Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

From shimmering shadow to pop culture-inspired cuts, the last quarter centurys looks.

In the same way that fashion fads fall in and out of favour, so do beauty trends.

Yes, history does repeat itself formerly thought to do so every couple of decades according to a process known as the 20-year trend cycle. Pop culture watchdog Vice has since disproved this theory, instead citing that the cyclical nature of trends is today working at breakneck speed repeating itself every five or 10 years thanks to the advent of social media and the uptick in micro-trends.

Of course, when a trend resurfaces its often with a twist to make it more appealing to the current zeitgeist.

Through the lens of beauty, the last 25 years have seen a fair share of makeup mishaps and wacky hairdos. Ranging from over-plucked eyebrows to frosted lipstick, the trailblazers of days gone by were willing to try any trend but for every questionable beauty look, there are numerous iconic ones.

Below, we chart the era-defining beauty trends as featured in Viva over the last 25 years.

A complete 180-degree turn from the glamour and gaudiness of the 80s, the 90s ushered in an aesthetic characterised by semi-sheer foundation and undone eyes.

Call it a resurgence of the no-makeup makeup of the 70s a la Kate Moss, who embodied the attitude at the time. Fresh-faced beauty took priority over an overly made-up face, which extended to a light feathering of mascara, neutral-toned eyeshadow and subtle blush.

Lipstick shades followed suit, in nude or brown shades but bold, grungy lips in bursts of burgundy or maroon werent uncommon either, lending a striking contrast to an otherwise bare face. The most memorable part, however, was the unblended lip liner, which saw everyone from Aaliyah to Naomi Campbell line their lips three to four shades darker than their lipstick. This look was one of many recreated by makeup artist Kiekie Stanners and captured by Mara Sommer for Vivas exclusive Aaliyah x M.A.C Cosmetics beauty shoot in 2018, in which model Charlee Passi of Unique Models was transformed into the 90s pop icon complete with poker-straight hair and glossy maroon lips.

Rich burgundies were echoed in pop culture with Chanels Vamp nail lacquer, a reddish-black hue donned by Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. The now-legendary shade was said to have been created from scratch at the French fashion maisons 1994 autumn/winter runway show.

In contrast to the clean complexions of the supermodel wunderkind came full-spectrum glitter with touches of silver or gold adorning hair, eyes and lips to disco effect. Metallic eyeshadow was out in full force think glittering purple eyelids or chrome-finish eye paints. This level of shimmer extended to lips, too, with frosted lipstick skyrocketing in popularity later in the decade. Few shots epitomise the grunge and glitter of the 90s like this shot captured by Mark Smith in Vivas October 13 issue in 1999, complete with smoked-out silver eyeshadow and aforementioned skinny brows.

Undeniably grungy, and pioneered by iconic makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin, were pencil-thin eyebrows. Its a trend wed rather forget (and are still recovering from) the overplucked, low-arch brow iconised by Gwen Stefani, Drew Barrymore and Angelina Jolie. Locally, ultra-thin brows were sported by two of the countrys most famous actors, Shortland Streets Minnie Crozier and New Zealand icon Suzy Cato of Suzys World.

For hair, the Rachel haircut defined much of the decade, with Friends fans taking pictures of Jennifer Anistons layered, face-framing haircut to their stylist in droves. Slightly edgier was the shag haircut, epitomised by Meg Ryan in Youve Got Mail. While it didnt hit cult status quite like the Rachel did, variations on the trend have stood the test of time and the style continues to be reimagined today.

Skinny brows continued their reign during the turn of the millennium, later morphing into a more sculpted, arched look towards the end of the decade.

Eyeshadow trends borrowed the same level of shimmer from the late 90s (think frosted eyelids) in baby blue, blush pink, lavender or mint green but later gave way to a smoky eye in every hue, from rusted reds and burnt oranges to nightclub-ready smoke in black, silver and white.

Another trademark of this era was a highly glossed lip bubblegum pink and glittery hues dominated. Formulas at the time were thick and promised to cast a sheen over lips when worn solo or layered on top of lipstick for extra shine. A fusion of both frost and gloss, makeup artist Steph Lai liberally applied frosted lipstick to model Marcellie Viezzers lips for a shoot that featured in Vivas Winter Fashion special in March 2006, as photographed by Carolyn Robertson.

Spurred on by the emo music movement, inky black eyeliner defined the eyes of musicians and models alike, on stage or on the runway. Tightlining was the best application method, with the upper and lower lash line coated in thick, ultra-dark formula for a sultry, mysterious finish. Kiwi singer Gin Wigmore made the look her own, and was very seldom spotted without her signature smudged-out liner and glossy nude lip.

Poker-straight hair was paired with the pouf (aka the bump or the quiff), a style that called for the top section of hair to be sectioned off, then pulled back over the top of the head, pushing the hair slightly forward to create a speedbump at the front. It also did an excellent job of disguising an unruly fringe or showing off two-toned, chunky highlights typical of the time.

Considerably more time-consuming than straightening hair was crimping often coupled with sections of straight or curled hair, something that was oddly popular at the time.

Fringes came in two formats, either ultra wispy (think French girl beauty) or of the thick, chunky and cover-your-entire-face variety. Personally, my preference was for the latter, and my left eye went on hiatus for five years from 2004-2009. Slightly less dramatic was the side-swept fringe, worn by model Sarah from Clyne Models in the March 2005 edition of Viva, photographed by Carolyn Robertson.

If the commitment of chopping a fringe felt too daunting, then free-flowing front strands were a great way to dip your toe in the trend where two thin pieces of hair were left to hang free from the rest of the hair (that was often slicked back into a high ponytail or bun).

The advent of social media birthed countless beauty trends, largely thanks to the rising obsession with selfies, which quickly became synonymous with celebrity and influencer culture.

Makeup had a major moment, especially where perfected, heavily filtered finishes were concerned. Think airbrushed foundation, false lashes, overlined lips, bold brows and a heavy focus on facial contouring.

Such glamorous beauty trends were excellent social media fodder for platforms like Instagram and YouTube, which experienced a surge in tutorials by makeup artists-slash-influencers like Jaclyn Hill and James Charles.

Elsewhere, reality TV shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians set off a global fascination with extreme highlighting, face baking, full-face contouring and overlined lips.

As one of the prevailing makeup trends of the 2010s, contouring was intended to enhance bone structure by using cream, powder and liquid contouring products to add shadows or highlights to the face.

Famed for his ability to chisel cheekbones and refine noses, Kim Kardashians makeup artist, Mario Dedivanovic, shared tips on Instagram, YouTube and via live masterclasses, before launching his eponymous makeup line, which included a now-viral contouring kit.

The face-framing powers of eyebrows never rang truer in the 2010s, when brows went from being a second thought to top priority. Brow makeup boomed and treatments like threading, waxing, microblading and laminating soared in popularity.

In 2017, K-beauty rose to fame with its 10-step skincare routines and obsession with niche ingredients like snail mucin and bee propolis to achieve a glass skin finish. The collective adoption of K-beauty saw people smoothing on all manner of essences, jellies and single-use sheet masks geared towards specific areas of the face and body. The trickle-down effect saw K-beauty brands like Hikoco and La La Beauty open doors to Auckland boutiques dotted around the CBD.

A complete 180-degree shift from the pile-it-on approach elsewhere this decade, K-beauty made a strong case for barely there, your-skin-but-better makeup using BB or CC creams. Perfected but not overly made-up was the brief for Vivas Accessories issue in May 2016, in which we highlighted Clyne model Paige Honeycutts glowing complexion while keeping the overlook look light and natural.

Developments in hair colouring techniques meant experimental hair hues were made possible, resulting in dramatic transformations in either rainbow brights or muted pastels. Originally developed in the 1970s, the French painterly highlighting technique of balayage allowed colourists to create a more natural finish with blended roots and sunkissed ends.

Hair stylist Katie Melody Rogers transformed Clyne model Seon Hwangs hair into the brightest shade of pink for Vivas beach-ready shoot photographed by Guy Coombes in December 2015. Flyaway, hot pink strands appeared all the more striking when set against coloured backgrounds in shades of blue, yellow and orange.

It was long overdue, but Fenty Beauty spearheaded the need for the diversification of complexion shade ranges. While M.A.C made excellent headway with its extensive shade range in the years prior, Fenty Beauty launched with 40 shades (now 50). More significantly, the brand fostered an important conversation around inclusivity connecting to people who felt previously ignored by the industry in both the shades offered and the representation in campaigns.

Were only three years into the 2020s, but so far, weve witnessed an eclectic co-mingle of beauty trends this decade, dewy, skin-finish makeup peacefully coexists with boundary-pushing graphic neon eyeshadow and bold siren liner.

A little bit of both were featured in this summer-ready beauty shoot creative directed and photographed by Carolyn Haslett for Viva Magazine Volume Two. The makeup artist/photographer worked with canary-yellow eyeliner to draw attention to 62 Managements model Portia Princes eyes, keeping the rest of her complexion fairly pared-back.

Glowing skin will always be in, and the emphasis on using skincare that promotes a healthy skin barrier continues. The concept of makeup-as-skincare has seen the rise in hybrid formulas like serum-based foundations, concealers and highlighters coming to the fore.

Makeup artist Sam Hart put skin in the spotlight on models Izzi Zigan and Denver Gray of Super Mgmt, creating a lit-from-within glow for the main beauty shoot featured inside Viva Magazine Volume Seven, photographed by Carolyn Haslett.

