tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/communists-30603/articlesCommunists – The Conversation2022-04-06T12:25:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1806382022-04-06T12:25:55Z2022-04-06T12:25:55ZWar in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456371/original/file-20220405-22-y1srld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C11%2C3846%2C2566&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vladimir Putin lights a candle as he attends an Orthodox Church service in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaOrthodoxChristmas/9e713c4565834d61921bde785f739d9b/photo?Query=putin%20church&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=504&currentItemNo=22">AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/02/21/outrage-for-franklin-grahams-pray-for-putin-plea_partner/">pray for Vladimir Putin</a>. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all cost.” </p>
<p>The backlash was fast and direct. Graham had not solicited prayers for Ukraine, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/franklin-graham-pray-putin-twitter-criticism-b2019848.html">some observers commented</a>. And he had rarely called on believers to pray for U.S. President Joe Biden. </p>
<p>A significant subset of the U.S. evangelical community, particularly white conservatives, has been <a href="https://bostonreview.net/articles/the-u-s-christians-who-pray-for-putin/">developing a political and emotional alliance</a> with Russia for almost 20 years. Those American believers, including prominent figures such as Graham and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/revealed-trump-lawyer-funds-putin-linked-religious-lobbyists-russia/">Jay Sekulow</a> of the American Center for Law and Justice see Russia, Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as <a href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/06/13/vladimir-putin-defender-of-the-faith/">protectors of the faith</a>, standing against attacks on “<a href="https://politicalresearch.org/2014/07/16/whose-family-religious-rights-family-values-agenda-advances-internationally">traditional” and “family” values</a>. At the center is Russia’s spate of anti-LGBTQ laws, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/05/bond-that-explains-why-some-christian-right-support-putins-war/">which have become a model</a> for some anti-trans and anti-gay legislation in the U.S. </p>
<p>Now, with Russia bombing churches and destroying cities in Ukraine, the most Protestant of the former Soviet Republics, American evangelical communities are divided. Most oppose Russia’s actions, especially because there is a strong evangelical church in Ukraine that is <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/march-web-only/ukraine-prayer-bible-help-evangelical-christians-russia-war.html">receiving attention and prayers</a> from a range of <a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/03/01/ukranian-pastor-southern-baptists-imb-rally-to-aid-ukraine/">evangelical leaders</a>. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, a small group of the most conservative American evangelicals cannot quite <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/christian-conservatives-vladimir-putin-ukraine-invasion.html">break up with their long-term ally</a>. The enthusiasm for Russia is embodied by Graham, who in 2015 famously visited Moscow, where he had a warm meeting with Putin.</p>
<p>On that trip, Putin <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-republican-right-found-allies-in-russia/2017/04/30/e2d83ff6-29d3-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.bb42f0bd95a3">reportedly explained</a> that his mother had kept her Christian faith even under Communist rule. Graham in turn <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-praises-gay-propaganda-law-critizes-us-secularism-in-russia-visit/">praised Putin</a> for his support of Orthodox Christianity, contrasting Russia’s “positive changes” with the rise of “atheistic secularism” in the U.S. </p>
<p>But it was not always so. Once upon a time, American evangelicals saw the Soviet Union and other communist countries as the world’s <a href="https://britishacademy.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5871/bacad/9780197266915.001.0001/upso-9780197266915-chapter-008">greatest threat to their faith</a>.</p>
<p>They carried out dramatic and illegal activities, smuggling Bibles and other Christian literature across borders. And yet, today, Russia, still a country with <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/">low church attendance</a> and little government tolerance for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/20/missionaries-struggle-to-work-in-russia-under-new-law-that-bans-proselytizing/">Protestant evangelism</a>, has become a symbol of the conservative values that some American evangelicals proclaim.</p>
<h2>Bible smuggling</h2>
<p>Starting in the 1950s, but intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. and European evangelicals presented themselves as intimately linked to the Christians who were suffering at the hands of communist governments.</p>
<p>One evangelical group that emerged at this time was “<a href="https://www.opendoorsusa.org/">Open Doors</a>,” whose main aim was to work for “persecuted Christians” around the world. It was founded by “<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1995/december11/5te045.html">Brother Andrew” Van der Bijl</a>, a Dutch pastor who smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. </p>
<p>Brother Andrew and other evangelicals argued that what Christians in communist countries really needed were Bibles – reflecting how important personal Bible reading is in <a href="https://www.nae.net/evangelical-beliefs-research-definition/">evangelical faith</a>. </p>
<p>Brother Andrew turned the smuggling into anti-communist political theater. As he headed toward the border in a specially outfitted vehicle with a hidden compartment that might hold as many as 3,000 Bibles, he prayed. According <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">to one ad</a> that ran in Christian magazines, he said:</p>
<p>“Lord, in my luggage I have forbidden Scriptures that I want to take to your children across the border. When you were on earth, you made blind eyes see. Now I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see these things you do not want them to see.”</p>
<p>Van der Bijl’s memoir, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Ssj2txmMyqgC&dq=God%27s+Smuggler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEkK-K74jdAhVHhuAKHQDdALIQ6AEIOTAC">God’s Smuggler</a>,” became a bestseller when it was published in 1967.</p>
<h2>Taking Jesus to the communist world</h2>
<p>By the early 1970s, there were more than 30 Protestant organizations engaged in some sort of literature smuggling, and there was an intense, sometimes quite nasty, competition between groups.</p>
<p>Their work <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">depended on their charismatic leaders</a>, who often used sensationalist approaches for fundraising.</p>
<p>For example, in 1966, a Romanian pastor named Richard Wurmbrand appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Internal Security subcommittee, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1966/05/07/archives/cleric-tells-of-communist-torture.html">stripped to the waist</a> and turned to display his deeply scarred back.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man, stripped to the waist, showing scar marks on his back to a committee seated in front of him" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456369/original/file-20220405-26-r4j3bw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, a refugee Lutheran pastor, stands stripped to the waist to show scars of torture in a prison in Romania, as he testifies to the Senate Internal Security subcommittee in Washington, May 6, 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TorturedClericTestifies/5d3bb7ef39f94b96abc7b66bfe23da06/photo?Query=Richard%20Wurmbrand%20stands%20stripped%20to%20the%20waist%20to%20show%20scars%20of%20torture,%20as%20he%20testifies%20to%20the%20Senate%20Internal%20Security%20Subcommittee&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Henry Griffin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A Jewish convert and Lutheran minister, Wurmbrand had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/mar/16/guardianobituaries.stephenbates">imprisoned twice</a> by the Romanian government for his activities as an “underground” minister before he finally escaped to the West in 1964.</p>
<p>Standing shirtless before U.S. senators and the national news media, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1966/05/07/archives/cleric-tells-of-communist-torture.html">Wurmbrand testified</a>, “My body represents Romania, my country, which has been tortured to a point that it can no longer weep. These marks on my body are my credentials.”</p>
<p>The next year, Wurmbrand published his book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Tortured_for_Christ.html?id=BdSfAAAAMAAJ">Tortured for Christ</a>,” which became a bestseller in the U.S. He founded his own activist organization, “<a href="https://blogs.brown.edu/hallhoag/2014/11/19/jesus-to-the-communist-world/">Jesus to the Communist World</a>,” which went on to engage in a good bit of attention-grabbing behavior. </p>
<p>In May 1979, for example, two 32-year-old men associated with the group flew their small plane over the Cuban coast, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">dropping 6,000 copies of a pamphlet</a> written by Wurmbrand. After the “Bible bombing,” they lost their way in a storm and were forced to land in Cuba, where they were arrested and served 17 months in jail before being released. </p>
<p>As I describe in my book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">The Kingdom of God Has No Borders</a>,” critics hammered these groups for such provocative approaches and hardball fundraising. One leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention complained that the practice of smuggling Bibles was “creating problems for the whole Christian witness” in communist areas.</p>
<p>Another Christian activist, however, admitted that the activist groups’ mix of faith and politics was hard to beat and had the ability to draw “big bucks.” </p>
<h2>After communism: Islam and homosexuality</h2>
<p>These days, there is little in the way of swashbuckling adventure to be had in confronting communists. But that does not mean an end to the evangelical focus on persecuted Christians.</p>
<p>After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, advocates turned their attention to <a href="https://www.merip.org/mer/mer249/politics-persecution">the situation of Christians in Muslim-majority countries</a>. Evangelicals in Europe and the U.S. <a href="https://princeton.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.23943/princeton/9780691153599.001.0001/upso-9780691153599-chapter-008">increasingly focused on Islam </a> as both a competitor and a threat. <a href="http://yris.yira.org/essays/1148">Putin’s war against Chechen militants</a> in the 1990s, and his more recent intervention <a href="https://institute.global/insight/co-existence/defender-faith-russias-holy-war-syria">on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria</a>, made him popular with Christian conservatives. Putin claimed to be <a href="https://institute.global/policy/defender-faith-russias-holy-war-syria">protecting Christians</a> while waging war against Islamic terrorism. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Putin’s policies of cracking down on evangelism do not seem to overly bother some of his conservative evangelical allies. When Putin signed a Russian law in June 2016 that <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2016/june/no-evangelizing-outside-of-church-russia-proposes.html">outlawed any sharing of one’s faith in homes</a>, online or anywhere else but recognized church buildings, some evangelicals were outraged, but others looked away.</p>
<p>This is in part because American evangelicals in the 2010s continued to see Putin as being willing to openly support Christians in what they saw as a <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/imagining-persecution/9781978816817">global war on their faith</a>. But the more immediately salient issue was Putin’s <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-american-conservatives-love-anti-gay-putin">opposition to LGBTQ+ rights</a> and <a href="https://politicalresearch.org/2015/01/21/natural-deception-conned-by-the-world-congress-of-families">nontraditional views</a> of the family. </p>
<p>Graham was among those who waxed enthusiastically about Russia’s <a href="https://www.advocate.com/world/2015/11/03/evangelist-franklin-graham-loves-putins-antigay-policies">so-called gay propaganda law</a>, which limits public material about “nontraditional” relationships. Others, such as the <a href="http://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/ExposedTheWorldCongressOfFamilies.pdf">World Congress of Families</a> and the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/alliance-defending-freedom">Alliance Defending Freedom</a>, have long been <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/history-of-christian-fundamentalists-in-russia-and-the-us-a6bdd326841d/">cultivating ties</a> with Russian politicians as well as the Russian Orthodox Church.</p>
<h2>Putin allies on defensive</h2>
<p>In the 21st century, then, the most conservative wing of evangelicals was not promoting its agenda by touting the number of Bibles transported across state lines, but rather on another kind of border crossing: the power of Putin’s reputation as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/26/world/europe/russia-putin-matteo-salvini-marine-le-pen.html">leader in the resurgent global right</a>. </p>
<p>Now, the invasion of Ukraine has put Putin’s allies on the defensive. There are still those, including the <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/election-2020/ct-lauren-witzke-delaware-qanon-flat-earth-20200917-w6xeptfn65bqrj4tzv75oygnoa-story.html">QAnon-supporting 2020 Republican candidate for Congress</a> Laura Witzke, who <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-ukraine-crisis-complicates-american-white-evangelicals-love-putin-n1290442">explained in March 2022</a> that she identifies “more with Putin’s Christian values that I do with Joe Biden.” But Graham himself emphasized to <a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/02/26/franklin-graham-sends-disaster-response-teams-to-europe-says-he-opposes-war/">the Religion News Service</a> that he does not support the war, and his humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse sent <a href="https://www.samaritanspurse.org/our-ministry/ukraine-response">several teams to Ukraine</a> to operate clinics and distribute relief.</p>
<p>For the moment, Putin’s status as the global right’s moral vanguard is being severely tested, and the border-crossing advocates of traditional marriage may find themselves on the brink of divorce.</p>
<p><em>This article includes material <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-putin-is-an-ally-for-american-evangelicals-101504">from a piece published on Sept. 4, 2018</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180638/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melani McAlister had received funding from Princeton's Davis Center for Historical Studies. </span></em></p>Vladimir Putin has long been a favorite with many American evangelicals who praised his support for conservative values – and some of them still can’t break up with him.Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, George Washington UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1684822021-11-22T19:08:50Z2021-11-22T19:08:50ZLittle red children and ‘Grandpa Xi’: China’s school textbooks reflect the rise of Xi Jinping’s personality cult<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432329/original/file-20211117-17-8jltky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-asian-elementary-school-children-one-591940196">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When students in China returned to classrooms in September 2021, they were provided with a <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/lingli_vienna/status/1413865821319860224">new series of textbooks</a> outlining China’s president Xi Jinping, or “Grandpa Xi’s”, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/1/chinas-pupils-get-schooled-in-xi-jinping-thought">political philosophy</a>. </p>
<p>Each textbook on “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era”, as Xi’s political philosophy is officially called, is tailored to students at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.</p>
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<p>“Xi Jinping Thought” was enshrined into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/29/c_136713559.htm">Constitution</a> in 2017. Although the main stated aims are to remain committed to reform and build a “moderately prosperous society”, the <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/7872#bodyftn4">realities</a> of this political philosophy has been a tightening of party discipline and curtailing of social freedom. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-sixth-plenum-will-consolidate-xi-jinpings-power-and-chart-the-countrys-ambitions-for-the-next-5-years-171395">China's sixth plenum will consolidate Xi Jinping's power and chart the country's ambitions for the next 5 years</a>
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<p>While prior textbooks were focused on the CCP, the new versions centre on China’s paramount leader. In this way they reflect the growing personality cult of Xi Jinping, eerily reminiscent of the days of China’s founding father Mao Zedong.</p>
<h2>The rise of the personality cult</h2>
<p>According to China’s <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202108/25/WS61259859a310efa1bd66aea6.html">National Textbook Committee</a>, the </p>
<blockquote>
<p>textbooks reflect the will of the Communist Party of China and the nation and directly impact the direction and quality of talent cultivation.</p>
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<p>In particular, the <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202108/25/WS61259859a310efa1bd66aea6.html">Committee</a> stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Primary schools should foster love and right understanding for the Party, country and socialism in students.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2017-10/12/content_33160115.htm">core socialist values</a> highlighted in the textbooks include prosperity, patriotism and friendship. </p>
<p>Targeted at children, the moniker of “Grandpa Xi” is part of the ongoing strategy towards creating a personality cult in China. Authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union also used the grandfather figure (“Grandpa Lenin”) as part of propaganda aimed at children. This enhanced Lenin’s <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230518216_6">personality cult</a> across the Soviet nations. </p>
<p>Political scientist <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1q1crzp.7?seq=5#metadata_info_tab_contents">Pao-min Chang</a> defines the personality cult as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The artificial elevation of the status and authority of one man […] through the deliberate creation, projection and propagation of a godlike image.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like Lenin, a personality cult around Mao Zedong emerged during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Although later leaders Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s economic reform, and Wen Jiabao, who was Premier between 2003 and 2013, are popularly known as “Grandpa Deng” and “Grandpa Wen,” they did not overtly push for this image. </p>
<p>Xi returns to Mao in his efforts to build a <a href="https://utsynergyjournal.org/2019/03/16/the-cult-of-xi-chinas-return-to-a-maoist-personality-cult/">personality cult</a> around himself. Since coming to power, he has cultivated the image of being “a man of the people” in a bid to make his authoritarianism more palpable to the masses. </p>
<h2>Little red children and Grandpa Xi</h2>
<p>The new primary school textbooks emphasise Xi’s wisdom, friendliness and care for the children. Early signs of this strategy can be seen in government propaganda video, Grandpa Xi is Our Big Friend, that circulated online in 2015. </p>
<p>The video was <a href="https://www.dwnews.com/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD/59660857/%E5%BB%B6%E5%AE%89%E5%AD%A6%E7%AB%A5%E6%AD%8C%E9%A2%82%E4%B9%A0%E7%88%B7%E7%88%B7%E7%BD%91%E5%8F%8B%E8%B5%9E%E4%BA%BA%E6%89%8D">recorded</a> at Yan'an Yucai Primary School in Shaanxi. The location is significant because the school was founded by Mao Zedong in 1937. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/xi-jinping-puts-his-stamp-on-communist-party-history-but-is-his-support-as-strong-as-his-predecessors-170874">Xi Jinping puts his stamp on Communist Party history, but is his support as strong as his predecessors?</a>
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<p>In the video, Xi Jinping is not presented as a distant authority figure. Instead, Grandpa Xi is a caring “big friend.” The children sing that his “warm smile” is “brighter than the sun.” Images of children waving sunflowers and lyrics that describe Xi’s visit as “better than the warmth of a spring day” serve to accentuate his friendly disposition. </p>
<p>Most importantly, the children sing about the need to “study diligently” to “achieve the Chinese Dream”. This dream is Xi Jinping’s vision for China to become a prosperous society.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Statue of Mao Zedong" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433031/original/file-20211122-13-1wujt62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A personality cult around Mao Zedong was a large part of the propaganda during China’s Cultural Revolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/lijiang-china-march-8-2012-statue-531870715">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The children wear red scarves and red stars in the video. These <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/220558">symbols</a> represent the national flag. The colour red alludes to the blood of revolutionary <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2011.587293">martyrs</a>. They remind children of their connection to the nation and the Party. </p>
<p>Xi wears a red scarf in the video. In one scene, he places a red scarf over the shoulders of a child. This accessory and gesture are depicted in the 2021 primary school textbooks as well. The act of placing a scarf on a child signifies children taking on the mantle of happily fulfilling Grandpa Xi’s vision. </p>
<h2>The CCP’s Young Pioneers</h2>
<p>The textbook for lower primary students contain photos of Xi planting trees with children and meeting them at school. </p>
<p>The books include statements such as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Grandpa Xi Jinping is very busy with work, but no matter how busy he is, he still joins our activities and cares about our growth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Xi shares his memories of being emotional when joining the Young Pioneers of China (the CCP’s youth organisation) in 1960. He then invites readers to describe their own feelings about becoming a part of the Young Pioneers, thus encouraging young people to join.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422845/original/file-20210923-1932-oof5br.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422845/original/file-20210923-1932-oof5br.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422845/original/file-20210923-1932-oof5br.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422845/original/file-20210923-1932-oof5br.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422845/original/file-20210923-1932-oof5br.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422845/original/file-20210923-1932-oof5br.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422845/original/file-20210923-1932-oof5br.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Xi Jinping tying a red scarf around a child at a Beijing primary school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Page from Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics For the New Era' textbook for lower primary.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The textbooks use illustrations with speech bubbles to make the ideological content more interesting. Some illustrations are of students sitting around a table teaching each other Grandpa Xi’s expectations to become a person of “good moral character” and who is “diligent and thrifty”. </p>
<p>The books also emphasise acquiring knowledge about “science and technology,” as well as being “creative and innovative”. </p>
<p>The children must cultivate these markers of good citizenship to become what the books refer to as “qualified builders and successors of socialism”. This rhetoric of children as the <a href="https://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=394">hope of the nation</a> has been in use since the late nineteenth century. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-chongyi-feng-profits-freedom-and-chinas-soft-power-in-australia-78751">Academic Chongyi Feng: profits, freedom and China’s 'soft power' in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The emphasis on being “qualified” suggests children must live up to the expectations set out by Xi. The textbooks imply this is only possible because of Grandpa Xi’s continued care for them. </p>
