What is happening to reading in the age of AI? This is the subject of a June article in The Atlantic by Joshua Rothman. He examines the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on reading and writing skills. In particular, he looks at the changes currently occurring to reading. You may think reading is a mundane activity, relatively unchanged since the invention of the printing press. However, you would be profoundly mistaken.

To be sure, the traditional printed book is definitely not going obsolete. People still enjoy the published copy. However, we all recognise that in this era of digitisation, books are increasingly available online.

The rise of fully digitised books is an alternative to buying the printed copy, especially if the book has long been out of print, Audiobooks are a booming sector, and internet users like myself regard their mobile devices as portable libraries. The classics of literature are hardly going out of style; Penguin Publishers, for instance, still maintains a strong and diverse collection of printed classics.

Nevertheless, there has been a decline in the sales of printed books. This is understandable, given the availability of information via digital media. Hey, I read books online, if they are available. Rather than shelling out thirty or forty dollars for a paperback, I would much prefer reading the book for free online – or buy a cheap secondhand copy.

There is no need to panic regarding the cultural shift to digital media. No, books are not going to disappear any time soon.

There is undoubtedly a shift taking place in reading and writing. We had the Gutenberg era – where the published book or magazine media dominated our consumption of information. We are moving into the Zuckerberg era, where digitisation and social media are the dominant forms of information distribution.

The literary classics – what we classify as the great works of our cultural canon – are freely available and accessible online. Does this make them part and parcel of the digital world? No, they are not. Why is that? The way we read them, digitised on the internet, is not what makes them classics. The way these books were conceived, constructed, published and distributed were part of the nondigital world.

What makes a book a classic? Its universal themes, the longevity of the topics it addresses, its relevance for contemporary times, and its ability to withstand the test of time. One such publication that is considered a classic today is Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Arendt, a German born American philosopher and scholar, covered the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The latter had been living in Argentina since the conclusion of the Second World War. Kidnapped by Mossad agents, Eichmann was taken to Jerusalem where he was put on trial for his role in the genocide of European Jews.

Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against humanity, and executed by hanging in 1962. Arendt’s serialised reporting and analysis of the Eichmann trial was compiled into book form and published in 1963.

What is especially unique about this book? Arendt, examining Eichmann’s defence in court, concluded that for crimes such as the Holocaust to occur, it is necessary that bureaucratic officials such as Eichmann obey orders and follow through without question. Arendt devised the concept of the banality of evil; Eichmann, at least according to his own account of his wartime activities, was a functionary in a gigantic killing machine. All he did was implement the instructions given to him from on high.

The execution of evil, according to Arendt’s book, does not require a colour, or an identity. The functionaries, the faceless nonentities staffing the machine, were all that were needed to carry out the Holocaust.

Now, you and I know, and Arendt knew, that Eichmann was being dishonest about his past, to say the least. He was a very committed and fanatical Nazi, dedicated to the ideology of white supremacy and antisemitism. The glue that held the entire Nazi hierarchy together, and underpinned their actions, was racial supremacy. Eichmann understood full well that Nazi-occupied Europe was to be made Judenrein – Jew free.

Arendt’s observations were uniquely her own; she took copious notes, covered every aspect of the trial, and studiously observed the reactions of the foreign media. The book conveys something of the sense of occasion – if that description can be applied to a trial. Its historic and political significance were apparent to all who participated in, and observed, the trial.

AI, for all its convenience and speed in producing text, does not have intentionality. It cannot know what is going on in the minds of human observers and participants. If you ask AI about the Eichmann trial, you will receive a good answer in record time. It will cover all the important points of that event. However, AI is nothing but a stochastic parrot, fed with reams of data and text, with which it churns out answers according to a probabilistic algorithm.

AI’s large language models (LLM)s can string together linguistic constructions with astronomical speed, saving you time and money. In a matter of seconds, you will have essay-length answers to your questions. But always remember that AI is only as good as what we feed it; it relies on plagiarism, with thousands of AI workers busy in the background creating text to feed the synthetic intelligence machine.

