Category Archives: Government Oppression

It wasSunday, Sept. 1, 1963 four days after Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his clarion call for racial justice with his I Have a Dream speech to hundreds of thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial and to millions more watching on TV.

In Plaquemine, Louisiana just south and west of Baton Rouge 16-year-old Calvin Johnson shoehorned inside Plymouth Rock Baptist Church to hear James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and a close associate of Dr. King, give a passionate talk about the moral imperative of registering African Americans in the Deep South to vote.

Just two weeks earlier, Farmer had led a protest march through downtown Plaquemine, shadowed by city police. Police chief Dennis Songy claimed he had gotten assurances that the Negroes had promised not to sing, which became hollow justification for what would happen next: As the protesters defiantly intoned We Shall Overcome, police fired canisters of tear gas, scattering the marchers and triggering the arrest of Farmer and other leaders.

But on Sunday, Sept. 1, Farmer was out of jail, and the 200 people inside Plymouth Rock Baptist Church were still seething over the tear gas attack and the black-and-white images of government oppression.

On orders from Louisiana Gov. Jimmie Davis, police looking for Farmer and other youthful instigators decided enough was enough. In the dark of night, police fired a barrage of tear gas, and officers on horseback rode into the church with cattle prods to drive people outside. They then pelted the sanctuary with high-pressure hoses, breaking windows and overturning pews.

Johnson was a skinny teenager all of 6-foot-2 and 120 pounds but at least he had the benefit of agility. He leaped through a church window and then tried to outrace the horses to a fence at the edge of the property.

It was a barbed-wire fence, but I had to jump across it to keep from being run over by the horses, Johnson recalled. My left arm got caught on one of the barbs, and that gave me a slit. I still have the scar on my arm.

But what Johnson recalls even more vividly than his deep and elongated flesh wound and the stitches was the smell of tear gas.

Today, if I think about tear gas enough, I can smell it, Johnson said.

Police went door to door, looking for Farmer, who had found a hiding spot at a funeral home next to the church. In a contemporaneous journal, Farmer wrote that protesters had told him police were ramming down doors in the neighborhood looking for him, promising to lynch him on sight. Farmer wanted to hand himself over to end the terror but was talked out of it by neighbors, who said he wouldnt be alive in the morning.

The woman who owned the funeral home hatched an ingenious plan: She would send out two hearses in different directions, and Farmer could jump into a casket in the back of one hearse, with its curtains pulled tightly, and drive inconspicuously through the police cordon, with the other hearse serving as a decoy.

Later that month, Johnson, a senior leader at all-black Iberville High School, felt emboldened to rally his classmates to leave school and march peacefully to the school board office in downtown Plaquemine to push for the integration of public schools. This was nine years after the U.S. Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of Education decision made desegregation the law of the land, but that message had not yet infiltrated Louisiana.

We basically had just about the entire high school population of 400 or 500 kids, Johnson said. We did the traditional thing, walking two by two down the street. The march was stopped again by law enforcement, and they told everybody to get back to school. There were 26 of us who didnt, and we laid down on the ground and got arrested.

As a 16-year-old juvenile, Johnson was charged with inciting a riot. He went to courtin the spring of 1964, defended by famed New Orleans civil rights attorney Lolis Edward Elie, whose cool demeanor in the courtroom left a lasting impression.

Lolis became a pivotal point for me just in seeing this man practice law and dealing with this judge, who was not nice at all, Johnson said. The way Lolis carried himself, the way Lolis talked to me, that was a revelation.

Spurred to enter law school

Johnson eventually went on to Loyola University Law School and for years earned a living as a criminal defense attorney and also as a professor of criminal law at Loyola University. In 1990, on the advice of good friend and mentor Jack Nelson, he successfully ran for a criminal court judgeship in Orleans Parish.

For the son of a Donaldsonville lumber mill laborer, it was one more example of gold being tested by fire. Johnsons older brother William became a member of the school board in Glen Cove, New York, and his older sister Linda was president of Louisianas Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

My father preached to his children their obligation it was kind of a W.E.B. Du Bois concept that we were part of the Talented 10, the talented 10% and we had an obligation to others, Johnson said.

As Johnson created the first drug court alternative in New Orleans and used his gifts to serve others who are mentally disabled, the memory of his 1963 arrest gnawed at him. In 2008, just before Christmas, he penned an op-ed for The Times-Picayune in which he viewed his rich life from 35,000 feet. His daughter had asked him what he wanted for Christmas.

I had everything I ever wanted, Johnson wrote cars, clothes, houses, fine wine, good food.

However, there is something else I want, he continued. Its not stuff. Its something I have wanted for almost 45 years, which I have never received. I want it not just for me, but for all those similarly situated. Its not a costly thing to give. In fact, its free. I want an apology.

The gift he yearned for

Johnson said he wanted someone who was present on the day he was arrested and present during the other violent incidents that proliferated in our state to say they were sorry.

Former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu read Johnsons piece, and his daughter Madeleine went to his house to type up a letter to the editor to the Times-Picayune: Although I was not in Plaquemine, La., at the time, I was an adult who stood silent as that inequity and countless others were inflicted on him and other African Americans during the Jim Crow era. My gift is not much and words may seem wholly inadequate, but I apologize to him for my inaction.

Johnson also received a phone call from a white woman who grew up in Plaquemine.

She was a woman about my age, and as strange as this sounds, these activities went on and a lot of white people really didnt know they were going on, Johnson said.

When Madeleine Landrieu became dean of the Loyola Law School, she kept Johnsons 2008 op-ed displayed on her office credenza, always wondering if someday she might be in a position to deliver a more concrete response.

For the longest time I had it folded up in my desk drawer because it was such an inspiring thing, and then I decided to laminate it and put it on the credenza, Landrieu said.

Johnson was not interested in a pardon which would imply that he had done something wrong. As the law school worked on honoring Johnson for his service to budding attorneys and to the community, Landrieu knew it was time to approach Gov. John Bel Edwards.

What the governors office came up with was an amende honorable an ancient French action of reparation for an offense or injury done by making an open and usually humbling acknowledgment.

Landrieu had asked Johnson to show up for the Baccalaureate Mass on May 12, even though he was to be the commencement speaker and receive an honorary doctor of law degree the next evening at the graduation ceremonies. Johnson was wrestling internally whether to attend the Mass because his schedule was slammed he had to finish a professional development test in the parking lot of Holy Name of Jesus Church for his role as interim director of the local office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

My wife was harassing me with the idea that I had to show up for the Mass, Johnson said. I was really busy. The whole time I was thinking, Why am I actually here?

And then, after Communion, Landrieu walked into the sanctuary. Johnson noticed something in her hands. He had seen it before. It was the laminated copy of his 2008 plea for an apology.

And then, Landrieu turned to another document and read the words Johnson had been yearning to hear for nearly 60 years: An apology from the state by Gov. Edwards.

It was such an absolute, total surprise, Johnson said. I was just in tears.

It was one small acknowledgment of the razor-sharp barbs imposed on an innocent life.

It means something, Johnson said. It absolutely does.

pfinney@clarionherald.org

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The cherished gift of an apology, 60 years later - Clarion Herald

By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) Margaret Atwood has imagined apocalyptic disaster, Dystopian government and an author faking her own death. But until recently she had spared herself the nightmare of trying to burn one of her own books.

With a flamethrower, no less.

She failed, and that was the point.

On Monday night, timed for PEN Americas annual gala, Atwood and Penguin Random House announced that a one-off, unburnable edition of The Handmaids Tale would be auctioned through Sothebys New York. They launched the initiative with a brief video that shows Atwood attempting in vain to incinerate her classic novel about a totalitarian patriarchy, the Republic of Gilead. Proceeds will be donated to PEN, which advocates for free expression around the world.

In the category of things you never expected, this is one of them, she said in a telephone interview.