Grappling with a pandemic for two years heavily influenced routines, with being housebound meaning people had more time to perform lengthy skincare rituals. Makeup was tailored to mask-wearers, with the absence of day-to-day lipstick-wearing in favour of playing up what was visible instead eyes, brows and cheeks.

The rise of conscious consumerism has seen brands respond with greater transparency around their ingredient sourcing and manufacturing processes. Sustainability, ethics, ingredient provenance and traceability, representation and inclusivity are just the tip of the proverbial when it comes to consumers using their purchasing powers to align with brands that reflect their own values. Its brands like Aleph Beauty, Emma Lewisham, Ecostore, Ethique, Kester Black and Sans Ceuticals (among others) that are pioneering the charge locally; combatting the beauty industrys waste problem by introducing recycling initiatives, having open conversations about ingredient sourcing and aiming to de-clutter bathrooms with multipurpose products.

Healthy, wealthy-looking blow-outs continue their reign, typically styled with a round brush to achieve loose, bouncy curls with ample volume. The swishy style has long been the Duchess of Cambridges signature, but the uptick in popularity of hot tools like the Dyson Airwrap and Ghd Glide have made it even easier to achieve salon-worthy blow-outs from home.

Many iconic nail moments have been had over the past 25 years, more so after the turn of the millennium when social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram helped showcase nail art designs. These mini canvasses were utilised as the ultimate form of self-expression a medium on which to make a literal statement. Today, its a rolling roster of trends like strawberry milk nails, mismatched manicures, artistic accents, micro-French and aura nails. Nail technician Tanya Barlow captured this perfectly with this fat-positive nail set she created for Viva Magazine Volume Two, sported by Katherine Lowe of Super Mgmt and shot by Babiche Martens.

So, whats next in beauty? The evolution of makeup, hair, skincare and nail trends over the last 25 years reflects the culture and mood of the moment, each one leaving a significant mark on the beauty world. Moving forward, beauty standards will continue to evolve and adapt, driven by the constant innovation within the category and the ongoing celebration of self-expression.

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Frosted Lipstick, Chunky Highlights & Thick Eyeliner: Every Beauty ... - New Zealand Herald

You cant have your cake and eat it too. Liberal women are taking to social media, like TikTok user Petra, known as @Ms_Petch, to air their grievances about how all the men they feel attracted to just so happen to be conservative.

As a liberal woman, it is really hard to find a man who is willing to play the more traditional masculine role in the relationship in todays day and age who is not a conservative, Petra said. A man who wants to pay on the first date; who wants to open your door; who has that want and desire to take care of you and provide who is not a conservative.

What women like Petra likely desire is a man who can tap into actual alpha energy, but frankly, they probably surround themselves with beta males who check their privilege and have been whipped into self-flagellation by an overbearing henhouse.

Some may say that masculine and progressive values are mutually exclusive, but in all honesty, theres much more nuance at play here. Masculinity, like the sexual orientations of the progressive men these liberal women probably come across in the dating sphere, exists on a spectrum and researchers believe they can diagnose three specific types on this range.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada released results from a recent research study led by their mens health expert John Oliffe. He recruited 92 heterosexual men between the ages of 19 and 43 from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds to see the different ways in which men harness their masculinity to navigate intimate relationships.

After in-depth interviews, Dr. Oliffe came to the conclusion that there are three types of masculine styles: neo-traditionalists, egalitarians, and progressives.

Of those 92 participants, half of the men were categorized as egalitarians, while 26% were progressives, and only 24% were neo-traditionalists. Heres a little look into what each of these masculinity styles reportedly look like, as explained by UBC:

Egalitarians, the researchers largest cohort of men, seek a more equal partnership with their woman. They purposefully distance themselves from several traditionally masculine gender norms, idealizing reciprocity and 50-50 contributions.

Progressives, which were second in frequency, focused on social justice and fairness, checking their own privilege in order to operate justly within their relationship.

Neo-traditionalists, the smallest cohort of men participating in the study, were reliant on traditionally masculine gender norms, preferring breadwinner and protector roles for themselves while assigning domestic roles as feminine.

Lets be real though, 92 participants is hardly a wide sample size, despite the researchers' caveat that they selected participants to fit a diverse range of cultural backgrounds. So, I thought it would be worthwhile to run my own poll on X and see which type of masculinity the gents self-identified with.

Granted, I knew ahead of time that the circles I run in online would tend to skew neo-traditionalist. After all, one of my X mutuals Jonathan Wong, the lead producer at Lotus Eaters, responded to my tweet introducing the concept of these three distinct types of masculinity by saying, That's like saying there are three types of swimming, and the other two do not feature water. And I had accounts that leaned slightly right-of-center sharing the poll, as well as those that skewed farther right, and those that are more libertarian leaning.

My own polling of 642 men resulted in 83.3% of respondents saying they are neo-traditionalist, 15% saying theyre egalitarian, and 1.7% saying they are progressive.

Now, theres no way to know if the people who voted were actually men and if they actually do fit into the categories, so my own data should be taken with a grain of salt. But heres why my arguably unscientific research is still important: Mainstream media controls all narratives. They have a stranglehold over them. But, as alternative media and social media have grown, the end-all-be-all narratives were typically spoonfed are now challenged and, in some cases, disproven.

One New York Post writer who analyzed UBCs research explained that the reason less than one-quarter of the test subjects were considered neo-trad is likely because younger generations of men are actively trying to move away from any association with toxic masculinity, which includes the suppression of emotion, the assertion of dominance and the reluctance to partake in household chores, such as cooking and cleaning.

Perhaps this is the case for single Redditors or men whipped by fourth-wave feminist type women who believe that being a divorce by age 30 is chic, but theres a significant group of men who are being overlooked.

What caused such a stark, sudden rise in the interest for a manosphere? Why are polemical voices like Andrew Tate or even the voices of those who are arguably tamer in tone and teaching like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Chris Williamson, or Andrew Huberman booming in popularity? Id wager that more men are jaded by the shift in gender roles than theyd like to admit and even if they did, the mainstream media doesnt want to appear accommodating to traditional masculine values.

Does it ever feel like the predominant narrative surrounding masculinity is mostly negative? The cultural zeitgeist that is toxic masculinity began to rise long before the #MeToo movement picked up steam and has now casually expanded in its definition to not just include genuinely problematic behaviors, but normal, masculine traits as well.

Media and scholars alike deliberately promote negative elements of masculinity while ignoring all of the amazing things that men have contributed in crafting our modern world. This ideology then trickles down to the masses, who spread misconceptions from friend to friend.

Since were treading new, increasingly egalitarian waters, theres very little research done on non-traditional frameworks of masculinity and how they could affect men over time. Whereas the feminist movement served to house non-traditional women, theres not exactly a one-for-one movement for non-traditional men to develop a collective, progressive male identity. Instead, progressive masculinity is less of a movement and more of a learned reaction to being treated as the enemy.

A study published by the Journal of Gender and Power, titled The elusiveness of progressive masculinity, sought to better understand the nature of this new concept. Researchers asked men to recount times in their lives when they had acted progressively in regard to their sex. They found that most men who self-identify as progressive instead recounted experiences that reflected traditional understandings of masculinity. Interestingly, only 17% of men interviewed who fit into the progressive masculinity camp actually had experiences to share that reflected progressive values. Because of this, the researchers felt that theres not a solid understanding of progressive masculinity. They even pointed out how some may be more likely to act progressively due to peer pressure, whether thats in the presence of a progressive woman or another man.

Again, feminist theory has been budding since suffragettes started social action in the mid-19th century. That laid the foundation for female-focused psychological research to take off part way through the 20th century, but any sort of male equivalent was mostly ignored until the late 1990s.

One paper discussing the taboos of masculinity asserted that successful progressive men share a love of learning, connection to the community, critical thinking skills, love for the people, and creative courage to say and do the right things as often as members of movements, teams, or groups. Maybe Im missing something here, but I dont see how these same values couldnt just as easily be assigned to a neo-traditionalist man.

If I were to conjure up poster children for progressive masculinity, Id look to men like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or California Governor Gavin Newsom. They both shill for an increasingly burdensome, oppressive nanny state and prioritize failing social credit scoring systems like DEI and ESG over actually governing in a manner that increases the freedom and well-being of their constituents.

These men epitomize the male cohort of the progressive left, and time after time, their behavior signals submission and subservience to special interests and globalist ideological dogma. Politicians aside, weve also witnessed a rise in soft boys like Harry Styles or Timothe Chalamet, who appear to reject their masculinity while embracing feminine traits to deconstruct our notion of gender in all respects.

But what about men who believe in genuine egalitarianism? Egalitarianism is supposed to encompass the philosophy that all humans are equal in the eyes of God and the law. Americans instinctually prefer equality of opportunity instead of institutionally mandated equality of outcomes, but its a slippery slope that can easily lead right back to progressive gender equity.

In Americas Judeo-Christian tradition, men and women have complementary roles to one another since our brains and bodies fundamentally operate in different ways. Sure, we share a lot of similarities in day-to-day function, and were still the same species (hence why were afforded equality, not outright equity), but there are specific things were naturally inclined to excel at. This lays the groundwork for traditional gender roles.