The outcome of relying on AI will be the triumph of the mediocre; the monotonous output of AI slop. The algorithm decides what strings of words to combine, without deciding the credibility or legitimacy of the ideas contained in them.

Please use AI if you want to, but do not make major decisions or life changes based on its output. As I have written previously, in times of cascading crises and multiple emergencies, everyone turns to the classics for guidance.

Are you a logical, rational thinker? Then you are primarily left-brained. Are you a creative, artistic type? Then you are right-brained. That is the story we tell ourselves. It has a commonsense appeal; we like to categorise people into distinct groupings. The brain has hemispheres, and particular human behaviours are controlled by specific locations in the brain, right?

The left-brained/right-brained dichotomy is false – we all use both hemispheres of the brain. It is true that functional lateralisation is apparent in the brain; the left hemisphere is where language is largely controlled. Damage to Broca’s area, for instance, located in the front left temporal lobe, impairs a person’s ability to understand and process language.

No, your personality and abilities do not depend on which hemisphere of the brain you use.

There has been extensive research on split-brain patients; the latter have had their corpus callosum severed. The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerves which connects the two hemispheres. Interruption to this interhemispheric transmission of information impacts a patient’s perception, motor skills, spatial reasoning and language processing. No, still this does not mean we all fit neatly into left/right brained personality or temperament types.

From the 1960s onwards, psychologist and neuroscientist Roger Sperry (1913 – 1994), and his protege, the psychologist Michael Gazzaniga (1939 – ) undertook pioneering experiments on split-brain patients. Numerous epileptic patients, who were experiencing multiple uncontrollable and violent seizures, underwent an invasive brain operation – cutting the corpus callosum.

This procedure, which is rarely if ever used today, effectively separated the hemispheres of the brain. Did this procedure have any impact on a patient’s mental abilities?

Sperry and Gazzaniga designed and conducted a series of clever experiments; each hemisphere was exposed to images or tactile stimuli. Would the patient understand what they were seeing or doing? The brain’s wiring, as it stands, means that the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and vice versa.

A patient was asked to stare at a dot – and then an image, say of a circle, was flashed to their right eye only. Language processing is located in the left hemisphere. The patient could articulate the image they saw.

However, if a circle was flashed to their left eye only, that information was sent to the isolated right hemisphere. The patient could not verbally identify what they witnessed. However, using their left hand, they successfully pointed to a picture of a circle.

That is just one example of an entire range of experiments conducted by Sperry and Gazzaniga. Does this mean that consciousness can be localised? Can the sense of self be divided? Is the mind entirely dependent on the successful functioning of neurons and synaptic activity in the brain?

Here is where pop psychology took hold.

The notion of the brain as a computer, and a corresponding computational theory of mind, ascended into widespread popularity after the Second World War. Brain lateralisation was a hot topic; identifying which areas of the brain controlled which functions gave us an image of the brain as a compact Swiss army-knife. Each component, equally important, fit smoothly into a single compartment.

Added to that was the rise of computerisation. Conceiving of the brain/mind duality as a hardware/software analogy gained public popularity.

It is heartening to see a major IT company, Atlassian, respond to this myth of left/right brain dominance with a debunking. Certainly, the right hemisphere is largely responsible for processing spatial and visual cues, which are important in producing art. But consider the following; physics, mathematics, cosmology and so on, are creative endeavours, each in their own way.

Solving mathematical problems, or resolving questions in physics and astronomy, requires not just logical deductions and pure rationality, but also thinking creatively. Einstein was a giant of twentieth century physics, and he also approached scientific questions with remarkable creativity.

Ironically, over the last 25 years, new neuroscience research has emphasised the importance of neuroplasticity. The brain is not a Swiss Army knife with specific components. The hemispheres of the brain work together. The brain is not a computer, but an entire network of interlocking and interdependent computers.

Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of the brain to evolve and respond to life experiences. While the left hemisphere is heavily involved in language processing, the right hemisphere is responsible for understanding intonation and pitch. Have we all forgotten that one of the most important stages of human communication and experience is nonverbal communication. Language would not be possible without the ability to express and process nonverbal cues.