To see her classic novel about the dangers of oppression reborn in this innovative, unburnable edition is a timely reminder of whats at stake in the battle against censorship, Markus Dohle, CEO of Penguin Random House, said in a statement.

The fireproof narrative is a joint project among PEN, Atwood, Penguin Random House and two companies based in Toronto, where Atwood is a longtime resident: the Rethink creative agency and The Gas Company Inc., a graphic arts and bookbinding specialty studio.

Rethinks Robbie Percy said that he and fellow creative director Caroline Friesen came up with the idea. Late last year, they had heard about a Texas legislator who listed hundreds of works for potential banning from school libraries: Percy and Friesen wondered if it were possible to make a book protected from the most harrowing censorship. They soon agreed on The Handmaids Tale, which came out in the 1980s and has had renewed attention over the past few years, beginning with the political rise and unexpected presidency of Donald Trump and continuing with the current surge of book bannings.

We thought an unburnable copy of Handmaids Tale could serve as a symbol, he said.

Percy and Friesen spoke with Atwoods publishers in Canada and the U.S. both divisions of Penguin Random House and got in touch with the author. They then contacted Gaslight, which has worked on numerous commissioned texts, including some for PEN.

The Gas Companys principal owner, Doug Laxdal, told the AP that instead of paper, he and his colleagues used Cinefoil, a specially treated aluminum product. The 384-page text, which can be read like an ordinary novel, took more than two months to complete. The Gas Company needed days just to print out the manuscript; the Cinefoil sheets were so thin that some would fall through cracks in the printer and become damaged beyond repair. The manuscript was then sewed together by hand, using nickel copper wire.

The only way you could destroy that book is with a shredder, Laxdal says. Otherwise, it will last for a very long time.

Atwood told the AP that she was was immediately interested in the special edition, and in making the video. She was a teenager in the 1950s, when Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 was published, and holds vivid memories of the novels futuristic setting, in which books are reduced to ashes.

The Handmaids Tale has never been burned, as far as Atwood knows, but has often been subjected to bans or attempted bans. Atwood remembers a 2006 effort in one Texas high school district, when the superintendent called her book sexually explicit and offensive to Christians, that ended when students successfully fought back. In 2021, The Handmaids Tale was pulled by schools in Texas and Kansas.

The novel has sold millions of copies and its impact is not just through words, but images, amplified by the award-winning Hulu adaptation starring Elisabeth Moss. Advocates worldwide for womens rights have dressed in the puritanical caped robes Atwood devised for her story. Most recently, some women in handmaid outfits marched to protest the Supreme Courts expected overturning this year of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Its an unforgettable visual metaphor, Atwood said. Thats why people in the middle ages put coats of arms on their armor, and had recognizable flags. That way you can visualize them and know whos standing for what.

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Burn-proof edition of The Handmaids Tale up for auction - Boston Herald

Recent news has again shone a light on the violence and sexism that thrives inside the institutions of the capitalist state, with revelations about a government cover-up of domestic abuse by an MI5 agent. The whole system is rotten to the core.

A recent BBC investigation has revealed how an MI5 agent was able to use his position to abuse and terrorise his partner.

The agent, who can only be referred to as X, worked as an informant on right-wing extremist networks in the UK. He brazenly told his partner, referred to as Beth, that she could not report the abuse she was enduring, as the security services would protect him.

With the approval of the state, MI5 agents and spy cops are authorised to commit crimes in certain circumstances. But even this highly-questionable immunity and impunity clearly does not cover activities in their private life.

In practice, however, when Xs abuse did come to the attention of the police after he attacked his partner with a machete and then tried to cut her throat the establishment quickly closed ranks to shield one of their own.

In a despicable case of negligence in-and-of-itself, police officers at the time arrested X, but failed to take a full statement from Beth, or register her video recording of the machete attack.

The Crown Prosecution Service quickly dropped the case as a result, citing a lack of evidence, and X was freed.

A counter-terror investigation was launched after police officers discovered extremist material at the house. The BBCs investigation describes how X admired white supremacist mass murderers; had written about exploiting and killing women and Jewish people; and fantasised about eating childrens flesh.

The BBC also found that X had a history of violent abuse, which had come to the attention of the police after he similarly terrorised a partner in another country before moving to the UK.

That this readily-available information did not stop X from securing a job with MI5 indicates that the British security services either did not bother to check, or simply did not care.

In an act of flagrant interference, the material that had been seized by counter-terror police was then handed over to MI5. It was then concluded that no criminality could be identified.

While this conclusion was being drawn, X fled from the UK to work for security services in a different country. His traumatised ex-partner, meanwhile, was hospitalised after suffering a mental breakdown.

It comes as no surprise that the capitalist state would be nonchalant towards violent sexism or racism when selecting its agents. After all, sexism and racism are baked into the very foundations of the capitalist system a system built on oppression, violence, inequality, and exploitation.

Similarly, Wayne Couzens was known as the rapist among his fellow police officers before he went on to use his police powers to abduct, rape, and murder Sarah Everard.

Although the government has in words launched an inquiry to prevent such abuses of power from taking place again, its deeds lay bare its real interests and hypocrisy.

For example, far from providing justice for left-wing activists coerced by undercover police into relationships, the Tory government has cleared the way for the continuation of this scandalous practice with its spy cops bill.

Likewise, when the BBC tried to bring to light Xs abuse and the blind eye that MI5 turned to this the government took the public news broadcaster to court, in an attempt to block the story from surfacing at all.

What is clear is that it is not just a case of bad apples creating a stench in the apparatus of the capitalist state. The whole system is rotten.

The police and security services as vital organs of the state exist to defend the interests of the ruling class, not the safety or wellbeing of ordinary people.

Indeed, to serve this role, these armed bodies of men are handed a monopoly of violence, in order to protect the property and power of the capitalists.

But it doesnt stop at these institutions. After all, the BBC itself doesnt have the cleanest record when it comes to covering up abuses, having brushed the disgusting actions of Jimmy Saville under the rug for years.

Xs violent sexism, racism, and abuse is not an isolated case. Countless similar examples will no doubt continue to surface in the future. And these cannot and will not be solved on a case-by-case basis.

Even the best-intentioned calls for inquiries and investigations into institutional sexism, racism, and corruption in the pillars of the capitalist state will not find a resolution.

These decrepit institutions just like the capitalist system they protect cannot be patched up or reformed. They are rotten and reactionary to their core.

Only the socialist transformation of society can do away with capitalism and its tools of repression, along with the violence and oppression that thrives inside of them.

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Violence and sexism in the state: Establishment closes ranks to protect their own - Socialist Appeal

Since the 2000, the institutionalization of government-led womens policies was rapidly promoted. In 2001, the Ministry of Gender Equality was started by agreement among the ruling and opposition parties. Ministry of Gender Equality changed its name to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in 2010. Moon Jae-in, who became president in 2017, declared that "I will be a feminist president" and made promises such as elimination of gender discrimination in employment and eradication of gender violence. After inauguration, Moon Jae-in enlarged organization and budget of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. As a result, progresses such as gender equality act and legislation on violence against women were seen.

On the other hand, problems of women such as low-wage female workforce became more serious. A few women tried to break the deadlock. But most women were stuck in poverty, discrimination and oppression. "Family-head (hoju) system", a symbol of patriarchy, was abolished in 2005. But it did not change the South Korean society, which had been built around patriarchy power. Liberation of all women will be impossible without the strategies to transform the underlying structure to overcome social or economic inequality. This article outlines the history of feminist movements and the current situation in South Korea to consider the possibility of feminist movements for social transformation as an alternative.