Women have been found to feel happier when their man takes a leadership role in terms of power dynamics and when they themselves embrace marriage and motherhood. Its built into womens DNA to desire men who are good providers and protectors even progressive women typically prefer men who exhibit more trad dating and courtship behaviors. Whats more, the General Social Survey recently published research showing that women married with kids have been linked to the biggest happiness dividends. In that same study, they found that married men report being twice as happy as their unmarried male peers.

Allowing men to have a bit more breathing space where they can embrace positive, productive aspects of masculinity and encouraging women to consider a more nurturing, maternal path in life could indeed contribute to better mental health outcomes. Though there are a lot of factors at play with deteriorating mental health in the West, its fascinating that soundness of mind appears to be on a downward trajectory while enforced equity is trending up and up.

Based on research and observations, its my opinion that we best thrive under the egalitarian-to-neo-traditional side of the masculinity spectrum. Once we hit the progressive end of the spectrum, we begin to socially castrate men. In order to better understand the trad-adjacent masculinities, I spoke with some of the men who voted in my poll and reported identifying mostly as egalitarian but with several neo-traditionalist traits.

Phil Labonte, lead singer of the metalcore band All That Remains and contributor at Timcast, calls himself an anti-communist and counter-revolutionary. Hes certainly not a right-wing extremist, but online users slander him as such and misconstrue the freedom-focused principles he espouses on Tim Pools shows and on social media, where he is quite outspoken on current events.

Labonte, 48, a proponent of reviving rock musics formerly anti-authoritarian messaging, leans libertarian in his personal politics. When presented with the UBC types of masculinity, he said that his gut instinct was to self-identify as egalitarian. Despite running in alternative crowds, Labonte shared with me in an interview that he actively seeks out more traditional gender roles.

Most of the people I associate with think traditional values are vital to a functioning society, Labonte said. In his view, the system humans created by making distinctions between masculinity and femininity go beyond one society, and the resulting power dynamic became so ubiquitous because of their utility to create functional families capable of producing children and making for more meaningful lives.

Theres not a future with men or women in it if the progressives get their way, Labonte continued. Eventually, the gender abolitionists will attempt to do away with any distinction at all. Which, in my opinion, wont happen because society will fall entirely apart on the way, long before gender could be abolished.

Next, I spoke with a 32-year-old Eastern European male immigrant from the former Soviet Bloc who wished to remain anonymous. He shared his perspective on how his cultural heritage and immigration status greatly inform his masculine identity. According to him, men in Eastern Europe would typically fit in the neo-traditional camp while the progressive masculine identity is more American.

But, in this mans opinion, America is at risk of great instability because of how off-balance our gender roles and expectations have become. Having lived in a post-Communist country where his own bloodline experienced Communism firsthand, the man warned about efforts to chip away at traditional gender roles.

Women were effectively second-class citizens but also expected to work. So, the idea of starting a family was very much frowned upon by the government while being a good worker was very much promoted," he said.

He explained that his own views regularly feel conflicted because old-school Eastern European tendencies were disturbed by a totalitarian regime where family was heavily criticized, but now that his family lives in America, he observes growing instability from us reversing our own gender roles.

It makes me feel like a boomer or a geriatric Gen Alpha because the more conservative friends I have feel a bit too trad, he noted, referencing one friend of his who leans so heavily into trad culture that this friend would consider a woman wearing a dress above her knees to be promiscuous. But on the other side, I have friends that are a lot more liberal, like theyre into polyamory, and thats where I feel like an out-of-touch boomer.

Another impactful perspective this man emphasized was that men and women in America may feel so miserable about their interpersonal relationships with one another because they insist they dont know the cause of their misery, when in fact they do. Theres a misalignment of gender roles through the proliferation of progressive masculinity and femininity. This misalignment acts in direct conflict to how were biologically built and how we instinctively act after thousands of years of evolution.

Im actually a bit optimistic about the future being more temperate and nuanced, he said. This man doesnt see an outright return to trad, but feels hopeful that there may have to be some sort of compromise. He concluded, There are some aspects of the liberal way which are good, and we should adopt them. But, there are also certain aspects of our instincts that are our bedrock. Both are okay, but there needs to be this compromise. I dont know if that will be in the next five years or 10 years, but its inevitable because you cannot cheat how you were built and you cannot breed that out of people or nurture it out of them quickly.

Its no secret that women, by and large, find more traditional elements of masculinity to be sexier. Many progressive masculine traits demonstrate inherent weakness or a lack of ability to protect and provide. But our understanding of old-fashioned gender roles is unfortunately colored by a static image of the 1950s nuclear family that simply cannot be reproduced today. Traditional families existed for centuries upon centuries before that, where women did in fact work to feed and clothe their families while also embracing their nature and raising children. Even staunch feminists cant resist their instinctual love for chivalrous mates, so if the science says there are three types of masculinity, we should encourage the behavior that promotes positive and not progressive masculine virtue.

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From Alphas To Betas: Science Says There Are Three Types Of ... - Evie Magazine

A few days after the Sunday Times and Channel 4 published rape and sexual abuse accusations against Russell Brand (allegations Brand strongly denies) a meme began circulating on social media. It showed a still from the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, with three of the films starsBrand, Jonah Hill and Mila Kunisstanding together at a beach bar. The caption read: This photo hasnt aged well in 2023.

Thats perhaps an understatement. Earlier this summer, Hill was accused of sending a series of controlling and emotionally abusive messages to his then-girlfriend, the surfer and model Sarah Brady, forbidding her from posting pictures of herself in swimwear, maintaining friendships with men, surfing with men and modelling in general. Two weeks ago, Kunis and her husband Ashton Kutcher apologised after sending a supportive letter to Danny Masterson, their former co-star in That 70s Show, prior to his rape trial. Masterson was subsequently sent to jail for at least 30 years. Then, last week, Brand was accused of having allegedly assaulted four women between 2006 and 2013.

Whenever historic allegations of abuse make the newsand they are almost always historic, if they do make the newspeople immediately raise two cautions in defence of the person accused. The first is that of nuance: what are the details of the story? Who are the accusers in question and what might be their motivations? Were they paid? Do they want to be famous? The second is whether the alleged behaviour may or not be of its time. Often that suggestion is intended to shut down the conversationit was a different timerather than offering nuance or even contextualising behaviour. (As in 2017, when Harvey Weinstein offered the defence: That was the culture then.) To be clear: breaching someones bodily boundary against their consent has always been wrong. But there are certain cultural conditions which help to deem what may be abusive behaviour publicly acceptable. Brandlike Kutcher, Kunis and Hillis a product of his time in every sense of the word. And the allegations against him reveal something about the unique ugliness of the 2000s.

Lets consider the 2000s for a moment. It was the war on terror, the financial crisis, the birth of social media, and arguably the period which paved the way for the current wave of populism. Culturally, it was chaotic. On screens, we saw gross-out comedies (like Superbad, starring Hill); forgettable romcoms (like Friends with Benefits, starring Kunis): early reality shows (like Punkd, hosted by Kutcher; or Big Brothers Little Brother, hosted by Brand), and Disney blockbusters (like Pirates of the Caribbean, starring Johnny Depp). Fashion-wise, we went from normcore and Y2K to boho and landed at indie sleaze. An eclectic mixbut if theres one thing that the era should be universally remembered for, its that it was arguably the most misogynistic period in recent history.

Russell Brands heydaythe mid-noughtieswas a particular low point. At every turn, men were encouraged to play into a caricature of debonair, clueless man-children downing pints and quipping insults, with women staged as their nagging housewives (see: Family Guy; The Hangover) or manic pixie dream accessories (see: New Girl, 500 Days of Summer.) Women, meanwhile, were subjected to endless scrutiny and encouraged to do the same to themselves: no-make up paparazzi pictures, upskirting shots, the size 0 trend, endless magazine articles about How to Please Your Man, busting cellulite or buying flattering clothes to fit the parameters of a patriarchal lens. This was the time of UniLad and LadBible, which have since rebranded as anodyne meme platforms, but launched themselves as intentionally sexist 2000s blogs. (LadBible came with a list of tragic commandments, including thou shall covet thy neighbours breasts, and thou shall bash and dash if thy woman refuses to make thee a sandwich in the morning. The mainstream press wasnt better either: in 2007, Christopher Hitchens published an article in Vanity Fair, without his usual crutch of irony, entitled Why Women Arent Funny. It provoked a flurry of public head-scratching from male journalists. Was this clueless patriarchy a prison in itself? Yes. Does that excuse it? No. And whether you were a rugby #unilad, an indie twee crooner, a ghoulish Camden lush or a bookish nice guyyou werent calling yourself a feminist.

Brand reached fame in the mid 2000s, when indie sleaze was in full drip. Everything about himfrom his aesthetic, to his sense of humour, to his sexual proclivities, and lofty, performative use of languagefed into the cultural template of that period. His much-romanticised hangout of Camden crawled with vomit-flecked male singers who sang lyrics like shes a slut and you never fucking liked her and were hailed as artistic geniuses. Their female counterparts were seen as volatile messes. Amy Winehouseher surnames beginning to sound like a description of her liver, Brand joked in 2007. Brands originality and charm were fostered by an environment that lacked those things. Surfing the wave of the zeitgeist, he gladly fashioned a persona of a louche, high-minded truth-teller who was at once above establishment prudishness, but also very much embodied the laddish ideals of the mainstream. His rise from comedian to public intellectualwhile still reviled by some at the timeisnt surprising in retrospect. In 2015, he was voted the worlds fourth most influential thinker by this magazine.