So what if this neuromyth of being left/right brained persists? What is the harm? When self help books, corporate bonding courses, and social media pop quizzes are all telling you that you are right-brained and therefore artistic, does that encourage you to pursue maths or the sciences? What happens when a 13 year old is told that s/he is left-brained and mathematically inclined – would they pursue art, painting or creative writing?

What happens when a person – whether a child, an adolescent or an adult – makes life decisions that will impact them over decades on the basis of a neuromyth? For generations, we have advised schoolgirls that they are ‘bad at math’. Are we doing them a favour by stating to them that their aptitude for maths is determined by the brain hemisphere they use?

While the current article is not the place to bring up issues regarding current politics, one observation will suffice here. Muslim majority nations are leading the world in women graduating in STEM subjects. Women working as scientists have been comprehensively interviewed over the years from Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Iran and other Muslim majority nations. So when it comes to mathematics, engineering and subjects requiring logical and analytical thinking, women’s brains are outpacing the men’s.

We all have our talents, skills and abilities. No, we cannot be good at everything. But please, dispense with this myth that we are the products of left/right brain predominance.

The National Weather Service, in the United States, is one division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It collects and analyses data regarding weather patterns and the climate. Our daily weather updates and forecasts – will it be hot or cold, sunny or rainy, will there be snow, sleet, or drought – depend on the vital work of the NOAA and the weather service.

The weather app, a ubiquitous feature on our mobile devices, gather and provide the latest information about the weather. We make decisions regarding our day by including, among other things, weather forecasts.

Not only that, but bodies such as the NOAA collect and analyse vital data regarding the incidence, frequency and magnitude of severe weather events – hurricanes, droughts, tropical cyclones, tornadoes, heavy rainfall, prospects of flooding – with advance warning of severe weather events, people can be prepared, emergency evacuations undertaken, and first responders can be equipped to deal effectively with the adverse impacts.

The Trump administration, under the guise of cost cutting, is threatening to close all that down. Our up-to-date weather reports might become a thing of the past. It is not just me, a loonie leftie, saying this – the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the publication of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is sounding the alarm.

Since the Trump administration assumed office, thousands of jobs have been cut from the NOAA. The crucial work of scientists has been impacted, decimating vital research into climate change, marine ecosystems, and water and air quality. The NOAA, created in 1970 by then Republican President Richard Nixon, has a wide mandate to collate and evaluate data regarding the natural environment, and make recommendations regarding the deployment of government resources.

Hollowing out the NOAA, as well as gutting federal agencies dedicated to tracking and informing the public about climate change, is part and parcel of the Trump/MAGA cult’s obsessive denial of the science of climate change, and the paranoid delusion that any form of government spending represents creeping ‘socialism.’ Gee, I was always told that political interference in scientific affairs and institutions was a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, such as the USSR or China…..

Indeed, the MAGA cult in power has had to confront another powerful communist woke menace that believes in climate change – the US military. The Department of Defence, at least as far back as 2015, noted that due to the increasing levels of moisture and rainfall, coastal cities such as Miami are at increasing risk of being inundated.

In an article for the New Yorker magazine, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that army engineers are studying various proposed solutions for the incrementally rising sea levels at the Miami coastline. The US army noted that there is no question that human-induced global warming is having a direct impact on sea levels, thus threatening coastal cities.

The Trump administration can scream about ‘woke’ climate change as much as it wants, there is no denying that the Department of Defence is taking climate change impacts seriously. Be that as it may, the Pentagon has now turned its myopic sights on the US military, downgrading climate change mitigation strategies elaborated by the military. References to climate change are being steadily expunged from military-affiliated websites.

Ironically, among the many installations threatened by an increasing frequency of flooding and hurricane are Florida’s military bases.

The NOAA is an essential independent agency for fighting the climate emergency. Would the US military, and first responders to weather emergencies, be better prepared or worse if the NOAA was gutted and abolished?

