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      in Elections

      Bob’s Burgers actor arrested on charges of joining January 6 mob

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      An actor known for his roles on the comedy television shows Bob’s Burgers and Mr Show with Bob and David was arrested on Wednesday on charges that he joined a mob of Donald Trump supporters in confronting police officers during the US Capitol riot, court records show.Jay Johnston, 54, of Los Angeles, faces charges including civil disorder, a felony. A federal magistrate judge agreed to free Johnston on $25,000 bond after his initial court appearance in California. A public defender who represented him at the hearing declined to comment.Video footage captured Johnston pushing against police and helping rioters who attacked officers guarding an entrance to the Capitol in a tunnel on the Lower West Terrace, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. Johnston held a stolen police shield over his head and passed it to other rioters during the attack on 6 January 2021, the affidavit says.Johnston “was close to the entrance to the tunnel, turned back and signaled for other rioters to come towards the entrance”, the agent wrote.Johnston was the voice of the character Jimmy Pesto on Fox’s Bob’s Burgers. The Daily Beast reported in December 2021 that Johnston was “banned” from the animated show after the January 6 attack.Johnston appeared on Mr Show with Bob and David, an HBO sketch comedy series that starred Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. His credits also include small parts on the television show Arrested Development and in the movie Anchorman, starring Will Ferrell.United Airlines records show Johnston booked a round-trip flight from Los Angeles to Washington DC, departing on 4 January 2021, and returning a day after the riot, according to the FBI. Thousands of people stormed the Capitol on 6 January after attending Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally.While the mob attacked police in the tunnel with pepper spray and other weapons, Johnston helped other rioters near the tunnel pour water on their faces and then joined in pushing against the line of officers, the FBI says.“The rioters coordinated the timing of the pushes by yelling ‘Heave! Ho!’” the affidavit says.Three current or former associates of Johnston identified him as a riot suspect from photos that the FBI published online, according to the agent. The FBI said one of those associates provided investigators with a text message in which Johnston acknowledged being at the Capitol on 6 January.“The news has presented it as an attack. It actually wasn’t. Thought it kind of turned into that. It was a mess. Got maced and tear gassed and I found it quite untastic,” Johnston wrote, according to the FBI.More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes for their conduct at the Capitol on 6 January. More than 500 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 18 years, according to an Associated Press review of court records. More

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      in UK Politics

      Carol Vorderman blasts Boris Johnson as a ‘dose of diarrhoea’ over fresh lockdown breach claims

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      Carol Vorderman has savagely branded Boris Johnson a ‘dose of diarrhoea’ amid fresh lockdown breach allegations.The TV host appeared on Have I Got News For You last night (26 May), where they reviewed some of the biggest stories from the week.“What a shower, ey? What an absolute shower!”, she said of the rumours, which involve repeated breaches at Downing Street and Chequers.“I can’t believe they’re our government. I mean, Boris Johnson is like a dose of diarrhoea that keeps on giving.”Click here to sign up for our newsletters. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Trump’s not a good sport’: Chris Cillizza on presidents at play

