Love & Hip Hop has many series on the air. In a recent interview, the franchise creator Mona Scott-Young spoke about her hope that all four series in the franchise will be able to return.

Since its debut in 2011, the Love & Hip Hop franchise has produced four different series. Love & Hip Hop: New York first debuted in 2011. This was following by the debut of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta in 2012. 2014 saw the debut of Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood. A few years passed before the introduction of the fourth series in the franchise, Love & Hip Hop: Miami, which debuted in 2018.

In an interview with Deadline, Scott-Young discussed the many different projects that she has in the works. Scott-Young is working on both scripted and unscripted projects about a number of topics.

The series in development include one on Shaka Zulu, a drama series focusing on the Aaron Hernandez case from the perspective of his wife, and a series with Black Lives Matter activist Tamika D. Mallory.

This is a special, unique, life-changing moment in all of our lives and especially for people of color, and when I look at how its being captured Im like this entire movement is happening on Instagram being captured by cell phones, he said. What will we have to look back on, and so we rallied some of our shooters and weve been following Tamika and have been on the ground with her and have really told the story of this reluctant leader of sorts. Shes been thrust into the forefront of this movement and then becomes a voice of the people, not by choice but by necessity and for me it was an incredible honor to be able to lend my skillsets for capturing this moment in time and memorializing it.

RELATED:Love & Hip Hop: Report Alleges Omarion Ended Relationship With Apryl Jones Because of Apryls Thirst for Fame and Her Close Friendship With Fizz

Scott calls the franchises success lightning in a bottle. In an interview, she also noted that she doesnt handle physical production of the show. But now, ViacomCBS has brought the production in house, as companies include Big Fish Entertainment and Eastern TV once handled the production.

The network has made a decision to take those productions in-house, so they have been gearing up and backing up in a way that will allow for them to do that, she said.

Scott-Young also noted the production impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have allowed them to think about the show in a new way. It wont change my role in the way that I work with them but there is a process now thats taking place, and also of course, the caution, the precautions that need to be taken with figuring out how to reimagine a docuseries and do it while adhering to safety protocols and finding a different way of making the show, she said.

RELATED:Love & Hip Hop: Stars Lyrica Garrett and Pam Bentley Almost Come to Blows in The Conversation

The casts of the shows always have new additions as well as people leaving, but Scott-Young hints that storytelling may also be different with this new shift. In the same breath, Scott-Young said the hope is to have all shows to come back, which may suggest that there is the potential for a shake-up.

I kind of embrace the challenge and see it as a new frontier to be conquered, she added. The beauty of it is each city has managed to establish its own fan base and has its own place in the zeitgeist and with the fans, and, of course my hope is that all four cities come back, there has been nothing to indicate otherwise. They all have fared really well for the network in terms of ratings and theyve been the cornerstone of the programming there so I dont see that changing.

Only time will tell if all of the shows will return as many shows head back into production. It is unclear if any of the Love & Hip Hop shows have been filming scenes during the pandemic.

Excerpt from:

'Love & Hip Hop': Will One of the Shows in the Franchise Get Cut? - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

In the onslaught of this election year, its likely that youve come across a fair share of political buttons. But theres no way youve seen as many as Christen Carter and Ted Hake, coauthors of Button Power: 125 Years of Saying It With Buttons.

[Image: courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]Carter is the cofounder of Busy Beaver Button Co. and Button Museum in Chicago, while Hake founded Hakes Americana and Collectibles in York, Pennsylvania, and was an appraiser on PBSs Antiques Roadshow. The pair reviewed 10,000 pin-back buttons spanning from their invention in 1896 to 2019, eventually whittling them down to 1,500. In the process, they learned that good button design tracks pretty closely with effective advertising: it should be quickly readable, attention grabbing, and start a conversation.

But while the principles of design havent changed much, the buttons themselves are a window into the past. Advertisers and organizations made sure moments big and smallfrom the Apollo 11 landing to the first on-screen movie kissoften included a take-home memento in the form of a button. Buttons are little objects [that] can take you back in time and give you a surprisingly detailed view of the world at that particular moment, says Hake, who began collecting buttons in 1960. Here are a few cultural milestones in bite-size form.

Buttons were first used in the political sphere, when a brass sew-on button that read Long Live the President was created after George Washingtons inauguration. (While not a pin-back button, it served a similar purpose.) Buttons have flourished as a quippy way to take political sides ever since.

[Image: courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]There were buttons both for and against Franklin D. Roosevelts contentious run for a third presidential term in 1940, with one reading Better a Third Termer Than a Third Rater. An opposing button showed Uncle Sam giving a thumbs-down with the words No Third Term.

[Image: courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]The buttons usefulness is exemplified with one of the most well-known political slogans of the last century, I Like Ike, which is said to have been coined long before his presidential run by a button maker in New York. In 1952, the Eisenhower campaign splashed the memorable motto across millions of buttons in varying sizes and designs.

[Image: courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]Another great example is a 70s era anti-Nixon pin that reads I Nothing to Hide with an illustration of Nixon streaking and holding up two Vs for victory. While a bad time for Nixon, the Busy Beaver Museum notes that the early 70s were a good time for streaking.

By the turn of the 20th century, advertisers caught onto the buttons success in politics, and began giving away commemorative buttons at major events that captured the zeitgeist of invention and industry, says Carter. Most people didnt even have access to color materials aside from on trading cards, adds Hake, making it a total novelty at the time.

[Image: courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]One such example is this 1901 button depicting Major Taylor, a Black cycling superstar sponsored by Iver Johnson Cycles. He was the first Black athlete to be depicted on a button, according to Hake. Meanwhile, gum company Pepsin Gum celebrated the first kiss in a movie, aptly called The Kiss, with a commemorative button in 1900. A slightly creepy black-and-white button marked the first lightbulb, beckoning consumers to Be-light-ed by Electricity.

Buttons like these were mostly collectible items at the time, according to Carter. It was really special to own a piece of printed material at that time, especially since they didnt have as many advertising images around like we do today, she says.

By the 1960s, buttons were everywhere. They commemorated major scientific events, such as the first American to orbit the Earth; pop culture, like Tommy Smalls, a DJ known as Dr. Jive who ushered in early rock and roll; and the counterculture. Hakes favorite is a button made by the 1964 Free Speech Movement after its first event in Berkeley, California, which he says kicked off a decade of revolution.

[Image: courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]Other buttons capture pithy phrases were familiar with today. Underground Uplift Unlimited in New York Citys East Village created some of the most well-known 60s buttons, according to Hake. They had slogans like Make Love, Not War, Draft Beer, Not Students, and Push this Button to Turn Me On.

Today, button makers are looking for new ways to grab attention, such as matte finishes that wont reflect on screens. But no matter what they say or sell, each button itself becomes an artifact representing a moment of changeas Carter describes them, little celebrations in time.

More:

How one tiny accessory popularized some of the most iconic slogans of - Fast Company

The new Whitney building, designed by Renzo Piano, with its multiple jutting terraces between which you can clatter up and down stairwells, is a welcome addition to Manhattans art scene. From its decks you can look over what feels like the whole of downtown Manhattan in one direction, and across the Hudson River in the other. Inside its walls you can currently see America Is Hard To See, the Whitneys polemical opening exhibition, and the defining US museum show of the season.

This exhibitions mission is to reconsider American art history through highlighting 600 works from the Whitneys permanent collection. It manages this challenge convincingly in places, integrating striking works by lesser-seen artists into the American canon, and offering a welcome historicised contextualisation of Postmodern and Contemporary art against what had gone before and what you see in commercial galleries today. Most of all, it exhibits great numbers of artworks thematically, so moving through the show you grasp art historys waves anew.

The top floor predictably starts with American learnings from the European avant-gardes. Lots of collage and Futurism, and works reflecting the shadows of Americas founding and its nostalgic but irreverent adoption of elements from European culture. In this new building, and in todays field of installation, performance, digital, post-digital etc art, this top floor feels like a different world to the present, but the ideasif not the materialsin art feel the same as now. The main concerns are the sense of fracture and dystopia, and the need to change how those things are represented in art, brought on by the heightening automatism of modernisation.

The first galleries explore abstraction and the early twentieth century moderns experimentation with form that still captivates the popular eye, despite (or probably because of) having faded into conceptual simplicity against the contemporarys complications. Emphasis is emphatically placed on certain reminiscences, such as the flattened forms of Patrick Henry Bruce and Stuart Daviss 1920s paintings, John Covert and Arthur Doves morbidly forlorn palette from the decades either side, and Lyonel Feiningers Gelmeroda, VIII, from 1921 with Georgia OKeeffes 1926 Abstraction, both of which employ shadow and angularity to locate the viewer and paint modernity as serenely seductive. One of the exhibitions goals is showing that art history picks its stars by caprice, but these rooms undermine this sense by the brilliance of major stars like OKeefe whose work shines out as somehow more brilliant, more talented than its neighbours.

A romantic interlude on a single wall celebrates abstractions affinity with synaesthesia and music. Concise curation here makes it work with only six pieces: paintings by Charles Burchfield and Oscar Bluemner, and two small poised and beautiful gelatin silver prints by Imogen Cunningham and Alfred Stieglitz. The line-up has impact because its quiet; the theme continues more brashly opposite with poet EE Cummings bright swirling painting Noise Number 13 and Richmond Barths 1933 lyrical sculpture African Dancer, beside a work by Agnes Pelton, another OKeefe, and work by Stanton MacDonald-Wright who in the 1910s founded the colour-based practice Synchromism, the first abstract movement that art history considers originally American. Here Four Part Synchromy, by Synchromism co-founder Morgan Russell, and Oscar Bluemners Last Evening of the Year look fresh, even though were still in the 1920s.

Moving into the following decades, Alexander Calder, Man Ray and Theodore Roszak succinctly locate visitors in mid-century mechanisationuseful as Joseph Stellas 1939 painting The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme could be 1990s street art. Here the silvery representations of the Empire State and the Chrysler make their inevitable appearances, taking their proper place in the canon at the expense of the exhibitions promised curatorial novelty.

On the floor below, things get big, boisterous and ugly as the show lands in Americas heyday. Calders downright adorable and insanely fiddly Circus installation of miniature figures contrasts with its strong-stroked canvas neighbours, but defines the character of this floor as one of animated spectacle. Reginald Marsh and Thomas Hart Benton dish up hips and tits in grotesque social realism. Overtly queer art emerges here in Modernism, setting the scene curatorially for its blossoming a few decades later, on the gallery floors below. Gentleman lovers admire a cocknballs sculpture in work by Charles Demuth and Paul Cadmus gives his terrifying hookers and muscular sailors cartoonish full physiques with the virtuosity of Renaissance painting. Its the seedier side of a spectacular society. In a clever touch, colourful works like these are broken up at intermittent rhythmic intervals with small-scale photography and etchings; their flattering monochrome offer relief and invert the narrative of the period, foregrounding the underside in colour and putting societys glamorous echelons in the background in black and white miniatures.

The gallery opens up towards the terrace, and Willem De Koonings eye-catching Woman and Bicycle (1952-53) portrays the pin-up girl with maniacal double grin (the second being her pearl necklace) riding a bike in homage to Duchamp. Abstract Expressionism (with its Surrealist outtakes) always appears to be the art form that is most at home in big American museums, their white cubes scaled up precisely to flatter expressive gestural works like these made in vast lofts when progressive artists could afford to live in Manhattan. They look striking, are pleasingly dwarfing for the viewer and deliver that sense of awe many people seek at galleries. It inevitably feels repetitive, however, to revisit these overexposed works. Although welcome, their historical contextualisation by this show is noticeably sidelined by the sheer aesthetic experience these showpieces produce. Thats probably a result of its quality as stand-alone art though.

Three sculptures work hard in this gallery to locate their painted neighbours in time. Louise Bourgeois Quarantania (1947) of empathic ghostly painted white wood figures huddled together, John Chamberlains Velvet White (1962), a Ford Triumph crushed to resemble a figure, and Mark di Suveros domineering Hank (1960)a champion of repurposed wooden beamsdemarcate through their material forms that we are in the American pre-Now in a way the surrounding paintings cant.

Despite their overfamiliarity and the machismo of this era in art history, the stellar paintings here are moving and beautiful to re-encounter, with De Koonings luminous chalky-hued Door To The River (1960) and Rothkos heavy Four Darks In Red (1958) leading the charge to show that the adoption of these works into the vocabulary of corporate taste merely dinted their aura from afar and only for a passing moment. The Whitneys distribution of space is significant here as it gives these big guns their proportional acknowledgement without resorting to short shrift, in keeping with the realigned canon attempted by the exhibition.

Fighting With All Our Might, a gallery about the Great Depression, holds a set of gems by Jacob Lawrence. His 1940s War Series conveys struggle and suffering in graphic, nave strokes using repetition and evocative figures. The African American artist had recently served in WWII and his skill for combining colours drawn from the ocean and naval dormitories creates high-impact little paintings. Next door, George Tooker, Peter Blume and Louis Guglielmi, alongside Hopper and Man Ray, look at America after modernitys impact on the mind and society. The most outstanding works here, however, are a set of eight wood block prints from Chiura Obata depicting the American landscape in the Japanese tradition in a beguiling blend that highlights the cultural conditioning of the artistic lens.

Down further, floor six brings us into familiar early contemporary territory as brash commercialism vies for attention with minimalisms serenities. A gallery titled Large Trademark is dominated by the loud and influential imagery of people like Jasper Johns and Alex Katz, but the softer aesthetics of Diane Arbus, William Eggleston and Malcolm Bailey counterpoint with their framing of Americana through nostalgia and tragedy. Nearby, Carmen Herrera, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Jo Baers monochromatic works populate the White Target gallery, where minimal colour blocks appear to be the most gorgeous things youve ever seen having had your retinas seared by Tom Wesselmann and Andy Warhol.

The room called Scotch Tape is one of the most engaging, full of the strange, textural mixed media of Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson, Claes Oldenburg and Bruce Conner. Particularly special is Louise Nevelsons 1959 white sculpture in painted wood called Dawn's Wedding Chapel II, and Noah Purifoys playful untitled leather figure from 1970 is a potent example of the new canon angle. Suddenly, the art here seems to have jumped ahead in time. The works in the Raw War gallery are particularly interesting having seen the responses to war on the previous level. By now its Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement; slogans, smooth photography and graphic lettering. Larry Clarke, Judith Bernstein, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris and On Kawara are among the artists whose angry and mournful observations make this a powerful room.

Richard Tuttle, Anne Truitt, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra and Michelle Stuart are among the artists whose clever works, often sculptures, give the segment called Irrational Rationalism its intriguing, if at times alienating, mood of being very serious about playful approaches. Overall, floor six reminds of how assemblage and Pop Art never lose their easy appeal; dynamic, witty, full of caricatures and quotation, but whats interesting is their contrast with barely-there canvases and soft-touch photography. The sheer density of images proliferating in the middle of the last century comes through on this floor, an easy ride compared with the previous, and one that marks a notable step towards the dominance of the image culture we live with today.

The last floor, level five, is the shows greatest strength, celebrating with tender polemic the art scene that gave New York its sceney kudos, and using the exploration of identity and personal narrative that dominates more recent contemporary art to support its curatorial proposition. It can sometimes feel jarring to mix works dating as far back as the 1960s with todays, framing everything as the Contemporary, but those of todays themes and artistic approaches included in the Whitney collection actually dont diverge too far from what occupied radical artists fifty years ago, meaning the selection resonates together to reflect what does feel like American art today.

Threat and Sanctuary is one gallery here; it shows the emergence of conceptual art and attempts to reform painting entirely. Aesthetically incredibly diverse, compared with higher floors, works range from Cy Twomblys subtle scribbly-handed paintings to Alma Thomass graphic bright Mars Dust (1972) and Chuck Closes photorealist portrait Phil (1969). Individual works are enticing here but thematic coherence is strained. Far tighter is the neighbouring room Learn Where The Meat Comes From. Through mainly photography and video (Lynda Benglis, Paul McCarthy, Ana Mendieta, Martha Rosler) the low-tech qualities of a grunge mood emerge. The room feels like the American subconscious memory, where hyper-performativity, sexism, and an encompassing fascination with self-image still reside today. Racing Thoughts is equally about a media-dominated society, but here it becomes glossier as the 1980s produces a Pop Art reloaded style, in contrast to the gritty realism of the previous decade. Barbara Kruger, Jeff Koons, Nam June Paik, Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring make this gallery fun, if not especially moving.

Through emotionally charged photography from artists such as Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz and Robert Mapplethorpe, Love Letter from the War Front portrays the tragic romanticism of the legendary 1980s and 1990s Downtown Scene during the AIDS epidemic. It also reveals the documentary turn that art took as photography became the medium for expressing the moment, giving these works more intimacy than art from previous periods, and adding poignancy to viewing it as many of the artists who made it have since died from the illness.

When you get to Guarded View, the nub of this exhibition becomes clear. The Whitney was founded on outsider-ish principles back in the 1930s, and when in the 1990s it exhibited work by gays and lesbians, women and ethnic minorities, critics complained on grounds of aesthetic taste and political correctness. Of course their exhibitions like Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art turned out to be the zeitgeist. In this room today the museum shows Matthew Barney, Catherine Opie, Jimmie Durham, David Hammons, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Lorna Simpson, Sue Williams, and Fred Wilson, often using the body in their work to push similar themes of identity and cultural construction as defined those earlier radical shows. America Is Hard To See is aimed at re-iterating the Whitneys credibility as a change driver in American society, using the site of a new building to claim the role of the big New York museum most in tune with art and culture nowand it does so.[O]

See original here:

'America Is Hard To See' at The New Whitney Museum - Ocula Magazine

But since then, he has had paper issues in a country that has blatantly refused to legalize a person who has been living in it for an astonishing 17 years.

Right now, I still dont have my papers. Im a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival [DACA] recipient. This allows people like me to work legally, travel, pay taxes and get things like a social security number, he says. Prior to Trump, we were able to travel but he tried to repeat the program because Obama passed it. He failed though [laughs].

When I tell my friends here, they dont understand how someone has been here for so long and doesnt have papers without commiting crimes and stuff like that, he continues As I grew older, I realized that it wasnt about rejected applications. It was just about the legality of entry and residency. Something happened with my dad a few years back and it sort of made it trickier.

He had his own green card and was processing ours, but he had to come back to Nigeria. That slowed things down, but I know that God is in control. My purpose is bigger than one country, he concludes.

This unfairness has made him lose great opportunities. Not that he reels, but before he chose music, he was in love with football - a sport that found him in his formative years as a child on the streets of Lagos.

As he grew older, he got really great at it. He says, I played all through high school and even in college. I was supposed to go D1, but my paper/legal issues prevented me from getting a scholarship, so I settled for community college and still played there. But I was like nah, let me just face music [laughs].

Regardless of the issues, he continues to thrive at his chosen art, music. He has gotten some major co-signs and media coverage. From here, the only way for him is up.

These days, Mannywellz has already released two bodies of work titled, SoulFro and Mirage. Both projects present Mannywellz as His style feels like a bridge between Mo'Believe, Moelogo, Kemena, a little bit of Daramola and 3rty's pen

He balances his American R&B, Soul and Trapsoul influences with elements of his Nigerian folk roots either in instrumentation, delivery, adlibs. style or vocals.

I wanna say Im at my best whenever I infuse elements of my culture into my music because its like Im introducing my culture to people who arent aware, he says. In some Afrobeats songs, you seldom hear Juju, Fuji and all that. So, I feel even if its a Trap or Hip-Hop beat, you gotta hear a bit of Omele, Bata, Sakara or GanGan.

But after two bodies of work and a lot of other songs, he rightly struggles to classify himself under any genre as an artist. Even though he can make any genre of music, he admits that recently, hes been under the R&B/Soul/Afro-Fusion umbrella. Going forward, he would like to make Juju music though.

I think were moving into that genreless direction where people just like to experiment and express though, he says. If its good music, its good music. People are also seeing that listener palettes are expanding.

At 26 and 17 years after his original move to the states, Mannywellz still feels very Nigerian, very African and very black - not exactly American. At no point in his American existence has he felt like he was losing his African identity. He says, Im not American at all, bro [laughs], Im just here.

His Yoruba is as crisp and clear as the next guys. He would also gladly tell you that his dad is Ijebu, his mom is from Owo, Ondo State and that he was born in Lagos. Like Davido, he also effortlessly switches between in American and Nigerian accents with embellishments like Omo or ehn.

Even when we moved here, we would go to parties where my dad would perform and he would be spraying [money], eating his jollof rice, his eba, his iyan [pounded yam] and so forth. My culture in my household never made me forget my Nigerian roots, he says. But it also helped that I grew up in the DMV where I got to hangout with several people who had a strong African spirit and culture.

In the 90s, Mannywellzs dad was the lead singer of The Choir of Cherubim and Seraphim Movement Church, Surulere that released more than four Gospel albums including, Oke Mimo, Toluwanile and Igbala De. His tenor vocals especially became a part of the Nigerian sonic zeitgeist after he championed the classic album, Oke Mimo.

However, Mannywellz never felt like a superstars son. In his Nigerian accent he says, Omo in Naij, I never thought about music [laughs], I just wanted to play soccer, man. Growing up, I learned a lot about the entrepreneurial and business sides of music from my dad.

In Juju music, theres not a lot about management and stuff. My Dads sound of music is also strongly infused in my style, he continues. Spending time with him and being at his shows also helped with my stagecraft and stage presence, but I didnt really realize a lot of that till I started making music. He would sing Juju music and Oyinbo people would dance awkwardly [laughs].

Being around my dad made me study King Sunny Ade, Fela and so forth, he concludes

A while ago, Mannywellz started Ife Life, a lifestyle brand with his friend. Its slogan is inspired by culture and religion. Ife is Yoruba for love and Mannywellz aims to use his platform to propagate a life of Gods love.

I am Christian and I go to Church, yes sir. My parents planted the seeds of my faith really early and it helped me discover Jesus for myself as I got older, he says. That helps me combat the realities of life. The bible says, Train a child the way he should go and when he gets older, he will not depart from it. Im a testimony of not departing from the way of the Lord.

While Mannywellz doesnt drink or smoke, he struggles with the part of celibacy like everyone else.

He says, Im trying to be celibate, but women are women and they are always around [laughs]. But Im focused or Im trying to be [laughs].

The ties he shares with his family remains strong. As they go through DACA struggles, they have remained together. While his dad has since moved back to settle in Nigeria, he continues to live at home with his mom and siblings despite his success, exposure and schedules. This helps him stay grounded and stuff.

Its been really easy to live at home. I move around a lot and my mom is very chill. I'm also the oldest - the man of the house - [laughs] and my mom appreciates and supports my music, he says.

When the time is right, Mannywellz would like to make music with his dad who continues to make music in Nigeria.

Currently, Mannywellz isnt signed to any major labels. While hes had some of those conversations with all the major labels, hes still independent and working through partnerships.

The only way Id sign to a major is if I own my masters. It doesnt make sense that if I use my advance to buy a house, they still own the house. Are they mad? [Hisses], he says.

On October 9, 2020, he released his second body of work, the 7-track Mirage EP. It features Tems, Wale and VanJess. The project documents the uncertainties and hondulating tendencies of love.

The project was going to be called La La [laughs], but my manager suggested Mirage as a title. My mirage is being in this world full of hurt and pain when you dream big and think theres no way out, but there really is - especially in a romantic sense, he says. We tend to get used to toxic things and toxic situations. Thats why we tend to stay in a relationship with toxic people who are emotionally and verbally abusive.