I am old enough to remember the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident on the territory of the former Soviet Union. This particular meltdown, and the Moscow authorities’ response to that disaster, were widely mocked and denounced in our corporate-controlled media. Here was concrete evidence that the Kremlin, so we were informed, could not care less about the health and safety of its own citizens. The allegedly haphazard and panicked emergency response to that disaster was further evidence, in the western mind, of the incompetence of the Soviet Communist system.

Whether the response of the Kremlin authorities to the Chernobyl disaster was inadequate or not, I do not know. I do know that the US is in no position to lecture other countries about disaster management, given its own track record of poor, inadequate and inefficient responses to numerous climate change-induced disasters.

Remember the smash hit movie of 1996, Twister? Two dedicated scientists, played by Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton, lead a team of determined storm chasers. Resolved to develop new and improved early warning tornado detection technology, the intrepid scientists are motivated by an ethical desire to save lives; early warnings can provide affected communities with enough time and resources to evacuate, thus saving lives.

I wonder what the residents of Kentucky think of that movie today.

Earlier this year, eastern Kentucky was hit by tornadoes. While that is not an unusual occurrence for Kentucky – tornadoes obviously cut across state boundaries – the severity and frequency of tornadoes is increasing. The NOAA early hurricane and tornado detection teams have been savagely hit by the Trump administration’s cutbacks.

Meteorologists and scientists are doing the best they can under the circumstances, but downgrading early warning systems leads directly imperils lives and communities that live in tornado zones. Public confidence and trust in NOAA and government weather institutions plummets, and social media conspiracy theorists step up to fill that gap with misleading and maliciously false information.

How about we improve those scientific institutions, such as the weather service, which help up make better decisions in our lives? While ballistic missiles and bombs provide us with a false sense of ‘security’, it is a scientifically literate population that is the best guarantor against misinformation.

The United Kingdom (UK) and Saudi Arabia are close allies. They maintain and have continued to develop extensive economic and military ties. Do not take my word for it; please feel free to read the UK government’s own description of its ties to Riyadh as a strategic partnership.

By 2030, the governments of both nations expect bilateral trade to increase to $39.6 billion.

Why is there such a close and mutually financially beneficial relationship between London and Riyadh? Surely the British government realises that it is laying itself open to charges of hypocrisy – a liberal parliamentary democracy maintaining trade and military links with a theocratic, hereditary monarchy like Riyadh. Why does the UK, where women enjoy the liberal freedoms of a capitalist state, intimately cooperate with a regime that maintains strict gender segregation?

The answer to that question lies in understanding Britain’s role in shaping the modern Saudi state in the 1910s and 20s. Indeed, the UK has a long history of colluding with and supporting fundamentalist groups, arming and training them, as a bulwark against Arab nationalist and anticolonial movements in the Middle East region.

Britain, eager to defeat the Ottoman Turkish empire, encouraged the Arab revolt, an uprising by Arabic-speaking peoples in the Arabian peninsula. The leader of this nationalist uprising was Sharif Hussein, a notable leader in western Arabia which was then known as the Kingdom of Hejaz. This was significant because his territory contained the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

Guardian of the holy sites and Arab leader. Hussein received numerous assurances from Britain (the 1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence) that London would respect the creation of an independent Arabia after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks. We all know through the romanticised and somewhat fictionalised movie Lawrence of Arabia that London’s policymakers were secretly plotting, along with France, a division of the spoils once the Ottoman Empire was defeated.

The secret Sykes-Picot agreement, signed in 1916, involved carving up the Middle East into spheres of influence shared between Britain and France. What is not publicised in that film, nor to students of the British empire, is that London was worried. Sharif Hussein was an anticolonial and nationalist leader. What happens if he is successful – would his example inspire similar anticolonial uprisings in Egypt and India?

Here is where the UK made a fateful decision; to financially and militarily back the fundamentalist and ultraconservative Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, the king of the central Arabian state of Nejd. His brand of theocracy is known as Wahhabism, named after the 18th century theologian Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703 – 1792).