<p>This image of Grandpa Xi as a “big friend” is a gentler form of propaganda than that seen during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Propaganda aimed at children during the Cultural Revolution positioned the Party as the surrogate parent. It also highlighted <a href="https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Picturing_Power_in_the_People_s_Republic.html?id=I3S6mlTj1K4C&redir_esc=y">children’s violence</a> as they fought for the socialist cause. Young Red Guards sang patriotic songs and read the Little Red Book. These rituals fostered Mao’s cult of personality. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether the new school curriculum is a harbinger of future deification of Xi Jinping.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New school textbooks in China focus less on the Chinese Communist Party and more on its figurehead Xi Jinping. The growing cultivation of a personality cult is reminiscent of the days of Mao Zedong.Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Literature, Deakin UniversitySin Wen Lau, Senior Lecturer in China Studies, University of OtagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1608352021-05-13T12:35:07Z2021-05-13T12:35:07ZFree speech wasn’t so free 105 years ago, when ‘seditious’ and ‘unpatriotic’ speech was criminalized in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400378/original/file-20210512-24-1b89lot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3949%2C2877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eugene Debs, at center with flowers, who was serving a prison sentence for violating the Espionage Act, on the day he was notified of his nomination for the presidency on the socialist ticket by a delegation of leading socialists.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/for-the-first-time-in-history-a-candidate-for-president-has-news-photo/530858130?adppopup=true">George Rinhard/Corbis Historical/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just over a century ago, the United States government – in the midst of World War I – undertook unprecedented efforts to control and restrict what it saw as “unpatriotic” speech through passage of the <a href="http://www.legisworks.org/congress/65/publaw-150.pdf">Sedition Act of 1918</a>, signed by President Woodrow Wilson on May 16 of that year. </p>
<p>The restrictions – and the courts’ reactions to them – mark an important landmark in testing the limits of the First Amendment, and the beginnings of the current understanding of free speech in the U.S.</p>
<p>As a scholar and lawyer focused on <a href="https://ericrobinson.org/">freedom of speech in the U.S.</a>, I have studied the federal government’s attempts to restrict speech, including during World War I, and the legal cases that challenged them. These cases helped form the modern idea of the First Amendment right of free speech. But the conflict between patriotism and free expression continues to be an issue a century later.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Emma Goldman in 1911 with dark hair in a bun, seated, looking straight at the camera through rimless spectacles." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400353/original/file-20210512-13-se0qvp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anarchist, political activist and writer Emma Goldman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a48924/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Government’s pursuit of ‘radicals’</h2>
<p>The onset of war led to a patriotic fervor, fed by an intense government <a href="https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/overhere/more">propaganda campaign</a>. It also led to new challenges to the concept of free speech.</p>
<p>Within a few weeks of declaring war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the <a href="https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3904">Espionage Act</a>. </p>
<p>This law, which is still largely in effect, makes it a crime to do three things. First, to convey false information in order to interfere with the American military, or promote the success of America’s enemies. Second, to cause or attempt to cause insubordination within the military. Third, to willfully obstruct military recruitment or enlistment. </p>
<p>Both the Obama and Trump administrations used this law to investigate unauthorized leaks of government information, including <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-justice-department-secretly-obtained-post-reporters-e2-80-99-phone-records/ar-BB1gu5rD">obtaining reporters’ phone records</a>.</p>
<p>The more restrictive <a href="https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3903">Sedition Act of 1918</a> went further, amending the Espionage Act to criminalize “disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive” speech about the United States or its symbols; speech to impede war production; and statements supporting a country with which the U.S. is at war.</p>
<p>These laws were unprecedented restrictions on speech, and challenged the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/freedom-of-expression-speech-and-press">First Amendment’s founding concept of tolerating criticism of government</a>. But the courts, including the United States Supreme Court, generally upheld them as necessary wartime restrictions.</p>
<p>“When a nation is at war,” the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/249us47">Schenk v. United States (1919)</a>, “many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.”</p>
<h2>Many convictions</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.history.com/news/sedition-espionage-acts-woodrow-wilson-wwi">More than 2,000 people were prosecuted</a> under the Espionage and Sedition acts during the war. About half were convicted, many of whom were given jail time. </p>
<p>These included several people who distributed leaflets arguing that the draft constituted slavery (as in the Schenk case) and those who urged labor strikes against munitions plants (as in the U.S. Supreme Court case <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/250us616">Abrams v. United States (1919)</a>. Those convicted included leaders of the Socialist and Communist parties, including anarchist writer <a href="http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/">Emma Goldman</a> and Socialist presidential candidate <a href="http://debsfoundation.org/">Eugene V. Debs</a>, whose <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/09/22/socialist-who-ran-president-prison-won-nearly-million-votes/">1920 campaign was mounted from prison</a>.</p>
<p>A few judges – notably U.S. Supreme Court justices <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1316/louis-brandeis">Louis Brandeis</a> and <a href="https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1337/oliver-wendell-holmes-jr">Oliver Wendell Holmes</a> – expressed concerns that the prosecution of war dissenters was contrary to the First Amendment protection of free speech. As Holmes explained in <a href="https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/democrac/43.htm">his famous dissent</a> in the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/landmark_abrams.html">Abrams case</a>, “Congress certainly cannot forbid all effort to change the mind of the country.”</p>
<p>The war ended in November 1918, but the Sedition Act continued to be used against so-called “radicals,” including a Justice Department campaign known as the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/palmer-raids">Palmer Raids</a> in response to several terrorist bombings. The effort was named for Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, whose home was among the locations bombed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Oliver Wendell Holmes, gray haired and with a big mustache, sitting at a desk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400369/original/file-20210512-17-9gsjdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote against speech restrictions, saying ‘Congress certainly cannot forbid all effort to change the mind of the country.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/oliver-wendell-holmes-associate-justice-of-the-supreme-news-photo/515357096?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After World War II, a reassessment</h2>
<p>The Sedition Act was finally <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9801E0DD133CE533A25757C0A9659C946095D6CF&legacy=true">repealed</a> on Wilson’s last day in office in 1921, although the Espionage Act remains.</p>
<p>All those who were jailed under the laws saw their sentences <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D07EFDB1130E233A25755C1A9649D946295D6CF&legacy=true">commuted</a> by 1923. In 1924, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone concluded that law enforcement should be concerned with only the conduct of individuals, not their “political or other opinions.” In 1931, President Franklin Roosevelt <a href="http://todayinclh.com/?event=president-roosevelt-grants-amnesty-to-last-of-ww-i-political-prisoners">offered amnesty</a> to all those convicted under the Espionage or Sedition acts during the war.</p>
<p>But speech restrictions returned. In the run-up to American entry into World War II, Congress adopted the <a href="https://totallyhistory.com/smith-act-of-1940/">Smith Act</a> in 1940, which barred speech and organizations intended to overthrow any government in the United States. It was used during the war and the Red Scare of the 1950s to suppress dissemination of Communist ideas and thought.“</p>
<p>Eventually, however, <a href="https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/brandenburg-v-ohio/">in 1969</a> the Supreme Court settled on the current legal standard, under which speech can be restricted only if it presents a threat of <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/incitement.htm">"imminent lawless action,”</a> based on the circumstances in which it is made. </p>
<p>This standard allows for controversial, even incendiary, speech, unless there is an immediate threat that the speech will foreseeably lead to illegal behavior by the audience.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Despite calls for repression of dissent after the Sept. 11 attacks, <a href="http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2975&context=journal_articles#page=16">no direct restrictions</a> on speech were enacted. In 2020 Attorney General William Barr <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/politics/william-barr-sedition.html">called for prosecutions</a> of violent protesters, but no such charges were filed. There were also calls for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-14/is-trump-s-jan-6-rally-speech-protected-by-the-first-amendment">President Donald Trump to be prosecuted</a> for the fiery speech that preceded the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. But the <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/incitement.htm">“imminent lawless action”</a> standard is a high threshold.</p>
<p>This reluctance to prosecute speech may well reflect the lessons learned from the excesses of repression under the Espionage Act a century ago. The First Amendment right of free speech exists as a means of keeping a critical eye on government. Such scrutiny is always important, but is especially critical during times of war.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/during-world-war-i-a-silent-film-spoke-volumes-about-freedom-of-speech-75440">article originally published</a> on April 6, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric P. Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Free speech is a long American tradition – but so are attempts to restrict free speech. A First Amendment scholar writes about measures a century ago to silence those criticizing government.Eric P. Robinson, Assistant Professor of Media Law and Ethics, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1135072020-12-01T19:48:20Z2020-12-01T19:48:20ZSocialism is a trigger word on social media – but real discussion is going on amid the screaming<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371807/original/file-20201128-13-1u67y0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Tug-of-words' posts debating the merits of socialism versus capitalism are all over social media platforms.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-xssmf">pxfuel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The word “socialism” has become a trigger word in U.S. politics, with both <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/07/in-their-own-words-behind-americans-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism/">positive and negative perceptions of it</a> split along party lines. </p>
<p>But what does socialism actually mean to Americans? Although surveys can ask individuals for responses to questions, they don’t reveal what people are saying when they talk among themselves. </p>
<p>As a social media scholar, I study conversations “in the wild” in order to find out what people are actually saying to one another. The method I developed is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netnography">netnography</a> and it treats online posts as discourse – a continuing dialogue between real people – rather than as quantifiable data. </p>
<p>As part of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0148296319300219">an ongoing study on technology and utopia</a>, I read through more than 14,000 social media comments posted on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube in 2018 and 2019. They came from 9,155 uniquely named posters.</p>
<p>What I found was both shocking and heartening.</p>
<h2>Loyalty and fear</h2>
<p>Both support for socialism and attacks on it appear to be on the rise. </p>
<p>Socialism can <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/243362/meaning-socialism-americans-today.aspx">mean different things to people</a>. Some see it as a system that institutionalizes fairness and citizen rights, bringing higher levels of social solidarity; others focus on heavy-handed government control of free markets that work more effectively when left alone. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, emphasized the right to quality health care, education, a good job with a living wage, affordable housing and a clean environment <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/opinion/bernie-sanders-socialism.html">in a 2019 speech</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/268295/support-government-inches-not-socialism.aspx">2019 Gallup Poll</a> found that 39% of Americans have a favorable opinion of socialism – up from about <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/socialism-rising-plurality-of-democrats-think-it-would-be-good-for-us-to-move-toward-socialism-according-to-fox-news-poll">20% in 2010</a>; 57% view it negatively. </p>
<p>Prominent elected “<a href="https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism/">democratic socialist</a>” officials include six <a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2019/How-Socialism-Permeated-City-Council/">Chicago City Council members</a>, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2020/03/bernie-sanders-socialist-or-social-democrat">Sanders</a>. </p>
<p>These and other advocates <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/783700/democratic-socialism-bad-why-norway-great">point to</a> a version of socialism called the “Nordic model,” seen in countries like Denmark, which provide <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/10/16/9544007/denmark-nordic-model">high-quality social services</a> such as health care and education while fostering a strong economy. </p>
<p>Critics call socialism anti-American and charge that it undermines free enterprise and leads to disaster, often using <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelas-collapse-exposes-the-fake-socialism-debated-in-u-s-11549465200">the unrealistically extreme example of Venezuela</a>.</p>
<p>President Trump has portrayed socialists as radical, lazy, America-hating communists. His son, Donald Trump Jr., has posted <a href="https://twitter.com/donaldjtrumpjr/status/925495970032443392?lang=en">tweets ridiculing socialism</a>.</p>
<p>During the 2020 election season, Republican Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell advised that his party could win by being a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/12/mitch-mcconnells-strategy-is-run-against-socialism-it-wont-be-enough/?utm_term=.6c9d5393693f">firewall against socialism</a>. He was on point: Fear of socialism may have been a <a href="https://reason.com/2020/11/06/socialism-2020-trump-biden-rebuke-left/">reason</a> why the Republicans gained seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020. </p>
<h2>A ‘tug of words’</h2>
<p>Although I wasn’t initially looking for posts on socialism or capitalism, I found plenty of them in my online investigation. Many were what I call a “tug of words” in which people asserted which system was better. People from opposite ends of the political spectrum made pithy observations, posted one-liners or launched strong, emotionally worded broadsides. There was often little dialogue – those who posted were shouting at each other as if using a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/40/1/136/1792230">megaphone</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=244&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371389/original/file-20201125-15-31vgbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A YouTube commenter uses a megaphone-like approach to preach about the perils of socialism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen shot by Robert Kozinets</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I also found a large number of short, nonconversational, megaphone-like posts on visual social media like Instagram and Pinterest.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370936/original/file-20201124-17-2rbbm5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some commentary on socialism on Pinterest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen shot by Robert Kozinets</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But some people were more circumspect. While they were often reactive or one-sided, they raised questions. For example, people questioned whether business bailouts, grants, lobbying or special tax treatment showed that capitalism’s “free markets” weren’t actually all that free. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372172/original/file-20201201-13-1421u0d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372172/original/file-20201201-13-1421u0d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372172/original/file-20201201-13-1421u0d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372172/original/file-20201201-13-1421u0d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372172/original/file-20201201-13-1421u0d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372172/original/file-20201201-13-1421u0d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372172/original/file-20201201-13-1421u0d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Making a historical economic argument against socialism and its slippery slope to totalitarianism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Kozinets' data collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And some considered what “socialism” actually means to people, linking that meaning to race, nationality and class.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370935/original/file-20201124-15-imys5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The meaning of socialism discussed on Twitter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen shot by Robert Kozinets</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Overcoming primitive ‘isms’</h2>
<p>Amid all the sound and fury of people shouting from their virtual soapboxes, there were also the calmer voices of those engaging in deeper discussions. These people debated socialism, capitalism and free markets in relation to health care, child care, minimum wage and other issues that affected their lives. </p>
<p>One YouTube discussion explored the notion that we should stop viewing everything “through the primitive lens of the nonsensical ‘isms’ – capitalism, socialism, communism – which have no relevance in a sustainable or socially just and peaceful world.” </p>
<p>Other discussions united both left and right by asserting that the real problem was corruption in the system, not the system itself. Some used social media to try to overcome the ideological blinders of partisan politics. For example, they argued that raising the minimum wage or improving education might be sensible management strategies that could help the economy and working Americans at the same time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370938/original/file-20201124-17-pw4wwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370938/original/file-20201124-17-pw4wwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370938/original/file-20201124-17-pw4wwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370938/original/file-20201124-17-pw4wwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370938/original/file-20201124-17-pw4wwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370938/original/file-20201124-17-pw4wwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370938/original/file-20201124-17-pw4wwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This Reddit post explores the benefits of changes that some might label as socialist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen shot by Robert Kozinets.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New forum for discussions</h2>
<p>As America’s divisions fester, my work gives me reason for hope. It shows that some Americans – still a small minority, mind you – are thoughtfully using popular social media platforms to have meaningful discussions. What I have provided here is just a small sample of the many thoughtful conversations I encountered.</p>
<p>My analysis of social media doesn’t deny that many people are angry and polarized over social systems. But it has revealed that a significant number of people recognize that labels like socialism, free markets and capitalism have become emotional triggers, used by some journalists and politicians to manipulate, incite and divide.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>To unify and move forward together, we may need to better understand the sites and discussion formats that facilitate this kind of thoughtful discourse. If partisans retreat to echo chamber platforms like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/technology/parler-rumble-newsmax.html">Parler and Rumble</a>, will these kinds of intelligent conversations between people with diverse viewpoints cease?</p>
<p>As Americans confront the financial challenges of a pandemic, automation, precarious employment and globalization, providing forums where we can discuss divergent ideas in an open-minded rather than an ideological way may make a critical difference to the solutions we choose. Many Americans are already using digital platforms to discuss options, rather than being frightened away by – or attacking – the tired old socialist bogeyman.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Kozinets does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An analysis of social media commentary about socialism versus capitalism shows that people are talking past each other, but some are engaging in more nuanced discussions as well.Robert Kozinets, Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair in Strategic Public Relations and Business Communication, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1409182020-07-01T12:27:17Z2020-07-01T12:27:17ZA summer of protest, unemployment and presidential politics – welcome to 1932<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344628/original/file-20200629-155345-1sy0pr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C7%2C613%2C474&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Bonus Army stages a demonstration at the empty Capitol on July 2, 1932. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2016649901/">Underwood and Underwood, photographers; Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An election looms. An unpopular president wrestles with historic unemployment rates. Demonstrations erupt in hundreds of locations. The president deploys Army units to suppress peaceful protests in the nation’s capital. And most of all he worries about an affable Democratic candidate who is running against him without saying much about a platform or plans.</p>
<p>Welcome to 1932. </p>
<p>I am a historian and director of the <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/index.shtml">Mapping American Social Movements Project</a>, which explores the history of social movements and their interaction with American electoral politics.</p>
