouTube and Vimeo, a giveaway compelled by a final renunciation of commercial gain for or with art. My gift to the world.
In the Fall of 2019, the Muses finally called with a vision about an astral-travelling subversive Zen monk. This triggered memories of a traumatic out of body experience I suffered in my early twenties, a shock that annihilated any previous identification with my physical body.
In my final experimental theatre production, “Escape from Chapel Perilous” (Dec. 2018), I invited a local Zen monk to play the disembodied spirit of a monk wandering the bardo between incarnations. A year later, in the Fall of 2019, I cast him as the astral-travelling Zen monk in my next film, “The Vanishing Field”.
He agreed and invited me to shoot the movie in the Zen monastery where he lived and worked along with other monks who agreed to appear in this chiefly improvised film. “The Vanishing Field” was completed over four months and received favorable reviews before its Portland premiere was covid-cancelled; it went straight to YouTube with my other films.
After “The Vanishing Field” was released, I wrote a book distilling the paratheatrical methods I had developed over the past four decades. The book was published as State of Emergence by Original Falcon Press in late 2020. I started wondering if the Muses of Cinema would ever call again. My life as a theatre director was over and I was feeling the earth and sky open up before me.
From Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur', Calliope (Cynthia Schwell) appears in a dream. image: courtesy A. Alli A year later, the Cinema Muses sent me my next vision about a writer who writes herself into a story with unexpected real world consequences.
This psychological romance of a woman falling in love with a figment of her imagination in a story she was writing ignited new fires in my ongoing obsession with mystical themes. Exploring a story of how the power of imagination shapes our experiences and our beliefs became my compass for navigating the Covid Bardo.
The term “Bardo” comes from the Tibetan Buddhist idea of an interim dimension between incarnations — when we die, our soul enters this limbo state, this bardo, where it drifts until incarnating, again, into the human condition.
“The Alchemy of Sulphur” was made over six months in 2021 during the challenging quarantine era of social distancing and masks. Four of the five actors were vaccinated and since most of the scenes were filmed outdoors at a nearby wildlife refuge, we were happy to play in a mask-free environment.
Moment from 'Soror Mystica: Ritual Invocation of the Anima'' a ParaTheatrical ReSearch performance, 2017: courtesy A. Alli For more details on any of the above, see my site Vertical Pool, or my book, "State of Emergence".
As a love slave to the Muses, Antero has helped them create fourteen feature art films and numerous documentaries and shorts since 1992 and be reached here
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 09:56 PM
What Happened to cineSOURCE?
by Doniphan Blair
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hasn’t been in your inbox lately—we missed you, too, and happy new year!
In the middle of celebrating Trump’s defeat, on November 3rd, 2020, cineSOURCE was hit with a malware attack. Although we rebuilt our site, cineSOURCE had long been having difficulties—its software needs an expensive upgrade—and I was busy with other writing projects. Indeed, I had recently edited and got published the book “Love at the End of the World".
But we kept putting up articles, mostly on film festivals or by our regular authors Karl Cohen and Don Schwartz, which was good, since Don bowed out last month (see story). Thanks for your great work, Don!
I also wanted to keep covering our specialty subjects, notably the conspiracy theory movement and Oakland, both of which are in their most severe crises since the McCarthy ‘50s and Crack ‘80s, respectively.
Indeed, we featured an Oakland article or issue every April since cineSOURCE’s start in 2008. Sorry for running eight months late but please check out “Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis", and let us know your thoughts on cineSOURCE’s Facebook page.
I also lost my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, in December, peacefully at age 96, but she lives on in her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption", which was released by Austin Macauley in May, 2021. See her obituary here.
In addition to editing it, I included “Darwin and Love: What I Learned Making a Holocaust Movie", my own attempt to make sense of that history, which appears in this cineSOURCE here. We also include one of my mother’s stories, “Stefan".
Despite the red ink, headaches and hackers, cineSOURCE has been one of the best projects of my life, from starting it as a paper magazine in 2008 to it becoming my entree to film showings, filmmaker interviews and film festivals, but most importantly my master’s class in writing.
Hence, I have many more articles, books and podcasts in the hopper. So, if you enjoyed cineSOURCE over our last decade, please subscribe or support me on Patreon.
I will do my best to keep cineSOURCE going.
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 04:23 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Jan 22
by Karl F. Cohen
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Spiderman and love interest (Tom Holland and Zendaya) from 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' (2021). photo: courtesy Marvel/i>Ever since the pandemic brought movie going to a halt, Hollywood has been consumed with fear of the demise of the mega blockbuster industry. With the arrival of “No Way Home”, the new Spider-Man film, which 20 million people in North American risked the new Omicron variant to see on its opening night, there is hope for the future—if a film is colossal and exciting enough.
“No Way Home” took in an estimated $253 million over the weekend of December 17th, according to Comscore. That means about 20 million tickets were sold. Indeed, it was the highest opening-weekend in the 19-year history of the eight-film, live-action Spider-Man franchise. It was also the third highest weekend EVER in Hollywood records, behind “Avengers: Endgame”, with $357 million, and “Avengers: Infinity War” with $258 million.
“No Way Home”’s big weekend gross is impressive, but the film will need more weekends to break even. The film probably cost Sony and Disney at least $200 million to make, plus there was enormously expensive marketing campaign. Will Covid 19 could ruins the film’s success?
Unfortunately, the weekend was not good news for other big productions. Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley”, a lavish noir thriller with an all-star cast, opened in 2,145 North American theaters. It bombed and it probably cost Disney about $60 million to make.
Also, let’s hope that December 17-20th didn’t turn out to be a super-spreader disaster.
Scene from Erick Oh’s new film 'Namoo'. photo: courtesy E. Oh/i>Erick Oh’s new Oscar contender is “Namoo”, Korean for tree, and the tree symbolically captures the beautiful and heartbreaking moments of his life. Oh created last year’s Oscar nominated “Opera”. He is from Korea and has worked at Pixar.
His new film is more personal and intimate than his last work. Oh was inspired to make “Namoo” while grieving the loss of his grandfather, and used his life as its centerpiece.
“I went on a journey to ask questions,” Oh told me. “I asked questions. Of course, I document my thoughts and provide a room for the audience to probe it and think about themselves too. That being said, I think I discovered a lot about who I am while making this film.”
The film shows the passage of time with changing color to represent the passing seasons. Oh says, “The tree is a symbol of your self-motivation that drives you internally, or it could be your unconsciousness with the tree and the guy interacting with each other. Sometimes tree gives stuff to him or takes away stuff or reveals something that he has forgotten. Sometimes he does something to the tree. That’s who we are. We keep talking or battling with our inner self and constantly making different decisions. That’s what makes life at the end of the day and who you are.”
“It forms in a heart shape when you meet the love of your life. Sometimes there’s a huge hole in the middle that probably represents those moments of emptiness. And then sometimes it goes super distorted, and it feels like everything’s falling apart. But after so many versions of your tree, you find a balance.”
Oh also commented that animating in virtual space and in real time with the Oculus headset was a new experience for him. Once he got up to speed, it saved him a lot of time. It took him a while to learn the “uninterrupted, 360-degree narrative flow of VR” but, fortunately, he had six experts to assist him.
The project began as a virtual reality experience created using the VR tool Quill, “which made transferring to a short much easier using the same animated workflow. One of the many reasons I was able to do VR was Quill software,” he said. “This enables artists to get into virtual space to draw and paint very intuitively. All the layers were done in Quill.” Indeed, the modeling, rigging, animating, shading, lighting are merged into one program
While the VR experience consisted of watching the tree grow in front of you, the short naturally contained a narrative flow that escalated with tension. “Thanks to Quill, the painterly, 2D-look was convincingly achievable in CG.”
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 Jan 10, 2022 - 04:16 PM
How Bad Are Video Games for Children?
by Karl F. Cohen
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The Girl Queen from Tencent Games popular game 'Honor of Kings'. photo: courtesy Tencentlittle attention to the video game industry.
Suddenly, however, I was reading all over about China cracking down on the game industry to combat child addiction to their products. Authorities were calling for parents, game developers and manufacturers to work together to combat the scourge of the game industry, which grossed $173 billion in 2021. Indeed, the stories were scary enough for game companies’ stock to tumble up to 10% in just a few hours. What was going on?
I read with amazement news articles that proclaimed, “No industry, no sport, can be allowed to develop in a way that will destroy a generation.” Several articles even called gaming “spiritual opium.” Chinese authorities were labeling e-sports and games the “opium of the mind” and digital games “electronic drugs.”
They called for more restrictions to prevent greater widespread addiction among children. One article claimed children were spending food money on games, and playing them for up to seven hours a day, resulting in their school grades dropping.
Tencent, a Chinese multinational entertainment company and the world’s biggest gaming developer (“Call of Duty: Warzone”, “Fortnite”, “League of Legends”), responded by saying new measures were needed to protect minors.
Tencent wanted to show they were socially responsible, but only suggested weak measures for another of their popular game, “Honor of Kings”. They did, however, support prohibiting kids under 12 from spending money on games and suggested limiting playing time to under 1.5 hours on weekdays and 2 hours a day on holidays and weekends.
The Chinese government responded to Tencent’s suggestions by issuing much tougher restrictions. Online gamers under 18 are now limited to only one hour on Friday through Sunday and on holidays. Play must be between 8 AM and 9 PM and is not permitted on Monday through Thursday.