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      From The Big Lebowski to Alice on The Brady Bunch, depictions of bowling abound in American pop culture. The sport’s real-life adherents included Richard Nixon, who installed bowling lanes in the White House and was known to play between seven to 12 games late at night. Characteristically, he played alone. This is one of many athletic accounts from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a new book, Power Players: Sports, Politics, and the American Presidency, by the longtime political journalist Chris Cillizza.Bowling solo personified “Nixon the loner”, Cillizza says. “He didn’t play tennis or golf with friends. He did enjoy bowling by himself. It’s a powerful image, a telling image.”Tricky Dick’s love of bowling also helped with a crucial voting bloc: “Nixon viewed it as the sport of the Silent Majority – white, blue-collar men who sort of made up his base. He was very aware of this.”A Washington journalist for four decades, most recently for CNN, Cillizza pitched the book as about “the sports presidents play, love, spectate, and what it tells us about who they are and how they govern. That was the germ of the idea, the seed going in.”Power Players surveys 13 presidents of the modern era, from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden. Some of its narratives are well-known – think Ike’s extensive golf-playing, John F Kennedy’s touch football games or Barack Obama’s pickup basketball on the campaign trail. The book explores less-remembered sides of these stories, including a scary moment on the links for Eisenhower.While golfing in Colorado in 1955, he fielded multiple stressful phone calls from his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. After eating a hamburger with onions and getting yet another call from Dulles, Ike felt too angry to keep playing. Chest pains followed that night. The White House initially claimed indigestion but an electrocardiogram found something more serious – a heart attack. At the time, there was no 25th amendment specifying the chain of command if a president became incapacitated. Fortunately, Ike never lost consciousness during the episode.Golf was a popular sport for many presidents, as reflected in a previous book about White House athletics, First Off the Tee by Don Van Natta Jr, whom Cillizza interviewed. Yet the list of presidential pastimes is long and diverse, from Nixon’s bowling to Jimmy Carter’s fly fishing to George HW Bush’s horseshoes. Yes, horseshoes. In addition to Bush’s well-known prowess on the Yale University baseball team, he was a pretty good horseshoes player who established his own league in the White House, with a commissioner and tournaments. The White House permanent staff fielded teams; Queen Elizabeth II even gifted Bush a quartet of silver horseshoes.In the greatest-presidential-athlete discussion, Cillizza lands in Gerald Ford’s corner.“No debate, he’s the best athlete ever, I think, with [George HW] Bush a distant second, among modern presidents.”Ford sometimes lived up to the bumbling stereotypes made famous by Chevy Chase and Bob Hope – including when he accidentally hit people with golf balls. Yet he was an All-American center on the national-champion University of Michigan football team and received contract offers from two NFL squads, the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.In addition to the sports presidents play, Cillizza’s book examines how presidents use sports to connect to the public.Calling sports “a common language that lots and lots and lots of Americans speak”, Cillizza says: “I think politicians are forever trying to identify with the average person … I think sports is a way into that world for a lot of presidents.”There’s the practice of inviting championship teams to the White House, which Cillizza traces to Ronald Reagan, although instances date back decades. While not much of a sports fan, Reagan came from a sports radio background, played the legendary Gipper in the film Knute Rockne, All American and understood the importance of proximity to winners, Cillizza says.There’s also the tradition of presidential first pitches at baseball games, arguably the most iconic thrown by George W Bush at Yankee Stadium during the 2001 World Series, in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. Cillizza notes Dubya’s baseball pedigree as president of the Texas Rangers, and that he reportedly contemplated becoming commissioner of Major League Baseball.Of the presidents surveyed, Cillizza says George HW Bush had the most sportsmanship, thanks to early lessons about fair play from his mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, a strong tennis player herself. The least sportsmanlike, according to the author? Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump. Cillizza cites an account of Trump’s time on the Fordham University squash team. After a loss to the Naval Academy, he drove to a department store and bought golf equipment. He and his teammates vented their frustration by hitting golf balls off a bluff into the Chesapeake Bay, then drove away, sans clubs.“That’s Trump, in a lot of ways,” Cillizza says. “He’s not a good sport who’s going to be genteel.”The author notes similar behavior throughout Trump’s career, including bombastic performances in World Wrestling Entertainment storylines and a whole recent book about his alleged cheating at golf, as well as a recent news item about the former president going to Ireland to visit one of his courses.“He hit a drive, and said Joe Biden could never do this,” Cillizza recalls. “It went 280ft right down the middle of the fairway. He talks about his virility, his health, through the lens of sports.”Not too long ago, two ex-presidents from rival parties teamed up as part of a golf foursome. George HW Bush joined the man who beat him in 1992 – Bill Clinton – en route to an unlikely friendship. Rounding out the foursome were the broadcasting legend Jim Nantz and NFL superstar Tom Brady.“It’s remarkable what sports can do to bring presidents together,” Cillizza says. “This day and age, it’s hard to consider … I don’t think Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be playing golf together anytime soon.”
      Power Players is published in the US by Twelve More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on American-Chinese relations: looking beyond governments | Editorial