<p>The parallels between the summer of 1932 and what is happening in the U.S. currently are striking. While the pandemic and much else is different, the political dynamics are similar enough that they are useful for anyone trying to understand where the U.S. is and where it is going. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344642/original/file-20200629-155303-1n73544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tanks and mounted troops advance to break up a Bonus Marchers’ camp of veterans protesting lost wages, Washington D.C., July 28, 1932.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/tanks-and-mounted-troops-go-to-break-up-bonus-marchers-camp-news-photo/160176122?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Multiracial street protest movement</h2>
<p>In 1932, as in 2020, the nation experienced an <a href="http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/depress/">explosion of civil unrest</a> on the eve of a presidential election.</p>
<p>The Great Depression had deepened through three years by 1932. <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/unemployment-rate-by-year-3305506">With 24% of the work force unemployed</a> and the federal government <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/hoover/domestic-affairs">refusing to provide funds to support the jobless and homeless</a> as <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/depress/economics_poverty.shtml">local governments ran out of money</a>, men and women across the country joined demonstrations demanding relief.</p>
<p>Our mapping project has recorded 389 hunger marches, eviction fights and other protests <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/unemployed_map.shtml">in 138 cities during 1932</a>. </p>
<iframe src="https://public.tableau.com/views/UnemployedProtests1930s/Story1?:embed=y&:embed_code_version=3&:loadOrderID=0&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link" width="100%" height="955"></iframe>
<p>Although less than the thousands of Black Lives Matter protests, there are similarities. </p>
<p>African Americans participated in these movements, and many of the protests attracted police violence. Indeed, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=m1J-Z1GP1kAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22James+J.+Lorence%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqt5WJ353qAhWFtp4KHcICC_AQ6AEwA3oECAUQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">unemployed people’s movement</a> of the early 1930s was the first important multiracial street protest movement of the 20th century, and police violence was especially vicious against black activists.</p>
<p>Atlanta authorities announced in June 1932 that 23,000 families would be cut from the list of those eligible for the meager county relief payments of 60 cents per week per person allocated to whites (less for Blacks). A mixed crowd of nearly 1,000 gathered in front of the Fulton County Courthouse for <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/angelo-herndon-case">a peaceful demonstration demanding US$4 per week per family</a> and denouncing racial discrimination. </p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The biracial protest was <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=m1J-Z1GP1kAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22James+J.+Lorence%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqt5WJ353qAhWFtp4KHcICC_AQ6AEwA3oECAUQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">unprecedented in Atlanta</a> and yielded two results. The eligibility cuts were canceled, and police promptly hunted down one of the organizers, a 19-year-old Black communist named <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015064833224&view=1up&seq=8">Angelo Herndon</a>. He was charged with “inciting to insurrection,” a charge that carried the death penalty. Lawyers spent the next five years winning his freedom.</p>
<h2>Protests over unemployment</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344647/original/file-20200629-155345-burmon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Five hundred unemployed ‘Hunger Marchers’ protest on Boston Common on their way to the State House, demanding unemployment insurance and other relief measures, May 2, 1932.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/five-hundred-unemployed-hunger-marchers-protest-on-boston-news-photo/515114596?adppopup=true">Bettman/Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But race was not the key issue of the 1932 protest wave. It was government’s failure to rescue the millions in economic distress.</p>
<p><a href="https://libcom.org/files/%5BFrances_Fox_Piven,_Richard_Cloward%5D_Poor_People's(Bookos.org)(1).pdf">Organizations representing the unemployed</a> – many led by communists or socialists – had been active since 1930, and now in the summer of 1932 protests surged in every state. <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/unemployed_map.shtml">Here are examples from the Mapping American Social Movement Project timeline from one week in June:</a> </p>
<p>• <strong>June 14</strong></p>
<p>Hundreds of Chicago police mobilize to keep unemployed demonstrators at bay at the start of the Republican Party nominating convention. </p>
<p>• <strong>June 17</strong></p>
<p>A so-called “hunger march” of 3,000 jobless in Minneapolis ends peacefully, but in Bloomington, Indiana, police use tear gas on 1,000 demonstrators demanding relief, while in Pittsburgh unemployed supporters crowd a courthouse to cheer the not-guilty verdict in an “inciting to riot” case.</p>
<p>• <strong>June 20</strong></p>
<p>Police break up a march by 200 unemployed in Argo, Illinois, and a much larger protest by jobless in Rochester, New York. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, 500 protesters successfully demanded an end to evictions of unemployed mill workers; in Pittsburgh, protesters block the eviction of an unemployed widow. The same day in Kansas City, a mostly Black crowd of 2,000 pleads unsuccessfully with the mayor to restore a recently suspended relief program.</p>
<h2>Farmers’ uprising</h2>
<p>The unemployed protests in urban areas of 1932 seem similar to today’s protest culture, but that was not true in the farm belt. </p>
<p>Dealing with collapsing prices and escalating <a href="http://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/great-depression-hits-farms-and-cities-1930s#:%7E:text=Farmers%20Grow%20Angry%20and%20Desperate,bankrupt%20and%20lost%20their%20farms.">farm evictions</a>, farmers in many regions staged near-uprisings. Black farmers in the cotton belt braved vigilante violence when, by the thousands, they joined the <a href="https://libcom.org/files/Hammer%20and%20hoe%20Alabama%20Communists%20during%20the%20Great%20Depression.pdf">Alabama Sharecroppers Union</a>, which advocated debt relief and the right of tenant farmers to market their own crops. </p>
<p>Newspaper headlines focused on the white farmers mobilizing in Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas in the summer of 1932. <a href="http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.pd.020">The Farmer’s Holiday Association formed that year pledging to strike (“holiday”) to raise farm prices</a>. The strike that began on August 15 involved sometimes heavily armed white farmers blocking roads to stop the shipment of corn, wheat, milk and other products. The strike withered after a few weeks, but farmers had sent a message, and some state legislatures quickly enacted moratoriums on farm foreclosures.</p>
<p>Counties that today are marked as Trump territory distinguished themselves in 1932 as centers of what became known as the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cornbelt_rebellion.html?id=En5YAAAAMAAJ">Cornbelt Rebellion</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344630/original/file-20200629-155299-1h4cryd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Farmers set up a roadblock near Sioux City, Iowa, during Farmer’s Holiday Strike, August 1932.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/protest-america/farmers-strike-sioux-city">State Historical Society of Iowa</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Unrest helped FDR defeat Hoover</h2>
<p>Periods of grassroots protest and civil unrest interact in unpredictable ways with presidential elections. In 1932, unrest helped Franklin Roosevelt defeat incumbent Herbert Hoover. Again, there are similarities between that summer and this one. </p>
<p>Democratic presidential candidate Roosevelt, like today’s Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, enjoyed the luxury of <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/dems-warm-to-bidens-bunker-strategy-338853">running on platitudes instead of programs</a>. <a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/acceptance-speech-at-the-democratic-convention-1932-2/">Roosevelt used the phrase “new deal” in his nomination acceptance speech</a>, but details were few and it was not until he took office that the phrase acquired real meaning.</p>
<p>Roosevelt could avoid commitments because the political dynamics of 1932 forced the incumbent to play defense, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-finds-himself-playing-campaign-defense-core-elements-his-base-n1215576">much like today</a>. </p>
<p>Herbert Hoover was no Trump, almost the opposite. <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15433.html">Cautious, principled, quiet, a moderate Republican</a>, he had made major errors in the first years of the Depression, and his reputation never recovered. Democrats accused him of inaction (<a href="https://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/great-depression">which was not true</a>), while the unemployed movements fixed the label <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/depress/hooverville.shtml">“Hoovervilles”</a> on the homeless encampments and shacktowns that sprang up in cities across the country. </p>
<p>Hoover’s credibility was further damaged in the summer of 1932 when more than 15,000 World War I veterans converged on Washington, D.C. under the banner of the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=g5CEg9oOn4MC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Bonus Expeditionary Force</a>, commonly called the Bonus Army. They demanded that Congress immediately pay them the bonuses they were due to get in 1945. </p>
<p>When the Senate rejected the proposal, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marching-on-history-75797769/">the Bonus Army settled into a massive encampment across the Anacostia River from Capitol Hill</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344643/original/file-20200629-155353-6ptzd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shacks burned by the U.S. Army in the shantytown constructed by protesters called the ‘Bonus Army’ after they were forced out by the military.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/burning-shacks-in-the-shantytown-constructed-by-the-bonus-news-photo/514907246?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A month later, Hoover called in <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-1932-bonus-army.htm">U.S. Army troops. During a night of violence</a>, the army burned thousands of tents and shacks and sent the Bonus Army marchers fleeing. </p>
<p>For Hoover, the deployment of U.S. Army units played out much as it did for Trump this May, when he had <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/22/watchdog-violent-clearing-of-protesters-white-house-333692">Lafayette Park violently cleared of protesters</a>. Hoover’s action deepened his image problems and strengthened the sense that he lacked compassion for those in need, including those who had fought for their country only 14 years earlier. </p>
<p>Hoover tried to mobilize a backlash against the summer of protests, claiming that Communists were behind all of the unrest, including the Bonus Army, which in fact had banned all Communists. It didn’t work: Roosevelt won in a landslide.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344648/original/file-20200629-155334-1f7zfhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The poor handling of the unrest and economic crisis by President Hoover, right, led to his election loss to Roosevelt, left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-composite-image-a-comparison-has-been-made-between-news-photo/150224243?adppopup=true">Roosevelt: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Hoover: General Photographic Agency/Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the end, the protests helped Democrats in the election of 1932. <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Momentous_Political_Realignment.htm">In Congress, Democrats gained 97 House seats and 12 in the Senate, taking control of Congress for the first time since 1918</a>. And equally significant, they helped propel the agenda of the New Dealers, as the new administration prepared to take power and launch the ambitious legislation of the first 100 days. </p>
<p>Three years of grassroots action had forced even reluctant politicians to recognize the urgency of reform. The early New Deal would race to provide debt relief for farmers and homeowners, jobs for the unemployed, and public works projects – part of what demonstrators had been demanding for years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140918/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James N. Gregory does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Marches, demonstrations, civic unrest, attacks by law enforcement and the military on protesting civilians: The parallels between the summer of 1932 and what is happening currently are striking.James N. Gregory, Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1164362019-05-07T13:22:06Z2019-05-07T13:22:06ZMandela’s lawyer Bram Fischer: a man who paid the ultimate price<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272524/original/file-20190503-103068-11lm95v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actor Peter Paul Muller as Bram Fischer in the film 'An Act of Defiance'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In October 1963 Nelson Mandela and nine of his African National Congress (ANC) comrades went on trial in South Africa’s capital Pretoria on charges of sabotage. In what became known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a>, they hired Bram Fischer, an Afrikaner as their senior advocate. This made Fischer an Afrikaner fighting an Afrikaner government. He was also a senior leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP). He clandestinely belonged to the underground party, which was not only banned in South Africa at the time, but as the epitome of the <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/17487/thesis_hum_2002_cartwright_katherine.pdf?sequence=1">“red peril”</a> was probably more hated than the ANC by the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>The Rivonia Trial could have ended – as the state advocated – with the men being sent to the gallows. In the end the court sentenced eight of them to life imprisonment due in no small measure to their <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-bram-fischer">defence team’s work</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actor Sello Motloung (standing) portraying Nelson Mandela in the film, ‘An Act of Defiance’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soon after the trial Fischer was arrested for contravening the Suppression of Communism Act. In 1966 he was found guilty of violating the act and conspiring to commit sabotage – he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-bram-fischer">died</a> on 8 May 1975.</p>
<p>A new film has put the spotlight again on the court case. <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/Trending/an-act-of-defiance-is-a-polished-struggle-film-for-the-patient-viewer-20190426">“An Act of Defiance”</a>, zones in on the Rivonia Trial. It’s a timely reminder of the sacrifices, fears and dangers experienced by a group of people, across the racial spectrum, who sought to bring apartheid to an end. Understanding Fischer’s role is crucial to adding nuance to the country’s historical narrative, at a time when South Africa’s history and politics are being <a href="https://theconversation.com/race-still-colours-south-africas-politics-25-years-after-apartheids-end-115735">viewed</a> in the starkest of narrow black-and-white terms.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2W2P9EglmNE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer of ‘An Act of Defiance’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Prominent family</h2>
<p>Born in 1908, Bram Fischer was the son of a prominent family in the Free State colony (it later became a province of South Africa). </p>
<p>Bram’s grandfather, Abraham Fischer, served as the president of the Orange River colony. His father, Percy Fischer, became Judge President of the Orange Free State. They belonged to a community where status mattered, and given their position, Bram could easily have ascended to the highest ranks of the Afrikaner political establishment. </p>
<p>It’s this that makes his sacrifice of the spoils of his political inheritance so significant. </p>
<p>At school in the late 1920s, Fischer was drawn by his mentor, historian <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/leo-marquard">Leo Marquard</a>, into Bloemfontein’s Joint Council of Europeans and Africans. Years later, he recounted that, at his first meeting, he was compelled, for the first time, to shake hands with a black man. Years of racial indoctrination turned it into an unsettling experience, and the moment became a turning point. </p>
<p>Fischer began to question his own reaction, and as he later said from the dock at his own trial,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I came to understand that colour prejudice was a wholly irrational phenomenon, and that true human friendship could extend across the colour bar once the initial prejudice was overcome. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the years that followed, Fischer’s path began to diverge from that of other talented young Afrikaner nationalists. Since his teenage years, he had nurtured his secret atheism – which would later be no secret – at a time when the Dutch Reformed Church dominated Afrikaner lives, as it would for most of the 20th century. </p>
<h2>As a young man</h2>
<p>By the age of 23, he had declared his opposition to segregation. He won a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford and used the opportunity not only to visit the European continent at a time when National Socialism was on the rise, but also the Soviet Union. And he had met Molly Krige, an independent, free-spirited and unconventional young woman, who would later become his wife and political partner.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actress Antoinette Louw as Molly Fischer in ‘An Act of Defiance’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1935, Fischer began working at the Johannesburg Bar. It was the beginning of a stellar legal career. It was also during this time, in the years before the Second World War, that he joined the Communist Party. It would draw him and Molly into the network of organisations and individuals who worked together to oppose apartheid. The Fischers’ home in Johannesburg became a meeting point for the leadership, and their swimming pool a place where the races could mix, in defiance of petty apartheid.</p>
<h2>The Rivonia trial</h2>
<p>As the apartheid regime became more brutal, Bram and Molly’s political involvement deepened, and they became regular targets of the Special Branch. They had to weather banning orders, and Molly imprisonment, all the while raising two daughters and a son with cystic fibrosis. Bram was being called on, more and more frequently, to defend those who fell foul of the apartheid state. </p>
<p>Bram and Molly could not attend the Congress of the People in 1955, as they were both banned, but Bram became a member of the defence team in the Treason Trial that followed. This would become the prequel to the trial for which he would become famous: the Rivonia Trial, at which he took on the role as leader of the defence. </p>
<p>The Rivonia Trial became a battle to avert a death sentence. That a sentence of life imprisonment was handed down was not only due to intense international pressure, but also due to the skills of the defence team.</p>
<p>But for Fischer, personal tragedy trumped whatever relief he might initially have felt. The day after the trial, Bram, Molly and a young woman named Elizabeth Lewin, drove to Cape Town. Their car was involved in an accident and plunged into a pool of water. Bram and Elizabeth survived, but Molly drowned. It was the beginning of Bram’s unravelling.</p>
<h2>Matter of time</h2>
<p>It was only a matter of time until the apartheid authorities, which had been biding their time, would begin to pursue Bram Fischer himself. Within a matter of weeks, he was detained and released. In September 1964, he was detained again, but allowed to leave for London to argue in an important case. Many urged him to remain in the UK, but he returned to South Africa to stand trial. </p>
<p>Shortly after his trial commenced, though, he skipped bail and went underground. But the isolation of being underground was akin to solitary confinement. His grief and the stress of hiding took their psychological toll. It was only a matter of time until he was recaptured.</p>
<p>Bram Fischer was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1966. At his trial, he invoked his Afrikaner pedigree as a driving force for his opposition to apartheid. Fischer <a href="https://www.academia.edu/26141157/Bram_Fisher_Afrikaner_Revolutionary">told</a> the judge from the dock:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Surely, my Lord… there was an additional duty cast upon me, that at least one Afrikaner should make this protest.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By 1974, Fischer’s fellow prisoners smuggled news out that he was suffering from cancer. This led to a campaign for his release, and he was finally released to his brother’s house in Bloemfontein a few weeks before his death. His ashes were <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-bram-fischer">impounded</a> by the state so that they couldn’t be used to create a shrine for the resistance movement.</p>
<p>Bram Fischer has been idealised in a post-1994 context, and rightly so. He was raised in a position of privilege, but he used it to defy the injustice of the society that raised him. For this, he paid the ultimate price.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116436/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindie Koorts is affiliated to the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State. She receives funding from The British Academy in the form of a Newton Advanced Fellowship, and incentive funding from the National Research Foundation. The views expressed in this article are her own. </span></em></p>South African lawyer Bram Fischer has been idealised in a post-1994 context. He was raised in a position of privilege, but he used it to defy the injustice of the society that raised him.Lindie Koorts, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1122532019-02-22T11:40:20Z2019-02-22T11:40:20ZOversight committee session with Michael Cohen looks like an illegitimate show hearing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260252/original/file-20190221-195876-1vq6b6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Michael Cohen, left, walks out of federal court, Nov. 29, 2018, in New York. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-Lawyer-Investigation/cbb665861cd14cf8b9c8671cefa85831/3/1">AP/Julie Jacobson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Convicted perjurer Michael Cohen’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/20/696475068/after-delay-michael-cohen-to-testify-on-capitol-hill-next-week">testimony at his upcoming congressional hearings</a> promises to be a political spectacle.</p>
<p>But Cohen’s appearance may not actually be legitimate under congressional rules. </p>
<p>In Cohen’s case, the <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/documents/2019-02-20%20Oversight%20Committee%20Hearing%20Memo%20re.%20Michael%20Cohen.pdf">Government Oversight and Reform Committee’s description of the issues</a> it will explore in his hearing include “the President’s debts and payments relating to efforts to influence the 2016 election … the President’s compliance with campaign finance laws…the President’s business practices …” even the “accuracy of the President’s public statements.” </p>
<p>These subjects have nothing to do with the committee’s jurisdiction. <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/about/committee-jurisdiction">The committee’s role</a> is to investigate the “overall economy and efficiency and management of government operations and activities.” </p>
<p>While Congress does have authority to pursue any “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/273/135/">subject on which legislation can be had</a>” as well as inquiries into “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/354/178/">fraud, waste and abuse</a>” in government programs, that power is not unlimited.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stanley-m-brand-689353">former counsel for the House of Representatives</a> from 1976 to 1983, I believe the Cohen hearing’s broad range of subjects go far beyond the jurisdiction of the committee. </p>