Also facial recognition is becoming required to insure the player is 18 or older, to prevent children from using the IDs of adults to sign on. BBC news estimates China has “tens of millions of young gamers.” Tencent has also developed a facial recognition system to limit late-night gaming by children.
It is obvious the company admits their product is dangerous, so why doesn’t China take it off the market?
Both boys and girls are attracted to The Girl Queen from 'Honor of Kings'. illo: unknown “Honor of Kings” was the world’s top grossing game in 2019 and 2020. According to Tencent, it had the equivalent income of $22.7 billion in revenue from smartphone games and $6.9 billion from PC games. And gaming is just part of Tencent’s total revenue of $74 billion. Gaming has been called “the world’s most lucrative market.”
Wikipedia says, “’Honor of Kings’ is a multiplayer online battle arena developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by Tencent Games for the iOS and Android mobile platforms for the Chinese market.” Interestingly, downloading the app is free but to upgrade characters or costumes to advance levels, players must pay.
The BBC says the crackdown by Beijing is based on a reaction to the rapid growth of capital and technology and the potential adverse effect on the well-being of the country’s young generation. The government is also concerned about “celebrity fan culture and private tutoring,” and is trying to create “positive energy” and restore “correct values.”
Game companies do develop ways to addict players. Obviously, they make the games as exciting as possible, which entices players to return. And they offer additional incentives, including daily or weekly use-it-or-lose-it quests, login rewards for continuous streaks of play, season passes and other incentives. Explicitly or not, they want to dominate the lives of their players.
Computer Game Addiction Also Serious Problem in US
Playing computer games is fun for millions of people. When that pleasure becomes excessive, it can be annoying to others, but it doesn’t qualify as a computer game addiction unless other areas of a person’s life become adversely affected. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening to many players all over the world.
An industry of health professionals has developed to try and help those with this serious compulsive disorder. Indeed, it is now recognized as a mental addiction in the World Health Organization’s “International Classification of Diseases” (2018).
The lure of e-sports is quite enticing to many people. E-sports players who get involved with competitions can be rewarded with big money and titles like “pro” or "grand master." Successful individuals and teams can achieve fame. Some people wanting to be great e-sports players say they spend 8 to 12 hours a day in training.
Some of the games are what are called massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs), which are designed not to have a fixed ending, so new players can join in and others can leave or take a breaks as desired. Games often have levels of achievement that encourage you to try and rise in your ranking. Players of many games can earn points or “wealth” simply based on the numbers of hours they have spent playing. This fosters the concern that if you stop playing, you may fall behind other players.
Another kind of lure are the gaming programs that adopt gambling concepts. Instead of using chips some games let you buy or win things to put in your “loot box.” Other types of games, including e-sports, have people getting excited by betting money or things called “skins.” There are lots of other ways to wager online that don’t seem to be like old fashioned gambling. Software designers are on the search for new innovative concepts to get you involved.
Some of the avatars, that players use in a type of cos-play, from the popular 'Call of Duty'. photo: courtesy TencentSymptoms of a computer addiction include not being able to quit, being upset or angry when you can’t play, thinking a lot about playing and believing that playing makes you feel better. Other signs that someone has a serious problem include the loss of other things you used to enjoy, having trouble with your job, relationships or schoolwork, and lying about the amount of time you spend on gaming. And there are physical symptoms that can develop from a sedentary lifestyle.
Treatment
Treatment programs at mental health clinics exist in the United States, China and other nations for people who spend way too much time doing things like playing games, web surfing or even online chatting. The treatments range from group therapy to one on one counseling and outdoor experiences called “wilderness therapy.” There are also more severe interventions including shock treatment and in China militaristic “boot camps.”
China has also established legal regulations. Prior to establishing the most recent rules, they had outlawed online gaming in 2019 for kids under 18 between the hours of 10 PM and 8 AM. There were also restrictions established in 2017 limiting the numbers of hours a kid could play on Tencent games.
If you type into your computer’s search bar “video game addiction treatment” you will find dozens of businesses offering the public their services. You may also find interesting statistics like “as many as 12 percent of boys and 7 percent of girls are addicted to gaming.” The number of kids playing video games is said to be 70 to 80%, and 41% say they spend too much time playing video games. In the United States, spending money on video games grew by 30 percent in the second quarter of 2020, to a record $11.6 billion.
Should the animation community and public be made aware of computer game addiction
I believe computer game addiction can be harmful to the player and possibly others close to that person. I don’t know what to suggest, except that friends or family of people with that condition do the necessary research and try to convince the player to understand their problem and seek help. Animation can be a great art and I hate seeing it used in a way that harms others.
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 Jan 09, 2022 - 03:00 PM
Honoring Don Schwartz
by Doniphan Blair
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Don Schwarz, circa 2010. photo: courtesy D. SchwarzIndeed, Don holds multiple degrees, including a PhD in psychology and counseling, which allowed him to serve for 21 years as the director of the Trager Institute.
Fortunately for cineSOURCE, Don just finished a number of his doc blogs, which can be seen here, Dr. Doc. The last is fittingly named, “Into The Night: Portraits of Life and Death”. He also just did a great interview with the Greek-American filmmaker, Stavroula Toska, which can be seen here. Indeed, Toska thanked cineSOURCE as well as Don profusely on her Facebook page.
Since 1977, he has written for a variety of publications and projects, including The Pacific Sun, Marin County’s alternative weekly, and some film scripts. Moreover, as an actor he has been seen as an extra in a number of feature films shot in the Bay Area, starting in the 2000s.
A strong advocate for local film and TV production, Don was a member of the Scary Cow film cooperative, the storied indie film incubator, which was sadly forced to close during Covid. Other interests include music, his twin nieces, and promoting natural healing through scientific research.
Don got into film criticism writing for Film/Tape World, which flourished in the Bay Area from 1984 to 2007. Joining cineSOURCE right when it started in 2008, he became our most a dedicated film reviewer and writer, including 38 of his mini reviews in the last six months.
A quiet and modest man as well as careful observer and deep thinker, he lives in Marin County, and we wish him well.
Thanks for your great work, Don!
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 09, 2022 - 12:54 PM
Filmmaking in the Pandemic
by Leslie Streit
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A landscape that inspired and appeared in Leslie Streit's new film '95 Days'. photo: L. Streit2020 and 2021 brought devastating drought conditions to the San Francisco Bay Estuary and its surrounding locations. This area is a delicate living ecosystem of marshland and wildlife. My film “95 Days” chronicles its journey from a lush spring through the progressive heat and dryness of summer when the lack of rain and humidity gives way to nearby wildfires. Using photos and videos taken from May to late August 2021, often overlaying imagery from archival sources, I documented a changing landscape that is at once colorful, abstract, poignant and threatened.
I live only minutes from the San Francisco Bay Estuary and spend spare time walking its trails and photographing its flowers, grasses and birds. To my eye the landscape translates as interesting lines, patterns and color fields punctuated by colors and textures beyond what the camera could ordinarily see. I've tried to capture those images in the hopes that others might see what I see. There is beauty even when there is damage to the land and even as climate changes before our eyes.
Although much of my work in the past 13 years has been focused on feature documentaries, “95 Days” was a return to my roots in visual and performance art which was often considered experimental. Working with my long-time editor and producing partner, Robin McCain, we chose to make every frame melt into the next one with changing color, depth perception and point of view. There are 3 sections accompanied only by music within the film’s 5 minute length. No dialog was needed to tell this story.
When it was time to send “95 Days” out into the world we found that the Covid pandemic and resulting turmoil it brought with it have radically altered our way of viewing content from live theater to virtual screenings.
The poster for '95 Days'. photo: L. StreitOn the other side Netflix, Apple, Hulu and many others are distributing theatrical films and series and have been producing their own big budget content. The big award shows (Emmys, Golden Globes, and Oscars) reflect the continuing importance of the streaming media providers well beyond the days of pandemic isolation. For many people this is still the best way for them to see movies.
There also seems to be a pandemic/post-pandemic trend for films to focus on content that reflects disturbing issues: disease, famine, politics, apocalypse, racism and inequality, gender issues, crime and corruption, mental illness, poverty. And an endless stream about the lives of celebrities has taken over the documentary scene as well as a looming fear that things we used to laugh about are now off limits.
But there are many new film festivals opening internationally and short films especially those about subjects like the environment and climate change are very much appreciated in many parts of the world. Our “95 Days” has already won several awards and special mentions in the only three months that it has been submitted to festivals. It has had a cross cultural impact—video art, stills, and music are universal.
Right now the short film format seems ideally suited for many things. Short films can be made with all levels of budgets – high to low – by individuals in isolation or crews and teams working together. They can be issue oriented, comedy, animated or many other genres, suitable for all age groups. Most importantly they can be self distributed. Festivals can program them in between longer films and audiences can see them comfortably on a variety of devices from television to mobile phones.
For the last many years I had only been creating short format films as teasers for feature films. But “95 Days” has changed my entire outlook on filmmaking. It is my invitation to enter a joyful world of experimentation and I think the experience of making “95 Days” has given me a new freedom to tell all kinds of stories going into the future.
"95 Days" went on to win a total of nine awards at international festivals including two for best female director and others for best experimental short and best film about nature and the environment.