My mirage is being in that kind of space while trying to find my way out, but finding that hard. he continues. I then found out that loving myself is one way to dig oneself out of such.

Interestingly, 95% of Mannywellzs music is inspired by his own life even though hes only actually been in two relationships.

Since Mannywellz left Lagos in 2003, he has not been back home due to these paper issues. One thing he would love to do going forward is to visit home.

I really want to come home like now, he says. Africa is home to all black people, no matter how good America is, that will always be home and the feeling is different. For people who are only being in Nigeria or other parts of Africa for the first time, people might be able to tell their freshness and facilities might not be as good, but they wont be killed because theyre black.

Quncy Jones says that, Its important to know where youre from to know where youre at and to identify where youre going, he continues. I wouldnt even say that America is better than us at all. Were so rich - if we come together, well do so much and wouldnt need America in a way that we think we do now.

Its also about finding an alternative for Mannywellz and other African-Americans. He feels like no matter how good America feels, people want to know that there is that alternative where they will not be judged for the color of their skin. While he cant vote in America, hes excited to get his Nigerian voters card when he can.

Even though he cant physically be in Lagos, he hopes to build a strong relationship with his Nigerian fanbase with interviews, appealing music, great effort and consistency.

He would also like to work with Afrosoul singer, Wurld. He says, I know his team. His manager is like my big bro here in the US.

Interesting fact: Zamir of LOS is Mannywellzs cousin.

Read more:

Mannywellz: Thriving with cultural identity and music in the throes of American unfairness [Pulse Interview] - Pulse Nigeria

From Jaws to Carrie to the slasher-defining Halloween, the horror genre owes a lot to the seventies. Which of these films still make audiences scream?

When it comes to naming the greatest decade in American cinema, the 70s is bound to come up as a strong contender. This is the decade that brought moviegoers the New Hollywood movement, which blended big-studio filmmaking and arthouse sensibilities to produce movies like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

RELATED:The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) '70s Horror Movies

The cynicism of this era of cinema can be attributed to the political climate of the time. American audiences wereon edge due to the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. Naturally, a social climate of fear was great for horror movies. Some real masterpieces of the genre hit theaters in the 1970s.

Steven Spielberg proved with 1975s Jaws, widely regarded to be the first-ever summer blockbuster, that excessive gore and an R rating arent what matter when creating a sense of dread in an audience. Despite its PG rating, Jaws is one of the most terrifying movies ever made. Spielberg used all the tricks from the Hitchcockian suspense playbook to make his audience fear a 25-foot great white shark for two hours while only actually seeing it for around four minutes.

What elevates Jaws above its shark-infested imitators is its perfectly constructed screenplay. This isnt a movie about a shark; its a movie about three mismatched guys. The shark is just there to get them on a boat together in the middle of the ocean.

Brian De Palma is one of the masters of cinematic violence. Hes turned on-screen bloodshed, once disregarded as Hollywoods form of smut, into an art form. He was the perfect filmmaker to bring Stephen Kings debut novel Carrie to the big screen.

The title character develops telekinetic powers while facing merciless bullying from both her abusive religious zealot mother and her fellow high schoolers. Its only a matter of time before she snaps, and De Palma builds the suspense masterfully.

Until thelatest adaptation of Stephen Kings It came along in 2017, William Friedkins 1973 classic The Exorcist was the long-reigning highest-grossing horror movie of all time.

The story of a priests attempts to exorcize a demon that has possessed a 12-year-old girl really captured the zeitgeist in the 70s. While there are plenty of other contenders, The Exorcist is regularly touted as the scariest movie ever made.

After defining the zombie mythos with an eerie parallel to Americas ugly history of racism in Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero followed it up with a zombie-infested satire of consumer culture, Dawn of the Dead.

RELATED:Dawn Of The Dead: 5 Reasons It's The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever Made (& Its 5 Closest Contenders)

With its hordes of the undead swarming to the nearest mall, Dawn of the Dead has both gnarly, blood-soaked violence and biting social commentary in spades.

Although its been ruined for many modern moviegoers by the terrible Nicolas Cage remake, Robin Hardys The Wicker Man remains an unsettling masterpiece of folk horror.

One of the few horror films considered to be high art, The Wicker Man is the pioneer and pinnacle of the law enforcement officer goes to spooky isolated place where all is not as it seems subgenre.

Every parents worst nightmare is realized in the chilling opening moments of Dont Look Now. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland star as a couple who go to Venice following the accidental death of their daughter when the husband is commissioned to restore a church out there.

While the story has supernatural elements, the focus of Dont Look Now is purely on the very real fear of losing a child and the effect it can have on a couples psyches.

All the Texas Chainsaw sequels have devolved into an exercise in one-upmanship built around excessive violence, but Tobe Hoopers original masterpiece is relatively bloodless.

Hooper used the inherent tension in the immediate threat of Leatherface to create more dread and fear than any amount of bloodshed ever could.

John Carpenter set the template for the slasher with his minimalist 1978 hit Halloween. The story of an escaped mental patient stalking a bunch of teenagers and finding that one of them is way more badass than he anticipated has been loosely copied time and time again, but few have come close to matching the brilliance of Carpenters work.

RELATED:Halloween (1978): 5 Ways It's The Greatest Slasher Ever Made (& Its 5 Closest Contenders)

Laurie Strode, played by iconic scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, is the quintessential horror movie protagonist (and one of the smartest, most resourceful final girls ever written), while the faceless embodiment of pure inhumanity that is Michael Myers is the quintessential horror movie villain.

Ridley Scotts Alien is a masterclass in pacing. Instead of rushing into the terror, Scott takes his time introducing the characters and their world. The crew members on the Nostromo are just like us. We get to know Kane as a regular guy before a facehugger latches onto him and impregnates him with a flesh-eating extraterrestrial.

The build-up is what makes the iconic chestburster scene at the midpoint so effective. And from there, Scott continues to ratchet up the tension, keeping the audience in fear of the xenomorph, designed beautifully by the master H.R. Giger.

Dario Argentos Suspiria plays like an operatic nightmare. The opening minutes hit like a surprise shot in the arm and then the rest of the movie maintains that disorienting pace and haunting beauty.

Noted for its bright, vibrant colors, influence on horror filmmakers, and musical score by Argento and prog-rock band Goblin, Suspiria is a serious contender for the greatest horror movie ever made.

NEXT:10 Must-See Horror Movies From The '60s

Next Star Wars: The Saga's 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Uses Of The Force

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, and independent filmmaker, and he's good at at least two of those things. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and Comic Book Resources, covering everything from Scorsese to Spider-Man, Ben directs independent films and does standup comedy. He's currently in pre-production on his first feature film, Hunting Trip, and has been for a while because filmmaking is expensive. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

Read more:

10 Must-See Horror Movies From The '70s | ScreenRant - Screen Rant

Be it in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Delta or Benin, Nigerians are unified by one voice in refuting terrible treatment as they also demand better governance while holding the government accountable. Governors have been defied and ridiculed on podiums while love for fellow man and country has taken centre stage.

But at the heart of this moment - which seems like a turnaround - is the use of music. As citizens rally for funding and iconic shots are taken, Nigerians have also used music to pass their messages in crystal clear forms.

Here are the top five songs from the movement;

"Aye o le o, aye l'o m'aye le..." That's Yoruba for, "Life is easy, people just make life hard..." The song basically suits the Nigerian government and its tendency for making life unnecessarily hard for its own citizens.

If Burna Boy's PR wasn't at an all-time low for his inactivity as regards the battle to EndSARS, this song would have been the perfect soundtrack for the protests. Chris Martin sings, "We are the monsters you made..." in reference to the political elite. Burna Boy sang about an inevitable conflict after citizens get fed up and this is it.

A little further back in May 2005, Nigerias now-defunct supergroup, P-Square released their sophomore album, Get Squared.

ALSO READ: Dbanj, P-Square sang about police brutality years ago, the problem still plagues us today

At track three was a track titled, Oga Police. It also chronicled the ills of Nigerian law enforcement. The long and short story was how a young man got arrested by members of the Nigerian Police Force (whatever command) simply for driving in his own car. For its topical resonance, the song perfectly suits the purpose of protests.

African China released this letter to the Nigerian president to treat the citizens well. This suits the current agenda as the irresponsibility of the central government is one of the reasons why we find ourselves here.

While 'Sorrow, Tears and Blood' was also used during the protest, 'Zombie' which was dedicated to the military government of the year it was created suits our current dispensation. We are fighting against arm-carrying, uniformed Nigerians who are mis-controlled by the central government.

Released off Eedris Abdulkareem's fourth studio album, Letters To Mr. President, the song documents the perpetual upheaval that's inherent in the Nigerian zeitgeist. 'Jaga Jaga' is then an onomatopoeia for the trouble and upheaval. In Port Harcourt, the song particularly too centre stage for the city's natural attitude to conflict.

While 'FEM' is not exactly a song with political background, it has been used as a soundtrack for EndSARS protests across the nation. It was even used to tell Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to shut up on October 13, 2020.

Go here to read the rest:

Here are the top 7 songs from EndSARS protests across Nigeria - Pulse Nigeria

If youve been missing South Florida cinemas and festivals, this weekend may just be the ultimate smorgasbord for any cinephile in the city looking for a treat. The Miami Film Festival's Gems series and Popcorn Frights nationwide collaborative festival, Nightstream, are here to provide a wealth of films to stream from your very home.

With dozens of films, panels, conversations, and more to choose from, it isnt an easy endeavor for anyone who wants to dive into what both festivals have to offer. Gems has works like Shiva Baby, The Sound of Metal, and Night of the Kings, while Nightstream offers everything from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorheads Home Movies to features like Frank & Zed, My Heart Cant Beat Unless You Tell It To, and Honeydew.

The list of films may seem endless, but film fans can relax and take the opportunity to read through some of what weve seen here at New Times and hopefully make their own decisions on what kind of wild film festival theyd like to have by combining tickets from the two.

Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott in Black Bear

Photo courtesy of Momentum Pictures

Those fond of Aubrey Plazas ability to stretch beyond comedy and into darker territory (as she has done brilliantly in FXs Legion, among other works) should seek out Lawrence Michael Levines Black Bear immediately. The film, which follows a female filmmaker at a creative impasse heading to a rural retreat to write and relax, is an intriguing little work, split into two chapters that feel like mirror images of each other in the best way. Plaza joins Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon in an exquisite trio of performances, shifting roles between each half in a way that defies easy description without spoiling.

In a way, Black Bear exists as both a thriller and a dark comedy, as a piece of fiction as well as its own metafiction, analyzing the story its telling, and the way filmmakers and actors engage in storytelling. It is playful in how it approaches these things, and Levine seems to draw much pleasure from exploring the toxicity of relationships, both personal and creative, and how it distinctly impacts the mental state of all those involved. While the investigation itself may be the slightest bit shallow and could arguably use an extension to further dive into its characters' psyche, the ride that the film provides is otherwise delightful. Juan Antonio Barquin

Thursday, October 8, and Sunday, October 11, via Gems; includes a prerecorded Q&A with director Lawrence Michael Levine moderated by Lauren Cohen. Tickets are $9.99. Sunday, October 11, through Wednesday, October 14 via Nightstream; includes prerecorded a Q&A with director Lawrence Michael Levine. Tickets are $13.

Mariana Di Girolamo in Ema

Photo courtesy of Music Box Films

Pablo Larrans Ema is the most unhinged piece of bisexual cinema since Paul Verhoevens Basic Instinct. Hyperbolic as that statement may sound, the two films share more in common than one might expect, including a penchant for indulging in pulp while critiquing societal standards and the placement of a sociopathic queer blonde at the film's core.

Emas opening act is designed to disorient by offering glimpses into a woman's life the audience doesn't understand. Fights between dancer Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) and choreographer Gastn (Gael Garca Bernal) are purposely obscured, emphasizing the relationship's toxicity through references to their adopted child, the fire he started, and who's to blame. The perverse way the two lob insults at each other is reminiscent of the vitriolic onslaught shared between George and Martha in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The exchanges are as brutal as they are hilarious.

Larrans brand of filmmaking is also in tune with Verhovens each can elevate material that might seem trashy at first (Guillermo Caldern and Alejandro Morenos delicious script wades dangerously close into depraved bisexual tropes) into something far more introspective and critical of the status quo than one would expect. Di Girolamo brings to Ema the same energy Sharon Stone brought to Basic Instinct's Catherine Trammell sexy, calculating, and unpredictable. Shes a woman constantly in motion, and cinematographer Sergio Armstrongs gaze approaches her body as though its torn between forces that she has no command over, even as her eyes indicate otherwise.

Though many viewers might consider Ema an unsympathetic figure, watching the story's deceitful machinations unfold is riveting. Though advertised as a film about a reggaeton dancer, the movie is less interested in dance only occasionally sliding into music video-inspired editing to show both sound and movement and more in the freedom that music signifies against the constraints of normalcy. Both the film and the title character exist to burn down the patriarchy, figuratively and literally, handing the audience everything from flamethrowers to queer orgies. Juan Antonio Barquin

Thursday, October 8, through Wednesday, October 14, via Nightstream. Tickets are $13.

Still from Jumbo

Photo courtesy of Dark Star Pictures

Zo Wittocks first feature, Jumbo, offers a peculiar twist on the conventional girl meets boy. More romance than horror, the film explores objectophilia when a lonely amusement park janitor, Jeanne (Nomie Merlant), develops an attraction to the parks latest attraction, Jumbo. Provocative and intriguing, Jumbo is best when Wittock applies the Hitchcockian principles of pure cinema to explore the erotic connection between human and machine. Using light, sound, and movement, Wittock anthropomorphizes Jumbo and creates a heady expansion into the theme of l'amour fou.

The film is wonderfully subversive in taking a traditional horror setting (an abandoned amusement park) and theme (mans relationship with machine) and exploring the liminal space between intimacy and mechanics. Despite this thrilling potential, the film struggles to find its tone. The courtship between Jeanne and Jumbo is the films strongest section, but the remainder of the film struggles under the weight of its daring premise. Perhaps the film would improve upon leaning into its own queerness rather than attempt to explain Jeannes erotic desires.

Jumbo soars when it invests in the sentient sensuality and electric eroticism of the sexual connection between Jeanne and Jumbo, where metal and flesh converge, and Jeanne experiences the total abandonment one experiences on such a ride. Though the films middle section and conclusion struggle to find themselves tonally, the style and performances by Merlant, last seen in the excellent Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the scene-stealing stalwart Emmanuelle Bercot, as Jeannes wonderfully tacky mother Margarette, make Jumbo a pleasant ride. Wittock establishes herself as a filmmaker to watch, and while it doesnt always fire on all cylinders, Jumbo is definitely worth a (tilt-a-)whirl. Trae DeLellis

Friday, October 9, through Wednesday, October 14, via Nightstream. Tickets are $13.

Still from Lapsis

Photo courtesy of Film Movement

Lapsis, the debut feature by Noah Hutton, is a sci-fi satire that mines the horrors of modern capitalism and corporate culture. Its a clever takedown of our current gruesome gig economy as well as a rebuke of an economic system stacked against the working class. In short, it is a perfect cinematic entry for the year 2020 that should become required viewing in high school econ classrooms.

A new technology, Quantum (think something like 5G), has taken over the world, causing equal parts excitement and anxiety. To maintain and grow the Quantum network, a faceless corporation is beholden to cablers, independent contractors who hike through the forest connecting cables between power sources. Ray (Dean Imperial) decides to earn some quick cash to help his brother who suffers from a new disease, Omnia (akin to Epstein-Barr), desperate for the best treatment available, which allows the film to skewer the American healthcare system/scam as well. But in the woods he works, he encounters a mysterious and dangerous corporate society, fueled by exploitative labor, automated surveillance, and a cutthroat competitive marketplace.

Lapsis plays much like a top-notch episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror with a self-assured tone and distinct point of view. Hutton has crafted an incredibly timely film to our current cultural zeitgeist while mining the classic trope of man versus machine. It also doubles as a great takedown of companies like Amazon or Uber, reflecting current court cases regarding their independent contractor system, while exposing the rot within capitalism. In the film, an app (think the perky cousin of Hal 9000) pesters workers to challenge the status quo, and Lapsis practices what it preaches in this highly amusing and thoughtful walk through the woods. Trae DeLellis

Sunday, October 11, through Wednesday, October 14, via Nightstream; includes a prerecorded Q&A with director Noah Hutton and actor Dean Imperial. Tickets are $13.

Still from My Prince Edward

Photo courtesy of Cheng Cheng Films

One of the best parts of the Miami Film Festivals pared-down fall offering is the opportunity to find a smaller film that could be lost in a larger festival and this is the case for the wonderful My Prince Edward. The first feature film by Norris Wong has that rare feeling of being deeply personal while expansively universal simultaneously, following Fong (adeptly played by Stephy Tang), an adrift woman working at a one-stop wedding shop in Hong Kong. She is feeling the societal pressure, but none of the desire to be married to her long-term boyfriend, Edward, and passively accepts his proposal when it comes. But before she can get hitched, there is one major hitch: a previous sham marriage that she entered in her youth for some quick cash.

Despite seeming heavily plotted, these events dont detract from the film, which won best new director at the Hong Kong Film Awards and heralds the arrival of a sensational new filmmaker. My Prince Edward is a poignant and wry look at the marital-industrial complex through the prism of a late-in-life, coming-of-age tale and could easily be marketed as an heir apparent to a film like The Farewell, with one easily imagining some studio might want it for an American remake of the film sooner rather than later.

Wongs film plays like a slightly subversive and smarter take on the romantic comedy, with its best moments involving the minutiae of long term relationships, like the particular emphasis on something as mundane as a pair of nail clippers. It is a subtle but wonderfully thought out and intelligent film about its exploration of marriage, freedom, and self-discovery. By asking what any modern rom-com should, questioning the institution of marriage, and emphasizing the importance of self-hood before coupling, My Prince Edward makes a terrific film to watch either with a significant other or by yourself. Trae DeLellis

Thursday, October 8, through Sunday, October 11, via Gems. Tickets are $9.99.

Paula Beer in Undine

Photo courtesy of IFC Films

Undine, the latest from Christian Petzold, is a tremendous romance from one of contemporary cinemas greatest and most underrated filmmakers. Despite his last film, Transit, being directly adapted from the novel that has served as his inspiration for much of his oeuvre, Undine feels as fresh as it does familiar for the filmmaker.

Petzold unites with his stars from Transit, the superb Franz Rogowski and Paula Beer (the latter of which won the Best Actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival) to dive into an altogether different tale of two souls crossing paths. In Undine, Petzold turns to the titular mythological character think a water nymph or Hans Christian Andersens The Little Mermaid more than Disneys version who becomes human when she falls in love but is doomed to die if he is unfaithful to her. But instead of focusing on this aspect of the myth, Petzold is more preoccupied with the nuances of falling in love and building oneself back up after a relationship.

This notion of rebuilding and reflecting on our damaged histories comes into play beautifully with Undines dual role as a mythological creature and lecturer on Berlins history and architecture, offering an especially poetic way to look at the films themes and the complex life of the central figure. Undine is as much a continuation as it is a departure from the Berlin School, Germanys film movement known for social realism and a focus on interpersonal relationships, by injecting German romanticism and magical realism for an intoxicating and refreshing piece of romantic melodrama. Juan Antonio Barquin and Trae DeLellis

Saturday, October 10, through Sunday, October 11, via Gems. Tickets are $9.99.

Link:

What to Watch at the Miami Film Festival's Gems and Popcorn Fright's Nightstream - Miami New Times

While Joe Biden has been making it unmistakably clear that hes nobodys socialist tool, the American socialist movementmost of whose adherents will be voting for Bidenhas continued to expand. The Democratic Socialists of America (to which Ive belonged since the Neolithic Age) now has more than 70,000 members and has launched a campaign to raise that number to 100,000. At its current rate of growth, its membership rolls may well surpass that of the Debs-era Socialist Party, which claimed 118,000 dues-payers at its early-20th-century zenith.

The rebirth of American socialism has come complete with any number of explanatory and exhortatory books, the best of which was published late last month: The Socialist Awakening: Whats Different Now About the Left, a brief, incisive volume by veteran political journalist, longtime democratic socialist, and sometime American Prospect contributor John B. Judis. The book is Judiss third in a series published by Columbia Global Reports. In it, as in its two predecessors The Populist Explosion and The Nationalist Revival, Judis tracks the consequences of the failures of globalized capitalism to sustain working- and middle-class prosperity and stability since the 2008 collapse, and the concomitant rise of both left and right in the wake of those failures. As is not the case in the other two volumes, however, Judis writes not merely as an analyst of an ideologys return but as an advocate for its necessity, with particularly shrewd assessments of how the new American socialism can advance, and, alternatively, how it may marginalize itself into irrelevance.

More from Harold Meyerson

Judis focuses on two periods in American socialisms long history: the Debs Era of 1900 through 1920, and the Bernie Sanders Surge, which began to incubate with the Occupy movement of 2011 but didnt really take off until Sanders began running for president in 2015. Both were periods in which capital concentrated wealth and power, in which little of either trickled down to most Americans, in which the New Deals semisocial democratic reforms had either not yet been enacted or had been discarded in the post-1970 turn toward laissez-faire.

Sanders has always made it plain that socialist leader Eugene V. Debs was his hero, but in Judiss telling, the key to Sanderss zeitgeist-changing success was his move away from the socialist insularity that Debs espoused. While nominally remaining a political independent, Sanders won election to Congress on a social democratic platform of greater regulation of capital, greater power for workers, an expansion of social welfare and economic rights, and a pledge that hed caucus with the Democrats. When he began running for president in 2015, Sanders made clear his model of socialism was the Scandinavian mixed economy. But as Judis recounts, after Columbia University historian Eric Foner sent him an open letter that emphasized a more American pedigree for socialist initiatives, Sanders took the hint. As I recounted in the Prospect, in Sanderss two speeches that he billed as his definition of socialismone given at Georgetown University in 2015, the second at George Washington University in 2019he cited Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King as his forebears in the struggle for socialist reforms.

Your donation keeps this site free and open for all to read. Give what you can...

SUPPORT THE PROSPECT

In keeping with that expansive definition, Judis emphasizes the broad socialist network thats emerged today, which extends well beyond DSA card-carriers. It includes a range of progressive think tanks (like the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute) and magazines; most importantly, it includes not just the avowed socialists in elected office but a host of progressives whose politics are indistinguishable from the socialists politics, as Elizabeth Warrens were from Sanderss.

Expanding that network, as socialists like union leaders Sidney Hillman, A. Philip Randolph, and Walter Reuther did during the New Deal and the postwar period, will be as important, if not more important, to the social democratization of todays United States than the growth of DSA per se, Judis contends. What could retard that growth, he continues, would be continuing the hold that a relatively small group of orthodox Trotskyists now have over DSAs leadership. The majority of DSA members, he argues, are Berniecrats, happy to work for socialist and other progressive candidates seeking office as Democrats. (I believe hes right about this.) They understand, as Sanders does and as DSA founder Michael Harrington did, that third-party politics are a dead end in the current configuration of the American electoral system, and that socialists have won power in democracies only when allied with other progressives on behalf of social democratic programs. Such an approach is anathema to the neo-Trotskyist cadres in DSA, for whom a kind of socialist identity politics eclipses both class politics and that of a 21st-century popular front.