<p>In my view, that makes this a show hearing, not a legitimate exercise of the committee’s duties.</p>
<h2>Power of the state</h2>
<p>Cohen is appearing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-cohen-to-testify-before-house-panel-on-feb-27/2019/02/20/decf159c-3570-11e9-a400-e481bf264fdc_story.html?utm_term=.121cc7b11e8d">willingly, almost enthusiastically</a>, before the Government Oversight and Reform Committee. </p>
<p>But for many witnesses subpoenaed by congressional committees, their appearance is a fraught and frightening experience full of legal jeopardy, where they face interrogation by a committee of some of the most powerful men and women in the nation.</p>
<p>The seemingly all-encompassing power of Congress to investigate has been the subject of numerous Supreme Court and lower federal court rulings that attempt to limit the power of these government committees against individual witnesses. The rulings ensure that witnesses facing such awesome government power are protected by the Constitution’s guarantee of due process. </p>
<p>The means the courts have insisted on strict adherence by members of Congress to the rules that circumscribe committee jurisdictions.</p>
<p>Maintaining this balance – of the need for investigations versus protection of individual rights – is the legal challenge facing the now Democratically controlled House as it embarks on an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/us/politics/trump-pelosi-house-investigations.html">array of investigations</a> into the Trump administration. </p>
<p>But is it legitimate for Congress to hold such show hearings? Serious questions are raised by Supreme Court precedents issued during the Red Scare era about the authority of Congress to pursue investigations that may have a political point, but which they do not have the actual authority to conduct.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260254/original/file-20190221-195879-5zym5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, in front of which Cohen will testify.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-Impeachment/40deec41e45249a38501f7f91fc657e7/1/0">AP/J. Scott Applewhite</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Grandstanding or public interest?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.apnews.com/097f2441c8dbcb0965c10bc64e413477">According to Republicans on the committee</a>, Cohen’s lawyer told them he “picked this committee” to tell his “story” which would include “anecdotes about his time with the President.”</p>
<p>The power granted to Congress in Article I of the Constitution – “all legislative powers therein shall be vested in Congress” – means that its <a href="https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-1/05-congressional-investigations.html">inquiries must aid in the achievement of a legislative purpose</a>. </p>
<p>But the president’s business practices or his campaign finance activities simply are <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/">outside the scope – government operations and activities – of the committee</a> that will hear Cohen’s testimony. The House rules give jurisdiction over federal elections and campaign finance to the <a href="https://cha.house.gov/about/history-jurisdiction">Committee on House Administration</a>. Other committees could have jurisdiction to hear testimony on the president’s business practices.</p>
<p>In addition, the courts have ruled that questions asked in a committee hearing must be “pertinent” to the subject under investigation. They shouldn’t be fishing expeditions for tangential, unrelated matters. And because the stakes are so high – a witness can go to jail for up to one year for contempt of Congress or potentially longer for perjury or false statements – that pertinence must be shown with a “degree of explicitness and clarity.” </p>
<p>Numerous cases from the 1950s and 1960s show how tough the court’s limits are about who can be compelled to testify in front of Congress and on which subjects. </p>
<p>In one case, a Senate committee whose jurisdiction was the “economy and efficiency of those doing government work” (a jurisdiction almost identical the House Committee in the Cohen case) summoned a defense contractor in connection with its hearings into communist infiltration of the defense industry. </p>
<p>The contractor refused to testify. He was convicted of contempt. But on appeal, <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/136/791/1964997/">the court ruled that the Senate committee’s charge</a> to study the “economy and efficiency of doing government work” did not extend to independent defense contractors. </p>
<p>The court said that “private operation of private industry is not activity performed by the government” and reversed the conviction. </p>
<p>In another case, a Cornell professor was subpoenaed to testify before the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/House-Un-American-Activities-Committee">House Un-American Activities Committee</a> in Washington. He refused to name people with whom he had engaged in communist party activities at Cornell and in Ithaca. He was convicted of contempt of Congress. </p>
<p>The professor appealed, and the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/367/456/">Supreme Court ruled that he was not guilty</a>. Why? Because the questions he had refused to answer from the committee were not “pertinent to the subject under inquiry,” which was communist infiltration in Albany – not Ithaca, which is 140 miles away. </p>
<p>This is the strict level of specificity imposed by the courts in enforcing congressional subpoenas, where 140 miles can make the difference between jail and freedom. </p>
<h2>No inquiry an end in itself</h2>
<p>In Cohen’s case, just how does his testimony to the Government Oversight and Reform Committee on his experience working for Donald Trump relate to government activities? </p>
<p>It doesn’t.</p>
<p>There’s one more problem that argues against Cohen’s testimony.</p>
<p><a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/354/178/">In a 1957 case, the Supreme Court</a> held that Congress has “no general authority to expose the private affairs of individuals without justification in terms of the functions of Congress. … Nor is Congress a law enforcement or trial agency.”</p>
<p>The 1957 opinion continues: “No inquiry is an end in itself; it must be related to and in furtherance of a legitimate task of Congress.” </p>
<p>As the House moved forward to investigate legitimate areas of oversight, it needs to carefully frame its pursuit of these subjects in a way that satisfies the requirements laid down by the courts. </p>
<p>That’s something it does not appear to have done in the Cohen case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanley M. Brand is affiliated with and currently serves as the Vice-President of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, Inc. ("NAPBL"), the governing body of minor league baseball.</span></em></p>Michael Cohen will soon testify before Congress about his work for Donald Trump. But the hearing’s subject goes far beyond the committee’s jurisdiction, which is government operations and activities.Stanley M. Brand, Distinguished Fellow in Law and Government, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1015042018-09-04T10:34:41Z2018-09-04T10:34:41ZWhy Putin is an ally for American evangelicals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234328/original/file-20180830-195310-mfbxze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a mass in his hometown of St. Petersburg, Russia, on Jan. 7, 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>An updated version of this article was published on April 6, 2022. <a href="https://theconversation.com/war-in-ukraine-is-testing-some-american-evangelicals-support-for-putin-as-a-leader-of-conservative-values-180638">Read it here</a>.</em></p>
<p>The close relationship between American evangelicals and Russia has lately been <a href="https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/unexpected-relationship-between-us-evangelicals-and-russian-orthodox">discussed widely</a> <a href="https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2018/02/23/why-billy-graham-went-to-russia">in the news media</a>. In particular, the Justice Department <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/opinion/maria-butina-putin-infiltration.html">unsealed a criminal complaint</a> in July against a Russian woman, Maria Butina, for trying to use the National Prayer Breakfast, a star-studded affair, as a “back channel of communication” with prominent <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/how-russia-became-a-leader-of-the-worldwide-christian-right-214755">American religious and political leaders</a>.</p>
<p>Among them is Franklin Graham, son of the well-known evangelist, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-billy-grahams-legacy-lives-on-in-american-life-92229">Billy Graham</a>, and head of the influential <a href="https://billygraham.org/">Billy Graham Evangelistic Association</a>. </p>
<p>In 2015, Graham famously visited Russia, where he had a warm meeting with President Vladimir Putin. On that trip, Putin <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-republican-right-found-allies-in-russia/2017/04/30/e2d83ff6-29d3-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.bb42f0bd95a3">reportedly explained</a> that his mother had kept her Christian faith even under communist rule. Graham in turn <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-praises-gay-propaganda-law-critizes-us-secularism-in-russia-visit/">praised Putin</a> for his support of Orthodox Christianity, contrasting Russia’s “positive changes” with the rise of atheistic secularism in the U.S. </p>
<p>But it was not always so. Once upon a time, American evangelicals saw the Soviet Union and other communist countries as the world’s greatest threat to their faith. </p>
<p>They carried out dramatic and illegal activities, smuggling Bibles and other Christian literature across borders. And yet, today, Russia is their crucial ally. </p>
<h2>Bible smuggling</h2>
<p>Starting in the 1950s, but intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. and European evangelicals presented themselves as intimately linked to the Christians who were suffering at the hands of communist governments. </p>
<p>One evangelical group that emerged at this time was <a href="https://www.opendoorsusa.org/">“Open Doors,”</a> whose main aim was to work for “persecuted Christians,” around the world. It was founded by <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1995/december11/5te045.html">“Brother Andrew” Vanderbijl</a>, a Dutch pastor who smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. </p>
<p>Brother Andrew and other evangelicals argued that what Christians in communist countries really needed was Bibles – an <a href="https://www.nae.net/evangelical-beliefs-research-definition/">evangelical view</a> of the centrality of personal Bible reading for the sustenance of the faithful. And Bibles were hard to come by. In 1978, Time magazine <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947040,00.html">reported</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A Christian’s chances of buying a Bible openly are currently good in Poland, erratic in East Germany, difficult in Czechoslovakia and Hungary…, extremely difficult in Rumania, virtually impossible in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. Buying a Bible is an out-and-out crime in Albania.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He turned the smuggling into anti-communist political theater. As he headed toward the border in a specially outfitted vehicle with a hidden compartment that might hold as many as 3,000 Bibles, he prayed. According <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">to one ad</a> that ran in Christian magazines, he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Lord, in my luggage I have forbidden Scriptures that I want to take to your children across the border. When you were on earth, you made blind eyes see. Now I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see these things you do not want them to see.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Vanderbijl’s memoir, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Ssj2txmMyqgC&dq=God%27s+Smuggler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEkK-K74jdAhVHhuAKHQDdALIQ6AEIOTAC">“God’s Smuggler,”</a> became a bestseller when it was published in 1967.</p>
<h2>Taking Jesus to communist world</h2>
<p>By the early 1970s, there were more than 30 Protestant organizations engaged in some sort of literature smuggling, and there was an intense, sometimes quite nasty, competition between groups. </p>
<p>Their work <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">depended on their charismatic leaders</a>, who often used sensationalist approaches for fundraising. </p>
<p>For example, in 1966, a Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Internal Security subcommittee, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1966/05/07/archives/cleric-tells-of-communist-torture.html">stripped to the waist</a> and turned to display his deeply scarred back. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234331/original/file-20180830-195325-oktql7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234331/original/file-20180830-195325-oktql7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234331/original/file-20180830-195325-oktql7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234331/original/file-20180830-195325-oktql7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234331/original/file-20180830-195325-oktql7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234331/original/file-20180830-195325-oktql7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234331/original/file-20180830-195325-oktql7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rev. Richard Wurmbrand stands stripped to the waist to show scars of torture, as he testifies to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Henry Griffin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A Jewish convert and Lutheran minister, Wurmbrand had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/mar/16/guardianobituaries.stephenbates">imprisoned twice</a> by the Romanian government for his activities as an “underground” minister before he finally escaped to the West in 1964. </p>
<p>Standing shirtless before U.S. senators and the national news media, Wurmbrand <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1966/05/07/archives/cleric-tells-of-communist-torture.html">testified</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“My body represents Romania, my country, which has been tortured to a point that it can no longer weep. These marks on my body are my credentials.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The next year, Wurmbrand published his book, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Tortured_for_Christ.html?id=BdSfAAAAMAAJ">“Tortured for Christ,”</a> which became a bestseller in the U.S. He founded his own activist organization, <a href="https://blogs.brown.edu/hallhoag/2014/11/19/jesus-to-the-communist-world/">“Jesus to the Communist World,”</a> which also engaged in a good bit of attention-grabbing, intentionally reckless behavior. </p>
<p>In May 1979, for example, two 32-year-old men associated with the group flew their small plane over the Cuban coast, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">dropping 6,000 copies of a pamphlet</a> written by Wurmbrand. After the “Bible bombing,” they lost their way in a storm and were forced to land in Cuba, where they were arrested and sentenced to 24 years in jail. </p>
<p>They served 17 months before being released in a general pardon of Americans in Cuban jails. </p>
<p>As I describe in my book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&">“The Kingdom of God Has No Borders,”</a> critics hammered these groups for such provocative approaches and hardball fundraising. One leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention complained that the practice of smuggling Bibles was “creating problems for the whole Christian witness” in communist areas. </p>
<p>Another Christian activist, however, admitted that the activist groups’ mix of faith and politics was hard to beat and had the ability to draw “big bucks.” Indeed, as Time estimated, <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947040,00.html">Bible smuggling groups raised US$30 million a year</a> in the late 1970s – a bit over $100 million today. </p>
<h2>After communism: Islam and homosexuality</h2>
<p>These days, there is little in the way of swashbuckling adventure to be had in confronting communists. But that does not mean an end to the evangelical focus on persecuted Christians.</p>
<p>After 1989, advocates increasingly <a href="https://www.merip.org/mer/mer249/politics-persecution">focused on Islam</a> as the greatest supposed threat to Christians. That is one of the reasons, I believe, that <a href="http://yris.yira.org/essays/1148">Putin’s war against Chechen militants</a> in the 1990s, and then his more recent intervention <a href="https://institute.global/insight/co-existence/defender-faith-russias-holy-war-syria">on behalf of Assad’s government in Syria</a>, made him popular with Christian conservatives: They believed Putin was protecting Christians while waging war against Islamic terrorism. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234329/original/file-20180830-195319-x1g9lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234329/original/file-20180830-195319-x1g9lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234329/original/file-20180830-195319-x1g9lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234329/original/file-20180830-195319-x1g9lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234329/original/file-20180830-195319-x1g9lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234329/original/file-20180830-195319-x1g9lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234329/original/file-20180830-195319-x1g9lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Franklin Graham.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Bazemore</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even Putin’s current policies of cracking down on evangelism do not seem to bother some of his conservative evangelical allies overly. When Putin signed a Russian law in June 2016 that <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2016/june/no-evangelizing-outside-of-church-russia-proposes.html">outlawed</a> any sharing of one’s faith in homes, online or anywhere else but recognized church buildings, some evangelicals were outraged, but others looked away.</p>
<p>This is in part because of his claim to be “<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/july-august/mideast-christians-see-russia-not-us-as-defender-of-their-f.html">defender of Christians</a>,” but also because he is seen to be a partner in upholding conservative values on <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-american-conservatives-love-anti-gay-putin">opposing LGBTQ+ rights</a> and nontraditional views of the family. Franklin Graham was among those who waxed enthusiastically about Russia’s <a href="https://www.advocate.com/world/2015/11/03/evangelist-franklin-graham-loves-putins-antigay-policies">laws against “gay propaganda.</a>” Other lesser known activists have been <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/history-of-christian-fundamentalists-in-russia-and-the-us-a6bdd326841d/">cultivating ties</a> with Russian politicians as well as the Russian Orthodox Church.</p>
<p>In the 21st century, then, evangelical conservatives aren’t promoting their agenda by touting the number of Bibles transported across state lines, but rather on another kind of border crossing: the power of Putin’s reputation as a leader in the resurgent global Right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101504/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melani McAlister does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During the Cold War, American evangelicals smuggled Bibles and other Christian literature to the Soviet Union and other communist countries. They still see Russia as a partner on evangelical values.Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, George Washington UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/988152018-07-06T10:37:53Z2018-07-06T10:37:53ZWhat the Nazis driving people from homes taught philosopher Hannah Arendt about the rights of refugees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226348/original/file-20180705-122247-fnyu4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ccac a o</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Facing a political revolt over immigration policies from the Christian Social Union partner in her coalition government, German Chancellor Angela Merkel <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/merkel-and-seehofer-strike-refugee-deal/">agreed to a compromise</a>, which would create “transit zones” or refugee camps along Germany’s southern border. </p>
<p>Under the agreement, migrants would be housed in designated transit areas, until German authorities determined their eligibility. If found to have registered in another EU country, immigrants would be turned back, assuming that country would accept them.</p>
<p>Merkel had earlier opposed this step, fearing it would trigger border closures. Already, Italy and Austria have refused to accept returnees. And these are not the only ones. In <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/149232/tyrants-dehumanize-powerless">the United States</a>, in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/world/europe/hungary-viktor-orban-election.html">Hungary</a>, and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/migrants-suffer-rising-anti-immigration-sentiment-italy-180524174927467.html">in Italy</a>, governments are justifying policies of expulsion and restrictive immigration. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/19/trump-border-children-inflammatory-rhetoric-655479">Inflammatory language</a> is often being used to defend policies aimed against the most vulnerable peoples. </p>
<p>That millions of refugees exist in legal limbo, sadly, is not a new story. The twentieth century Jewish political theorist, Hannah Arendt, analyzed refugees’ plight in the period between and after the two world wars. As a <a href="https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/diving-for-pearls-a-thinking-journey-with-hannah-arendt">scholar of Arendt’s political thought</a>, I believe her writing is relevant to understanding today’s refugee crisis and their lack of rights. </p>
<h2>Who was Hannah Arendt?</h2>
<p>Born in Hanover, Germany in 1906, Hannah Arendt studied theology and philosophy during her university years. The <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/how-anti-semitism-interwar-germany-was-influenced-medieval-mass-murder-jews">explosion of anti-Semitism in the late 1920s</a> led Arendt to turn her attention to politics and questions of human rights. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226350/original/file-20180705-122247-uc43d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226350/original/file-20180705-122247-uc43d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226350/original/file-20180705-122247-uc43d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226350/original/file-20180705-122247-uc43d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226350/original/file-20180705-122247-uc43d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226350/original/file-20180705-122247-uc43d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226350/original/file-20180705-122247-uc43d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hannah Arendt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/g4gti/6246088123">Ryohei Noda</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A few months after the Nazis gained power in 1933, they deprived certain German citizens, particularly Jews and Communists, of basic rights, subjecting many to detention in prisons. Becoming stateless, Arendt fled to France, where she worked for Jewish causes. When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, the French government began ordering refugees to internment camps. In May 1940, Arendt was sent to a <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005298">concentration camp in Gurs, France</a>, along with thousands of other Jewish women considered to be “enemy aliens.” </p>
<p>Taking advantage of imperfect security at the camp, Arendt escaped. Helped by the American journalist, <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005740">Varion Fry</a>, who <a href="https://www.rescue.org/">secured asylum</a> for several thousand people in danger of being turned over to the Nazis, Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher, immigrated to the United States in 1941.</p>
<h2>History of suppressed rights</h2>
<p>In 1943 – two years after she arrived in New York – Arendt wrote <a href="http://www.arendtcenter.it/en/2016/10/11/hannah-arendt-we-refugees-1943/">“We Refugees,”</a> an essay expressing her outrage at the existential crisis her people faced. </p>
<p>Driven from one country to another not because of anything they’d done, but simply because of who they were, she explained how Jews had been forced to seek refuge wherever they could find it in a world increasingly hostile to their existence.