Leslie Streit is a filmmaker, writer and producer, living in San Francisco who can be reached here
Posted on Jan 09, 2022 - 03:20 AM
Letter from Oakland, Part II
by Doniphan Blair
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One of Oakland's largest unhoused encampments, home to some, a den of thieves to others, is in West Oakland. photo: D. BlairIndeed, Oakland is rich and talented enough to fix its problems, according to my neighbor Jermaine, who was raised in a Chicago hood by a drug-addicted mom. The gang war he witnessed from our loading dock comes from increasing lawlessness, he told me. Heading Jermaine’s fix-it list are the homeless encampments, which are common up and down the West Coast but over the top in Oakland, where they include fully 1% of the population. Although aggravated by gentrification, the homeless camps only started after the Occupy movement established that camping in public spaces would be tolerated, and then they distributed tents.
Many of the town’s biggest camps are in West Oakland. While they provide a release valve for society’s rebels or outcasts, they are rife with addiction, theft, sex abuse and the dangerous tactic of torching rivals’ tents, according to my friends who work with the unhoused as activists, social workers or firefighters, or who live nearby.
Oakland never burned during the nation-wide riots of 1964 through ’68, the last year because the Black Panthers advised against it. By the time Vice President Kamala Harris was born here in ‘64, it was becoming a remarkable multicultural and artistic city, the center of the Bay Area Figurative Movement (of painters) with a world-class art school, California College of Art.
Times were tough for Oakland's proletariat, due to downturns at the port and in many industries. Nevertheless, most residents still had access to elevated opportunities for friendships, education (the University of California at Berkeley is four miles down Telegraph Avenue from downtown Oakland) and employment. When the Rodney King riots erupted in Los Angeles in 1992 and spread to San Francisco and Berkeley, there were no riots in Oakland.
America’s history of slavery and ongoing racism are important subjects for study and debate, especially when contextualized within America’s democratic evolution, but making it the centerpiece of Oakland’s current catastrophe belies the obvious. Indeed, critical race theory can sometimes sound like a conspiracy theory—a monstrous unaddressed evil is sabotaging society—which is problematic in Trumpian times, when so many Americans believe his Big Lie about election fraud and other conspiracy theories.
In point of fact, Oakland has been a “chocolate city” for fifty years, having birthed the Panthers in 1966 and, in 1977, elected its first Black mayor, Lionel Wilson, another McClymonds High School graduate. He served for 14 years, the second longest term in Oakland history. (Panther co-founder Bobby Seale ran for mayor in ’72 and came in second out of nine.) And there have been two more Black mayors: Elihu Harris, 1991 to ‘99, and Ron Dellums, 2007 to ‘11.
While whites continued to hold the vast majority of power and African American Oaklanders dropped from 47% of the population n 1980 to 29% today, many people of color became city employees, entrepreneurs, politicians, professionals, artists, and professors, as was the case with Newton’s brother and Harris’s parents. They also became cops.
Ersie Joyner, who was still recovering two months later from the unbelievable 22 gunshots he survived in October, emerged from poverty in East Oakland to become a respected officer. He was involved in a police shooting a decade ago, for which the department paid a wrongful death settlement of $75,000, but he claimed he was confronting an assailant about to commit a murder. Not only did Chief Armstrong and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf praise Joyner highly after he was shot, he was an early advocate of defunding the police.
“My whole entire career I have been taught, I have trained, and I have worked towards eliminating gangs,” Joyner told a reporter from The Guardian in 2019. “That has failed miserably for us for decades.” For most of the last decade, Joyner led Ceasefire, Oakland’s anti-violence program, which is known nationally and was instrumental in reducing Oakland’s murder rate.
Ersie Joyner: ex-OPD captain and head of Ceasefire, a gang intervention program, as well as, more recently, cannabis entrepreneur and shooting victim. photo: courtesy TGTimeLittle of that ilk has been organized of late, save for the OPD’s small march in July. I’m guessing activists assume such efforts would cast aspersions on last summer’s hard-won reforms, hand critics a wedge issue, and be of little use, due to ongoing systemic racism.
There is also the class question. Middle class African American families, from which many activists hail, famously give their kids “the talk,” about what to do when harassed by cops. Often left unmentioned is their more frequent lectures on thugs and gangs. Indeed, they have to fight harder on that front, since some of their kids like to prove themselves by running wild. Caught between those two mortal threats, they are understandably reluctant to get involved in gang abatement.
Defunding a police department, or reforming it and redirecting some monies, is direly needed in jurisdictions which militarized or failed to integrate their police or increase social services. But that doesn’t really describe the OPD, which has long had some innovative practices, including collaborating with activists and therapists, but has struggled to find sufficient funding for decades.
When the notoriously liberal but also pragmatic Jerry Brown served two terms as Oakland’s mayor in the 2000s, between his four respected terms as governor, he tried to expand the force by 100 officers. Many Oaklanders of color liked Brown and voted for his additional-police ballot measure, but the measure funding it was defeated. With 681 officers today, the department is about 50 officers below Brown’s hoped-for levels 15 years ago.
OPD was docked $14 million during BLM Summer, with another $22 million lost from pandemic-related tax revenue drops, equaling five and seven percent of its budget. In the meantime, OPD’s case-solved rate went from a half to a third, although Armstrong did shift six detectives to homicide, and he recently claimed the department had cracked ten murder cases. OPD fields up to 2000 911 calls daily, one of the highest calls-per-officer rates in the country. After hearing the shots that killed Rashad Brinson, I called 911 three times before getting through.
Although the city shifted another $18 million to social services in June 2021, it did allocate $38 million for more police academies, i.e. classes of recruits, to cover the perennially low levels and the many officers who are quitting. One academy will graduate in January 2022 and another in May. A big problem, however, is those recruits, an Oakland friend recently told me, since the vast majority are not from Oakland, let alone its inner city.
Be that as it may, the OPD has been comparatively well integrated for decades and now includes some Asian officers and members of the city’s artistic community. Jinho Ferreira (Black/Latinx), who rapped as “The Piper” while an OPD officer, also wrote the well-received, one-person play, “Cops and Robbers” (2012), which examines its opposing protagonists notably sympathetically.
Police killings, especially those resembling executions, instead of fog-of-war errors, are criminal, culturally corrosive and incendiary offences, naturally alienating people from authority and society and fueling the anger of volatile young men.
A June 2020 Black Lives Matter march passes in front of Blair's building on West Grand and Adeline, West Oakland. photo: D. BlairMoreover, fratricide is more difficult to process psychologically than outsider aggression since it hits in the home. While external enemies can be criticized aggressively and publicly, as demonstrated during BLM Summer, internal oppressors are often downplayed or denied. Then the repressed anger is transferred to a more palatable opponent, hiding the injury and making it harder to heal.
Oakland’s Black community has hundreds of churches, large and small, and their pastors and parishioners do a fantastic job. I have seen them hand out food, provide medical services, set up a community recording studio, and even save the elderly parishioners living next door to my building from a fire, before the arrival of the fire department. But to address our current crisis, which is aggravated by the two major crises of our era, the pandemic and Trumpism, they don’t have much street cred.
For that, the organizers of an “Oakland United Against Violence,” or similarly-named march, concert or social-work symposium could turn to Oakland’s many famous rappers or basketball stars. Or they could tap Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter (who was born in Oakland but moved to wealthy Marin County and returned at age 27), Angela Davis, the internationally-known thinker, professor and friend of the Black Panthers, or Boots Riley, the brilliant indie rapper turned filmmaker, who shot his masterful and scathingly satirical debut feature "Sorry to Bother You" around Oakland in 2017 (see cineSOURCE article).
Many of Oakland’s creatives and entrepreneurs have the skills to organize concerts, clinics or neighborhood fitness or media centers, preferably located on or near crack corners. Or to contribute fresh ideas. The Oakland Occupy drew denizens from all walks of life and hoods to fruitful encounters and discussions in front of the mayor’s office. Alas, Mayor Jean Quan, a woman, Asian and longtime activist, was unable to find a way to channel that energy or hybrid it with city services.
“Blindspotting”, another excellent Oakland indie feature, which builds an interracial bromance into a political and operatic epic, was written by and stars Oaktown homies and old friends, Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, the latter fresh off his New York star turn as Thomas Jefferson in “Hamilton” (see cineSOURCE article). Filmed largely in West Oakland, also in 2017, they set their white cop’s murder of a Black man on West Grand and Adeline, my corner. Alas, there have been no police murders here in the last three decades, while well over 150 of my neighbors in a few block radius have killed each other.
“Blindspotting”, “Sorry to Bother You” and other recent films artfully address police killings and institutional racism, but when it comes to Oaklanders butchering each other, it’s slim pickings. Nevertheless, there were a couple of spectacular, low-budget films wading into that morass, notably “Licks”, which is slang for the corner liquor stores the film’s protagonists like to rob, and “Everyday Black Man” by my friend Carmen Madden.
“Licks” was directed in 2012 by Jonathan Singer-Vine, a white, Jewish twenty-something from Berkeley whose Oakland friends, some living deep in the hood, obviously loved the project and worked incredibly hard on it. With a largely amateur cast, they produced a striking, professional film which delves deep into thug life.
Big John, played by Steve Joel Moffet Jr., is one of the toughest characters in 'Licks', the groundbreaking Oakland movie by Jonathan Singer-Vine. photo: courtesy J. Singer-VineFor thirty years, I have known the members of the extended family which owned and worked in my corner lick, where Rashad Brinson was killed in October. Indeed, their saga is central to local gossip, giving me a leg up at local gatherings. In addition to brandishing weapons to defend themselves on many occasions, they have shot a few assailants, and one, Willy, accidentally shot himself (he survived).
“‘Licks’ is so studded with the N-word and local slang, like ‘whip’ for car, as to be almost unintelligible,” I wrote in my 2017 review of the film for cineSOURCE. “[I]ts denigration of women—many of its protagonists are pimps, although they adore their mothers and grandmothers—makes it almost unwatchable.” But also accurate, it would seem.
