Filip Zahariev – Pike & Hurricane

The Politics of Video Games

Filip Zahariev — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:11:01 +0000

Many in the gaming industry have gone to great lengths to declare their products “apolitical”. A strangely reactive defense of a genre that has long sought to be accepted as an art form—few would deny that novels, movies, photography, all other art forms are inherently political. It’s not impossible to make art that is apolitical, of course; the result is most often bad art.

Doublethink

The great irony is, political statements are evident by the content of the games that most ardently push for an apolitical label. Look no further than Ubisoft’s The Division 2, a game about the socio-political fracture of the USA to the point of a second civil war (sound familiar?) that somehow “is not a game about politics,” according to creative director Terry Spier. Earlier in 2018, the same publisher had released Far Cry 5, another game about US society breaking down, this time in the state of Montana, and under the strain of religious fundamentalism. In the link above, PC Gamer had aptly described it as “ultimately toothless”; one imagines this a direct consequence of an unwillingness to examine any one political ideology for fear that it might alienate parts of its player base.

But then, Ubisoft’s development teams and the company’s management seem two very different beasts trapped in the same body. The company’s track in the politics of sexual harassment is even murkier, as became apparent over the summer of 2020, when some of the highest-positioned management staff were embroiled in a string of sexual misconduct reports; later, a survey at the company revealed that as much as 25% of employees at the French publisher had experienced some form of workplace misconduct. Industry critic Jim Sterling covered at length the extent of protection the company extended to these executives—for years prior to the breaking of the story.

Profit Trumps All

No one aware of it could forget Activision Blizzard’s kowtowing before the interests of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) when the company severely censured and punished Blitzchung, a champion player of their digital card game, Hearthstone. When the latter showed support for the 2019 Hong Kong protests going on at the time, he was banned from taking part in any Hearthstone championships for a year, and his championship prize of $10,000 rescinded. Blizzard’s explanation? Blitzchung’s statement had violated a tournament rule, which prohibits the player from engaging in any activity that “brings [them] into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image [sic].” If they only knew the amount of damage that move would cost them in that most valuable of intangible resources, reputation. The reaction was so fervent, it caused a rare bipartisan rebuke from members of US Congress in addition of turning large swathes of the Blizzard community against the company.

Yet, one cannot help but consider the dotted line—like any Triple-A company in the gaming industry, Activision Blizzard is eager to tap into the enormous gaming market that China has to offer; a market strictly regulated by the CCP, whose propaganda offices are all too happy to deny access to any studio that gives offence to the party. Though the revenue stream Activision Blizzard currently receives from the entire Asia Pacific region is dwarfed by both the Americas and the EMEA(Europe/Middle Eastern Area), it’s no petty cash by any means.

Ubisoft’s reason for claiming that apolitical label for games whose content is blatantly political in nature is similar—committing to one side of any political debate risks offending half the player base at a time of great political polarization.

What developers seem to struggle with is the notion that pointing a finger at a piece of art and proclaiming it apolitical does not automatically minimise the political thought inherent in that piece of art.

The latest offenders

Two topics have commanded the news cycle more than all others during these early months of 2021: COVID-19 and the insurgency at Washington DC in January. Certain game developers have managed to show remarkable aloofness in dealing with both topics. SCS Software, the developer behind Euro Truck Simulator 2 released a press announcement, which originally read “We Do Not Take A Stand Neither For Or Against Vaccines”. Later chalked up to a mistake in translation (the corrected statement read “No matter if you stand for vaccines or against them, these truckers still have to work really hard and we wanted to give them their well-deserved 15 minutes of fame”), this message was met with consternation by many—why would a medium-sized European studio feel the need to make so blatant a non-statement of political conformity? The answer can only be guessed at.

On the other side of the coin rests Six Days in Fallujah, a video game that portrays the Second Battle of Fallujah. It is also not political, if you believe Peter Tamte, head of the game’s publisher, Victura. Despite the game aiming to be a faithful representation of the fiercest battle of the Iraqi War, Tamte claims:

For us as a team, it is really about helping players understand the complexity of urban combat. It’s about the experiences of that individual that is now there because of political decisions. And we do want to show how choices that are made by policymakers affect the choices that [a Marine] needs to make on the battlefield. Just as that [Marine] cannot second-guess the choices by the policymakers, we’re not trying to make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea.

The complexity of urban combat, one might suppose, itself has a great deal of political weight behind it. “Helping players understand” it in 2021 brings particular connotations to the fore, especially after what the world witnessed happening in the United States’ Capitol on January 6. Tamte exhibits the same wilful ignorance towards the wider context of politics as other executives do, a context which rests well outside of what is enacted by “policymakers”.