Through the grainy footage of hindsight, its tempting to look at the 2000s and feel that it is a distant time. (Since then, weve had the MeToo movement, among other social and political upheavals, and identifying as a feminist is now not only valid but popular.) But its also becoming fashionable to say that the 2000s are coming back. From the return of Y2K and indie sleaze aesthetic, to the popularity of misogynistic figures such as Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate who has, incidentally, rushed to Brands defence in recent daysfor many, 2023 doesnt look or feel a million miles away from 2003. The truth is that the 2000s have never really gone away. For a brief periodduring the MeToo Erathey felt stifled. But one glance at the internet is enough to see how much repressed misogyny was waiting to resurface.

Today, the evidence of our desire to rehabilitate overpowering men is everywhere. Whether its the baffling career comeback of Johnny Deppa domestic abuser who is now starring in upcoming film Jeanne du Barry, and has amassed a cult Gen Z fanbase following his defamation cases (he fought two, winning one and losing one)or the comments underneath videos about the Brand allegations railing against the establishment, people are always scrambling to find ways to defend men for alleged wrongdoing against women. Its not just an alt-right problem either. The number of Andrew Tate videos that slip through the algorithm and recommend themselves to me is some indication of the prevalence of this kind of thinking.

As I write this article, Channel 4 has cut ties with Brand, the BBC has removed some of his content, YouTube has suspended his channel from making money and the police are investigating a report relating to the allegations. Brand may be de-platformed; and he could face the weight of our legal system. But, sooner or later, theres a solid chance hell be rehabilitated, whatever the outcome of the current allegations. Until the effects of the deeply ingrained sexism of the 2000s are fully confronted and shattered, people will continue to prop doors open for misogynists, and quietly or publicly support them. Thats a problem, not only because it validates and perpetuates abusive behaviour, but because ultimately it deters brave women from speaking out. To quote Forgetting Sarah Marshall: If you get bitten by a shark, youre not going to stop surfing, are you? The answer: Probably, yeah.

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Russell Brand is a product of the horrifically misogynistic noughties - Prospect Magazine

10 years ago today, pop music history was made. On September 27, 2013the alt-pop Barbenheimer, one could sayNew Zealand teen Lorde and L.A. sister trio HAIM released their studio debuts Pure Heroine and Days Are Gone. The former was a polished, gothic album detailing the boredom and loneliness of growing up in the age of the Internet, while the latter was a warm, 70s-inspired indie pop-rock record brimming with soulful, incredibly catchy tunes about unrequited love and failed relationships.

Coming off two promising EPs, Pure Heroine and Days Are Gone were immediate game-changers. They boasted two successful lead singlesthe moody, capitalism-critiquing Royals and the sparkling breakup anthem The Wire. They gained attention and adoration on Tumblr right at the websites peak. Even their album covers oozed cool, with Pure Heroines monochromatic simplicity and Days Are Gones laid-back, retro aesthetic reflecting the alternative fashion trends that dominated the mid-2010s and re-materialized in todays sartorial style.

Lorde and HAIMs first major-label albums not only launched the then-rising artists into superstardom, but marked an exciting inflection point for pop music in general. In addition to the sharp, confident quality of their songwriting and production, Pure Heroine and Days Are Gone expanded what pop could sound like: exploratory, genre-fluid and defiant of categorization and formula. Just as the hyper-positivity that animated recession-era pop music began to decline, these records became massively influential both for their challenging emotional landscapes and ambitious artistic visions.

Lorde especially felt like nothing anyone had heard before, crafting songs about being young while still experiencing her youth in real time at 16 years old. Other fellow emerging artistslike Lana Del Rey, Florence Welch, Grimes and Sky Ferreiraalso made angsty pop music that catered to a relatively young audience, but Lorde in particular spoke so exactly to a generation dealing with increasing social isolation, rapidly accelerating technology, and constant messaging about staying optimistic amid all the cultural chaos. Im kinda over getting told to put my hands up in the air, Lorde declared on Team, effectively closing the door on the previous decade of party rocking. Celebrating was out; brooding was in.

Throughout Pure Heroine, Lorde nimbly and impressively drew from a wellspring of themes pertinent to millennials/Gen-Z cuspers. Against a backdrop of elemental yet vivid electronic instrumentation, she cut through the bullshit of materialism on Royals, chronicled her social anxiety on downtempo opener Tennis Court and, most prominently, expressed the whiplash of adolescence on the romantic 400 Lux, the spectral Buzzcut Season, and the soul-piercing Ribs.

Were it any other musician, these interpretations of youth culture would read as glib and pandering, but Lorde immediately stood out for her gifted, singular songwriting, texturizing the musical spareness of Pure Heroine with sprawling, poetic imagery. Empty suburban roads, explosions on TV, Cola with the burnt-out taste, several metaphors about teeththese visuals created a fascinating, immersive portal into Lordes imagination, so much so that practically any disaffected high schooler could feel like she was pulling directly from their experiences. Her smoky vocals and minimalist aesthetic also coated her music with a certain maturity and allure, a stark contrast to the colorful glitz and glam of her pop progenitors.

But perhaps the biggest reason why Pure Heroine resonated so strongly with teens at the time was because Lorde was talking not just to her audience, but also on their behalffrequently employing we and our in her lyrics. The best use of this play with perspective was on Ribs, where Lorde channeled her fear of aging into a melancholic anecdote about hosting a party while her parents are gone. Over ghostly reverb, droning synths and quiet drum loops, Lorde uses the anecdote to bittersweetly lament the passage of time, addressing the listener via intimate, conversational verses as if they were a close childhood buddy. She repeats these anxieties before building to a thrilling and devastating crescendo, grasping at her memories of sleepovers and hysterical laughing fits with friends before they fade away into a somber echo.

With this stunning sonic and lyrical juxtaposition, Ribs perfectly articulated how disorienting coming of age can be, which in a way makes it the definitive Lorde song. Its this sophistication that also led Lorde to become a musical sage of sorts for young adults following Pure Heroines success. In 2014, she executive-produced the soundtrack for the third installment of the Hunger Games franchise, a series all about the youth leading a movement of political and social change. Pure Heroine and its barn-burning 2017 follow-up Melodrama have gone on to inform the work of other young female pop artists like Clairo, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, the latter of whom explicitly credited Pure Heroine as an influence on her breakout single drivers license.

Though each of them has their own distinctive artistic signature, Clairos hushed presentation, Eilishs husky, lilting voice and dark-pop undertones, and Rodrigos deeply personal balladry can all be tied back to Lorde. What unifies them all, too, is what made Lorde so special in the first place: her ability to make people take the feelings and experiences of teenage girls seriously. While Lorde made waves for her staggering originality and relatability, HAIM felt like something familiar made anew, filtering the spiky stylings of female-fronted rock bands like Fleetwood Mac and Pat Benatar through a contemporary lens, made for a contemporary audience. Eldest Este, middle child Danielle and youngest Alana were at a unique advantage in 2013not just for already being sisters, but for having fine-tuned their sound, image and work ethic over the course of many years.

They had been playing instruments since they were young, famously forming a group as kids with their parents and calling themselves Rockinhaim. After Danielle and Este briefly joined another girl group in 2005 (the aptly titled Valli Girls) and Danielle later finished touring as a guitarist with Jenny Lewis and Julian Casablancas, the Haim sisters came back together, truncated their original name and began what would be a lucrative journey with Days Are Gone.

In contrast to Pure Heroines steeliness, Days Are Gone offered a lighter substitute for indie pop listeners, still dealing with heavy themes but at a much more amiable register. Their earliest singles Falling, Forever and Dont Save Me defined their Californian sound to a T: crisp percussion, lovely vocal harmonies, thick bass licks, the ha! yelp. Honey & I and the title track conveyed the elasticity of their rangethe former a pleasant, relaxed ditty about finding new love and the latter a weightier, sadder (but still very catchy) reflection of a relationship on its last legs. The woozy, hip hop-inflected My Song 5 flirted with the bands interest in experimentation that theyd later practice in 2017s Something to Tell You and 2020s Women in Music Part III.

Similar to how Lorde was so adept at capturing the highs and lows of teenhood, Haim found their thematic groove in talking about the myriad difficulties of maintaining a relationship and the messiness that comes with ending one. No more is that apparent on The Wire, which HAIM reportedly recorded seven times before nailing the final versionan interesting factoid, considering the song itself contends with how hard it is to get it right.

Accompanied by an infectious guitar riff and snappy handclaps, each Haim member got a chance on the mic to justify their romantic rejections while owning up their own shortcomings. Danielle blamed herself for bad communication, Alana offered a gentle warning to her ex to not rationalize why the relationship ended and Este explained her exhaustion in trying to do what her ex wanted. Ultimately, though, all three of them come to the same note that every guy whos ever been thrown off by a breakup should hear: Youre gonna be okay anyway.

Although the ideas and sounds found in The Wire would recur throughout the rest of HAIMs discography, the band has continued to broaden their musical and professional horizons. Since Days Are Gone, theyve worked with Rostam Batmanglij, Dev Hynes, Taylor Swift and Paul Thomas Anderson, the latter of whom has helped highlight their talents by directing many of their innovative music videos and casting them in his 2021 film Licorice Pizza. The band has even maintained a sense of humor in promoting themselves online, poking fun at their sisterly dynamic in a Funny or Die clip with Brie Larson as the fourth HAIM sister and making endearingly cringey posts on Instagram and Tik Tok. Their exuberant hooks and emotional synchronicity have also gone on to impact other non-male indie pop-rock trios like MUNA and boygenius.

