Daily Archives: May 7, 2022

There is No God by Vladimir Menshchikov, 1975. Color lithograph. Museum of Russian Icons collection

By Kristin Nord

CLINTON, MASS. President Vladimir Putin has been feeding his people a steady diet of misinformation on the Ukraine war. What he has portrayed as a righteous attempt to reclaim the borders of Russias historic past belies the virulent attacks on Ukraine civilians and their cherished cultural institutions. And this recent wave of Russian aggression is eerily reminiscent of the assault on the religious faithful that followed the Bolshevik Revolution.

Images of Atheism: The Soviet Assault on Religion at the Museum of Russian Icons returns us to that pivotal time for an overview of the visual propaganda that was intrinsic to the Communist Partys seven-decade war against religion (circa 1920-1990). In this exhibition, which will be on view through October 2, visitors encounter the propaganda that was plastered as posters on the walls of clubs, schools, army barracks and factories and disseminated in journals throughout much of the Twentieth Century.

Soviet leaders believed that the Russian religiosity needed to be eradicated if they were to fulfill their radical and utopian promises that humanity could master the world, and that injustice and evil could be overcome in this life rather than in the next. But declaring atheism as the state religion was very much about power as well and propagandists were called upon to play crucial roles. Soviet leaders embarked upon a full-blown assault on religion, and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular, with a vehemence not seen since the days of the Roman Empire, historian Richard Pipes writes, in Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.

Where Will a Leader Like This Take You? by Dmitri Moor (1883-1946), circa 1926. Color lithograph poster, 14 by 21 inches. Saint Louis University Special Collections.

Curator Dr Wendy Salmond, an art history professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., draws upon rare collections of posters and other print materials from rare collections housed at St Louis University and Rochesters Memorial Art Gallery. It is deeply disturbing, she added recently, to see so many of the same tactics in full force in 2022 as the war on Ukraine unfolds.

Bolsheviks realized quickly that newspapers and pamphlets could carry their message only so far. And so, they established a propaganda machine with its own visual iconography to attack all religions and the faithful and to trumpet the arrival of a prosperous new order. In blasphemous and often racist and antisemitic narratives, the states graphic artists attacked the faithful, and portrayed all religions as bastions of ignorance and superstition.

A cadre of Soviet graphic artists led the charge in the leading journal, Atheist at the Workbench, with Dmitrii Moor, the prominent Soviet caricaturist, (1923-1941) producing some of the publications most memorable works. Moor employed familiar religious motifs and subverted the visual vocabulary of traditional icon painting to create critical images that were accessible to a semi-literate readership. At the height of its popularity, the journal had an annual circulation of 70,000 in the Soviet Union and was distributed with translated text abroad.

The letter from The Anti-Religious Alphabet, Blacksmith, Beat the Bells into Ballbearings by Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykh, 1932. Color lithograph. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; Marion Stratton Gould Fund.

During the first five years of Soviet power, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were executed; by the late 1920s, the anti-religious struggle was as important as the class struggle, and the mass demolition of churches was underway.

According to Russia Beyond, a contemporary publication that noted at press time that its website and social media accounts are under threat of being restricted or banned, due to the current circumstances:

Ancient churches were demolished without hesitation if they interfered with the construction of hydroelectric power plants, driveways or road extensions. Many churches were simply closed and used for the needs of the new Soviet regime: anything from grain storage to a factory could be in a church, while monasteries were often turned into prisons. As if to mock Christianity, the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism was opened in the Kazansky Cathedral in St Petersburg. By the time of the collapse of the USSR in 1991, only 7,000 of the 54,000 pre-revolutionary churches remained.

The letter from The Anti-Religious Alphabet, Substitute Science for the Sorcerers Spells by Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykh, 1932. Color lithograph. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; Marion Stratton Gould Fund.

Amy Consalvo, the museums director of Interpretation, said visitors even today may be taken aback by the content of these posters, which can be comical on a superficial level, but biting and disturbing the more one deconstructs the imagery and translates the Russian text. In one propagandists narrative, emaciated peasants are delivering their harvested goods to a corpulent Russian Orthodox priest as locusts ravage their fields. In Christ is Risen, Christianity looms as the ultimate vehicle of oppression, with Christ ascending into heaven while a Daddy Warbucks-like capitalist stomps on oppressed workers. There are sneering capitalists in top hats and monocles, one of whom is depicted as he sprays fermented alcohol (i.e., the opiate of the people) from a canister labeled religion. And there is a rare copy of The Anti-religious Alphabet, with its depictions of apple cheeked children liberated from shackles of traditional faiths. Yet despite the purge of clergy and the seizure and destruction or conversion of church properties, these relentless assaults had little success in eradicating observance and daily practice. Religion remained a powerful force in Russia both during the Imperial regime and in the Soviet Union.

For them, culture meant religion religious belief, but especially religious rituals and festivals: baptism, circumcision, confirmation, confession, burial, Christmas and Easter, Passover and Yom Kippur and Ramadan, Pipes writes, in Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.