The early feminist movement in South Korea remained primarily within the university faculty since the establishment of womens studies in 1977 at Ewha Womans University. And other feminist movements were also limited to some feminist claims and struggles. For many years, feminism had not been common for Korean women. And feminism was generalized among women by the murder of a woman which occurred near Gangnam Station in Seoul in May 2016. As a result of this incident, Korean women began to speak out one after another, and it became a big social movement. From 2015, a year before that, there were signs of a growing awareness of feminism. "Misogyny" was spreading online due to fake news that the first infected person by Mers was a woman in her twenties who returned from overseas. And in the same year, radical feminist launched an internet community site called "Megalia". Korean women expressed "Megalia" by combining "MERS" and "Egalia" based on Norwegian feminist literature classic "Egalias Daughters". In Megalia, the words that men despised women were also applied to men as they are as a counterattack against misogyny. However, some excessive mirroring not only insulted men excessively but also ridiculed unrelated sexual minorities, which became a social problem in South Korea. After all, the site was closed in 2017.

However, people who used Megalia had developed feminism peculiar to South Korea in various ways, such as the opening and operating of a radical feminism site called "Womad". Since then, womens anger and struggles led to quantitative rather than qualitative growth of feminism in South Korea. In 2018, more than 70,000 women, the largest number for a single womens agenda, gathered at Gwanghwamun Square to protest against the polices partial investigation of illegal filming and photography. From around 2018, the tal-corset movement began to spread in the South Korean society. Those who were angry at violence against women had embarked on aggressive actions to eradicate misogyny. A series of activities were different from the forces of the existing womens movements. It was an explosion of the cumulative victims experiences of individual Korean women who were unfairly treated in the society. After that, the womens movements to have the same rights and status as men continued in South Korea. In addition, #MeToo movement that accused harassment worldwide made the movements more active[1]. But on the other hand, the future vision of the movements was not in the prospect of social transformation. Therefore, the movements did not develop beyond the struggles against patriarchal order by individuals.

Since the year 2000, government-led womens policies have been institutionalized rapidly in South Korea. But the results of the policies were further deterioration of the living environments of most women such as low-wage and unstable working conditions and double duty imposed on women as wage and domestic workers. The inauguration of Park Geun-hye in 2013 as the first female president in East Asia symbolizes the disparity between women. Government-led policies have only fostered the advancement of a small percentage of elite women in the public sphere. Park Geun-hyes reactionary neoliberalism with a populist and feminist face enforced repression of the majority of women. And the repression is deeply rooted in the South Korean society in almost all fields such as politics, economy, and culture. At least there was no commonality between former Korean Air Vice President Cho Hyun-ah and the Korean Air female crew members (or Filipino housekeeper illegally hired by Cho Hyun-ah) in the nut-rage incident, also referred to as nutgate which occurred a year after Park Geun-hyes inauguration[2]. It was clear that there were large class differences instead of common elements between the woman who exploited and the women who was exploited. At that time, many South Koreas feminists could not explain differences among women, differences in class, and problems of domination and power among women. "Merit system" and "result-oriented pay system" with the success myth of a few women lowered the power for womens liberation.

Meanwhile, capitalism exploitation and patriarchy repression interacted and strengthened each other. As a result, feminist groups that hold existing political power, executives of major womens organizations, and some privileged women succeeded in advancing to the public sphere. However, the process is far from the human rights of women. Its just a power struggle for personal and political interests. The liberal feminism policies have highlighted the class differences among women. Meanwhile, neoliberals ignored the majority of oppressed women and continued discussions mainly in the public sphere in institutional reforms. It showed the limitations of "liberal equality".

Liberal feminism has been the mainstream in South Korea and has taken the initiative to make policies such as expansion of female labor. And representatives of womens organizations advanced to politics and government. These changes seemed to promote womens participation in the public sphere, but in actual fact the majority of women were left alone. Unfortunately, its neoliberal policies have converted service labor into market-oriented and expanded "traditional gender roles". And South Koreas neoliberal government exploited female labor force under low-wage and unstable working conditions in the name of "womens policy". "Gender mainstreaming" in "flexible work strategies" employed by capital served as a means of accelerating unfavourable living conditions for women. And the institutional reforms promoted by Korean liberal womens movements have not changed the lives of women.

It shows that the problems caused by capital cannot be solved by "equal measures" of institutional reforms. The "equal measures" wanted to find a few elite women who could provide a workforce "comparable to men". And discussions mainly in the public sphere in the institutional reforms have disregarded near-daily discrimination, domestic work, and sexual violence in the private sphere as "personal problems." At the same time, liberal feminism has ignored issues such as racism and classism, denying the need to break the fundamental structure of womens oppression.

On March 9, conservative Yun Seok-yeol has won the South Korean presidential election. It shows that most South Korean voters allowed the next government to trample on the fundamental human rights and to lose respect for legal and administrative womens rights[3]. In the current situation, it remains to be seen what new rise can take place for a movement aimed at social transformation from a class perspective. Six years have passed since the murder occurred near Gangnam Station in 2016. During this time, feminist movements for gender equality have developed independently in South Korea under the influence of the global #MeToo movements. However, the reality of life for the majority of Korean women has not changed. Neoliberal policies by fake progressive forces have resulted in the creation of a small number of elite women, while driving the majority of working-class women into chronic and severe poverty and oppression. In the process, feminist movements are heading for unexpected directions. Some "radical feminists" took conservative direction to prop up exclusive separatism with anti-gender ideology[4]. They are not sufficiently radial. Some dominant feminist groups still remain stuck and varied in the course of the linear model of western feminism[5]. Also, many feminist scholars did not consider women activists to be equal in solidarity. Looking from above, they sought to strengthen the power and authority of a few privileged women, which was almost unrelated to improving the lives of the vast majority of women.

Until now, dominant feminists in South Korea have been insensitive to the oppression of women deepened by capitalism. Womens liberation is not obtained through dialogue with capital. Womens liberation is possible by socialism. And real socialism is possible for the realization of womens liberation. The 2016 candle light uprising which impeached "the first female president in East Asia" Included the flames of many Korean womens willingness against social contradictions and hardships brought about by neoliberals. But it cannot necessarily be called a struggle launched by the class perspective. And there are many limitations to define it as a revolution. We must build a structured autonomous womens movement for social transformation that goes beyond institutional reforms or the limitation of liberalism in order to break the structural womens oppression caused by social relations of capitalism and patriarchy which are interacted and strengthened each other.

16 May 2022

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Women's Movement in South Korea: How to Break the Structural Oppression - International Viewpoint

When former Army Capt. Matt Gallagher saw the video of former President Bush accidentally condemning the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the moment that cut the deepest was when Bush realized his mistake and laughed about it.

Bush had intended to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin during his speech on Wednesday in Dallas when he misspoke. Bush said that the Russian governments oppression of any political opposition has led to the end of checks and balances, And the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.

The former president immediately winced as he corrected himself and said, I mean: Of Ukraine. Then, he gave a very brief laugh, put his head down and said under his breath Iraq too, anyway. After his audience laughed, Bush then joked about his age and said, 75 and that elicited even louder laughter from those attending his speech.

To Gallagher, who served in Iraq, Bushs laugh was more revealing than the mistake itself.

I think the snicker conjured up a lot of old, buried feelings I once had of Bush at his worst the dismissive, cocky Decider-in-Chief who held little regard for nuance or critical examination, Gallagher told Task & Purpose of the war, which began when the U.S. military invaded Iraq in March 2003 because the American government suspected that dictator Saddam Hussein was secretly building weapons of mass destruction. It turned out Iraq had abandoned building those weapons after the Gulf War when Bushs father had been president.

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Thats the Bush I remember raging against, privately, in my college and ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps] days, the man who was determining my immediate future and that of my peers, and whose decisions ended up leaving some of them dead in Iraq, trying to make the best of his reckless, stupid war.

Now a published author, Gallagher was commissioned as an Army second lieutenant in 2005 after graduating from Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division and then spent 15 months in Iraq as a scout platoon leader from 2007 to 2009. While he was deployed, Gallagher wrote an anonymous blog about his experiences, which he was eventually ordered to stop.

On Wednesday, Gallagher tweeted that he struggled to respond to Bushs accidental reference to the Iraq invasion. While he no longer hates Bush, the former presidents laugh stayed with him.

