Category Archives: Rebellion and Resistance

Universal Language  [Part II]

Authoritarianism, Movies, Rebel, Rebellion and Resistance

 

 

The film Universal Language continues to dig deeper into the issues of authority, obedience, and rebellion—indeed universal subjects of great importance.

 

Negin, a student, has found money frozen in the ice. It is a matter of life and death he says. 500 Riels. “We can buy so many socks.,” he says. Or perhaps she could buy the student who could not see a new pair of glasses and all the students would be released from their captivity in the closet.

 

The film moves to Quebec with a big image of the Premier and a grey wall and a man sitting at a desk beside another grey wall. There are a lot of grey walls. The man, eating, explains to Matthew, that the world is losing confidence in its governments. Everywhere. Who could disagree with that?  “I am all for freedom,” he says, “but there must be limits.”  Again, who would disagree with that?  Well, Trumpsters in the US and members of the Truck convoy in Canada. To them freedom, means absolute freedom. At least for them. For the rest of us, freedom means no freedom.

 

Matthew has to write a report about his stay in the country, but it can’t be negative or neutral. To him freedom is just another word for nothing left to choose. At least the authoritarians of Iran, or perhaps Winnipeg, have the freedom.

 

Negin and his sister Nazgo as a passerby who is wearing a Christmas tree, all around, where they can find the turkey dealer. Muslims looking like Christians.  Again, they are surrounded by brick walls. Only this wall is brown. They are in the brown district, where you can choose any colour as long as its brown.  Buildings in each district conform to the color of the district. Grey, brown, or beige. Conformity is the key in this film.

 

The children find a shop with only turkeys for sale. You can buy anything you want, as long as its turkeys. They are looking for an axe to get the money out of the ice. The merchant has photos of turkeys on the wall. He assures the children, “we only use the gentlest system of circular saws.”  The merchant, wearing a cowboy hat and riding a senior’s motor cart asks the girl what she wants to be when she grows up. She says, “a cognitive neuroscientist.”  This is a surreal world.

 

Matthew takes a bus to Manitoba. The teacher, Iraj, is going too and asks if he can sit beside Matthew, even though the bus is nearly empty.  Matthew explains that he was planning to sleep through Ontario. He is a smart tourist and Iraj says that is unfortunate, because Ontario is very romantic in the moonlight.

 

One passenger refuses to sit beside a turkey. Buses should be for humans only she says. She explains to the driver that she has experienced much suffering. Her sons died in a marshmallow eating contest. Her husband was killed by a swarm of wasps. She has neighbours who steal her rhubarb and now she must sit beside a gobbling turkey? How can that be? The bus driver dressed in pink, including pink ear muffs, explains she is lucky because the turkey won an avian beauty contest. In the land of authority be thankful for what you get.

 

 

We see seniors playing bingo with the lady pulling ping pong balls with numbers on them. She is wearing a big coat, mitts and scarf. After all it is Winnipeg—One Great City. A pyramid of Kleenex boxes guarded by a ramrod still man in white coat and tie. A woman in East Kildonan can’t stop crying and the jackpot is a year’s supply of Kleenex. What could be better? The winner rebels. She does not want Kleenex because she already has a fantastic tear collection.

 

 

Dara drives by a bridge with a group of mourners standing in the snow inside an exit ramp of the Disraeli Bridge if I am not mistaken. Supposedly it is the grave site of Louis Riel the founder of Manitoba. All wear proper winter attire except the tour leader. The tourists are told Louis Riel was the premier rebel of Manitoba who started the province. They asked the leader if he earned good money as a revolutionary. What was his salary? This is the land where inane is king. I suppose they want to know if it pays as well to resist authority as the Revolutionary Guard in Iran? He wants them to stand for 30 minutes of silence to honor Riel for the sacrifices he made for the people. But, of course, all we hear is loud street traffic as the tourists from Iran stand respectfully obeying authority in silence surrounded by snow and loud traffic.