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      Richer and more complex stories lie behind dominant narratives, as the British Museum’s fascinating new exhibition, China’s Hidden Century, reminds us. It challenges the conventional wisdom that the country’s “long 19th century” was solely a time of decay and decline. It documents domestic turmoil and aggression and plunder by foreign powers – notably Britain – but also resilience and innovation. By looking beyond the Qing court, it includes individuals, ideas and possibilities that complicate our understanding of China’s identity and trajectory. Alongside splendid imperial robes, visitors see a cook’s uniform. They hear not only Empress Dowager Cixi’s words, but those of the feminist and revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin.At a time when hostility towards the west and especially the US is growing in China, and vice versa, looking beyond headlines and politicians to other parts of the story is crucial. When intergovernmental relations hit the rocks, the contacts between societies and individuals – whether through tourism, academic discussion or shared cultural interests – are even more important. They can offer a less pressured and public space for exploring options. They can help to build understanding and prevent escalation. Conversely, domestic nationalism can make it harder for governments to pull back in a crisis even if they wish to. As the American and Chinese scholars Scott Kennedy and Wang Jisi warn in a recent report on academic exchange, Breaking the Ice: “Less connectivity is not only a product of worsening ties, it also has contributed to the decline of relations … A rise in estrangement reinforced fears about the other side’s motives.”Gallup says that the proportion of Americans with a favourable view of China has plummeted from 38% in 2018 to just 15% this year – a record low. While it is extremely hard to gauge public opinion in China, the business intelligence firm Morning Consult says it found that 66% of adults saw the US as an enemy or unfriendly, while 64% of Americans believed the same of China. A decade ago, 15,000 Americans were studying in China; in the 2020-21 academic year there were just 382. (The US has seen a less dramatic decline in Chinese students.) Severe pandemic restrictions were primarily responsible – but numbers were already dropping, and there is little confidence that they will return to anywhere near the old levels.China’s detention of two Canadians after Ottawa arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, at the behest of the US, its sanctioning of academics over criticisms of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the introduction of Hong Kong’s draconian national security law have made scholars and others understandably reluctant to travel there. Even businesses, which have often sought to push back against tougher US action, are having second thoughts. Economic stagnation and governmental attempts to “derisk” supply chains are key, but recent raids at high-profile consulting firms that help foreign businesses assess investments have highlighted concerns about staff safety.On the US side, the surge in anti-Asian hate, the targeting of Chinese scholars for scrutiny and now state legislation banning or restricting land purchases by Chinese nationals have all made it less attractive. Dr Kennedy and Prof Wang note that non-governmental exchanges are necessary though not sufficient to stabilise ties, and urge both sides to restore connections “across the entire span of the two societies”. The aim is laudable. It will, however, be extremely hard to realise.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      I’m a drag queen in Tennessee. The state’s anti-drag law is silly, nasty, and wrong | Bella DuBalle