Seven years later, in her monumental work, <a href="https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/arendthtml/essayb1.html">“The Origins of Totalitarianism,”</a> Arendt pursued the question of refugees’ rights further.</p>
<p>If human rights were inalienable, she asked, why hadn’t those rights protected asylum-seekers or precluded Jewish expulsion and extermination throughout Europe? </p>
<p>To Arendt, the answer lay in breakdown of the delicate balance between state and nation resulting in national interest taking priority over law. </p>
<p>Following World War I, <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/minority-rights">European states redrew their boundaries</a>, breaking up empires, such as czarist Russia and Austria-Hungary, into single nation-states populated by a dominant ethnic group, identified as citizen nationals or “state peoples.” Several minority groups also resided in the same territory, but lacked the same rights. </p>
<p>In these new states, minority rights were supposed to be protected through Minority Treaties guaranteed by the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/league-of-nations">League of Nations</a>, an organization established after World War I to foster international cooperation and prevent further conflict. Yet, increasingly in the 1920s, these treaties proved unenforceable, leaving millions subject to national governments arbitrarily denying minorities their rights. The treaties, along with the League, collapsed with the outbreak of World War II.</p>
<p>Minorities in newly formed states, such as Ukrainians and <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/resistance-during-holocaust/jewish-life-poland-holocaust">Jews in Poland</a> and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/1993/06/19/yugoslavia-new-war-old-hatreds/">Croatians in Yugoslavia</a>, lacked equal rights. At the same time, growing numbers of stateless peoples, deported or otherwise forced from their countries of origin as a result of civil wars or other conflicts, such as the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008191">Armenians in Turkey</a>, were dispersed throughout Europe and the Middle East in this same period.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226377/original/file-20180705-122274-1k66sd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226377/original/file-20180705-122274-1k66sd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226377/original/file-20180705-122274-1k66sd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226377/original/file-20180705-122274-1k66sd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226377/original/file-20180705-122274-1k66sd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226377/original/file-20180705-122274-1k66sd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226377/original/file-20180705-122274-1k66sd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Greek and Armenian refugee children in barracks near Athens, 1923.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002709156/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arendt identified statelessness with the refugee question or the “existence of ever-growing new people … who live outside the pale of law.” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Zm_f-8NCE9UC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=but+because+of+what+they+unchangeably+were%E2%80%94born+into+the+wrong+kind+of+race+or+the+wrong+kind+of+class+or+drafted+by+the+wrong+kind+of+government.&source=bl&ots=3URuEMvw4B&sig=7J_se6W4CBz5IFpuYvqtowWqwKw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK6-jIsOjbAhUBKqwKHTA4D2EQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=but%20because%20of%20what%20they%20unchangeably%20were%E2%80%94born%20into%20the%20wrong%20kind%20of%20race%20or%20the%20wrong%20kind%20of%20class%20or%20drafted%20by%20the%20wrong%20kind%20of%20government.&f=false">She explained</a> how these new refugees were persecuted “because of what they unchangeably were – born into the wrong kind of race or the wrong kind of class or drafted by the wrong kind of government.” </p>
<p>Without legally enforceable rights they were treated as less than human, forced to live under what Arendt called conditions of “absolute lawlessness.” Even if they were fed, clothed and housed by some public or private agency, their lives were being prolonged by charity, not rights. No law existed that could have forced the nations of the world to feed or house them. </p>
<h2>The right to have rights</h2>
<p>The postwar presence of growing numbers of stateless refugees, who lacked the legal right to residence in countries to which they had been sent or sought to enter, brought into sharper relief a fundamental conflict at the heart of international law. </p>
<p>States had long recognized the right of someone persecuted in her home country to seek asylum in another country. Yet, these same states asserted the right to sovereign control over nationality, immigration and expulsion.</p>
<p>Arendt identified this conflict as a paradox at the heart of the long-held belief that <a href="https://www.unfpa.org/resources/human-rights-principles">human rights were inalienable</a>. In the absence of enforceable laws mandating states accept asylum-seekers, refugees remained at the mercy of the receiving authority, which established its own rules governing who, if any, would be allowed to stay within its national borders.</p>
<p>Without legal residence, refugees lack basic rights long considered intrinsic to being human. </p>
<p>In reality, Arendt argued, human rights, supposedly independent of citizenship and nationality, are guaranteed only as the rights of citizens or, most restrictively, as the right of nationals of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/denmark-immigrant-ghettos.html">“folk” or ethnic identity</a>.</p>
<p>Thinking about the stateless led Arendt to identify something more fundamental than the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=8f2y0F2wzLoC&pg=PA296&dq=due+to+charity+and+not+to+rights,+for+no+law+exists+which+could+force+the+nations+of+the+world+to+feed+them&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN2NvFy-jbAhUGi6wKHQfDBM4Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=due%20to%20charity%20and%20not%20to%20rights%2C%20for%20no%20law%20exists%20which%20could%20force%20the%20nations%20of%20the%20world%20to%20feed%20them&f=false">She called it</a> “the right to have rights,” or the right to belong fully to a political community, even if it was not one’s native land. She said,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[T]he right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself. It is by no means certain whether this is possible…[because] the present sphere of international law… still operates in terms of reciprocal agreements and treaties between sovereign states.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Arendt’s resonance today</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226351/original/file-20180705-122247-bh1nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226351/original/file-20180705-122247-bh1nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226351/original/file-20180705-122247-bh1nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226351/original/file-20180705-122247-bh1nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226351/original/file-20180705-122247-bh1nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226351/original/file-20180705-122247-bh1nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226351/original/file-20180705-122247-bh1nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People protesting against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies outside Downing Street in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alisdare/32601766806/in/photolist-REUzrG-V6oxwA-TSsNVh-TVhRtV-Uywa7c-TV1nrV-UyKhFS-RvsZPS-UXebD4-UU4gQq-V6hbRE-QXMXVh-UWTUV8-Qs2BqG-Rv2PMs-UUuQZw-UUg62N-TVgqvR-UUwBWd-TSiuNJ-TUTEVB-TS26Kw-V9MC6R-TVeSbx-UWQwq4-RJnUYz-TUNuaD-Ra11Qm-REY3af-UUevEQ-RELmY1-V6j6om-QXBhKd-QuAUve-RWsss1-TS344h-V9WuyZ-TV1kXH-V9Fm1r-V6rM1y-Vxos9m-UX1Gr6-UWRcvD-TSrgBs-V6hWEw-TRZiVN-UytjZS-UyBqEJ-UX4JVD-S4d1Yx">Alisdare Hickson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, there are <a href="http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199652433-e-021">international laws</a> related to refugee protection. These laws and treaties create “exceptions” to a state’s sovereign right to control which “noncitizens” can enter and remain within its territory. In some case, they could grant at least temporary asylum to refugees. </p>
<p>However, no legal means currently exist that could require sovereign states to comply with international conventions and rules. Individual states, thus, retain the power to deny parts of humanity “the right to have rights” simply by asserting national sovereignty. </p>
<p>This is evident when far-right political parties in Germany, Austria, Italy and Hungary, along with the current administration in Washington, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/27/world/europe/europe-migrant-crisis-change.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer">call for harsher, draconian border policies</a> to prevent refugees from seeking asylum.</p>
<p>With the precarious conditions that are affecting ever-growing populations of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/world/asia/un-myanmar-rohingya-investigate.html">minorities</a> and the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugees-economic-migrants-europe-crisis-difference-middle-east-africa-libya-mediterranean-sea-a7432516.html">economically vulnerable</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/world/five-conflicts-driving-refugees.html">refugees across the globe</a>, Arendt’s words matter more than ever today.</p>
<p>The idea of humanity, excluding no one, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5872U7QQl8oC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Arendt wrote</a>, “is the only guarantee we have that one ‘superior race’ after another may not feel obligated to follow the ‘natural law’ of the right of the powerful, and exterminate ‘inferior races unworthy of survival.’” As she herself witnessed, the first steps are the abrogation of minority rights and the refusal of asylum to refugees.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen B. Jones received funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a registered Democrat and member of the ACLU. </span></em></p>The 20th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote how refugees, in the absence of legal rights, were forced to live in a state of ‘absolute lawlessness.’ Her words matter today.Kathleen B. Jones, Professor Emerita of Women's Studies, San Diego State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/919622018-02-15T19:40:42Z2018-02-15T19:40:42ZWas Jeremy Corbyn a Communist spy? The evidence says no<p>Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn met a Soviet Bloc intelligence officer in the late-1980s, a report in The Sun newspaper <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5581166/jeremy-corbyn-communist-spy-cold-war-briefings/">revealed</a>. Based on documents found in Czech archives, the paper reported that Corbyn – then an outspoken Labour backbencher – was approached by Czech State Security (the Státní bezpečnost or StB). Corbyn is reported to have warned a Czech agent about British Security Service (MI5) surveillance. While it sounds like the stuff of spy novels, the reality is more mundane and Corbyn was certainly not the only MP to fall foul of Eastern bloc spying methods.</p>
<p>The documents reveal that Czech StB thought Corbyn was “reserved and courteous”, occasionally “explosive” on human rights, but often “calm and collected”. The reports noted that the Labour backbencher was “negative towards the USA, as well as the present policies of the Conservative Government”. It said he took a “positive” view of the Eastern Bloc and was supporting a Soviet-backed peace initiative. The documents also claimed that Corbyn was “well informed” and knowledgeable on people in contact with anti-communist agencies. </p>
<p>Corbyn was initially approached by Tony Gilbert, the general secretary of the anti-colonial civil rights group Liberation, and another campaigner, Sandra Hodgson, before meeting the Czech officer in the House of Commons. The StB were keen to maintain contact and even assigned the future Labour leader the codename COB. </p>
<p>Labour has been quick to deny the reports and a spokesperson said: “Like other MPs, Jeremy has met diplomats from many countries. In the 1980s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2018/feb/15/jeremy-corbyn-denies-ridiculous-smear-that-he-briefed-communist-spy-politics-live">he met a Czech diplomat</a>”. They added that Corbyn “had not offered any privileged information to this or any diplomat”.</p>
<p>The claims raised questions about Corbyn’s leadership credentials. “Mr Corbyn says he didn’t know, but it shows breathtaking naivety from someone who wants to head the British government”, intelligence academic <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5581166/jeremy-corbyn-communist-spy-cold-war-briefings/">Anthony Glees</a> suggested. Conservative MP Michael Fabricant called Corbyn an “embittered fool” while MEP Daniel Hannan <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/964060616372736000">suggested</a> that the “story would (if true) disqualify Corbyn from holding any elected office”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"963952904049741824"}"></div></p>
<h2>‘Owns dogs and fish’</h2>
<p>But the fact is that there is very little in this report that is revelatory. Corbyn’s views on the Thatcher government, US policy and Eastern Europe were known to many at the time. Contributions to Hansard and public speeches would have provided all this. After one meeting in October 1987, the StB reported that the conversation had focused on national liberation movements and Western policy in the Gulf. But the information – <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5581166/jeremy-corbyn-communist-spy-cold-war-briefings/">as even The Sun reported</a> – “could not be utilised” as it was “limited to general nature”. </p>
<p>In other words, it was mere tittle-tattle or small talk. The intelligence was limited. As a backbencher on Labour’s fringe with little frontbench prospect, there wasn’t much information for Corbyn to give. “Owns dogs and fish,” the Stb reported back to Prague – hardly the crown jewels. </p>
<p>The Czechs may have wanted to cultivate Corbyn for information on the Labour Party and the Westminster bubble. The same report mentions that the StB officer met Corbyn in the Commons to “strengthen mutual recognition” and develop trust. But it would appear that contact was broken off shortly afterwards. </p>
<h2>Spies, MPs and new recruits</h2>
<p>In the 1960s, Czech defector <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/05/three-labour-mps-history-mi5">Jozef Frolik revealed</a> that three Labour MPs – John Stonehouse, Bernard Floud and Will Owen – had links to the StB. Stonehouse had been privy to sensitive information, but disappointed his handlers on the information he provided as a junior minister. Owen provided defence information and was known as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=njWH7cW3aLAC&pg=PT802&lpg=PT802&dq=will+owen+stb+greedy+bastard&source=bl&ots=ja6A3dNjk0&sig=QxVRipVtqeb_ss9CUOB93CYpq4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitheza1ajZAhUIa8AKHZLSABAQ6AEIQDAI#v=onepage&q=will%20owen%20stb%20greedy%20bastard&f=false">“greedy bastard”</a> in StB circles thanks to his demands for money and all-expenses paid holidays.</p>
<p>In 2012, claims also emerged that Conservative MP Raymond Mawby had <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-minister-raymond-mawby-spied-for-czechs-7896370.html">provided information to the Czechs</a> for a decade, including sensitive information about parliamentary colleagues. Mawby had been enticed to spy for the StB during off-the-record discussions about politics and trade unions, before being asked to provide “documents from Parliament”.</p>
<p>The StB reported that it paid Mawby for his information, gradually, “deepening the compromising of his position”. Mawby was vulnerable and loved gambling and money but provided little top secret information. Most was on internal Conservative Party politics, documents have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9361396/Tory-minister-spied-for-Communists-in-the-House-of-Commons.html">since revealed</a>. He eventually stood down in 1983 and died in 1990. </p>
<p>Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies were always on the lookout for new recruits. In 1975, the East German Stasi even tried to recruit Labour’s general secretary <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ron-hayward-1344325.html">Ron Hayward</a> – though he was likely unaware of the Stasi’s interest in him as a possible agent. “He likes chatting to women and is a heavy drinker”, reported the Stasi. Hayward was approached during a visit to the East Germany city of Dresden and commented on the “pulsating life” and wanted to avoid talk of “ideological differences”. Instead he wanted to focus on “united labour and the SED” (Socialist Unity Party). The approach failed and the Stasi quickly forgot about Hayward. </p>
<p>One of the more prominent targets for Eastern Bloc recruitment was Labour’s Harold Wilson. In 1956, the KGB gave him the codename <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tiNqCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT701&lpg=PT701&dq=OLDING+Harold+Wilson&source=bl&ots=N6xp86RIwJ&sig=YmF5PuKQPNZz-LK9Pax8ZenZPv0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjox_ySqajZAhWHbFAKHUPTCF8Q6AEIYjAJ#v=onepage&q=OLDING%20Harold%20Wilson&f=false">OLDING</a> and opened an “agent development file” in the hope of recruiting him. “The development did not come to fruition”, the KGB was forced to admit. </p>
<p>Trawling Eastern Bloc archives for names can also be problematic. Like their East German and KGB counterparts, the StB would embellish reports to justify meetings or show off growing influence. In the case of the KGB, the number and significance of contacts in the West were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/07/kgb-defector-cold-war-vasil-mitrokhin-notes-public">often exaggerated</a> to impress the leadership and maintain funding. </p>
<p>So was Jeremy Corbyn a spy? Well the material proves very little other than the fact he met someone from the StB. Corbyn maintains he thought the individual was a diplomat – a cover regularly used by intelligence officers during the Cold War. Does this make Corbyn stand out? Absolutely not. How many other politicians, civil servants, businessmen and women and ordinary travellers unknowingly met Eastern Bloc intelligence officials during the Cold War? The number is certainly high. </p>
<p>The now Labour leader may well have been someone the StB wanted to cultivate but Corbyn provided little information that couldn’t have been obtained elsewhere. The story provides more on StB techniques and tradecraft than it does about 00-Corbyn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91962/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Lomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The fact Jeremy Corbyn spoke to a Communist spy posing as a diplomat in the 1980s does not make him a Communist agent. Many politicians and diplomats were tricked into similar meetings.Dan Lomas, Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882592017-12-03T10:20:00Z2017-12-03T10:20:00ZNadya Krupskaya: the Russian revolutionary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196722/original/file-20171128-7450-3acb2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antoon Kuper/flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/women-on-the-left/15628-women-on-the-left-nadezhda-krupskaya">Nadezhda (Nadya) Krupskaya</a> was a significant figure in the radical movement that made the Russian Revolution a century ago. But, like many women in politics before and after her, Krupskaya has been reduced to her relationships to men. In her case, being the <a href="https://www.rbth.com/arts/2017/05/18/revolutionary-first-lady-the-life-and-struggles-of-lenins-wife_765659">wife</a> of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.</p>
<p>She was born into an impoverished family in St Petersburg in 1869. Her father, an aristocrat, had lost his commission as an officer, possibly for being suspected of being involved in revolutionary activities.</p>
<p>Krupskaya’s first political passion, as a teenager, was for Russian author <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/">Leo Tolstoy</a>’s <a href="http://www.ibe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/tolstoye.PDF">theory of democratic education</a>. For Tolstoy science needed to be democratised and placed in the service of the people as a whole rather than used as a weapon of domination and exploitation by an elite. In contrast to the rigid curriculum of the Russian schools of the day he argued for education based on an experiential and unstructured embrace of free and open inquiry.</p>
<p>In 1891, at the age of 22, Krupskaya began teaching evening classes in literacy and arithmetic to factory workers. By 1894 she was involved in underground Communist study groups and soon became involved in building factory workers’ organisations. </p>
<p>In 1896 Krupskaya was arrested and exiled to the Siberian village of Shushenskoye. Her first pamphlet, <a href="http://www.manifestopress.org.uk/index.php/publications2/65-the-woman-worker">The Woman Worker</a>, was written in 1899 and published, via an underground press, in 1901. It examines women’s work on the land, in the factories and in the family. It’s often said to have been the first Marxist text to specifically tackle the condition of women in Russia and a significant feminist text.</p>
<p>Krupskaya and Lenin had <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSkrupskaya.htm">met</a> in 1894 in a Communist discussion group. From the outset, their relationship was a meeting of comrades. Krupskaya’s classes with factory workers gave her knowledge about conditions in the factories that was vital to the pamphlets that Lenin was writing at the time.</p>
<p>Lenin and Krupskaya had shared their exile in Siberia, on condition that they married. It has been suggested that their relationship was more a matter of shared political commitment than a passionate love affair. But this is pure speculation. Both Lenin and Krupskaya spoke very little of their courtship, marriage and personal lives.</p>
<h2>Secret letters</h2>
<p>After her release Krupskaya moved to Geneva where, in 1903, she became the secretary of the editorial board of <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSkrupskaya.htm">“Iskra”</a> (Spark), the underground paper of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In his autobiography, fellow Russian revolutionary <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/RUStrotsky.htm">Leon Trotsky</a> <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/29/nadezhda-krupskaya-woman-center-organization-russian-bolshevik-revolution-married-lenin-26-years/3">recalls</a> that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She was at the very centre of all the organisation work; she received comrades when they arrived, instructed them when they left, established connections, supplied secret addresses, wrote letters, and coded and decoded correspondence. In her room, there was always a smell of burned paper from the secret letters she heated over the fire to read…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1910 Krupskaya was a co-founder of International Women’s Day, which was first celebrated in Russia in 1913. It was conceived, as Krupskaya <a href="http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/887/iwd.html">made clear</a> in her article in the radical women’s journal Rabotnitsa, as a revolutionary celebration. Four years later, on 8 March 1917, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/womens-protest-sparked-russian-revolution-international-womens-day">massive strike</a> that started the Russian Revolution began on International Women’s Day, and was led by women textile workers.</p>
<p>After the revolution Krupskaya was appointed as deputy to the People’s Commissar of Education. After Lenin’s death in 1924, and the ascent of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z8nbcdm">Joseph Stalin</a> to lead the Soviet Union, women were rapidly isolated and there was rapid regression in terms of state and party positions on gender and sexuality. International Women’s Day was turned into a twee celebration of patriarchal values, not, as it has been <a href="https://www.internationalwomensday.com/About">noted</a>, unlike Mother’s Day in the United States. </p>
<h2>No anomaly</h2>
<p>Krupskaya, like other leading women in the new Stalin-led state, was marginalised. But in her case, there was another aspect to the hostility that she encountered. She was Lenin’s widow. Her political and intellectual life and work was rapidly reduced to her relationship to her husband.</p>
<p>This is no anomaly. In South Africa for example, it was also the case for <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela">Winnie Madikizela Mandela</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first">Ruth First</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/albertina-nontsikelelo-sisulu">Albertina Sisulu</a> among others. These three women, although independent ANC and SACP activists in their own right, were often defined by the men they were married to (Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo and Walter Sisulu respectively).</p>
<p>It’s no wonder that many powerful women choose to be without men, or not to highlight their lives as wives or mothers, because all their work then gets defined by their relation to the men in their family.</p>
<h2>Public attack on Stalin</h2>
<p>In December 1925, Krupskaya led a <a href="http://links.org.au/node/1544">public attack</a> on Stalin. But in May 1927 she backed down from this position for reasons that remain unclear and contested. She wrote important articles on children, leisure and the green city. In 1933, she backed away from some of her feminist positions, again for reasons that remain unclear and contested. </p>
<p>After her <a href="https://toritto.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/lenins-wife/">death in 1939</a> she was largely, although not entirely, forgotten as anything other than the woman who had been Lenin’s wife. It’s not unusual for historians to credit men around Lenin for aspects of his success. Krupskaya however, fades into her role as Lenin’s wife, a role that is assumed to be contained to the domestic space, which itself is assumed to be a space outside of politics.</p>