 

 

The tourist meanwhile visits another highlight of Winnipeg in the beige district where all buildings are beige.  They stand around looking at a dull building. One tourist asked if anyone famous lived there, as “it seems pretty boring.” ‘No,” the guide replies. “They were all unknown people. One was an administrative assistant. Another was a fax machine operator.” Dull ordinary people in other words. The tourists have been dragged out to see views of dull ordinary people. But they are free to do so. You can do anything you want as long as it’s boring.

 

The next place of interest is a briefcase left on a makeshift bench in 1978. Someone left it there. No one has ever looked inside. No one knows who the person was that left it there. It is said he was waiting for a bus. There is a photo of former Mayor Bill Norrey. The bench and forgotten briefcase have been enshrined as a UNESCO World Heritage site. “It is a monument to absolute interhuman solidarity at its most basic and banal.” It is a monument to dull and boring.

By then the tourists were understandably complaining about standing around in the cold. A very small rebellion.

 

Next, they are taken to Portage Mall to see a poster of former premier. Pallister with the words in Farsi, “A strong economy helps to prevent feelings of worthlessness.” I guess there is nothing like a nod to consumer society go give a tourist a thrill of excitement. There is also a sign in the mall in Farsi, the universal language, “ No loitering. Zero tolerance.” One customer sits on a chair, inserts a coin and waits for a mechanical massage. Reminds me of Marshall McCluhan’s car that he called a “Mechanical Bride.” The Portage Mall clock has no minute hand nor hour hand. Because, explains the tour guide, “the Portage Mall is timeless.” And they don’t any longer show 3D films because “they were too exciting.” Just one-dimensional films now. A blind man with a cane and a camera follows the group down the stairs. Spying on them? Perhaps.

 

In a modern scene right out of Kafka’s playbook, the tour guide shows them an empty water fountain no longer working. It has no water anymore. Another highlight of Winnipeg! In 1987 though people would watch it for hours, as it was so fantastic. You can’t throw coins into the empty water fountain because “all wishes have been cancelled.” To discourage loitering. One tourist asks, “Loitering? There is nothing to see here. A fountain without water is meaningless,” she demands. “I don’t know why you brought us here.” One more tiny rebellion. The guide replies, “Perhaps I brought you here out of hope. A small hope that the water might return and dazzle us again. A police officer comes up to the group and asks them to leave, because there is no loitering allowed. But they have a permit. They are an official tour group. Sadly, the permit allows only 30 seconds of viewing and they have already been there a whole minute! The tour leader asks to be forgiven. He lost track of time. I guess it was too exciting. They must leave.

 

 

As they walk through the city at night, a woman comes by to offer to sell her paper shredder. Massoud says he doesn’t need it as he has no paper. The woman says he can use it to make noodles with it or shoelaces. That’s allowed. They have some Riel freedoms.

 

Mahmoud walks Mathew to his apartment—another brown beige apartment block—where he took in Mathew’s mother who mistook him for Mathew. He works as a customer rep at the Winnipeg Earmuff authority. He is another authority figure, no less. He always wears earmuffs in the film as do some of the kids. He is also a shoveler of snow. Of course, he also is a tour guide but there is little need for his services in Winnipeg, particularly in the winter time. “There is very little tourism in Winnipeg,” he says. But he loves to show people the places he cares about.

 

Why does he do care so much for Mrs. Rankin, Mathew wonders? She had no one else he explains to Mathew.  Mathew says, “but it’s not your problem?” Mahmoud explains it this way to Mathew: “just as the Assiniboine joins the Red River and together they flow into Lake Winnipeg we are all connected.”

 

And the characters in the film, that seem so unconnected are in the end revealed to be entirely inter connected. It is real. Mahmoud tries to get Matthew to reconnect with his mother. He suggests he go up to see her. Photos of him will be there and he should know that sometimes he noticed his mother looking at them with love. “Tell her you are home now,” he suggests. After all, love is the universal language. Not Farsi? Or French? In this Riel Winnipeg, there are no other languages.

 

What a brilliant, beautiful, and funny movie. I had to see it twice to catch on. The first time I watched this film I saw the humour but I was distracted by it. It is so much more than a brilliant comedy.  This film is fantastic. It just seems boring!

 

Yes, the universal language is love. And connection, but you must obey authority. If you rebel, just don’t expect to be well paid.