Judis also makes the case for a socialist version of nationalism, at which many in todays socialist movement will look askance. So long as democratic nations offer the one kind of government where majority rule holds sway, though, I think Judis has a point. While capitalism has had no trouble going global (in part to escape the regulations enacted by democratic nations), socialism cannot yet call on any planetary democratic body to reform the global economy. Moreover, peoples support for welfare states funded with their taxes, Judis points out, seldom extends beyond their nations borders. To advance a slightly different viewpoint, its worth noting that the nation that has given the highest share of its GDP in foreign aidsometimes to insurgent movements, like the African National Congresswas Sweden under the Social Democrats. Of course, that was when Sweden also had the worlds most expansive welfare state for its own citizens.

Judis writes not merely as an analyst of an ideologys return but as an advocate for its necessity.

As events would have it, the publication of Judiss book coincides with the premiere of a film that seeks to introduce and normalize socialism to American viewers. Indeed, The Big Scary S Word, a film by documentarian Yael Bridge, will have its first festival screening later today.

In Judiss terminology, The Big Scary S Word is a film about the broad socialist network, and broad left history, rather than a look at, say, the American Socialist and Communist Parties, or at DSA today. The focus is on progressives in motion, then and now, and their connection, explicit or implicit, to socialists and socialism, as distinct from the substance of their involvement in the socialist movement as such. Rather than disentangle the socialist and nonsocialist threads that came together to make the civil rights movement, for instance, the picture simply documents the socialism of Martin Luther King. Some of the environmental protests it shows may not have been populated by socialists, but theyre juxtaposed with interviews with Naomi Klein in which she connects a socialist perspective to any serious effort to save the planet. Theres a marvelous segment, replete with old films and photos, on the socialists 40-year control of Milwaukees city government, but no discussion of the social democratic meliorism of Victor Berger, the Milwaukee socialist leader and a contemporary of Debs who did not share Debss antipathy to reformist socialism. For that, you need to consult Judiss book, which is pitched at a narrower audience than Bridges film.

Your donation keeps this site free and open for all to read. Give what you can...

SUPPORT THE PROSPECT

Just as Eric Foner plays a key role in Judiss account of the Americanization of Bernie Sanderss socialism, so Foner plays a key role in explaining the contributions of socialists to American struggles for justice in Bridges picture. In this task, he is joined by Klein, Cornel West, The Nations John Nichols, and a host of others. In documenting the rise of socialism today, the picture focuses on Lee Carter, a DSA member and the one socialist in the Virginia legislature, as well as on a teacher who assumed a leadership role during the Oklahoma teachers strike and became a socialist in the process.

As its title suggests, The Big Scary S Word makes a broad and pointedly reassuring case for socialism as the remedy to our towering inequities. Judiss book makes a compelling case for what it will take to roll the revived socialist movement on, and offers a pointed critique of how sectarianism could derail it. The former is essential viewing for a broad audience; the latter essential reading for progressives and socialists.

Original post:

The Socialist Moment, and How to Extend It - The American Prospect

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The Make America Great Again MAGA slogan is nothing new. On the evening of March 21, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson attended a screening of The Birth of a Nation. The blockbuster film was based on The Clansman, a novel written by Wilsons good friend Thomas Dixon. As in the novel, the film presented a resurgent view of the South and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. Wilson endorsed the film wholeheartedly, only to embolden a KKK white nationalist reign of terror on African Americans. The Klan created a shibboleth to accompany their resurgence and terrorism: Make America Great Again.

Ronald Reagan and the Republicans used the theme successfully throughout Reagans presidency. Decades later Tea Party Patriots, white nationalists, the alt-right and conservative Republicans proclaim the same MAGA. Only this time the invocation conveys more of an urgency and vitriol. They fear the growth of multiculturalism, socialism and leftists and a country the white majority is becoming a minority.

The leader of the emergent white nationalist movement, the one who gives voice to their fears, is none other than the billionaire and star of the reality show TheApprentice, Donald Trump, forty-fifth POTUS. With Mussolini aplomb and stand-up comedy theatrics, Trump has drawn out a subterranean cast of characters. Trump has been successful in using concepts, terms and colloquialisms easily understood by the deplorables. In fact, it appears that they enjoy each others company and Trumps political rallies. They have become a fun fest of character assignation and blatant lies about political rivals and their ridiculous policy positions.

Trump, acting as a CEO Master of Ceremonies, salutes his loyal assistants in the context of doing a good and then turns on former assistants, usually if they snipe publicly at Trump. While at rallies Trump has people in the crowd stand for ovations when they participate extemporaneously with favorable shouts. He is at this best when he departs from script to lampoon a political rival. Sometimes his is blunt in his criticism when he describes former security advisor, John Bolton, an idiot.

For those at rallies who have showered affection on Trump, when his fan base shouts I love you Trump responds in kind, I love you more. On the other hand, during his campaigns in 2016 and 2020, Trump had no problem telling people at his rallies to shut up hecklers, or punch them in the mouth, and he would pay their legal fees. Most importantly, Trump knows that as ringmaster of his own circus, media ratings will be high with such theatrics which translates into political exposure and advertising from big business.

However, with Trumps recent Covid revelation, and stock market drop, the jury is out on whether or not the media industrial complex will pull the plug on Trump. Revenues from advertising may decline if viewers show displeasure looking at a Covid president on the big screen in their houses. Clearly Trumps right-wing big show has been profitable for business according to a November 18, 2019 article in Fortune Magazine, by Alan Murray and David Meyer, all of this is in terms of GDP growth. But while productivity of an economy is one thing, wages and purchasing power is another. Yet Trump s able to sell the public on a good economy even though the Fed has been bailing out the multinationals by the trillions of dollars.

Underneath this sham is a personality likened to the megalomaniacs of 20th century Germany, Italy and Spain. This makes no difference to Trumps followers; they are energized and entertained by Trumps comical remarks, reminders of his multi-billion dollar success, and his lampooning of political rivals in both parties Low Energy Jeb (Jeb Bush), Lyin Ted Cruz, Crooked Hilary Clinton, Wild Bill Clinton, Little Marco Rubio, Crazy Bernie Sanders, Shifty Adam Schiff, Mr. Magoo (Jeff Sessions), Mini Mike (Michael Bloomberg), Fake Tough Guy (John Bolton), Nervous Nancy Pelosi and a litany for Sleepy Joe Biden, Sleepy Creepy Joe Biden, Slow Joe Biden, Basement Biden, OHiden, and Joe Hiden Biden.

No one indignity is spared, not even Mike Pounce aka Mike Pence Trumps Vice President.

Mocking insults go to the Fake News such as the Clinton News Network (CNN Time Warner), CON-cast (Comcast MSNBC), Amazon WaPo (Jeff Bazos owned Amazon and Washington Post), and Jeff Bazos himself as Jeff Bozo. Media personalities are also a target, Sour Don Lemon, Psycho Joe (Joe Scarborough), Wacky Glenn Beck. Television media programs are not exempt, Deface the Nation (Face the Nation), Meet the Depressed (Meet the Press) and Morning Joke (Morning Joe). Heads of State are made into cartoon characters such as Rocket Man or Little Rocket Man (Kim Jung-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea), My Favorite Dictator (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of Egypt) and Animal Assad (Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria).

Trump is admired, for all intents and purposes, by dictators such as Turkeys Erdogon, Russias Putin, Philippines Duterte, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA has identified as directly responsible for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist and dissident. Trumps adoring public could care the least, and have never cared even with his shady alleged criminality in real estate, taxes, relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, impeachment, and sexual manhandling of women. Nor are they concerned about his former staff indicted and sentenced, and countless turnover within his administration.

Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, though enthusiastically supportive of Trump, appears to be guarded with his praise of Trump, especially with the Presidential elections within a month.

Most interesting are conservative Christians and Catholics who not only dismiss Trumps checkered past and present, but distort and manipulate scripturally comparisons of Trump to Cyrus the Great, a pagan Babylonian king who freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon to reclaim Israel. Point being that God can carry out her/his will in the unchurched like Trump, in the same way that God can work through pagan kings like Cyrus the Great to free Israel from captivity and bondage. Cyrus, as their argument goes, is the archetype of the ironic vessel (vessel theology) in which God carries out her/his plan of salvation, despite the superficial inconsistencies.

For conservative Catholics, as long as Trump is against abortion, anything he does on a personal level or supports as public policy contrary to Catholic social teaching can be justified. Ignored in this form of ethical triumphalism, is the fact that Catholic ethics calls for its faith community to form their consciences on Church teaching (Scripture and Tradition) based on the continuum of life ethics. This means that no one single overarching issue should take priority over others, unless ones conscience directs them in good faith otherwise. Nevertheless, both groups revel in the fact that with three Supreme Court picks, Trump will be able to overturn abortion and follow through on a complete list of conservative and libertarian public policies that the Right have been dreaming of for the last forty years. In all, the vessel theology for conservative Christians appears to be a scriptural form of money laundering while conservative Catholic antiabortion triumphalism appears to be a gaslighting technique, intended as a diversion from other highly import ethical concerns.

Arguably, both conservative Christians and Catholics might agree on vessel theology and the primacy of abortion in their support of Trump. This would justify their manic identity as both Christian and Republican; Democrat not being much better. Unarguably they both agree that the continuum of life issues such as the Churchs preferential option for the poor, the avoidance of environmental extinction, the end to endless wars and global economic domination of the world (PNAC), the elevated status of the military industrial complex, the development of a Space Force, unfettered neoliberal capitalism, increased poverty in the midst of exponential wealth, elite control of government, the threat to democratic freedoms through the new surveillance state, threats to civil liberties and rights in the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, extrajudicial murders, secret FISA courts, CIA orchestrated coups in Ecuador and attempted in Venezuela, illegal and harmful economic sanctions placed on Venezuela, racial and class disparities in the criminal justice system, police lawlessness and brutality, economic devastation in all levels of education, neglect of infrastructure development in inner cities, lack of affordable housing and universal health care, capital punishment as justice, nuclear proliferation and the targeting of innocent civilians, nuclear annihilation of all known life on the planet, and the corruption of the two major political parties are of little importance or even sadistically supported or dissented upon relative to the issues.

Yet in all of this, Trump appears to be impervious to the assaults of his political foes. He never lets on that he is bothered by them, at least not in public. Even though he is behind in the polls Trump came off like a brawler. The debate became a hoot and then into a donnybrook which included Trump, Biden and moderator Chris Wallace. Trump took on both simultaneously; Biden putting in a few swings, while Chris Wallace was unable to reign in Trump unhinged. When Biden tried to go on the offensive explaining the advantages of the Green New Deal, Trump asked if Biden supported the GND to which Biden responded in the negative. Trumps counterpunch to Biden? You just lost the Left. Clearly the intensity of Trump was felt and his anger apparent, an anger that reflected a wounded animal.

After the debate the media agreed that the debate was a disaster, but nevertheless concluded that Biden was the marginal winner. Two more debates will tell more. But Trump has some help coming. If Trump can undermine voting, for example in Texas, by having governor Abbott limit ballot drop off ballots one per county as is being discussed, then Trump could very well win Texas and a huge number of electoral votes. And watch conservative governors go to work on this same strategy. Making it difficult to vote has proven to be highly successful for Republicans. Long waits in line, sometimes several hours in predominately poor districts, has proven to frustrate these voters. Suffice it to say, no Republicans in Congress have dissented from this tactic. And no Republicans have dissented at all from Trumps usurpation of the Republican Party. The exceptions of Jeff Flake, who resigned from the Senate, and House member Justin Amash who is now a Libertarian are few and far between. Others like Bob Corker have resigned quietly. In short, Trump will not be ruled out for a second term.

None of this feels right, as in reading Upton Sinclairs, It Cant Happen Here. Sinclair writes about a fictitious 1930s America where a deceptively polite group of individuals marketing the concept of Americanism takes over the country. It parallels 1930s Nazi Germany, and for that matter, the fascist takeovers of Italy and Spain, all democracies at the time. But the It Cant Happen Here scenario is not without actual historical context. In fact, during the 1930s a thriving Nazi Party was alive and well in the United States. Footage of a Nazi Party convention at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939, with 20,000 people in attendance, reveals a frightful scene of a rabid crowd, gathered under the pretense of a pro-Americanism rally, were automaton-like saluting allegiance to a massive image of a George Washington portrait with swastikas on each side. This is not insignificant given the zeitgeist then and the zeitgeist now. Known as the German American Bund, the pro-Hitlerorganization in the United States promotedNazi propaganda, combining Nazi imagery with American patriotic history. The largely decentralized Bund, as they were self-described, was active in a number of regions, but attracted support only from a minority ofGerman Americans.The Bund was the most influential of a number of pro-Nazi German groups in the United States in the 1930s; others included theTeutonia SocietyandFriends of New Germany(also known as the Hitler Club). Alongside allied groups, such as theChristian Front, these organizations were virulentlyantisemitic.

When Trump ran for office and was elected president there was a perception of a fascist coup and the appearance would have been cemented, had not Trump been talked down from a military parade on his inauguration. Now the perception is reality. During the debate Tuesday, Trump would not agree to a peaceful transition if he was voted out of office. The rationale was that with the mail in ballots and scattered locations to drop off ballots voter fraud would result which did not obligate him to relinquish the Office of the President, Moreover, when Chris Wallace asked Trump if he would denounce the Proud Boys, Trump instead told the Proud Boys and other alt-right groups to stand back and standby implying that their help might be needed. Thus, Trump refused to unequivocally condemn white supremacists and far-right groups who have respondedto ongoing protests against police brutality and racial injustice, instead pinning the blame for violent clashes on the left wing.Antifa is just as bad even though FBI reports indicate the direct opposite as reported to congressional committees by Director Christopher Wrey. The perception of fascism is now reality. The mask is off and the faade of a democratic society has been exposed.

Most disturbing is the fictional account of the Antifascists (Antifa) as a violent leftist terrorist group. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In an internal memorandum, FBI Director Christopher Wrey, found no evidence of Antifas involvement in national unrest, specifically with the George Floyd protests and riots as falsely reported by The Nation, June 2, 2020. The Washington Field Office memo states that no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement was initiated during the protests, as erroneously stated from Trump, Attorney General Barr, and various right-wing news outlets such as FOX News. On June 12, 2020, the New York Times in Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests, cleared Antifa and on June 22, 2020, the New York Times, 41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread Locally, described how propaganda against Antifa was spread through the media community, most likely form conservative politicians and political action committees. The attempt was to falsely blame the uprising on an orchestrated group such as Antifa, according to Glenn Kirschner, former FBI, counterintelligence. Blaming a left-wing group was a ruse created to gaslight the public and divert attention from the right-wing police tactics condoned by the Trump administration.

***

Various media outlets and activist groups have documented the rise of alt-right white nationalist groups. The PBS News Hour, as reported by Kenya Downs (October 21, 2016), identified the growing attraction to rightist groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled a report, White Nationalist, (https://www.splcenter.org/7-15-20/), in which they report that the MAGA have attracted the alt-right such as neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, neo-Confederates, Racist-Skinheads, Christian Identity. The weirdest and most dangerous, arguably, appear to be the QAnon. They allege that a cabalof Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against PresidentTrump. They warn that a day of reckoning is at hand involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians. In no uncertain terms, QAnons day of reckoning is aimed at liberals the Left, code for socialists, anarchists, antifa, and communists.

None of these rightest groups have foresworn the use of violence or vigilante tactics, nor have they ruled out the use of violence against local and federal government. The Boogaloo Bois and their movement have even called for a Second Civil War and the Order of the Nine Angels, a Satanic neo-Nazi group in England and the United States, deifies Adolf Hitler as the head of their Order. What has proven to be most disturbing is that hate groups have increased 55% since Trumps campaign and presidency, noted by Jason Wilson of The Guardian, March 18, 2020.

So if the alt-right White Nationalists have surfaced within society, could it be possible that they have also emerged within the rank and file?

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, 2018, and Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, 2017 argue that the eroding of human rights and civil liberties in the United States have, in effect, has transformed the United States into a quasi-fascist state, trending ever rightward. They cite policies and law such as the Patriot Act, 2001; National Defense Authorization Act, 2012, in which federal government agencies can spy and detain indefinitely suspects without signed judicial warrants or even probable cause. All of this rationalized as a result of the 9-11 event.

Expanding on their theses, Snyder and Stanley describe fascist movements, and societys attraction to them, based on the following: economic fears, immigrant xenophobia, the need for social stability and status quo, and above all the primacy of white Western European hegemony. Change with respect to diversity, pluralism, and collectivist economic arrangements frightens some people and thus creates forms of neurosis and paranoia to which fascist politics thrives. Examples of fascism include, but are not limited to, the absolute nature of the State, a militarist charismatic leader, and the eradication of diversity and multiculturalism. This has tremendous appeal to those who become emotionally destabilized by what postmodernists describe as the other. Moreover, a powerful dictatorial leader whose followers are drawn toward authoritarianism, is in essence the heart and soul of fascism itself.

Others such as Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) argue that fascism in Germany was based on an attraction to a mesmerizing leader who convinces followers that civil liberties and human rights have become excessive and therefore undermines social cohesion needed for the well-being if not survival of the state. The implication is that liberal democracy undermines the common good and that a constriction on democratic rights is thus justified. Arendt concludes that there is no guarantee that democracies will uphold human rights and civil liberties and that vigilance to these threats must be a permanent feature of any democratic government. Tragically, Germanys democratic Weimar Republic, 1918 1933, lost sight of this vigilance. Hitler and likeminded fascists lacking any real opposition, quickly weakened the democratic institutions in Germany which then cleared the way for the Nazi Third Reich.

The rapid decline of German democracy and the Nazi assault on the democratic foundations of the Weimar Republic, then focused on Jews, Left-wing politics (labor unionists, socialists, communists, and Marxists) and various social deviants as the enemies of the Third Reich and Aryan race. The mastermind behind this propaganda assault was Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. Sensing the disposition of the German people, Goebbels took advantage of Germanys humiliating loss of World War I, and Germanys economic collapse after theWall Street Crash of 1929 further intensified their collective humiliation. Germany was already compensating the Axis powers for WWI and with its dependence on American loans from 1924 onwards German, once a proud and wealthy country of Western Europe found itself in a psychotic downspin. Then as the loans were recalled by the United States, the economy in Germany sunk into an even deeper depression. Investment in business was reduced or eliminated completely. Wages fell by 39% from 1929 to 1932 and people once employed full-time, fell from twenty million in 1929, to over eleven million in 1933. In the same period, over 10,000 businesses closed every year and poverty increased dramatically.

Hitler and Goebbels were able to capitalize on the vulnerability of the German psyche. With the Great Depression, Goebbels was highly successful in associating the economic failure of the Great Depression with the Weimar democracy. When combined with the resulting political instability within Germany, Hitler and Goebbels vitriolic propaganda pushed Germans to become further disillusioned and even hostile to the Weimar Republic. Hitler was to be the unquestioned leader of the German people and purge the Aryan Nation of parasites such as Jews (appealing to German anti-Semitism and blaming Jews for Germanys problems), political rivals, and the eradication of genetic aberrations form the German Aryan race.

In Hitlers biography, Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler develops the Jewish Doctrine of Marxism. Hitler argued that the survival of Germany was threatened by Marxist intellectuals who were predominantly Jewish.Goebbels, seeing an opening for further promoting the cause of Nazism, gave a speech February 1926 titled Lenin or Hitler? in which he asserted that communism or Marxism could not save the German people and would only usher in Bolshevik tyranny such as that of Russia. In 1926, Goebbels published a pamphlet titled Nazi-Sozi which attempted to explain how National Socialism differed from Marxist socialism and economic collectivism. National Socialism (Keynesian social spending) would rejuvenate the German economy, not Marxist socialism which happen to be a popular alternative to the horrendous effects of the German depression. The Marxists scholars in Germany, intellectually attacked by the Nazis, were known as the Frankfurt School. They argued that Hitler and Goebbels were making a false comparison between their policy recommendation for a democratic economy, not a Bolshevik collectivist model implemented by the Soviet Union. In fact, the Frankfurt School rejected both Stalinism and Fascism.

In order to convince Germans of their superior status as a race, Goebbels insisted that Hitler promote himself as an ubermench or superman in his 1935 Triumph of the Will. Goebbels argued that Hitler must promote his own cause as the Fuhrerprinzip or Fuhrer (prince leader) and demonstrate the evils of the democratic Weimar Republic. The film would serve to denounce the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic, call for a resurgence of the German will to power, ignite passions of German patriotism and thus set the stage for a Nazi coup detat. The timing was perfect. With the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler as Chancellor, would step in and abolish the Office of the President and declare himself Fuhrer. Finally, the call to National Socialism is contrasted with propagandized subhuman Bolsheviks, who because of Stalinist collectivism, suffer as a nation. Marxism is therefore dismissed comically as a viable economic option. Competing collectivist economic arrangements urged by labor unionists, socialists, anarchists and Marxists would be dismissed in patronizing theatrics. With this the Weimar Republic and its democratic foundations were destroyed.

***

The white nationalists assert that white people are a unique race, and as such, seek to maintain its white identity or white pride within a majoritarian white nation such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other white dominated countries. They believe they are being pushed aside and headed toward a minority status. Their agenda, specifically in the United States, is to support the dominance of white culture and ensure the rights of besieged white people. The assimilation of minorities into white society is therefore perceived to be a threat to the survival of the white race and its cultural heritage. Resistance to the inclusion of minorities through miscegenation, multiculturalism and immigration is axiomatic. In compounding the issue, Donald Trump endorsed white nationalists when he stated (August 15, 2017) that white nationalist demonstrators and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, North Carolina, have very fine people on both sides. And with Trumps refusal to denounce David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Ku Lux Klan, Trumps political sentiments have surfaced. The MAGA slogan, nonetheless, identifies the white nationalist vision.

The, MAGA, was adopted by Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, taken straight from the Klan, and translated into Make Germany Great Again (MGGA). In fact, the MAGA has re-emerged in Germany over the past two decades with the German alt-right. It has become a catchall phrase for a loose group of extreme right-wing individuals and organizations who promote the fascist values of white nationalism. These groups tend to exhibit at least three of the following five features: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy and a white nationalist state advocacy of white domination. In a study by Anne Applebaum, Peter Pomerantsev, Melanie Smith and Chloe Colliver, Make Germany Great Again: Kremlin, Alt-Right and International Influences in the 2017 German Elections, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2017), the authors argue that the MAGA theme was established in Adolph Hitlers Mein Kampf and the fascist doctrines set forth inThe Manifesto of the Fasci of Combat (Fascist Manifesto, 1919), and further enumerated inThe Doctrine of Fascism, purportedly written byBenito Mussolini, but more than likely the intellectual formulation of fascist Giovanni Gentile in 1932.

In the German context the MGGA denotes those who seek to define and defend a true German national identity from elements deemed to be corrupting of that identity, for example, Jews, communists, socialists, gypsies, dissident priests and ministers, union leaders and trade unionists, and those persons opposed to authoritarianism. This phenomenon has also developed in dominant white European countries including Russia. The resurgence, whatever the shibboleth, clearly has deeper roots in authoritarian and fascist traditions as argued in Theodor Adornos The Authoritarian Personality, 1950. During and after World War II, Adorno examined the psychological causes of the development of European fascism. Adorno concluded that there was a distinct personality associated with prejudice and intolerance that led to racist and fascist policies. The authoritarian personality is fundamentally one that is inflexible, rigid, and intolerant of uncertainty. They reject unconventional behavior as immature, inferior, degenerate, or even deviant. Moreover, authoritarians, identify with authority figures and the power that accompanies such positions. Any anti-authoritarian behavior is perceived to be a threat to authoritarians themselves and society. As a consequence of the authoritarian mindset is one formulated upon a neurotic fear and therefore forms a reaction to dissident ideas from its own. It seeks to suppress these views and the people that possess them and their cultures an any outward expression of these differences.