When Singer-Vine finally found a distributer, the suits wouldn’t release “Licks” unless he cleaned it up—the commercial wing of the PC police. He refused, hence its four-year delay before appearing on Amazon Prime in 2017. “Licks” still hasn’t gotten proper promo or viewing, even around Oakland, despite its elevated insights (see it here). As is commonly known, as well as well confirmed by research, people respond to honest stories about their issues.
In contrast, “Everyday Black Man”, shot in Oakland in 2009, was by a woman about men. Madden, who is African American and grew up mostly in Oakland’s suburbs, started as an actress and became an accomplished teacher, writer and director. “Everyday Black Man”, her first feature, tackles the even thornier subject of corruption among community leaders (see it here). Although the story follows another Black lick owner and his hiring of a Black Muslim man, who turns the store into a front for drug dealing, Oaklanders knew Madden was referencing the murder of Chauncey Bailey.
A well-regarded reporter and the editor of The Oakland Post, who was African American, Bailey was killed downtown in 2007 by a paid assassin with a long gun. He was about to publish another article exposing the criminal activities of the owners of the once-popular Your Black Muslim Bakery. After the hit man turned state's evidence, they got life without parole.
Many of Oakland’s progressive elite also oppose full freedom of speech, if it reflects poorly on a disenfranchised community. Almost 20 years ago, Ron Dellums, the first Black congressperson from Northern California, who was also an anti-war activist and socialist, and the mayor of Oakland in the late ‘00s—as well as a West Oaklander who attended McClymonds—led the campaign to cancel “Gentlemen of Leisure”, a proposed television series.
It was based on “American Pimp”, the critically-acclaimed 1999 documentary about West Coast pimps, many from Oakland, by the Hughes brothers, who are Black. To have been shot in Oakland, the show was supported by Madden and other creatives and would have been a feather in the cap of the city’s fledgling film business, perhaps even paralleling what “The Wire” (2002-8) did for Baltimore.
But “Gentlemen of Leisure” would not have looked good for the airbrushed Oakland Dellums and other city elders were trying to sell gentrifiers to revive Oakland’s tax base. (Mayor Brown said he would build 10,000 dwellings, Mayor Dellums 100,000.)
Oakland is cursed by the California conundrum of being comparatively rich, beautiful and liberal, which makes its poverty, ugliness and repression more grotesque. That very quality, in fact, drives its disadvantaged to more extreme anger, envy and ambition. As the poorest of the fabulous cities by the bay, Oakland is an automatic loci of crime, simply because ambitious poor people will always sell two very popular products and services: drugs and sex. As painful as that is for my more bourgeois or politically-correct neighbors to contemplate, it requires in-depth exploration through research, sociology and art.
The Oakland mayor's office put up lackluster billboards, while more creative submissions were rejected. photo: D. BlairThe “talented tenth” of Black men rebuilt their personal patriarchies through hard work, the arts or professions, but the less skilled looked to boom towns, like Oakland during World War II, to become fully vested family men. As those jobs waned, they suffered, while women joined the workforce, sometimes with notable success. The revival of matriarchal traditions is largely why out-of-wedlock births are now hitting historical highs among African Americans and why the lure of becoming a gangster, with increased reproductive opportunities, is so attractive. It also seems many of the inner-communal killings are jealousy driven, as appears to have been the case with the young man killed behind my building on June 25th, 2021. During the pandemic, many murders were inspired by watching rivals have fun on social media.
It is no surprise that Oakland became the center of Northern California’s enormous legal as well as illegal marijuana industry, which is mostly white owned (even though the legacy busines until 1980 was largely Black and Latino). Oakland has Harborside, one of the biggest weed stores in the world, Oaksterdam University, the world's first cannabis college, and many related classes, services and stores, from supplies and equipment to dispensaries and manufacturing.
Indeed, retired-Captain Joyner now runs the Joyous Recreation and Wellness Group, a cannabis edibles manufacturer, located in an unmarked warehouse four blocks from my house. Since the cannabis industry, which started legalizing in the US in California in 1996, is still not permitted banking services, its workers often carry large amounts of cash. This led some journalists to speculate Joyner was not a random robbery victim.
With Oakland an ongoing prostitution and drug center, people assume some of its police simply must be on the take, an opinion which increased after the OPD’s spectacular sex scandal of 2016. That imbroglio was made even more memorable when Mayor Schaaf, who had been special assistant to Mayor Brown and assumed office in 2015, fired three police chiefs in one week.
Captain Sean Whent had been doing a decent job for three years, according to “The Force” (2017), a documentary by Emmy-award-winning Oakland filmmaker Peter Nicks, which has some good clips on Armstrong. Nicks's previous film, the acclaimed “The Waiting Room” (2012), was about the emergency room at Oakland’s main hospital, Highland, which is known nationally for its gunshot surgery miracles. (I was waiting for treatment once when a young Black man was wheeled in, bleeding but bragging into his phone, “I was shot, I was shot.”)
Unfortunately for Nicks, he wrapped principal photography just before the story broke about a suicide, a murder, and dozens of cops being involved with a 17- then 18-year-old woman of color with an hourglass figure, known by her assumed name, Celeste Guap. As it happened, Ms Guap’s mother was an OPD dispatcher and had many friends on the force, including Officer John Hege, who helped her escape an abusive husband and was beloved by Guap. Both were devastated when Hege was one of the four Oakland cops killed that same day in 2009.
Coercion by powerful figures and child sex abuse were the issues raised by Guap’s lawyers to win her $1 million dollar settlement from the city, and they remain her talking points today, but the actual affair was probably a bit more, well, Oakland.
The story starts with a white, increasingly-disturbed rookie cop named Brendan O’Brien, whose Latina wife committed suicide, after they argued about him possibly having an affair. But her family thinks he killed her, and ex-OPD detective Mike Gantt agrees. Indeed, he was pushed off the case by department brass protecting their own, he says, and he filed a related claim against city officials. The intricate evidence was reported at length in The East Bay Express, by Darwin Bond Graham and Ali Winston (see it here), but the facts remain somewhat ambiguous to me.
Celeste Guap (her working name): a young Oakland woman who had family friends and boyfriends in the Oakland police and was also a sex worker. photo: courtesy C. Guap's Facebook pageWhether the relationship was coerced or consensual, we won’t know until Guap does a podcast, book or movie, but there must have been some romance, given the rumors and fantasies that started flying around. Indeed, Ms Guap became the object of rapt attention of dozens of police officers from departments around the Bay Area, an adulation she evidently enjoyed.
After a months-long, half-bromance, half-serial orgy, O’Brien killed himself after Guap threatened him—during a drunken phone call from Puerto Rico, where she was vacationing—that she would reveal she was screwing lots of cops. Instead, O’Brien’s suicide note brought that fact to the attention of authorities.
As soon as Mayor Schaaf heard, she fired Chief Whent. But when she tried to replace him with a lieutenant captain, it came out he recently had an extramarital affair. When her second appointee realized he wouldn’t fare well in the spotlight and resigned, Schaaf took over managing the department herself, through the mayor’s office. Eventually, her staff recruited from Spokane Anne Kirkpatrick, whom Schaaf must have hoped would help with the OPD’s testosterone problem.
The scandal was enormous, involving cops from as far as Livermore and San Francisco. Yet the OPD only expelled four officers, suspended seven, and left a dozen unidentified. The released version of the department’s long internal report, completed in 2019, is over half redacted. Eyebrows shot up again when officials running the flawed investigation were promoted, and two incriminated officers stayed on the force. They had had sex with Guap and texted lascivious notes to fellow cops, but after she turned 18.
Guap’s mother told a retired cop who was a family friend about the abuses, but he didn't report it. Alameda County filed numerous charges, but almost all were eventually dropped.
The OPD’s 2016 sex scandal is one back story illuminating an aspect of Oakland’s descent into violence. Another is the Black Panthers.
The Panther’s three founders, Newton, Seale and late-arriving but brilliant and already-published Eldridge Cleaver were visionary, hardworking and innovative. In a spectacular bit of political theater, they took over the California capitol, in Sacramento, in May 1967, brandishing their trademark long guns (see cineSOURCE story). As well as providing inspiration and ideas to Black people across America and then the world, they started a children’s breakfast program, newspaper, medical clinic and other essential services. Along the way, they were confronted by relentless attacks from authorities and infiltrators but also Newton’s proclivity for violence.
After two juries failed to reconvict Newton on appeals of his cop-killing conviction, he was freed in 1970. Picked up from San Quentin Prison by his close friend Bert Schneider, a Hollywood producer in a white Cadillac, he was driven to a heroes’ welcome in Oakland, where he hopped on a car, stripped to the waist and exhorted revolution. Newton proceeded to tour the nation, China and elsewhere as America’s most acclaimed revolutionary. After another arrest, for allegedly murdering two women, he fled to Cuba but returned and was found innocent again.
In 1980, Newton earned a PhD from U.C. Santa Cruz with his easy-to-research thesis “The War Against the Panthers”, although, by that time, he had long been a gangster. Vying to become Oakland’s top pimp daddy, he took up residence in a fancy penthouse overlooking Lake Merritt and the Oakland court house, where he spent so much time. Even while maintaining his grueling schedule of writing and public appearances, he led a hard-nosed crew which allegedly extorted protection money from bars and other businesses, ran coke, to which he became addicted, and pimped some Panther sisters.