Though seemingly disparate on the surface, Lorde and HAIM have overlapped numerous times since they came onto the music scene. Theyve covered Alanis Morisette together, collaborated on the incredibly underrated Hunger Games: Mockingjay song Meltdown and been parodied on SNL. But most importantly, they each gave us two fantastic, inimitable debut records whose endurance in the zeitgeist can never truly be replicated.

Sam Rosenberg is a filmmaker and freelance entertainment writer from Los Angeles with bylines in The Daily Beast, Consequence, AltPress and Metacritic. You can find him on Twitter @samiamrosenberg.

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The Enduring Magic of Lorde's Pure Heroine and HAIM's Days Are ... - Paste Magazine

Climate activists play a similar role to that of journalists: informing the public, shaping discourse, and wrestling the narrative back from the powerful. While journalists wear the chainmail of press freedom, activists dont have the armour of a similar social compact.

Terry Kaelber woke to find himself alone in bed on a Saturday morning in April 2018. He thought his husband David Buckel had simply slipped out of their Brooklyn apartment for a bit, and that hed be back soon for their usual visit to the local market. Nothing in Davids recent behaviour had given any clue as to what would come next.

David, a former human rights lawyer and prominent New York LGBT+ activist, had walked to a nearby park, where he texted local media outlets to say what he was about to do. He sat on the grass, doused himself in petrol he chose, deliberately, a fossil fuel and set himself alight.

The sun was barely up when Terry learned that his partner of more than 30 years was dead.

This was not a death of despair, Terry explains a few years later on the podcast Death, Sex & Money. It wasnt suicide. David was drawing on the Buddhist tradition of self-immolation, an act of offering up ones body in sacrifice, in this case as a political protest to shake the world out of a coma of climate complacency.

My early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves, wrote the 60-year-old in a note explaining his actions.

Only it didnt do what hed hoped. The media barely paid attention beyond a few ghoulish moments, and then, predictably, moved on to the next story.

If only hed chosen to direct his activism into writing, Terry reflects.

He was such a great writer.

Is this kind of protest too much? Is it a step too far?

Judging by the reception of the rising wave of climate demonstrations around the world, it is.

But then so is the tomato soup splattered across the protective glass pane covering a Van Gogh by Just Stop Oil activists in 2022, even though the action was intended to leave the painting undamaged. Too radical. Greta Thunbergs address at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2019. Too angry. Extinction Rebellions disruption of city traffic now and then. Too inconvenient.

What comes next, after all normal channels have failed? When society continues to deafen itself to letter writing and public appeals and street march sing-alongs, is it time to break the law, asks Chris Packham, the British television presenter and David Attenborough protg in a recent Channel 4 broadcast.

Civil disobedience is already here, where activists are breaking the law peacefully in the interests of the common good, like the Extinction Rebellion sit-in at Standard Banks Johannesburg head offices this month to draw public attention to the financiers support of fossil fuel development on the continent. The protesters transgression was trespassing. Their punishment was to be manhandled from the property by security and bullied outside on the pavement by police.

This road to justice has a long history. Martin Luther King was all for peaceful law-breaking in the struggle for civil rights in 1950s America. If the law is unjust, he said, we have a moral duty to break that law.

South Africas liberation movement upped the ante against the apartheid state when it chose to meet violence with violence. The early 1960 Sabotage Campaign deliberately targeted infrastructure though, including places like pass offices which stood for state oppression. The mandate: dont hurt people. Nelson Mandela got locked up for 27 years for his part in this, although he was willing to die for it too.

Suffragette Emily Davison did die for the cause. After years of fighting for women to be regarded before the law as actual flesh-and-blood human beings, rather than objects through marches, clashes with police, arson, prison time, and hunger strikes in June 1913 she made her final protest at the Epsom Derby, a horse race that was a theatre for the rich and powerful. She stepped in the path of galloping steeds and was trampled under the kings horse. She died of her injuries. Some histories remember her as a militant.

These people werent popular at the time. Thats the nature of activism, its trying to lurch the zeitgeist out of inertia, and those benefitting from the status quo dont want disruption. But the Kings, Mandelas and Davisons of the world arent doing it to one day be on the right side of history. Theyre doing what is right, at that moment in time, so that we can have a world less cruel and exploitative.

And since were trying to avert societal annihilation, the stakes are a little higher this time.

Veteran war photographer James Nachtwey argues that reporting from the heart of violence is a way of negotiating peace. Wars are far removed from the lives of those in stable societies, so by showing us the murderous bloody maelstrom, journalists can shake us out of a fog of complacency and indifference. This is how we nudge society to demand more of itself, he says, in the hope of avoiding future wars. The roll of honour is replete with journalists whove died in the line of fire.

Environmental activists are dying, too, in a fight for a similar cause. Global Witness reckons that nearly 2,000 were murdered or killed on the job from 2012 to 2022 in the David-vs-Goliath battle to protect the land, forests, rivers, wildlife, culture and the global common good of a stable climate from predatory exploitation by corporations and complicit governments.

But journalists step into battle with the chainmail of press freedom, which gives a margin of protection, in and outside of war zones. Environmental activists dont.

Journalists are celebrated for putting their lives on the line. Climate activists are spat on, insulted, dragged from the road by irate drivers, vilified by right-wing media, and even charged with terrorism.

The binge-able BBC podcast Burn Wild tells the story of environmental activists in 1990s USA who had used up all peaceful means to stop clear-felling old-growth forests, and then turned to arson, using home-made fire-bombs to torch buildings and equipment. The states response was to charge them not just with arson, but with terrorism. The criminal implications were huge, in terms of adding years to their sentences. But the message to the public was as severe: by putting their mugshots on the FBIs most-wanted terrorist list, environmental activists were now on a par with extremists who fly passenger planes into tower blocks.

Standard Bank issued a mea culpa after its handling of the climate protests, but it only apologised for roughing up a journalist who got caught up in the fray, and for the banks transgression against a free press. How could it not respond cap-in-hand to Daily Maverick editor-in-chief Branko Brkics excoriating rebuke, and the heft of the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) hovering in the wings?

The financiers curt, three-paragraph statement clearly regards the protesters as out of order and needing to be held accountable. The bank doesnt apologise for its excessive use of force in evicting them. The only damage the trespassers were doing was to the banks reputation, and even thats easily laundered when a corporation has a huge PR machine on standby.

Theres a mind-blowing disconnect between the push-back against these small inconvenient protesters voices, and the almost willful blindness towards those who actually control the narrative. Fossil fuel companies have been exposed again and again for deliberately misleading the public and stoking climate denial, even as theyve known for 30 years that carbon pollution will destabilise the climate. They have used calculated, well-funded communications campaigns to keep us on a path towards unimaginable suffering, so that they can keep pocketing their profits. Al Gore calls this the moral equivalent of a war crime.

Rightwing media stables like those in the Murdoch empire Fox News, et al have been complicit in climate disinformation and denial, and deliberately demonised climate activists by calling them extremists and eco-terrorists. You only need to look at video footage of irate European drivers dragging peaceful protesters from road sit-ins, or beating them up, to see how this media narrative emboldens people against vilified protesters. Drivers feel it is their right to physically assault protesters, an act of harmful criminality, in response to a non-violent act of civil disobedience.

I wonder what the people of Derna have to say about all of this bluff and bluster around soup and famous paintings and a few hours of traffic bottlenecks?

What Packham calls, kindly, a childish act of vandalism, is a soft way for a London student activist to say what journalists are reporting from the frontline of disaster zones: that the climate is already becoming dangerously unstable.

The suffering in Derna, where a third of the Libyan city was razed after a rain bomb collided with the problem of failing infrastructure and incompetent governance, is unimaginable. Over 11,300 people crushed under collapsing buildings, lungs filled with suffocating water in a raging torrent, swept out to sea.

Rebuilding the Mozambican city of Beira after Cyclone Idai levelled most of it in 2019 is more than a little inconvenient. Likewise, the full toll of that years cyclone season on Cabo Delgado province in the north of the country is only now being tallied. The Red Cross/Red Crescent joins the dots between Cyclone Kenneth, which arrived a few weeks after Idai, with the existing political instability at the time, and escalating conflict in the years following this record-breaking storm season.

How inconvenient were the floods in Durban in April 2019 and again in 2022, which killed hundreds, destroyed buildings, disrupted water, electricity and sewerage services, and left thousands homeless?

This is only just the start.

The activists who try to draw these largely invisible stories into the noisy, distracted, entertainment-craving global media-scape will never be popular. The problem isnt the messenger, its the message: its too fucking frightening to look the truth square in the eye.

Its easier to shoot the messenger, be it with bile or bullets. DM

Excerpt from:

Climate activists: How far is too far in raising the climate alarm? - Daily Maverick

Pride Anthems at WHBPAC June 2nd at 8PM

The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (WHBPAC) Director of Marketing and Communications Heather Draskin announced their programming of Pride Anthems as a wonderful way to kick-off Pride Month in the Hamptons. Ms. Draskin said, Pride Anthems is a great performance. What it is going to be is the kick-off of Pride-Month, here in the Hamptons. The kick-off will be the festivities June 2, at 8 PM with Pride Anthems at the WHBPAC. Director Draskin credits Executive Director Julienne Penza-Boone for spearheading the effort to bring Pride Anthems to WHBPAC.