 

 

Bugonia

Movies, Polarization, Rebellion and Resistance

 

 

In the film Bugonia, Teddy and his cousin, Don, who don’t appear to be very bright, have done something amazing. Based on stellar Internet research, they believe they have kidnapped someone from the Andromeda constellation and as a result, like so many whacky conspiracy theorists, they are going to save the world.  The constellation is a mere 2.5 million light-years away so to kidnap someone from there is a very big deal and yet, Teddy and Don, dropouts from the local high school, have done it! But before they start the rebellion to save the planet, they each chemically castrate themselves so they won’t be tempted by any Andromedan female look-a-likes. Like their captive.

 

To us, this alien looks like a pretty regular modern business woman. Beautiful. Smart. Sassy. Corrupt. And not very smart.  Her name is Michelle. She is part of a system of abuse and exploitation and Teddy believes her corporation has caused his bees and mother to die. She is the CEO of that business. A modern female executive. We don’t really have much sympathy for her, but Teddy and Don are not very sympathetic either. All the characters are flawed. OK, worse than flawed.

They kidnap her on her own yard, a long way from Andromeda, but they are sure that is where she is from.  They sedate her, grab her, and put her in their vehicle. They tie her up.  Treat her like an alien in other words.

She is upset. How dare they do this? They cut her hair and tied her to the bed. Teddy tells Don that “It is not in control any more. We are.” She is not human so is not treated like one.

All of this does not satisfy Don. He thinks he looks stupid in a suit that is too tight for him and was last worn by Teddy’s father.  He is right. He looks very stupid. When she wakes from her sedative, Teddy tells Michelle, shortly before torturing her,

“Welcome to the headquarters of the human resistance. Despite our general suspicion and disavowal of all extant governing bodies and despite the fact that you as an Andromedan are not subject to the human rights guidelines, detailed in the Geneva Conventions we nevertheless attempt to adhere to those guidelines out of humanist principles to which we aspire.”

 

They want her to bring them to “the Mother Ship” so they can stop the people from Andromeda from destroying our planet. From here on there is a battle of wits (or is it dimwits) between the 3 of them. They tell her “nothing you say is true.  Objective human truth has no value in Andromedan cognition.”  Unlike the world of whacky Internet conspiracy theorists of course. Teddy tells her,

“You are a high-ranking official in the royal Andromedan  court and you’ve aided your species in the techno-enslavement in the agro-corporate disintegration of planet earth. OK And we need you to bring us to your mother ship on the night of the lunar eclipse.”

 

Teddy points out that she has killed his family, his community, and his bees. “So given that, you should appreciate how super professional I’m being right now by not gutting you.” Teddy, the brighter one (or not), assures Don that she is not a human woman so they need not sympathize with her.  Even if she was, she is “pure corporate evil. It’s killing our planet, cuzzie.” They are cousins in the midst of an insane conspiracy. “It only knows cruelty.” It is an alien, Teddy assures Don. She just looks human. “It’s trying to gain your sympathy.”

But, Don, supposedly the dumber of the pair, was having understandable doubts about what they had done. So, Teddy assured him that one day the world would see him as a hero, for kidnapping the executive. That was good enough for Don.

 

n the battle of the dimwits, we see a battle of a dim-witted capitalist and dim-witted rebels. The liberal at one end of the universe. The revolutionaries at the other, staring at each other over a continent-sized abyss. Yes I know that is the modern world.  She says there are options.

He disagrees: “There are no options. There are no rules. There are no deals. There’s no payoff. There is no money. There is no legal system. There’s no Congress. There is no America. There is no global democratic order.”  This conversation ends with her saying he is mentally ill and him smashing her in the face. This is the new world order the film portrays. Not that far from the truth. Isn’t that the American way?

But there is one thing Michelle and Teddy both agree upon. Earth’s most admirable creatures are honey bees.  Based on what we see here that’s probably true.