“I probably would have killed Huey myself,” remarked his erstwhile-best-friend Seale. Newton was finally murdered in 1989, about a mile from my building, a few months after I moved in. It was considered a standard Black-on-Black attack until it came out he had been killed by a member of a rival revolutionary group, the Black Guerrilla Family, in a coke deal gone bad.
Memorial to Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers, who grew up and died in West Oakland. sculpture: Dana King photo: D. BlairA friend of mine, Rick Moss, told me how the mother of a friend of his stridently blocked their attempt to join the Panthers’ San Francisco chapter in the ‘70s. As the director of Oakland’s African American Museum and Library, Moss mounted a Panther show in 2016 to commemorate their 50th anniversary but edited out Newton’s “posturing and showboating.”
Of course, the Oakland chapter of the Panthers was under constant attack by FBI double agents, through its notorious Cointelpro program, as well as by pseudo-revolutionaries, hustlers and local cops, which put them under immense pressure and fomented paranoia. Nevertheless, Newton was egregiously violent. Indeed, his revolutionary hero status and gun-slinger style—which Cleaver captured in his iconic portrait of Newton sitting on an African wicker throne, holding a spear and a gun—contributed to African American gun culture, which ballooned in the ‘70s and led to thousands of deaths.
A small mural of Newton appeared on a West Oakland side street in 2017, but it hardly compares to the deluxe, bronze bust of him without a shirt—Newton liked to strip to the waist to show off his prison pecs and play the rock star, even though that is an odd pose for a radical thinker—which was dedicated in October 2021. Organized by his widow Fredrika and sculpted by Dana King, the golden statue sits in the wide greenway in the middle of Mandela Avenue, a block from where Newton was murdered. The city also named the nearby 9th Street Dr. Huey P. Newton Way.
Before the statue was placed, its stone plinth and accompanying sign were defaced by graffiti tags and the words “fraud” and “fuck you.” Fredrika didn’t call the police, which community members are loath to do, but the community did identify the young male taggers, who apologized, saying they didn’t know what the rock was for. They also helped with the cleanup.
Except for its proximity to where Newton was murdered, the plaque does not reference his gangsterism. While he achieved many successes and wrote a substantial body of work, including the plaque’s quote—“I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people”—actions speak louder than words when it comes to ethical instruction.
Some of my Oakland friends, as well some radicals, rappers and thug culture aficionados, or actual thugs, are expressing renewed reverence for Newton in statements, songs and T-shirts. But is he an appropriate hero for young Oaklanders? Imagine hearing Newton venerated while growing up but learning his unexpurgated biography in college, say, especially if you lost friends or relatives to gun violence. As with the great writer Gertrude Stein, another larger-than-life Oaklander with feet of clay (she was revealed to have collaborated with French Nazis), we have to examine our heroes and forbearers honestly, just as our woke friends are doing with Columbus and Jefferson.
Would Newton applaud Oakland’s new radicalism or lawlessness? Or would he recognize the US is under attack by entirely different revolutionaries, the Republicans and conspiracy theorists who are threatening democracy and whose policies are decimating poor communities, white as well as Black. Indeed, poor whites are plagued by opiate and amphetamine addiction, the deaths from which doubled during the pandemic to over 93,000 in 2020, and the anti-vax movement and QAnon conspiracy theorists, which have led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths.
An Oakland muralist, who uses the nom de art 'Yellow Peril', salutes a Black Lives Matter march, June, 2020. photo: D. BlairThe latest innovation by Oakland gangsters is brazen assaults by large groups, like the gang of 50 found burglarizing buildings in West Oakland. On November 19th, 2021, stores around San Francisco’s premier Union Square were looted by a “flash mob” wielding crowbars, smashing glass cases and teargassing security guards. A day later, the high-end Nordstrom store in the Oakland suburb of Walnut Creek was swamped by 80 “shoppers” who suddenly metamorphosed into smash-and-grabbers. On NPR on December 20th, California Attorney General Rob Bonta explained how the thieves coordinate on social media like crime syndicates and sell stolen goods in online markets, which are failing to police themselves.
Similar attacks have transpired from large Home Depot stores to small marijuana dispensaries, despite increases in security personnel and Bay Area counties joining to share information and policing duties. And they are spreading across California and the US.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, well-armed caravans marauded across Oakland and two people, who attempted to mount a defense, were murdered. Retired-OPD sergeant Kevin Nishita, who was Japanese-American but had an interracial family, was working as a security officer for a KRON 4 camera crew, covering a rob-mob incident, when gunmen tried to steal their cameras. Nishita intervened and was shot to death.
Twenty-eight-year-old Erik Davis, an African American from Los Angeles, who had lived in Oakland for a few years and was known for his affable personality, was also shot and killed for confronting brazen thieves, this time those breaking into cars in a public setting. Indeed, it was 3 pm, Thanksgiving Sunday, on an avenue alongside Lake Merritt, a hundred yards from the city’s popular promenade.
Those two murders, combined with the flash mob attacks, two bullets fired directly at police, and the Thanksgiving weekend's tsunami of 911 calls brought OPD to a fever pitch that required calling in off-duty cops. “We were entirely overwhelmed with the staff we had, even by bringing in those officers,” said Barry Donelan, the OPD union’s president, who is white. He also wrote an op-ed piece in The East Bay Times warning how low morale threatened the force with complete collapse.
Mayor Schaaf, for her part, thanked serving officers profusely on camera, offered new recruits a $50,000 signing bonus, and said she would petition Governor Gavin Newsome, another Jerry Brown acolyte, for more resources. Around December 10th, she appealed for more state police and technology, including license plate readers on freeway ramps.
Vice Mayor Kaplan, meanwhile, developed MACRO (Mobile Assistance Crisis Responders of Oakland), the city’s response to clamors for police alternatives, which will be run through the Fire Department. With an emphasis on recruiting community members with lived experience, it intends to provide “an effective civilian response option,” according to an October 20th press release, although it is just a 15-member pilot program. A friend of mine, who used to live in West Oakland and does body work, herbalism and activism, applied but said his odds were slim due to over 1000 applicants.
Also starting around Thanksgiving, Guillermo Cespedes, head of Violence Prevention, organized Town Nights, events held in four parks in tough hoods on four successive weekends. Combinations cook-outs, clothing giveaways, pickup basketball games and community gatherings, they seemed successful, despite the skepticism voiced by Chief Armstrong and others that such festivities could reach violent individuals. The plan is to do a lot of Town Nights in the summer, when violence is the highest, according to the SF Chronicle (12/31/22). Armstrong also announced the allocation of 40 additional officers to East Oakland, where three-quarters of the murders transpire.
Despite the murders and robberies, Oakland’s always-multicultural, often-hipster and sometimes-marijuana-fueled party continued. The week after Thanksgiving, I attended my first First Friday art crawl since the pandemic. Now organized by Oakland First Fridays (.org), it restarted in October. As usual, it was fun, intercommunal and occasionally visionary, with some great people, performances and art but a fraction of its once-enormous crowds.
Street memorial for 28-year-old Cameron Windom, Oakland's first murder victim of 2022, killed by a 23-year-old after an argument at 34th and Hollis, a half a mile from Blair's building. photo: D. BlairAs well as prevent the murder of more Rashad Brinsons, Lai Dangs or John Heges, Oakland could provide guidance to other communities. For that to happen, however, even more Oaklanders will have to join their neighbors across cultural, racial or class lines, and develop even more innovative methods in education, social work and the arts, as well as policing. Lecturing or arresting will not mollify enraged neighbors willing to seek satisfaction through the barrel of a gun, we have to inspire and offer alternatives.
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To see the author's article on Black Lives Matter from July 2020, go here.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Jan 08, 2022 - 03:15 PM
Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis
by Doniphan Blair
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Oakland police carefully count the 73 rounds discharged on October 15th, 2021, right behind author Doniphan Blair's building in West Oakland. photo: D. BlairON OCTOBER 20TH, SHORTLY AFTER
sunset, I was at my desk in West Oakland, California, when I heard that telltale, deep-throated sound—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—six shots, very loud, in front of my building, or so it seemed.
I crept to my window. No yelling or tires screeching, traffic passing normally. I called the police, although some of my Oakland friends say never do that, due to the Oakland Police Department’s long record of abuse, corruption and murder. After two busy signals, I got through.
I went into my hallway. A young Chinese woman, who moved into the building last year and goes by Jasmine, since she thinks no one can pronounce "Mengjiao," her Chinese name, and a friend were coming up the stairs, chatting. Had they heard shots? “No, we just parked and must have missed them.” Did they know about lying down when they hear shots nearby? “Yes, of course,” Jasmine said, laughing.
It turned out Rashad Brinson, a 28-year-old African American man, had been murdered in front of our corner liquor store. That makes him at least the twelfth person killed there in my 32 years living here. Brinson was "unhoused," i.e. homeless, so he didn’t get the traditional street memorial with flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, and tea candles spelling out his name, like most young Black murder victims in Oakland. But at least we have his name.
Brinson was killed in a drive-by shooting for no apparent reason, it turned out, which surprised me, since I assumed he was a casualty of a turf war over the crack corner a block away. Indeed, less than a week earlier, on October 15th, that corner was hit with a military-style assault in broad daylight, although no one was actually hit.
My space is on the far side of the building and I was in a storage room, so I didn’t hear the 73-round barrage fired right behind our parking lot, which must have sounded like a war. About an hour later, however, I did notice the cops had closed all three west-bound lanes of West Grand Avenue, which runs along the side of my building. A bit rich, I thought, until I got closer and met another new neighbor, an African American man named Jermaine, who saw the entire incident from our loading dock.