Politics reach further than well-kempt parliamentary buildings and senate floors. In an age where more and more issues are politicized, to be apolitical might seem a tempting prospect, a siren call to those too tired of the polarized climate across the public sphere. But attempting to faithfully render blatantly political situations in the format of a video game, only to stand apart from the messages that come with these is nothing if not dishonest and cowardly—and worth condemning.

Related articles:

A game of chess at the Greek-Turkish border

Photo credits:

Wiki-background by Prachatai on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Hearthstone at Gamescom 2013 by Sergey Galyonkin on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The post The Politics of Video Games appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Tightening the Grip: Is Experience Necessary for a Successful Autocrat?

Filip Zahariev — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 18:21:01 +0000

Right-wing populists and autocrats do not accept defeat. Challenged by reality, they clamp down—their position is rigid, very often averse to even the slightest possibility of change. Truth has been devalued, facts are treated as opinion, those who possess knowledge and expertise are treated with contempt. We live in an age of rampant anti-intellectualism, where the divisions on social issues are widening instead of narrowing. Consensus has never been further away, as the divisions on social issues show, ranging from equality to freedom of speech and the press to racism to xenophobia.

The Man Who Would Be King

This has been illustrated full well over the last month. Look to the USA. After months of sowing doubt about mail-in voting, Trump lost because of it. He has not conceded—and he never will. It’s likely he believes the baseless accusations he spouts; populists and autocrats are ever prone to the worst bouts of paranoia. If the political crisis in Belarus has hammered a point home, it is that no would-be autocrat is willing to go quietly into the night. Even if Trump himself is aware of reality, his rhetoric has made certain that a sizeable number of the seventy-three million Americans, who cast their votes for him, will never accept Joseph Biden as their legitimate president.

Seventy-three million. That is the number of souls who have voiced unconditional support for the conduit of the United States’ forty-fifth president. For the strongman whose approach has placed loyalty first, second, and third, and made competence not even a necessity. This approach has flourished on all levels of Trump’s White House, decreasing America’s prestige in the eyes of its old allies, while encouraging others of Trump’s ilk––the elected despots who lead ever more “illiberal states,” if we use the term Hungary’s Viktor Orban employed some years back.

America’s Favourite Strongman

Orban himself has much to teach us about control, more even than Trump. While one flaunts his inexperience in public office, the other is an old hand at politics. Following the European Union’s attempt to rein in Hungary and Poland’s “waning of democracies” via a rule of law mechanism, both countries’ leaders have vetoed the EU’s budget for the next seven years—a move that might very well bring about a full-blown political crisis in the bloc. It would come as no surprise if the Union blinks before Orban does—the individual member-states of the EU are desperate for the financial relief this new budget will provide them, to deal with the aftermath of the coronavirus.

Orban has used every excuse he can to centralise authority on his own person; his popularity has suffered little for it. He has curtailed judicial powers and independence, has blamed many of the issues that plague the country on outside influence, most commonly George Soros—who has long been a political foe and critic of his—and immigrants, including when the coronavirus first reached the country. Orban continues to be viewed as a hero, in the highest echelons of the European Union but elsewhere, too; his past accomplishments are compelling. There is ample reason why Viktor Orban has been described as “the American right’s favourite strongman”. He has shown a capacity for using any crisis to his ultimate benefit—something the current American president has attempted to emulate, to mixed results.

For the “elected despots” of the European Union, politicking has proven thicker than the blood of those who have viewpoints opposing their own.

His Polish counterpart, Jarosław Kaczyński, is no different. Rather than take a step back from the controversial abortion law that sparked the “Women’s Strike”, Kaczyński’s party has used these protests to draw a line in the sand, polarizing Polish society and enervating the Polish conservatives by painting the conflict not as one against the law itself but rather, as an attack on the Catholic church. The gall of another member of the ruling party PiS (Law and Justice) in “likening the red lightning symbol of the protests to the runes of Nazi Germany’s SS forces” shows the extent to which PiS is willing to stoke the flames of social strife.

For the “elected despots” of the European Union, politicking has proven thicker than the blood of those who have viewpoints opposing their own. The overall theme is the same: They are all nationalists quick to point a finger of blame, unwilling to backtrack. They are—unlike Trump, who ran as one—economic populists, which is where the vast amount of their support comes from. Peter Beinart writes for the NYRB:

“In 2019, Poland’s xenophobic and homophobic Law and Justice party won a dominant election victory in large measure because of its immensely popular payouts to Polish families, which, according to the World Bank, dramatically reduced child poverty. (Law and Justice’s popularity has fallen since then as many Poles have revolted against its draconian efforts to outlaw abortion.) In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has launched a New Deal-style public works program that gives hundreds of thousands of Hungarians government jobs.”