In psychoanalytic terms what emerges is a form of reaction formation which provides a framework for which authoritarians need not question their own beliefs or values, that is, compared to that of unconventional ones. For Adorno, the authoritarian personality then believes that members of a minority group are inferior in relation to the authoritarian archetype, in that, failure to assimilate or comply to given standards, relative though they are, are projected on to others and viewed as defiant of the state. Difference and nonconformity translate to subversive activity and a threat to the survival of society itself. The authoritarian person and state then react to this defiance or deviance by assigning those to, not only an inherently inferior status, but one of danger or evil. This tends to perpetuate itself within authoritarian societies and accompanying institutions and traditions. Understanding the context for this recent emergence of the MAGA is in order.

White Privilege

Minorities and anti-racists point to white privilege as the basis of white hegemony in the United States. White privilege refers to the historical advantages white people have over people of color. Jesse Myerson in White Anti-Racism Must Be Based in Solidarity, Not Altruism, The Nation, February 5, 2018, addresses political scientist David Kaibs argument that there are two faces of privilege. One face is composed of a higher quality of life, education, employment, living wage jobs, homeownership, retirement benefits, healthcare, etc. The second face is the societal privilege to dominate narratives, initiate dialogue and discussions, and monopolize control of public spaces. Though they are referred to as privileges, Kaib asserts that privileges should be defined as rights. Suffice it to say, white people have more access to these two privileges than blacks, and though white people are more likely to find themselves in managerial positions with some institutional power over blacks, these are a far cry from the power to influence national and international government and institutions as noted by Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, 1987. White privilege thus maintains a social, political, and economic advantage over people of color, and in doing so, pits white people against people of color, specifically African Americans. The privileges that come from membership in dominant white groups, is prioritized by whites in order to maintain their very privilege.

At times this is reinforced by anti-racists who, in realizing their privilege, prefer not to be active in racial resistance since they might be outed for latent racist attitudes as Robin Di Angelo identifies in White Fragility: Why Its So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. This also carries over to an oppressor/oppressed binary which offers no incentives for white people to live differently. In this binary, white people can only fall on the side of the oppressor and the inherent privileges that accompany whiteness. This model erases the history of white people engaged in personal, interpersonal, cultural, and systemic work to promote racial, social and economic justice. There is no recognized, historical alternative to toxic whiteness in this binary despite there actually being a history of anti-racist white people struggling to create an alternative white identity. This false narrative of white only racism needs revision, e.g., John Brown, the Abolitionists, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, etc.

White privilege undermines the democratic gains of people of color. Since 1865, with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, African Americans have made some progress towards full democratic participation. White reaction has been to undermine and even rollback some of these gains. For example, at the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, the Black Codes were unlawfully implemented while Jim Crow laws violated Reconstruction Era Civil Rights legislation. In overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, The Supreme Courts landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was rejected by southern states by shutting down public schools throughout the South.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 prompted states and local governments to intimidate and obstruct African Americans from voting. The Southern Strategy, orchestrated by Kevin Phillips and Richard Nixon intended to create dog whistle racist slogans to turn whites away from supporting civil rights and turning to regressive public policy supported by conservatives. The War on Drugs initiated by Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, disenfranchised millions of African American men through broken windows policing, racial profiling, stop and frisk police tactics, and three strikes legislation. All of this leading to a racist redux as described in recent scholarship by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow and J. Michael Higginbotham in Ghosts of Jim Crow.

White Nationalism

The MAGA and white nationalists reject the white privilege argument and instead see themselves as the new oppressed minority. The philosophical underpinnings of white nationalism are, for the most part, derived from social Darwinism, Nazism, and fascism. Narrow cherry-picked passages by Christian fundamentalists use interpretations of Hebrew and Christian scriptures that support racist beliefs. White nationalists tend to believe that a conspiracy against whites is being promoted as part of an attempted white genocide. They usually base their evidence for this on a partisan activist government implementing public policies on behalf of minorities, and the declining birth rate among whites and the increasing birth rate among minorities and immigrants. Their white culture and traditions are dying. In response the white nationalists scapegoat minorities, progressive legislation, and if necessary, violence to protect themselves from extinction.

The alt-right (alternative right) has become a catchall phrase for a loose group of extreme right individuals and organizations who promote white nationalism. The alt-right, also describe themselves in terms of white power and white pride, is a movement in America who seek a resurgence or revolution in promoting the unique identity of the European heritage of white Americans. Its soldiers, as some describe themselves, are not lone wolves but highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview made up of white separatism, supremacy, virulent anticommunism, and Christian apocalyptic faith. In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew provides a history of a movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s, around a potent sense of betrayal of American world domination only to be forced to retreat, specifically from the Vietnam War, a war they felt they were not allowed to win. According to Belew, government was to blame for Americas retreat as a world power and as a result, anti-government citizen groups and militia emerged, from Waco and Ruby Ridge, to the anti-government terrorist bombing on Oklahoma City, to a resurgence under President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

Many of the alt-right conclude, nonetheless, that waging war on their own country, the United States, was justified. They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, veterans, and white separatists, to form a new movement of loosely affiliated independent cells to avoid detection. The white power and white pride movement operated with discipline and clarity, undertaking assassinations, armed robbery, counterfeiting, and weapons trafficking. Its command structure gave women a prominent place and put them in charge of brokering alliances and birthing future recruits. Belews disturbing and timely history recounts that war cannot be contained in time and space: grievances intensify and violence becomes a logical course of action.

Based on years of deep immersion in previously classified FBI files and on extensive interviews, American para-militarism and the birth of the alt-right has both overt and covert manifestations. This has become what historian Carol Anderson describes as white rage in White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. She argues that it was white rage at work that sparked the riots and that the media and public at large ignored the kindling which stoked the flames. What fueled the unrest is a white backlash of resentment, anger, and even rage that African Americans and other minorities are being privileged over whites. This is clear in the tolerance of hyper policing and brutality directed at blacks. This has also enabled increasing displays of white rage in an insurgent white nationalist movement.

Critical Race Theorists such as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, in Critical Race Theory argue that the compounding impact of marginalization felt by whites, as the dominant identity in the United States, further compounds resentment toward minority entitlement especially since this has resulted in financial loss for whites. There is some truth to this resentment. Cedric Robinson argues in Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, that the wealth disparity as a result of a capitalist economic system, coupled with corrective measures by way of Affirmative Action and welfare policies, makes upward movement into a more equitable economic and social class all the more difficult, not only for blacks, but for whites as well. And this class struggle is one that elicits fear and anger. Anticipating this resentment Malcom X urges, I tell sincere white people, work in conjunction with us each of us working among our own kind. Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist.

The MAGA and White Nationalist movements emboldened by Trump have made fascism in the United States the acceptable norm. Hopefully with this election, the removal of Trump from office will quell the alt-right. Democracy is at stake.

NOTES

1. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley (New York: Random House Publishing, 1964), p. 434.

Continued here:

MAGA and the White Nationalist Agenda - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

Nightclubs in Toronto may be a no-go, but party-goers will soon be able torelive the zeitgeist of peak New Yorknightlife at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

The Art Gallery of Ontario has announced they'll be bringing an exhibit dedicated to Studio 54: the revolutionary NYC nightclub and creative disco hub that rocked the globe for a few short years in the late 1970s.

Studio 54: Night Magic will open to the public on Dec. 26.

The exhibition is currently at the Brooklyn Museum, and is being organized by the museum in collaboration with Spotify.

Visitors will be able to see hundreds of mementos, includingphotos, films, sketchesand fashion pieces. It will be organized chronologically and set to the sounds of disco.

Studio 54 opened in 1977 in an old Manhattan theatre at the height of social unrest, amidst the Civil Rights Movement, the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, women's rightsand at the tail end of the Vietnam War.

In three years, the space had transformed into a gathering space for designers, performers, artists, writers like Truman Capote and musicians such as Andy Warhol, Michael Jacksonand Cher.

More information on the exhibit is on the way. AGO Members and AGO Annual Pass Holders will be able to view the exhibit for free, as can visitors 25 and under.

See the original post here:

An exhibition all about New York's iconic Studio 54 is coming to Toronto - blogTO

When YG first emerged on the scene five albums ago, certain elements of his artistry were more rough around the edges than many rap purists would have liked. But it wasnt his gift for wordplay or emmaculate cadences that drew listeners in. It was his honesty, at times blunt, brutal, and bombastic, that set him apart from well-practiced Compton cohorts like The Game or Kendrick Lamar or even Problem. His flows lacked polish and he hewed closely to familiar concepts, but there was an edge of lived experience that made his debut, My Krazy Life, and its follow-up, Still Brazy, so electric and engaging.

Now, six years removed and with much more experience, wisdom, and practice in the game and a lot more to lose than the scruffy, devil-may-care version of himself that once introduced the world to the concept of flocking and apologized to his mama for all his street-running shenanigans YG releases his fifth studio album (and last under his Def Jam deal), My Life 4Hunnid. The new album offers few surprises and while the rougher edges have been polished off, the music provides something else in exchange: A glimpse of a veteran at work one who has since mastered his craft and turns out to be pretty damn good at it.

While prior releases prompted some listeners to call YGs music one-dimensional due to his aforementioned tendency to stick to comfortable topics, My Life 4Hunnid arrives in a completely different context as did many other releases this year. Like the rest of us, YG has seen his plans derailed and his day-to-day existence upended by the arrival of the novel coronavirus and the resulting shutdown of his industry, both of which offered frustrating setbacks and promising opportunities for rebirth or renewal.

However, on a personal note, YG also faced turmoil, seismic upheaval, and the reevalution of his own emotional state early this year, which inform the self-effacing tone and anxieties expressed on tracks like lead single/album closer Laugh Now Kry Later. He began 2020 demonstrating personal growth by apologizing to the LGBTQ community for previous ignorant statements and views, a sign that his relationship with Bay Area artist Kehlani had left a positive impact on him. Unfortunately for YG, he also faced the disintegration of that relationship, which he touches on in the lyrics to multiple songs on the album, albeit in an oblique way that suggests hes looking at things from her point of view as much as his own.

You be wantin more from me, he confesses on the melancholy Thug Kry, Tryna make me strong when Im weak / You be wantin more from me / But I like you more as a friend. On Laugh Now Kry Later, he addresses his errors in the third person: Baby got her heart broken, need labor / He cheated, like head, so the n*** played her / Now she anti-dick, she a dick hater / Got her in her house playin with the vibrator. The flashes of his devious humor remain evident, but hes also smiling to keep from crying, just like the title of the song a favorite axiom among gangster types says.

Likewise, YG has been observing the months of civil unrest directed at police who continue to abuse, harass, and murder Black people at a disproportionate rate. Hes spoken on the subject before; Still Brazy contained Police Get Away With Murder, a self-explanatory examination of the phenomenon. This time, though, he taps into the zeitgeist from a different angle with FTP, reflecting the transformation of the peoples exasperation with polices invulnerability into fury and action. Its no surprise that FTP has not only become the soundtrack of the movement, but reverberates that energy in its protest footage-fueled video.

With just 11 songs, not including the two Traumatized interludes recording his own childrens reactions at having police officers guns pointed at them during a raid on YGs house early this year, there was less room for missteps. Unfortunately, the Chris Brown and Tyga-featuring Rodeo counts as one that started with a good idea calling back to Tupacs How Do You Want It? and executing it poorly, speeding up the beat to an arhythmic rattle that doesnt suit either YG or Tygas usually dependable flows. Meanwhile, YG does continue to stick to the usual subject matter, which limits the perception of his growth. Nothing here is particularly high-concept, although the expansive range of instrumentals will undoubtedly widen his appeal beyond the sun-soaked streets of Los Angeles.

My Life 4Hunnid isnt quite the superstar effort that YGs first two projects were. Back then, we were watching a rookie coming into the game and blowing us all away with highlight play after highlight play. Now, we sort of know what to expect from him, and when we get it, its harder and harder to feel impressed after all, familiarity breeds contempt. But taking a step back, the timeline of YGs development as an artist and a craftsman becomes clearer. When a rookie-of-the-year candidate doesnt quite become the perennial all-star we all thought hed be, its easy to view his career trajectory as a disappointment. But in a game where the average career doesnt last more than two years/albums, to see him still here, still consistent, and building his business as a label owner while owning up to past mistakes, YGs persistence and longevity reveal an artist coming into his own. Thats more than enough to satisfy.

My Life 4Hunnid is out now via Def Jam. Get it here.

Read the rest here:

YG Shows Consistency And Growth On The Concise 'My Life 4Hunnid' - UPROXX

We grow up, but do we ever forget how afraid of ourselves we are?

* * *

The books parents protest about are the best at converting children into bookworms. They create a lightbulb moment for art as an outlet. Adults arent plagued by anything sweeter: the hunt for a spine to crack, the subversion of a dream explored in its fullest context before responsibility disenchants. We have entered Black Mirror and made it mundane. Hackers are getting younger by the app. Fetuses might as well edit their own genome from the womb. The I-Ching ka-chings across big tech. The pillow talk of smartphones, helicopter parents the size of a satellite, tattletale culture these will soon delete slightly inappropriate finds like Alvin Schwartzs Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Tweens kneel, as if in prayer, squinting at Steven Gamells hellish tracings. His lines, left incomplete, torment the imagination. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (the film) is packed with Easter eggs, agonized frames referencing the text, in search of those courageous enough to stay haunted decades later. Like the book series, the film is toned down for children, but nostalgia carries it past its faults as a stand-alone work. Such seminal horror for eighties and nineties kids can be sustained on the application of one archaic thing: style.

Monstrous sculptures are brought to cinematic life at twenty-four sketches per second the pale-faced woman from The Dream, Jangly Man, Harold (the scarecrow), and the woman searching for her big toe. Its hard to pinpoint practical effects from CGI. Animation has become quite crisp right alongside our increasingly digitized lives. Actors were painted inside the body of each demon. The spinal twist, scuttling backwards on all fours, was shot in real time by men in intricate costume Gamells iconic images recreated in 3D. We shift to the early retro: 1968 what Guillermo del Toro calls the end of innocence. American kids go missing in Vietnam while their ghosts scream at the red scare hoax that stole their essence.

The first act begins with an awkward, bookish Stella (Zoe Colletti) and her geeky friends donning costumes to trick-or-treat, knowing that Tommy (Austin Abrams), the neighborhood bully, will steal their pillowcases of candy. Instead of filling up the sack with goodies, each bags stuffed with pungent dad underwear. Tommy crashes his car as the children light a bag of shit on fire and crown his tight-jeaned crotch with it. The neighborhood scarecrow, Harold, steps in and quickly dispatches Tommy with a pitchfork. Its not blood but straw emerging from each wound fortifying Tommys flesh, pouring from his mouth as he claws at his throat, expanding and growing blue. His eyes pop in recognition that hes become mulch much quicker than decomposition allows. The audience might have a hard time identifying with this plastered jerk of a character, but the excitement and expectations of the movie trailer, in anticipation of this ceremonial adaptation, is slowly undermined.

Stella and Ramn (Michael Garza) share a pockmarked romance, pimples popped in the rearview mirror closer than they appear. The roller-coaster thrill of their conundrum is too fast-tracked. Tell her the truth! Ramon shouts to Stella through a supernatural veil. Truth and bravery are the golden tickets for most of these Stranger Things wannabe revival flicks. Children have a stand-up-to-the-goblin moment at the end, and the spiders legs shrink back into its body. But the clutter of characters that also clogged the narrative drain of the It remake is sadly the driving force of Scary Stories. The film is choked by transitions. Spectacular moments pale-faced lady pulling the curly-haired kid into her belly are embittered by their follow-through. Why make a family-friendly film for the generation who grew up with the book? In some ways, del Toro and director Andr vredal (Trollhunter) stay faithful to the text. Their few departures are cringeworthy. Our zeitgeist depression sure needs redirecting from the self-help section (the poop emoji made readable) to Dostoyevsky and Rimbaud, but the earths been flat since identities were solidified and hauled into the cloud. Suspended in a bionic bubble, now even scientists are trolls, explaining Doritos, laughing out Mountain Dew.

Stella flips through Sarah Bellowss notorious book. The pages color themselves in, much like Pans Labyrinth. Both films include a little girl holding the key to unlock imaginary worlds. Its her compulsive lexicon that will save her, disbelievers draining into the black hole off-screen. True to life, reading harms and saves in equal proportions. The tiny intellectuals open the magic marbled paper an old-school technique to ensure each print is its own monotype. Some methods of marbling use childrens blood. These misfits are certified organic. Two million new cells leak red to fill out a prepubescent will and testament. Their deaths have been stripped of blood to write their end. A gold leaf fate. Leather binding stretched over the eyes. A sky that stinks of iron holds tight between each meme-like layer of plot.

The pairing of the often-quirky stories with the excruciating illustrations is lighthearted. Calls to ban the book from school libraries echo through the decades, but children have experienced and imagined worse. For years the people in this town told lies about me. Locked me away. Called me a monster. This sentiment from Sarah Bellows the ghost of a girl tormented by her family for going against the grain, a watery expos is trending. Why do we need an audience for our lives? Does every breath of air need attention? Cancel culture continues to snake its way through the world of filmmakers and writers. But the effect of canceling is kin to bans, which makes readers and cinephiles all the more excited to witness whatever is withheld. It should go without saying that repression only causes more of what is supposedly being repressed, but those YouTube comment warriors tune in less from moral exasperation and more for likes and comments.

For the generation who retold each section of these books verbatim, thumbs dragged through the mist of youth the Scary Stories franchise busted a few childhood bones that wont grow back. It has been rotoscoped with fractured fingers. Luckily, many of the strange things that happened to us as children we only read. Dont reread childhood books if you want to keep the dollhouse version of yourself from crumbling whether This Little Light of Mine is a burning building or a namaste. The Gamell drawings changed some of us for the worse, Francis Bacon style. Bacon quipped that he unloaded his violence into the viewer via their cornea. We are born with a scream love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death. And like the folktales Alvin Swartzs stories are based on (stories keep us violent; stories keep us silent or however the nursery rhyme goes), the parasite of art is willing to derange its host to bulk itself into tendril-like afflictions. There are many books from grade school that turned flashlight readings beneath the sheets into an outburst. Besides Scary Stories, there was anything written by Stephen King. His books turned into playground myths, children daring each other to read something more heinous, bullying one another, lying that each tortured climax didnt prescribe its own set of sleep paralysis.

Sarah Bellows is a myth. This is echoed by all the teenage book junkies in the film. Cinema is the best backdrop for our fables to electroshock to life. 2D drawings grow legs, sprout movement, while the amniotic surround sound cradles us. We grow up, but do we ever forget how afraid of ourselves we are? In his The Ordinary Man of Cinema, Jean Louis Schefer writes, At the heart of cinema (in its most ancient condition for us, and most brutal) subsists the vague terror or fear that links our entire childhood to one film or another. He draws scattered lines between children and the theater. The atmosphere these spaces wield are thunderous and profound. Suspension of disbelief is a valuable talent the young possess. Scary Stories is concocted with fabled ingredients. The open-ended logic of Winnebago legends is somewhat explored here, since each child hollowed out and stuffed with straw, fused into the belly of an obese mental patient, or dragged into a place between the floor and wall does not return. No answers exist. A loop between folklore and war. Tarsal claws crunching out a future, were all stunted by the trauma of birth. Uncured meat, hunting for a hook that fits who we are, that fills the holes in our heart.

In response to the challenge of its censors, for reasons such as, insensitivity, occult Satanism, and violence, children read more. Del Toro has rekindled a feeling adjacent to the original magic, but we need more than looks that kill. For every self-important moralist, a rebellious child. For every splotchy, watercolor trauma, a time-lapse culture skinning itself alive, husk balanced on the top of a silo, crisping in the shine.

* * *

Images are screenshots from the film.

More:

Born on a Meat Hook: On Andr vredal's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) - Bright Lights Film Journal

Recent protests against racism and police brutality, along with the #MeToo movement, have increased pressure on businesses to measure and improve their recruitment and promotion of women and people from underrepresented racial groups. Chicago Booths Marianne Bertrand, the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Willard Graham Faculty Scholar, and Mekala Krishnan, a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute, discuss with Caroline Grossman, executive director of the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, how businesses use data to track diversity and inclusion.

Editors note: To mark the 50-year anniversary of Milton Friedmans influentialNYTpiece on the social responsibility of business, we are launching a series of articles on the shareholder-stakeholder debate. Read previous installmentshere. The following is an edited and condensed transcript of a panel discussion held during the Corporate Social Responsibility Revisited conference hosted by Chicago Booth.

Caroline Grossman:

Research and data must play arole when it comes to implementing Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategythat actually moves the needle on equity. If you dont collect data, its hardto diagnose how your company is performing. If you dont track data, you wontknow how youre improving. A necessary complement to putting a diversity andinclusion plan in place is using research and data to ensure change is actuallyhappening. Our two panelists today offer that complementarity a two-way lens:Chicago Booth Professor Marianne Bertrand and Mekala Krishnan, Senior Fellow atMcKinsey Global Institute.

Much of Marianne Bertrandsresearch on this topic uses data to quantify the effects of racial and genderbias and to understand which mechanisms work better than others. Because manyfirms are in early stages with these topics and may not have great data, itsalso useful to have Mekalas voice on what this looks like in practice today.

One possible lever to pull that may make sense for some industries more than others is the question of quotas. On the topic of hiring, quotas have been adopted in a few countries, especially here, for those of us who are in Europe as theyre tuning in, and recently in the US in the State of California. Proponents see quotas as mechanisms to increase gender and racial diversity, but they can also lead to concerns like tokenism. Research, including some by you, Marianne, suggests that quotas arent a panacea. Based on the data youve seen, whats your take?

Marianne Bertrand:

We studied, a few years back,the first gender quota policy that was adopted in Europe, and that was inNorway back at the beginning of the millennium. I think the main way tosummarize what we saw in the data is that quotas didnt really do anything bad,but they are not the kind of transformative tool that I think companies may belooking for if theyre really trying to improve diversity.

Just so everybodys on the same page, Norwayvery similar to a lot of other European countries after itpassed a law that forced publicly traded corporations to have 40 percent of women on their board. There was a lot of pushback by corporations that were basically saying, Were never going to be able to find women with the kind of talent that is required to be on those corporate boards.

What we found was that corporationswere clearly wrong when making that statement. We were able to document thequalifications of the women that were appointed to the board once the companieswere forced to find 40 percent of women on the board. These women were, ifanything, more qualified than the very few women that were on the board priorto the quotas being put in place.

So those companies managed to find highly qualified women to serve on these boards, which means that once you force the companies to look beyond the standard network that they have, lets call it the old boys network, there are a lot of qualified women to fill in those positions. So thats really, I think, the good news about what we found in the context of this quota reform.

What is, I think, the less optimisticmessage is that if you believe that this is a policy that is really going tomake a difference, thats going to be transformational for womensopportunities inside of corporation, you really have to hope that there will bespillovers of these quotas beyond the corporate boards. Corporate boards arevery, very few individuals. So the idea theoretically is by appointing movementto the boards, you may have more women joining the C-suites, more women risingin the operational ranks of the organization. And then what we do is basicallycheck the data to see whether that was happening. And there was really no signof that.

So the bottom line is: by forcing companies to look for women, theyre going to be able to find highly qualified women to serve on the board. But you should not expect that this kind of policy will be transformational in terms of bringing more talented women at the top of organizations. So the main takeaway for me is that there was a sense in a lot of European countries that, Okay, we have these quotas in place. Thats it. Our job is done, and weve achieved gender diversity in the corporate sector. And that would be a really, really big mistake.