 

As Tim Jonze a reviewer for the Guardian who likes this film more than I did, said in his review: she some redeeming value in the final collage of Earthlings dying, perhaps from the  poisons from Michelle’s corporation, including lovers in the middle of intercourse, dead drivers in cars, and school children dead in their classroom. But nature survives. Nature always bats last. Great. Jonze said  this  was perhaps the most straight-forward of the films of the director Yorogs Lanthimos,  for

“It addressed very modern ailments, from corporate ecocide to the people on society’s fringes being sucked down the worst wormholes of the internet. The only question you’re left wrestling with is not how to save humanity from itself, but whether human beings are really worth saving at all.”

 

After watching this film, I think the answer is obvious. And as far as I am concerned, Jonze can have this film. I have had enough.

 

Evangelical Enemies of the state in Bulgaria

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Concentration Camps, Evangelical Christianity, Rebellion and Resistance

 

There was another aspect of these concentration camps that interested me and was not discussed on the CBC radio show. They had some very peculiar enemies that included, of all people, Christian Evangelical Pastors. How could they possibly be dangerous?

 

The Belene labour camp located on an island in the Danube River in which we sailed, had about 2,323 inmates at the height of the repression in 1952.  Most of them were men, but about 75 were women. The prisoners included Bulgarian Turks who resisted the official policy of forcing the Turks to change their names and surnames to Bulgarian names. Go figure. The Bulgarians wanted the Turks to be assimilated, much like Canadian educational authorities wanted Indigenous boys and girls to be assimilated in Canada’s residential schools. Probably, just as in Canada, the authorities thought they were doing this for their own good.

 

From 1949 on, in Bulgaria, Evangelical Christian pastors were also targeted as “enemies of the State.” There was an infamous trial in which 13 such Pastors were tried at a Show Trial, convicted, and sent to the Belene concentration camp in the Danube River.

 

One of them, was Haralan Popov who survived the experience later and founded a mission called “Door of Hope International” to bring Bibles behind the Iron Curtain. He published his autobiography in a book called Tortured to Death for His Faith. I am not sure why he called it that, since he survived to write about it. Its Bulgarian title was The Bulgarian Golgotha. I guess he thought he was Christ-like.

 

But why would they attack pastors?  According to a Google AI search, it was “because their faith and activities were seen as “a challenge and alternative to the official state ideology of atheism and communist control.”  Again, according to Google AI, “In essence, any form of independent association, loyalty to an authority other than the state (God or foreign church leaders), or independent thought was perceived as an existential threat to the communist regime’s absolute control over all aspects of society.” Apparently, some of the pastors were even tortured to induce them to confess their sins against the state.

 

Authoritarians don’t like rebellion and invariably deal with it harshly.  Rebellion is always a threat to the regime. Even from pastors.

The Most Dangerous Man in America

Extinction, Rebellion and Resistance, Right-wing Extremism, World of ideas

 

The clarion call of the new right-wing was all about liberty and freedom. This was, according to Justin Ling, in his podcast aptly called The Flame Throwers, “the language of revolution.”  1998 was time for a New Tea Party. Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich saw themselves as right-wing revolutionaries. In fact Gingrich invited Limbaugh to come to Washington to fire up the new troops that had been elected. This was going to be the politics of extremism with no holds barred.

Limbaugh advised the newly elected Congressmen in 1998. “This is not the time to be moderate, this is not the time to be liked, this is no time to seek to gain the approval of the people you have just defeated.” American politics had entered the age of extremism where there was no room any more for moderation, reasonableness, or humility.

The incoming class of Republican Congressmen and women presented Limbaugh with a plaque that said, “Rush was right.”  They also assured him that there was not a single Feminazi in the bunch.  The right in America was nothing if it was not hyper- masculine. Only wimps would give in to feminists. Women were one of Limbaugh’s most consistent targets of verbal abuse.

At the time Limbaugh’s radio shows were shown on more 600 stations in the USA. He had a television show on another 225 stations. As Ling said, “Tens of millions of Americans were hanging on his every utterance. He now basically runs the Republican Party.”  This was a role later taken over by Donald Trump. As much as he loved being adored by the Republican party, there was one endorsement that he treasured above all others—he got a personal letter from Saint Ronald Reagan himself. He was in heaven. Not only that it was the best heaven of all—Republican heaven.