The snicker is just a couple seconds, sure, but its so instinctual on his end, Gallagher told Task & Purpose. He recovers after, to his credit, and we see a more reflective and human side come out, but I cant help but wonder how much of the other guy remains in there, still trying to justify his war of choice that took so much from both Iraq and America.

Bushs office did not respond to Task & Purposes requests for a statement to include in this story.

Sean Schofield, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 with the 1st Marine Division, said Bushs error is part of a pattern of the former president saying questionable things.

A former sergeant, Schofield is currently in Ukraine, where he is training Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces. On Thursday, Task & Purpose reached out to Schofield and asked for his reaction to Bushs Iraq comments.

I think this is just one more instance of him being his own worst enemy, Schofield said. Unfortunately, in this instance, hes saying that Americas military was party to an unjust and brutal invasion of a foreign country, and he seemed to lack the common sense to recognize the severity of the gaffe, and then added insult to injury by laughing about it.

Since President Bush first ordered the U.S. military to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, nearly 4,600 troops have been killed and more than 32,500 service members have been wounded while supporting operations in Iraq, according to the Defense Department.

Estimates for the numbers of Iraqi casualties since the 2003 invasion vary. Between 184,000 and 207,000 are believed to have been killed by 2019, according to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, R.I. As of 2020, 9.2 million Iraqis had either fled their country or were internally displaced, the institute also found.

Nothing about the invasion of Iraq or its aftermath is humorous, said retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, senior adviser to the liberal veterans group VoteVets.

Eaton, who helped to train Iraqi forces after the invasion, said he deeply regrets the U.S. governments decision to attack Iraq. It is an error the country needs to learn from.

He also said the failure of former Army Gen. Tommy Franks, then head of U.S. Central Command, as well as then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to plan for stabilizing Iraq after the invasion contributed to the loss of American and Iraqi lives.

Laughing it off as a gaffe was the worst part about it, Eaton told Task & Purpose. He [Bush] made a decision to go into Iraq. Not only did he make a very bad strategic decision to go to war with a country that we did not need to go to war over, but he did it badly. It was incompetently executed by the CENTCOM commander. The ill-advised humor from President Bush and those in the audience is simply appalling.

If there is to be a final epitaph for the Iraq War, then it deserves to come from a letter that Tomas Young wrote to Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after he entered hospice in 2013. Young joined the Army two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In April 2004, he was shot in the spine while serving in Sadr City, a Shiite suburb of Baghdad. His wounds left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Written more than a year before his death in November 2014, Young wrote in his letter that Bush and Cheney had used, betrayed, and ultimately abandoned a generation of disabled veterans.

My day of reckoning is upon me, Young wrote. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

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President Bush may find it funny but the Iraq War is no joke - Task & Purpose

The Historic Montopolis Negro School Open House won first place in the category of "Event - Community Engagement Forum" at the National Association of Government CommunicatorsBlue Pencil and Gold Screen Awardson May 11, 2022. The Blue Pencil and Gold Screen awards recognize excellence in government communication at all levels of government across the nation. Listed as one of the 21 most coveted government leadership awards, the Blue Pencil and Gold Screen awards program has 51 categories in which communicators can submit work, reflecting the breadth of tactics employed by government communicators to deliver information to the public.

The City of Austin acquired the Montopolis Negro School in 2019 for the purpose of preserving and programming the building and site as a museum and tourist asset. The Montopolis Negro School operated from 1935 to 1962 and is among the last surviving rural schools that Travis County operated for African American children during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation. After the Austin School District integrated in 1962, the building served as the Montopolis Church of Christ until the 1980s.

Austin Parks and Recreation held an open house at the school property on November 6, 2021. Approximately 85 community members attended, some former students at the school in the 1950s. Several key community leaders attended and spoke to media present. Neighbors attended to learn the history, and some had artifacts from the school to contribute for preservation. The open house inspired community support for the project in a way that would not have been possible without seeing the space and feeling the surroundings.

"When we think of segregation as a country or as a city, we tend to feel the shame of the system we inherited," said Austin Parks and Recreation Director Kimberly McNeeley."However, our staff provided an opportunity to come to the site and remember the joys, the striving, and the hope that ran parallel and in the face of the pain of segregation. The department was also reminded that we are stewards of these spaces, and without community, we stand to solidify systems of oppression rather than working together to break them down."

"We are proud to recognize the excellent work that these award winners provided to their communities in 2021. There were so many compelling, creative and informative products submitted this year," said NAGC President Scott Thomsen. "As government communicators, we believe that every citizen has a right to equal, full, understandable, and timely facts about the activities, policies and people of the agencies comprising their government. The works submitted this year really embodied that belief. The example set by these government communicators is one we should all follow."

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Austin Parks and Recreation Wins an NAGC 2022 Blue Pencil & Gold Screen Award for the Montopolis School Open House - AustinTexas.gov

Welcome to Foreign Policys Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Tunisias largest trade union calls a strike over wages, a politician in Algeria seeks to criminalize normalization of relations with Israel, and the Meroe pyramids in Sudan are digitized.

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Africans Caught in the Geopolitical Crossfire

Proposed U.S. law seeks to punish African countries for aligning with Russia, declared the headline of a May 20 story in the Nigerian outlet Premium Times. The South Africa-based Daily Maverick warned it could see the continent caught in crossfire.

Both stories focused on the U.S. Congresss debate in April of a bill that would seek to counter the malign influence and activities of Russia and its proxies in Africa. The headlines offered great insight into how some African journalists and citizens view U.S. foreign policy in Africa as being primarily driven by geopolitical concerns about rivals Russia and China rather than the prosperity of Africans.

The proposed act, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, would allow Congress to assess the scope of Russian engagement on the continent, as well as monitor disinformation operations and the activities of Russian private military contractors. It passed the House of Representatives on April 27, with 415 members voting in favor and just nine against.

However, the bill is just one of many pieces of legislation, and the broader picture is worrying for African observers who fear the escalation of a new Cold War.

Even before details of the Meeks bill emerged, some had envisaged reprisals over African countries nonalignment. The United States expects other countries to fall in line, Nontobeko Hlela wrote in the Kenya-based Elephant, despite being systematically excluded from any decision-making.

The bill exists alongside the Strategic Competition Act, seeking to bolster the United States as it vies with China for influence, and the 2,900-page U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, also aimed at countering Chinaboth of which foreign-policy researchers Odilile Ayodele and Mikatekiso Kubayi have characterized as arguably Cold War-esque. That these large-scale projects prioritize China and Russia as a key focus speaks more about power than a genuine partnership with Africa, they wrote.

The bill does address real threatsand the relationship between Moscow and military governments in Sudan and Mali should not be overlooked. In Mali, suspected Russian mercenaries, alongside Malian soldiers, are accused of massacring an estimated 300 civilians in Marchthe worst single atrocity reported in Malis decade-long armed conflict, according to Human Rights Watch.

While the bill addresses Russias playbook of unfair extractive resource deals in exchange for weapons, it also requires the regular identification of African governments and officials that have facilitated payments and other prohibited activities that benefit United States-sanctioned individuals and entities tied to Russiaraising the question of whether a poorer African nation buying Russian oil from a sanctioned entity, for example, could then face sanctions.

Part of the problem, argue Zainab Usman and Katie Auth of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is that the United States and its allies have engaged with Africa for decades only on humanitarian and security concerns. On a continent that has the largest number of foreign military operations and outposts, Africas young and increasingly cynical population perceives U.S. policies focused on China and Russia, in which African countries are merely pawns in a so-called great-power game, as an objectionable way to build partnerships.

U.S.-Africa trade has continued to slide from $142 billion in 2008 to just $64 billion in 2021. While Africas relationship with China is highly unbalanced and has sparked repeated regional protests, U.S. diplomats often fail to acknowledge the infrastructural benefits it has brought to democratic countries such as Senegalwhere Chinas Belt and Road projects have funded highways and cultural centersand in the Seychelles, which actively courts Chinese investment as part of the countrys ambitions to be a financial hub.