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      I am the show director at Atomic Rose, a nightclub in Memphis, Tennessee. I first discovered drag through Shakespeare. I’m a founding member of Tennessee Shakespeare Company, and I got to play some drag roles there. Growing up in the conservative south, I had learned to suppress anything considered feminine as a safety mechanism. Drag was the first time I was able to put the feminine parts of me forefront, as a source of pride and strength rather than shame or weakness. I fell in love with the art, and I’ve been doing it now for over a decade.On 2 March, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed into law two bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community. The first, SB1, outlaws all gender-affirming healthcare for minors. SB3, the “anti-drag bill,” redefines drag performers as adult cabaret artists and classifies drag as a prurient art form. “Prurient” is a legal term referring to a shameful or morbid interest in sex.If SB3 is enforced in the way its backers would like, it would prohibit any public drag displays – meaning no Pride events, no Drag Queen Story Hours, no drag performances in any place that might be seen by a minor. This would shut down all-ages drag brunches and other family-friendly functions. It would even raise questions about venues like mine that have large windows and lots of passersby. Would that qualify as viewable by a child? The law’s language is vague and incredibly broad.SB3 was supposed to take effect on 1 April but a local drag theatre troupe I used to work with, Friends of George’s, filed a suit against it. “The law prohibits a drag performer wearing a crop top and mini skirt from dancing where minors might see it,” their complaint notes, “but does not prohibit a Tennessee Titans cheerleader wearing an identical outfit from performing the exact same dance in front of children.”A federal judge temporarily blocked the law through 26 May while it is adjudicated. We are confident it will be overturned as a blatantly unconstitutional infringement on free speech. Even the judge – a Trump appointee – has effectively said as much, which is telling. Multiple district attorneys, including Memphis’s Steve Mulroy, have also called the law unnecessary and unfair.As for SB1, the US Department of Justice recently filed suit against Tennessee to prevent the bill from going into effect on 1 July as originally scheduled. We hope to see it swiftly overturned as well.Although neither of these laws currently has legal standing, they have absolutely had a chilling effect on freedom of expression and the queer community. Organizers in Knoxville said they may have to cancel their annual Pride parade if SB3 goes through. I also know some local non-queer venues that have shut down their shows out of fear or uncertainty. Theatre, ballet, and opera companies are asking lawyers, “Can we still produce Peter Pan with a female Pan? Can we do Mrs Doubtfire? Is it okay for us to put on Shakespeare the way it was traditionally performed?”Transgender and gender-nonconforming people are worried about just being in public. The rightwing pundit Michael Knowles recently called for “transgenderism” to be “eradicated from public life entirely”; I think people with that worldview, who view trans folks as embodiments of an ideology rather than actual human beings, could see a trans woman in public and say, “That’s a man impersonating a woman.” SB3’s language never uses the word “drag”; it only refers to “male and female impersonators.” My fear is that the language is intentionally and maliciously vague.These attacks on the queer community are part of a broader political impulse. SB1 and SB3 are just two items on what we call Tennessee’s “Slate of Hate.” I get the sense that many of our elected officials are not as politically experienced, savvy or well-versed in law or public policy as they present. Children and families in Tennessee face very real issues, but our state’s legislative session was obsessively focused on trans kids, pronouns, drag queens, and the like – all in the guise of “protecting children.”Tennesseans overwhelmingly support stronger gun control, particularly after the Covenant shooting – one of many horrific mass shootings in Tennessee in recent years. Yet the legislative session ended having done nothing to address these concerns. This comes as little surprise: our governor recently signed into law a widely-opposed permitless carry bill – at a gunmaker’s factory. How is this protecting children?Last year, the Southern Baptist Convention released a list of over 700 of their ministers accused of sexual abuse, with many of the ministers in Tennessee. And that’s just one denomination. There is no record, not a single documented instance, of a child ever being harmed or abused at a drag show. Statistically speaking, children are far safer at a Drag Queen Story Hour than at church. Yet we aren’t attempting to legislate whether parents can take children to church. How is this protecting children?Tennessee is dead last in the nation in the stability of our foster care system – failing the nearly 9,000 children under the state’s care. This information was released by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth after multiple failed attempts to dissolve the commission by state senator Jack Johnson – who incidentally also introduced both SB1 and SB3. How is this protecting children?We have real and difficult issues in Tennessee that require real and difficult solutions. Rather than confront the problems constituents are begging them to address, rightwing lawmakers are concocting solutions to imaginary issues. And it’s not just here in Tennessee; conservative legislatures across the US have realized there is an easy political power grab to be had by vilifying a minority group. Over 650 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in 46 states since the beginning of the year. This is beyond alarming.I am reminded of a not-too-distant past when the Nazi government painted queerness as inherently evil, a danger to families, children and culture. It resulted in pink triangles, camps, executions, the burning of books and the destruction of the Hirschfeld Institute. The othering and dehumanization of a minority group is always the first step toward their eradication.In the last election cycle, about 10% of queer Tennesseans voted. In that same cycle, nearly 60% of our elected representatives ran unopposed. It is well past time we elect officials focused on solving the myriad problems facing their constituents rather than those championing a far-right Christian nationalist agenda.
      Bella DuBalle is a drag artist in Tennessee More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I wish he had finished his book’: Chad L Williams on WEB Du Bois