These are social policies that earn no small amount of goodwill, difficult to break despite raising discontent. And—as the Polish ruling party is all too willing to prove—social cohesion is not high in the list of priorities for the democratically elected despots, not when they hold onto the firm belief that they can energize a large enough percent of their populations to continue being reelected to office.

“The people” is not as inclusive a label as we might think; in the eyes of a caudillo, this concept extends only to those who are firm in their support. The opposition is the enemy—this lesson, at least, Trump learned well and early.

Related articles:

Delusive Donald

Will the Refugee Crisis be the Downfall of the EU and its Ideals?

Photo credits

Trump by geralt No attribution required

Viktor Orban by Łukasz Dawidziu CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

People in Groups by Sukanto DebnathlCC BY-NC-ND 4.0

The post Tightening the Grip: Is Experience Necessary for a Successful Autocrat? appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

An Ideology of Selfishness — How Misinformation Propagates Inequality

Filip Zahariev — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:26:39 +0000

Since the 2010s, a sharp uptake in the levels of misinformation can be observed, in the push for so-called austerity, in the war on facts, in the bold attempts of different socio-political organizations to exchange fact for opinion.

The mechanisms of propaganda have mastered their most powerful array of tools yet––social media. That’s not to say misinformation hasn’t gone hand in hand with print media; it has walked hand in hand with factual information, since as long ago as the fifteenth century, when the printing press took off. In the intervening centuries, human society has, collectively, found ways to combat misinformation through methods of verification which, the hope was, the Internet would make foolproof. But rather than provide a higher standard, the rise of the Internet (and of social media, in particular) has seen the decline of hard journalism along with the printed press.

Nowadays, criticism is systematically dismissed as “fake news”––if not outright silenced––, no matter the source or topic it is aimed at. It would be easy to pin the blame on a name or on a score of them. Easy but misguided. The Trumps and Bolsaneros of the world are a symptom of an economic system at odds with itself, much like the ouroboros swallowing its own tail, at once hungry and suffering from agonising convulsions.

Marilynne Robinson, in a piece for the NYRB in June, “What Kind of Country Do We Want?” described this economic system as:

“…the snare in which humanity has been caught––great industry and commerce in service to great markets, with ethical restraint and respect for the distinctiveness of cultures…having fallen away in eager deference to profitability.This is not new, except for the way an unembarrassed opportunism has been enshrined among the laws of nature and has flourished destructively in the near absence of resistance or criticism.”

This is, Robinson writes, a “system now revealed as a tenuous set of arrangements that have been highly profitable for some people but gravely damaging to the world”. And not just the world––growing economic inequality is as high as it has ever been.

Inequality – A Cancer Eating Away at Society

Inequality affects “more than 70% of the global population,” according to a UN report, but nowhere is it more jarring, more on focus than in the richest, most powerful and prestigious countries in the world. To this end, it’s time to turn the reader’s attention to several recent developments, first in the USA and then in the UK.

Robinson describes the USA as “having been overtaken with a deep and general conviction of scarcity, a conviction that has become an expectation, then a kind of discipline, even an ethic. The sense of scarcity instantiates itself. It reinforces an anxiety that makes scarcity feel real and encroaching, and generosity, even investment, an imprudent risk.”

It is this sense of scarcity that drives society towards polarization, which Robinson in turn characterizes as “a virtual institutionalization in America of the ancient practice of denying working people the real or potential value of their work.” This institution couldn’t work without popular support. It is here that the mechanisms of branding––dare we call it by its non-politically correct name, propaganda?––enter into the scene. With them come their main beneficiaries, would-be demagogues whose interest lies in reinforcing the status quo.

Through the benefits of unified branding, large swathes of the population are persuaded to vote against their own interests. This branding rarely has a basis in fact, as is the case with perceptions of economic competence in the USA, for example. Every Republican administration from Reagan onward has overseen a recession, and every Democratic administration has overseen a strong recovery and an economic boom. Do Americans trust Democrats more to do a good job with the economy? On the contrary: the GOP enjoys a durable advantage, recently at eight points. The pandemic may agitate sentiments and approval numbers, but even in the chaotic era of President Trump, Americans irrationally trust in the GOP’s longstanding image as the party of practical, “fiscally conservative” businessmen who know how to run things efficiently and profitably. (Joseph O’Neill, “Brand New Dems?” for the NYRB)

This is no small feat of misinformation, but a wilful spread of what is equivalent to a mass delusion over decades. So, too, with migration; despite migrants performing jobs the vast majority of Americans do not want, their contribution to society is denied.