Their lives revolved around the ceremonies of the religious calendar, because these not only glorified their hard and humdrum existences but gave the humblest of them a sense of dignity in the eyes of God, for whom all people are equal, he adds.

Christ is Risen! by Dmitri Moor (1883-1946), circa 1926. Color lithograph poster, 28 by 42 inches. Saint Louis University Special Collections.

With sung liturgy, a distinctive use of octavist singers in its choral music, incense, candles and gilded icons, Russian Orthodox Church services were powerful and multisensory. Families were also unwilling to relinquish their cherished icon corners for godless ones.

And as the late journalist Christopher Hitchens noted in his book God is Not Great, Anti-religious propaganda in the Soviet Union was of the most banal materialist sort; a shrine to Lenin often had stained glass, while in the official museum of atheism there was testimony offered by a Russian astronaut, who had seen no god in space. This idiocy expressed at least as much contempt for the gullible yokels as any wonder-working icon. Soviet absolutists did not so much negate religion, he adds, as seek to replace it.

Over time, Roland Elliott Brown notes in Godless Utopia, Bolshevism became a new form of Tsarism, imbued with its own secular practices and rituals. Fascinatingly, it would be Stalin, who had once studied to become a Russian Orthodox priest, who understood that Russians would respond more positively if communist values were draped in religious garb whether it was the elevation of Lenin as a Christ figure, or the state parades in Red Square with the elements of feast day processions.

Autumn by Dmitri Moor (1883-1946), circa 1926. Color lithograph poster, 27 by 20 inches. Saint Louis University Special Collections.

As early as 2000, Putin also had begun to cloak his regime in a type of Orthodox nationalism, employing symbols from both the Imperial and Soviet eras to legitimize his position as absolute ruler in the eyes of the people. In photographs he is often shirtless and wearing a cross around his neck; he is always careful to document the Russian Orthodox Church patriarchs blessing when he wins an election. Much as Stalin used language and rituals to create the communist religion around Lenin, Putin has presented himself as a devout Christian, appealing to Russias growing spiritual population by attending Christmas and Easter services. State parades on Red Square trumpet Soviet power and authority, much as they appeal to the cultures desire for worship, for community and for visual experiences.

Two days before he launched a bloody invasion of Ukraine, Putin justified the special military action in Ukraine in religious terms. Ukraine was an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space, he said, reclaiming Ukraine for the restoration of a greater Russkiy mir, or Russian world.

With the war in Ukraine a daily presence in our lives, the exhibition has become timely in a way we could never have imagined when we first planned it, Salmond said. The atheist posters on display document a piece of Russian history were in danger of forgetting, but they also provide an opportunity to think about the workings of state-sponsored propaganda more broadly. The sheer scale of the Soviet campaign to eliminate religion will be explored in the conference on The Visual Culture of Iconoclasm and Atheism in June,' she added.

The Museum of Russian Icons is at 203 Union Street. For information, http://www.museumofrussianicons.org or 978-598-5000.

Excerpt from:
Images Of Atheism: The Soviet Assault On ReligionAntiques And The Arts Weekly - Antiques and the Arts Online

The Indian sub-continent is the birthplace of four major world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. And even in the mostly-Christian West, many identify India as a land steeped in religious meaning. Authors J. D. Salinger and Leo Tolstoy were moved by 19th-century Hindu mystic Swami Vivekananda and Vedanta philosophy, a tradition kept up by The Beatles, Steve Jobs, and scores of modern Western celebrities seeking spiritual enlightenment. Upon witnessing the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in July 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb, would later remark that the experience reminded him of a passage from Hindu scripture (the Bhagavad Gita, or Song of God), Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. At the Swiss facilities of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN), there stands a statue of the Hindu god Shiva performing the Tavama divine dance that, in physicist Fritjof Capras words, mirrors the pulsating process of creation and destruction observed among subatomic particles, and which forms the basis of all existence.

Amid such deep reverence of Indias spiritual and religious traditions, perhaps its not surprising that Indian treatments of materialismthe view that reality is shaped by purely physical processeshave gotten a lot less attention in the West. Yet Indias earliest materialist movement, Crvka, actually predates its 2,300-year-old Western counterpart, Epicureanism. According to one precept, While life remains, let a man live happily, let him feed on ghee even though he runs in debt / When once the body becomes ashes, how can it ever return again? (Or, in the original Sanskrit, yvaj jvet sukha jved a ktv ghta pibet / bhasmbhtasya dehasya punargamana kuta).

The Sarvadaranasagrahaa 14th-century compendium of philosophical systems, compiled by guru Madhvacharyabegins its treatment of Crvka Darana (Darana in Sanskrit means an insight, or a lens through which to glimpse reality) with that latter quotation. Ancient Indian knowledge systems had by then been divided into nine schools. There were six stika (orthodox) schools: Nyy, Vaieika, Skhya, Yoga, Mms, and Vednta, and three of the Nstika (heterodox) variety: Buddhism, Jainism, and Crvka. (There are references to the jvika and Ajna movements being counted as separate Nstika schools, but most of the literature in Indian philosophy relies on the nine-school typology as definitive).

