Новости за 15.08.2017

The appropriation of faux-medieval culture by modern racists happens everywhere. The Nazis did it when they used medieval-obsessed German Romanticism of the nineteenth century (Wagner, fairytale castles) as a template for a new national identity that was founded on the extermination of minority groups. White nationalists do it in Britain and France when they want to claim that the country “belongs” somehow to white people, looking back to an imaginary time of long-lost racial purity (a time that never existed... Читать дальше...

Many years ago, I went to a conference of the Jane Austen Society of North America. We met in the Fairmont Chateau at Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies, which was said to be the original of the hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining. But this time it was the setting for a different kind of eerie displacement: nearly 600 Austen enthusiasts, many wearing Regency costumes, decked out in ribbons and bonnets, and carrying reticules, fans, and parasols.

Though a reminder was hardly needed, occurring as it did against a backdrop of reckless nuclear threats against North Korea and a campaign of intimidation directed at Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, Donald Trump’s ignominious response to the deadly white-supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, served as a fresh testament to the fact that the president is unfit for office and deserves to be removed.

On Monday morning, after two days of flailing around with ambiguous statements, President Donald Trump finally denounced the racist violence that led to the death of a counter-protester in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists,” Trump remarked in a prepared statement. The words themselves were unremarkable, but it’s astounding that it took a behind-the-scenes struggle to get Trump to utter them... Читать дальше...

The neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched and brawled in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend wore their whiteness like a shield. It was proudly evident in their uncovered faces and their arms outstretched in Hitler salutes. It was displayed on their bare skin, which flaunted tattoos of swastikas and Confederate flags.