A car pulled up and out stepped a 20-something African American man with an assault rifle and a few teenagers with pistols, who seemed scared, Jermaine said. They went to the corner and started firing toward the crack corner a block away, hitting mostly cars, including one belonging to Jermaine. He waited over two hours, while the cops marked where those 73 shells landed, to see if they wanted his eyewitness account. They didn’t. It is no longer unusual for shootings in Oakland to involve dozens or hundreds of rounds.
A street memorial for a young man killed around June 25th, 2022, in DeFremery Park, where the Black Panthers used to gather. photo: D. BlairThe killing increase is obviously due to pandemic-driven poverty, isolation and depression, which also added to the suicide rate, and the ability to move around masked. But there are many other factors, like Trump’s machismo and rejection of rule of law. Although African Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic, some Black men support Trump; their numbers increased about 6% from 2016 to 2020 (see BBC report); and they included figures like superstar rapper Kanye West.
Five days after those kids bullet-sprayed my street, there was a shootout at a gas station about a mile away, also in broad daylight (1 pm, October 20). It killed Desoni Gardner, also known as “Li’l Theze,” since the 20-year-old from Vallejo, 25 miles away, was a rapper. He was also African American.
Gardner’s crew wounded the man who shot him, Ersie Joyner, a retired captain in the Oakland Police Department, also African American. The station’s security cameras showed them rifling Joyner’s pockets, making it a robbery until Joyner whipped out his gun. But one of my Oakland friends thought it might have been a vendetta against a dirty cop.
Four months earlier, on June 25th, a young man was murdered on that same street behind my building, due to an altercation between a father and his baby momma’s current boyfriend, according to my neighbors who heard it. The dispute involved a child and someone getting in or out of a car, they said, although they were unsure of who murdered whom. My neighbor Hannah, an emergency room doctor and white, heard the shouting and shots and ran down to see if there was anything she could do. There wasn’t.
Within a day or two of that murder, a young man was killed six blocks away on the basketball court in DeFremery Park, where the Black Panther Party used to hold rallies. The Panthers started in West Oakland in 1966. The closest court to my building, I have been playing there for three decades almost without incident. Going to shoot around a few days later, I was surprised to see a street memorial courtside, although the candles were scattered by then, and I couldn’t make out the name. I called the OPD to see if they knew the names of those two young men. They didn’t.
Six months earlier, in January, four miles from me in East Oakland, Dinyal New lost both her teenage sons, Lee Weathersby (13) and Lamar Broussard (19), within three weeks of each other. Horrific tragedies by any measure, they were especially egregious since there was no apparent motive for either murder. There were no arrests, since community members are reluctant to “come forward,” i.e. snitch, and murders are hard to solve without motives or eyewitnesses, even by the best-funded police departments. Lee and Lamar did get street memorials, however, as part of the rituals enacted by the kids, families and communities to address the trauma of losing so many, so young.
Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who took over at the beginning of the crisis in 2021, is from West Oakland. photo: courtesy OaklandsideMany of Oakland’s young men are extremely angry, obviously. Not mature enough to control their rage, minor disputes often trigger major arguments, which easily escalate into shootings, since so many are packing guns. Sure, they are casually taking a life and throwing away their own, if arrested and convicted, but they are desperate for what the killings provide: elevated status and self-expression. It gives voice to their own immense trauma. In this way, the inner-city killings parallel America’s increasingly frequent mass shootings, although those are perpetrated almost exclusively by angry white men.
“It’s like a war zone,” said Oakland’s Deputy Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong at LeShawn Buffin’s funeral, according to the San Francisco Chronicle article of February 2nd. “We’re seeing a huge increase in the number of high-powered firearms.” The killings don’t follow identifiable trends, Armstrong said, in terms of gang violence or victims’ race or age, which is another frightening new national trend.
Random killing also increased in Albuquerque, which has a 3% African American population, ruling out that subgroup’s cultural factors. The randomness appears to be driven by the chaos of the pandemic and Trumpian times, plus the new availability of “ghost guns.” Assembled at home and with no serial numbers, ghost guns are impossible to trace.
“She was a loving mother to her daughters and grandchildren,” said Armstrong, also African American, who was a family friend of Buffin and called her his “god sister.” “She was a caring person in the community, who would open her home to help anyone. She will be truly missed.”
Armstrong was born and raised in West Oakland, where he lost a brother to gun violence. He attended McClymonds High School, six blocks from my building, and asked to be sworn in there, a nice nod to our hood, when he was appointed chief of police, shortly after Buffin’s funeral.
Armstrong has had a stellar career since joining the OPD in 1999, both as an officer and advocate of progressive policing. An early participant in Ceasefire, Oakland’s highly innovative violence intervention program, he led the Stop Data Collection Project, which cut police stops of African Americans by over half, and has participated in numerous national programs and classes, and taught some himself.
Chief LeRonne Armstrong and his predecessor, Anne Kirkpatrick, who came to Oakland in 2017 from heading Spokane's police force. photo: unknown“It’s just overwhelming,” said Guillermo Cespedes, the head of Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention, who has a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, according to the same SF Chronicle article. Cespedes was an anti-gang activist and city official with that portfolio in Los Angeles, which has many gangs, including Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, the vicious El Salvadorian super-gang. “These have been the most difficult conditions I have ever worked under.”
For over a year, Oakland residents have been hearing—if not seeing, if they don’t live in the hood—their city descend into chaos: a lot more sirens, shots and helicopters. There were other indicators: stores not stocking shelves due to shoplifting, people running red lights, the respected 170-year-old Mills College, which borders on a tough hood, announcing it would close (it will continue in diminished capacity under Northeastern University, Boston), and increased attacks on Asians.
For comic relief, Oakland’s entire school board was forced to resign after some of its members bitched out parents for pleading with them to open the schools, saying, “Parents wanted their babysitters back” and “more time to smoke cannabis.”
Most Oaklanders see their city is in distress, although many are reluctant to discuss it. Why bring each other down with useless complaining? And the threat is comparatively small if you are white or if you don’t run with drug dealers or argue with road-ragers. To add insult to injury, you never know where people stand on the intricate issues involved, meaning a discussion can easily slip into politically-incorrect territory.
On a few occasions, I have been criticized for opining on the affairs of my hood because I am white. Skin color, speech and other cultural attributes do form large parts of our first impressions of each other, but to privilege them above the overall relationship or our ethics or insights, or to value racial categories and histories more than shared humanity and equality is a big mistake, I feel.
I learned this philosophy from my neighbors growing up in New York City across the street from Grant Houses, one of the tougher projects in Harlem, and playing in the Harlem Little League, during the riots of the summer of 1964, and in the Pop Warner football league, where I was the only white kid. I have also called West Oakland home for almost half my life, which provided me some unique experiences: mostly fun, a few harrowing, many revealing.
Politically correct self-censorship proved problematic when Trump’s China-insulting and race-baiting helped trigger unprecedented attacks on Asians. Residents of Oakland’s large Chinatown endured a rash of robberies, beatings and a few murders.
A graffito in praise of Molotov cocktails by a member of Oakland's large anarchist community. photo: D. BlairSignificantly stranger, Lai Dang, a 58-year-old man of Chinese heritage, was murdered in cold blood seven blocks from my house in broad daylight on January 11th, 2021, for no apparent reason. Surveillance videos and witnesses indicate a father and son were driving through West Oakland, stopped to urinate, spotted Dang, shot at him, ran him down and killed him—open season on Asians. They were arrested four days later in Tracy, 50 miles from Oakland, and held without bail.
That the anti-Asian assailants were almost entirely African American men was usually omitted from news reports or statements by representatives of the Asian community. Excluding racial descriptors is an understandable attempt to limit implicit bias or the fear some Asians have of African Americans, while allowing Asian spokespeople to maintain people-of-color solidarity. But it puts potential victims at a disadvantage doing threat assessments; everyone was already talking about the races of the individuals involved; and to pretend that is not a relevant fact is a fantasy. Some of the attackers also appear to have mental health issues.
Along with discussions about inadequate health care, institutional racism, endemic poverty, and pandemic-driven job loss and school-dropout rates, we need to broach the subject of Black Lives Matter. Considered the biggest activist movement in American history, Black Lives Matter helped inspire fantastic changes in corporate, media and overall culture, in America and around the world. In Oakland, many residents readily adopted its tenets, joined marches and posted BLM signs on their properties or vehicles. But there were also negative repercussions: reduced police services, the partial destruction of downtown, increased tribalism.
Focusing on racial justice issues, without fortifying it with democratic successes, in a mixed and egalitarian community like Oakland, pushes people to tribe up and displace their grievances onto the “other.” A problematic position in general, this is more dangerous in Trumpian times, given the racialized fearmongering of Trump and many Republicans. Moreover, once othering is established as a practice, it can be applied to internal divisions.
Othering people from different hoods, gangs, races and social classes is one factor fomenting Oakland’s murder spree. Another is: after a prosperous period diminished the need for gangsterism, a new generation of thugs is taking the opportunity to accrue power. Throw in political upheaval, which put the police on their back foot and reduced morale and leg work along with funding. Last but not least, a scofflaw spirit is sweeping America, from ex-president Trump on down.