I think gender is quite different for me than racial minorities and their representation. When it comes to gender and the representation of women in the corporate sector or in the higher-paying jobs, in many ways I think that the key difficulties are not so much biases but really have to do with the structure of work, really have to do with what just happened today. Kids are walking around the home and the other responsibilities that women may have that make it very difficult for them to succeed at balancing the work and the family responsibilities.

Mekala Krishnan:

Just to add a couple of thoughts, Marianne, because I completely agree with what you just said. I feel like with quotas, people arrived at quotas as a panacea, as the silver bullet. And its great that it has led to increase representation on boards, but thats really not had the kind of spillover effects that people had hoped. And in fact, our research would suggest two things that I think are of interest to this conversation. The first is there is a lot of work out there including boards that correlates representation in leadership positions with corporate outcomes. And of course, its correlation, not causation. But interestingly, that correlation is not as strong compared with women in top management positions when you look at women in boards. If you think about appointing women in boards as a corporate performance driver, it may be less helpful than having women in top management positions.

People arrived at quotas as a panacea, as the silver bullet. And its great that it has led to increase representation on boards, but thats really not had the kind of spillover effects that people had hoped.

I think the second is when you look at the corporate pipeline, its really interesting to see that as quotas have been implemented, you see this funnel go down way from entry level to C-suites and then a jump up at the end for boards as weve put quotas in place. But really, that funnel, if you look at the data carefully from our survey of North American companies, where you see the funnel drop off is really that first promotion. So from the entry level to that first manager role is where you see most women fall off. And of course, for some companies, it might be the end of the funnel. But on average, if youre focusing your efforts at the end of the funnel, youre not really solving the issue, which is enabling women to make that first promotion.

I think the second thing that was really interesting with that data is that that first promotion, people came to us to say, Okay, the reason that women are dropping off at that first promotion point is that thats the age where they want to leave the workforce to have children, and so its women leaving companies. But actually, when we looked at the data, attrition rates for women and attrition rates for men were essentially the same. It was the promotion rates that were quite different. So whats happening is that women are getting stuck at that first entry level. They arent progressing through the funnel, whereas the common zeitgeist is that women want to leave the workforce to have kids. But we arent really seeing that, at least when we look at data in North America and Europe. It may be different than other countries, but in those two regions, we arent really seeing that in the data. And this, again, emphasizes why data is so important.

Marianne Bertrand:

So thats super interesting, and this is about data to study diversity and inclusion. This is the call out for more corporations to make the study of the funnel and how it evolves available because absent the ability to look inside of corporations and see the funnel that youre able to see by your consulting work, its really hard for us researchers to bring additional insights. One more thing I will say is that what you described is somewhat different from what Ive seen in other data set. So theres a lot of really, really good research that documents that its not so much women want to leave the workforce to have children, but really documents the dramatic effect that having children, the birth of a first child has on the career opportunities of women. So it is not being done, unfortunately, focusing solely on the kind of woman that would have the potential to lead corporations. Its done on a much broader side of the populations, but the data is remarkably striking You see the career of men and women evolving really in parallel with one another up to the point of the birth of a first child. And this is really the point where women start experiencing very rapid losses and really never fully recover.

Mekala Krishnan:

I completely agree with that, actually. Weve done some work again, simple correlation analysisbut it correlates the time that women versus men spend on unpaid care work, what we call unpaid care work, things like childcare and household work, and correlate that with labor force participation rates, correlate that with relative rates in leadership positions. And theres very, very strong relationships between the two. One of the things that our surveys of employees have also found is the number one challenge that women cite is what they call the double burden syndrome or the fact that theyre working both in the workplace as well as in the home. So I think it is significantly impacting womens experience in the workplace. I think its just that the idea that women prominently drop out is not true its that they are struggling to manage both work in the workplace, work in the home. It may be limiting how many hours that women work. It may be limiting the types of opportunities they reach out for. It may be impacting their own aspirations for their career.

Marianne Bertrand:

And the point that you justmade about this double burden and not being able to work as long hours I thinkalso ties back to another fact that is in the data, which is that in thecorporate sector there is massive reward, financial reward, for the ability towork very, very long hours. So thats really the massive difficulty that womenface is that in order to succeed, you have to work these long hours.

Caroline Grossman:

I actually want to go back to something you said on quotas Mekala, you said that data doesnt indicate that having more women on boards actually has an effect on corporate performance. What is the time horizon on that? We know performance is measured on a quarterly basis, but when would you expect to see the impact of diversity on boards on corporate performance? I know this is an issue we talked about a lot relative to the environment, that if a company makes decisions around sustainability, will you see it on a quarterly basis? Maybe not. Well, is it an important long-term strategy? I think certainly. So how do you see this play out?

Mekala Krishnan:

A corollary to that question is also, if companies are putting in certain D&I practices, when do you actually expect to see those practices pay off in representation data? So maybe with something like hiring, you expect to see it relatively near term. But on inclusion practices, for example, promotion practices, maybe it takes time for things to actually peter through the dataset. We havent really looked at timeline analysis of this kind just because these data sets are all relatively new. What I will say is that when we work with corporationsnot so much on this topicon broader organizational transformations, so culture shifts that kind of work in companies, what we find is that for change to really start to peter through the organization can take anywhere from five to seven years.

So really, true culture shifts,mindset shifts, norm shifts, practice shifts happening in a way that the entirepsyche of a company changes can take time. And so I agree that maybe this is,again, a plea for more research and data as these data sets become available,that the ability to do more analysis that is over time and allows us to dotimeline analysis is super important.

So as we think about data, theres almost two flavors of data that we need more of. The first is data on actual outcomes, gender-disaggregated data on outcomes both in labor markets more broadly but also within corporations. And then data on what works. How do you actually drive change?

Marianne Bertrand:

When I think about therelationship between the diversity inclusion agenda and corporate performance,I think theres really two ways I think about it. And that also ties back toFriedman, which is what this event is all about. There may be really valuehaving more diversity in management for corporate outcomes. So theres justmore ideas, different ideas. People are going to talk about different things,and thats valuable. It is just remarkable to me that thats an argument wehear very often, that diversity per se is going to help corporate outcomes.This is an area where theres essentially no research that I can think about.Theres really not a good piece of research that can point out thatconvincingly shows that diversity is valuable for corporate outcomes.

But theres another angle toit, which is that if you are focusing all of your recruitment on one half ofthe population because youre only looking at men, theres absolutely no waythat youre on the frontier in terms of the talents that you bring within yourorganization. And that in itself I think doesnt even need to be demonstratedin data. That seems pretty sensible that by limiting your search to half of thelabor market you cannot be at the frontier. So I just want to make this pointbecause theyre really the two ways I think about the relationship betweendiversity and inclusion and corporate performance and why there would be apositive relationship. The second one is pretty straightforward to me. Thefirst one is one that we hear a lot of corporations talking about, thatdiversity is good for corporate outcomes, that we really dont have the kind ofresearch I would like to be able to point at to say, Yes, heres theproof of that.

Mekala Krishnan:

Yeah. And I think the other argument you were making, Marianne, its especially true in a world where in many developed countries now women are graduating from college at exactly the same rates, maybe higher rates, than men. So its not on just innate talent. Its also learned skills that women are actually possessing at maybe higher rates than men. So its just such an economically inefficient argument to not be tapping into that talent pool. So fully agreed.

Caroline Grossman:

One place I think there is some data is on parental leave policies and the effect that those have. Marianne, could you speak to that?

Marianne Bertrand:

Theres lots of discussionabout the value of giving women longer maternity leave to be able to havechildren but remain in the workforce. The research there, I think, says prettyclearly that longer maternity leaves are not going to be beneficial to women,especially the more educated women.

What you find in the data,which is typically put all of UCD together, study economic outcomes for women,and look at the correlation with these economic outcomes and the lengths ofmaternity policies that these countries have in place, you will find that amongthe more educated women, longer maternity leave policies associate with abigger gender wage gap, so lower wages for these educated women compared tomen.

I think what is behind thisresult is really that as you make this maternity leave longer, women becomekind of separated from the labor market for longer, and theres a price forthat. Companies like to keep their employees. They want to have them kind ofcontinuously, and the longer you let the mothers out of the labor force, themore difficult it is for women to reenter these corporations on the same trackas the one they were in before.

Thats, I think, one of theexplanations. The other one is really just strategically, corporations may notwant to put women, single women, in important positions knowing that thesewomen will leave the company for an extended period of time when they becomemothers.

That is, I think, kind of areally important finding which sometimes people find counterintuitive, butlonger maternity leave policies are not a silver bullet to help women in laborforce, especially the more educated women.

Now, what is, I think, muchmore promising to the extent that children will keep on appearing is policiesthat try to change the norm, moving away from maternity leave policies toparental leave policies and paternity leave policies.

In this regard, the Scandinavian countries, I think, have been the most frontier in terms of trying to put in place policies and incentivize fathers to stay at home and share the burden with mothers when kids are born. Its still to be determined whether these policies will make a difference, but in many ways, I see them as really the directions we need to go into, because those policies are about trying to change the norms, trying to change the norms that say that the mother is going to have a disproportionate share of the burden when it comes to child rearing.

Mekala Krishnan:

You know, I think that yourlast point about changing the norms, I actually think these policies areimportant for such vital reasons. The first is the fact that they change normsabout who actually bears this burden. It actually signals that thisis not just the womans burden.

I think the second thing itdoes in terms of changing norms is in the company, now, you have both men andwomen taking leave. Its not just the women taking leave, so just from theequality that it creates in terms of career progression, in terms of normsrelated to performance reviews in terms of some of the mindsets that you talkedabout, about how companies perceive single women, it changes those norms, and Ithink thats also incredibly important.

Then, I think the third thing it does is for women, themselves. In one of the surveys we did about two, three years ago, surveyed employees about if an employer has maternity leave practices, they have flexible leave practices, a whole set of policies, whats the adoption rates? They were abysmal, like 10 percent.

I think the third thing itdoes, it actually makes it okay to adopt some of these policies, because peopledont feel like their careers are threatened. I think its important onmultiple fronts to think about these not as women policies but as peoplepolicies and make them ones that everyone in the organization feels comfortableadopting.

Marianne Bertrand:

I just cannot reinforce that last point you made enough. In many ways, when I think about good policies in that environment, they are not womens policies. They are human policies. The more we take gender out of these policies, the more we make them policies for all employees, the better it will be.

When I think about good policies in that environment, they are not womens policies. They are human polices. The more we take gender out of these policies, the more we make them policies for all employees, the better it will be.

Caroline Grossman:

Marianne, earlier in the conversation you said women are one side of it, but this is different when we talk about issue of race, and I want to come back to that question. I first want to ask, as you think about diversity and inclusion, and you think both about the questions of gender and race, what are some of the common themes you look at across, and where do you see them diverging?

Marianne Bertrand:

When I think about issues of race or ethnicity, thinking about Europe and European audience that we have here where they may not just be issues we have with African Americans in the US and compare that to women, in my mind, where I am right now based on my research and the research that Ive read is that I think that bias and discrimination is a much more important force when it comes to thinking about the under-representation of racial minorities in corporations than it is with respect to gender.

I am not saying that theres nogender discrimination going on, but I do believe the force that we just talkedabout are much more important than just discrimination per se to explain whywomen are underrepresented. I think when it comes to racial minorities, bias,whether it is implicit or explicit, is a much more important force.

I think the other big difference when I think about women versus racial minorities is that theres a lot that comes with being a racial minority in America or in Europe that is not associated with just being a woman. When you think about racial minorities in the US that goes hand in hand with economic disadvantage. That goes hand in hand with access to lower-quality schools, lower-quality public services, and lower quality amenities because of residential segregation.

Obviously, thats not forgender. Boys and girls are born in equally rich families. They are verydifferent conversations in my mind at least when I think about what we do interms of improving womens representation compared to when it comes toimproving racial minorities representation.

Caroline Grossman:

One complement to this conversation is the question of individual responsibility and action and Booth Professor Jane Risen teaches a course on this topic, and she weaves in research from behavioral economist Dolly Chugh from Harvard by really digging into the book, The Person You Mean to Be, How Good People Fight Bias. Chugh encourages us to acknowledge unconscious bias, take a stand, get involved, and be a builder.

What are things that each of us can do, and this is a question for Marianne, Mekala, the things that each of us can do in our day-to-day work, particularly in a virtual world where were feeling more disconnected, to check our unconscious bias, be advocates and allies, and drive forward meaningful change?

Mekala Krishnan:

I think the main unconsciousbias lever that we see companies implementing, and then I think employees andindividuals can complement that, theres a variety of trainings that companiesdo related to unconscious bias. Its to create awareness of unconscious bias.

I think the corollary here is step oneactually recognizing that you have unconscious biasesbut I dont think its necessary that every unconscious bias you have is a negative thing. The reason we have these biases is this is how its helpful to process the world in some ways, but recognizing where they exist and where they are really biases, so I think step one starts with that.

Just recognizing that you haveyour own world view and there may be others that are experiencing realchallenges that you may not be seeing or be aware of, so thats kind of stepone.

I think step two is having the conversation. As weve been surveying employers and employees, its really stark to me how much sometimes employers put in place policies and practices that employees dont really care about or want. One of the funny examples is weve done a survey now of Covid practices, and one of the things that so many companies have put in place is practices around open forums with senior leadership to create encouragement and lift morale, but when we surveyed employees, they dont see it as a high priority.

Im using that as a sillyexample, but the idea is I think we often make assumptions about what peoplewant and what people need and what is helpful, which may completely be a flawedassumption. I think really asking the question and having an authenticconversation coming from a place of curiosity and spirit of learning I think isreally important.

Then, I think there are a bunchof things that you could do structurally even as an individual. If youre amanager ensuring that a performance review has an unconscious bias check. Ifyou think about all the activities you engage in on a day-to-day level, findingways to embed that check on your biases through those day-to-day activities Ithink is important, too.

Marianne Bertrand:

Yeah, I agree with kind of allthat Mekala said. To go back to your original question, Caroline, Im inspiredby the work of psychologists that have studied particularly implicit bias andkind of tell us about the particular situations under which it is more likelyto creep in and drive our decisions. We know the implicit bias is more likelyto drive our decisions when we are rushed, when we are stressed, when we areangry, even when we are happy. So, when we are more emotional, we have moreimplicit bias.

Just that suggests that, andtaking it back to the corporations, taking it back to the HR process, the morewe can move away from HR decisions being made under those kind of, say, timepressures, the better probably it will be in terms of having HR managers reallytaking the time to review applications or be thinking about promotiondecisions.

Theres also lots of work,again in psychology, that tells us that we can train ourselves to be lessbiased. Same way that we have this increased association between seeing a blackface and feeling frightened, we can teach ourselves to engage in contrary tostereotypical thinking.

Theres good evidence from thelab, fairly short-term, that by forcing yourself to associate positive thoughtswith a black face rather than the negative thought you would have, you can makea difference. You can make people kind of less biased. We dont know how longthis lasts, but this matters.

Another thing that I thinkcomes strongly from the debiasing literature in psychology is to really moveaway from thinking in categories. That goes back to the point we were making,Mekala. Its not about men and women. Its about people.

One of the kind of methods thatpsychologists would use to debias people is to get them to think about theperson, individuating. Thinking about not this black guy, but think about him:Whats his life like? What does he do? Thinking beyond the category and tryingto imagine the person, putting yourself in the shoes of the person.

There are lots of tools thathave been shown, again, in lab experiments, to help in reducing bias. Im goingto make the same call as the one I made before. As Mekala said, Im suretheres lots of corporations that are using those kind of training to try toimprove bias inside the corporation. It would be fantastic to allow researchersto take a look at whether or not this makes a difference.

Besides the work in the lab, wereally dont have the kind of data to assess whether those kind of trainingprograms matter.

The other thing that I wouldstress, and I think Mekala also mentioned that, is that if you dont believethat those kind of training are really going to make a long-term difference, Ithink the other important step is really to have formal processes in place.

When I think about my ownorganization and how we do recruiting, I feel like over the two decades Ivebeen doing it, we are moving slowly towards having more and more structure. Asmuch as we dislike structure, because it feels like its bureaucratic andacademia shouldnt be bureaucratic, structures really help.

The most common examples that I always come back to is just rejecting someone for a promotion or for a job because he or shes not a good fit. That is just not the world that we should still be in. We should have explicit criteria ahead of time when we decide what are the kind of skills that were looking for in a person and not deviate from those, because we dont like the person that emerges after weve gone through these criteria. So I think formalizing a lot of the HR structure, even though it means more bureaucracy, is also, I think, another way to reduce the extent to which we have biases creeping in.

Mekala Krishnan:

Yeah. Just on the company training on unconscious bias, I mean, what were seeing, similar to the quota crutch, this is becoming the crutch where a company does an unconscious bias training with their employees once a year. And then they think theyre done and people are all set for the year. When really, I mean, its such a process. So you need to think about continuous nudges. You need to think about structural change, but its what I worry about is that this is now kind of the buzzword that everybodys using and its going to be the quotas of 2020 is going to be unconscious bias training.

You can view the entire panel discussion here:

Read more here:

Strength in Numbers: Using Data to Track Diversity and Inclusion - ProMarket

Reality now resembles a dystopian world that could only be imagined as a harrowing work of fiction or biting political commentary. The works of George Orwell, Ray Bradbury and Sinclair Lewis now appear as an understatement in a world marked by horrifying political horizons a world in which authoritarian and medical pandemics merge. In this age of uncertainty, time and space have collapsed into a void of relentless apprehension and the possibility of an authoritarian abyss. The terrors of everyday life point to a world that has descended into darkness.

The COVID-19 crisis has amplified a surrealist hallucination that floods our screens and media with images of fear, trepidation, and dread. We can no longer shake hands, embrace our friends, use public transportation, sit inside a restaurant, go to a movie theater or walk down the street without experiencing real anxiety and stress. Doorknobs, packages, counters, the breath we exhale and anything else that offers the virus a resting place is comparable to a ticking bomb ready to explode resulting in massive suffering and untold deaths. Amid this collective terror, the architecture of fascist politics has resurfaced with a vengeance in the form of a waking nightmare with a cast of horrors. Surveillance technologies proliferate, armed militia defend groups refusing to wear protective masks, conspiracy theories originate or are legitimated by President Trump, right-wing federal judges are confirmed bya right-wing Senate at breakneck speed in order to destroy civil liberties.Republican politicians and reactionary media pundits use vitriolic language against almost anyone who criticizes Trump's destructive and death-dealing policies, including Democratic governors and liberal and progressive members of the press and media.

The current coronavirus pandemic is more than a medical crisis; it is also a political and ideological crisis. It is a crisis deeply rooted in years of neglect by neoliberal governments that denied the importance of public health and the public good while defunding institutions that made them possible. At the same time, this crisis cannot be separated from the crisis of massive inequalities in wealth, income and power that grew relentlessly since the 1970s. Nor can it be separated from a crisis of democratic values, critical education and civic literacy. With respect to the latter, the COVID-19 pandemic is deeply interconnected with the politicization of the social order through the destructive assaults waged by neoliberal capital on the welfare state and the ecosystem.

The pandemic has revealed the ugly and cruel face of neoliberalism, which has waged waron the social contract, public sphere and the welfare state since the 1970s. Neoliberalism is a worldview that takes as its central organizing idea that the market should govern not only the economy but all aspects of society. This is a worldview that vilifies the public sphere, rejects the social contract and public values; at the same time, it promotes untrammeled self-interest and privatization as central governing principles. In this logic, "individual interests are the only reality that matters and those interests are purely monetary."

Neoliberalism views government as the enemy of the market, limits society to the realm of the family and individuals, embraces a fixed hedonism and challenges the very idea of the common good. In addition, neoliberalism cannot be disconnected from the spectacle of fear-mongering, ultranationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment and bigotry that has dominated the national zeitgeist as a means of promoting shared anxieties rather than shared responsibilities. Neoliberal capitalism has created, through its destruction of the economy, environment, education and public health, a petri dish for the virus to wreak havoc and wide-scale destruction.

What is clear is that the COVID-19 plague must also be understood as part of a comprehensive political and educational narrative in which neoliberalism plays a central role. In this case, we cannot separate the struggle for public health from the struggles for emancipation, social equality, economic justice and democracy itself. The horror of the pandemic often blinds us to the fact that a range of anti-democratic economic and political forces have been grinding away at the social order for the last 40 years. As engaged citizens, it is crucial to examine the anti-democratic and iniquitous political, economic and social forces that have intensified the pandemic while failing to contain it.

This is especially true at a time when a growing number of authoritarian regimes around the globe replace thoughtful dialogue and critical engagement with the suppression of dissent and a culture of forgetting. This does not only include the usual suspects such as Turkey and Hungary, but also allegedly democratic countries such as England, where government officials recently "ordered schools not to use resources from organizations which have expressed a desire to end capitalism." This state act of censorship should remind us that fascism begins with language, the suppression of critical ideas, the undermining of institutions that support them, and finally with the elimination of groups considered undesirable and disposable.

How do we situate our analysis of white supremacy, nativism and the suppression of dissent as part of a broader discourse and mode of analysis that interrogates the promises, ideals and claims of a substantive democracy?What role does the legacy and continued force of systemic racism play in the virus disproportionately infecting and killing poor people of color? How do we fight against iniquitous relations of power and wealth that empty power of its emancipatory possibilities, and as Hannah Arendt has argued, "makes most people superfluous as human beings"? How might we understand how a society driven by the accumulation of capital at any costs, with its appropriation of market-based values and regressive notions of freedom and agency, uses language to infiltrate daily life? These are not merely economic and political issues but also educational considerations.

Oppressive forms of education have now become central elements of a society threatened by a number of pandemics that threaten human life and the planet itself. The propaganda machines of the right-wing media echo the Trump regime's support for conspiracy theories, lies about testing and fake cures for the virus, all the while engaging in a politics of evasion that covers up both Trump's incompetence and the machineries of violence, greed, and terminal exclusion at the core of a society that believes the market is the template for governing not just the economy but all aspects of society. One consequence is that truth, evidence and science fall prey to the language of mystification, which legitimates a tsunami of ignorance and the further collapse of morality and civic courage.

What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals in shocking images of long food lines, the stacking of dead bodies and the state-sanctioned language of social Darwinism and racial cleansing is that a war culture has become an extension of politics and functions as a form of repressive education in which critical thought is derailed, dissent suppressed, surveillance normalized, racism intensified, and ignorance elevated to a virtue. This pandemic has made clear the false and dangerous market-driven ideological notion that all problems are a matter of individual responsibility and that the state is simply the tool of the ruling financial elite.

Neoliberal ideology now works in tandem with corporate media conglomerates to produce identities defined narrowly by market values, while normalizing a notion of individual responsibility that convinces people that whatever problems they face, they have no one to blame but themselves.Right-wing media platforms such as Breitbart News, the Sinclair Broadcast Groupand the Rush Limbaugh podcast reproduce endlessly the falsehoods, misrepresentations and lies that sustain the conditions that disproportionately produce chronic illness among poor people of color and contribute to the acceleration rise of infections and deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a strain of pernicious neoliberal common sense and public pedagogy that celebrates unchecked self-interest, disdains civic freedoms, scorns scientific evidence and turns away from the reality of a society with deep-seated institutional rot and the continuous unraveling of social connections and the social contract. Americans do not simply inhabit a deeply divided country, which has become the phrase of the day among the liberal media, but a war culture.