A Universal Problem

This is not a uniquely American issue, though the USA is perhaps the most extreme example––and the richest country in the world. If we turn to the UK, much the same can be seen, both in terms of a push for austerity and in the divorce from facts. For a decade now, British austerity has gutted the NHS (National Health Service)––in a time of a pandemic, the fault lines of this act couldn’t be more pronounced.

The “Leave” campaign was successful on the grounds of false claims, as well as racism and a perceived economic victimhood of the English (more so than any other group) at the hands of migrants. At the UK’s great economic loss over membership taxes to the EU, as well. Why is it, then, that British farmers were faced with the possibility of their harvest rotting, unpicked, on trees? This is an issue exacerbated by the coronavirus, certainly, but with its roots in the Eastern European migrant labour force that so offended English sensibilities, despite performing a job that no Britons are interested in.

And in February, Business Insider estimated that by the end of 2020, the British government will have spent £200 billion to leave the UK, more than all its payments to the Union over forty-seven years of membership. One cannot help but wonder what these funds might’ve accomplished, were they aimed at reducing economic inequality within the UK, rather than spent on a divorce bill.

What becomes clear through these examples––and many more like them––is that the drive towards ever greater profitability at the core of our economic system is not only flawed, it is a pandemic more deadly, more divisive than COVID-19 could ever be. Its tools seek to propagate an ideology of selfishness. And it is easy to drink its bitter message in. What’s required is only passive consent, a wilful lethargy, an unwillingness to look away from the screen.

Or… a different choice can be made. We can examine humanity through a prism not of its greed or rugged individualism, but through an outrage for the injustices embedded in our society, and most of all, through a shared human experience and selflessness.

Related articles:

A Stark Case of Propaganda

The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Photo credits:

Astroturf by hanne jatho, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

INEQUALITY by Teeraphat Kansomngam, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Paul Harrop / Poster site, New Bridge Road, Newcastle / CC BY-SA 2.0

The post An Ideology of Selfishness — How Misinformation Propagates Inequality appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Life under the corporate sovereign: human automata and modern serfdom

Filip Zahariev — Sun, 17 May 2020 13:28:45 +0000

Consider the basic rights we in the Western world take for granted – the twin pillars of freedom and democracy, which define Western culture. Or so it seems. Strange, then, that when we think of the single most influential institution in our capitalist society, neither of these pillars are to be found. I write, of course, of the modern-day corporation: a fundamentally illiberal institution.

In this article, I’ll look first and foremost at American corporations, as American capitalism is at its most evolved – a signpost for days to come in Europe and beyond. The COVID-19 crisis, further, allows for the underlining of the social injustices of this system.

Corporation as the engine of Capitalism

The corporation stands at the nucleus of modern society. The vast amount of people work for big business, either directly or indirectly, and their livelihoods are dependent on their continued employment. The labour the workers produce is much more valuable than their wages – what Economics professor Richard D. Wolff defines as surplus in his 2012 book, Democracy at Work. This surplus is under complete control by the capitalists, who Wolff defines as the employers of the labourers and the owners of the means of production. This surplus, then, is used to enrich capitalists and cement their place in society. This is a well-established process, to the point that to even question the capitalist market system comes with a degree of social and political stigmatization – especially in the United States. It wasn’t that long ago that the very term “socialist” could sink political careers in the US, a trend changed only recently by Bernie Sanders.

But the owners of capital – those who count themselves among the major shareholders and members of the boards of directors of corporations – have enough influence to make any talk of true equality seem a fever dream. In what reads as an Onion headline, a 2010 Supreme Court ruling held that corporations have the same right as individuals to influence elections. This, despite the skewered amount of influence corporate lobbyists have over policy in the USA and beyond – a fact owed to the tens of millions spent by corporations to this end. Take Exxon, for example, its reach is described as the kind that allows its executives “easy access to every president”. Its confident CEO is “a peer of the White House’s rotating occupants” who can usually count on the administration to see things as he does. In fact, the president is often more pliable than the CEO, who often goes his own way, “aligned…with America, but…not always in sync; he was more akin to the president of France, or the chancellor of Germany…. His was a private empire.” Almost as if depthless pockets open all avenues to power.

Life holds no candle to profit

Corporations have the absolute authority to cut any number of their workers if holding onto them threatens the bottom line of corporate profitability. Take the recent announcement that Disney stopped paying 100,000 of its employees starting the week of April 20, 2020. The devastating societal effects this decision will have on each and every one of these employees is little different than the proliferation of globalizing forces in the 1970s and onwards which saw American corporations leave behind millions of middle-class Americans for the far cheaper workforce of Asia. It was this that brought about the rise of the economically vulnerable “precariat” class – 45,000 members of which kill themselves yearly, as summarized by Helen Epstein.