<p>Writing almost a week after her death Leon Trotsky <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/03/krupskaya.htm">described</a> Krupskaya as one of the most “tragic figures in revolutionary history”. This view of Krupskaya could only be held by Trotsky because he defined her by the men in her life. He defined her by Lenin, and later by Stalin. </p>
<p>Trotsky’s one-dimensional view of Krupskaya is typical of the narratives about women that seek to flatten their identity and have them fit the simplistic narratives of patriarchy. She could not be, as men are often acknowledged to be, a complex individual with a capacity to struggle, love, deceive and hate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88259/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vashna Jagarnath is affiliated to the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (Numsa)</span></em></p>Russian revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya, like other leading women in the new Stalin-led state, was marginalised. But in her case, because she was Lenin’s widow.Vashna Jagarnath, Senior Lecturer, History Department, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/791242017-06-08T16:31:15Z2017-06-08T16:31:15ZIt’s cold outside Zuma’s ANC. But there’s little warmth left inside<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172920/original/file-20170608-32301-170ol4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protest in support of Raymond Suttner released from detention in 1988 by apartheid authorities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Botha/Times Media Group</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In the liberation struggle against apartheid a small number of white people joined the battle to overthrow the South African regime. One of them, academic Raymond Suttner, was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served eight years in prison because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.</em></p>
<p><em>After his release in 1983 he was forced - after two years - to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency for 27 months – 18 of these in solitary confinement.</em></p>
<p><em>First published in 2001, Suttner’s prison memoir “Inside Apartheid’s Prison”, has been made available again, now with a completely new introduction. The Conversation Africa’s Charles Leonard spoke to Suttner.</em></p>
<p><strong>Why did you write the book?</strong></p>
<p>I was hesitant to write it because there is a culture of modesty that is inculcated in cadres. I used to think it was “not done” to write about myself. I also thought that my experience was a “parking ticket” compared with the sentences of Nelson Mandela and others. But I came to feel that I have a story to tell. </p>
<p>Nevertheless I hope that resources will be found so that more stories are told, not only of prison but the many unknown people who pursued resistance in different ways in a range of relatively unknown places.</p>
<p><strong>You were imprisoned and on house arrest for over 11 years. It was based on choices you made. Would you make the same choices today?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. I did what I believed was right at the time and even if things are not turning out so well at the moment that does not invalidate those choices. I saw the liberation struggle as having a sacred quality and considered it an honour to be part of it. </p>
<p>I was very influenced by the great Afrikaner Communist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-fischer">Bram Fischer</a>. He had nothing to gain personally and could have been a judge, the president of the country or anything else. Instead he chose a life of danger and later life imprisonment. I was inspired by that example, amongst others, to do what I could. </p>
<p>When one embarks on revolutionary activities there are no guarantees of success. I was not sure that I would come out alive. I did what I believed was right and would make the same choices again.</p>
<p><strong>So those choices were worth it?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172918/original/file-20170608-32312-rckzh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Definitely. This was not a business venture where one could answer such a question through balancing profits and losses. For me joining the struggle, as a white, gave me the opportunity to start my life afresh by joining my fortunes with those who were oppressed. It gave me the chance to link myself with the majority of South Africans. </p>
<p>That was a more authentic way of living my life than whatever successes I may have achieved, had I simply focused on professional success. Most importantly I see this choice – to join the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberation-struggle-south-africa">liberation struggle</a> – as giving me the opportunity to humanise myself as a white South African in apartheid South Africa.</p>
<p><strong>Do you still feel the damage after all these years in prison?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. I have post-traumatic stress. I am not sure that it will ever be eliminated or that I always recognise its appearance. Many of us live with scars from that period.</p>
<p>I have not always acknowledged or understood that I have been damaged but it is directly related to my having <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/fibromyalgia/home/ovc-20317786">fibromyalgia</a> (a disorder characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues), according to the specialist who diagnosed it. She cautioned me about returning to my prison experiences, in this book, fearing the possibility of it setting off physically painful symptoms. That didn’t happen as far as I am aware and returning to the scene of trauma may be part of healing, according to some. </p>
<p><strong>Why did you break with the ANC over 10 years ago?</strong></p>
<p>I had not been happy with many aspects of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a>’s presidency but that did not mean I should align myself with his successor <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">Jacob Zuma</a>. Zuma’s candidacy was promoted not only by ANC people but especially the South African Communist Party (SACP) and trade union federation <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/congress-south-african-trade-unions-cosatu">Cosatu</a>’s leaderships, presenting him as having qualities that were not valid. In particular the claim that Zuma was a man of the people with sympathy for the poor and downtrodden was untrue.</p>
<p>It was already known that he was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-thabo-mbeki-sacks-deputy-president-jacob-zuma">linked</a> with corrupt activities before he was elected as ANC president in 2007. But what was decisive for me was Zuma’s 2006 <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-10-the-khanga-womanhood-and-how-zumas-2006-rape-trial-changed-its-meaning">rape trial</a>. There was something very cruel in the way the complainant, known as <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/10/10/who-was-khwezi-heres-what-we-learnt-during-the-zuma-rape-trial">“Khwezi”</a>, was treated, in the mode of defence that Zuma chose. I found that <a href="http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/191680/khwezi-was-let-down-by-the-justice-system-of-this-country-nomboniso-gasa">unacceptable</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Is it not lonely outside the ANC?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172921/original/file-20170608-32343-1yuqu9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Raymond Suttner in 2001, when ‘Inside Apartheid’s Prison’ was first published.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Raymond Preston/Times Media Group</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I miss the comradeship that I understood to bind me to people with whom I had shared dangers, joys and sorrows. When you are together in difficult times it creates a special bond. I did not conceive of that being broken.</p>
<p>But when you break away in a <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/news/2017-04-11-uct-slams-corruption-state-capture-under-zuma/">time of decadence</a>, what is it that one misses? I cannot resume relationships on the same basis as those which I previously counted as comradeship. Our paths diverged. I went out into the cold and some with whom I used to be very close chose to link themselves with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-need-to-despair-even-as-the-dream-of-south-africa-feels-like-a-nightmare-76129">project</a> that has meant corruption, violence and destroying everything that was once valued in the liberation tradition. </p>
<p>These former comrades have all been accomplices in <a href="https://mg.co.za/report/zumaville-a-special-report">Nkandla</a> (Zuma’s private rural home which was upgraded at a cost to the country of R246-million to taxpayers), the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-grant-scandal-exposes-myths-about-how-the-state-should-run-things-74325">social grants scandal</a> and many other <a href="http://www.groundup.org.za/article/who-are-guptas/">features of this period</a> which have seen some individuals benefit unlawfully and at the expense of the poor. I do not say that every person I know has been improperly enriched. But all those who have been in the ANC/SACP/Cosatu leadership have endorsed, indeed even provided elaborate defences of some of the worst features of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17450447">Zuma period</a>. </p>
<p>In the new introduction to the book I use the word “betrayal” and I choose it to refer to these people, many of whom were once brave, who turned their backs on those from whom they came or whose cause they once adopted as their own.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s lonely. But that loneliness cannot be remedied by resuming bonds
with people who have taken fundamentally different paths. I now build relationships with others from whom I am learning and growing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raymond Suttner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the new introduction to his prison memoir South African anti-apartheid stalwart Raymond Suttner uses the word ‘betrayal’ to explain his break from the ANC.Raymond Suttner, Emeritus Professor, University of South Africa and part-time professor Rhodes University, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/751762017-05-18T00:49:24Z2017-05-18T00:49:24ZWhat witch-hunters can teach us about today’s world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169612/original/file-20170516-11929-vpwk9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How do leaders find authority as discerners of evil?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wellcomeimages/30054570064/in/photolist-MMPwAu-G91GBB-MMCwhp-MMCwqR-NyzcQn-H4spQn-5TSa2d-cGBhHd-AbTPHU-7c7jzK-AddsSK-zVGzyR-AaSGHo-pWqebF-AoNSZ-zgjtvp-zVCSuc-Ae2LfT-knZuT-zVzhgZ-Ac2xkh-zg7kqG-zg7x27-JZZ51i-AaRf5A-xx6gs8-H1tewU-GV6JrN-GDhU2w-GDhyyo-GDhxE9-GDhy9W-MrhzWE-H4spta-GDhUEf-GDhwpy-H1tf69-NM45CZ-NAJ5W9-NHMKxo-LHF5f2-sjr57m-ph8g9H-bs8Nnd-9aMx8E-8SNQ49-8SNPDJ-7eEr4j-5ygDdh-5qb49P">Wellcome Library, London.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is hardly a new observation that political leaders seeking populist appeal will exacerbate popular fears: about immigrants, terrorists and the other.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-fear/498116/">plays to fears of immigrants and Muslims</a>. Benjamin Netanyahu <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/israel-abbas-netanyahu-rhetoric-fear-dialogue-hope-peace.html">inflames Israeli fears</a> by constantly reminding citizens about the threats around them. And many African leaders bring up <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/aug/12/1">fears of satanism</a> <a href="http://ghanapoliticsonline.com/npp-agents-satan-ghana-akua-donkor/">and witchcraft</a>. In earlier times, too, American and European leaders <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-history-reveals-about-surges-in-anti-semitism-and-anti-immigrant-sentiments-74146">invoked threats</a> of communists and Jews. </p>
<p>Such observations explain how leaders use fear to create popular anxiety. But this focus on fear and evil forces, I believe, does something else as well – it could actually contribute to a leader’s charisma. He or she becomes the one person who knows the extent of a threat and also how to address it.</p>
<p>This path to leadership takes place in much smaller-scale situations too, as I have studied in my own work. </p>
<p>In my book “<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8135.html">Evil Incarnate</a>,” I analyze this relationship between claims to discern evil and charismatic authority across history, from European and African witch-finders to modern experts in so-called satanic ritual abuse. </p>
<h2>How charisma works</h2>
<p>In popular parlance one calls a person charismatic because he or she seems to possess some inner force to which people are drawn. </p>
<p>Social scientists <a href="http://www.bu.edu/anthrop/files/2011/09/charisma.pdf">have long perceived</a> this ostensible inner force as the product of social interaction: Charisma, in this interpretation, arises in the interplay between leaders and their audiences. The audiences present their own enthusiasms, needs and fears to the leader. The leader, for his part, mirrors these feelings through his talents in gesture, rhetoric, his conviction in his own abilities and his particular messages about danger and hope.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169613/original/file-20170516-11941-1so6yru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169613/original/file-20170516-11941-1so6yru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169613/original/file-20170516-11941-1so6yru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169613/original/file-20170516-11941-1so6yru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169613/original/file-20170516-11941-1so6yru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169613/original/file-20170516-11941-1so6yru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169613/original/file-20170516-11941-1so6yru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Witch doctors in Africa resting between dances.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001028718/PP/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In sub-Saharan Africa, over the course of the 20th century, charismatic witch-finders swept through villages promising the cleansing of evil. In both Africa and Europe, communities had <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo3641171.html">long been familiar</a> with witches and their modes of attack in general. It has been common in many cultures throughout history to attribute misfortune to witches, who are both a part of society and also malevolent. Misfortunes can thus seem to be the product of human malevolence rather than some abstract divine or natural cause.</p>
<p>Witch-finders, as I see it, have offered four new elements to the “basic” image of witches: </p>
<ul>
<li>They proclaimed the immediacy of the threat of witches.<br></li>
<li>They revealed the new methods witches were using to subvert the village or afflict children.<br></li>
<li>They offered new procedures for interrogating and eliminating witches.</li>
<li>And most importantly, they proclaimed their own unique capacity to discern the witches and their new techniques to purge them from community.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>The witch-finder could show people material evidence of witches’ activity: grotesque dolls or buried gourds, for example. He – rarely she – could coerce others to testify against an accused witch. Often, he would present himself as the target of witches’ active enmity, detailing the threats they had made against him and the attacks he had suffered. </p>
<p>The witch-finder’s authority over – and indispensability to – the growing crisis of threatening evil <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3232086/Open_the_Wombs_The_Symbolic_Politics_of_Modern_Ngoni_Witch-finding">shaped his charisma</a>. People came to depend on his capacity to see evil and on his techniques of ridding it from the land. An uncleansed village felt vulnerable, awash in malevolent powers, one’s neighbors all suspect; while a village that a witch-finder had investigated seemed safer, calmer, its paths and alleys <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/witchcraft-and-society/oclc/57791996">swept of evil substances</a>.</p>
<h2>Witch hunts, satanic cults</h2>
<p>Of course, in order for a witch-finder to be successful in activating fears, there were many extenuating circumstances, both historical and social, that had to work in his favor. These could be catastrophes like the plague, or new ways of organizing the world (such as African colonialism), or political tensions – all of which could make his identification of evil people especially useful, even necessary. Also, he had to come off as professional and he had to have the ability to translate local fears in compelling ways.</p>
<p>Indeed, there were many situations in both Europe and Africa when such claims to authority failed to stimulate a sense of crisis or to legitimate witch-finders’ procedures.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169614/original/file-20170516-11956-1k7bd0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169614/original/file-20170516-11956-1k7bd0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169614/original/file-20170516-11956-1k7bd0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169614/original/file-20170516-11956-1k7bd0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169614/original/file-20170516-11956-1k7bd0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169614/original/file-20170516-11956-1k7bd0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169614/original/file-20170516-11956-1k7bd0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Bernardino of Siena.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/17269033793/in/photolist-sj1j6X-Hvstut-9dFpNf-9dCFgZ-9dCvP4-9dCFRr-ggY3zx-9dCHQV-9dFuFY-9dCBFK-9dCGix-9dFu8S-9dCBct-9dFt29-9dCCQp-9dFB1N-9dCCqe-9dCH6D-9dFsyj-9dFHdJ-9dCvia-9dCoer-9dFCVY-9dCwPk-9dFkH1-9dFmSA-9dCfQp-9dFo6d-9dCfhX-9dFpcN-9dCwgF-9dCufx-9dFtyY-9dC8UH-9dFxcL-9dC9tt-9dFBt7-9dFoEh-9dCrqk-9dFris-9dC4aK-9dFHKq-9dFeVW-9dC7x6-9dFg7y-9dCmXR-9dFwCU-9dFCrq-9dCzQe-9dCmuK">Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, in 15th-century Europe, the Franciscan friar Bernardino was able to instigate horrific witch-burnings in Rome <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fswxYJDBLygC&q=section+24#v=onepage&q=bernardino&f=false">but failed to persuade the people of Siena</a> of the dangers witches posed. </p>
<p>But there are times when this pattern has come together and witnessed outright panic and ensuing atrocities. As historians <a href="http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/staff/profile/4563-professor-miri-rubin">Miri Rubin</a> and <a href="http://history.psu.edu/directory/rxh46">Ronald Hsia</a> have described, various such <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14006.html">charismatic discerners of evil</a> in medieval and Renaissance Northern Europe (often Christian clergy and friars) <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300047462/myth-ritual-murder">promoted false charges</a> against local Jews that they hungered for stolen Eucharists or for the blood of Christian children. </p>
<p>These charismatic leaders organized hunts through Jewish houses to uncover signs of mutilated Eucharist or children’s bones – hunts that swiftly turned into pogroms, as participants in these hunts <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14006.html">felt a conspiracy of evil</a> was emerging before them. </p>
<p>The contemporary West has in no way been immune to these patterns on both large and more restricted scales. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the United States and the United Kingdom found themselves <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521620826">facing a panic</a> over <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14006.html">satanic cults</a>, alleged to be <a href="http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/bookdetail.aspx?bookid=SKU-000010141">sexually abusing children and adults</a>. </p>
<p>In this case, a number of psychiatrists, child protection officers, police and evangelical clergy were styling themselves as experts in discerning the abuses of satanists both in daycare centers and among psychiatric patients. Many people came to believe in the urgency of the satanic threat. Yet no evidence for the existence of such satanic cults <a href="http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/bookdetail.aspx?bookid=SKU-000010141">ever came to light</a>. </p>
<h2>Needs of an anxious culture</h2>
<p>In many ways we can see a similar interplay between charisma and the discernment of evil in those modern leaders that seek a populist appeal.</p>
<p>For example, in his campaign Trump insisted that he alone could utter the words “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/when-a-phrase-takes-on-new-meaning-radical-islam-explained.html?_r=0">radical Islamic terrorism</a>” which assured members of his audience that only Trump was calling out “the terrorist threat.” In Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte threatened publicly to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/04/25/philippines-duterte-terrorist-threat-liver-sot-vo.cnn">eat the liver of the terrorists</a> there. These leaders, I believe, are trying to convey that there is a larger threat out there and, even more, they are assuring people that the leader alone understands the nature of that larger threat. Trump’s several <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/trump-travel-ban-iraq/">attempts to ban</a> Muslim visitors since his election have made his supporters <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/30/politics/travel-ban-supporters-trump/">feel understood and safer.</a></p>
<p>As my work on witch-finders shows, an anxious culture may invest itself in a leader who, it feels, can discern and eliminate a pervasive and subversive evil. Perhaps, in today’s world, the terrorist has become the new “witch”: a monstrous incarnation of evil, posing a unique threat to our communities and undeserving of normal justice.</p>
<p>Do our leaders provide <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14285.html">the charismatic leadership</a> for this current era?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I received an NEH grant in 1992
</span></em></p>Witch-finders of early modern Europe and modern Africa made themselves indispensable by showing people a threat of a growing crisis of threatening evil.David Frankfurter, Professor of Religion, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/774412017-05-15T00:59:25Z2017-05-15T00:59:25Z4 things to know about North and South Korea<p><em>Editor’s note:</em>
North Korea recently tested a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-idUSKBN1890UO">ballistic missile</a> that landed in the sea between North Korea and Japan. North Korean leaders claim to hold nuclear weapons capabilities that could reach the U.S., although other <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/15/asia/north-korea-missile-test/">recent missile tests</a> have cast doubt on those assertions. </p>
<p>The U.S. is ramping up <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/21/us-south-korea-hold-joint-military-exercise/">joint military exercises</a> with South Korea, and President Donald <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39741671">Trump has stated</a> the threats may lead to a “major, major conflict.” South Koreans have elected <a href="https://theconversation.com/four-challenges-for-moon-jae-in-south-koreas-new-president-77422">a new president</a> who may be open to talks with North Korea.</p>
<p>We turned to one of our experts, Professor Ji-Young Lee, to help us understand that part of the world.</p>
<p>Here are four things to know.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Why is there a North and a South Korea?</strong></p>
<p>Before there was a South and North Korea, the peninsula was ruled as a dynasty known as Chosŏn, which existed for more than five centuries, until 1910. This period, during which an independent Korea had diplomatic <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/chinas-hegemony/9780231179744">relations with China and Japan</a>, ended with imperial Japan’s annexation of the peninsula. Japan’s colonial rule lasted 35 years.</p>
<p>When Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, the Korean peninsula was split into two zones of occupation – the U.S.-controlled South Korea and the Soviet-controlled North Korea. Amid the growing Cold War tensions between Moscow and Washington, in 1948, two separate governments were established in Pyongyang and Seoul. Kim Il-Sung, leader of North Korea, was a former guerrilla <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-real-north-korea-9780199390038?cc=us&lang=en&">who fought under Chinese and Russian command</a>. <a href="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-8995-9780824831684.aspx">Syngman Rhee</a>, a Princeton University-educated staunch anti-communist, became the first leader of South Korea.</p>
<p>In an attempt to unify the Korean peninsula under his communist regime, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5740.html">Kim Il-Sung invaded the South</a> in June 1950 with Soviet aid. This brought South Korea and the United States, backed by United Nations, to fight against the newly founded People’s Republic of China and North Korea. An armistice agreement ended hostilities in the Korean War in 1953. Technically speaking, however, the two Koreas are still at war.</p>
<p><strong>Beyond the political divide, are Koreans in the North and South all that culturally different? If so, how?</strong></p>
<p>Koreans in the South and North have led separate lives for almost 70 years. Korean history and a collective memory of having been a unified, independent state for over a millennium, however, are a powerful reminder to Koreans that they have shared identity, culture and language. </p>
<p>For example, in both Koreas the history of having resisted Japanese colonialism is an important source of nationalism. Both North and South Korean students learn about the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-real-north-korea-9780199390038?cc=us&lang=en&">1919 March 1 Independence Movement</a> in school.</p>
<p>Consider, too, the Korean language. About 54 percent of North Korean defectors in South Korea say that they have <a href="http://www.nkrf.re.kr/nkrf/archive/archive_01/kolas/kolasView.do?key=70048046&kind=DAS&q2=">no major difficulty understanding</a> Korean used in South Korea. Only 1 percent responded that they cannot understand it at all. </p>