Heather Draskin explained Pride Anthems is a musical journey of the past fifty years featuring music from folks like Donna Summer, Queen, George Michael, and Madonna with all those songs that are significant to the Pride Legacy. Then, Ms. Draskin added how important this show will be because There is a storytelling component about the fight for LBGTQ+ Equality, and its all performed by Broadway Stars, Broadway performers. It is a show for all ages, and Everyone comes together in song and celebration. It will demonstrate where the community has come from.

The show showcases the story of the fight for LGBTQ+ equality and how it is linked to the music that evokes the struggles, heartache, and liberation of queer lives then and now. The show commemorates the legacy and power and power of the Stonewall Riots.

The Stonewall Riots or uprisings, occurred after an anti-gay violent action by the NYC police at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969. Patrons of the other lesbian and gay bars and neighborhood street people reportedly fought back. Many consider this event to be the watershed event, of the gay liberation movement of the 20th century. It was a very emotional two days that jump-started in motion, an energy that grows to this day.

The power of awareness hit the zeitgeist those two days of June 1969. Intense sacrifices of those pioneers have definitely had a phenomenal positive long-term effect. Both here is the U.S.A. and around the world.

The performers scheduled for Pride Anthems are Natalie Joy Johnson, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, and Jon-Michael Reese. They perform under the supervision of Musical Director Brian J. Nash. Heather Draskins also mentioned, Pride Anthems will be a brand-new performance. The show is having their World Premire on May 24th. The WHBPAC performance will be the second performance. Draskin added, Pride Anthems is part of a nationwide tour. What makes this special is that a portion of the proceeds will benefit Pride Lives, and the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center. The center is scheduled to open June 2024 in Washington D.C.

Tickets are still available at the website (www.whbpac.org ) or at the box office, or online. As Director Draskin also said, I want to point out that it is for all ages. It is going to be a fun and uplifting evening of entertainment. This will be the WHBPACs first foray into LGBTQ+ programing. That is why we want a great kick-off to all pride festivities. We are working to make the WHBPAC an inclusive space for the community.

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Pride Anthems at WHBPAC June 2nd at 8PM - Hamptons.com

When I sat down with Eric Huntley on 13 April 2023 it was under the auspice of interviewing him about the new community garden that he has establishedalong with filmmaker and organizer Sukant Chandanin the London borough of Ealing, just minutes away from where he and his wife, Jessica Huntley, ran their bookshop and publishing house. However, it was impossible to contain our conversation to just the Jessica Huntley Community Garden. It would also have been a huge missed opportunity. Eric and Jessica were pioneers of Black literary publishing in twentieth-century Britain, alongside so much more. While running the Walter Rodney Bookshop and Bogle-LOverture publications, some of the first ever Black-owned enterprises of their type, they were also founder members of the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association; helped form the Black Parents Movement in 1975; organized the 1981 Black Peoples Day of action march; and established the Supplementary School Move in the community. And that is just the list of activities listed in Whats Happening in Black History? III (2015).

During our wide-reaching conversation, Eric went right back to his earliest political activities in the 1940s of then British-Guiana, all the way through to 2023, where the 93-year-old community organizer and former-publisher is still working tirelessly to bring about radical change in British society.

The Huntleys legacy in Britain has been well-documented, commendably in Margaret Andrews book Doing Nothing Is Not An Option: The Radical Lives of Eric & Jessica Huntley (2014). After arriving in London between 1957-58, they started Bogle-LOverture Publications in 1968 out of the front room of their house at 141 Coldershaw Road in Ealing. The bookshop followed in 1974. It wasnt long before neighbors officially complained to the local council that the Huntleys were lowering the standard of the street by operating a business in a private house, and thus they were forced to look for a commercial premises. They ended up finding a place just off West Ealing high-street, that would later be named the Walter Rodney Bookshop after the Guyanese intellectual who was assassinated in 1980.

Rodney is integral to this story. When I asked Eric what the impetus was for founding the publishers, he first told me the anecdote that often gets repeated: Eric and Jessica were close with their Guyanese compatriot, both ideologically and socially, and when his writing and lectures were banned by the Jamaican government in 1968, the Ealing-based couple decided to publish his collected speeches in the book The Grounding with my Brothers. But then Eric corrects himself. While that was certainly true, his first foray into publishing came in Guyana over a decade earlier.

Guyana was still under the yolk of British colonialism when Eric was living there. He was a member of the anti-colonial Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) who ran as a pro-independence group, although Eric is modest about his role: Jessica and I didnt have any skills, we were working class people. Most of the people in the leadership of the party were middle-class doctors and lawyers and so on [1]. In 1951, while working as a postman in the village of Buxton, Eric saved up for a flatbed duplicating machine, I produced an unofficial journal for the Post Office Workers Trade Union using that equipment. We literally starved that month. Three years after, in 1953, the security forces seized the machine on one of their raids looking for contraband literature.

1953 was a turning point for the Guyanese independence movement. The PPP won a mandate from the public to govern, yet months later the colonial British regime suspended the constitution then conducted a widespread, violent crackdown against the PPP and anti-imperialist groups. As was common all over the world at that time, the British Empire wanted to nullify the upsurge in communist popularity that was permeating amongst the population and specifically cited concerns over the influence of communism as justification for their actions.

Marxist-thought was indeed popular amongst Eric and his comrades. He notes that communist ideas first found their way into the Guyanese zeitgeist through the soldiers who had gone abroad to fight in World War Two then returned home with battered copies of various Marxist texts. Some of these soldiers had been inculcated by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), with whom Eric had a very short-lived relationship when we first arrived in Britain (he recounts how he and his fellow Caribbean communists had a meeting at CPGB headquarters on Farringdon Road, London, but never returned after they were kicked out mid-discussion at nine in the evening: we had just from the tropics where we were our own masters, Eric recounts, the night was young and when you start talking politics you go into the morning!).[2]

Communist organizing in Guyana begins to pick up pace after the success of the Cuban Revolution. Eric recalls how delegates from the PPP begin to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union and bring back ideas and books that were disseminated through lectures and study groups. Excluding Andrews biography, the foundational role that Marxism plays in Erics thought and life is often dismissed in the literature written about the Huntleys, even though he was keeping company with the likes of Marxist scholars C.L.R James and Walter Rodney, and facilitating the International Book Fair of Radical Black & Third World Literature in the 1980s. Eric stresses this point to me: Our teacher was what was happening on the ground here. We took a Marxist outlook which I havent lost and forms the basis of my world view.

However, he does highlight that Marxism, in particular the Eurocentric variety popular in 1950s Britain, sometimes felt alien to the newly-arrived Caribbean diaspora:

We came from the colonies with a Marxist perspective, [although] you left home without any consideration for the color of your skin and only you became aware you were Black when you came to England. And therefore the politics, the way you viewed the world, changed completely. We never really read Marxist books when we came here. In the colonies, that was all we had. In England, the racism, the issue of ESN (Educationally Subnormal schools), SUS [laws] became more important.

In other words, it sometimes felt like the issues facing the Black diaspora in England at that time had nothing to do with [the] Marxism that they had been reading about in their homelands. Eric even suggests that making these issues too party political could be a hindrance to change: There was more political value out of our struggle if we concentrated on [specific] issues [], with SUS it was much easier to come together. Which is also why Eric and Jessica, in spite of all their organizing efforts, never attempted to form a political party in England. Forming a party meant attempting to reconcile too many differences within the community, and that is without considering the angle of personal belonging too, we didnt really see ourselves as residents here, and settled, to form a political party. It didnt enter our thoughts, Eric told me.

Bringing together the community was central to the vision of the Huntleys Walter Rodney Bookshop. Even before it moved to the commercial premises at Chignell Place, the bookshop was a hub for the migrant community of Ealing: The bookshop became a virtual advice center where persons called for advice on a wide range of issues, wrote Eric in 2015. People came for addresses of solicitors in the event of being arrested on being being a person preparing to to commit an offense (SUS), accommodation, social and welfare issues. Maybe unsurprisingly, Eric also mentioned how they would often host visiting writers, activists, and throw parties. These events brought the Huntleys close to the international anti-imperialist movements of their time, especially the Grenadians.

Bogle-LOuverture publications was just one of three Black-owned publishers operating at that time in London, the others being New Beacon Books established 1966 by John La Rose, and Allison & Busby established 1967 by Margaret Busby and her partner Clive Allison. Rather than seeing each other as competitors, they often collaborated with one and other, coalescing on multiple fronts, including organizing the aforementioned International Book Fair of Radical Black & Third World Literaturewhich ran for over a decadeand founding Bookshop Joint Action, created after a spate of racist attacks on Black and Asian community bookshops in the seventies. The Walter Rodney bookshop itself was defaced on multiple occasions.

Throughout our conversation, I was enthralled by how much the Huntleys had achieved in such a short space of time and with so little financial support. When I expressed this to Eric he was, in what was a common trait of his, fairly self-effacing about it: Today if you have an idea, the first question theyre going to ask you ishow are you going to manage? Where are you going to get the money from? We never started off like that! Once you had an idea, you went ahead and somehow put it into practice. In order to publish their first book, they printed posters and greeting cards and sold them to raise the funds; when they first opened the bookshop, friends who worked in offices would liberate stationary from their workplaces and supply it to them.