Believing Islam to be corrupted by foreign elements, Wahhab wanted to purge Islam of those he considered apostates. A highly strict, orthodox interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism is today the official ideology of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud was no fool, realising that British arms and training would give him a decisive edge over his rival, Sharif Hussain.

The supply of armaments and money flowed into the coffers of the house of Saud. With British backing, the Wahhabi leader was able to impose his brand of Salafi revivalism on the entire territory of the Arabian peninsula after the defeat of the Ottoman Turkish empire. The subsequent political and economic character of the unified Saudi state was heavily influenced by this covert development.

Sharif Hussein’s forces were defeated, not by arms alone, but by imperial British treachery. Throughout the 1920s, the UK improved its relations with the emergent Saudi state. It is interesting to note here that Hussein repeatedly refused London’s proposal to start a Jewish state in Palestine.

Hostile to Zionism, Hussein desired the unification of Arab lands, including Syria and Palestine, into one entity. Ibn Saud on the other hand, accepted (however reluctantly) the Zionist project in Palestine. The 1917 Balfour declaration, committing Britain to a Jewish state in Palestine, was the price Ibn Saud was willing to pay for British finance and military backing.

By 1925, Hussein had been forced out of the port city of Aqaba, a city his forces liberated from Turkish control during the First World War.

Let us be clear – Britain actively colluded with a fundamentalist ultraconservative movement to achieve its geopolitical objectives. It is quite hypocritical for the UK to publicly denounce the Saudis for culturally regressive practices, but then actively support those political forces which advocate religiously fanatical culturally regressive policies.

London’s collusion with fundamentalist groups is not just a matter of history. There are important lessons for us today.

The current government in Damascus, headed by the fundamentalist and ultraconservative organisation Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS), a Sunni supremacist group, received copious funding and military support from the UK, in their effort to topple the previous Ba’athist regime in Syria.

While every uprising undoubtedly has domestic origins and legitimate grievances, the military support and political backing provided to HTS by Britain is of an order of magnitude similar to the UK’s regime change policies of the past. Only now, months after the ousting of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, is the full extent of London’s covert support for the Syrian Sunni rebel group emerging.

While it is easy to view the success of HTS as a purely indigenously based, rapid advance against a tottering regime, the HTS militia was steadily groomed and cultivated over the years from its enclave in northwestern Syria.

Emerging as an Al Qaeda offshoot, the HTS has ruled Syria with lethal force, engaging in ethnic cleansing against minority communities. London’s role in orchestrating a regime change in Syria, accompanied by a media campaign to whitewash HTS’ image as a ‘moderate’ force, is only now just becoming clear. The HTS leadership is media savvy, and able to appeal to a Western audience – something no doubt their British paymasters trained them to do.

No amount of slick public relations can obscure the violent and extremist nature of the HTS militia. The new regime in Damascus recently announced their intention to privatise public assets, cut corporate taxes, and make Syria a business-friendly economy – a failed prescription that we have witnessed many times before.

The success of the HTS Salafi uprising has more in common with the Sudeten German ethnic uprising in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. An uprising, sponsored by a foreign power, intended to break apart a multiethnic and multi-confessional state, thus making it easier to monopolise. This is a playbook we have witnessed in the past.

I grew up in a car-centric suburb, in outer western Sydney. It was a quiet place, leafy, with only a tiny shopping village. It was tranquil, uninterrupted by the sounds of traffic or crowds of people – and it was absolutely f*cking boring.

The car centric suburb is a place of isolation, loneliness and a vortex of despair and boredom.

Forced to catch the bus – privately owned – or rely on the car, my late father being the chauffeur, I realised I could not actually walk anywhere. Oh yes, the local park, but for any amenities, it required at least a bus trip. Usually, I required the train – public transportation.

I am not alone in my experience. Consider the following observation of Muizz Akhtar, writing in Vox magazine in 2022 about the American suburban experience:

Distance and isolation are fundamentally built into the urban areas — defined by the US Census Bureau as any area with at least 5,000 people — where most of us live. State and local governments prioritize building infrastructure for cars, and public transportation remains underfunded and unreliable. Wide roads and parking lots spread everything out and make walking extremely difficult, if a neighborhood even has sidewalks to begin with. Today, because a majority of Americans, including an increasing number of children and the elderly, live in car-centric areas like suburbs, our ability to form connections and community is limited.