This is what that blessed epistle from the Saint of the Right said:

“Thanks Rush for all that you are doing for promoting Republican and conservative principles. Now that I have retired from active politics, I don’t mind that you have become the number one voice for conservatism in our country. I know the liberals call you the most dangerous man in America, but don’t worry about it. They  used to say the same thing about me. Keep up the good work. America needs to hear the way things otta be.

Sincerely, Ron”

In many ways, Rush Limbaugh was in fact the most dangerous man in America. He was ready to blow it up—in the world of ideas of course. Though it would have ramifications beyond that.

 

The Religious  Mob

Classic Books, Extremism, Fear, Freedom, Politics & Religion, Rebellion and Resistance

 

In the amazing novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, when it is discovered that a slave has escaped from his master, a mob of white people—mainly good Christian white people—got excited and gave horrific chase to the slave aided and abetted by his young white friend. These were good ordinary citizens of America. They believed it was their religious duty to give chase to an escaped black slave and return him to his owner. Of course, it helped that they might reap a $40 reward from the owner. Is that all it takes?

 

Azar Nafisi was a Muslim woman living in Iran who taught Huckleberry Finn to young Islamic men and women.  By and large these students were respectful of the tyrannical regime in their country. Like good American citizens, they were good citizens and good Muslims? What would they think of Huck Finn?

The book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is as I have been saying a book about freedom and resistance to authority.  Those are both characteristics that have usually been absent in Iran. At least that was true until recently, when there have been some rebellion led by young women resisting the authority of the government to impose dress requirements upon them, as well as other even more important impositions on their freedom. The women have demonstrated uncommon bravery in the face of that tyranny. A number of them have been killed by the government for their opposition.

Mark Twain in that brilliant book showed how an uneducated white boy and his black slave friend revolted against the “conscience” of the nation. Most people in America, at the time, believed in the racial superiority of whites and in their absolute right to do as they saw fit with the inferior black race in their midst.

Nafisi said this about the book:

“It looks at how ordinary decent people, or outcasts like Huck and Pap, could abandon their hearts and take the easy road, embracing ugly thoughts and prejudices when they are sanctioned by society. Could such horrors as slavery or the Holocaust happen without the complicity and voluntary blindness of decent, ordinary people, those who go to church and volunteer for good works and yet can easily turn, as they do in Huck Finn, into a murderous mob? It might have been the question that gave Huck such a dramatic sense of urgency when I taught it in those violent revolutionary days in Iran”.

 

How can good people wreak such havoc on other more vulnerable good people? Is a $40 reward all it takes?

Yet the young students of Iran largely supported the rebellious position of Huck. They applauded his actions in refusing to return the slave to the master.

Even though they were good Muslims, they did not support the religious mob! I found that interesting.

Self-defense?

criminal Justice, Rebellion and Resistance, Vigilantism

 

 

David French described Kyle Rittenhouse’s conduct this way in his illuminating article in The Atlantic:

“He didn’t impose order. He didn’t stop a riot. He left a trail of bodies on the ground, and two of the people he shot were acting on the belief that Rittenhouse himself was an active shooter. He had, after all, just killed a man…without any meaningful training, he was engaged in remarkably dangerous and provocative conduct. But that dangerous and provocative conduct did not eliminate his right of self-defense, and that self-defense claim is the key issue of his trial, not the wisdom of his vigilante presence. But that brings us to the danger of Kyle Rittenhouse as a folk hero. It is one thing to argue that the law is on Rittenhouse’s side—and there is abundant evidence supporting his defense—but it is quite another to hail him as a model for civic resistance.

It was frankly to be expected that an American jury, composed mainly of people who appeared to be white, would acquit a young “brave” hero, as Trump described him, who wanted to protect them from the black hordes. It would have been surprising had they not done that. It is also not surprising that the jury accepted the claim that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense, even though he created the dangerous conditions by showing up where he did not belong with an automatic rifle. Did his victims not have the right to use self-defense to protect themselves against him? That’s how the law, especially in the United States, works when the police and justice officials are also infused with the same mythology. As a result, the law in its majestic manner arranged for Rittenhouse to walk away a free man while 2 men were left to die on the street as a result of his highly unreasonable actions.