Put in the most simple terms, an stika is a believer, and a Nstika is a non-believer. But in truth, the dichotomy is not that simple. While there are many opinions on how the difference between the two categories should be defined, the most popular formulation is that Nstikas did not accept the infallibility of the Vedas, Hinduisms oldest texts. (The 12th-century Indian grammarian Hemachandra went so far as to state that a Nstika is one who thinks that there is no virtue and no vice: nsti puya ppam iti matirasya nstika. But this is not a widely accepted view among ancient or current Indian philosophers.)

Dating the Crvka Darana is a difficult task. While we know Epicurus was born in 341 BC and died in 270 BC, the Crvka school of thought cant be traced to one person. Secondary references to the literature of Crvka (also known as Lokyata) begin appearing around 700 BC. But the primary sources, known as the Brhaspatya stras, have been lost except for the fragmentary quotations that appear in later textssuch as the third-century BC Arthashastra (which contains the first known usage of the word Crvka in connection to materialist philosophy) and the epic Sanskrit poems Mahbhrata and Rmyana.

In terms of leading philosophers, the first known proponent of Indian materialism was sixth-century BC thinker Ajita Kesakambali, though his primary writings, too, have not survived. Secondary references to his work suggest the Crvka Darana developed further during the period of about 600 to 400 BC. But it is difficult to trace the development of its precepts with precision because even later texts (such as the aforementioned Sarvadaranasagraha; the eighth-century Sarva-Siddhnta-Sagraha; the 11th-century Sanskrit allegorical drama Prabodhacandrodaya; and the Tattvopaplavasiha, a famous philosophical tome written in the ninth century by Jayari Bhaa) tend to reference Crvka by way of the rhetorical technique known as purva paksha (steelmanning). That is to say, the authors in question tend to endorse opposing schools of thought, and relate the Crvka view only insofar as is required to refute it.

In the Indian philosophical tradition, there are six pramas (means of knowledge): Pratyaka (perception), Anumna (inference), Upamna (comparison), Arthpatti (presumption by circumstance), Anupalabdi (inference by absence), and abda (reliance on the testimony of reliable experts and sacred texts). But the Crvkas considered only one prama to be valid: Pratyaka (perception). They considered perception to be of two kindsexternal and internal. External perception is a product of the five senses, while internal perception involves the mind. In the end, all knowledge is derived from the interplay between these two means of perception.

(The Crvka view on Anumna, or inference, is nuanced. As one scholar has put it, when the Crvkas denied the status of inference as an independent means of knowledge, they ipso facto did not reject all kinds of inference, but accepted only such inference as was found true in everyday practice [lkavyavahra]. Thus, in the Crvka conception, perception includes both what is sensually apprehended and inference based on such apprehension. Only such inferences as derived from the scripture, Veda and Smriti [Hindu texts], are not admitted.)

The Crvkas considered only matterthat which could be sensedto be real. They saw matter through the fourfold typology of earth, water, fire, and air, while rejecting the idea of ether because it could not be an object of perception. Consciousness, as per the Crvkas, is an epiphenomenon, i.e., a secondary phenomenon that emerges from the four elements coming together. They would say things like matter secretes mind as liver secretes bile. Eighth-century Hindu philosopher Adi Shankara described this materialist view, as regarding the soul, to present the body as characterized by the attributes signified in the expressions, I am stout, I am youthful, I am grown-up, I am old, etc. It is not something other than that. A sentient being does exist This bundle of elements is void of self, in it, there is no sentient being. Just as a set of wooden parts receives the name of carriage, so do we give to elements the name of fancied being.

The Crvkas completely deny the existence of the tman (soul), vara (god), heaven (svarga), or any form of Punarjanma (reincarnation) or transmigration of souls. The Sarvadaranasagraha shares verses such as: There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul in another world; When once the body becomes ashes, how can it even return again?; and If he who departs from the body goes to another world, how is it that he comes not back again, restless for love of his kindred? They also completely reject rituals performed by the Vedic priests.

Naturally, The Crvkas were portrayed by their opponents as hedonists who believed only in sensual pleasures. Shankara, for instance, lampooned the Crvka view from a Hindu perspective by describing it as teaching that the enjoyment of heaven lies in eating delicious food, keeping company of young women, using fine clothes, perfumes, garlands, sandal paste, etc. Even if one rejects this description, a neo-Crvka is faced with the problem of defending a movement that, for centuries, was defined principally through the writings of those who sought to reject its teachings.

At the same time, a neo-Crvka might see this historical moment as a time of opportunity; as the atheistic movement is generally dominated by precepts that have their roots in the Judeo-Christian West, and so is due for an injection of fresh perspectives. While there are cursory references to the East in Christopher Hitchenss influential 2007 book God is Not Great (in the chapter titled, There Is No Eastern Solution), and in Sam Harriss 2014 bestseller Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, the East and its knowledge traditions have generally been ignored by the many Western thinkers who push for a strictly materialistic understanding of the human world.