Everyday life has taken on the character of a war zone. The walls and cement barriers now surrounding Trump's White House signify a mode of governance wedded to both a warlike mentality and an expansive culture of cruelty and ruthlessness, most clearly visible in the police violence waged against poor people of color. The latter is a murderous violence enabled and encouraged by the white supremacist ideology at the center of the Trump administration. State violence hides behind the power of a badge as the police terrorize the spaces in which Black people drive, conduct their everyday lives, walk the streets and sleep.

What are the ideologies, institutions and spectrum of injustice in America that allow the police to kill, with impunity, Breonna Taylor while she slept in her own home? What allows a police officer to believe without a modicum of self-reflection that he could brutally kill George Floyd by pinning him to the ground and kneeling on his neck until he showed no signs of life? What order of injustice allows the police to shoot, on different occasions, Philando Castile and Jacob Blake while their children were in the back seat of their car? What is the connective tissue between the brazen forms of police brutality at work in American society, the violence Trump calls for and enables among his right-wing extremist followers, and the organizing principles of violence at work in Trump's policies?

The culture of violence runs deep in American society. For example, Attorney General Bill Barr allowed military forces to attack demonstrators in the streets outside the White House so that Trump could walk to a nearby church and pose for a photo op, while ironically holding up a Bible all the while giving new meaning to a display of fascist agitprop. It is worth noting that Trump referred to the right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis who marched in a hate rally in Charlottesville in 2017 in which Heather Heyer was killed as including"very fine people," while calling protesters who marched against racism and police violence "thugs," "terrorists" and "anarchists." Trump is not just deaf to the violence being provoked by vigilantes, armed extremists and right-wing militia groups around the country, he encourages their actions.

Such spectacularized violence cannot be abstracted from those political and economic forces driving hyper-capitalism, ultranationalism and the politics of racial sorting, spiraling poverty and soaring inequality. These rapacious economic structures extend from a predatory financial sector to big corporations that produce massive misery, engage in unchecked exploitation, plunder the public sector and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a ruling elite. This war culture also assaults every element of the welfare state.

The current stage of hyper-capitalism has waged war on the social contract, public sphere and the public good for the last four decades. One consequence has been the publicly owned bones of society public education, roads, bridges, levees, water systems have been underfunded and in many ways pushed to the breaking point of disrepair and dysfunctionality. Moreover, this attack on the welfare state and common good is increasingly legitimated and normalized through tyrannical forms of education in a variety of sites, especially in the broader cultural sphere. This is a space in which perverse ignorance, the disdain of science, the repudiation of evidence and conspiracy theories are produced not only at the highest levels of government but also in the media and other cultural apparatuses such as conservative talk radio and Fox News in the U.S., which David Enrich describes as playing a "democracy-decaying role as a White House propaganda organ masquerading as conservative journalism." Fox News and a number of other conservative cultural apparatuses function ideologically and politically to objectify people of color, promote spectacles of violence, endorse consumerism as the only viable expression of citizenship, and legitimate a language of exclusion, bigotry and white nationalism.One consequence is a deep-seated anxiety, loneliness, cynicism and profound emptiness at the heart of American society, coupled with an accelerating culture of cruelty and white supremacy.

Unfortunately, the political, medical and economic crises Americans are experiencing has not been matched by a crisis of ideas that is, by a critical understanding of the conditions that produced the crises in the first place. Yet the U.S. and several other countries are in the midst of a medical, racial, political, economic and educational crisis that touches every aspect of public life. Fascist politics no longer hides behind the call for market freedoms, small government and individual expressions of freedom. For example, Trump's hatred of dissent not only reveals itself in his view of the free press as an "enemy of the people," but also in his disdain for any institution that does not promote the willful narrative of white nationalism. How else to explain his call for a commission to establish what he embarrassingly labeled "patriotic education," a term one associates with dictatorial and fascist regimes?

Trump's admiration for racial purity and "his ongoing eugenics fixation" has been expressed in his lavish praise for what he called the "good genes" of an overwhelmingly white audience in Minnesota. This is the menacing logic of a eugenicist rhetoric that disdains bad genes, and hence willingly labels some groups as undesirable and subject to terminal exclusion. There is more at stake here than an investment in racial purity; there is also the willingness to erase and rewrite historical memory, especially the history of racial oppression. This may be most obvious in Trump's criticism of the New York Times' 1619 Project, which teaches students about the history of slavery. There is more at stake here than the divisive rhetoric of a president who is "a gift to polarization." This is an ominous language that both echoes a horrifying and dangerous historical period and normalizes the mobilizing passions of an updated fascism. This is a language that, as Adam Weinstein of the New Republic observes, reveals a government that inflames partisan positions that creates chaotic contexts not unlike those that enabled fascist movements to come to power in Germany and Italy in the 1930s. He further argues that the Trump administration represents a gangster state that has "reached an important stage of fascist maturity":

It is time to embrace the parallels, to be unafraid to speak a clear truth: Whether by design or lack of it, Donald Trump and the Republican Party operate an American state that they have increasingly organized on fascist principles. It is also time to consider what else the fascists may yet do, during an unprecedented pandemic, amid unprecedented unemployment, faced with unprecedented resistance ahead of an unprecedented election.

As part of a broader autocratic maneuver, Trump has made clear that he will not agree to a peaceful transition of power if he loses the election. Not only has he questioned the legitimacy of the upcoming election, which the polls indicate he will lose, he has also nominated a prospective right-wing Supreme Court justice whose presence may play a crucial role in enabling him to secure his re-election if he contests it. Under such circumstances, fascist politics is now embraced by him, his sycophantic political alliesand his followers without apology. Antonio Gramsci's notion that as the old dies and the new order has yet to emerge, a new form of barbarism can appear, seems more prescient than ever and has become increasingly visible under a Trump era that mirrors a frightening reality.

It is worth repeating that most of the globe is experiencing a new historical period produced by a hyper-capitalist neoliberal system that is at odds with any just, prudent and equitable notion of the future. This is a system which, since the 1970s, with its tools of financialization, deregulation and austerity, has transformed American society, if not most of the world, in pernicious ways. We now live in an age in which economic activity is divorced from social costs, all the while enabling policies of racial cleansing, militarism and white nationalism along with staggering levels of inequality that have become the defining features of everyday life and established modes of governance. The economic brutality and barbarism of neoliberal capital has joined forces with the forces of white supremacy and white nationalism to create an updated form of neoliberal fascism.

We get glimpses of this new political formation in Trump's massive tax giveaway to the ultra-rich and his reversal of policy regulations designed to protect workers, the public and the environment. Trump's White House has become a monument to white nationalism. Consider Trump's defense of Confederate monuments and his support for racial sorting, his formulation of suburbs as white public spheres, his attempt to pass laws that deny citizenship to particular groups, and his definition of cities as dark enclaves of criminality, all of which echoes a history rooted in earlier forms of fascism. Most recently, in his first presidential debate with Joe Biden, Trump refused to denounce white supremacy while signaling his support to members of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, to "stand back and stand by."

His inflammatory remarks not only revealed his tribute to white supremacy and his willingness to stoke racial fears but also his support for right-wing extremist groups to continue using violence to promote social change. Trump has made it clear that he is a candidate for aggrieved white Americans and that he is willing to fan the flames of hatred and bigotry. His racist remarks reveal the degree to which he has turned democracy into ashes.

American fascism presents itself in the form of unabashed white supremacy, a defense of nativism, the longing for a strongman, a cult of ignorance that denies scientific evidence, the elevation of emotion over reason, a disregard for the law and civil liberties, an enthusiasm for using armed militias to attack protesters and a celebration of the enabling rhetoric of violence. Nativist populism as one register of an updated notion of American fascism has a long history in the United States. What is different today is that it occupies the center of power in the White House. Sarah Churchwell argues persuasively that fascism has resurfaced in America and that "it draws on familiar national customs to insist it is merely conducting political business as usual." She writes:

American fascist energies today are different from 1930s European fascism, but that doesn't mean they're not fascist, it means they're not European and it's not the 1930s. They remain organized around classic fascist tropes of nostalgic regeneration, fantasies of racial purity, celebration of an authentic folk and nullification of others, scapegoating groups for economic instability or inequality, rejecting the legitimacy of political opponents, the demonization of critics, attacks on a free press, and claims that the will of the people justifies violent imposition of military force. Vestiges of interwar fascism have been dredged up, dressed up, and repurposed for modern times. Colored shirts might not sell anymore, but colored hats are doing great.

Fascism in America has never gone away, it simply exists in different forms, often at the margins of society. In its updated form, American neoliberal fascism does not need to make a spectacle of swastikas, jackbootsor Nazi salutes, or to call for sending those considered disposable to concentration camps. Fascism today wraps itself in local customs, ultra-nationalism, the rhetoric of purification, the flagand Nuremberg-like spectacles and legitimates itself not by banishing the media but by controlling it. Moreover, the tropes of fascism are being mainstreamed in the midst of a plague that reinforces what Bill Dixon calls "the protean origins of totalitarianism loneliness as the normal register of social life, the frenzied lawfulness of ideological certitude, mass poverty and mass homelessness, the routine use of terror as a political instrument, and the ever growing speeds and scales of media, economics, and warfare."

As I have said elsewhere, talk of a fascist politics emerging in the United States and in the rise of right-wing populist movements across the globe is often criticized as a naive exaggeration or a misguided historical analogy. In the age of Trump, such objections feel like reckless efforts to deny the growing relevance of the term and the danger posed by a society staring into the abyss of a menacing authoritarianism. In fact, the case can be made that rather than harbor an element of truth, such criticism further normalizes the very fascism it critiques, allowing the extraordinary and implausible, if not unthinkable, to become ordinary. Under such circumstances, history is not simply being ignored or distorted, it is being erased. In this instance, the claim of moral witnessing disappears. Moreover, after decades of a savage global capitalist nightmare both in the United States and around the globe, the mobilizing passions of fascism have been unleashed unlike anything we have seen since the 1930s.

This is a fascism that not only grants impunity to the ultra-rich and big corporations, regardless of their criminogenic behavior, but also exhibits a disdain for weakness and a propensity for violence. It poisons the air we breathe and thrives on producing widespread misery. In its current forms, the checks and balances that liberals point to as an impregnable defense against fascism in America appear quaint if not delusional in the face of Trump's frontal assault on all the institutions that shore up a democratic society along with his increasing use of state violence to squash dissent. As Peter Maass points out in the Intercept:

... the accessories and devices of dictatorship have expanded with infectious ruthlessness in American cities. The police swinging batons wildly, the paramilitary forces refusing to identify themselves, the hysterical president trying to incite war, the vigilantes in league with the police, military helicopters clattering overhead, the general marching in the streets in combat fatigues, the state TV network loosing its tales of sabotage and mayhem it's all there, loud and clear.

Turning away from the horrors of an updated fascism can be both complicitous and dangerous. While there is no perfect fit between Trump and the historical fascist politics ofleaders such as Mussolini, Hitler and Pinochet, "the basic tenets of extreme nationalism, racism, misogyny, and disgustfor democracy and the rule of law" are too similar to ignore.

The COVID-19 plague cannot be separated from a broader plague of hyper-capitalism, right-wing populismand surging fascist politics around the globe. These forces represent the underside of the COVID-19 pandemic and relentlessly subject workers, the disabled, the homeless, the poor, children, people of color and, more recently, frontline hospital and emergency workers and all others considered at risk to lives of despair, precarity, massive danger and, in some cases, death. At the roots of this larger pandemic is an unbridled lawlessness and deep-seated disdain for critical thought, meaningful forms of education and any mode of analysis that holds power accountable. The pandemic has revealed the toxic underside of a form of neoliberal fascism with its assault on the welfare state, its undermining of public health, its attack on workers' rights and its prioritizing of the economy and the accumulation of capital over human needs and life itself.

The full-blown pandemic has revealed in all its ugliness the death-producing mechanisms of systemic inequality, deregulation, a culture of cruelty, the increasingly dangerous assault on the environment and an anti-intellectual culture that derides any notion of critical education. Beneath the massive failure of leadership from the Trump administration lies the long history of concentrated power in the hands of the one percent, shameless corporate welfare, political corruption, the legacy of racial violence, and the merging of money and politics to deny the most vulnerable access to health care, a living wage, worker protection and strong labor movements capable of challenging corporate power and the cruelty of austerity and right-wing policies that maim, cripple and kill hundreds of thousands, as is evident in the current pandemic.

The brutality of casino capitalism, with its hyped-up version of social Darwinism, is now openly defended by Trump and many Republican governors in their call to reopen the economy and undercut or eliminate protective measures that would slow the pace of the virus. Most at risk are those populations who have been considered disposable, such as poor people of color, undocumented immigrants, the racially incarcerated, the elderly warehoused in nursing homes and the working class. These populations are now told to sacrifice their lives in the interest of filling the coffers of the corporate elite.

At the same time, the claims of neoliberal capitalism have been broken and what was once unthinkable is now being said in public by large groups of people. Young people are calling for a new narrative to repair the safety net, provide free health care, child care, elder care and quality public schools for everyone. There are loud calls to address state violenceand the plagues of poverty, homelessness and the pollution of the planet. The spirit of democratic socialism is in the air. The pandemic crisis has shattered the myth that each of us is defined exclusively by our self-interest and as individuals are solely responsible for the problems we face. Both myths run the risk of breaking down as it becomes obvious that, as the pandemic unfolds, shortages in crucial medical equipment, lack of testing, lack of public investments and failed public health services are largely due to right-wing neoliberal measures such as regressive tax policies and bloated military budgets that have drained resources from public health, public goods and other vital social institutions such as public and higher education.

The pandemic has torn away the cover of a neoliberal economic system marked by what Thomas Piketty calls "the violence of social inequality." Inequality is a toxin that destroys lives, democratic institutions and civic culture and it is normalized through politicians and a right-wing media culture reduced to sounding boards for the rich and powerful. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's infamous quip that "there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families" no longer holds the status of neoliberal common sense in a society in which matters of social responsibility and strong, morally responsive government institutions are crucial in order to fight the pandemic and the economic and political conditions that worsen its effects.

If neoliberalism contributed to the unraveling of social connections and the institutions that support them, the pandemic has made clear how vital such connections are to both the public health of a society and its democratic institutions. As social spheres are privatized, commercialized and individualized, it becomes difficult to translate private issues into systemic considerations, inequality becomes normalized, and the pandemic crisis is isolated from the political, economic, social and cultural conditions that fuel it.

The ideological virus-plague has as one of its roots a politics of depoliticization and normalization. It attempts to rob people of their sense of agency, all the while making the unthinkable matters of alleged common sense. Through a variety of market-based assumptions and pedagogical practices, it works to undermine and normalize those ideas, values, modes of identification and desires that enable individuals to become critically engaged actors.

Crucial to any politics of resistance is the necessity to take seriously the notion that education is central to politics itself, and that social problems have to be critically understood before people can act as a force for empowerment and liberation. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, matters of criticism, informed judgment and critical modes of understanding are crucial in making a choice between democracy and authoritarianism, life and death.

The stark choices regarding what the future might look like appear to hang between the forces of despotism and democracy. Yet as ominous as this foreboding appears, history is open, and how it will unfold hangs in the balance. The pandemic is a crisis that cannot be allowed to turn into a catastrophe in which all hope is lost. While this pandemicthreatens democracy's ability to breathe, it should also offer up the possibility to rethink politics and the habits of critical education, human agency and elements of social responsibility crucial to any viable notion of what life would be like in a democratic socialist society. Amid the corpses produced by neoliberal capitalism and COVID-19, there are also flashes of hope, a chance to move beyond the contemporary resurgence of authoritarianism. Beyond the normalizing ideologies of a poisonous cynicism and a paralyzing conformity endemic to neoliberal capitalism, there is a growing movement to reclaim a collective political vision that is more compassionate, equitable, just and inclusive.

In spite of the ugly terror of a fascist abyss that lurks in the background of the COVID-19 crisis, the pandemic can teach us that democracy is fragile as "a way of life" and that if it is to survive, critical education, civic courage, historical consciousness, moral witnessing and political outrage must become central elements of a pedagogical practice capable of producing citizens who are informed, politically aware and willing to struggle to keep justice, equity and the principles of a socialist democracy alive. Rosa Luxemburg's once-celebrated claim that under capitalism humanity faces a choice between "socialism or barbarism" is more appropriate today than in her own time at the beginning of the 20th century.

The pandemic has done more than expose the cult of capitalism and its production of social inequities operating on a vast scale in the U.S. and around the globe. It has also revealed the inner workings of a Trump government that has been more concerned about the health of the economy than saving lives, especially the lives of those marginalized by color, class, age and pre-existing health conditions. Because of Trump's failure to address the crisis, the United States has been turned into a giant cemetery. Trump lied about the severity of the virus, calling it no more dangerous than the flu, even saying it would just disappear. He admitted to journalist Bob Woodward that the virus was deadly and airborne and that millions of people could get infected, sick and die. He flouted the advice of scientific experts and put incompetents in positions of power to shape health policies. Moreover, as the virus spread throughout the country, Trump disregarded the advice of medical and health expertsand held indoor rallies in cities around the United States, impervious to the danger large group gatherings posed to his followers.

After downplaying the virus since its inception while modeling behavior that promotes it, going so far as to treat mask-wearing as a weakness while ridiculing his Democratic opponent,Joe Biden, for wearing one, Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, have now tested positive for COVID-19. For four years, this administration has lied, deceived the publicand undermined the health and safety of the nation. Events have now caught up with Trump's world of deceit, liesand willful ignorance,and he has to bear the fate of his own hypocrisy and moral failing.What is crucial here is that Trump is not the only victim ofhis own inept leadership and the disdain of health experts and the laws of science. More importantly, because of his lack of leadership the economy tanked, millions lost their jobs, at least 208,000 people have diedand more than 7.3 million are infected. Trump did not deserve this virus, but neither did the people who contracted it because of his irresponsible and vicious disregard for the lives of others. Trump has blood on his hands, and his failure to address the pandemic's reach, severityand danger is no longer an issue he can ignore.

Calls to remove Trump from office, raise the minimum wage, support decent and safe work, offer access to affordable housing, provide universal health care, lower prescription drug costs, provide free quality education to everyone, expand infrastructure, defund the police and military, and invest in community services are important.But they do not deal with the larger issue of eliminating a market-driven economic system structured in massive racial and economic inequalities. Renowned educator David Harvey is right to argue that the "immediate task is nothing more nor less than the self-conscious construction of a new political framework for approaching the question of inequality [and racism], through a deep and profound critique of our economic and social system." The battle against capitalism can only take place through a movement that unites its disparate movements for social justice, emancipation and economic equality.

This is a crisis in which different threads of oppression must be understood as part of the general crisis of capitalism. The various protests now evolving internationally at the popular level offer the promise of new global movements for the struggle for popular sovereignty and economic, racial and social justice. Central to this struggle is the challenge of destroying the neoliberal global order. In the current moment, democracy may be under a severe threat and appear frighteningly vulnerable, but with young people and others rising up across the globe inspired, energized and marching in the streets the future of a radical democracy is waiting to be reimagined, if not reborn. Democracy needs to breathe again, inspired by collective struggles to dismantle the machinery of social death at the heart of neoliberal fascist empire.

Read more here:

Dystopian plagues and fascist politics in the age of Trump: Finding hope in the darkness - Salon

There are all kinds of horror-tinged media to choose from nowadays, but games may be the most chilling medium of all due to the level of immersion and interactivity they impart. If you've ever sat in a dark room with headphones and played something like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, you know that unique feeling of terror we're talking about. And god forbid you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Horror games aren't exactly for the weak of heart.

But as Halloween approaches, there's no more fitting genre for the season, and luckily, there are a wealth of horror games out there well worth your time. The genre had humble beginnings in the late '80s, with a wave of fantastic games coming out in the three subsequent decades. And thanks to the rise of indie games, there are more scary games out now than ever before.

In 2020 we've seen some excellent horror games released, such as Capcom's follow-up to its Resident Evil 2 remake, Resident Evil 3. But even more are yet to come; we're still looking forward to horror games like The Dark Pictures: Little Hope and Amnesia: Rebirth to keep genre fans busy this fall.

Whether you plan to work your way through your horror backlog on your own or invite friends over to experience the jump scares with you, we've got you covered this Halloween season and beyond. We've gathered a list of the most terrifying and memorable games every horror enthusiast should experience this Halloween season. Genre classics like Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil Remake, and Dead Space are represented here, but you'll also find more surprising and modern choices interspersed throughout. Regardless of their notoriety, the horror games we highlight below (listed in no particular order) are all ones that left us with lasting memories.

Which horror games will you be playing this fall? Shout out your favorites in the comments below.

After creating a phenomenon with Amnesia: The Dark Descent and following it up with the existential horror of Soma, Frictional Games is going back to the series that put them on the map with Amnesia: Rebirth. Taking place in 1937, Rebirth's aesthetic finds itself somewhere between the Victorian-era castles of The Dark Descent and the hyper-futuristic underwater facility of Soma. Of course, with this being a Frictional game, nothing's as it seems, and even in the release date trailer, there are signs we're in for an even wilder and scarier ride than we might think. Amnesia: Rebirth is set to release October 20, which is a great time to get some good, new scares in on Halloween. -- Suriel Vazquez

It's an Early Access title at the moment and thus feels a bit incomplete, but don't sleep on World of Horror, a lightly animated text adventure that's all spooky vibes, all the time. Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and horror manga artist Junji Ito, the roguelite game sends you out into a strange town beset by twisted people and supernatural horrors. World of Horror feels like you're playing through one of Ito's strange short stories, where you might search through a school for a murderous, scissors-wielding substitute teacher with a carved-up face, or investigate the apartment of a researcher who was extremely interested in eels--but, like, in an evil way.

Each of your investigations takes you through various locales, where you'll meet allies, find weapons, and engage in text-based combat with creatures, all in an effort to discover what eldritch horror is trying to be born into the world so you can put a stop to it. World of Horror is constantly creepy, often funny, consistently challenging, and always compellingly weird, and especially if you like Ito's works and fresh spins of Lovecraft tropes, you shouldn't miss it. -- Phil Hornshaw

Since 1984's The Thing, there have been plenty of games directly inspired by John Carpenter's classic film, putting you in the role of a scientist or soldier who must fight against an alien threat. However, it's rare to see a game that puts you in the monster's shoes--and that's exactly what Carrion does. You control an amorphous monster whose only goal is to devour everyone in its path, grow larger, and spread its biomass throughout the world. You crawl through each area with your fleshy tendrils, pulling every human into your toothy maw. The movement feels fast and satisfying as you slip into pipes and small crawl spaces to reach new locations. Of course, the humans won't go down without a fight, so you'll need to figure out ways to outmaneuver and outsmart them as their arsenals expand from pistols to flamethrowers. If you've ever wanted to play the monster, then Carrion is a way to do just that. -- Mat Paget

This year's Resident Evil 3 remake shows a different side of the infamous outbreak we first saw in Resident Evil 2. After surviving the Spencer Mansion incident, Jill Valentine must now escape zombie-ridden Raccoon City while being pursued by the bloodthirsty Nemesis. RE3 requires resource-management, puzzle-solving, and a cool hand to take out the zombies and other monsters that threaten your life. It's definitely a more brief experience than the Resident Evil 2 remake, but Resident Evil 3 is still worth playing for fans of Resident Evil, horror, and zombies. And once you're finished your first playthrough, you can partake in victory laps with unlocks like more powerful guns, infinite ammo, and more. -- Mat Paget

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

Until Dawn developers Supermassive haven't quite found a hit on that game's scale since 2015, but they've slowly been getting their groove back. The first part of The Dark Pictures Anthology, Man of Medan, had a lot of what made Until Dawn shine, so we're hopeful Little Hope improves on the formula and has some great scares of its own. It's also primed to be a good Halloween game, releasing on October 30 and likely being short enough to get through in a single sitting with a group of friends -- Suriel Vazquez

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

Polish developer Bloober Team is releasing its next psychological horror outing, The Medium, in December--and while you won't have it for Halloween, you've got a great stand-in with Layers of Fear, the team's first horror game. The first-person title has you exploring a haunted house as a painter as he tries to complete his masterpiece, wandering shifting halls in search of macabre ingredients to make the perfect colors. What's great about Layers of Fear is the way that it manipulates space and perspective to freak you out, with the house shifting around you when you turn a corner, spin around to check behind you, or open a door.