<p>However, the divergent politics of North and South Korea have shaped differences in Koreans’ outlook on life and the world since the split. South Korea’s vibrant democracy is a result of the mass movement of students, intellectuals and middle-class citizens. In <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0109.xml">North Korea</a>, the state propaganda and ideology of Juche, or “self-reliance,” were used to consolidate the Kim family’s one-man rule, while reproducing a certain mode of thinking designed to help the regime survive.</p>
<p><strong>What have we learned from North Korean defectors who settled in South Korea?</strong></p>
<p>As of September 2016, an estimated 29,830 North Korean defectors are <a href="http://eng.unikorea.go.kr/content.do?cmsid=3892">living in South Korea.</a> From them, we’ve learned the details of people’s everyday life in one of the world’s most closed societies. For example, despite crackdowns, more North Koreans are now watching South Korean TV dramas. </p>
<p>In North Korea, repression, surveillance and punishment are pervasive features of social life. The state relies heavily on coercion and terror as a means of sustaining the regime.</p>
<p>Still, not all North Koreans are interested in defecting. According to <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/marching-through-suffering/9780231171342">anthropologist Sandra Fahy</a>, interviewees said they left the North reluctantly driven primarily by famine and economic reasons, rather than political reasons. A majority of them missed home in the North. </p>
<p>However, Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to the South in 2016, believes that Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could face a popular uprising or elite defection as North Koreans have increasingly become <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTvNBfdjuJI">disillusioned with the regime.</a></p>
<p><strong>What is the history of U.S. relations with South Korea, and where do they stand now?</strong></p>
<p>The purpose of the U.S.-South Korea alliance has changed little since its formation in 1953. This has much to do with continuing threats from North Korea. </p>
<p>However, despite differences in their approach to North Korea, President George W. Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun took a major step toward transforming the Cold War alliance into a “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/07/joint-declaration-commemoration-60th-anniversary-alliance-between-republ">comprehensive strategic alliance</a>.” Under President Barack Obama and South Korean Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, many believed the U.S.-South Korea alliance was at its best. Under their leadership, Washington and Seoul agreed to expand the alliance’s scope to cover nontraditional threats, like terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other global challenges like piracy and epidemic disease, while coordinating and standing firm against North Korea’s provocations. </p>
<p>Now, with Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump as new presidents of South Korea and the United States, there is a greater degree of uncertainty. Among other things, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-we-may-terminate-us-south-korea-trade-agreement/2017/04/27/75ad1218-2bad-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.7220866a5910">Trump criticized</a> the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, while insisting Seoul pay for THAAD, a U.S. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/asia/trump-south-korea-thaad-missile-defense-north-korea.html?_r=0">missile defense system deployed in South Korea</a>. Moon, whose parents fled the North during the Korean War, is likely to put inter-Korean reconciliation as one of his top priorities. This may collide with the current U.S. approach of imposing sanctions against North Korea.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ji-Young Lee received funding from the Academy of Korean Studies (Competitive Research Grant, 2013), for a book project on historical international order in Asia.</span></em></p>North and South Korea explained in four questions and answers.Ji-Young Lee, Assistant Professor, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/737832017-04-11T10:30:40Z2017-04-11T10:30:40ZThe untold story of thousands of Italian children sent away from their parents in the 1950s<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164670/original/image-20170410-8846-1iet2fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the 1950s, Reggio Calabria on the toe of Italy, was a dangerous place to grow up. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lyonora/6076224245/sizes/l">lyonara/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The province of Reggio Calabria on the toe of Italy is a hotspot for natural disasters. As a humanitarian reaction to severe floods in 1951 and 1953, thousands of Calabrian children were displaced and sent to live with other families or in summer camps, military bases or Church-sponsored institutions across Italy. </p>
<p>Both the Christian-Democrat government in charge at the time as well as the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and their associated civic groups were directly involved in the relocations. </p>
<p>This is a silenced corner of Italian and European history. It is not part of official Italian history textbooks, nor an issue readily discussed in local Calabrian communities. As part of my own ongoing research I interviewed a number of former displaced children, now in their sixties and seventies, who spoke to me for the first time about their experiences. They empathise with the problems facing displaced people, particularly children, currently entering Europe and see similarities in their stories of being uprooted.</p>
<h2>Childhoods uprooted</h2>
<p>In the floods of 1951, the Ministry of the Interior reported that the damage affected 68 municipalities in Reggio Calabria, that 3,090 houses were severely damaged or destroyed, 3,797 families were hosted in temporary shanty towns and 49 people died. Two years later, more floods killed 55 people with 2,500 more left homeless. </p>
<p>Reacting to the disasters, the PCI, involving a number of groups such as the Union of Italian Women, took the initiative to relocate children aged three to 12-years-old from southern Italy – with the agreement of their parents – to live with new communist families in the north of Italy. Centre-right newspapers at the time <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Cari_bambini_vi_aspettiamo_con_gioia_il.html?id=-AqyGwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">condemned</a> the scheme as an “abduction of infancy”, echoing criticisms of child evacuations <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo12274715.html">instigated</a> by the Communists during the Greek civil war. </p>
<figure>
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<p>Interventions by the Catholic Church and police, who openly opposed the relocations by the communists, only led to the removed children being sent to monasteries, orphanages or juvenile detention centres across Italy instead of moving to new families or back home. Children stayed away from their parents for between one and ten years. </p>
<p>Under other disaster relief schemes active during the early 1950s, the government and church as well as their associated civic groups, primarily the Italian Women’s Centre, also relocated orphans and children from very poor families to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Memorie_di_una_che_c_era.html?id=MmXwbjybNqwC&redir_esc=y">place them</a> in institutions across the country. </p>
<p>Some of the people who were relocated as children who I interviewed spoke of having very positive experiences of living in new towns. There were opportunities to go to the cinema, get a good school education and eat new foods. But <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2015.1111210">others</a> were deeply traumatised. </p>
<p>Two such children, displaced at the age of six and seven, remember the day they describe as being “snatched” by the Italian Red Cross, without warning and while playing with their friends. They stopped only momentarily to wave goodbye to their parents working in a nearby field. They were taken to Sicily before being separated and sent to gender segregated institutions in different parts of Italy where they lived for over a year until they returned home. Life in the institutions was hard: there was hunger, malnutrition, stale bread, and corporal punishment. </p>
<p>Today, recalling memories of this experience provokes immense suffering and disbelief about the political decision-making processes and power games between left and right that were involved in these children’s relocation for “humanitarian” reasons. </p>
<h2>Silent reunions</h2>
<p>Upon their return, many children remained silent about their experiences. They soon understood that what had happened caused a great deal of suffering to their parents. The relocations were a source of constant humiliation and shame for both the children and their families. According to many of those who were relocated as children that I spoke to, their parents were victims of false promises by the government to provide them with subsidies and a new house – things which never materialised. </p>
<p>It has become apparent during my research that even in close-knit Calabrian village communities, children who were relocated are to this day rarely aware of neighbours who suffered the same fate. In Italy, where secrets are often public knowledge, families and neighbours kept their personal story of displacement well guarded.</p>
<p>People do still remember and evaluate what happened to them. But I believe there was no space for the existence of these divisive and shameful stories in the newly united Italian collective post-war imagination. The child displacement seemed to be an extra burden that Italy could not or was not willing to shoulder after the moral and political defeat of the war. After the devastating schisms of World War II, silence in Europe <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/292994/postwar-by-tony-judt/9780143037750/">seemed like a natural condition</a>.</p>
<p>The post-war period was fundamental in giving birth to and establishing top-down policies, spawning lasting <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-wars-wake-9780195399684?cc=gb&lang=en&">ideological positions</a> concerning displacement and refugees. In the same way, Europe today is unprepared for the current migration crisis while still dealing with the debris of <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137501486">economic meltdown</a>. </p>
<p>The silenced child displacement of 1950s Italy is not simply a thing of the past. Humanitarian actions that took place several decades ago continue to affect the lives of relocated children. Displaced children breaking their silence about their experiences is fundamental not only to piecing together silenced European histories but, crucially, to better evaluate the current politics of mass relocation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stavroula Pipyrou receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>When floods hit the toe of Italy, children were sent away, often for years.Stavroula Pipyrou, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647152017-04-09T08:50:33Z2017-04-09T08:50:33ZRemembering South African struggle hero Chris Hani: lessons for today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139576/original/image-20160928-27034-7l1lh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) sing and dance with a poster of Chris Hani.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The “what if” game is popular with the media and the <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commentariat">commentariat</a> in South Africa. A popular example is “what if …” South African Communist Party (SACP) leader <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thembisile-chris-hani">Chris Hani</a> were still alive.</p>
<p>What, for example, would he say about the SACP’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/tripartite-alliance">tripartate alliance</a> partner, the African National Congress? What would he say about the state of the alliance after recent calls by both partners, the SACP and union federation Cosatu for President Jacob Zuma <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-04-cosatu-the-time-has-come-for-president-jacob-zuma-to-step-down">to step down</a>?</p>
<p>These questions are being asked again on the anniversary of Hani’s <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/03/10/Remember-How-the-Sunday-Times-covered-Chris-Hanis-assassination">assassination</a> on April 10, 1992 by two rightwing extremists.</p>
<p>But such use, often by the liberal media, of Hani’s name (and those of other fallen cadres of the liberation movement) is problematic. It seeks to isolate Hani from the movement that produced him, presenting him as an exception it can then appropriate.</p>
<p>Hani’s name is also regularly invoked by the SACP and the ANC come election time. Many campaign posters call on supporters to “Do it for Chris Hani”. Here, the summoning of Hani’s memory has become little more than empty rhetoric. </p>
<p>A more useful exercise may be to reflect on Hani’s life, actions and beliefs, and their significance for today. </p>
<h2>A popular hero</h2>
<p>In his book “<a href="http://jacana.bookslive.co.za/blog/2014/11/21/new-pocket-biographies-chris-hani-thomas-sankara-patrice-lumumba-and-haile-selassie/">A Jacana Pocket Biography: Chris Hani</a>” historian Hugh Macmillan argues it was Hani’s physical and moral bravery, his compassion and humanity that made him a “popular hero” – the words used by French philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/11/guardianobituaries.france">Jacques Derrida</a> to describe Hani in his <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=sEENbAP5FZsC&redir_esc=y">Spectres of Marx</a> lecture.</p>
<p>Hani helped build a culture of internal criticism in the ANC. In 1969 he and six other commissars and commanders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, signed what became known as the “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/%26lsquo%3Bhani-memorandum%E2%80%99-%26ndash%3B-introduced-and-annotated-hugh-macmillan">Hani memorandum</a>”. The memorandum <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/08/10/time-for-a-hani-memo">outlined</a> the “frightening depth of the rot in the ANC”, accusing its leadership of careerism, corruption and persecution by the party’s security.</p>
<p>Hani’s memorandum was the catalyst for one of the most significant events in the history of the ANC in exile, a conference in Morogoro, Tanzania. But it was viewed as treacherous by some within the leadership, particularly those it had criticised. Hani and his comrades were expelled from the ANC and only reinstated after the Morogoro conference. </p>
<p>Russian scholar <a href="http://www.inafran.ru/en/node/350">Vladimir Shubin</a> has <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/current-affairs-a-history/anc-a-view-from-moscow-detail">argued</a> that it was largely thanks to the memorandum that the delegates to the conference included rank and file MK members and not just the leadership.</p>
<p>The Morogoro conference opened ANC membership to non-Africans. It also adopted the important “Strategy and Tactics” <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/strategy-and-tactics-statement-adopted-anc-morogoro-conference-april-may-1969-abridged-0">document</a>. This provided – for the first time since the ANC’s banning in 1960 – a systematic assessment of the conditions of struggle and an overall vision for defeating apartheid in a time of deep political demoralisation. </p>
<p>The conference was a moment of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/sadet1_chap14.pdf">self-reflection</a>. It helped the ANC to overcome the state of crisis and demoralisation that had set in. </p>
<p>The ability of the leadership of both the ANC and its closest ally, the SACP, to reassess circumstances, interrogate these and themselves, and learn from past mistakes to overcome difficult moments is one of the most important lessons from their history. This tradition of internal debate has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2017-04-05-fighting-violations-of-what-the-anc-stands-for-is-not-sowing-disunity/">sowing disunity</a>.</p>
<h2>Disrupting notions of masculinity</h2>
<p>A famous quote by Che Guevara states that “the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love”. Leaders like Hani were moved to act by their hearts as well as by reason. The decision to join the liberation struggle was one of reason – a conscious rejection of apartheid oppression and inequality. But it was also a choice informed by “revolutionary love” or a “love for the people” – shaped by a sense of justice and by compassion, as well as by a vision, the ability to imagine a different future.</p>
<p>As struggle veteran and public intellectual <a href="https://raymondsuttner.com/about/">Raymond Suttner</a> points out in <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/current-affairs-a-history/recovering-democracy-in-south-africa-detail">Recovering Democracy in South Africa</a>, what is new and alarming about many of the ANC’s current leaders is their callousness. The plight of the poor no longer evokes compassion or empathy from a government that is supposed to represent them.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Chris Hani salutes at a rally of the African National Congress (ANC) in this file picture taken December 16, 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Both Suttner and Macmillan also highlight Hani’s commitment to disrupting notions of heroic masculinity. In his book Macmillan tells the story of one of Hani’s comrades <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thenjiwe-mtintso">Thenjiwe Mtintso</a> who credited him with introducing her to the gender content of the liberation struggle when she arrived in exile.</p>
<p>Hani’s concern with gender issues can also be seen in his reaction to the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Aspects_of_the_experiences_of_10_women_in_MK.pdf">abuse of women</a> in MK camps. He <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/anc_underground_mplan_rivonia.pdf">introduced a rule</a> that prevented officers from forming relationships with new women recruits.</p>
<p>By looking at the life of people like Hani South Africans can recover the possibility of alternative and gentler types of masculinity to the prevailing models of patriarchal, machoist, militaristic and violent manhood.</p>
<h2>Communist for life</h2>
<p>At the time of South Africa’s transition to democracy Hani decided to resign from ANC structures and concentrate his efforts on building the SACP. He understood that there would be a need to build the party for it to be a truly democratic and democratising force in a post-apartheid South Africa intent on taking the struggle of the working class and the poor forward.</p>
<p>While the SACP would have to redefine itself in the new South Africa, Hani believed that it should be the main agent of change. That’s where his loyalty to the party was rooted.</p>
<p>Hani was not a communist in passing. He immersed himself completely into the liberation struggle. And it was “a communist as communist”, to <a href="http://bat020.tumblr.com/post/47613716841/jacques-derrida-on-chris-hani">quote</a> Derrida again, that his assassins were out to get.</p>
<p>The story of his life –- and that of many others –- is exemplary of this total commitment and willingness to sacrifice one’s life for an ideal. It was ideas, a political project and the movement that counted – not individuals, because no one would have made it on their own. </p>
<p>This may be difficult to imagine in today’s society where individualism and self-interest reign supreme and personalised politics has become the norm. But it was by doing things with, and for others, as part of a collective movement that people like Hani found their self-realisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arianna Lissoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The name of ANC struggle hero Chris Hani, who was assassinated in 1993, is regularly invoked to win political arguments in South Africa.Arianna Lissoni, Researcher at History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/754402017-04-06T15:02:08Z2017-04-06T15:02:08ZDuring World War I, a silent film spoke volumes about freedom of speech<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164307/original/image-20170406-16685-ejvvjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chief John Big Tree, Dark Cloud, Jack Cosgrave, Adda Gleason and Robert Goldstein in The Spirit of '76 (1917).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182444/mediaviewer/rm1417546496">IMDb</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the United States, “The Great War” led to unprecedented efforts by the federal government to control and restrict “unpatriotic” speech. But the boundary between speech that undermined the government and legitimate criticism was often unclear. </p>
<p>As a scholar and lawyer focused on <a href="http://bloglawonline.com/">freedom of speech in the U.S.</a>, I have studied the restrictions on speech during WWI and the legal cases that challenged them. These cases helped form the modern idea of the First Amendment right of free speech. But the conflict between patriotism and free expression continues to be an issue a century later. </p>
<h2>Thousands silenced</h2>
<p>The onset of war led to a patriotic fervor, fed by an intense government <a href="https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/overhere/more">propaganda campaign</a>. It also led to new challenges to the concept of free speech.</p>
<p>Within a few weeks of declaring war, President Woodrow Wilson signed the <a href="http://www.legisworks.org/congress/65/publaw-24.pdf">Espionage Act of 1917</a>. This law, which is still largely in effect, makes it a crime to do three things. First, convey false information in order to interfere with the American military, or promote the success of America’s enemies. Second, cause or attempt to cause insubordination within the military. Third, willfully obstruct military recruitment or enlistment. </p>
<p>The following year, Congress passed the more restrictive <a href="http://www.legisworks.org/congress/65/publaw-150.pdf">Sedition Act of 1918</a> on May 16, and President Wilson signed it, criminalizing disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive speech about the United States or its symbols; speech to impede war production; and statements supporting a country with which the U.S. was at war.</p>
<p>These laws – the first wartime restrictions on speech in American history – were unprecedented challenges to the right of free expression. But the courts, including the United States Supreme Court, generally upheld them as necessary wartime restrictions. </p>
<p>“When a nation is at war,” the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/schenck-v-united-states-defining-the-limits-of-free-speech/">Schenk v. United States (1919)</a>, “many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164201/original/image-20170405-18537-nnszn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anarchist political activist and writer Emma Goldman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEmma_Goldman_seated.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>More than 2,000 people were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=KrIqAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PR4&ots=Oz8foBdBRa&dq=%22Government%20prosecutions%20under%20espionage%20act%22&pg=RA7-PA1#v=onepage&q=%22Government%20prosecutions%20under%20espionage%20act%22&f=false">prosecuted</a> under the Espionage and Sedition acts during the war. About half were convicted, many of whom were given jail time. These included several individuals who distributed leaflets arguing that the draft constituted slavery, and leaders of the Socialist and Communist parties. </p>
<p>Robert Goldstein, the writer and producer of “The Spirit of ‘76”, a silent film about the American Revolution, was <a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/07/30/us-v-spirit-76">prosecuted</a>. The film, although largely fictional, included a depiction of a historical incident in which British soldiers – enemies in the Revolution, but allies in the world war – killed women and children. Those convicted also included anarchist writer <a href="http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/">Emma Goldman</a> and Socialist presidential candidate <a href="http://debsfoundation.org">Eugene V. Debs</a>.</p>
<p>A few judges – notably U.S. Supreme Court justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes – expressed concerns that the prosecution of war dissenters was contrary to the First Amendment protection of free speech. As Holmes explained in his dissent in <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/landmark_abrams.html">Abrams v. United States (1919)</a>, “Congress certainly cannot forbid all effort to change the mind of the country.”</p>
<h2>‘Imminent lawless action’</h2>
<p>The war ended in November 1918, but the Sedition Act was not <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9801E0DD133CE533A25757C0A9659C946095D6CF&legacy=true">repealed</a> until Wilson’s last day in office in 1921. In 1924, then Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone concluded that law enforcement should be concerned with only the conduct of individuals, not their “political or other opinions.” All those who were jailed under the laws had their sentences <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D07EFDB1130E233A25755C1A9649D946295D6CF&legacy=true">commuted</a> by 1923, and in 1931 President Franklin Roosevelt <a href="http://todayinclh.com/?event=president-roosevelt-grants-amnesty-to-last-of-ww-i-political-prisoners">offered amnesty</a> to all those convicted under the Espionage or Sedition Acts during the war.</p>
<p>With the end of the war, the idea that speech could be restricted when it presented a “clear and present” danger to social order was transformed by the courts in later cases. Under the new standard, speech could be restricted if it presented a <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/268us652">“dangerous tendency”</a> toward disorder: a standard that allowed for even more restrictions on speech. In 1940 Congress adopted the <a href="http://legisworks.org/sal/54/stats/STATUTE-54-Pg670.pdf">Smith Act</a>, which barred speech and organizations intended to overthrow any government in the United States and was used during World War II and the Red Scare of the 1950s to suppress Communist ideas and thought.</p>