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      Chad L Williams has written a brilliant biography of WEB Du Bois, a civil rights powerhouse widely regarded as America’s most important Black intellectual. Williams speaks and writes with a warmth and authority which have made him a star at Brandeis University, where he is the Samuel J and Augusta Spector professor of history and African and African American studies.The Guardian caught up with him just after he arrived in his hometown, San Francisco, where he was combining promotion for The Wounded World with a reunion with his sister and his parents, both retired attorneys.Williams lives in Needham, Massachusetts, with his wife, Madeleine Lopez, who directs the Center for Inclusive Excellence at Regis College, and their three children.“I thought I was going to go to law school but then I realized I didn’t want to be like my parents,” Williams said. “My first encounter with Du Bois was during my freshman year at UCLA, in a course on African American nationalism when I read [Du Bois’s 1903 classic] The Souls of Black Folks.“I was blown away. I remember not knowing what to make of this very strange book that had all of these powerful metaphors in it. It was really undefinable as far as discipline. It had history, sociology, philosophy, music. It is truly one of those timeless, classic books.“I started reading his other books like Black Reconstruction in America and really came to appreciate him as the most significant Black intellectual and scholar activist in American history.”To Williams, Du Bois was “singular” because of the sheer span of his life: “Ninety-five years; born in 1868 during the presidency of [Andrew] Johnson, during Reconstruction, he dies the day before the March on Washington, in Ghana in 1963. He really encapsulated the struggle for Black freedom and equality throughout the 20th century in the United States and throughout the broader African diaspora. I never thought I’d write a whole book about Du Bois. But yeah, it did happen.”Williams was a graduate student at Princeton when he first went to Amherst College, where most of Du Bois’s papers are in a library named in his honor. He saw a reference to “Du Bois world war I materials” and asked to see them.“I figured maybe I’ll get a couple of folders and [the librarian] returned with six microfilm reels. And I think, ‘What could this possibly be?’ I load this first reel and I see this manuscript which I knew nothing about. It was over 800 pages long. In addition to the manuscript, all of his research materials and all of his correspondence related to this book entitled The Black Man and the Wounded World.“He worked on it for two decades and no scholar had ever talked about it. I was stunned. This was this huge aspect of his life and career and scholarship which had been overlooked. From that moment I was hooked on understanding it. It would have been the definitive history of [Black soldiers] in world war I and one of Du Bois’s most significant works of scholarship – but he never completed it.”I asked if Williams identified with Du Bois’s seminal idea of double consciousness in every Black American, and how it related to the unfinished work on the war: “Did it mean anything to you as a Black man?”“I think not. Not initially. When I first read The Souls of Black Folk I was really just trying to understand who Du Bois was and what this book was about.”But soon, Williams began to reread the book every year. As he learned more about African American history, he “came to appreciate the significance of Du Bois’s formulation of double consciousness. And subsequently began to think about it just in terms of my own racial identity.“But it’s such a powerful metaphor and I really think it sits at the heart of my book, in terms of why Du Bois supported world war I, and how he felt that the war was an opportunity to reconcile that double consciousness that Black people faced. This tension that he described, of being Black on the one hand and being American on the other, this was the opportunity to put that theory into practice and to test it.“He genuinely thought those warring ideals he talked about could be reconciled … and he genuinely believed the war could serve as that opportunity. And ultimately he was wrong.”Du Bois fought for the creation of a Black officer corps, even though he had to accept segregated training. When he got to France, to interview Black soldiers, he was appalled by what he learned.“This is the beginning of him working on his book conducting research and also reckoning with the failed expectations of the war. He was genuinely taken aback by the racism that he was exposed to and Black soldiers told him about.”White officers spread the libel Black soldiers were raping French women. French mayors told Du Bois Black soldiers were much better behaved than white.“Getting the first-hand accounts from all these mayors was really important. And when he publishes them in [the NAACP magazine] the Crisis it’s an incredibly bold act, going directly against the narrative the government and the army are putting out about Black troops” being well treated.Like most great books, The Wounded World is a tribute to persistence. Williams worked on it for 12 years but he started thinking about it when he discovered Du Bois’s unpublished manuscript, 23 years ago.“One of the things that I think us writers can appreciate … is howdifficult it is to write a book,” Williams said. “I wish Du Bois had finished his book. But I can empathize with him. It’s not easy, even when it’s the great Du Bois, who wrote 22 other books.”
      The Wounded World: WEB Du Bois and the First World War is published in the US by Macmillan More