In some countries, the Russia-Ukraine war has compounded the economic problems caused by the pandemic, Chinas economic slowdown, and climate change-induced drought. Egypt, the worlds largest importer of wheat, relied on Russia for around 50 percent and Ukraine for 25 percent of its grain supply. We will feel shame if we find that millions of people are dying because of food insecurity. They are not responsible for that. They didnt do anything wrong, Egyptian Finance Minister Mohamed Maait told the Financial Times.

Last week, as India banned exports of most of its wheat, Egypt asked to be exempt. A Russian blockade of Black Sea ports has stopped the export of some 25 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain that now cannot leave the country, according to the United Nations.

Some Western writers have sought to use food supply challenges as an argument for why African governments should condemn Russia, failing to understand the position that sanctions on Russia are the main driver for their economic turmoil. As Nic Cheeseman wrote in the Africa Report, the idea that economic injustices in the worlds most economically exploited regions should be used as a stick with which African governments can be hit to force them back into line, is equal parts perplexing and offensive.

Certain African governments have condemned Russias actions in Ukraine in strong terms. Kenyas U.N. ambassador, Martin Kimani, affirmed to the U.N. Security Council just days before Russias invasion that we must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.

Therefore, it would be a mistake to view Kenya and many other nations abstentions as being pro-Russia. Kimani said Kenya abstained on votes to avoid being dragged into global power rivalry, stating that the Security Council in the future may appear weaponized.

Responding to questions about African neutrality, the United States ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that we have to do additional work to help these countries to understand the impact of Russias war of aggression on Ukrainea comment that implied African leaders required education on their own sovereign decision-making.

As Ghanaian historian Samuel Adu-Gyamfi tells it, Western-imposed forms of democracy have failed the continent. In his view, economic reforms required by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have led to underdevelopment in African countries, as have more recent imports like lockdowns, travel bans and vaccine mandatespushed on Africa by Western-dominated institutions, he wrote in NewsAfrica.

Resentment of neocolonialism is also driving opposition to Western demands. Frances policies toward its former colonies have prompted growing backlash against the French government. A nine-year military engagement in Mali that failed to subdue violent extremists has brought frustration and accusations of civilian killings in drone attacks, while in Chad Frances support for the military regime has angered the Chadian people, who overwhelmingly want a democratically elected leader.

Africa, like much of the world, is not aligned with Washingtons framing of the war. As FP columnist Howard French wrote, Americas concern with containing the spread of Chinese or Soviet influence overrode considerations of governance and democracy for decades in Washingtons Africa policy.

Some things havent changed. In January, an op-ed in GhanaWeb suggested that [i]n most cases, the US government continues to support corrupt regimes, citing Ugandas Yoweri Museveni. Western powers continued to provide his regime with nearly $2bn a year, Cheta Nwanze noted in Al Jazeera.

If the West wants to bring African countries into the fold, it would do well to acknowledge and understand the legacy of its own policies in those countries while genuinely engaging citizens and providing incentives for leaders to get on board. New proposals that Africans perceive as punishment for exercising their own geopolitical agency risk undermining long-term U.S. goals on the continent.

Wednesday, May 25: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ends his three-nation African visit in South Africa.

Global celebrations mark Africa Day, the anniversary of the formation of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 and the African Union in 2002.

Thursday, May 26: Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi hosts Algerias president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in Rome.

U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres delivers remarks at the opening segment of the high-level policy dialogue of the Africa Dialogue Series 2022.

Ugandan detentions. Ugandan police have detained opposition figure Kizza Besigye in his home in the capital of Kampala after he called for street protests against rising food and fuel costs. The government has so far refused to intervene to address the rising cost of living; on Sunday, President Yoweri Museveni said government subsidies or removal of import taxes would collapse the economy.

Besigye, who has been under house arrest since May 12, has repeatedly campaigned against the government of Museveni, who has been in power since 1986 and was reelected amid accusations of vote fraud in January 2021.

Tunisia strikes. The main labor union in Tunisia, UGTT, said on Monday that it would hold a national strike over wages after rejecting participation in a limited dialogue proposed by President Kais Saied as he rewrites the constitution, in what critics have called a presidential coup.

UGTT has more than 1 million members and remains a powerful political force in Tunisia. Saied has ruled by decree for almost a year, since July 2021, when he dismissed the government and suspended parliament.

Ethiopia arrests. Ethiopian authorities have arrested more than 4,000 people in the northern Amhara region, local state media said on Monday, as part of a wider crackdown against militia fighters, the media, and critics. It followed the arrests of at least nine media workers in the region, according to the outlets that employ them, the Nisir International Broadcasting Corp. and Ashara Media.

Just a few days earlier, the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, the rebel group fighting Ethiopias federal government, said on Twitter that it would release 4,208 prisoners of war as part of an amnesty agreement.

Algeria-Israel relations. Algerian members of parliament have submitted a bill that seeks to criminalize any normalization of relations between Algeria and Israel. The bill, proposed by opposition lawmaker Youssef Ajesa, may not win majority support. Algeria has maintained a pro-Palestinian stance and has so far not joined other Arab-majority nations in reestablishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

Sudans pyramids. The pyramids of Meroe, the last capital of the ancient Kingdoms of Kush, located in modern-day Sudan, can now be explored on Googles Art and Culture platform, including the chance to view carved hieroglyphics inside the sandstone tombs using panoramic imagery via Googles Street View.

Meroe, which was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2011, was part of Sudans Nubian civilization that dominated around 2500 B.C. and left behind more than 200 pyramids.

In 1834, Italian explorer Giuseppe Ferlini began blowing up several pyramids in his search for Kushite treasures, leaving many of the tombs missing their pointed tops. The objects he found were sold to museums in Munich in 1839 and Berlin in 1844. (Those treasures had belonged to Nubian Queen Amanishakheto.)

The cursive and hieroglyphic scriptures within Meroe have long been considered a lost history of Black civilization because the Meroitic language they are written in is only partly deciphered. For years, European and American historians and archaeologists wrongly viewed the kingdom as an outpost of Egypt.

As Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet told Smithsonian Magazine, Western archaeologists were trying to find Egypt in Sudan, not Sudan in Sudan. As a result, much is still unknown about the empire, which would require a full understanding of the Meroitic language.

Tunisias inflation rate has passed its previous March 2019 peak. The countrys central bank has had to raise its key interest rate to confront high inflation amid a budget deficit that will expand to 9.7 percent of GDP this year due to the shock in grain and energy prices. The surge in prices has strengthened the U.S. dollar while pushing down the value of Tunisias dinar.

In HumAngle, writer Muhammed Akinyemi takes a deep dive into the illegal oil refining network that is causing health issues in Nigerias Port Harcourt, as well as irreversible damage to its environment. The country has very few refining facilities and relies on imported oil.

In Africa Is a Country, Marame Gueye recounts the heydays of Afro-Cuban music in West Africa during the 1960s and 1970s in a review of the film El Maestro Laba Sosseh, which documents the life of Senegalese salsa singer and composer Laba Sosseh.

Excerpt from:

How the West Lost Africa, Protests in Tunisia, and More News - Foreign Policy

AMAC Exclusive By Ben Solis

On May 11, Chinese authorities arrested 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong from 2002-2009 and an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Partys oppression of Christians. In targeting Cardinal Zen, the CCP is continuing a long historical pattern of socialist regimes persecuting religious leaders in order to expand political and social control over a population.

In the charges brought against Zen, the CCP accuses him of breaking Chinas national security law for associating with the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, an organization which provided bail funds to protestors arrested during the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2019.