“If multiculturalism can’t work in Oakland, with so many activists and artists of all races and mixed races, as well as the immense number of social services and political organizations, what hope is there?” I’ve heard a few Oaklanders say, or something like that. Indeed, Oakland has to take a leadership position in this regard, given it is one of the most racially-mixed cities on the planet, with a 29% Black, 27% white, and 21% Latinx population, according to the 2020 census. In addition to its plethora of talent, Oakland is comparatively wealthy.
Illegal dumping in front of Stay Gold Delicatessen, one of West Oakland's best as well as few beer/sandwich shops. photo: D. BlairLocal newspapers with limited budgets, like The Oakland Post or The East Bay Times, were slow to cover Oakland’s civic collapse, although the latter has done excellent longform reporting on the OPD, as has Berkeley’s left-centric Pacifica Radio station, KPFA. Colorful crime stories out of Oakland have long made Bay Area or national news but the new, unprecedented levels were not emphasized until recently. When I began mentioning the rash of murders around my building, a few friends dismissed it as typical—“Oakland bats last against gentrifiers,” as one put it—but some longtime neighbors said it is the worst they have ever seen.
In November, Rebecca Kaplan, a liberal council person and Oakland’s vice mayor, was talking up her initiative to cleanup illegal garbage dumping, which is a notorious blight across West Oakland. Then she moved on to the huge homeless crisis. While both are terrible, they hardly compare to the slaughter, although all three can be connected through the “Broken Windows Theory.”
Some progressive pundits and friends of mine blame the OPD for not doing enough to investigate crime in the hood, despite the 10% budget cuts, and for retaining bad officers. In fact, the OPD remains under the Federal supervision imposed in 2012, as part of the 2003 trial of a gang of corrupt cops. In 2016, the department was rocked by another massive scandal, when over a dozen officers were found exploiting a young, woman-of-color sex worker. That precipitated three police chiefs in one week.
Be that as it may, the primary person addressing Oakland’s killing crisis is Chief Armstrong, who was opening press conferences at the end of 2021 with over two minutes of silence, one second for each lost Oaklander. “We can be vocal about certain things, but I just don't understand why this community cannot be vocal about 100 lives lost," Armstrong said on September 21st, on the occasion of Oakland’s 100th killing in nine months, almost as many as the entire previous year.
"We can scream and yell about anything the police department does wrong but, in this time, we can't speak up about what's plaguing all of us—and that's gun violence.”
On July 10th, between 60 and 200 people joined the OPD’s march, “Stand Up for a Safe Oakland,” around Lake Merritt, the large lake which serves as the town’s centerpiece and site of its intercommunal Sunday promenade. The small march ended up at a lake front park, which became Black Oakland’s weekend gathering spot and street fair during the lockdown. It was also where seven people were shot, one fatally, three weeks earlier during Juneteenth, the celebration of liberation from slavery, which President Biden declared a federal holiday that very day.
Also on July 10th and at the lake, the Anti-Police Terror Project had organized a car caravan and barbecue. Shouting ensued.
A family enjoys the weekend street fair favored by Black Oaklanders that emerged during the pandemic on Lake Merritt and featured minimal masking and social distancing. photo: D. BlairIt is not lost on the kids or gangbangers as well as Chief Armstrong or many Asians that in 2020 there were dozens of BLM marches, which attracted tens of thousands of people and crisscrossed Oakland, to protest the brutal police killing of George Floyd thousands of miles away but not for Lai Dang, the Chinese-American murdered near my house.
The root cause of inner-community violence is institutional racism, poverty and poor services for kids of color, which can’t be solved by additional police, according to proponents of BLM tenets. Indeed, Albuquerque, Nashville and Oakland have one officer for every 550 to 625 residents, while Detroit, where the murder rate is three times Oakland’s, has twice that, one cop per 300. Hence, we have to switch our policing, education and social work, according to defund-the-police supporters, and accept some collateral damage until it takes effect.
Oakland’s murder rate almost doubled in 2021, from its record low of 72 in 2019, a level only last seen from 1998 to 2001 or in the ‘70s, to 137. Although mortality peaked in 1992, with 165 killings, comparing the crack epidemic to today is like contrasting apples and oranges, given Oakland’s recent renaissance. The 2010s were probably the city’s most prosperous decade since the ‘40s, including for many low-income locals—if they weren't displaced by gentrification, of course.
Along with pushing up rents and homelessness, gentrification brought hundreds of new businesses, many of them restaurants, which provided jobs as well as places to get a decent bite. There were also scores of new music venues and art galleries, welcome outlets for local artists, including those driven here by the much higher rents in San Francisco, which has been occupied by overpaid techies. The first Friday art crawl, started in 2006 by the Art Murmur gallery association, blew up over five years from a few hundred to over 20,000 attendees. The majority were Oaklanders enjoying each other’s company, but the bridge and tunnel crowd’s copious eating and drinking, if not art buying, turned it into a cash bonanza.
Gentrifiers can be disgusting and destructive, of course. Unscrupulous house-flippers preyed on impoverished families. High rents exacerbated the homeless crisis. Foodies drove up taco truck prices. Black families were forced out to distant suburbs, like Tracy or Vallejo, where they sometimes felt like foreigners. I had to bitch out white new home owners, on a couple of occasions, for whining about petty thievery which bordered on racism. Didn’t they look around before plunking down a half a million dollars, say, for their house?
Other times, it’s tone deafness. Two blocks from me, in the opposite direction from the crack corner, is a brewery and pub called Ghost Town after the nearby neighborhood. Alas, Ghost Town didn’t earn its moniker by having a quaint, old graveyard (see cineSOURCE interview with a local activist).
Oakland hasn’t become a hot art market, except for a couple established galleries, like the nationally-known Creative Growth, which features artists with developmental disabilities. But the galleries often have work by, and a few are run by, people of color. Ditto the scores of vendors with tables, booths or trucks that feature everything from art and handicrafts to fashion and food. There are also performers doing music, magic, juggling or “fire arts,” since Oakland is home to many organizers and enthusiasts of the world-famous desert festival, Burning Man.
Oakland's famous First Friday art crawl/street fair, which drew a diverse crowd of 20,000 before the pandemic, restarted in October, 2021. photo: D. BlairIn the last decade, West Oakland became imminently livable. Once a food desert, it now has Mandela Foods, a Black-owned, collectively-run, organic grocery store in its 12th year, haute cuisine like Korean fusion or Middle Eastern, or the unfortunately-named but airy and pleasant Ghost Town Brewing.
Oakland also has a burgeoning film scene, which I tried to cover and support in this magazine, cineSOURCE, which I started with some friends in 2008.
After Oakland’s decade-long boom, I assumed it could endure the pandemic. I was inspired when I walked around Lake Merritt on March 26th, 2020, one week after the statewide shelter-in-place order was issued, which I covered in a cineSOURCE article, "Oakland in the Time of Corona". My socially-distanced fellow strollers were Black, white, brown and even Asian, which is not always the case; they were straight and LGTBQ, bolstered by Oakland’s large lesbian community; some were even bridge-and-tunnelers. Surely, we were creative, resilient and tolerant enough to handle Covid-19, I thought. Alas, the Oakland promenade didn’t include a few critical groups.
Although the vast majority of Oaklanders masked up, helped their neighbors and eventually got vaccinated, the economic shutdown and switch to online teaching hit poor Black kids especially hard, feelings aggravated by political upheaval. As amazing as BLM’s achievements have been in white-dominated towns, industries or police departments, the combination of illness, poverty, protest and reduced police services proved catastrophic for Oakland.
Protests have been popular in Oakland since 1946, when a city-wide strike by 146 different unions, against discriminatory hiring of African Americans, shut the city down. By nightfall, however, it had become a party, with union officials getting bars to put their jukeboxes on the street, where interracial dancing ensued.
Oakland was long been known for its adventurous, artistic and activist working-class types, typified by its premiere native son, author and socialist Jack London. During the Depression and war, it attracted poor Blacks from Texas and Louisiana and poor whites from Oklahoma, and vice versa. A rugged and less-educated population, that immigration fed the Black Panthers, on one hand, and the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, also based in Oakland, and the police force, on the other.
In the ‘60s, there were demonstrations against the draft and for Huey P. Newton, a co-founder of the Panthers, who was from West Oakland and convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing a cop a mile from my house. More recently there were large protests against the murder of Oscar Grant by a BART (subway) cop, in 2009, and during the Oakland Occupy, two years later. In addition to outraged activists and sympathetic liberals, recent demonstrations have attracted rowdy young men who are Black, and sometimes associated with gangs, or white, and sometimes associated with Black Bloc, an anarchist movement, or suburban hooligans.
After one night of looting, on May 29, 2020, the dozens of other Oakland marches protesting George Floyd's killing were peaceful, even festive. photo: D. BlairSome marchers tried to stop the looters, I was told by the Palestinian-American owner of The Twilight Zone, a large smoke shop on Broadway, Oakland’s main march route, who had over $70,000 of glass cases and inventory smashed. Some marchers also came back the next day to help him clean up, he said.
Unfortunately, a year and half later, downtown Oakland, which the city has been struggling to revive for 30 years, remains partially boarded up. Those boards are covered with magnificent murals by local artists, which are sometimes toured by tourists, but many businesses are not coming back; some people have moved out; and that one night of destruction—almost all the other dozens of marches were completely peaceful—ended some much-needed jobs.
One Black Lives Matter march I attended was organized by the Oakland Black Officers Association, then headed by Armstrong. It consisted almost entirely of people of color, in contrast to most of Oakland’s other BLM marches, which were often largely white, and it had elegantly-dressed women in front belting out gospel. Armstrong didn’t speak at the central police station on 7th and Broadway, where the marches often ended, but the officers who spoke did an artful job of explaining their competing concerns.