If you seek more persuasive evidence, all you need do is take a glance at the unemployment numbers in the United States – twenty million (and counting) for the period of March 12–April 12. Those numbers have not shrunk since – in fact, they’ve grown. While Europe is a far cry from exemplary in tackling the coronavirus crisis, the unemployment rate hasn’t skyrocketed. This is owed to the protections workers unions have negotiated with governments over long decades via collective bargaining. Perhaps the new depression triggered by COVID-19 is just the right time to introduce collectivization in a wider context.

A better way?

Professor Wolff argues in Democracy at Work that there is an alternative to the way corporations are currently run – Workers Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE). At its essence, the WSDE offers “placing the workers in the position of their own collective board of directors, rather than having directors be non-workers selected by major shareholders… It is the tasks of direction – the decision making now assigned usually and primarily to corporate boards of directors and only secondarily to the major shareholders who choose them – that must be transferred to the workers collectively.”

Wolff’s chief example is the Mondragón Corporation in Spain, which has been in operation for over 50 years. Over this time, the corporation has grown to be one of the most successful businesses in Spain, and “now includes eighty-five thousand members in its constituent worker cooperative enterprises.”

The WSDE methods are neither new, nor revolutionary. A 1997 New York Review of Books article, Reinventing the Corporation, examines six novels dealing with the introduction of “collaborative methods” within corporations. Discussed are the problems a traditionally structured corporation meets in transitioning towards such starkly different methodology as well as, the benefits and issues during the transition period:

“Employees, as we shall see from a variety of studies, tend to be happier, more productive, and better paid under collaborative or participatory work arrangements. These arrangements, however, are often difficult to carry out. Not only must the work force be reeducated, but managers must be persuaded to accept diminished authority.”

It is a difficult shift, no doubt, but the novels discussed in the article make more than one compelling case for it. To even scratch the surface of such a challenging topic as this has been no easy task. Professor Wolff’s argument is not clear-cut – collaborative enterprises such as Mondragón suffer from their own share of problems. But to ignore the cracks in a system that fails time and again is to ignore the fundamental instability of the society we live in. It is to turn a blind eye to the necessity for change and a different way forward.

by Filip R. Zahariev

Photo Credits

on the wall, Dennis AB, CC BY-SA 2.0

MEPs back joint Parliament-Commission register of lobbyists, European Parliament, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The post Life under the corporate sovereign: human automata and modern serfdom appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Bordering reality: how the speculative genre extends and reflects on human experience

Filip Zahariev — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 09:14:23 +0000

Speculative fiction has long been held suspect for one cardinal sin – offering escapism from real-world problems. “How can made-up worlds,” the condemnation goes, “reflect on the issues of today? How can reading about fictional societies in secondary worlds give us …” While the popularity of speculative fiction has silenced some of its critics in recent years, the fields of “serious” literary criticism and academia still look down on it, considering it as inconsequential and superfluous. Over the span of this article, I will illustrate how both science fiction and fantasy have navigated through and penetrated real-world issues, offering invaluable insight in the process.

Science Fiction: mapping the unthinkable

Science fiction is, in the words of evolutionary biologist Richard C. Lewontin, “a literature of imagination and logic in which the consequences of radical alterations in the conditions of human existence are deduced.” A sandbox in which the author, taking on the mantle of a social scientist, sets up a vision of society starkly different from our own – this is a core tenet of the genre.

Sometimes, the societies constructed at first appear as utopias, like those in Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos. Seemingly perfected versions of our own capitalist society, these would-be triumphs of human perseverance inevitably reveal the gaps and weaknesses inherent to the system, and proceed to widen them past the breaking point – one trait the futuristic societies of both works share in is that for the technological splendour they live in, the billions upon billions of human beings have grown stagnant, their culture incapable of providing growth, either spiritual or evolutionary.

More commonly, science fiction lingers on the anxieties of tomorrow’s world. The dangers of technology are a motif our own society falls in love with time and again, and none have given voice to these deep-rooted fears with an eloquence comparable to that of Philip K. Dick. His works concern themselves with technology invading even unthinkable aspects of human experience; 1969’s Ubik investigates the effects of a technology which allows humans to preserve the consciousness of their dead and even communicate with them. Beyond the obvious ethic and moral implications is a lingering theme of technology eroding the borders of what is real and asking,”Where does reality end, and the unreal begin?”

