"Why is the US far right finding its savior in Spanish dictator Francisco Franco?" by Jason Wilson (#TheGuardian)
"Some US far-right figures have made renewed attempts to rehabilitate the 20th century Spanish dictator Gen Francisco Franco in recent months, praising him as an avatar of religious authoritarianism, and praising his actions during and after the Spanish civil war as a model for confronting the left in the US."
"The critics of this flurry of neo-Francoism say that the real target of this revisionism is domestic attitudes to US democracy."
"For Faber, parts of the the American right are captured by “the dream of order, where social order is more important than democracy, and democracy is a threat to social order”."
It doesn’t surprise me. Probably the same crowd that praises the “Chilean Miracle” and thinks that “Pinochet did nothing wrong.”
I also don’t doubt that the idea of summary executions (a mainstay of Franco even years after winning the war) secretly appeals to them. Such an efficient way to purify society.
Unfortunately, the idea of a society that must be "pure" (in its various variants) is very attractive to those people who seek above all Order and Hierarchy.
WHITE SIGHT. Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness by Nicholas Mirzoeff (The MIT Press, 2023).
"White supremacy is not only perpetuated by laws and police but also by visual culture and distinctive ways of seeing. Nicholas Mirzoeff argues that this form of “white sight” has a history. By understanding that white sight was not always common practice, we can devise better ways to dismantle it. Spanning centuries across this wide-ranging text, Mirzoeff connects Renaissance innovations—from the invention of perspective and the erection of Apollo statues as monuments to (white) beauty and power to the rise of racial capitalism dependent on slave labor—with ever-expanding surveillance technologies to show that white sight creates an oppressively racializing world, in which subjects who do not appear as white are under constant threat of violence".
"Dark MAGA: The Latest Cycle in the Far-Right Aesthetics Laundromat" by Tim Squirrell (2022).
"Many people reading about the latest development in right-wing extremist aesthetics might think little of it or find it laughable – after all, Dark MAGA attempts to make a septuagenarian former President look cool and edgy. The problem with this reaction is that it both writes off the movement as fundamentally unserious – which it is not – and allows for further amplification by journalists and others who cover Dark MAGA as light news."
The construction of political power has always implied the need to generate a continuous flow of artefacts and actions. This matter is brilliantly analysed by Burke in The Fabrication of Louis XIV (1992). The construction of the king’s public image, linked to a sacred dimension, was the result of an unceasing collective production by painters, sculptors, engravers, poets, choreographers, masters of ceremonies, musicians, architects and tailors, among many others (all of them coordinated in a complex system organised by several ministers).
"A Theory of Cultural Heritage. Beyond The Intangible" by Salvador Muñoz-Viñas (Routledge, 2023).
If you are interested in having an overview of what it is and how to define what we call "cultural heritage", I recommend this book by my colleague Salvador Muñoz Viñas.
"Museums, Heritage, Culture: Into the Conflict Zone" by Kavita Singh (2015).
"But think for a moment of the history of museums. Think of the way their collections have been built, and the purposes they have served. Think of the violent encounters that often lay behind the collecting of curiosities in the age of exploration; or think of the museums built by missionaries to display pagan gods wrenched away from natives. Think of the vast collections built (and the ways these were built) during the age of colonialism, with entire monuments transported across the seas and re-erected in museum galleries. Think of the nations transformed by revolutions, where treasures were violently wrested away from the church and presented as desacralized avatars in museums".
"Culture Machine Liquid Books is a series of experimental digital ‘books’ published under the (gratis/libre) conditions of both open editing and free content. As such, you are free to compose, rewrite, edit, annotate, translate, tag, add to, remix, reformat, reinvent and reuse any of the books in the series, or produce parallel versions of them - and what's more you are expressly invited and encouraged to do so. (We would appreciate it if you would tell us about it if you do so away from this site.)"
"Bombing of Gaza has damaged or destroyed more than 100 heritage sites, NGO report reveals" by Sarvy Geranpayeh (The Art Newspaper).
"The human cost of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip in the war with Israel is well documented. What is less well known is how many historic buildings and sites have also been destroyed."
"Several of Gaza’s museums have also been destroyed or damaged. Rafah Museum, located in southern Gaza, published two videos on its Facebook page showing that the building has partially collapsed. Yasin says Palestinian officials have also received reports of significant damage caused to Al Qarara Cultural Museum and Deir Al Balah museum."
"NARRATING HERITAGE. Rights, Abuses and Cultural Resistance" by Veysel Apaydin (Bloomsbury, 2023).
"Drawing on over ten years of research and ethnographic fieldwork based on six complex case studies from Turkey and comparing them with case studies from across the world, the book explores a variety of social, political, cultural and economic heritage discourses, making explicit the relationship between cultural and natural heritage. This book expands on these discourses by examining the role of violence in heritage, expanding on the concepts of both direct and slow violence. It situates heritage discourse within the sphere of human rights and lays out redistribution, recognition and representation as dimensions of social justice in a heritage context."
If you search for this phrase or "how to start a religion" in Google, 670 million results are shown in the first case and more than 3 billion in the second case. On Amazon there are several books with these or similar titles such as (surprisingly) "How to Build a God in Your Garage". Some websites (with more or less seriousness) try to explain step by step how to create your sect or community of beliefs.
"The Uncomfortable Oxford, the tour that tells the dark side of the University" by María Ramírez (eldiario.es; Spanish)
"The tours have been so successful that the group started with one, but now offers several in Oxford, Cambridge and York as well as lectures and other courses. In pandemic, the tours continued virtually, and now the not-for-profit enterprise is sustainable.
Durand comments that the success of his tours reveals "a clear appetite for complex and nuanced discussions of the past and cultural heritage." He believes that history education, heritage and tourism are three sectors that can be brought together in the public space in a fruitful way".
Society can be understood as something that only exists as long as actions are performed, as long as processes take place, as long as we all contribute in some way to its ephemeral construction.
"Social organization is messy and refractory, a shambles rather than a crystal […]. There is no tidy atom and no clear-cut world, only complex striations and long strings that reptate as in a polymer goo" (White, H.C. (2008), Identity and control, Princeton, Princeton University Press, p. 18).