Alas, neither they nor most other BLM spokespeople seemed to find the sweet spot between aggressive activism and sophisticated civil society development, an error in the time of Trump, I believe. Indeed, the general discourse of the Black Lives Matter movement was suffused with talk of white people in blanket terms, without the balancing spirit of equality and goodwill established by King and Obama as well as Lincoln and Jefferson.
All humans are created equal; judge not by color of skin but content of character; there are not two Americas. In addition, defining people through DNA is a slippery slope; shame is not a stable motivator; and multiculturalism is about accepting people from groups you don’t like, not just allies.
“All Lives Matter” is considered racist for good reason. Who is to tell anyone what to call themselves? The BLM organization started in 2012, long before the national movement. And “All Lives Matter” was adopted by racists in a mimic-and-ridicule game.
But, of course, all lives do matter. And that would have been a better name for the movement by virtue of its emphasis, right in the name, on building a cooperative community instead of protecting one tribe. All lives matter would have better modeled equality, in contrast to fetishizing privilege or adjudicating racism. If organized by African Americans, it would have implicitly conveyed the message “Stop murdering Black people” and tacitly included Black-on-Black violence.
Most BLM activists do not mention, let alone emphasize, Black-on-Black violence, as far as I know. They seem to feel that broaching the subject in the same breath as state violence would be a copout, whataboutism or straight up racism. It is certainly true that everyone fights with their family and neighbors more than strangers, and those commonplace crimes need increased investigation and abatement by the police and community.
Speakers from a BLM march of Black police officers and their families, in front of the Oakland Police Department's central station. photo: D. BlairThe longstanding conflict between police and African Americans is a direct result of slavery, systemic racism and endemic poverty, but it is often aggravated to an extreme by the need of both parties to obtain respect in the moment of confrontation. While policing is based on respect, so is the self-esteem of many men, and some women, who have little else.
Growing up as a white kid in Harlem, I have been mugged over a dozen times. Hitchhiking as a hippie through thousands of miles of redneck country, I was stopped by cops dozens of times and jailed a few. Along the way, I learned to respect the powerful players, be they muggers, cops, gangsters, border guards, convicts or rednecks, while maintaining a semblance of dignity. Groveling invites abuse from deranged machos of any profession or race.
Even a minor gesture can escalate an average traffic stop or thug encounter into suicide by cop or mugger. If we research the interactions leading to cop killings, I think we will often find some trigger of disrespect. Indeed, that is also what leads to most Black-on-Black murders. Yes, American laws and culture entitle us to speak our minds, but it is ill-advised to play disrespect chicken with deranged machos.
The flats of Oakland were thought to be pretty tough in the 1970s, when I was living in hippie San Francisco. But I knew and visited a couple there, an enormous, ripped Black guy named Wetback, who was from a California border town, favored red bandana headbands and had done time—although he didn’t mention it much and our chats were more about Buddhism, fitness and weed—and his young, white girlfriend, Donna, the daughter of a police officer. They seemed to accord both sides respect, while enjoying the already-developing, hipper side of Oakland.
If you treat people with basic respect, typified on the street by a glance and nod in passing, they will often return the courtesy. When confronted by thugs or muggers, if you honor them with warrior status, while remaining calm and respectful, as difficult as that might be, you usually get a pass. If not, just hand them your wallet, while casually asking for a few bucks back to get home or buy milk. One time, I stepped into my corner liquor store on a Saturday at midnight, a massive mistake, I realized upon seeing it was full of severe-looking Black men. When one said loudly, “How’s it going?” I responded at a similar volume, “Slick as a dick,” and won a wry smile from him and some of his crew.
Oakland did have a corrupt white mayor in the early ‘60s, John Houlihan. A nationally-known expert on urban issues and a liberal Republican, he presided over the construction of the Oakland Museum and other major projects but had to resign during his second term for embezzling. He served two years in prison.
Oakland had a large Ku Klux Klan chapter until 1924, and racist sympathizers long after. In the ‘60s, the OPD was only 2% Black, notoriously harsh, and its officers often tormented and sometimes killed men of color, which inspired the formation of the Black Panthers in 1966.
Huey Newton deduced his innovative tactic of police monitoring in the Merritt College law class of Edwin Meese, eventually Reagan’s Attorney General, no less. It consisted of following patrol cars, observing their stops at a legal distance, advising detainees of their rights, and standing by with legal long guns, in case problems arose. Until California repealed open-carry a year later, neither side fired a single shot. Respect.
BLM marchers listen to speakers at an amphitheater on the edge of Lake Merritt, Oakland lovely' centerpiece and intercommunal promenade. photo: D. BlairDespite these correctives, some of my Oakland friends suspect there are still bad cops, that the court-appointed monitor is benefiting somehow, or that the nine-citizen police commission, which was established in 2016 and can discipline officers, direct policy or sack a chief, is still mired in Oakland’s old patronage political system.
On the other hand, Oakland is in Northern California, a center of progressive politics, environmental beauty and immense wealth. In addition to state assistance, Oakland has an enormous number of not-for-profits, faith-based social services, art organizations and political-activist groups. Although Oakland is the most income polarized of any Bay Area city, with a substantial number of hill dwellers in large houses with bay views, they often help with the philanthropies.
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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 Jan 07, 2022 - 01:32 AM
Academy of Art’s Disastrous Loan Program
by Karl F. Cohen
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The Academy of Art provides a massive presence in downtown San Francisco, through its 32 properties. photo: courtesy the Academy of Artpage story on November 5th about how the Academy of Art, San Francisco’s largest art school, made millions off of convincing students—including some who were unqualified to attend the school—to take out government loans to fulfill their dreams of becoming successful artists.
The long article, about how the school finally settling the case that dragged on for 12 years, ended with: “Meanwhile, The Chronicle spoke with 17 former Academy of Art students who had independently contacted the paper after reading stories about the lawsuit. Students were not part of the suit, but protecting their interests is why the government regulates recruitment schemes.
Of those ex-students, 12 said they owed more than $50,000 in student loan debt, including eight above $100,000.
One of them was Shaun Dunn, a 2019 graduate who earned two degrees from the Academy of Art over many years, including a master’s degree in animation and visual effects. Unable to find a job in his field, Dunn, 40, owed more than $431,000 in student loans.
The Academy’s recruiters were egged on by school officials, who allegedly dangled Hawaii trips and pay hikes to get them to be more aggressive.
Dunn said he felt tricked by the school, which he described as persistently urging him to stay even though he couldn’t afford it and enticing him with promises of a lucrative career.
“’It’s ruined my life,’ Dunn said.”
Academy of Art officials declined to comment for that story.
Where’s a reputable, responsible and creative Bay Area art school when we need one?
Oh yeah, we let the Art Institute close last year.
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 Jan 05, 2022 - 06:38 PM
SF Docmaker Takes Red Nation Feature Award
by Renée Alexander
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Humberto Concepción Pérez, a farmer from Oaxaca State, Mexico, in Gustavo Vazquez-Orozco's new doc 'Los Guardianes del Maíz'. photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-OrozcoVazquez-Orozco recently brought home the Best International Documentary Feature Film award from the 26th Annual Red Nation International Film Festival in Hollywood.
Having known him for years, I decided to call him up and ask him about the film, “Los Guardianes del Maíz” ("The Keepers of Corn"), which I was privileged to see an advance copy of. It combines scenic views of rural life in Southern Mexico's La Chinantla region with in-depth interviews of indigenous farming families, food sovereignty activists, agricultural organizers, and genetic scientists.
“Los Guardianes del Maíz” explores the resiliency of corn-growing communities and the fragile systems that secure their survival in the face of threats from corporate colonialism, toxic chemicals, climate change, and even Coca-Cola. Ultimately, it reveals the interdependent relationship between corn and humans, which have cultivated each another, as it were, over hundreds of generations.
The film will screen on April 9, 2022 at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th Street, in San Francisco’s historic Mission District. It is a collaboration with Executive Producer Jonathan Barbieri, an artist and alcohol spirits producer Vazquez-Orozco met 45 years ago, while both were students at the San Francisco Art Institute. Vazquez-Orozco is a professor in the film and digital media department at UC Santa Cruz.
The film has shown in numerous festivals around the world, including the Seattle Latino Film Festival, International Multicultural Film Festival in Australia, Festival de Cine Amazonia del Plata in Argentina, SUNCINE Environmental Film Festival in Spain and Mexico, Sustainable Living Film Festival in Turkey, in Canadian festivals and elsewhere.
I caught up with Vazquez-Orozco recently by Zoom.
Vazquez-Orozco (center), Executive Producer Jonathan Barbieri (right) and Online Producer Yira Vallejo (left). photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-OrozcoVazquez-Orozco: The heroes and heroines of the film are all the members of the traditional indigenous communities in Oaxaca [Mexico]. When I would ask a question, such as ‘What do you think about this or that...' consistently the answer was, ‘I don't speak for myself, I speak for my community.'
While the film surveys traditional indigenous agriculture, as a model that can be applied where industrial mono-cropping failed, it is also about people. It explores the cultural continuity that links today's corn farmers in Oaxaca [State, Mexico] to their pre-colonial ancestors.
In the course of our three-year journey, we learned that—even under the stress of bio-piracy, the aggressive promotion of glyphosates [fertilizers], natural disasters, broken promises and the incursion of Maruchan instant soups and Coca-Cola—traditional farming communities have be