The appearance of the Internet has further complicated matters. William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the so-called father of the cyberpunk subgenre, anticipates the Cyberspace and outlines the apprehensions of a society in thrall of a shared cyberspace which acts as a “consensual hallucination”. The path from the neon-stylized 80s imagining of a global network in which any user can be “jacked,” to the 2000’s Matrix movie is short indeed.

Another branch of science fiction questions the exploitation of natural resources – Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest is one such example. In my review of this novel, I wrote that Le Guin imagines a world “dominated by oceans and lush green forests, where a little over two thousand men are working to deforest the world one island at a time, in order to state the unquenchable thirst of an Earth that has exhausted all its natural resources of wood.” The novel is an allegorical tale written in response to the events of the Vietnam War, and Le Guin’s introduction is a poignant reminder as to the times that produced such literature:

“…it was becoming clear that the ethic which approved the defoliation of forests and grainlands and the murder of non-combatants in the name of ‘peace’ was only a corollary of the ethic which permits the despoliation of natural resources for private profit or the GNP, and the murder of the creatures of the Earth in the name of ‘man’. The victory of the ethic of exploitation, in all societies, seemed as inevitable as it was disastrous.”

The end-point of exploitation of the natural world is nothing less than climate disaster – and has any book done more for the popularizing of climate fiction than Frank Herbert’s Dune? This titan of sci-fi brought to attention environment issues and questions of ecological limitations (and how to overcome these) to an entire new generation in the sixties, and continues its relevance over half a century later.

“Alright, alright,” the disproving critic says, “That’s well and good, I concede the point. But how does fantasy come into it?” I’m glad you asked.

Fantasy: holding up a mirror

At its finest, fantasy literature offers not just escapism but poignant commentary on the world that has produced it, sometimes against the author’s issues. Such is the case with The Lord of the Rings; author J. R. R. Tolkien is loath to admit any connection between the narrative of his opus and the events of World War II, but authorial intent is not the end to this equation. The events of the outside world shape authors and what they put into a work, knowingly or otherwise.

Criticism to reality can be found much more often in the fantasy of the last forty years than of much of the genre canon of the fifties, sixties and seventies. A cursory examination at the works of Mark Lawrence and Joe Abercrombie offers societal visions much in the same vein as those in science fiction, though where sci-fi looks forward, fantasy looks back. Abercrombie’s A Little Hatred examines a society in the throes of an Industrial Revolution, while complicating matters further by examining themes relevant to the socio-political environment of the world we live in. A Little Hatred offers a scathing critique to a refugee crisis all too similar to those both in Europe and the United States.

Massive, multi-tome works such as Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Dead offer insight on just about any theme that takes on the human condition, from compassion to fraternity to the horrible cost and nature of war. It is issues such as these that dominate the field of speculative fiction in the twenty-first century, and their expert handling by voices new and old has value far outweighing that of mere escapism. To argue otherwise is to live in a reverie.

by Filip R. Zahariev

Photo Credits

Human Disorder,Tom Overloop, CC BY-NC 4.0

Mars Cities Geo-Block, Alex Mathers, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Binary System, Chris Frewin, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

The post Bordering reality: how the speculative genre extends and reflects on human experience appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

Politically conscious art as backlash: Amanda Palmer’s “There Will Be No Intermission”

Filip Zahariev — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:08:04 +0000

Amanda Fucking Palmer is loud, so loud it might seem like she’s screaming for attention – and some people on the Internet hate her for it. But guess what? She has a lot of things to say.

This has never been more evident than on Palmer’s third solo album, aptly named There Will Be No Intermission. Apt because, at twenty songs and seventy-eight minutes long, this album is resolute in delivering a powerful, politically-conscious message of resistance and survival. It is not only sorrowful, pained, even tragic; but also angry, breathless with fury. The cover, which features a naked Palmer brandishing a sword high above her head, anticipates the tone of the album in both its extremes.

Where Art Comes From

Time and time again, the singer-songwriter taps deep into her emotional experiences. Whether as a sister – “And I tried to call my brother || but he no longer exists” (Palmer lost her brother in 1996) in “Bigger on the Inside”; a mother – “I know it’s hard to be a parent || But this mess is so gigantic || I wonder if I should have had a child” in “A Mother’s Confession”; a friend – “I have never liked the box of knives || I took it to the oceanside the day you died || I stood out on the dock || No matter how hard I tried || I couldn’t drop them in || And I collapsed and cried: || What do I do with this stuff? || It seems like yesterday you were alive || And it’s as if you never really died” – in “Machete”; and a daughter – “Remember the daughter || And all that you taught her || She’s grown up at last || With a child of her own || She struggles alone || As the years all rush pass” – in “Look Mummy, No Hands”. But perhaps most striking are the songs which have a direct link to women’s reproductive rights, namely “Drowning in the Sound” and “Voicemail for Jill”.