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      in US Politics

      Moms for Liberty, meet John Birch: the roots of US rightwing book bans

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      Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based pressure group which campaigns for book bans in US public schools, an issue at the heart of the national debate as Republican-run states seek to control or eliminate teaching of sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.But rightwing calls for school book bans are by no means a new phenomenon – and a look at the Moms for Liberty website indicates why.Moms for Liberty seeks to organise “Madison Meetups”, events it describes as “like a book club for the constitution!”, featuring discussion of “liberty, freedom and the foundation of our government”. Under “resources that we have found helpful”, the only resource offered is The Making of America, a book by W Cleon Skousen.In the early 1960s, Skousen was a hero to and a defender of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that campaigned against what it claimed was the communist threat to America.Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He points out that though the Birchers were not the only ones promoting book bans in the 60s, “they were likely the most visible group promoting book bans or promoting the policing of content in schools, libraries, movie theaters, even on newsstands”.The Birchers, Dallek adds, focused on “the so-called erosion of the moral fiber of the United States, but also the struggle to rid the country of what they regarded as really the socialist left wing”.The society still exists but its influence is greater than its presence, most obviously through a resurgence of Bircher-esque thought and action in the Republican party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.In the society’s heyday, Dallek says, book bans and school board elections, another current battlefield, “gave Birchers a way to take action in their community.“They looked at where their kids went to school and their local library and the movie theater they would pass by. Part of their agenda was to insert what they considered Americanist publications, as opposed to communist propaganda.“What’s frightening now is that I don’t recall a time where those efforts were so often successful. Moms for Liberty and the other successors to the John Birch Society, they’re having a lot more success at actually implementing their vision.”Last month, the writers’ organisation Pen America reported a 28% rise in public school book bans in just six months. As the 2024 election approaches, attacks on the place of race in history classes and teaching on LGBTQ+ issues seem certain to feature in Republican debates and town halls.Dallek considers the Birchers’ influence on the Republican party over more than 60 years. But he can’t recall the society inspiring “any sweeping legislation like Florida has now passed, through three major bills. And one in particular, it’s very Orwellian. They have these education minders who have to approve all texts in school libraries. That was certainly a dream of the Birch Society.”Tactics are familiar too. Birchers often protested against what they called pornography in books and teaching, as a vehicle for communistic thought. Now, the hard right sees pornography in books on LGBTQ+ rights, in drag queen story hours, or in the casting of children’s plays.Dallek says: “Whatever the language is, whether it’s ‘woke’, or ‘progressive’, or ‘pornographic’, or ‘communistic’, in a way the brilliance of the Birchers and other groups is in the way they use language. They’re able to distill ideas and aspects of the culture they find offensive and brand them as something evil, something un-American, something that will twist and pollute the minds of kids.“I don’t know that they meant that it was literally communistic to teach sex ed in schools but it was a kind of brilliant shorthand, because they were able to mobilise a lot of supporters by saying this was a civilizational battle. A battle for whether your children will grow up being moral or not, whether they’ll have a decent life.“And if we want to bring it back to today, Ron DeSantis is out there claiming, ‘We’re only banning books that are pornographic or that kids should not be exposed to.’ But then when you’re talking about banning Toni Morrison? I mean, come on. It’s ridiculous.”But it’s real. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, and her masterpiece Beloved have been removed from some Florida libraries.Dallek notes other echoes. For instance, the role of rightwing women.“Historically, schools have been in terms of teaching jobs often reserved for women. And so, ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, as feminism becomes a major force in the culture and many women expect to work outside the home and be active politically, conservative, really far-right women take an element of that and get active in their communities.“Women have been on the frontlines of many of these fights to ban books, to police what kids are learning. Parental rights, the whole idea … is I think focused at the moms and … imposing their version of Christian morals on public education and many public spaces.“To go back to the W Cleon Skousen thing” on the Moms for Liberty website, “it does suggest a link to the past. Skousen continued to write in the 1980s and 90s. He was a defender of the John Birch Society and was held up as a hero.”Skousen died in 2006. Seventeen years later, to Dallek his recommendation from Moms for Liberty “suggests there really is a tradition in modern American politics, on the far right, that has become much more mainstream.“Groups like Moms for Liberty understand that. That there’s a set of ideas, and a literature, and a whole kind of subculture around this effort to police ideas and morality in schools. And they are tapping into that very effectively.”
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

