The Spirit of 1968

04-29-2018

The Spirit of 1968

[caption id="attachment_19661" align="alignright" width="300"] By BeenAroundAWhile at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0[/caption] Claus Leggewie interviews Daniel Cohn-Bendit, one of the leaders of the 1968 student movement in Paris. Cohn-Bendit tells Leggewie: “[Hannah] Arendt saw 1968 as the liberating revolt of the next generation. She actually wrote at  letter to me that was supposed to be conveyed by Mary McCarthy. The letter never made ito me, but it was later discovered. It said: “Your parents would have been proud of you. Get in touch if you need help.”” Leggewie and Cohn-Bendit talk about the power of civil disobedience and how it transformed European society.

“Cohn-Bendit: Even many right-wing voters profess that they like what happened in ’68. The only ones who don’t are Catholic traditionalists, like François Fillon, and the supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy. We have to understand the psychodrama of May ’68. Meanwhile, I have become the psychoanalyst of the French, so to speak. Once, after my expulsion from France had been rescinded, I got off the overnight train in Paris and was approached by a man who was perhaps ten years older than I: “Mr. Cohn-Bendit, I want to thank you.” How so? He turned out to be a member of the CRS who wanted to tell me how important ’68 had been for him as well: “It was a great time, merci.” Leggewie: Hannah Arendt predicted at the time, “It seems to me that the children of the next century will once learn about 1968 the way we learned about 1848.” But what is it that we’re learning, exactly? In retrospect, Jürgen Habermas believes it caused a “fundamental liberalization” of German society that made it possible even for conservatives to change their views. Children’s rights have found their way into the constitution, cannabis has been legalized not just in California, same-sex marriage is now possible, women hold leadership positions—is that our time’s master narrative? Cohn-Bendit: The revolt accelerated a development that was already in progress, which is why some contend that our societies would have modernized and liberalized anyway. Rubbish—that’s just not how history works. Yes, there was a tendency toward liberalization and democratization, but no, it was we who steered it in a certain direction.”

Form more information visit: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/05/10/1968-power-to-the-imagination/

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

[caption id="attachment_19664" align="alignleft" width="300"] By Soniakapadia - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0[/caption] Ed Pilkington writes about the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The brainchild and project of Bryan Stevenson, the lawyer whose Equal Justice Initiative defends prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted and poor, marginalized, and disadvantaged  prisoners in Montgomery and around the United States. The new Memorial opened this week and “addresses head on a subject that has been marked by a booming silence until now – the enforcement of white supremacy in America through racial terrorism in the form of lynching, as well as its other guises: slavery, segregation and modern mass incarceration.” White supremacy is a term often used but rarely used well. Pilkington shows that Stevenson’s Memorial and the accompanying museum do the hard work to make an argument that gives meaning to white supremacy as an historical, present, and institutional idea. —Roger Berkowitz

“The memorial records and honors the more than 4,000 people of color, Bunk Richardson among them, who lost their lives to terror lynching…. One of the myths of the lynching era was that black people were targeted for raping white women or for murder. But EJI’s research suggests that only a quarter of the lynchings involved sexual relations and less than a third related to allegations of violence. Most frequently, the “crimes” committed were breathtakingly minor. Like shoving a girl off a porch, as Fred Croft found when he was forced to flee for his life. Jack Turner was lynched in Alabama in 1882 for organizing black voters. Bud Spears raised objections to the lynching of a black man in Mississippi in 1888, and for his pains was himself lynched. Many of the two dozen or so women who were lynched died because a mob couldn’t find their husbands or sons at home so grabbed them instead…. For Bryan Stevenson, such barbarism, such sadism, served a purpose. It also exacted a heavy price.

“People were being asked to prove their commitment to white supremacy by their willingness to engage in ever more extreme forms of violence,” the lawyer said. “The problem with that is you get disconnected from decency and kindness, you get lost in it. Whether you were the person cutting off fingers or the person enjoying deviled eggs and lemonade as the spectacle unfolded, something tragic and destructive was happening to you.”

As he speaks, the exceptional nature of what Stevenson has created on top of the hill becomes clear. This is not another conventional addition to black historiography. Certainly, it explores and commemorates black experience. But it also powerfully dives into the warped psyche of white Americans prepared to participate in the gruesome mutilation of other human beings. This is not academic history, it is red-hot political challenge. It challenges the state capitol down the hill, it challenges white-dominated towns and cities across the American south and beyond, and, yes, it challenges the current occupant of the White House. It is time, the new memorial says, to confront the sins of the past and recognise the tragic consequences of white supremacy…. The treatment continues down the hill in downtown Montgomery at the new Legacy Museum which traces the unbroken path of racial violence from slavery, through lynching and Jim Crow segregation to the modern era of drug wars and mass incarceration. The exhibition is fittingly located in a slave warehouse on Commerce Street (the commerce in question having been trade in slaves) just two blocks away from the auction house where black people were sold along with mules, carts and wagons. Stevenson’s conviction is that slavery didn’t end in 1865, it evolved into lynching, then segregation and now into a modern dystopia where 2.3 million Americans are incarcerated and one in three black males born in America can expect at some point to go to prison. He draws a single unbroken thread uniting all these manifestations of racial dominance: “The idea that black people are not the same as white people, they aren’t fully human or evolved, and are presumed dangerous and guilty. That’s why American society today is so non-responsive to shootings of unarmed black people, to disproportionate expulsion rates of black kids, to putting handcuffs on four- or five-year-old black girls – we’ve been acculturated to not valuing the victimisation of black people.””

Form more information visit: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/lynchings-sadism-white-men-why-america-must-atone

Terrifying Politics

Claire Voon writes about Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident artist, who recently defended his decision to pose for a picture with Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. For Ai Weiwei, those who cannot tolerate free expression are more terrifying than the AfD.

“Many an eyebrow was raised last week when the leader of the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party shared a selfie in which she poses with artist Ai Weiwei. Politician Alice Weidel originally posted the photograph on her Twitter account with the caption,” #AiWeiwei is in the capital!!!! I almost didn’t dare ask him for a selfie ;-).” In the image, the artist sidles up close on her right and grins for the camera. Ai is known to oblige people’s requests for selfies with him, but this documented encounter raised a few questions. Namely, some wondered, did the Chinese dissident know who his companion was? Weidel is an openly lesbian, former investment banker who opposes same-sex marriage and once referred to immigrants in Germany as “illiterate people” who “don’t have any training.” Her party, founded in 2013, is known for its anti-Islam and anti-immigration positions. Ai, on the other hand, grew up a refugee in his own country; remains an exile in Berlin; and has spent the last three years making art to raise awareness about global refugee crisis — tasteless as his efforts might be at times. Speaking with Frieze, the artist said he had not known Weidel was an AfD politician until she told him so. Weidel had approached him at a restaurant in Berlin, he said, and clarified that AfD was “the right-wing party,” after which he agreed to pose with her. In his statement, the artist also defended his decision. “I don’t believe that differences in political views or values between people should act as a barrier in communication,” the artist said. “My efforts are in tearing down those boundaries. Alice Weidel is a democratically elected politician and has the right to freely express her political views. Although her views are completely the opposite of mine, no one has the right to judge her personal life. “At the same time, no one has the right to judge who I choose to take a photograph with,” he added. “If you cannot tolerate free expression, your political views are even more terrifying.”

Form more information visit: https://hyperallergic.com/439609/ai-weiwei-selfie-right-wing-german-politician