As horror games go, Layers of Fear requires little from you outside the occasional bit of light puzzle-solving or searching for notes and clues. You won't have to run from or fight any monsters, so you won't have to contend with any difficulty spikes or skill issues. That said, the scares are still highly effective thanks to Layers of Fear's expertly crafted atmosphere. This is a great game to turn off the lights and get lost in. -- Phil Hornshaw

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | eShop | Steam

The remake of a horror classic, Resident Evil 2 released last year and was one of our top picks for Game of the Year. The remake doesn't change the story of the original, for the most part: You still get the choice to play as either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield as they make their way through zombie-infested Raccoon City. The storylines and settings for each character are similar, but there are unique side characters and other differences that make playing each character's path worth it. Plus, it's not that long--only about 3-5 hours for each campaign.

Resident Evil 2 is a brilliant remake that improves and expands upon the original. The creepy atmosphere left me constantly on edge, holding my breath as I turned every corner, but it balances that fear with a huge sense of satisfaction at solving challenging puzzles and taking down enemies without exhausting all my ammo. While I didn't find Resident Evil 2 quite as frightening as Resident Evil 7, it's still one of the best horror games out there, and I was enthralled by its story until the very end. -- Jenae Sitzes

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

Until Dawn has become a classic among story-driven games. The survival-horror adventure follows a group of friends on a winter getaway to a snowy mountain lodge, where, one year prior, two of their friends disappeared and were never found. It's the stereotypical setup for a slasher film, complete with flirty teens and a masked stalker on the loose, but the story takes some unexpected and unforgettable turns along the way. Most notably, Until Dawn is driven by player choice, and the consequences of your choices are deeply felt throughout the entire game. On your first playthrough, there are no redos if your action gets someone killed--only in subsequent playthroughs can you go back to specific chapters to make a different decision.

Because the story branches off in so many directions and has multiple endings, there's a ton of replayability to Until Dawn. While technically a single-player game, Until Dawn is equally fun to play with a group of people. While a bit long for a single session--it'll take you eight or nine hours to complete--you could easily break Until Dawn into two or three sessions and play through it with friends, with each person choosing a character to control and passing the controller back and forth. Having played it both alone and with friends, I can attest that it's fun to experience over and over, and there are still characters I haven't figured out how to keep alive (I refuse to look it up). It's not on the same level as something like Outcast or P.T. in terms of scariness, but there are some truly terrifying moments in Until Dawn I'll never forget. -- Jenae Sitzes

See on the PlayStation Store

Red Dead Redemption quickly became one of my favorite games of all time when it was released back in 2010. This was thanks in most part to the wonderful setting, quirky yet lovable characters, and increasingly engaging story. I was ready to take any excuse to spend more time in that world, and you can bet your butt I was excited for a zombie-themed expansion. Undead Nightmare is supposed to be a bit more silly and nonsensical than scary, but I don't think a single game has unnerved me as much as it. Seeing the familiar Wild West turned into a desolate, fog-filled wasteland of zombies was shocking.

It was as close as I've felt to actually experiencing a zombie apocalypse breakout in my hometown. Even my family had been turned, and though John Marston was reacting in a humorous way, I couldn't help but be totally stressed out by the entire situation. And these zombies aren't the slow and lumbering type you find in the halls of Resident Evil 2's police station: they sprint right at you, make the absolute worst noises, and need to be shot in the head. All of this, and that very sad Sasquatch mission, made me feel incredibly uneasy in a world I had fallen so much in love with.

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare are both playable on Xbox One, thanks to Microsoft's backward-compatible program. There's even a 4K patch for the game on Xbox One X, which looks fantastic. -- Mat Paget

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store

Amnesia: The Dark Descent, its expansion, Justine, and the sequel, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, comprise what is still one of the best horror franchises of all time. You can grab all three of them in the Amnesia Collection, available on the PlayStation and Xbox stores. Amnesia is undoubtedly the series that ignited my love of the horror game genre, and like many, I first experienced the game through Let's Plays by a then-little-known YouTuber called PewDiePie. It's terrifying enough to watch someone else to play, but getting behind the screen yourself is another experience altogether.

Released in 2010, Amnesia: The Dark Descent follows a man named Daniel, who wakes up in a dark castle with no memory of who he is, aside from his name. In exploring the castle, Daniel must fight to maintain his sanity while putting together pieces of his past and avoiding the dreadful monsters that lurk in the shadows. The first-person survival horror game was followed by a 2013 sequel, A Machine for Pigs, that begins with a wealthy industrialist waking up in his London mansion with (once again) no memory of the past few months, only the feeling that something is terribly wrong. If Amnesia has somehow flown under the radar for you over the past decade, then wait for a dark night, grab some headphones, and dive in. -- Jenae Sitzes

See on Nintendo eShop

Metro Exodus isn't strictly a horror game. There aren't many jump scares, there are no re-animated corpses, and you spend a lot of time on a train chatting with your comrades. What Metro Exodus does have is dark, cramped corridors oozing with a foreboding atmosphere. Sure, Exodus also has a lot of open areas, but some of the most terrifying moments are when you're trapped in the metro, scrounging for supplies, while avoiding irradiated beasts. -- Jake Dekker

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

With Little Nightmares 2 confirmed to release on February 11, 2021, there's no better time to play the original. Little Nightmares is a Tim Burton-esque puzzle-platformer first released in 2017 that follows a small, hungry child in a yellow raincoat known only as Six. The child is trapped in a horrifying, mostly underwater island location called the Maw, which is home to numerous strange and deplorable creatures. From a long-armed blind janitor to a chilling, shadowy Lady, Six must avoid capture while navigating her way out of the Maw.

Little Nightmares is far scarier than you might expect--I was on edge during my entire playthrough. Like Playdead's Limbo or Inside, Little Nightmares has no dialogue, letting the creepy environments and tense atmosphere drive all of the suspense. It culminates in an ending that, while a bit open-ended, is definitely satisfying. The game has also received three DLC chapters, and you can get the whole experience in Little Nightmares: Complete Edition. -- Jenae Sitzes

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Nintendo eShop | Steam

A lot has been said about Silent Hill 2, so I'll spare you any overt critical analysis I have on this beloved survival-horror sequel and instead share with you why this game still rocks. The premise alone should be enough to captivate you. As the widowed James Sutherland, you travel to the foggy town of Silent Hill in search of your dead wife, who has somehow managed to send you a letter. As a middle-schooler (yes, I played this game in 8th grade), Silent Hill 2's story was like nothing else I had encountered. There were no action heroes, explosions, or convoluted government conspiracies. Just a crippling sense of dread, an eerie atmosphere, and intriguing characters that kept my hands glued to my PS2 controller.

Silent Hill 2 expertly handles its myriad horrors, pulling you in with disturbing creatures, clever puzzles, and haunting sound design. I can't help but be in awe of how well it stands up whenever I revisit the game every few years. Its Historical Society area remains one of its crowning achievements and one of horror gaming's most expertly designed environments, brilliantly handling tense foreboding with unexpected pathways and puzzles. There are some slow moments interspersed between its most terrifying ones, but they're never enough to detract from the chilling horror and thought-provoking storytelling on display.

If you haven't played Silent Hill 2, you're in for quite a spooky adventure. It's one of the genre greats for a reason, and it only continues to stand the test of time. You can buy it as part of the Silent Hill HD Collection for PS3 and Xbox 360; fortunately, it can also be played on Xbox One due to backward-compatibility. -- Matt Espineli

See on digital stores: Xbox Store

Red Barrels' Outlast has always stood out to me for how the game presents its world. Mount Massive Asylum is blanketed in absolute darkness, so the only way to see where you're going most of the time is by using the night vision function on protagonist Miles Upshur's video camera.

Because I'm terrified of the dark, I use the camera all the time, and this transforms everything I see into a murky green where faraway environmental details aren't clear and enemies' eyes shine with a ghoulish glow. Also, this mechanic forces me to explore--batteries need to be found to keep the night vision function on the camera working--and Outlast's chilling soundtrack makes those unscripted moments of searching very tense.

Looking for batteries isn't even the scariest part of Outlast, though. It's the inhuman Variants that create most of the game's scares. Desperately running through an insane asylum while cannibalistic twins, a scissor-wielding mad scientist, and a seemingly unkillable monster chase after Upshur is terrifying. The worst of these Variants, Eddie Gluskin, appears in Outlast's Whistleblower expansion. Gluskin, aka The Groom, is a deranged serial killer who mutilates his male victims' genitalia in order to create the "perfect wife." Watching what he does--in first-person I might add--to the DLC's protagonist, Waylon Park, haunted me for days, and is still nauseating to even think about. -

If you buy Outlast, you might as well pick up the Outlast Trinity bundle, which includes Outlast, its Whistleblower DLC, and Outlast 2 (which is also very good). - Jordan Ramee

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Nintendo eShop | Steam

Three years after Resident Evil 4 squeezed new scares from one of gaming's best horror series, Visceral Games might have perfected the third-person survival horror formula with Dead Space. Players control engineer Isaac Clarke as he and a rescue team land on a city-sized spaceship to find out why it's not responding to communications. They quickly discover the reason is that the ship has been overrun by monsters that used to be its crew, which are nearly impossible to kill unless players use various sci-fi mining tools to hack off the creatures' limbs.

Dead Space is a perfect confluence of modern sensibility and old-school survival horror, pairing fantastic graphics and gameplay, specifically its limb-cutting mechanics, with slightly uncooperative controls and the desperate hunt for items to keep Isaac healthy. The game uses everything at its disposal to scare you. Its industrial setting pairs with sound design that makes you constantly feel like you're not alone, and every surface is covered in air vents perfect for delivering popcorn-tossing moments as lethal mutated creatures come squirming out, straight at your face. Visceral tops it off with a spooky story that combines Alien, Children of the Corn, and Evil Dead.

Developed for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, you can also play Dead Space on Xbox One via backward-compatibility. -- Phil Hornshaw

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

Devil Daggers may not be a traditional horror game by any means, but that makes it no less scary every time I play it. It throws you into a dark arena and tasks you with eliminating waves of flying skulls, disgusting, multi-legged beasts, and other demonic monstrosities.

There is no winning in Devil Daggers; death is inevitable, whether that comes after 10 seconds or 100 (if you're good). It's minimal in terms of visuals and sound; there's no music to accompany the onslaught of enemies. Instead, enemies produce terrifying but distinct noises. This serves to assist you by letting you know where enemies are, but it also creates an inescapable sense of dread as these horrifying monsters box you in. I find it hard not to jump out of my seat when I turn and see that I'm face to face with a flying horned monster.

It's unusual that a game designed around high score runs evokes fear, and the threat of failure is undoubtedly part of what makes Devil Daggers so tense. But it's the combination of this tension with the haunting imagery and sounds that create a legitimately terrifying experience. -- Chris Pereira

I'll admit to being the perfect mark for Slender: The Eight Pages when it was released for free in 2012. The tiny, minimalist Unity experiment by developer Mark Hadley capitalized on peak Slender Man interest, expounding on the Internet-born folklore creature that was already doing a phenomenal job of absolutely creeping me out. Hadley's little game was a tightly made little nightmare: you're exploring a small, darkened park from a first-person perspective, and you're being hunted by a supernatural creature that you can't even look at without dying. Players try to gather eight pages from around a park, which detail some other poor victim's descent into madness, while the thing keeps appearing in front of you, ever closer. It was a perfect storm of jump scares, ambient dread, and a spooky creation of the zeitgeist at the height of its power.

Slender: The Arrival expanded the game with multiple levels, a full story and prettier graphics to fully realize Hadley's original concept. It didn't change the core principle of being hunted, with nothing to help you except fleeing in desperate terror, and hoping that looking away from what stalks you might be enough to save you a few moments more. -- Phil Hornshaw

See on Nintendo eShop

To play Resident Evil 7 is to willingly put yourself in an inhospitable environment. The decrepit mansion where the game begins is filthy, with peeling, yellowed wallpaper, broken drywall, and garbage littering the scarred wooden floor. Wind blows through the cracks in drafts, emitting a low, constant howl. The kitchen, scattered with moldy food and unidentifiable skeletal remains, is unspeakable. You can almost smell the rot.

This is not a place you want to be--and that's before you meet the family that lives there. There's the dad, who stalks after you even after you've killed him numerous times. Mom doesn't bat an eye when he severs junior's hand at the dinner table. Somehow even worse is grandma, a catatonic woman in a wheelchair who can appear and vanish any time and anywhere when you're not looking.

The horror game improves on the best aspects of the series, while throwing out everything that had grown stale in recent installments. Playing Resident Evil 7 is a thrilling, crazy, scary-as-hell experience. And if you think it's terrifying on a TV screen, you gotta try it in VR. -- Chris Reed

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | Steam

The Xbox 360 had a generally strong launch lineup, despite lacking a killer app like Halo. There was a Majora's Mask-lite in Kameo: Elements of Power; sports games like Amped 3 and Madden, and for those who passed on the heavily flawed, but creative Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2 was there to satisfy action fans when WWII shooters were in their prime. With other titles with mass appeal like Tony Hawk's American Wasteland or Gun, who had time for a psychological horror game?

That juxtaposition between Condemned: Criminal Origins and the rest of the launch lineup was perfectly clear in the music of the title screen. Half Se7en, half Shutter Island, you play as detective Ethan Thomas, who has to track down a serial killer to prove his innocence after his partner is murdered. Along the way, you're attacked by rattled-up drug addicts and hallucinations of demons who strategically flee, hide behind corners, and fight back in the game's surprisingly effective first-person melee combat.

What made Condemned such a memorable horror experience was the feeling of being alone in the grittiest, most desolate parts of town, with intimate combat against people who hated you. You could hear them seething around corners, flanking you in the darkness, and that was all before the game throws demonic hallucinations at you. Sprinkle in a memorable final boss, a couple of solid jump-scares, one of the best uses of Xbox achievements in requiring you to forgo using guns, and a level set in a mall with walking mannequins that culminated in one of my favorite video game moments, and you've got a horror classic. Not bad for a launch-title. -- Nick Sherman

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | Steam

2014's Alien: Isolation was a bit of tough sell as a horror game. After spending many years as disposable cannon fodder in other Alien games, most notably in Aliens VS Predator and Aliens: Colonial Marines, the Xenomorph was elevated to boss status in Creative Assembly's survival horror FPS. Serving as a sequel to the original film, it moved away from the shooting galleries and action-horror from previous games, and honed its focus on dread, anxiety, and fearing the lone alien creature that stalks the halls of Sevastopol Station.

As a deep admirer of the original Alien, more so than the sequel Aliens, I longed for the day where we could get a game more influenced by the first film--with its quiet moments of dread and low-fi sci-fi aesthetic in full swing. What I appreciated most about Alien: Isolation was that it not only respected the original film, but it also fully understood what it made it so scary. As you're desperately scavenging for supplies throughout the corridors, those brief moments of calm would almost inevitably lead to situations where you'll come face to face with the Alien, who is all-powerful and cunning in its approach to slay any human that comes across its path.

For more of my thoughts on Alien Isolation, check out my retrospective feature discussing why the game is still an unmatched horror experience. -- Alessandro Fillari

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | eShop | Steam

Don't judge a visual novel by its cover. Doki Doki Literature Club looks like a simple anime-inspired visual novel packed with tropes; you have a love triangle (or quadrilateral?), the tsundere, the shy one, and the childhood friend as a potential love interest all thrown into a high school club. While the free-to-play game is front-loaded with your typical story progression, it's expected that you make it past a certain point where things really pick up.

Take note of the content warning presented upfront, as Doki Doki Literature Club uses sensitive subjects and graphic visuals throughout its narrative. It'll subvert expectations in clever and terrifying ways that can be either subtle and in-your-face. Since this is a PC game, it has the unique ability to be meta; breaking the fourth wall is used to great effect and a few secrets get tucked away within the game's text files. There are a few moments that allow the player to impact progression, such as dialogue options or choosing which of the club members to interact with at certain moments. But that's all in service of building you up for when the game reveals its true nature. Even the wonderfully catchy soundtrack gets twisted to create an unsettling atmosphere.

It's hard to communicate exactly why Doki Doki Literature Club is one of the most horrifying games because it relies heavily on specific story beats and meta-narrative events, and we wouldn't want to spoil the things that make it so special. You'll just have to experience it for yourself. -- Michael Higham

When Resident Evil first hit the Playstation back in 1996, it revolutionized video game horror and created a new sub-genre in the process--survival horror. Its GameCube remake in 2002--and subsequent remaster for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC--utilized improved graphics and lighting to greatly enhance the haunting atmosphere of the first game.

You have the option to play as one of two STARS members (elite police officers), who have come to a mansion investigating a number of strange murders. Unbeknownst to them, this mansion is home to a number of illegal experiments operated by the Umbrella Corporation, leading to zombified humans and creatures attacking the STARS.

The entire game takes place from fixed camera angles, and you never know what's on the other side of the door, or around each corner, meaning you're just moments away from walking into a scare. You're given limited ammo and even a limited number of opportunities to save your progress, and this formula works perfectly in tandem with the foreboding atmosphere.

In one particular moment, I hadn't saved in hours and was running through a room I'd revisited multiple times in the past with 0 health left--when suddenly zombie dogs decided to jump through the windows scaring the crap out of me. A room I thought was safe had betrayed me at the worst time. This moment alone is easily one of the most impactful scares I've ever had playing a game and cements Resident Evil as a mastercraft in horror video games. It's available as part of the Resident Evil Origins Collection, which also gets you Resident Evil 0. -- Dave Klein

See on digital stores: Xbox Store | PlayStation Store | eShop | Steam

Eternal Darkness took the concept of survival horror--already well-established by games like Resident Evil, Clock Tower, and Silent Hill--and added a brand new element designed exclusively to screw with the player: the sanity meter.

Alexandra Roivas returns to her family's estate after discovering her grandfather has been murdered. The police have found nothing, so she decides to look for herself, and finds a secret room with a book the Tome of Eternal Darkness. The game then takes place in multiple timelines and locations, with players choosing who they want to follow as characters battle with, or are corrupted by, ancient artifacts and the Eternal Darkness.

This allows the game to utilize a vast array of settings for its horrors, as well as having every character affected by a sanity meter, which slowly drains if players are spotted by enemies. Sanity effects range from statue heads following you, to weird noises and strange camera angles. In one particular instance, I went to save my game, only to find the game telling me it was deleting my save. I jumped off of my couch, ran over to my GameCube to turn off the game, only to realize the game was screwing with me, and my save wasn't being deleted. You win that round, Eternal Darkness you win that round. -- Dave Klein

In the years since the release of the first game, the Five Nights At Freddy's series has gone from popular YouTube Let's Play game to massive phenomenon. As gaming's Friday The 13th, the horror series manages to get another sequel, even when people are just experiencing the previous game. While the franchise has spiraled out in a big way, the original game still manages to turn a mundane job into nerve-wracking nightmare scenario. As the late-night security guard for Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, your job is to make sure no one breaks into the place, and to ensure that the walking animatronic puppets don't murder anyone--namely you. That second part is important.

With no means of self-defense, your only hope is to survive until early morning by blocking doors and obstructing the paths of the roaming animatronics puppets, who desperately seek any humans after hours. My expectations for the game were low, mostly due to how played-out it seemed in the months after its release. However, once I got to play it for myself, I was surprised at how quickly it ramped up in intensity, despite its ridiculous premise.

Even though it manages to revel in jump-scares, almost comically so, the tension and moments leading up to those genuinely chilling encounters make for some rather memorable frights. Just when you think you're safe and only minutes away from sunrise, Freddy Fazbear waltzes into your safe room and gets the jump on you. I'll never forget the moment that this game, which I grossly underestimated, got the best of me.-- Alessandro Fillari

See on Nintendo eShop

Editor's note: This article is the updated version of a story first published on October 30, 2018.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Read the original here:

The 23 Best Horror Games To Play On Halloween 2020 - GameSpot

I cant wait to find out what I was doing in New York in the era that preceded this pandemic. To discover exactly what New York was like at a time in which I was its resident, to flit vicariously through those magical years of my prior first-person experience; to be given a context, provided a backdrop, a soundtrack to the life that Ill find out I had been leading. What zeitgeist will I soon be told defined my generation? What image will be chosen as the cover for my memoir?

When Bob Dylan sang that he was going back to New York City, I intended to go back there with him.

And while its true that memoir will largely have been ghostwritten, that shouldnt make it any less an evocative entry into the canon of Urban Non-Fiction. Think Patti Smiths Just Kids, but replace punk rock with to-be-determined transgressive art movement to which Ill eventually be claiming a retroactive affiliation.

Just as the coronavirus outbreak is reshaping New York Citys future, so too it will reach backward to largely redefine its past a past Ill be thrilled to have been a part of.

Im willing to wager that the pre-quarantine city will turn out to have been someplace essential and, as someone who lived there and moved about freely, Im excited to get to know why. Why that New York City was the real New York City, and why Im sorry to tell you: You missed it.

Which probably requires something in the way of explanation.

For as many years as Ive lived in New York, Ive been plagued by the nagging notion that I arrived in the city too late. A persistent insecurity that the city Id moved to for was not the city that Id moved to. The former being, in all fairness, not really a city at all more an anachronistic amalgamation of selected media imagery, a Scorsese-fied version of a gritty urban landscape that was one part Joseph Mitchell, two parts David Byrne and three parts dependent on whatever drugs Lou Reed was doing at the time.

But imagined or not, it was a city that struck me as vital, a sprawling concrete majesty of unimpeachable artists and impossible con-men, of graffiti-tagged subways and smoke-filled back rooms, of indescribable wealth tinged with a seductive seediness that seemed to reek of the human condition. It was the city of CBGBs and the Lower East Side, of chronic rolling blackouts ending dog-day afternoons. It was Phillip Roth and Debbie Harry and Allen Ginsberg in the Village, it was Harlem, it was Warhol, it was Katzs Jewish Deli. It was a place, it seemed, where life could be easy if one accepted that life would be hard, a place where a precocious philosophy minor could aspire to something authentic.

It was a city whose past I mythologized into a photo collage of my future, a place where my technical lack of career wouldnt mean Id have nothing to do. I would drink at the bar of the White Horse Tavern and Id buy Dylan Thomas a whiskey. I would eat lunch suspended on a wrought-iron beam hanging thousands of feet above Midtown. I would steal a guitar and Id dye my hair black and theyd christen me Timmy Ramone. When Bob Dylan sang that he was going back to New York City, I intended to go back there with him.

But by the time that I got there, that New York City was gone.

At least thats what everyone kept telling me. Which didnt feel, at least to me, an assertion necessarily borne out by the facts.