It has been in this revolutionary, almost punk, spirit that Eric and Sukant Chandan, a collaborator and fellow Ealing resident, have founded the Jessica Huntley Community Garden, commemorating Jessica who died in 2013. Erics environmental work began in 1995 when he started the quarterly magazine Caribbean Environment Watch. But the community garden, in its own way, is closer to to replicating the dynamics of the now-defunct bookshop. The pair hope it will become a gathering place for local people to discuss their issues, as well as find some joy. It is a fitting legacy [for Jessica]. To put our communities into the center ground, literally, to put them into the center ground in this beautiful way, Chandan remarked. In West Ealing, like in many other areas, gentrification is marginalizing people further, so this is about bringing the people at the margins to the center.

Eric added to this his concern with the effects of the pandemic on peoples social lives, particularly young people. While on a simpler note, he affectionately remembered Jessicas love of gardening: Jessica herself loved flowers. When we first came to the country we were unaware of what the flowers and vegetation was like. We kept a lot of the weeds in the garden, once they flowered, to us they were fine, they were flowers. We didnt realize that as far as the English are concerned they are weeds. So we found ourselves keeping a lot of weeds in the garden.

There seems to be a lot of hope bound up in the new community garden and hope is a word that begins to reoccur frequentlymuch to Erics own jocular amazementat the close of our conversation. You hope at the end of the struggle you can show some progress, remarks Eric. A lot of ground work has been taking place across various ages and were seeing it coming out now. Look what the The Guardian [has published]. [] This is not a miracle. Eric here was referring to the The Guardians recent investigation into itself called The Cotton Capital, exposing the newspapers link to the Atlantic slave trade.

I express some cynicism about both The Guardians investigation and the downturn in a coherent revolutionary-left resistance to the problems of contemporary capitalism. Eric is thoughtful and respectful of my youthful impatience: Sometimes you need a magnifying class [] but the movement is taking place. He gives the example of todays young environmental activists, who despite being sons and daughters of the middle-class, have made some extraordinary sacrifices and faced heavy repression for decades. They came down on them like a ton of bricks, Eric points out. But now, he suggests, the tide is turning against the big polluters.

Generations sometimes react differently to the same issues, but it doesnt mean the struggle has disappeared. Chandan reminds us that these days, for better or worse, much of life is taking place online. That said, the community garden itself then becomes a statement, an antidote to the world of online class conflict, seeking to rebuild a different kind of public forum where local people can drop by and discuss existing issues with each other. Who knows what will emerge from these dialogues, but as Eric is always keen to remind us, doing nothing is not an option.

[1] In truth, the couple were clearly revered by the PPP leadership. Eric was a member of the partys general council and a campaign manager in 1953. Jessica was requested to run as candidate for the constituency of New Amsterdam in Guyanas 1957 general election. While Jessica failed to win her seat, the PPP were again victorious.

[2] Andrews (2014) writes that Jessica and Eric also campaigned for the CPGB candidate for Hornsey, G.J. Jones, in the run-up to the 1959 UK general election.

Rohan Rice is a writer, photographer, and translator from London. You can find his work at: https://rohanrice.substack.com/

First published on Freedom News

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The illuminating influence of Eric Huntley - Peoples Dispatch

Yup, I still want to dress like Sofia Richie.

Since her classic and timeless sense of style seemingly blew up overnight, I couldnt tell if it was just a phase. I wondered if people would be on to the next it-girl within a few weeks. However, given the current zeitgeist that is steering even the trendiest of fashion people towards quiet luxury and elevated staples, Im convinced that Richie is here to stay.

My favorite thing about Richies style is that it plays into the quiet luxury movement without being too minimal. She finds a way to evade overly trendy pieces while still having fun with her wardrobe. She knows when to bring color and unique elements into play with elegance. With that being said, Im ready to shop her wardrobe. Im convinced that I can do it without breaking the bank so below find the 31 Nordstrom finds that you absolutely must shop if youre like me and want to dress like Sofia Richie.

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Want Sofia Richie Style? Try These Cheap Nordstrom Finds - Who What Wear

Amid the zeitgeist of diplomatic rapprochement and normalization in the Middle East which has recently seen Saudi Arabia and Iran mend ties and Syrias Bashar al-Assad welcomed at this months Arab League summit the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas took a step forward to repair its own regional relationships.

In mid-April, a delegation of senior Hamas officials, led by Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal, traveled to Saudi Arabia under the guise of a religious pilgrimage. Yet being the first visit of its kind in more than a decade in which ties between Hamas and Riyadh had been unraveling, the political significance was unmistakable.

Some analysts framed the visit as a product of the breakthrough diplomatic agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which was brokered by Beijing in March. That, however, may be overstated given that there have been a string of similar gestures in recent years, such as Meshaals 2021 television interview on the Saudi network Al-Arabiya and the release of Hamas-affiliated political prisoners jailed by the Saudi government.

Nonetheless, the new atmosphere generated by the Saudi-Iran accord certainly offers a more conducive environment for Hamas-Saudi reconciliation. Moreover, the visit raises important questions about the impact of the Saudi-Iran rapprochement on Palestinians more broadly, especially given that the United States and Israel have made major efforts to bring Riyadh on board the Abraham Accords the normalization project initiated by the Trump administration in 2020 and carried on by President Joe Biden ever since.

Although the recent rapprochement does not have direct implications for the Palestinians vis--vis Israel, it could ease some of the pressure that has mounted in recent years by ending the period of regional polarization and reversing the momentum of the Abraham Accords. The question is: will the Palestinian political leaderships take advantage of this moment?

Lacking a state of their own, the Palestinians have always been highly dependent on the regional environment and reliant on external backing for their political cause. As such, the Palestinian liberation movement has, for decades, been forced to carefully navigate the Middle Easts complex politics and avoid antagonizing possible sources of support and hostility. Sometimes, however, the regional environment is so fraught that it makes this impossible.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud after signing a joint statement on the restoration of diplomatic relations, with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in the background. (Mehr News Agency/CC BY 4.0)

Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was such a moment. Caught between two important backers of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which also hosted sizable Palestinian communities, Chairman Yasser Arafat found himself in an unenviable decision-making position.

Arafat ultimately tried to strike a sort of balance, opposing the U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq in favor of a regional diplomatic effort an equivocal stance that was read by the PLOs Gulf allies as a betrayal, given Kuwait was a clear victim of Iraqi aggression. The cost for the Palestinian community in Kuwait, and Palestinian politics more broadly, was catastrophic, as hundreds of thousands were forced to leave the country and the PLO experienced the worst diplomatic alienation in its history.

The 2011 Arab uprisings and the ensuing regional competition between rival ideological camps was another instance in which uninvolved political actors were pressured to choose sides. That is particularly true of the bitter hostility between the Saudi-Emirati alliance and Iran, which divided the Middle East and North Africa (as well as other regions like the Horn of Africa) in a localized cold war that exacerbated conflicts in multiple countries such as Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.

With Tehran providing support to the Syrian regime and several substate actors and the Saudi-Emirati bloc moving into closer alignment with Israel, the balance for Palestinian groups like Hamas became untenable, and their regional relationships suffered. Even Hamass relations with Tehran were initially unsettled after the Palestinian group chose not to support the Iran-backed Assad regime against the Syrian opposition. Eventually, Irans financial backing and military support to Hamas resumed.

The decision by Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations with Iran is important in this regard for two reasons. First, it reduces the violent polarization and competition in the region. While that is far likelier to be felt in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, it does take the pressure off of Palestinians as well.

This is meaningful both for the Palestinian political leaders who were forced into uncomfortable positions that threatened their material support, and for the Palestinian communities living in Arab countries that often bear the brunt of those decisions as witnessed in Kuwait after 1990 and Syria after 2011.

Ebrahim Raisi, current president of Iran, at Naja headquarters, April 30, 2019. (Tasnim News Agency/CC BY 4.0)

The reduced tensions also free regional powers from having to choose sides among the rival Palestinian factions. It was therefore unsurprising to see Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas hosted in Saudi Arabia at the same time that the Hamas officials were in the country, as Riyadh intended to make a show of balancing its relationships.

Furthermore, the Beijing-brokered Saudi-Iran accord is a clear sign that Riyadh and its allies are acting more independently of their longstanding partnership with Washington. This current period of multipolarity and middle-power assertiveness could be beneficial for Palestinians; U.S. hegemony in the Middle East has clearly not served Palestinian interests well, and a shakeup in the regional order could provide new opportunities.

The second reason the Saudi-Iran rapprochement is important for Palestinians is its relationship to the parallel Arab normalization process with Israel. Given that the Palestinians were the collateral damage of this process or more likely, at least from Israels perspective, a target of it the derailment of further normalization is a positive result for them.

The Saudi decision (and that of the UAE, which restored relations with Iran in 2022) is particularly important because it defies the rationale and narrative of the Abraham Accords, which oriented around rallying a regional bloc to confront Iran. This, along with the overarching imperative to safeguard Americas security architecture in the Gulf, had provided the motivational basis for entering into those accords.

Indeed, one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Abraham Accords is that it lacked a core achievement. Despite being framed as peace deals, they ultimately amounted to the formalization of diplomatic relations between non-warring states. Furthermore, an agreement that is based on coalition-building for the purpose of enhancing security must ultimately compete with alternatives aimed at achieving the same purpose.