Constructing suburbs for car-dependent travel fails to contribute to the building of human connections.

The suburban home is built far away from shops, cinemas, schools, theatres, universities and general places of public gathering. Yes I know, there have been (and are ongoing) developments in western Sydney. A university was established to accomodate students in the region. More businesses are moving out to Parramatta, which has become a hub of activity.

Surry Hills, in the inner city, and Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, are separated by kilometres. Yet they both have a social contact street culture. People can walk and meet each other in restaurants, bookshops, cinemas, pubs and so on. Urban planners are finally waking up to these kinds of deficiencies in western Sydney suburbia.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and lockdowns were enforced, social isolation became a major issue. Involuntary confinement undermines the human need for social interaction. I do not want to say that I was completely unaffected by such lack of contact, but I was ready for such an outcome. Making myself busy and occupying my mind are social skills that I developed as a result of the normative isolation of suburbia.

No, lockdown was not a breeze, but it was something with which I coped better than most. Reading is a joy for me, because a good book transports you to another time and place, another location without leaving your house. No, it is no substitute for social connections. However, books became my way of breaking the monotony.

I will return to the impact of reading a bit later, but first let’s make an observation. Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood, writing in Psychology Today magazine, make the point that car-heavy lives construct a mode of living where we are always traveling away from our surroundings, not actually enjoying them. If enjoyment and connection is to be found by driving for miles away, what does that say about our suburban surroundings?

Spontaneous and serendipitous connections with potential friends are much harder to come by if we are cocooning ourselves in our cars.

A place which I enjoyed immensely and found connection was the old Soviet bookshop. Formerly located in Sydney’s CBD, it was the victim of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the ubiquitous move to the internet. Yes, you can find multiple publications on the Net, and of course, the tech giant Amazon dominates book sales. Be that as it may, there was something unique about that bookshop.

It was the place that taught me that the world can be understood and experienced. It was a supplement to my university education. I kept up my studies for my university course, but also undertook a ‘postgraduate’ course, if you will, in Marxist books. The Soviet example taught me that reading is not only a joy, but a way of understanding the lives and struggles of other people.

The storefront bookshop, while not completely dead, has been overtaken by online media. Social media is one way of connecting with people, especially those who are geographically separated from us. However, there is no substitute for browsing the shelves of an actual bookshop.

No, I am not suggesting that we demolish the existing suburbs. I am suggesting that we redefine our image of the suburb, not simply as an investment property developer’s dream of houses to be bought and sold like cattle, but rather as places of human connection, walk ability, and green spaces.

It is important to raise one final point here. We all need to save for a financially secure retirement. I guess I am thinking more about this question now that I am approaching decrepitude. How secure will we be retiring to suburbs that are located in the middle of a climate hellscape?

Socially connected living goes beyond just numbers, but let’s consider the following regarding living in safe suburbs – what happens when they get inundated, or demolished by cyclones? Should not we be planning our suburban communities for these eventualities?

The topic of genocide is not something I would have chosen for myself as an object of deep investigation. My late Armenian grandfather was a survivor of the 1915 genocide, and he would sometimes talk about his experiences. I never pushed the subject, always allowing him to volunteer information about that traumatic event, if he so wished.

Talking about that genocide, and comparing and contrasting it to similarly unspeakable crimes in the twentieth century, is a topic familiar to diasporan Armenians. This month, I found out that I have a high level official who is exercising his tremendous intellectual capacities on a similar subject – US President Donald Trump.

He is unable to sleep at nights apparently, riddled with anxiety about an ongoing genocide – that of the Afrikaners, the white South African farmers whose land is being seized by a relentlessly furious campaign by the black-majority government in Pretoria. Huge numbers of these farmers are being systematically exterminated, so we are told.