Though the organization is now defunct, Zen could face life in prison if convicted. Cantopop singer and actor Denise Ho, ex-legislator Margaret Ng, and academic Dr Hui Po Keung were also arrested and stand accused of similar charges. Many Catholics in Hong Kong affectionately refer to Zen as Grandpa Cardinal, and his arrest is sure to worsen an already tense situation between Beijing and the Vatican, as well as the international community.

Born into a Catholic Shanghai family in 1932, Cardinal Zen left for Hong Kong, then a British colony, in 1948, a year before the communists took over of the mainland. In 1989, Zen and others in Hong Kong watched the student-led pro-democracy protests unfold in China before a brutal military crackdown in Beijings Tiananmen Square left many dead.

That started Zen on a pattern of activism and speaking out against the Chinese government. Zen has repeatedly urged the Vatican to take a tougher stance toward the CCP, and has raised concerns about the Churchs willingness to compromise its independence in order to appease authoritarian leaders a criticism that echoes that of other church leaders in the 20th century, namely in Eastern Bloc countries under Soviet rule.

Indeed, Zens arrest bears eerie similarity to the targeting of religious figures by Moscow following World War II as Stalin and his successors tried to stamp out the light of Christianity on the continent.

In 1953, for example, the Polish Communist regime, a puppet of Moscow, arrested Cardinal Stefan Wyszyski, the Primate of Poland. As a Church canon law professor, a warrior who fought both the Nazis and the Red Army, and someone who risked his life to save Jews from the Holocaust, Wyszyski was a symbol of invincible and sagacious resistance.

When the Soviets took over following World War II, Moscow issued a decree that allowed it to appoint and dismiss officials in the Catholic Church administration, including parish priests. A Conference of Bishops led by Cardinal Wyszyski protested the decree, saying that we must not lay Gods matters on Caesars altar. For his transgressions, Wyszyski was imprisoned for three years and watched closely by the communist regime.

In Hungary, Moscow imposed a similarly brutal crackdown on the Catholic Church, nearly destroying it entirely. Soviet authorities secularized Catholic schools, censored the free press, and killed or arrested many priests.

In the face of this oppression, Cardinal Jzsef Mindszenty dared to defy the Soviets, urging resistance to the puppet government in Budapest. Like Wyszyski, Mindszenty was uncompromisingly anti-communist, with no illusions about the ulterior motives, designs, and nature of the Marxist adversaries. Especially when dealing with determined communists, a hesitant, irresolute attitude could prove disastrous, he wrote in his memoirs.

In 1948, Mindszenty was arrested, and after being tortured, pled guilty to treason and conspiracy. He was imprisoned for eight years before finally being freed and granted asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest.

But while the persecutions of Wyszyski and Mindszenty were met with thundering condemnation by Pope Pius XII, Zens arrest has come with hardly a peep from Pope Francis. While the Vatican has said it is concerned about the arrest, it has neither said or done anything of real significance for fear of upsetting the Communist Party of China.

As Zen himself has said, compromise with evil will not save the Church in China, but only doom it to a more prolonged suffering and destruction. It has and always will be the faith of religious peoples which allow light to triumph over darkness. Todays Catholic leaders would do well to remember this truth and forcefully condemn Chinas crackdown on religion, lest the Chinese communists succeed in accomplishing what the Soviet Union unsuccessfully sought to do many decades ago.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian and researcher.

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China's Arrest of Heroic Cardinal Shows Vatican Must Stand Up to Beijing - AMAC

In the three months since Russia began its war of aggression, the character of the country has been changing before our eyes. Its much-vaunted military has been exposed as not only weak, disorganized, and corrupt, but also criminal, engaging in pillaging and the torture and mass slaughter of unarmed Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war. Resorting to a practice not seen since the Stalin era, Vladimir Putins government has also been deporting captured Ukrainians, apparently by the hundreds of thousands, to distant portions of Russia, first passing them through filtration camps where prisoners are interrogated for nationalist leanings and selected out for punishment. The Russian judicial system has been mobilized to crack down on dissent against the war; among other things, it is a crime punishable by up to 15 years in a labor camp to refer to it as anything but a special military operation. To the extent that there were independent media before the war, they have been shut down and the only voices now in print or on the air are official propaganda. Access to independent news sources on the internet has also been sharply restricted. In sum, Russia has taken a number of steps back toward the repression of the Soviet era.

But as draconian as these various measures all are, Russia is not yet properly called totalitarian as it rightly was during the reign of Joseph Stalin or even much of the Leonid Brezhnev era. About a century ago, Benito Mussolini called fascist Italy a totalitarian state, a concept that he defined with brilliant clarity: Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. But whether the label of totalitarian actually applies to Mussolini-era Italian fascism, or, again, to Putins Russia today, is open to serious question. All-encompassing statism was more of an aspiration than an Italian accomplishment. Even the more thoroughgoing oppression of Nazi Germany did not quite fit the totalitarian model, at least according to the criteria set forth by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Carl Friedrich in their influential 1956 volume, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy.

To Brzezinski and Friedrich, totalitarian rule was an extreme form of authoritarianism possessing six characteristics: an all-encompassing ideology, a single party, a terroristic police, a communications monopoly, a weapons monopoly and a centrally directed economy. All six were necessary to fit the bill of totalitarian. Absent one, and the definition was not fulfilled. Stalins Soviet Union was the premier case. Nazi Germany, with its only partially centralized economy, was a close second. Putins Russia is moving alarmingly closer, but it still lacks some of totalitarianisms key features.

Here at home and in the West, the concept of totalitarianism came under assault as the Cold War consensus unraveled in the 1960s and 1970s. Revisionist scholars saw it as offering an intellectual foundation and implicit justification for the VietnamWar and the Cold War. A barrage of journal articles and books was launched in an attempt to demolish the construct. As the counterculture emerged, it became fashionable in some quarters of the left to identify the United States itself as totalitarian, or pre- or proto-totalitarian, on a plane with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In this, the novelist Norman Mailer was a pioneer, opining in his famous 1957 essay, The White Negro, that citizens were trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society, doomed willy-nilly to conform if one is to succeed. Herbert Marcuse, the political theory guru of the New Left, came next, arguing that all industrial societies, very much including the United States, were totalitarian. To some on the extremes, we were not America but Amerika, the spelling signifying a shared identity with Nazi Germany. We shall not defeat Amerika, proclaimed Abbie Hoffman, leader of the leaderless Yippies, by organizing a political party. We shall do it by building a new nationa nation as rugged as the marijuana leaf.

Today, in one of those remarkable inversions of history, the charge that the United States is totalitarian no longer comes from the left but the right, from Americas growing contingent of self-proclaimed post-liberal intellectuals.

To Rod Dreher, senior editor at the American Conservative and the author of a number of best-selling books, liberal democracy is degenerating into something resembling the totalitarianism over which it triumphed in the Cold War. To be sure, qualifies Dreher, [t]his totalitarianism wont look like the USSRs. Its not establishing itself through hard means like armed revolution or enforcing itself with gulags. Rather, it exercises control, at least initially, in soft forms. Dreher has in mind contemporary progressivism: Under the guise of diversity, inclusivity, equity, and other egalitarian jargon, the Left creates powerful mechanisms for controlling thought and discourse and marginalizing dissenters as evil.

Patrick Deneen, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Why Liberalism Failed, maintains that U.S. constitutional libertiesfreedom of speech, freedom of association, free and fair elections, and freedom of religionhave become an empty faade: [O]ur capacity for self-government has waned almost to the point of nonexistence. We live under what he calls liberalocratic despotism, in which the liberal state expands to control nearly every aspect of life. Liberal totalitarianism is a phrase he has taken to employing.

To Yoram Hazony, the Israeli-American leader of the new U.S. national conservative movement, liberal democracy has become a kind of totalizing dictatorship: [T]he opponents of liberalism have been vanquished one by one, and universal liberal empire has seemed to come within reach. The consequence: There are increasingly insistent demands for conformity to a single universal standard in speech and religion. Liberalism has taken on the worst feature of the medieval Catholic empire upon which it is unwittingly modeled, including a doctrine of infallibility, as well as a taste for the inquisition and the index.