The music video for “Drowning in the Sound” sees Palmer perform her sexuality, her role and experience as a mother and artist, even her role as a performer itself, to staggering effect, eerily resembling David Bowie’s performance of his own death in “Blackstar” and “Lazarus”, released a few days before Bowie’s passing from cancer.

“Voicemail for Jill” is a deeply emotional piece about abortion and the psychological effects of it – the video is difficult to watch because of its raw emotions at display, and the honest, powerful way the lyrics delve into the heart of the struggle to survive and continue living. Pregnancy becomes something a woman is expected to suffer through and be grateful, or end and be shunned, even persecuted for. Even so, the hopeful note the song ends on, the notion of support and some small measure of happiness reclaimed, these capture the heart of a vulnerable moment in the lives of many women, the struggle society often expects them to grit their teeth through in silence.

The message in “Voicemail for Jill” and the album as a whole comes at a time of organised assault against women’s reproductive rights in the United States of America, both on a federal and state level. A secular government uses religious justification to rob women of their hard-earned rights, fought for over the last century. What is a politically-charged artist to do about it? According to Palmer, the way forward is “to share the naked truth of [our] experiences”.

A Slide Back into the Middle-Ages

When these experiences include barbaric laws like the one passed last year by the governor of Alabama, which would see abortions permitted “only if the mother’s life is at risk or if the fetus cannot survive, but not in cases of rape or incest.” The bill was passed by legislators later in the month of May 2019 and was supposed to enter into effect on November 15. While it was temporarily blocked by a federal judge at the end of October, the authors of the bill seek to table discussion of the contested law to the Supreme Court. With Trump’s Conservative Supreme Court appointees tipping the balance in favour of so-called Pro-Life ideas, the likelihood of such a case being struck down in favour of the status quo is doubtful.

Though Alabama is singular in its draconian law, other states have introduced bills which seek to cut down the period in which women could get an abortion: “Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio stopped short of outright bans, instead passing so-called heartbeat bills that effectively prohibit abortions after six to eight weeks of pregnancy, when doctors can usually start detecting a fetal heartbeat. Utah and Arkansas voted to limit the procedure to the middle of the second trimester.”

The most outrageous bill proposed yet, however, is one in Ohio. If passed, this bill would demand doctors do a “procedure that does not exist in medical science,” namely the re-implanting of an ectopic pregnancy in a woman’s uterus. Not only is this an impossible procedure to do, the refusal to do it would result in obstetricians and gynecologists being charged for “criminal charges, including murder”. This will be punishable by life in prison. Another new crime, “aggravated abortion murder”, is punishable by death, according to the bill. Such abortion laws would make women criminals for exercising their personal autonomy. The narrative told in “Voicemail for Jill” would look and sound much different if it were set in any one of these states.

Here again, Amanda Palmer’s words resonate: “frightening political climates make for really good, real, authentic art.” There Will be no Intermission is but the latest example of great art as backlash to a dark political reality. In her own words: “If the political climate keeps getting uglier, the art will have to answer. We will have to fight…We are sharpening our knives for a large buffet.” With the political landscape of both the United States and the world at large turning darker, the fight has only just begun.

by Filip R. Zahariev

Photo Credits

AFP, OpenEye, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Amanda Palmer Posters, Vladimir Zimakov, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

‘Abortion Never’ Galway City, NationalPartyIE, CC BY 2.0

The post Politically conscious art as backlash: Amanda Palmer’s “There Will Be No Intermission” appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.

The Mythology of Italian Fascism: Beginnings and Endings, Homogenized

Filip Zahariev — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 16:37:26 +0000

It is the unfortunate reality of Italian politics that fascism is alive and well, seventy-five years after the ignoble death of its great European architect, Benito Mussolini. Indeed, though Il Duce’s body may have been hung in the middle of Piazzale Loreto for all to see and revile, Italian politics still bears the marks of its notorious former leader. The country’s political arena is messy. It is cutthroat and it is, above all else, driven by personalities: Men (far more often than women [1]), oozing with machismo, their superficial charm rivalled only by their odious moral compass and the corruption charges levied against them.