There is just one problem with the white genocide of Afrikaners – it is not happening. But its imaginary status does not deter our fearless Trump, and his colleagues in paranoid delusions Elon Musk and JD Vance, from taking actions based on such an illusion. After all, collective illusions are powerful things – when enough people believe them, they can have violent consequences.

The white genocide conspiracy theory involves more than just manufactured anxieties about the Afrikaners. It is an overarching worldview of racial resentment, alleging that ethnic minorities are ‘invaders’, brought to Anglophone and European nations by ‘traitorous’ elites (and that usually signifies the Jews) as demographic battering rams. Overpopulating their new domestic homeland, they eventually turn the white population into a beleaguered minority.

The origins of that racial paranoia resides with the so-called Great Replacement theory, as elaborated by French writer Renaud Camus. He codified a disparate yet interrelated series of racially resentful ideologies, which opposed the efforts of nonwhite peoples at decolonisation.

Let’s not stay in Europe – at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Australian politicians such as Edmund Barton (our first prime minister) stated that the new Australian federation was a necessary political unification project. Why? To avoid being swamped by nonwhite, particularly Asian, immigration.

Charles Pearson, Anglo-Australian academic and writer, expressed his anxiety (in 1892) that the white population would one day wake up and find themselves outnumbered and outgunned by nonwhite immigrants. Perhaps current UK prime minister Keir Starmer was channeling Pearson (and Enoch Powell) when he spoke of Britain becoming an island full of strangers.

Let’s get back to South Africa. The Afrikaners, descendants of the Dutch settlers who settled there from the 1600s onwards, benefited from the system of apartheid (apartness). Monopolising control of the land, they helped (along with the English settlers) to establish a rigidly stratified society based on race.

The end of apartheid in 1994 did not bring about ecological justice – while white South Africans make up only 7.8 percent of the population, they still own 72 percent of the arable land. Hardly evidence of a systematic campaign of racially motivated elimination.

Is crime a problem in South Africa? Yes, sadly it is. Are white farmers being singled out for oppression and extermination? No, they are not. There is no evidence that Afrikaner farmers are disproportionately affected by violent crime. In fact, the black African community is most adversely affected by the incidence of crime.

Indeed, the African National Congress (ANC) banked on a singular strategy in 1994 which they hoped would correct the injustices of apartheid – the creation of a black capitalist entrepreneurial class. That is certainly one strategy, adopted by numerous governments around the world in the immediate aftermath of the Eastern bloc’s dissolution. However, creating a new capitalist class proved inadequate in confronting and rectifying the deep seated economic inequities of the apartheid era in South Africa.

Multiple white South African commentators have rubbished the Trump administration’s claims of white Afrikaner genocide. Elon Musk, himself a scion of privilege, no doubt spread the ‘white genocide’ claim in his social media posts, resentful about the demise of formal apartheid.

Indeed, the Trump administration has vociferously rejected refugees from nonwhite nations – Haitians, Somalis, Afghans, Salvadorans – are having their applications for sanctuary strongly rejected, and immigrants in the US being rounded up and deported. The 59 Afrikaners who arrived by a government-provided airplane are the recipients of generosity because they are white.

Trump is sending an unmistakable message to the world; his solidarity extends only to those who are white. Sanctuary is reserved for white racial brethren.

If the MAGA cult was so concerned about stopping a genocide, then they could certainly take decisive action towards that goal. What am I talking about? Trump could immediately cease all armaments sales and military contracts with the Israeli military. The latter is conducting a genocidal war against the Palestinians of Gaza.

Civilians are being deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers, hospitals and schools are being bombed, and food aid is being purposely withheld. Famine looms as a real possibility in Gaza, with all the humanitarian consequences that this catastrophe raises.

If anyone requires advice about how to survive the white genocide in South Africa, look no further than an article by Ryan Cooper, a white South African who grew up in a remote black homeland, a Bantustan, set up by the apartheid regime in the 1960s. Such homelands were created by the apartheid authorities along tribal lines, enforcing the relocation and tribal segregation of the black population.