Indian materialists are very much in the countrys minority. But their days of being dismissed as outliers may be numbered. While religion is still an important badge of identity for most Indians, the Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism indicates that the number of non-religious people in India has been rising. And from 2001 to 2011, the number of people listed in the census category, Religion Not Stated went up from 700,000 to 2.9 million.

One problem here is that Western polling methods dont always map well onto Indian belief systems when it comes to religion. Last year, the Pew Research Center conducted a detailed survey titled Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation. Belief in God is nearly universal in India (97%), and roughly eight-in-ten Indians (79%) say they believe in God with absolute certainty, Pew reported. Majorities among all major religious groups believe in God. But consider the fact that only one percent of surveyed Jains said they do not believe in God. How does one interpret that statistic in light of the fact that, as a BBC summary put it, Jains do not believe that any form of god is necessary to keep the universe in existence, or that any form of god has any power over the universe. (Nor do Jains believe that the Earth was created by God, or that God set out the cosmic laws that govern the universe.) Which is to say that surveys such as this one tend to be built around the Western idea of knowledge systems divided cleanly between the Abrahamic view of a world created and lorded over by a particular kind of god, and an atheistic rejection of the very idea of god.

In some Eastern contexts, one can reject Gods relevance to humanity while still being nominally classified as a believer. One can also follow overlapping religious systems, such as can be seen in Japan, where about two-thirds of people participate in Shinto practices, and about two-thirds of people participate in Buddhist practices. Most Japanese, it turns out, practice both religions.

Even in the case of Hinduism, it isnt clear how many Indians who are given to ticking the Hindu box on surveys truly endorse stika (orthodox) Hindu beliefs. Rather, many may be Nstikas who are deferring to cultural or political trends, by which Indians are encouraged to sort themselves into faith communities as a matter of tribalism. In many cases, there is no real conflict between the self-asserted Hindu identity they describe to pollsters and their Nstika beliefs.

In coming years, Indian neo-Crvkas can be part of a trend toward political and intellectual reform, especially if the movements adherents recognize that their ideas are authentically Indian, and not derived from some modern book written in English. Just as our earliest faith traditions took form independently of Western influences, so, too, did the materialist tradition that emerged in opposition.

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Imagine Theres No Svarga: Rediscovering Crvka, Indias 2,700-Year-Old Atheistic Tradition - Quillette

by Massimo Introvigne.

Article 2 of 5. Read article 1.

Does Confucianism exist? The question is not pedantic, even if there are entire libraries of books including Confucianism in their title. Like other terms, Confucianism was originally a piece of chinoiserie, a word invented by Westerners that Chinese had never used. Actually, the process was twofold, and involved an ecumenical cooperation of sort between Catholics and Protestants.

First, Catholics invented the word Confucius. Before the 17th century, nobody had heard of Confucius, although everybody in China and some outside the country knew the name of an early Chinese sage called Kong. He was referred to in China with the honorific titles of Kongzi (Master Kong) and Fuzi (The Master). As Lionel M. Jensen has argued in Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), Kongfuzi, a word putting together Kongzi and Fuzi was very rare in written Chinese, but was used in the spoken language. Jesuit missionaries heard it, and Latinized it into Confucius.

Yet, Confucianism was rarely, if ever, used until Protestant missionaries started being interested in Confucius. It was the Scottish missionary James Legge (18151897) who perhaps created and certainly popularized the word Confucianism. Actually, Legge did much more. He became the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University, and a friend of German philologist Max Mller (18231900). When Mller published his monumental 50-volume collection Sacred Books of the East, four volumes on Confucianism, edited by Legge, were included. From then on, that Confucianism was one of the worlds great religions became a matter of course, and Confucian representatives, in fact officers of the Qing imperial court, were invited to the first Parliament of the Worlds Religions organized in Chicago in 1893.

This is not to say that Chinese resisted the use of Confucius and Confucianism. On the contrary, they embraced the terms quite enthusiastically, and ended up forgetting these words had been invented by Western Christians. Today, the cultural institutes and international propaganda outlets of the Peoples Republic of China are called Confucius Institutes, and Confucius and Confucianism pop up everywhere, including in speeches by Xi Jinping.

However, even official translations of Chinese documents translate with Confucianism two different Chinese expressions, Kongjiao (), the teachings [or religion] of Confucius and Rujia (), the Way of the Ru (we will try to define Ru later; and there is also Rujiao, the teachings [or religion] of the Ru). Kongjiao was introduced in the Chinese language in the 19th century to translate the Western word Confucianism. Although it is promoted today, as we will see in another article of this series, by those who would like to see Confucianism officially recognized as a religion, Rujia remains the most common expression.