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      in US Politics

      The Wounded World review: brilliant biography of WEB Du Bois at war

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      My favorite kind of history makes you feel you are living inside every moment the author creates. This can only happen when the fruits of rigorous research are assembled with the flair of a novelist. Chad L Williams, a Brandeis professor, does all that and more in his riveting new biography of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.The first Black man to earn a Harvard PhD, Du Bois’s passion and thoughtfulness still make him America’s most important Black intellectual. Besides his brilliance, he never shied away from friction: another useful quality for any good biographer.Williams’s focus is Du Bois’s role in the first world war and the book about it which preoccupied him for many years, though he never managed to publish it. But Williams also includes the most important details of Du Bois’s life before and long after.One of the many pleasures of this volume is that author and subject are equally interesting writers.Du Bois established himself as a thoughtful radical and eager combatant with The Souls of Black Folk, an essay collection published in 1903, into which Williams says he poured “all his brilliance and anguish”. Combining “philosophical clairvoyance, historical audacity, literary imagination, sociological precision, autobiographical introspection, political urgency, musical lyricism, and poetic emotion”, it was “a text that defied classification”.It also made Du Bois a declared enemy of Booker T Washington, who founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Washington pleased white supremacists by declaring that “in all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers”. Williams writes that Du Bois portrayed his rival as anointed by white capitalists “North and South to legitimize the social, political and economic marginalization of the race”.It was here that Du Bois offered one of his first famous insights: the color line endowed Black Americans with the peculiar sensation of “double consciousness”. This was the “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity … One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”Williams discovered Souls as an undergraduate. It has been a touchstone ever since. The “dogged strength” of African Americans forms the spine of this biography.Six years after publishing his foundational volume, Du Bois became a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he was director of research and, most importantly, editor of its monthly magazine, the Crisis. This gave him a direct line into the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of African Americans, for 24 years beginning in 1910.In 1915, Du Bois correctly identified the Great War as proof that “European civilization has failed”. But he also believed the loyalties of people of color had to lie with England, France and Belgium, despite their terrible colonial records, because a triumph by Germany would be the worst possible outcome.Du Bois used his pulpit at the Crisis to celebrate the role of Black Africans fighting for France, photos of the tirailleurs sénégalais carrying arresting captions like: “Black soldiers from Senegal fighting to protect the civilization of Europe from itself.”When Woodrow Wilson led America into battle in 1917, Du Bois was fiercely anti-war: “It is an awful thing! It is Hell. It is the end of civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism.” But with what Williams calls “a mix of resignation, pragmatism, patriotism, and hope”, Du Bois supported entry, because he saw it as “an opportunity for African Americans to claim their full civic rights”.Du Bois clashed frequently with the NAACP board but he had a crucial ally in Joel Spingarn, the chairman. This was an early example of the Black-Jewish alliance which would be an important feature of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Spingarn enraged many Black newspapers when he advocated for a segregated training school for Black officers. But Du Bois agreed that, given the depths of prejudice, this was a necessary evil. He called the segregated facility “a temporary measure” designed to “FIGHT, not encourage discrimination in the army”.The secretary of war accepted the NAACP request. More than 1,000 Black officers were trained. But when Du Bois got himself a passport and passage to France, he discovered bigoted white officers making Black lives hell. They spread the libel that Black soldiers were raping vast numbers of French women. One colonel requested the removal of Black officers from his regiment, because they supposedly prevented the development of “mutual confidence and esprit de corps”. Black officers, Du Bois wrote, were disgusted by the “seemingly bottomless depths of American color hatred”.He surveyed French mayors, all over the country. Reports came back: Black Americans were treating French women with much greater respect than white American troops did. The entire 369th Infantry Regiment, the Black Rattlers from Harlem, embedded with the French army, received the Croix de Guerre.When the war was over, Du Bois and 5,000 others watched in awe as the French honored its troops of color with a gala celebration at the Palais du Trocadéro. The Théâtre-Français acted out “battlefield exploits of the colonial troops … and singers from the opera gave a rousing rendition” of the Marseillaise. The spectacle “surpassed any tribute to Black men” Du Bois “had ever seen”.I can only hint at the number of beguiling moments that fill the pages of this great book. The best part of this job is an occasional chance to celebrate great work. This gripping history is a cause for celebration.
      The Wounded World: WEB Du Bois and the First World War is published in the US by Macmillan More