Hence, reaching an agreement with Iran as the principal adversary is more likely to achieve a better result than escalating tensions through a confrontational posture, which would have put the Gulf states in the crosshairs of Iran and its proxies with few ironclad guarantees of help from the United States or Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the UAE Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bahrain attend the Abraham Accords Signing Ceremony at the White House in Washington, USA, September 15, 2020. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)

If anything, the rapprochement with Iran is a demonstration that the Arab states, including the UAE, have been exposed to the limitations of normalization with Israel and the growing unreliability of the United States as a security partner. This realization became acute after both Gulf states suffered a series of Iran-sponsored attacks on their infrastructure and commercial interests between 2019 and 2022, with barely any response from Washington.

This was no doubt a wakeup call for the Gulf states, which began seeking a less-confrontational approach to Iran and other regional adversaries. With Iraq and Omans help, reconciliation talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran began in 2020. In January 2021, the Saudi-UAE alliance lifted its blockade of Qatar. A few months later, the Gulf states began diplomatic overtures to Turkey. By the summer of 2022, the UAE and Iran had exchanged ambassadors, with Saudi Arabia following suit in the spring of 2023.

At the same time, the Abraham Accords stalled. No new agreements were forged after Trump left office in January 2021. Sudan has vacillated on its early declaration to join the process; and countries like Oman, which appeared like possible candidates, have enhanced their laws prohibiting any dealings with Israelis.

Even the UAE, which spearheaded normalization with Israel from the Arab side, has appeared more conflicted of late. The Emirates has used its chair on the UN Security Council for the 2022-23 term to support Palestinian positions and criticize the current Israeli governments policies. While it is unlikely for the UAE to reverse its formal ties with Israel, its enthusiasm for this process may be waning.

Ostensibly, all of this is a positive development for Palestinians. Normalization was being used by Israel to undermine Palestinian leverage, marginalize their cause regionally, and pressure them to capitulate to Israeli demands. The Saudi-Iran agreement contrasts sharply with the Abraham Accords, both in substance and effect.

Yet taking advantage of this change is another story entirely. Political fragmentation has denied the Palestinian liberation movement a singular address since 2007 and made regional engagement more complicated.

The PLO/PA under Abbass leadership has also proved a poor steward of Palestinian diplomacy: despite three decades of failure, Abbas has doubled-down on the strategy of relying on the United States to deliver a peace deal with Israel, while remaining wedded to the defunct Oslo Accords. Indeed, it was this agreement signed in the 1990s that allowed the Gulf states to more openly engage Israel, and has provided the ongoing context of cooperation that made the Abraham Accords possible.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah, September 3, 2020. (Flash90)

This one-track strategy on the part of the PLO/PA has taken regional support for granted rather than actively cultivating it. As a result, the PLOs regional relationships have eroded, its once-strong diplomatic infrastructure has collapsed, and the Palestinian diaspora in the Middle East has fallen by the wayside, denying the liberation movement key sources of support, vitality, and leverage, including vis-a-vis the Arab regimes. The PLOs aging, corrupt, and bureaucratic leadership are no longer a source of inspiration for the people of the region as they were in the movements revolutionary heyday. Although the Arab street remains overwhelmingly sympathetic and supportive of Palestinians, it is not because of their leaders efforts, but in spite of them.

Hamas, on the other hand, more closely resembles the PLO of old and has proven itself somewhat better at navigating the regional landscape. While holding firm control in Gaza, its core diplomatic and political leadership are located outside of the occupied territories, where they are not subject to Israeli domination. And unlike the post-Oslo PLO/PA, Hamas does not have a built-in source of financing from a bloc of international donors a structure which makes the PA not only complacent and unaccountable, but subject to Western and Israeli conditionality.

Hamas still has to be more adept at responding to the vicissitudes of regional politics. But its strategic position is not precluded, like the PLO because of its Western-dependence, from maintaining relations with a diverse cross-section of allies, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Still, as long as Palestinian politics remain divided and dysfunctional hindered even more by the complete absence of democratic national elections, and a restructuring of systems of governance and decision-making the advantages that have opened in a changing regional context will likely pass the Palestinians by.

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What will Saudi-Iran rapprochement mean for the Palestinians? - +972 Magazine

Fifteen EU member states, including France, recently joined the infringement procedure initiated by the European Commission against Hungary before the European Court of Justice concerning the countrys controversial law on the protection of minors. According to Brussels, by prohibiting sexual content, including homosexuality and gender ideology, for children under 18, this law would violate the common values foreseen in the Treaty on European Union, notably the principle of non-discrimination.

It is rare to see fifteen countries follow the Commissions lead against another member state. That they should do so to attack a national law in the name of common values is a firstone which, beyond the facade of consensus, raises many questions. Whatever one thinks of the Hungarian law that has been in the news since 2021, a crucial but neglected question remains: In what way is the sexual education of Hungarian minors a competence of the European Union? On what legal basis does the EU claim the right to challenge this law?

The answer is, it is precisely in the name of these common values that are so often invoked but never defined. Even if, at first glance, the Commissions approach might appear justified, it could be that this vague notion serves as an ideal legal alibi to justify the imposition of an ideological line. Strictly speaking, the Union has no mandate to interfere in these matters. The Treaty is clear on this point, stating that the EU must fully respect the responsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organisation of education systems. And yet, an infringement procedure has been launched, fifteen countries have responded, and the EU Court of Justice will deliver its judgment in 2024.

When the EU lacks an explicit competence regarding a particular issue, the Commission has demonstrated an unfortunate tendency to tailor one for itself by invoking disparate legal bases that are detached from the main complaint. In this case, the Hungarian law is said to be contrary to the free movement of goods, the freedom to provide services, the protection of personal data, and European audiovisual laws. Therefore, a national law merely needs to come close to any one of the tens of thousands of European laws to bring it within the competence of the EU and judge it according to these undefined European values. This only occurs ifand only ifthe Commission so wishes, of course, because in order to add a layer of legal creativity, we should not forget that the Guardian of the Treaties has the exorbitant power to launch an infringement proceeding or to refrain from doing so, on demand and against whoever the Commission desires, without any justification.

It is true that, for decades, the Commission has used this prerogative carefully and sparingly. But it would seem that, in this age of extreme ideologisation and loud messianism, the zeitgeist is to give precedence to values over legal rules. In this way, the latter are invoked in an abusive manner to better circumvent the rules and provide a veneer of legality for steps that might not be legal. Has the EU taken on the role of arbiter of ideological elegance, based on a margin of discretion so great that it becomes arbitrary?

Lets imagine for a moment that Brussels determines that secularism is discriminatory and Islamophobic, and therefore contrary to European values. In reality, there is no point in speculating: even if this vision is slowly making its way through the halls of power in Brussels, such a proceeding would be unimaginable, in light of Frances political weight. In theory, however, such a proceeding would be possible, and would open the door to many abuses, allowing the EU to suck up national competences under futile and sometimes ideological pretexts. In such an instance though, France could rely on its political clout. But what about the majority of other countrieswould they be able to do the same? Would political weight therefore become the main criterion for being subject to or escaping legal proceedings? In the name of common values, this would not be the only such paradox.

This messianic reflex is all the more worrying when one considers that Brussels recently acquired a formidable weapon with imprecise contours: financial conditionalityor, the possibility of withholding the entirety of the European financial manna upstream, if violations of the principles of the rule of law undermine or present a serious risk of undermining the sound financial management of the Unions budget. In cases of fighting fraud and preventing the misuse of the EUs financial resources, the Commission would be able to withhold all of the EUs money upstream if such violations are identified. If it was indeed only about fighting fraud and preventing the misuse of EU funds, how could anyone oppose it? But if, on the contrary, this mechanism was used as a lever to impose constitutional changes on a country or to unravel national educational reforms, then it would look more like a blatant abuse of power. A recent example illustrating this is the exclusion of 180,000 Hungarian students from the Erasmus programme beginning in September, even though no evidence of fraud or potential risk has been found.

In short, this is an opaque mechanism that allows the imposition of extremely severe sanctions for hypothetical or even imaginary, offencesthis time in the name of another all-purpose value: the rule of law. Moreover, the fact that since 2021, Turkey has been an integral part of this flagship Erasmus programme and its membership has never been questioned, further demonstrates just how this just in case exclusion, in the case of Hungary, is perplexing.

It is also worrying that these abuses are taking place in the midst of a paradox of broader public indifference towards the EU in parallel with general acclaim for the Union. For instance, the war in Ukraine is in full swing and the EU is playing a decisive role in it, which has enabled it to regain its image in the eyes of public opinion. But we should be concerned that such abuses are taking place in the shadows of a major geopolitical crisis, during which the European budget has been transformed on the sly into an instrument of political pressure, blithely violating the law precisely in the name of the rule of law.

Some people are satisfied that the EU is being built on the basis of crises and are delighted with this ever closer Union which is being forced from above rather than desired from below. They are forgetting that in this way, the EU will remain, democratically speaking, a giant with feet of clay. Others argue that by joining the Union, each new member state commits itself to respecting those common values so vaguely described in the Treaties, the interpretation of which has miraculously become clear and one-sided. In the face of these elucidations, let us recall without ambiguity that the real keystone of the European edifice is the principle of attribution of competences, a golden rule according to which any competence not attributed to the Union in the Treaties belongs to the Member States. This principle is clear and precise, yet it is widely trampled on. One sometimes wonders whether, in their role as troublemakers, certain central European countries, far from breaking the rules of the game, are in fact merely reminding us of their relevancean insolence that they pay a high price for and in hard currency, in the name of common values and the rule of law.

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EU as Arbiter of Ideological Elegance? The European Conservative - The European Conservative