The astute reader would have noticed that Confucius or Master Kong is nowhere to be seen in Rujia. This explains a curious incident reported by Tony Swain at the beginning of his book Confucianism in China. When visiting Qufu, in Shandong province, the hometown of Confucius and for this reason a popular tourist destination, Swain was given a bilingual tourist brochure. In the English version, it was explained that Confucius was taught Confucianism as a young man. It did not make sense, and nobody would say that Jesus Christ was taught Christianity (by whom?) at an early age. However, the word translated as Confucianism in the brochure was Rujia, not Kongjiao.

Was he alive, Confucius would probably abhor the world Kongjiao but would wholeheartedly agree that he was trained in Rujia by good masters. In fact, as far as we know, Confucius always insisted that he did not invent or create any new doctrine. In the previous article, I have mentioned Father Joseph Shih, the Jesuit scholar who introduced me to Confucius some fifty years ago. He started his courses by explaining that Western Enlightenment philosophers had turned Confucius into a subversive, whose aim was to get rid of the old Chinese religion. In fact, Confucius was a traditionalist. He believed that China, at his time in a deep cultural and political crisis, had once been great; it had forgotten its past greatness and badly needed to return to its ancient ways.

Confucius (551479 BCE, if we believe the traditional dates) lived under the Western Zhou dynasty (1050256 BCE), at a time of political crises and revolts, which led to the Warring States period (475221 BCE) a few years after the sages death. Confucius looked with nostalgia at the early Zhou years around 1000 BCE, when King Wu ruled assisted by his younger brother, the Duke of Zhou. The learned Duke is credited with having created the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven, according to which Heaven gives, and may withdraw, its mandate to rule to subsequent Chinese dynasties.

While the Duke had to fight those who wanted to restore the ousted Shang dynasty (16001046 BCE), Confucius believed that there was a lot to be praised among the Shang too, as well as among their predecessors, the Xia. The sage was a true believer in the mythical history of China, and was not bothered by theories by later scholars that many of the characters he referred to likely never existed.

The Xia, Shang, and early Zhou kingdoms had been great and prosperous, Confucius argued, because they promoted culture and morality and honored the sages. He came, in his own words, to transmit, not to innovate, and to restore the real or supposed wisdom prevailing at the times of the Duke of Zhou, which he believed dated back to much early ages. Here we encounter again Rujia, one of the terms translated today as Confucianism. Confucius wanted to restore the wisdom of the Ru, but who were the Ru? The term is often translated as scholars, but in fact indicated a class of scholars who had mastered certain texts referred as Classics and supposedly dating back to the early Zhou years if not before.

These were at the time of Confucius, or shortly thereafter, the Five Classics, i.e., the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Documents, the Book of Rites, the I Ching (Book of Changes, also used for divination), and the historical Spring and Autumn Annals. The Annals, a compilation of historical facts, cover a period until Confucius last years, and were allegedly added to the Classics by him, although they were probably written later and supplemented by commentaries, including the esoteric Gongyang, which became among certain scholars more important than the text itself. It is also said that Confucius added parts to the Book of Rites and appendixes to the I Ching. Later, many additional Classics were added, including the Analects, a collection of sayings by Confucius written after his death, probably in layers during the course of three or more centuries.

There are problems with Confucius similar to those Christians have with Jesus. There is evidence enough to persuade scholars that Confucius existed, but most of the biographical details about him were written down centuries after his death. What is probably accurate is that he was born in the state of Lu, in present-day Shandong province, in an aristocratic family that had lost its status and was regarded as semi-aristocratic only. He trained as a scholar and obtained administrative positions in his home state, including commissioner of police. Both hoping to spread his program of restoring the glory of the Ru and escaping political instability, he traveled around China. He did not have much success, though, and returned home to spend his last years in teaching a small number of selected disciples.

Confucius did not want to be called master or even sage, and he claimed he just wanted to teach the old Ru ways. At the same time, if we believe the Analects, he repeatedly said he was acting on behalf of Heaven (Tian). But what was Heaven for Confucius, exactly? We will address this question in the next article of the series.

The rest is here:
Confucianism: Atheism or Religion? 2. In Search of Confucius - Bitter Winter

In June 2021, Alita, a trans woman living in Saudi Arabia, saw a hashtag trending on Twitter that translated roughly to a space for hatred of religion. In a Twitter Spaces audio room days earlier, Alita, who asked Rest of World to use her screen name for her safety, had spoken frankly about atheism and her decision to leave Islam. A recording of the conversation started circulating on Twitter and the backlash was swift, resulting in the trending hashtag. In the days that followed, she received transphobic comments, death threats, and calls that she be arrested by Saudi authorities for what she had said. Apostasy abandoning your religion is punishable by death in the country, and atheists have been labeled terrorists by the government.

If it was up to them, the government would have arrested and prosecuted me by now. But thank goodness that my information is private and Im not known everywhere by my real identity. Thats why Im still safe, Alita told Rest of World in a private Twitter Spaces room. She requested to speak there, rather than on encrypted messaging apps, because she said its where she feels safest sharing her experiences.

