Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator who I've never heard of either, is apparently rising through the ranks of jostling homophobes clawing to be Republican candidate for the US Presidency. He is known for his considered, insightful and forward-thinking statements such as, "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing." He thinks that people should not be allowed the right to privacy; to consensual relations with the partner of their choice; he appears to think homosexuality is equivalent to child rape and bestiality. Here he is expressing himself, over compensating for something, in an unedited interview with Associated Press.
Santorum wants to mess with the private lives of millions of people, delving into details that are absolutely none of his business, choosing to surround himself in the details of activities he claims to abhor. In 2003, back when Santorum was still senator, gay rights campaigner Dan Savage decided to mess with Santorum by launching a sort-of competition to give a crude definition to the word santorum. The winning definition was "Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum." A website was created declaring the meaning of the word, and it quickly shot to the top of Google's search ranking for the term santorum. It remains at the top, and must be quite a problem for the nasty homophobic Christian extremist and the nasty homophobic Christian extremists whose votes he lusts after.
I added my liberal, wishy-washy, limp-wristed, deviant-empowering, Satanic, dog-fucking two cents to the story mainly for the reason of being able to link to the definition of Santorum and thus contribute to its remaining at the top of Google search results. I think he deserves it, and it scares me that such extremists could seriously be considered for the Presidency of a modern country.
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't Jewish.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemöller
I rarely have the time for these police brutality videos which are so often reposted on twitter; are so often blurry, lacking in context, or carefully chopped to make to police look like aggressors; are so often hyped up by anarchists, conspiracy theorists, and silly little fools as incontrovertible evidence of a global conspiracy. I hardly ever have an emotional response, as the videos and the comments by people who can't possibly be impartial or knowledgeable, provide no factual information with which to form an opinion.... But...
Today a video called 'Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC [University of California] Davis' is doing the rounds, and to me this video stands out for many reasons. It still lacks a certain amount of context, but what happens in it is clear to see: an armoured police man stands before a row of students seated on the path of their university campus; he raises his arm displaying his weapon, a large can of pepper spray (or other similar chemical weapon), very much in the manner of a professional wrestler playing to the audience, armed with a 2x4 wrapped in barbed wire, standing over a prostrate opponent (I'm not joking, watch the video). He then walks up and down the line spraying downwards onto the faces and heads of the peacefully protesting students.
What then follows after a couple of minutes of confusion, (in which it appears a small number of arrests are made i.e. some people are dragged away), is one of the most inspiring and beautiful acts of peaceful rebellion I, or you, are ever likely to see. Somehow the students form a semi-circle around the police officers, I suppose they are kettling them whether by accident or design, chanting Shame on you, shame on you. The police begin a tentative retreat, furtive glances, some grasping tight their strangely-shaped guns of some description.
The chant then changes to Whose University? OUR University, Whose University? OUR University, and then a peaceful invite to the police: You can go, You can go, You can go which finally results in what appears to be the police moving off the university pathway and back onto a public highway, and cheers from the protesters. It is a wonderful, tear jerking moment; one that has to mean something and should be remembered.
It doesn't really answer any questions, but it does show that small-scale peaceful protest can have some affect, and should be repeated. It doesn't provide any evidence that the US is fascist or evil, and is still just a video of one nervous, vicious, or stupid cop doing something disgusting, while his colleagues panic and try to salvage the situation. Whoever called the police onto the university campus needs to face some consequences. The university should sue the police, especially if it was uni staff who called on the police. There should be severe laws against using chemical weapons on peaceful protesters (I can't believe I actually had to type those words in that order).
If ever there were proof needed that the US was not some evil, fascist all-controlling dystopia, it is the free and easy distribution of the evidence against this police officer's crime. The video disseminates across the globe easily, and we rightly judge this as an atrocity committed against individuals, and against us all. Just remember that the world has many genuine fascist dystopias, where the pepper spraying of some students would be a minor everyday occurrence; where genocide, rape as a tool of oppression, and disappearing are the big news, but where no evidence of this can spread because the citizens are subjects without freedom; where big news is no news.
We, the comfortable people of the West, see the policeman's crime as offensive, disgusting and wrong, and this is a sign of how far we have come; how advanced and free we are; not a sign of how oppressed we are.
I have no knowledge about the facts leading up to the events of the video, nor do I know anything about what happened and will happen afterwards. I know nothing about the events in the video, except for what I think I can see, and what I conclude based on my own observations and emotions. As much as I wish I was, I am not impartial, objective, or in any way able to offer useful information; and neither are you. This is a confusing mess. I have no idea how often things like this happen, but judging by the amount of cameras filming in the video, and the speed in which the video gets out, I suspect it doesn't happen very often. But that's all I can do: suspect, wonder and worry. And be proud of the reaction of the students; proud of the free society which allows this video out; upset that one human being could treat others like insects to be spray away as an unpleasant inconvenience.