<p>Eventually, however, <a href="https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/brandenburg-v-ohio/">in 1969</a> the Supreme Court settled on the current legal standard, under which speech can be restricted only if it presents a threat of <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/incitement.htm">“imminent lawless action,”</a> based on the circumstances in which it is made. This standard allows for controversial, even incendiary, speech, unless there is an immediate threat that the speech will lead to illegal behavior by the audience.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">United States Army draft cards set ablaze in protest in Los Angeles, May 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>So, for example, peaceful protests against the Vietnam War and the Vietnam-era draft were permitted. However, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/232">held</a> that burning military draft cards was punishable because it was a destruction of government property and disrupted the draft system.</p>
<p>Since the 1960s, the federal government has not pursued dissenters in the way it did under the 1918 Sedition Act. Even after the Sept. 11 attacks, despite the calls for repression of dissent, <a href="http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2975&context=journal_articles#page=16">no direct restrictions</a> on speech were enacted. More recently, there have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/us/isis-influence-on-web-prompts-second-thoughts-on-first-amendment.html">some calls</a> for limitations on speech online because of the threat of terrorism, but none have been enacted.</p>
<p>Hopefully this reflects the lessons learned from the excesses of the repression of speech under the Espionage Act a century ago. The First Amendment right of free speech exists as a means of keeping a critical eye on government. Such scrutiny is always important, but is especially critical during times of war.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric P. Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During the war, fear of being undermined by the enemy sparked restrictions on freedom of speech. As a result, thousands of Americans were prosecuted.Eric P. Robinson, Assistant Professor (media law and ethics), University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/649892016-10-23T18:18:11Z2016-10-23T18:18:11ZInside apartheid’s prison – an experience that haunts for a lifetime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136723/original/image-20160906-6127-8qd3ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A young Raymond Suttner with his bird, Jailbird (JB).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gisèle Wulfsohn</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://raymondsuttner.com/about/">Raymond Suttner</a> was actively involved in the liberation struggle against apartheid, both in legal political activities and illegal underground work. He served two periods of imprisonment and after release in 1988 was under house arrest, totalling 11 years. At one point he was in the leadership of the banned <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-communist-party-sacp">South African Communist Party</a> and the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>In 1975 he was charged under the Internal Security Act after six weeks of detention during which he was tortured. This is an edited extract from his book Inside Apartheid’s Prison (2001). An updated edition with an afterword is set to be published early in 2017 by Jacana Media.</em></p>
<p>My experience of prison is still with me, years after I was finally released in 1988. It is something that makes me want to get out of claustrophobic, overheated rooms, to have access to fresh air and light, to avoid dark and dingy rooms and have a sense of space. It also resurfaces when I am forced to be with people with whom I have little in common.</p>
<p>What I found most oppressive was the absolute denial of everything I really wanted to do. This not only involved being confined to a physical space, but the imposition of sights and sounds that were unwanted and unwelcome.</p>
<p>There was no raised bed in the prison cell. I slept under blankets, on a mat placed on the cement floor. But the cell did have a basin and was clean. I was also permitted, under South African law, to have reading matter, and soon collected a lot of literature. </p>
<p>Obviously, the prison authorities had never encountered anything like this before, for they had no bookcases or were very reluctant to supply anything to house more than a Bible. I was supplied with very makeshift containers to accommodate my books.</p>
<p>I was the only political prisoner in the prison. Most of the other prisoners were awaiting trial. As remains the case today, many of these people waited months in jail before their cases were settled.</p>
<h2>Prison textures, materials and colours</h2>
<p>The prison was all grey and steel. These two words define the textures, the materials and colours I would have to deal with for a long time. In prison, there is little you want to touch or look at. The mat was rough, the blankets uninviting. There was nothing comforting or homely about what was to be my home. </p>
<p>There was no garden and there was little time to see the sky. I was allowed out into a small part of a yard for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon. If I had a visit, it substituted for exercise. The rest of the time I stayed in my cell. And I could see nothing outside of it. </p>
<p>I was initially charged under the apartheid regime’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/1967-terrorism-act-no-83-1967">Terrorism Act</a> on August 3 1975. But this was merely a formality. The actual trial would start two months later, with the charges formulated under the Internal Security Act.</p>
<p>Just before being charged, I was given fresh clothes and taken for a haircut. I also decided to have my beard shaved off, since it might make me look more respectable in the eyes of a white South African judge. I also wanted to appear as dignified as possible, as I was a representative of the liberation movement.</p>
<p>Two things changed after I was charged and returned to the Durban Central prison. I now had access to lawyers and could see visitors for 30 minutes, twice a week. </p>
<p>Although aspects of my conditions were better than I had expected, I was impatient to have my trial settled and know my sentence so I could adapt to the life that lay ahead.</p>
<p>It was pleasant, as well as unsettling, to be visited by friends, and for them to send me food and fruit, which was allowed prior to sentencing. This made life easier, but I kept on thinking that I should not get used to such “luxuries”.</p>
<h2>Judas hole</h2>
<p>Although not yet a sentenced prisoner, I started to get a glimpse of what lay ahead of me. I saw the various ways in which prison rules try to rob prisoners of their individuality. There were constant invasions of privacy and attacks on the dignity of prisoners. One little thing that immediately struck me was the “Judas hole” on the door. </p>
<p>Any passerby could look into my cell whenever it took his fancy and sometimes other prisoners would do so, and shout obscenities at me. I felt, then, a peculiar sense of powerlessness. I could not see much of the outside from inside the cell, but anyone looking in could see as much as they liked and deprive me of any semblance of privacy. It was sometimes quite intimidating to have a person I could not see shouting threats at me from outside the cell.</p>
<p>From early on I noticed the prison noises, the occasional silences, broken by terrible noises, the banging of steel doors, jingling of keys, shouting and swearing of warders. No prison official speaks softly. Officers would shout at warders and warders always shouted at prisoners.</p>
<p>Sleep was difficult, since the young warders on patrol did not bother to be quiet. When they looked into my cell at night, they would switch on the light long enough to wake me and then go away. Sometimes a young warder would just stand around, apparently aimlessly, but lightly jingling his keys, enough to cause considerable irritation and make me realise how frayed my nerves were.</p>
<p>There were no direct contact visits, and you had to speak through a glass panel. Sometimes other prisoners had visitors at the same time as I did, although they generally tried to keep us separate. I preferred it this way, because it was hard to hear above the shouting of other prisoners and their visitors.</p>
<h2>Statement from the dock</h2>
<p>At this time, I was preoccupied with preparing my <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/statement-court-raymond-suttner-lecturer-law-university-natal">statement from the dock</a>. There was not a lot I could say in my defence. Purely in terms of the law, the case against me was cut-and-dried. </p>
<p>In a letter to my grandmother, which was dated August 18, 1975, I wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Generally I do not feel very depressed here. It is a great waste to have to spend this time locked away and conviction for a minimum of 5 years will mean that – but I cannot pity myself in this context: there are others who have far longer sentences and also went to prison around my age. Though I do not want to go to gaol, this does not mean that I have any regrets for what I have done – I would do everything, but more again. That I have done insufficient is what I regret.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This passage is written in the tone of the revolutionaries I studied and tried to emulate. It is also a good example of my tendency to deny my own pain precisely because I knew others were experiencing worse. ANC leader <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> had been sentenced to life imprisonment. Therefore, I chose to say nothing about my own suffering.</p>
<h2>Taking a defiant stance</h2>
<p>At the time, I really did not understand what it meant to be put away for years – or know what depression really meant. I wrongly equated depression with unhappiness. I knew how to act, and how to take a defiant and unrepentant stance. But I did not foresee the real suffering that lay ahead, nor understand the toll that long imprisonment exacts. I am not sure that I fully understand it now, outside of recognising that many of my present habits are conditioned by my prison experiences.</p>
<p>But perhaps my behaviour was right at the time. Denying my pain was at least a strategy for coping, and perhaps an effective one. And I honestly did feel ashamed of complaining, especially when others had much heavier sentences. Complaining – as distinct from protesting – might have only wasted time, lowering my own morale and that of my comrades. </p>
<p>We live in different times now, and I am able to look back and be honest about how terrible it was.</p>
<p>The letters I wrote at the time, typical of my attitude of the time, now seem a little naive. But I was forced to draw on some basic beliefs to survive those difficult times. And my convictions were, in many ways, the key to my survival. </p>
<p>I took a defiant stance, made no apologies for what I had done and stood with the liberation movement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64989/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raymond Suttner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spending time in prison for one’s political beliefs can be incredibly challenging. Those convictions can help you to survive those times.Raymond Suttner, Emeritus Professor, University of South Africa and part-time professor, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642612016-08-24T19:50:51Z2016-08-24T19:50:51ZSouth Africa’s ruling ANC is facing its sternest test. From the inside<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135326/original/image-20160824-30222-v747rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A supporter arrives at an ANC rally in July 2016 addressed by President Jacob Zuma</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cornell Tukiri/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is in the aftermath of the <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/default.aspx/">2016 local government elections</a>. Math has been the order of the day as parties have fought for local councils in “anyone but the ANC” coalitions, claiming an electoral “mandate to govern” by a single coalitionist seat in many cases.</p>
<p>The governing ANC <a href="http://ewn.co.za/Topic/2016-local-government-elections">lost</a> most major cities. It lost many small towns and rural municipalities to fragile, ideologically incoherent coalitions of the power-hungry, the forgotten, the almost forgotten, the preferably forgotten, the far right, the rearguard and the downright loony. The old world as South Africa knew it, of ANC majorities and policy certainty, seems to be at an end – and all does not seem fine, within the ANC at least.</p>
<p>The identity and ideology of the ANC are up for grabs as power blocs battle for control. And the fight is going to be both ugly and entertaining.</p>
<h2>Which ANC?</h2>
<p>The ANC is a massive and highly nuanced organisation so what follows is unavoidably reductionist. Nonetheless, it would appear that the party is deeply divided between those who see a <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2016/07/28/watch-is-the-anc-destined-to-become-a-rural-party">rural, conservative future</a> and the urban modernisers. </p>
<p>The rural-based future is based on tradition and loyalty, where the true African lives on the land where his (yes, <em>his</em>) ancestors lived, is in touch with his roots, and symbolises the “clean”, pure “son of the soil”. This stands in contrast with the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/06/anc-elections-south-africa-democracy-zuma">clever black</a>” as President Jacob Zuma infamously <a href="http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/Zuma-scolds-clever-blacks-20150429">called them</a>, seduced by modern life and its sins, by whites and their fickle ways, and “dirtied” by a rootless urban life. </p>
<p>The conservative group – an extremely powerful force in the Zuma-led ANC – is deeply suspicious of a modern, sophisticated world where urbanisation is an unstoppable demographic force. The modernisers want the ANC to remain true to its principles but simultaneously to embrace an urban, complex, globally competitive Afropolitan future, where old certainties have gone, forever.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135329/original/image-20160824-30228-koi788.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135329/original/image-20160824-30228-koi788.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135329/original/image-20160824-30228-koi788.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135329/original/image-20160824-30228-koi788.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135329/original/image-20160824-30228-koi788.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135329/original/image-20160824-30228-koi788.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135329/original/image-20160824-30228-koi788.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ANC has become divided between rural and urban support bases.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cornell Tukiri/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Will the centre hold?</h2>
<p>A collision is imminent, reflected in the <a href="https://polotiki.com/2016/08/18/we-do-not-support-the-call-made-by-the-gwede-mantashe-of-people-resigning-if-he-wants-to-resign-he-must-do-so-alone-anc-yl/">recent call</a> from the ANC Youth League for an early elective conference to hold to account</p>
<blockquote>
<p>people who taint the name of the organisation busy drinking champagne and expensive whisky whilst they taint the name of our glorious movement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ANC may feel partially vindicated by the fact that it lost many of its majorities – but no-one else won them. South African voters have ringside seats to see if a series of locale-specific coalitions involving a free-market Democratic Alliance (DA), an avowedly Marxist-Leninist-Fanonist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), Zulu traditionalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), tiny United Democratic Movement (UDM) and ideologically unknown African Independent Congress (AIC) - with others too small to recall - can hold themselves together long enough to occupy the centre. </p>
<p>A sympathetic author would note that the ANC made major compromises to allow South Africa to overcome the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/575204.stm">barbarity of apartheid</a> and a global sea-change. In this view, the ANC consciously took a series of body blows – ongoing white racism and free market capitalism conspicuous among them – in return for stability and avoiding a racialised civil war. This narrative at least recalls the context in which transition from apartheid occurred.</p>
<p>Another, given a major fillip by the EFF, is more caustic and almost entirely a-historical. In this version, the ANC deliberately made a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/anc-faustian-pact-mandela-fatal-error">Faustian pact</a>” with “white monopoly capital” and ANC leaders were soon hell bent on a craven pursuit of personal wealth regardless of consequence, and sold the poor for 30 pieces of silver (or a 4x4 or a home built at taxpayers’ expense). The racialised civil war had merely been postponed, not avoided, in this narrative. </p>
<h2>End of the rainbow</h2>
<p>As such, it is unsurprising that a key issue of contestation is race. The 1994 ANC leadership talked of non-racialism, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archbishop-emeritus-mpilo-desmond-tutu">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</a> spoke of the “Rainbow Nation”, and for a while all seemed possible. But as the economy got tougher, whiteliness continued its arrogant posturing and institutional dominance, no sufficiently broad-based economic or social transformation took place. Getting a toilet that flushes is scarcely to feel “transformed”, let alone equal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135330/original/image-20160824-30228-p4wt50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135330/original/image-20160824-30228-p4wt50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135330/original/image-20160824-30228-p4wt50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135330/original/image-20160824-30228-p4wt50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135330/original/image-20160824-30228-p4wt50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135330/original/image-20160824-30228-p4wt50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135330/original/image-20160824-30228-p4wt50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Full social transformation is still a long way off in Jacob Zuma’s South Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Race, undergirded by inequality, has come back to haunt the country. The EFF and its followers speak with scorn of selling out to white supremacy, and Africanist essentialism is the order of the day for many.</p>
<p>Within the ANC its Youth League can usually be relied on to bring into play the worst elements of the party as this recent <a href="http://www.ancyl.org.za/show.php?id=8770">statement</a> displays:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The enemy of the White Supremacy Liberal agenda is the ANC and the enemy of the ANC is the White Supremacy Liberal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Playing with race is not restricted to the Youth League. When former President Thabo Mbeki spoke of “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027679?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">two nations</a>”, it was predictably met with howls of hostility from the white chattering classes, but secure with a <a href="http://www.socialistworld.net/mob/doc/1182">70% majority in 2004</a>, few felt he was vote-chasing. However, when Zuma was <a href="http://www.citizen.co.za/1214819/de-lille-condemns-zumas-racist-remarks/">reported</a> to have said of the city of Cape Town</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In China, the Chinese rule, in India, the Indians are in power; it is only here in South Africa that we allow other people to govern</p>
</blockquote>
<p>the country saw the awful spectacle of the ANC playing race. </p>
<h2>ANC regeneration</h2>
<p>Successive generations of ANC leaders during its 104-year-long <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">existence</a> who fell into apathy (or worse) and were successively radicalised or removed. These include the challenge of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/industrial-and-commercial-workers-union-icu">Industrial and Commercial Workers Union</a> in the 1930s to the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a> and the formation of the trade union federation <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/congress-south-african-trade-unions-cosatu">Cosatu</a> in the 1980s. In each case, the ANC was shaken from torpor to often progressive responsiveness, often shedding leaders on the way.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135335/original/image-20160824-30209-16t34nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135335/original/image-20160824-30209-16t34nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135335/original/image-20160824-30209-16t34nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135335/original/image-20160824-30209-16t34nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135335/original/image-20160824-30209-16t34nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135335/original/image-20160824-30209-16t34nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135335/original/image-20160824-30209-16t34nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ANC has lost the votes of thousands of its traditional rural supporters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rogan Ward/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the post-2016 election ANC seems hellbent on becoming a conservative, rural movement. It fears complexity, fluid social identities, uppity student movements and the like. It is retreating into a revanchist rump of self-congratulatory leaders.</p>
<p>It is a dangerous path: the ANC shed hundreds of thousands of <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/economy/2016/08/08/anc-lost-ground-in-rural-areas-as-well-as-cities">rural votes</a> between 2014 and 2016 elections. The party will search for a pure rural base at its own peril, as the population at large is becoming better educated, more Afropolitan and cosmopolitan, demanding high quality services and choice in everything from politics to personal trainers. </p>
<p>The ANC has always managed, with pushing and shoving, to modernise and adapt. But this was driven by progressive activists, not sleaze-tainted politicians. </p>
<h2>Communist purge ahead?</h2>
<p>The ANC Youth League was once the catalyst of progressive reform in the ANC. In the youth league of founder <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/introduction-10">Anton Lembede</a>, this radicalising perspective turned on two key issues. The first was the need to remove the ANC from the thrall of “white bearers of foreign ideologies” - white communists. The same seems set to happen in 2016 – a threatened cabinet reshuffle to remove Communists has been widely shared, not least <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=5211#sthash.Ryu67HaO.dpuf">by the South African Communist Party</a>. Many communists such as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/emmanuel-bonginkosi-nzimande">Blade Nzimande</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/gwede-mantashe">Gwede Mantashe</a> and others are black, but no mind: power is at stake.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135336/original/image-20160824-30209-xmxcer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135336/original/image-20160824-30209-xmxcer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135336/original/image-20160824-30209-xmxcer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135336/original/image-20160824-30209-xmxcer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135336/original/image-20160824-30209-xmxcer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135336/original/image-20160824-30209-xmxcer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135336/original/image-20160824-30209-xmxcer.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe is targeted by his party’s youth wing for its poor performance in the 2016 elections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters</span></span>
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<p>The second key item on the reformist agenda of the old youth league was the need to radicalise – to move the ANC under the leader AB Xuma from a party that sought to recruit “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/resolutions-anc-annual-conference-december-20-22-1942#sthash.iQAWUSS3.dpuf">distinguished university graduates</a>” and turn to extra-parliamentary opposition. The current ANC Youth League prefers “congratulating” the conservative bastions of the current ANC – the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and Mpumalanga. But while the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal may have held a majority in local elections (2011-2016) at 58%, it dropped 10% in the Free State and 8% in Mpumalanga.</p>
<p>The ANC Youth League has demanded a conference to clear the decks. Its position is clear: those who oppose Zuma and his traditionalist dreams are “opportunistic and lack thinking capacity” while the man himself is <a href="https://polotiki.com/2016/08/18/we-do-not-support-the-call-made-by-the-gwede-mantashe-of-people-resigning-if-he-wants-to-resign-he-must-do-so-alone-anc-yl/">blameless</a>.</p>
<p>If Zuma is innocent, communist and moderniser Mantashe, the ANC Secretary-General, is guilty. He is closely followed by the “selfish” ANC rebels in South Africa’s wealthiest province of Gauteng, who must also be expelled if the ANC Youth League have their way.</p>
<p>The ANC is facing its sternest test, and it is now almost entirely internal. Votes in 2016 suggest that if the traditionalist rural rump of the ANC wins out, the party is on an irredeemably downward spiral. Whether the ANC is capable of cleansing itself, re-energising its base, refurbishing its moral and ethical standards and adopting policies that suit a modern state, remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64261/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Wits School of Governance regularly receives funding from the NRF, donor organisations and others.</span></em></p>In this new world where its lost thousands of votes does South Africa’s ruling ANC know who it is, how to be in opposition, or how it might fight its way back to winning ways?David Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.