Twitter Spaces, a live audio discussion feature, launched on the platform in November 2020, and has since become a venue for LGBTQIA users across the Gulf States and their diaspora to gather. Participants regularly host discussions about stigmatized topics such as sex education, gender identity, conversion therapy, suicide, atheism, and chosen families. Many take part anonymously, using alts, or second accounts with avatars as their display picture. Other speakers use voice distortion tools. Alita continues to be active in these spaces, despite the harassment shes experienced, and distorts any photos of her face she posts on Twitter so she cant be identified.

The announcement in late April that Tesla and PayPal founder Elon Musk is to buy Twitter for $44 billion has created concerns that the anonymity that people like Alita rely on could be under threat. In a series of posts on Twitter about his plans for the company, Musk has said he wants to authenticate all real humans as a way to address the problem of bots and abuse on the platform. It isnt yet clear how the company would achieve that, but even if it doesnt move to a policy more like Facebook, which requires users to register with their real names, collecting more data on users comes with risks. Musk has also said that he expects Twitter to comply with local laws in all of the countries it operates in, opening up the possibility that governments could demand to see user information, exposing people like Alita to criminal prosecution or harassment. That would be potentially devastating for free expression in places from Saudi Arabia to Myanmar to Colombia where Twitter has become an important space for activists, political opposition, and marginalized communities. Experts warned that any approach to authenticate users has to protect users who need anonymity.

Anonymity provides a sort of basic protection for individuals who are engaging in online space in authoritarian or repressive, or even socially difficult, situations, said David Kaye, a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the former U.N. special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Free speech includes anonymous speech. Do you plan to undermine anonymity and change the [rule of ]anonymous accounts that has been a signature feature of Twitter?

The user behind the Twitter account Burmese Beast, a Myanmar national living abroad, only joined the platform in February 2021, after the Myanmar military seized power in a coup. Although Facebook has long been the dominant social media in Myanmar, Burmese Beast joined a flood of new Twitter users from the country. I wanted to know what was going on and I wanted to join the millions of voices which were taking part in the revolution, Burmese Beast, who requested their gender and location not be revealed due to safety concerns, told Rest of World.

Shortly after joining Twitter, Burmese Beast began using the platform to raise funds, initially to support striking civil servants who had joined the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement, and later to support the armed revolution against the junta. With just under 3,900 followers, Burmese Beast estimates they have raised about $60,000 for the anti-coup movement, mostly by selling made-to-order portraits and illustrations; in March, they designed a pair of sneakers for the NBA basketball player and outspoken human rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom.

If they find out who I am, I think that would be devastating.

They have to carefully guard their identity. No one knows, not even my parents know what I do or who I am on Twitter, and I also deleted everything that could be traced back to me, they said.

The military junta has repeatedly arrested the family members and close contacts of dissidents in order to pressure them to turn themselves in for arrest. Not being able to remain anonymous would immediately have an impact on my safety, Burmese Beast said. Doing all of this fundraising work, even focusing on humanitarian aid, is considered a bad thing by the military, so if they find out who I am, I think that would be devastating.

The junta has used Facebook to hunt down anti-coup dissidents, and in recent months, arrested dozens of people after their personal details were shared over pro-military channels on Telegram, according to digital rights activists. The user behind the Burma Revolution Twitter account, a student in Myanmar, said that he prefers using Twitter than these applications, but still had doubts about his online security on the platform in part because he had to provide his phone number to create his account.

I dont feel very safe us[ing] Twitter, even now, he said. Nothing has happened to me yet, because I have been very careful while using Twitter. If Elon Musk really implemented verifying users identities, it would be much more dangerous.

Khin, a digital safety trainer and activist from Myanmar, who requested to be identified by a shortened version of her name for security reasons, said she was terrified by Musks statement that he sees free speech as being which matches the law, which demonstrates a lack of understanding of the legal environment in countries like Myanmar. If we look at Myanmar and other countries in our region People do not agree with the law. The law just exists to oppress the people, she said.

Ultimately, the impact of Musks desire to authenticate Twitters users will depend on exactly how it is implemented, and on what basis the decisions are made.

While Facebook has taken a real-name approach, and its algorithms flag users who appear to be using pseudonyms, other platforms allow users to have a pseudonym but require official documentation to verify their identity. Users would have to trust that Twitter would protect any information they might be asked to provide. What happens when governments seek that user data? All of those kinds of issues instantly create pressure on anonymity, whether that was [Musks] initial intention or not, Kaye, the former special rapporteur, said.

Kaye said that if Musk wants to deal with Twitters bot problem, he should focus on behavior, rather than identity. If you start to do it from the perspective of behavior, you get at spam, you get at bots, you get at the creation of accounts that are used for purposes of harassment and disinformation, without getting at whos the underlying person.

Activists and free speech advocates in several countries suggested that Musk needs a more nuanced understanding of what free speech is, and needs to be transparent about how authentication decisions will be made.