To Adrian Vermeule, an integralistthat is, an advocate of establishing a Catholic confessional stateand a chaired professor at Harvard Law School, communism and liberalism have far more in common than it would seem at first glance. According to Vermeule, [t]he stock distinction between the Enlightenments twinscommunism is violently coercive while liberalism allows freedom of thoughtis glib. Liberal society celebrates toleration, diversity, and free inquiry, but in practice it features a spreading social, cultural, and ideological conformism. And in his account, those who decline to conformilliberal citizens like himselflive much like refuseniks in the totalitarian USSR: They are trapped without exit papers, suffer a narrowing sphere of permitted action and speech, shrinking prospects, and increasing pressure from regulators, employers, and acquaintances, and even from friends and family.

What can one say about this vision of America as a repressive society?

One of the arresting features of the supposed American totalitarianism is that it is invisible. Dreher explains that, given its soft form, [i]ts possible to miss the onslaught of totalitarianism. To Deneen, liberalism is more insidious than its competitor ideologiesfascism and communismprecisely because, unlike highly visible fascist or communist repression, it is unseen: [L]iberalism is less visibly ideological and only surreptitiously remakes the world in its image. [A]s an ideology, it pretends to neutrality, claiming no preference and denying any intention of shaping the souls under its rule.

Of course, another obvious explanation, other than unwitting enslavement by an invisible tyranny, is that the contention that the United States is under totalitarian rule is simply false. The definition of an onslaught is a very violent or forceful attack. If it is possible simply to miss the onslaught of totalitarianism, as Dreher claims, perhaps it is not really much of an onslaught at all. If one considers the six characteristics enumerated by Brzezinski and Friedrich, not a single one of them obtains in the United States. There is no over-arching ideology to which it is mandatory to adhere. No single party dominates with an autocrat at its head. There is no government monopoly on communications or force. No secret police is hounding dissidents. No central economic planning is in place.

To assert, as Deneen does, that the liberal state expands to control nearly every aspect of life is to make a mockery of the real horrors of totalitarian societies, past and present, like North Korea, where such control is a grim reality. In lamenting the impossibility of obtaining exit papers and the narrowing sphere of permitted action and speech in which he and like-minded colleagues find themselves, Vermeule, a distinguished professor of law who prolifically expresses himself in public lectures, books, articles and even tweets, is doing nothing more than engaging in a vicarious form of victimhood. Likening his (highly privileged) position to that of someone trapped without exit papers is a particularly ugly exercise in America bashing, on a par with anything ever said or done by the Yippies. At any moment, of course, Vermeule is free to resign his Harvard chair and emigrate to the country of his choice; no exit papers are required. As for Drehers soft totalitarianism, on inspection it is a mere oxymoron, a nonsense phrase akin to gentle terror, that serves as a rhetorical grenade to toss in the culture war.

In characterizing America as totalitarian, post-liberals like Dreher are reacting to an over-bearing strain of American progressivism that travels under the name of political correctness and, lately, wokeness, a pejorative term that sheds more heat than light. Dreher would be on target if all he claimed is that some corners of the left have succeeded to a disturbing extent in putting in place mechanisms that attempt to control discourse in educational institutions and corporations. There is indeed a censorious cultural movement afoot that has spread widely, committing outrages along the way. But these outrages are overwhelmingly the handiwork of private actors, not overreaching government. Moreover, countervailing forces are in play: Organizations like the Academic Freedom Alliance and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education have sprung up to defend freedom of thought and expression. There is no shortage of thinkers across the political spectrumthe names of Jonathan Chait, Anne Applebaum and Robert P. George come to mindwho offer withering criticism of progressive authoritarianism without rushing to the conclusion that America has descended into some sort of totalitarian nightmare.

The fact of the matter is that in whatever direction one looks, the left-wing progressive agenda is in retreat. A dont say gay bill that bans discussion of sexual orientation in kindergarten through 3rd-grade classrooms has passed in Florida, and copies are under consideration in numerous other jurisdictions. Theres a well-publicized backlash to the participation of transgendered athletes in womens sports. The teaching of critical race theoryor just the perception of the teaching of critical race theoryhas provoked a backlash, leading to books being removed from school libraries, not by the left but by the right. Supposedly woke mega-corporations are under assault from lawmakers, their tax benefits targeted, their antitrust status questioned. The landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion is almost certain to be overturned, and one state after the next is subjecting the procedure to tighter restrictions if not an outright ban. If one looks at the composition of the Supreme Court, it appears that conservatives have been faring rather well. Whatever one thinks about any of these developments, they are not exactly the hallmarks of a left-wing dictatorship, let alone a totalitarian one.

Ironically, even as the post-liberals deplore their own countrys totalitarian character, they have a soft spot for genuine authoritarians. Putin has presided over a regime with a long record of murdering rivals and journalists and engaging in aggression against neighboring countries. This did not deter Dreher from piling praise on the Russian leader for his Christian virtues in articles with titles like Putin Gets It. Why Dont We and Putin, Our Tsar Protector. Only after Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine did Dreher evidently have a change of heart. Now his articles bear titles like Clarity About Russian Brutality, in which he expresses disappointment that the master of the Kremlin, his erstwhile hero of the culture wars, is an utter disgrace.

If the sun has set on one deity, it has long risen on another, namely Viktor Orbn, prime minister of avowedly illiberal Hungary. Hazony and Deneen have made pilgrimages to Budapest to pay homage to the Hungarian leader. At Orbns meet-and-greet with Deneen, reads the official press release, the American academic spoke highly of Hungarys family policy measures, stressing that the future would rest on local communities based on national and family values rather than on liberalism. To Dreher, who had gone to live in Hungary for a spell, Orbns election victory in early April was a moment of triumph: Make no mistake, Dreher pronounced in a tweet, #ViktorOrban is the leader of the West nowthe West that still remembers what the West is. Under Orbn, says Dreher, the Hungarians are defending democracy and national sovereignty over and against the culturally imperialistic liberals of the West.

Never mind that Hungary is a kleptocracy in which the media is overwhelmingly controlled by the state and the ruling Fidesz party. Never mind that Orbn has packed Hungarys courts with cronies. Never mind that, as Arch Puddington has shown, Orbn has adopted a fawning posture toward a true totalitarian state: the Peoples Republic of China. Never mind that Orbns party and government have engaged in a thinly veiled campaign of anti-Semitism, rehabilitating vicious Jew-hating fascist figures of the pre-war era, white-washing Hungarys extensive role in the destruction of Hungarian Jewry, and turning the Jewish Hungarian-born American philanthropist George Soros into a national bogeyman. Like Putins Russia, Hungary makes a show of upholding family values and Christianity, and what is a little state-sponsored anti-Semitism compared to that? Soft totalitarianism may be a self-refuting oxymoron, but a more useful analytical term, creeping authoritarianism, certainly applies to Drehers new political paradise.

What follows from the notion that America is a dictatorship? One logical conclusion would be that the tyranny must be brought down. It would be foolish in the extreme to maintain that the mob that swarmed the Capitol on Jan. 6 was inspired by post-liberal theorists. The chief inspirer was Donald Trump himself. But a climate has been created, and wild ideas are in circulation, which Trump exploited.

Deploying violent imagery, the post-liberal theorists are contributors to that climate. Vermeule calls for seizing a strategic position from which to sear the liberal faith with hot irons. Civility and decency are secondary values, says the integralist Sohrab Ahmari, another post-liberal and an editor at Compact magazine. It is necessary, Ahmari says, to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy. The goal of the war is to enjoy the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good. The common and the Highest Good are to be determined, of course, by Ahmari and his like-minded post-liberal comrades themselves. Ahmari, it is pertinent to note, is a supporter of Frances far-right Marine Le Pen, leader of a political party whose roots lie in French fascism.