On the contrary: my formative years spent in New York City years in which I was lucky enough to not pay utilities due to my apartments steadfast inability to comply with the stickier standards of human habitability felt flush with the possibilities that Id always imagined of a life in the city. The buildings were as big, the subways were as crowded I met an old man at a day-drinking-dive-bar who claimed that hed known Dylan Thomas. I was young, I was poor, and I was living under a brothel. Replace long-form improvised poetry with short-form improv comedy and I was basically living Just Kids.

At least, I thought I was.

Yet at every turn I took I was met with the refrain that the New York that I had dreamed about was dead. Regardless of the source, the message was clear: New York used to be something and now it just wasnt. It was seemingly accepted as an a priori truth that old New York had been subsumed by something different, something corporate, something vacuous a playground for the rich, as one pejorative-du-jour put it.

There were thousands of essays titled Why Im Leaving New York. Could all of them really be wrong?

The metaphors were as varied as the speakers who espoused them. Some focused-in on the Disney-fication of Times Square, once a bustling porn emporium, now a whitewashed tourist Mecca (although that veneer would occasionally be shattered by a shoddily-costumed, ubiquitous army of Elmos). Others lamented the Giuliani-imposed exile of the Midtown squeegee men, a ragtag group of guerilla extortionists expert in the provision of both non-consensual windshield washings and expletive-laden demands for recompense. For those with a penchant for heavy-handed symbolism, CBGBs had been acquired by a high-end mens clothier, one specializing in the punk-rock aesthetic. The specifics would differ but the consensus was clear: Somewhere along the way, New York City had lost its soul a consensus that I rejected outright, yet one that somehow managed to take root.

Despite my best efforts to dismiss those assertions as the sour-grape-grumblings of a dying generation, try as I might to dispel any notion that the citys best days were behind it, each successive year that I spent in New York made me wonder if those pronouncements held true. Had the heart of New York City been priced out of its apartment? Was its culture now co-opted by some faceless corporate interest?

There were thousands of essays titled Why Im Leaving New York. Could all of them really be wrong? And what, after all, could I offer as evidence to the contrary? I loved New York City and it never disappointed, but could I also say it met my expectations?

My expectation being that the city would look like something out of a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective, the reality, as I found it, was that New Yorkers spent a vastly disproportionate amount of time commuting to work and just buying groceries than they did lounging on fire-escapes while staring blankly into a camera and smoking in black and white. Where was the action, what was the scene, when would short form improv penetrate the broader culture? Did I need to acknowledge that the naysayers were right? Could it be that New York City was dead?

The answer, it turns out, was Nope. Quite the opposite, in fact. It turns out that the New York that I was living in had never been more vital. And I would soon learn why.

At the time of this writing, New York is in what appears to be an early-stage recovery from the crux of its viral pandemic. And while it remains to be seen just what city will emerge in the wake of this transformative crisis, what is certain is that it will be different. Which means it will be almost certainly better. Which will make it most assuredly worse. Which probably requires something in the way of explanation.

The simple truth is that New York City has never been a real-time phenomenon. Its a narrative created in hindsight, a curated series of revisionist histories that contrast the truth of the present. And it is in that contrast that those histories are defined, what it is versus what was. The citys future is often a construct of chance and its present is out on display. But its past is whatever we want it to be and thus so are our pasts within it.

The story of New York has always been told through its artists, but its a story that tends to be written much later, in the liner notes of future generations

Were constantly recreating the lives that weve lived in response to the lives that were living and, as the years of our future become those of our past, those lives become, more and more, a blank canvas true, of course, regardless of location, but you dont write Just Kids in Montana.

The creation of a New York City existence is a unique and deliberate thing, at least for those of us susceptible to that particular mythology of the city that places outsized emphasis on squalor and artistic freedom. Its an exercise in the selective juxtaposition of what used to be with what is, and when what used to be has been replaced, its value sees an ex-post-facto spike. It is, in a sense, a specialized form of delusion, a specific nostalgia for those things that were bad, precisely because they werent good. (And quite literally so: the era of squeegee men and all-access porn is now referred to, wistfully and with reverence, as the Bad Old Days of New York, because a New York City that was bad is also one that was authentic and authenticity trumps progress.

Sure, its nice to have a Duane Reade on the corner of 125th and Lexington. But now where will Lou Reed go to buy heroin? And is it even really heroin if it comes home in an Uber? Duke Ellington used to ride a crowded subway uptown, because of that we now have Take the A Train. Bono decided that he could just call Via and now were stuck with Angel of Harlem.

The struggle of New York gives New York its essence. Essence is the opposite of easy. A New York City thats easy isnt really New York City, its just another place to charge your iPhone. Theres a reason, after all, why the lyric isnt: If I can make it here that success will be in no way indicative of any future achievement in larger markets A life in New York City is supposed to be hard thats how you know its a life!

And life was so much harder in New York before you got here and thats what made the city so much better.

This crisis has locked us in a clear moment in time a process that would otherwise take decades. We get to engage in our revisionist histories while those histories are still cooling in the window. A life in New York City is usually one years spent in the making. After all, if one is going to create a past out of a repudiation of the present, then one had better leave some breathing room between the two, enough time, at least, for the edges to have blurred, to make ones claims more difficult to fact-check.

To wit: it seems to be a point of pride among aging New York punk musicians that they never really learned to play their instruments, which, forty years later, in a Village Voice interview, sounds irreproachably recalcitrant and pure. But forty years earlier, down the street from your apartment, it likely sounded more like awful music. We pine for the days of the White Horse Tavern, with its tables full of Boho Literati. But back then those were simply alcoholics wearing watchmens caps, drinking cheap gin on a Tuesday. The picture needs to fade a bit before it looks vintage. Ones generation wont be defined for generations, or until a once-in-a-century viral pandemic hits the city. And then youve got a clear before and after. And it is in some middle ground between those two where we find ourselves today.

The only path forward out of this bind seems to be a dramatic restructure the times, as they say, are a changin. (Although if Bob Dylan were truly prophetic, his opening exhortation to come gather round people, wherever you roam would have concluded with but please maintain at least a six-foot distance) This virus is an agent of irrevocable change. It will leave behind a vastly different city. And while it is difficult to ascertain just what that city will be staring, as we are, through the lenses of glasses that are consistently fogged-up by mask-breath we do know that it will look different. If the history of New York can be predictive of its future, the city will look better. But only objectively so. And just like a New Yorker, in true New York fashion, Ill be longing for those things that were worse.

Things like the subway.

As it was recently announced, for the first time in its history, New York subways will stop running after midnight. Night service will be paused so that the train cars may be cleaned. If COVID wants a ride uptown, it can Uber-share with Bono. The result of the service stoppage will be a cleaner, safer subway. Yet it will leave us with a subway thats not in any way worth taking. The subway is a proxy for the city. And a subway that is dirty means a city that is honest. When you clean the grime, you wash away the soul. Cleanliness, as they say, is next to godliness but only when it comes out of a mold-laden squeegee thats been soaking in stale hot-dog-water run-off.

The subway is essential not in spite of the urine. Its the urine that reminds us that were living!

How can one say that theyre experiencing life if they arent forced to sit in its waste products? The trains should hold a mirror to the city that they service. Yes, the D train may be gross, but so then is humanity! When you sanitize the subway so you sterilize the city. Its the subway, after all, its not the Monorail through Epcot.

Of course, all of the preceding will thus be rendered moot if there is nowhere left to take the subway to, when anywhere that once was good is gone. Or, if not gone, then at a minimum not the same which, when said with a dismissive snort and pompous grin, might be New Yorks most withering indictment. After all, a restaurant that has been strategically restructured so as to not be conducive to the immediate spread of a highly communicable and potentially life-threatening illness is just a fancy way of saying Applebees. And I can go to Applebees in Jersey.

Dining out in New York used to be a communal endeavor in fact, that was largely the point: to share cocktails and ideas within coughing distance of your neighbor, to wink at posted Occupancy Limits as ironic urban kitsch, to Heimlich yourself into the edge of your table whenever anyone got up to use the bathroom. But we were just so immersed in the energy of the city! We were all having one conversation! is the narrative I imagine that well land on later. We were always within a transmissions distance of some artist, rogue, or poet just please dont ask us yet for the specifics.

Because, at the time of this writing, every New Yorker is still in the process of workshopping their chronologically-undebatable-enough-so-as-to-not-invite-further-scrutiny anecdote about the time they spilled a drink on some generationally-transformative-artist-who-back-then-was-not-yet-famous in the basement of whatever-formerly-crowded-dive-bar-is-now-a-socially-distant-Chicos. (Im thinking that mine will have something to do with LCD Soundsystem in Brooklyn. But these works, as I say, are in progress)

And, speaking of art!

The story of New York has always been told through its artists think Basquiat, Beastie Boys, Baldwin. But its a story that tends to be written much later, in the liner notes of future generations at least for those artists who have been extended the cachet of being underappreciated in their own time. At their height, the Velvet Underground did not sell many records. But now everybody claims they knew Lou Reed.

Which is why I am perhaps most excited to find out about the to-be-determined transgressive art movements to which I will surely lay claim, the representative ethos of my generation that could not have existed today. Fingers crossed that it has something to do with unscripted comedy. After all, if theres anything thats unlikely to return in the form in which it existed, its amateur performances in windowless basements next to crates of unthawing mozzarella sticks. Its only a matter of time before they get recontextualized as outsider art.

Whatever it turns out that New York used to be, Im just happy that I was there for it. It was a magical time in an incredible place and one that well never get back to. So enjoy your time in the city, kid, just know that its not what it was. Because that New York City was the real New York. And Im sorry to tell you: you missed it.

Please make arecurring or one-time contribution today. Its readers like you who ensure we continue publishing in these challenging times. Thank you!

Read the original here:

Things Are Different Today, Back In Old New York - The Indypendent

Dubbed by men in the music industry as too angry and man-hating, Helen Reddys 1971 feminist anthem I Am Woman rose to the top of the Billboard chart and became the sound of a movement. The story behind the song and the woman who wrote and performed ir is explored in the new biopic I Am Woman, starring Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Hotel Mumbai) in the titular role.

A struggling artist, Reddy left her native Australia for the heartbeat of the music industry in the United States and was unsurprisingly met with sexism. Her musical response to male executives controlling the narrative about women artists place in the industry dovetailed with the rise of the womens rights movement. The song became a number 1 hit and a cultural phenomenon and it made Reddy a star. She won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female in 1972.

Reddy went on to record other hits, including Angie Baby and Aint No Way to Treat a Lady, but nothing matched the influence of I Am Woman influence as part of the zeitgeist of the era.

The film, from director Unjoo Moon, costars Danielle Macdonald (Dumplin, Patti Cake$) and Evan Peters (American Horror Story).

Watch the trailer for I Am Woman below.

See original here:

Helen Reddy & Her '70s Feminist Anthem Roar in Trailer for I Am Woman - Advocate.com

The past two weeks have seen the resignations of two powerful Jewish female voices: former New York Times editor and columnist Bari Weiss, and former University of Southern California student government vice president Rose Ritch. Weiss and Ritch both cited outright hostility against their Jewish identities and solidarity with the State of Israel as the reasons for their decisions to step down from their positions.At first glance, both women appear to check all of the requisite boxes on the progressive checklist of suitable qualifications to hold such positions. Weiss cites her accomplishments of bringing in political dissidents, minority voices and other voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages, while Ritch cites her plurality of identities including queer, femme or cisgender as rendering her qualified as electable when the student body voted last February.Yet in her resignation letter excoriating the blatant hypocrisy she had experienced during her tenure at the Times, Weiss signals that the lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to democratic society have not been learned.Both Weiss and Ritch assert that it is their respective Jewish identities that have led to their verbal harassment and vilification in the physical and virtual space. Ritchs critics argue that her support for Israel has rendered her complicit in racism and by consequence guilty of espousing racist ideology. In her resignation letter, Ritch cites an aggressive social media campaign designed to impeach her Zionist ass, despite university claims to nurture an environment of mutual respect and tolerance.Similarly, in her letter of resignation, Weiss cites constant bullying by colleagues who disagreed with her views. They have called me a Nazi racist, chiding her about writing about the Jews again. In addition, several of her colleagues insisted that Weiss be rooted out if the company is to be a truly inclusive publication.As David Suissa, editor-in-chief of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, so keenly identifies in his recent article assessing Ritchs resignation, Arguably the worst insult in America today racist is being weaponized against Jews who have the nerve to support the existence of a Jewish state.The irony of this statement cannot be understated, and the inherent perils that the current climate of cancel culture presents cannot be ignored. In an environment where monuments are being torn down and, in the case of USC, buildings are being renamed in a campus-wide effort to right the wrongs of historic fascist and even Nazi affiliations, antisemitic rhetoric can no longer be given a pass.THE ATTACKS on Ritch are part of the broader corrosive influence of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that has permeated the mainstream of progressive consciousness. By suggesting that Ritchs support for a Jewish homeland would somehow render her unfit for office or justify her impeachment in effect resurrects the oldest of Dreyfus Affair level antisemitic tropes that call into question the primary loyalties of Jews who hold public office and holding Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. Political disagreements have always fueled the fabric of intellectual debate and especially on a college campus. Yet in Ritchs case, labeling her Zionism as racism effectively silenced her voice in the debate and rendered her fair game to be canceled under the guise of political correctness, which bends far toward the side of the anti-Israel narrative.What we are witnessing is a collective silencing of those who do not hold these toxic antisemitic views by those who do, ironically similar to the voices of moderate Islam squelched by the voices of extremism. Throughout modern history, intellectual curiosity and a sense of civic responsibility to repair what was broken in society were pursuits identified with both the college campus (think Berkeley of the 60) and the printing press (thing Enlightenment). Yet, what we are seeing on college campuses and in the press is a narrowing of the acceptable definition of woke consciousness, where membership is qualified by an asterisk that Jews need not apply.Our nation is at a crossroads with an upending of long-held beliefs, practices and even social institutions being questioned and redefined to fit the zeitgeist of the current political climate. We are not exempt from these vital conversations, nor should we shirk from necessary inward introspection as we strive to repair a world so broken by racism, elitism and discrimination. However, it is incumbent upon us to root out the misguided and misinformed ideology that has led to the resignation of these two powerful and important voices, and to decry all antisemitic rhetoric at every occurrence with a zero-tolerance policy. After all, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14)The writer is an associate director of the USC Casden Institute, and lecturer of Hebrew language at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Los Angeles.

Excerpt from:

Bari Weiss, Rose Ritch resign after harassed over their Jewish identities - The Jerusalem Post

In America today, personal gain and economic advantage often trump social responsibility and concern for the commonwealth. In America, it depends on who you are. And who you are, very much depends on where you stand socioeconomically. As Edward Burmila put it recently, you are only as free as you are wealthy. For proof, look at what has happened during the pandemic: the economic elite has gotten richer, and people of limited financial means have died disproportionately.

Yes, life is worth living (per Fulton J. Sheen), but life is worth losing, too (per George Carlin). Sheens Life is Worth Living was a popular, 1950s television program. Life is Worth Losing is Carlins 2005 comedy album. Seemingly disconnected public expressions tell a tale about America. Its a tale about how a minority group has gained control of American society. Its a tale of subversion, strategy, and persistence. Regaining the edgevital for democracycertainly wont be easy and probably wont happen soon even if Trump exits The White House.

Life is Worth Living featured a Roman Catholic priest, the Reverend Fulton J. Sheen. Featuring isnt the right word: Sheen was the show. Televised nationally from 1952-57, LWL drew as many as 30 million weekly viewers. With hypnotic gaze, riveting presence, and resplendent dress, Sheen used a chalkboard to etch his arguments. In the episode shown here, Sheen launches into a lecture about the right to own property and rails against excessive wealth, calling it Monopolistic Capitalism. Sheen asserts that those who enable the accumulation of wealth (that is, employees) should share equitably in owners profits. To make that happen, Sheen supports participatory management and co-ownership of industry. Speaking professorially through most of the program, Sheen becomes emotional at the end.

Sheens program aired during the McCarthy Yearsa time when fear-mongering and conspiracy theories were the coin of the realm, and critiques of American capitalism werent taken lightly. But Sheen, who was staunchly anti-communist, stood above the fray.

Ill bet that Sheen was a Democratic Socialist long before that term came into public use. At issue is what America might have become had it pursued Sheens line of thinking. It didnt.

As we reflect on what Sheen said nearly seven decades ago, we know his thoughts arent unfamiliar. Ill bet that Sheen was a Democratic Socialist long before that term came into public use. At issue is what America might have become had it pursued Sheens line of thinking. It didnt.

Enter Life is Worth Losing, a George Carlin comedy album recorded in late 2005 and co-presented as an HBO special. In one routine, Dumb Americans, Sheen explains why dumbness serves an important political purpose. He calls it The Reason (listen, 6:40ff). The owners of Americathe wealthyown you, Carlin proclaims. They dont want people capable of critical thinking. They dont want educated people. Why? Its against their interests. They dont want people sitting around the kitchen table talking about how badly theyre getting (F-bomb) by the system. They want people who are just smart enough to do their jobs, but not smart enough to question whats happening to them. (Dumb Americans had 11,682,000 views on YouTube as of August 8, 2020.)

Carlin believed Americas wealthy minority (and their compatriots) had taken control by subverting systems in their favorthings like pouring money into elections to support candidates wholl do their bidding, engaging in electoral subterfuge (e.g., gerrymandering, voter suppression), getting their people in executive posts across sectors, and dominating organizational boards, locally and nationally. Theyre also adept at taking advantage of Americans soft spotsgood at throwing bones (e.g., tax cuts), using scare tactics (e.g., others ideas are radical), blowing dog whistles (e.g., White America is in jeopardy), and diverting attention from matters they dont want in the spotlight (e.g., Trumps tweets).

Yes, its about money and the influence that comes with it, but its about much more than that. These folks have a game plan, an associated set of strategies and tactics, and momentum, too50-years worth.

A half-century ago, a man by the name of Lewis F. Powell (soon to be U.S. Supreme Court justice) was flummoxed by successes achieved by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. He was also perturbed that one of his own, namely Richard Nixon, had the audacity to establish the Environmental Protection Agency.

Powell believed firmly that social causes were dominating public and political attention, and he wanted to change that predilection. As counterstrategy, Powell proposed that the Conservative and business community embark on an organizing effort to serve commercial interests. In 1971, he wrote a 34-page treatise entitled, Attack on the Free Enterprise System (referred to generally as The Powell Report). In it, Powell wrote expressively and persuasively about how forces were conspiring against free enterprise. He submitted the report to the leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ending the missive with these words: The business and enterprise system are in deep trouble and the hour is late. (italics added)

Greenpeace has called the Memo a corporate blueprint to dominate democracy. It is that and more. Three things are apparent if you take the time to read Powells memo. First, Powell wrote in detail and across sectors about specific things that needed to be done. Second, if you reverse the timeframestarting with today and looking backyoull be amazed at how many of the things Powell referenced in general terms have become a reality (e.g., tax cuts, smaller government, Fox News, Citizens United, painting higher education as liberal). Third, Powell had clear sailing. While the Left has had episodic successes over the past half-century, it didnt (and doesnt) have a coherent, strategic, and sustained approach to achieving preferred objectives.

Without counterforce, the circumstances referenced by Sheen and Carlin have become deeply ingrained in Americas culture. Understanding just how deep is like peeling an onion: just when you think youve uncovered the revealing layer, another layer awaits. One example is systemic racism, a topic that is getting plenty of attention these days and for good reasons. But in her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, Isabel Wilkerson contends theres much more to the story. Sunil Khilnani describes it this way: Racism is only the visible manifestation of something deeper. Underlying and predating racism, and holding white supremacy in place, is a hidden system of social domination: a caste structure (italics added) that uses neutral human differences, skin color among them, as the basis for ranking human value.

Maintaining social divisions, then, becomes le passe-temps de choix (the pastime of choice). Too many Americans seek rewards that, by design, flow to the few. In an exchange transaction, affluent Americans give back to society. But as Anand Giridharadas writes in Winners Take All, a good share of that philanthropy isnt about changing the system so that more people can live The American Dream. Its about helping people cope with the system that exists (a caste system in Wilkersons parlance).

Long before Wilkerson and Giridharadas were writing, two other messengersone sacred (Sheen), the other profane (Carlin)delivered similar messages. Fulton J. Sheen framed it discerningly, Monopolistic Capitalism. George Carlin called it out. The system is rigged, and the tables are tilted.

The zeitgeist then is the zeitgeist today. Americans have tons of skin in the game. We rely on others wealth for jobs and promotions, in politics, at nonprofits, at universities, and more. When it comes to power, influence, and (in many ways) control, America as plutocracy trumps America as democracy.

What are the odds of that changing? Without a Progressive coup, theres no chance at all. Yes, there have been and will be episodic wins, but Americas moneyed interests dont worry about losing a battle here and there. What matters is winning the war. And they are.

Frank Fear

You can listen to this article on Anchor, Apple, and other podcast platforms. Tune to Under the Radar with Host Frank Fear.

The rest is here:

Sheen and Carlin Had 2020 (In)Sight - LA Progressive

Ryan Reynolds isnt just a beloved Canadian actor with a penchant for humour of the quick-wit and sarcastic variety, hes also been named one of Fast Companys Most Creative People in Business for 2020. The man can act and sell gin, it would seem (to the chagrin of Hugh Jackmans coffee company, we imagine).

But, all jokes aside, he also isnt afraid to participate in the tough conversations around racial equality that are (rightly) taking over the zeitgeist in 2020. A point which became abundantly clear when he sat down with Fast Company to talk about Deadpool, marketing, diversity and, notably, he and Blake Livelys regret over their plantation wedding.

For those who need a refresher, Reynolds and Lively tied the knot in 2012 at Boone Hall, an antebellum-era plantation in South Carolina, which describes itself as one of Americas oldest working plantations. Later, in 2018, Reynolds came under fire on Twitter after praising the movie, Black Panther. The post, which quickly went viral, had fans pointing out the actors perceived hypocrisy, as well as a lack of judgement exercised in the selection of their wedding venue.

Speaking with Fast Company, Reynolds addressed the controversy head on. Its something well always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for. Its impossible to reconcile, he said. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy.

Reynolds continued on to explain that, years later, he and Lively got married again at home, but it didnt excuse or dismiss their past complicity. Shame works in weird ways. A giant fking mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesnt mean you wont f up again. But re-patterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesnt end.

Reynolds and Lively have been vocal throughout the Black Lives Matter movement, each taking to their respective social media platforms to support the cause. Theyve also acknowledged the shame they feel for, in the past, allowing themselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is.

Last year, the couple each donated $1 million to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Young Center for Immigrant Childrens Rights. In late May, Reynolds and Lively contributed once again, this time donating another $200,0000 to the Defense Fund.

In the interview, Reynolds also spoke candidly about the need for diversity in Hollywood, explaining that representation and diversity need to be completely immersive. Continuing on he noted, It needs to be embedded at the root of storytelling, and thats in both marketing and Hollywood. When you add perspective and insight that isnt your own, you grow. And you grow your company, too.

This inspired the Deadpool actor to create the Group Effort Initiative, which aims to bring people of colour and other marginalized or otherwise underrepresented groups to work alongside experienced professionals on his next movie. In a video shared to social media, Reynolds explained that the film industry has systematically excluded Black, Indigenous, people of colour, and a whole host of other marginalized communities for far too long.

Reynoldss next film, a sci-fi comedy titled Free Guy is set to release in December. In the movie, the actor will star as a minor video-game character who starts to think for himself a role which Reynolds insists shows vulnerability you dont often see from big screen heroes.

Read the original:

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively 'deeply regret' their plantation wedding - The Loop