 

Mythology of the Vigilante

Rebellion and Resistance, Vigilantism

 

The problem in the Rittenhouse case is that the prosecutors had to contend not only with a very limiting self-defense law in the United States, but also a deep and very real mythology of the vigilante. That mythology has justified some of the most astonishing acts of violence conceivable. That was nowhere more clearly displayed than Cormac McCarthy’s brilliant book Blood Meridian which described acts of nearly unimaginable violence involving vigilantes on the Mexican border. That mythology has been reinforced in recent decades by the Marvel comic universe where every young boy is allowed to be a defender of the people. I thought Rittenhouse was astonishingly foolish in bringing the danger upon himself, but in law, people are allowed to be foolish. As David French pointed out in The Atlantic,

“The narrow nature of the self-defense inquiry is one reason people can escape responsibility for killings that are deeply wrongful in every moral sense. Take, for instance, cases in which bad cops create danger and confusion through incompetence or excessive aggression, and then they respond to the danger or confusion they created by using deadly force.”

  

The power of the right to self-defense, particularly in the US, much more so than in Canada, was evident a couple of years ago in the case of Breonna Taylor. In that cases cops with a “no-knock warrant” in hand, without warning, in the middle of the night, crashed into her apartment she was sharing with her boyfriend. Unsurprisingly, in the dark of night he fired a shot at the police in self-defense and they fired an incredible volley of shots into the apartment in return, but still also  supposedly in self-defense. Even though the police had foolishly and dangerously created the incident that mothered the ensuing violence, the Grand Jury refused to authorize charges against the police.

Rittenhouse was just as foolish and just as much the author of his own misfortune, but none of that mattered in the law of Wisconsin.  Even though 17-year old Rittenhouse inserted himself into a potentially violent situation, swinging an AK-15 style automatic rifle and elicited a reaction by the protesters/ rioters to defend themselves, when they chased Rittenhouse to such an extent that he feared for his life, in effect the jury called shooting his pursuers self-defense.

A man, or even a boy, with an AR-15 assault style weapon cruising the streets of America looking for damsels or others in distress has become part of this vibrant mythology. These are American patriots, even though they unleash inevitable violence and seldom perform the magic they have learned in their FantasyLand to expect.

Even if they leave a trail of dead bodies in their wake, accomplish absolutely nothing to bring about law and order, protect no one, they can become instant  heroes invited by right wing politicians to be their aides and a former president call them “brave”.

The mythology of self-defense is so potent it can turn vinegar into wine.

Patriot or Martyr

criminal Justice, Extremism, guns, Polarization, Rebellion and Resistance, Vigilantism, violence

 

I understand that the jury has still not rendered its verdict in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse and will resume deliberations tomorrow.  Yesterday I posted about why I thought there was a good chance he would be acquitted and made a hero.  Today I want to talk about the less likely  chance that he will be convicted and made a martyr. If he is a patriot for his actions as his supporters allege and many on the right believe to be the case, then if he is convicted  he will be hailed as a martyr. Which is it?

Personally, I don’t think a young man who travels from out of state carrying an automatic AR-15 style rifle  to an area of heated dispute   that some call riots and others protests, depending on which side of the great divide in America (and Canada) they lie, is a hero so should not be welcomed as a hero if successful  or a martyr if not.  Instead, he was a foolish young man who took a dangerous chance while endangering the lives of many others that led in fact to the deaths of 2 Americans while injuring a third.  He was not trained for this job and took it upon himself as a vigilante to “help” the police to do their job. He made things much worse as the trail of devastation behind him made clear. It is part of their belief that “the system” cannot be trusted and only private vigilantes or warriors can be trusted.

I realize that many young American men have been raised in the Marvel FantasyLand where such actions are encouraged. They think they can stand up to the evils of a corrupt or inept system that fails to protect American citizens.

Rittenhouse should not be valorized. He was hardly a peacemaker. No one should encourage other young American men (and they are largely men who do this) to take such foolhardy and dangerous actions. Such actions are not helpful. They are pouring fuel onto an already raging fire.

Rittenhouse may or may not be guilty of murder or the other crimes he was charged with, but he is neither a hero nor a martyr.  And he might be much worse.