Here's the video. Watch it in full. Form your own opinions (and remember that they are only opinions; just because you think something doesn't make it true. Only conclusive evidence can make something true). (I suppose my confusion lies there – in my instinctive disgust at the policeman's crime, yet my unwillingness to view the video as evidence of a global evil; a conclusion I expect a lot of people to reach; a conclusion I view as being the opposite of the truth. Anyway, it's time I shut up.) Here's the video:
At some point I said I didn’t want to use this blog for airing laundry, but with fifty or so years of blogging ahead of me I’ll need to write something about everything to ease the repetition. So, today a brief facebook discussion resulted in a sudden unfriending and me being told where to go. Here is the dialogue, unedited except I have removed the names, and the video that prompted the original poster:
Original poster:Watch this! And Then Try and tell me that Canada isn't a Fascist State!
Me: Canada isn't a fascist state.
Second Poster: Damn! I was gonna put that. This is bad but I think fascist state is maybe a little bit too far! Cheer up Original Poster, it's not that bad :)
Me: The world has plenty of actual fascist states where this sort of thing happens as policy. Countries like Canada, the UK and the US are as free and admirable as we currently have, and flippantly denouncing them as 'fascist' helps no one. All this video shows is one police man doing some thing terrible; one isolated incident without context. It teaches us nothing.
Original Poster: Really... It's beginning to show the hallmarks of one. The UK, USA & Canada all are: People arrested for kissing (US), Shotgun attacks to unarmed women (Canada), Police attacking disabled people in a wheelchair (London), Increasing levels of Police Brutality (people arrested for riding a bicycle through a public park - London), ever growing levels of persecution towards Minorities (emergence of the EDL) (which is publicly endorsed by the Government through their permission to exist despite being a group preaching hate), Aggressive Military Policies (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya), Plans to introduce Compulsory ID's (UK, US), The indoctrination of Young People through declining education standards (UK, US) ,Delibrate Miseducation through the main stream media (UK, US), The introduction of toxic psycho-neurotic chemcals in drinking water (US and UK) and the food chain which have the effect of damaging brain cells and making people docile, Manipulation of currencies to ensure the vast amount of people stay poor (ALL THE ABOVE). Shall I go on...........?
Me:You can go on if you like, but I'm not really interested. It's waffle. Sorry mate, but if anyone's indoctrinated I think it's you.
Original Poster: Really, OK? So I'm just making this stuff up? Just look at youtube... put in Police Brutality and you can see that the Police have repeatedly overstepped the mark with attacks on frail elderly women, disabled people, special needs people, ethnic minorities........
Original Poster: Anyways, If a unarmed woman getting shot at pointblank range with a riot shotgun is just WAFFLE to you, Then I suggest you go crawl back under the rock from whence you came from. I no longer consider you a friend. NOW FUCK OFF!
At this point I was ‘unfriended’ and thus denied the right to reply.
Third Poster: How dare you Kevin???? I have a very close elderley friend who will be 90 this year, he was born in bremen in 1921, he has told me repeatedly that they had no idea that nazi germany was a police state from 1933 onwards it did not feel any different to before because of the sophisticated cleverness that was used to introduce it. The same friend has told me in no uncertain terms that that way the USA and UK have been going for the last 10 years is exactly a mirror replica of what happened after 1933 and that he is only able to realise it coz he has the benefit of hindsight.............. I hope you did not have any relatives that died in ww2 coz you just pissed on there grave.
Where do I begin with this; do I defend myself against the disgusting and bizarre accusation of describing an unarmed woman being shot at point blank range as “waffle”, or do I explain the weak fallacies in Original Poster’s arguments? In an ideal world the answer would be neither for the following reasons:
The only comment I made specifically about the scene shown in the video was that it was “one police man doing some thing terrible”. The waffle I spoke of was obviously the long paragraph of waffle spewed by Original Poster (from now on to be referred to as OP for sake of brevity), which came less than one minute after my previous comment. From this quick turnaround I infer that OP had already collated his unattributed, unconnected list of events (“emergence of EDL, deliberate miseducation, etc”) and therefore had a prewritten response to use regardless of what was argued against him. Typically of this sort of thinker, OP seems to be unable to actually discuss things and can only regurgitate things he doesn't understand as if they are his own thoughts.