I think that in general [authentication] is a worrying change, above all, because of those who exercise these controls, [and] because we still do not know the barometers of objectivity of these processes or what are the criteria to verify an account, Alejandro Lanz, co-director of Colombian human rights nongovernmental organization Temblores, told Rest of World. So, I think that does give a lot of room for arbitrariness and for many accounts that do clandestine activism to be censored.

Its not like people disappear. People switch to other platforms. Are the platforms going to be safer or more unsafe for them?

Colombia also has a political protest movement that relies on anonymity for the safety of its members. The Escudos Azules or Blue Shields have staged several high-profile, and often controversial protests, including interrupting mass and dying the water fountain red outside of the headquarters of media giant Semana, accusing the company of failing to accurately cover violence against protesters in 2021. In March of this year, Semana claimed in an article to have access to a police report linking the Escudos Azules to the National Liberation Army or ELN, a communist guerrilla group that has been fighting the state since the 1960s a common tactic in Colombia to stigmatize protesters.

Members of Escudos Azules cover their faces to mask their identities and go by aliases. A member of the group who goes by the name Amok told Rest of World that the face coverings are to protect themselves and their families from persecution, but are also meant to symbolize that their struggle is bigger than the individuals who make up the group. They take the same approach on Twitter, not revealing their identities to their more than 21,000 Twitter followers.

Amok had both ideological and practical objections to the idea of authentication. Authenticating all accounts on Twitter would threaten the symbology of a collective and non-personalized struggle, he said. Being unmasked carries the threat of being located, threatened, profiled, stigmatized, and, as happens in Colombia murdered and disappeared for thinking differently, he added.

Amok said that if Twitters rules change, Escudos Azules would continue their struggle on other platforms.

Maybe well do better on TikTok, he said.

Forcing authentication on individuals, even with guarantees that their identity will be protected, is likely to undermine trust in the platform.

If I hosted a Twitter Space, out of a hundred, maybe two or three people are joining with their real identity, said Wajeeh Lion, who is openly gay and from Saudi Arabia, but now lives under political asylum in the United States. Lion hosts near-daily Twitter Spaces for other LGBTQIA Arabs. Theyre either going to go underground or look for other avenues to use social media.

LGBTQIA users in the Middle East have good reason to fear losing their anonymity. In October 2019, the gay social media personality Suhail al-Jameel was detained under a public decency law in Saudi Arabia for posting a picture of himself on Twitter shirtless and wearing swimming shorts. Al-Jameel was 23-years-old when he was arrested and is still in prison more than two years later, with a scheduled release in October 2022. Other Twitter users in the country have been jailed for posting support for LGBTQIA rights. Alita alleges her parents have used her transition as grounds for the criminal charge of filial disobedience and is now seeking to leave the country for fear of detention by Saudi authorities.

Other anonymous LGBTQIA users who spoke to Rest of World predict that communities in the Gulf would migrate to private Discord channels or Snapchat groups if their anonymity was threatened on Twitter.

Its not like people disappear. People switch to other platforms. Are the platforms going to be safer or more unsafe for them? Thats always the question, Afsaneh Rigot, a researcher at the freedom of expression nonprofit Article 19, who has studied how digital evidence is used to persecute LGBTQIA communities across the Middle East and North Africa, told Rest of World. Youre just reducing the number of spaces folks who are at risk have to be in community, to exist It just gets smaller and smaller for the comfort of the few.

The prospect of relocating to more discreet channels is daunting for those that have spent years building a platform on Twitter. Its very scary, said Lion, who has been hosting Spaces since 2020. Lion describes their Twitter community as a lifeline for queer people at risk. Lion fled Saudi Arabia to escape the threat of violence because of their sexuality, and in recent years has used Twitter to connect with LGBTQIA users in the Gulf who are also seeking asylum overseas directing them towards resources and contacts who can help them find safety.

A lot of people in the kingdom have used [Twitter] to escape the kingdom, or to tell the rest of the world about it, they said. I have told my story a million times and I know how empowering it is and how therapeutic it is. I really want to put that power in the hands of people that never have that opportunity.

Originally posted here:
Why Elon Musk's ambition to have Twitter authenticate all real humans will get people killed - Rest of World

Floyd Dells adolescence in Quincy inspired him to become an author. He became one of the most important American writers of the first half of the 20th century, a prolific novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and editor. He resided here from 1899 to 1903, between the ages of 12 and 16, a crucial period that shaped his life and provided the themes that would illuminate his work: socialism, atheism, and free-thinking.

Although he became a best-selling author and inductee into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, and his work made into four Hollywood movies and a hit Broadway play, Dell saw himself in Quincy and for the rest of his life as an iconoclast and rebel. After leaving Quincy, he lived as a bohemian artist, first in Davenport, Iowa, then Chicago, and finally New Yorks Greenwich Village, dovetailing into that avant-garde generation of the 1920s that shunned conformity but valued art and believed it could change the world.

Floyd James Dell was born on June 28, 1887, in Barry, the youngest of four children. His father, a Union Civil War veteran and staunch abolitionist, worked as a butcher in Barry. His mother, a former teacher, maintained the household until the depression of 1893 hurled the family into dire poverty. Dells three older siblings soon dropped out of high school and moved to Quincy looking for factory work. In 1899 Floyd and his parents followed. The family lived in a decrepit house on the citys south side and the Dell boy enrolled in Franklin School, at the time a junior high.