A quick glance at the state of the country’s string of prime minister-led governments speaks of nothing so much as instability. Twenty-one government cabinets in thirty years – four of them led by Silvio Berlusconi, a populist in all but name long before it was cool, to use modern parlance. Mired in scandal since before his first term of office, Berlusconi is a far cry from Mussolini – he has, until recently leaned towards the centre-right, a liberal conservative unafraid to embrace a variety of policies, including traditionally liberal ones, as well as populist and Catholic ones. But Berlusconi’s personal political legacy is a foul one, his politics and conduct both a precursor to those of recent populists, with Matteo Salvini at the forefront of their ranks. Salvini’s allegiance with fascist ideology has long been a divisive question in Italian society but the fact of the matter is, neo-fascist parties such as Fratelli d’Italia see the leader of the Northern League as their natural ally.

The Internal Logic of Fascism

The Italian statesman Massimo d’Azeglio said, a day after the unification of Italy in 1861, “We have made Italy and, now, we must make the Italians.” Whatever else is said about Mussolini, he well grasped, perhaps at an intuitive level, the importance of a unified nation.

Fascism, as described by novelist and frequent NYRB contributor Tim Parks, is “an ideology not only repressive but also inward-looking.” It recalls the exceptional, reinforces the notion of a god-chosen people. In the Italian example, it offers a unified vision of Italy through history; Mussolini appropriated classical Antiquity, mythologized and streamlined it, offering simple, reassuring answers to the complex questions of the time. The history of the Ancient Roman Empire, this notion of Romanitá, thus became a unifying staple of Fascist ideology. In Mussolini’s own words, “For the Italian people all is eternal and contemporary. For us it is as if Caesar was stabbed just yesterday. It is something proper to the Italian people, something which no other people have to the same extent.”

This ideology’s underlying logic seeks to produce unity, a homology which the deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida warned against on the grounds that in creating a bounded unity, there must necessarily be a “constitutive outside,” an enemy to unify against, to drive out and abject. And indeed, both the early and the later years of the Fascist movement were defined by violence against those who would constitute the “other,” mainly Slavs – in particular Yugoslavs, Serbs and Slovenes.

To the fascist, this is a battle for nothing less than survival, for Antiquity offers a bitter lesson as to the failure in doing so: “It is not the change in political forms, from republican to monarchic, which indicates the beginning of Rome’s decadence, but the corruption of dominant races in too much and too frequent contact with inferior peoples”. Mussolini’s reasoning, unsurprisingly, has little to do with the realities of empire. It does, however, serve to reinforce the most overt messages of one of the most persistent works of classic literature in modern Italy, the Aeneid.

A Uniform Founding Myth?

At first glance, Virgil’s Aeneid presents a founding myth which perfectly embodies the notion of a “dominant race”. By the end of this great Roman epic, the shattered remnants and dredges of Troy are reforged into one people under the rule of Aeneas, a leader forged in the fires of war, a man who sacrifices his individual freedoms for the good of his people. Chased away from their sacked homeland, the progenitors of the Roman Republic become, as NYRB’s chief editor Daniel Mendelsohn notes, “a nation of victors rather than victims.” Divine providence – what better tenet to base national identity on?

Indeed, Virgil’s magnum opus presents questions no less relevant today than they were in Mussolini’s Italy, perhaps more. It is a text both informative and problematic. Individuality is suppressed for the sake of the common good and empire stands triumphant. The epic poem’s hero, Aeneas, is repeatedly caught red-handed, committing one morally outrageous act after another, all borne out of necessity, for the survival of his people.

But to reduce the great poet’s work to only these characteristics would be a disservice, though one a fascist would be happy to perpetrate. The Aeneid itself does not offer a singular, unified vision of the world – the voice of the African queen Dido is perhaps the strongest criticism to the notion of strength, unification and empire the fascist would place foremost in his reading of the work. Dido, who saves and aids Aeneas only to be betrayed by him at the behest of his gods, kills herself and thus becomes, to quote Mendelsohn, “a heartbreaking symbol of the collateral damage that ‘empire’ leaves in its wake.” Hers is not the only part to offer criticism to the notion and cost of empires; there is warning there, a cautious tale against the price paid by perpetrator and victim alike.

No homogeneous view of society thrives for long, and Il Duce’s vision of Romanitá has seen its decline in the seventy-five years since his fall from grace. But neo-fascism and far-right nationalism have gained enough ground in recent decades to echo the early rise of the fascist movement in troubling ways. One hopes that, for all Salvini’s accidental gaffes in apping Mussolini, the leader of the League Party will stay away from embracing the odious rewriting of history his political predecessor engaged in. Salvini’s track record, however, leaves much to be desired.

by Filip R. Zahariev

[1]Italy has long struggled with the vastest gender-gap in Western Europe.

Photo Credits

mussolini a colori,cripto, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Meeting of Dido and Aeneas, Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland, CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

The post The Mythology of Italian Fascism: Beginnings and Endings, Homogenized appeared first on Pike & Hurricane.