That brings me to why I shouldn’t have to explain the irrelevancy of OP’s (and by extension Third Poster’s) arguments. In discussion is a 15 second youtube video showing an unarmed woman (with a camera around her neck, and who seemed to turn her head away a split second before) being shot from extremely close range with what appears to be a ‘non-lethal’ projectile; and whether or not this means Canada is a fascist state. I should not have to patronise anyone by pointing out that there is no logical connection to be made there. (I used inverted commas around ‘non-lethal’ because something like that cannot be guaranteed.)
My argument against OP's assumption is that Canada is not a fascist state, and that the video provides no evidence to contradict me. I made the statement 'you can go on if you like, but I'm not really interested' because the list OP churned was just unattributed non-evidence which I can provide no specific argument against. This is not due to an inherent weakness with my position, but due to the argumental stance taken by OP which is more concerned with minor semantic victories than the truth. The fact is that Canada is not a fascist state, but OP feels that if he can shut me up by blinding me with lists, then he can appear to have proven his point.
When I refused to rise to his list of waffle (the details of which may or may not be true; I make no comment on their veracity because I have no relevant information) OP was incredibly quick to quote me out of context to make me appear to be an unfeeling monster, take the moral high-ground based on what I didn't say, personally insult me, and then deny me the right to reply. His sudden violent defensiveness speaks to me of the weakness of his argument.
Luckily OP had Third Poster to back him up (I'm being sarcastic now). The less said about that rant the better, but I want to go on public record as saying I have never pissed on the graves of my ancestors. In fact I would even be bold enough to claim that I have never knowingly pissed on anyone's grave.
In summation: Call me crazy if you want but I don't believe that the UK, the USA, or Canada are fascist states. I believe it is puerile and pathetic to claim otherwise. As nations they are less than perfect but, when judged in perspective against other contemporary countries and world history, they are undeniably Great. The modern world (you can call it the Western world if you want; proudly or sneeringly, it's up to you) is a wonderful achievement. Of course it is open to criticism - everything is and should be - but don't pretend it is worse than it is, and don't pretend it is some evil empire of comic books and conspiracy forums. I believe that in the long run globalism is a force for good, and as such the atrocities committed by genuine extreme-right (or extreme-left) governments or groups across the world are more serious than occasional (relatively-) minor atrocities committed in the otherwise peaceful pool of home.
I plant myself firmly on the left, and the country I see around me is largely liberal, free, and peaceful. I wish I could say the same about the entire world, but unfortunately there are huge areas not so fortunate. As a lefty I strongly believe that other lefties should stop this solipsistic inward criticism, concentrate on global human rights abuses, and stop mindlessly siding with anyone or anything which takes an anti-Western stance.
“John Heartfield is one of the most important European artists. He works in a field that he created himself, the field of photomontage. Through this new form of art he exercises social criticism. Steadfastly on the side of the working class, he unmasked the forces of the Weimar Republic driving toward war; driven into exile he fought against Hitler. The works of this great artist, which mainly appeared in the workers’ press, are regarded as classics by many, including the author of these lines”
Another from the dark and complicated vaults of the bookshelves in my spare room. John Heartfield is an aggressive and confrontational early-20th century photomontage artist; he used his art to fight the rightwing oppressions of the Weimar Republic and the Nazis. His birth name was Helmut Herzfeld which he apparently anglicised “to criticise the rabid nationalism and anti-British sentiment prevalent in Germany during World War I” (I copied that off Wikipedia!). Sounds like a pretty brave thing to do; side with the goodies while living in the pit of the baddies. Respect to Herr Heartfield.
Adolf the superman, swallows gold and spouts junk
The book begins with a series of short essays about photomontage, historical relevance this and that; a range of people all discussing the same subject. Perhaps I’ll read them. Most of the book is just almost-page-sized b&w reproductions of the art. Hitler better have had a self-depreciating sense of humour, or he wouldn’t have been amused. He, his Nazis, and their appeasers, excusers and collaborators are portrayed as the snivelling, blood-lusty, genocidal, philistines they are.
Should men fall again that shares may rise?
I acquired(*) Photomontages of the Nazi Period by John Heartfield at some lost point in the past; probably from Oxfam bookshop in Lancaster. When that shop isn’t full of the books my mum has made my dad get rid of, it often contains some real gems of arty oddness. I’m pretty sure it’s where I got my book about Bela Lugosi and every movie he ever made. (* Pretentious people don’t buy things; we acquire them.)
The Reichsbishop drills Christendom.
Just realised that I’m bored of myself trying to write about this book. It’s not about the book, it’s about the fucking great, nasty, sarcastic images. And there’s not much I can do to communicate the brilliance of them. Just look at the bloody pictures and leave me alone.
This wasn't really supposed to be an essay; I just wanted to show you all some pictures. Then I accidentally started writing, but going nowhere. See, I'm still doing it...