His parents doted on their youngest child and aspired for him to attend college and for the family to gain respectability. Katherine Dell encouraged her son to read and believed he could do better in the world than her older children. Dell did well in school but withdrew from his peers after a brief but life-changing encounter soon after arriving in Quincy.

A boy introduced himself to Dell by saying My father is a doctor. What is yours?

Ashamed of his familys poverty and his fathers lack of steady work, Dell became a recluse and spent most of his time at the Free Public Library, which he called a place of perfect equality. At the library, he read voraciously: poetry, travel, novels, and the revolutionary works of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, which had a profound influence on him.

At Franklin School, his study of Shakespeares play "The Merchant of Venice" sparked his passion for language, and he wrote his first poem: a plea for people like his brothers to stop drinking, which Dell supposed caused the countrys destitution. The study of grammar and parts of speech suddenly became fascinating: a writer needed these skills to hone his craft. Later, while reading Edgar Alan Poe in class, he began writing stories and founded a school literary society. Upon his ninth-grade graduation in 1901, he delivered a commencement oration.

Dells mother sent him to the Presbyterian Church and its Sunday School, believing this would bolster his chances of entering college. At his first service, a well-dressed youth from a prosperous family ridiculed a group of Civil War veterans from the Soldier Home who were in attendance, exclaiming within earshot, Look at the blue-bellies! Painfully aware that his own father had fought and shed blood in that war, Dell renounced churches and dismissed the Bible as a beautiful fable. His reading of the Koran and Mormon Bible furthered his disdain for organized religion, and he became an atheist for the rest of his life.

Having heard about Martin Luthers famous nailing of the Ninety-Five Theses on the Church door at Wittenberg, Germany, Dell contemplated posting a similar proclamation of atheism at Quincys Presbyterian Church. In his autobiography Homecoming, Dell wrote of his turbulent adolescence, made more perplexing by his study of Freud: What the Church, despite all its efforts to frighten us with hell fire, could not do for us in the way of taking our minds off the subject of girls eyes, lips and breasts, we did for ourselves by hating the Church. Later he became one of the first champions of feminism and womens rights.

Meanwhile his reading of Karl Marx moved Dell toward socialism. This political philosophy explained his familys plight as the result of a system that exploited workers and created a class of poor people, who were not, as many local citizens believed, shiftless and lazy. During the four summers he worked in Quincy factories to help support his family, he wrote several plays, one about Benedict Arnold and another about the abolitionist John Brown.

These first major works expressed his sympathies for rebels and outcasts like himself. He wrote in his autobiography: My life seemed now to have some meaning, to be whole. Atheism was a natural part of socialism. And I was an enemy of the established order, Church, and state both, and set out to destroy it.

One day he met William Morris, a Quincy street-sweeper, who like himself had converted to socialism. Morris invited the audacious youth and one of his few friends from Franklin School with similar views to attend a political meeting. Although they were only fifteen, the two joined Quincys socialist party during an era of profound economic hardship that had left many people across the country disillusioned with capitalism.

In his semi-autobiographical novel Moon-calf, Dell portrays Quincy as Vickley with a mixture of alienation and affection. He never quite scorned small-town America the way Sinclair Lewis did in his satiric work Main Street, a classic novel published the same week as Moon-calf. Like his older siblings, poverty forced Floyd Dell to drop out of high school. But he had fallen in love with literature in Quincy and formed the unswerving belief that art holds the power to kindle social reform. The Gem City endured as the bittersweet town that had rebuffed him, but where his literary career began and the themes he wrote about and lived first took flight.

Clayton, Douglas. Floyd Dell: The Life and Times of an American Rebel. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994, 3-

Creditable Work By a School Boy. Quincy Journal, June 15, 1901, 1.

Dell, Floyd. Homecoming: An Autobiography. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1933, 42-78.

Dell, Floyd. Moon-calf: A Novel. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1920.

Gertz, Deborah. Program Spotlights Berry Native Floyd Dell. Quincy Herald-Whig, Jan. 29, 1996, 3A.

Local and General News. Quincy Daily Journal, Nov. 5, 1900, 7.

Joseph Newkirk is a local writer and photographer whose work has been widely published as a contributor to literary magazines, as a correspondent for Catholic Times, and for the past 23 years as a writer for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. He is a member of the reorganized Quincy Bicycle Club and has logged more than 10,000 miles on bicycles in his life.

The Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County is preserving the Governor John Wood Mansion, the History Museum on the Square, the 1835 Log Cabin, the Livery, the Lincoln Gallery displays, and a collection of artifacts and documents that tell the story of who we are. This award-winning column is written by members of the Society. For more information visit hsqac.org or email info@hsqac.org.

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Floyd Dell's illustrious writing career started in Quincy - Herald-Whig