If there is a whiff of fascism in the air or, perhaps, more precisely, a longing for a Franco or a Salazar, that is unsurprising. Ahmari and his fellow post-liberals hold liberal democracy in contempt. They despise the individualism that is liberalisms underpinning. They valorize national solidarity and cultural homogeneity. They exude a loathing of America as decadent and depraved. We are an evil civilization, and we will be judged, declaims Dreher in a tweet. They follow the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce, who contended, as Deneen approvingly summarizes his view, that the great totalitarian threat of our age emanated not ultimately from the dictatorships of so-called communist regimes of the Soviet Union or China, but from the unfolding liberal logic of the West (emphasis added).

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them, said George Orwell. But the claim that the greatest totalitarian threat emanates from the unfolding liberal logic of the West is worse than stupid, it is morally despicable, standing on its head the epic struggle between freedom and barbarism while erasing memory of the millions who perished at communist hands. Just as there is something called Holocaust denial, there is something called Gulag denial, and this is an instance of it. It would be interesting to ask Deneen, who has a doctorate in political science, to compare the number of people murdered by the Soviet Union and China with the number murdered by governments operating under the unfolding liberal logic of the West. He would discover that the resulting ratiotens of millions of deaths on one side, zero on the otheris a telling measure of what constitutes a totalitarian threat and what does not. One is only left wondering why Deneen calls the Soviet Union and China so-called communist regimes. While tarring the liberal West as despotic, does he simultaneously harbor doubts about the communist character of these two countries?

Whatever lies behind such confusion (if that is what it is), both the post-liberals calumniation of their own country and their adoration of authoritarian leaders abroad seeps down from the intellectual sphere into the popular culture, where an entire ecosphere of illiberalsactivists, journalists, aspiring politicians, militia members, crackpots of various stripeshas been energized. While retaining his affinity for Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlsonthe keynote speaker at Hazonys first gathering of national conservativeshas broadcast from Budapest, bringing the supposed virtues of Hungary to the broad masses of the Fox television audience. This very month, the Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), hosted a convocation in Hungary in Orbns honor. A strange assortment of characters is now lauding Hungarys illiberal democracy, while lambasting America as a tyranny. Dictator Joe Biden started phase 1 of the Dems Communist takeover of America, is how Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sees the world. The United States needs to be liberated like Ukraine, says Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert. Rod Dreher makes an excellent case that totalitarianism has just about arrived in the U.S., writes Abe Greenwald, an editor at conservative Commentary magazine, addingwith the self-indicting irony escaping himthat the label totalitarian is much abused.

A segment of the right is infected with arrant nonsense, but the content of that arrant nonsense did not spring from nowhere. At a moment when American liberal democracy is coming undone, a group of supposedly serious thinkers has been engaged in a travesty, slandering the United States while simultaneously trivializing the extraordinarily brutal history of 20th century totalitarianism. It is a scandalous falsehood, a perversion of language for political ends, to contend, as Dreher does, that American liberal democracy has degenerated into something resembling the totalitarianism over which it triumphed in the Cold War. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent much of his life caught in the maw of such a regime. His masterwork, The Gulag Archipelago, a chronicle of the torture and murder of millions, makes plain what totalitarianism is and what it is not. Live not by lies is Solzhenitsyns indelible admonition to those who would seek freedom. In a case of intellectual hijacking, Live Not By Lies is also the title Dreher gave to his most recent book. It is past time he and his fellow post-liberals began heeding Solzhenitsyns famous words.

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Is the United States Totalitarian? - Lawfare

Even before Between Two Knees starts, it is already making you laugh loud, think hard and question your values.

This show has the funniest pre-show announcements, and not in the usual funny voice or unwrap your candy now speech. The no photography allowed warning mocks the audiences misunderstandings of Native American culture (photographs take a piece of your soul) and the now-ubiquitous explanation that theaters exist on land stolen from Native communities descends into literal blah blah blah, saying that audiences never listen to it so the company has offered a map in the program showing who originally cared for all the land in Connecticut.

Prepare to be challenged, confronted, enlightened, shamed and, above all, amused.

Between Two Knees is a weighty, witty, mad dash through some abominable, almost unimaginable tragedies of American history. One where people are massacred for the land they live on or sometimes for no good reason at all. The play is bookended by the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 and the American Indian Movements occupation of Wounded Knee, which led to armed altercations with the federal government in 1973. A lot happens in between, including a few wars.

The laughs are constant and constantly uncomfortable. White guilt is a running theme. So are abuse of power, racism and classism. Organized religion is attacked. So is the military.

Between Two Knees was originally produced three years ago by comedy troupe The 1491s at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with the same director and much of the same cast,but this is such a consummate Yale Rep-type show that its very difficult to believe it wasnt created here. It has well-crafted jokes, well-researched history, costumes that are not just practical (since each cast member makes dozens of costume changes) but really something to look at, props that makes jokes funnier, projections that transport the action into other worlds, an old-fashioned vaudeville stage outlined with giant Native caricatures like the Cleveland Indians mascot and the Land-o-Lakes woman and rigorous attention to every line, every joke, historical note and cry of anguish as another character is killed.

Justin Gauthier as Larry in "Between Two Knees" at Yale Rep, directed by Eric Ting. (T. Charles Erickson)

This play has five writers: Ryan Redcorn, Sterlin Harjo, Dallas Goldtooth, Migizi Pensoneau and Bobby Wilson. None of them appear in the show as performers because they are all currently shooting the second season of Reservation Dogs, a TV series Harjo co-created for the FX network.

So many hands on the script means that jokes have been finetuned for maximum impact. The many different playing styles are distinct and refined and work on their own terms.

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Director Eric Ting helmed some amazing productions at the Long Wharf Theatre when he was the associate artistic director there from 2004-15, but almost nothing that could be called comedy. Here, Ting proved not just as versatile as The 1491s, but a genuine team player who can find the heart of each scene.

[Native American historic satire Between Two Knees, from the writers of Reservation Dogs on FX, seeks to enlighten and amuse at Yale Rep]

At two-and-a-half hours, Between Two Knees takes all the time it needs to tell a multi-generational story about a Native American family, offering critical retellings of massacres and injustices. In the first half, there is a brief game show parody and a vaudeville comedy routine, both of which are simple and direct and also funny and deceptive. Layered light and dark routines anchor the second half, including a monologue about decades of degradation and distrust, told in a stand-up comedy style, and a family melodrama that ends with smoldering bodies.

From left: Shaun Taylor-Corbett and Wotko Long in a sketch from The 1491's "Between Two Knees" at Yale Repertory Theatre through June 4. (T. Charles Erickson)

Everyone in the cast seven Native American actors and one Chinese one (so they can make a joke about You know how hard it was to cast this?) has a range seldom required of performers in a single show. They clown, they die, they dance and they engage in long stage battles. One of them (Justin Gauthier) is the shows narrator named Larry who convincingly falls into a dozen other characters all also named Larry. Several players dazzle, including Shaun Taylor-Corbett, who plays an evil priest as well as one of the plays big heroes, William Wolf, Rachel Crowl, who sings, plays piano and gets some of the biggest laughs of the night as a 1960s New Age minister, and Sheila Tousey, the funniest wounded mother ever.

As impressive as individual characterizations are, whats most impressive is how well everyone works together, especially with hyper shifts in mood and style.

Theres a long tradition of thought-provoking, dark, topical and funny ensemble shows at Yale Rep. Between Two Knees raises the stakes and brings the house down.

Between Two Knees by The 1491s, directed by Eric Ting, runs through June 4 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., with Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. on May 28 and June 4 and a Wednesday matinee at 2 p.m. on June 1. $10-$65. yalerep.org.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.

The rest is here:

'Between Two Knees' at Yale Rep is a dark, and unpredictably hilarious, response to a century of Native American oppression - Hartford Courant