The Bantustans were dignified with the title homeland, but in reality were reservations to which the black African populations were confined.

Cooper explained his tactics for surviving in Bophuthataswana. an isolated Bantustan in the north of South Africa. Living with a black host family, as the only white person for miles, he adopted the following cunning strategy for survival, live and mix freely among black Africans, make friendly with them, and catch public transport with them.

This elaborate and deceptively crafty approach to living enabled Cooper to survive the relentlessly hostile terrain of black South Africa. Hiding in plain sight, he was able to avoid the worst excesses of his black African friends, neighbours, colleague and counterparts. There is a lesson in that for all of us.

The National Geographic magazine is not the first place you would think of as having anything related to modern history or politics. However, you would be mistaken – there is a large History and Culture section of the magazine. In the May issue, there is a detailed summary of Operation Paperclip, which began in 1945.

Operation Paperclip was a covert mission, initiated and organised by US intelligence, to secretly transport and settle numerous German rocket scientists in the United States. These scientists, heavily involved in the military programmes of Nazi Germany, worked in the American space and military industries.

Their membership of the SS, their use of forced labour in concentration camps, was quietly swept under the carpet. The name Paperclip came from an identifiable paper clip earmarking the files examining these scientists.

One of the most famous of these German scientists was Wernher von Braun, (1912 – 1977) an engineer and rocket scientist who led the creation of the so-called V-2 ballistic missile. This ‘vengeance weapon’ was used to target British cities in the last years of the war. Slave labourers from concentration camps, built to accommodate the needs of the rocket program, died in their thousands from overwork, starvation and disease.

In a cruel irony, more people died extracting the raw materials required for building these rockets than the civilians killed in Britain due to V-2 attacks. Braun’s passion for ballistic missiles helped fuel the space ambitions of NASA.

You may find more details about the specifics of this operation here.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War 2. Numerous commemorative activities, presentations and ceremonies were held across the world. One of the most important of these was the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow. Multiple heads of state attended the parade on that day, marking the decisive contribution of the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Other writers have examined in great detail the incredible sacrifices of the Soviet people, including 300 000 Armenians, in breaking the back of the Nazi war machine. I will not go into the details of the extraordinary and heroic efforts of the Red Army here. What I can anticipate though, is the screaming objection by Western commentators, indoctrinated in the Hollywood-Longest Day-Guns of Navarone-Saving Private Ryan fan club version of history – what about the Western contribution to the Nazi defeat?

This question is important, though it is deployed in a cynical fashion. It is not asked out of genuine interest in the Anglo-American-Canadian contribution to the war effort, but to distract us from the complicity of imperialist powers in accommodating and encouraging the rise of Nazi power.

Large corporations in the United States and Britain, while wary of Nazi designs on Western Europe, were definitely encouraging Hitler to build a German empire in the European east – a project involving the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler himself made no secret of the fact that Eastern Europe constituted German lebensraum (living space), in much the same fashion that white settlers in the United States expanded West. The tactics used to expel the indigenous people of the American West were adapted by Nazi Germany to exterminate the Slavs and Jews of the European East.

What about Britain’s undeniable effort to defeat Nazi Germany? There is no question regarding the courage and determination of the English people facing the Nazi blitz, but they were hardly standing alone. Gary Younge, sociology professor at the University of Manchester, writes that millions of nonwhite people from the far flung territories of the British empire, volunteered to fight for Britain.

Millions from India, (and the Indian subcontinent), sub-Saharan Africa, Jamaica, the Caribbean nations, Kenya, North African Arab-speaking nationalities – the British fight against fascism was multicultural. They have never received their VE Day, and their contribution has been written out of the history books.

While Europeans were ecstatically celebrating their newly-won freedom on VE Day 1945, another scenario unfolded in the former French colony of Algeria. France had been occupied by Nazi Germany, and it had signed, along with the other Allied powers, the Atlantic Charter, a document that stipulated that occupied nations in Europe had the right to self-determination.

Well, the Algerians for one, decided that the principle of self-determination applies to them. Protesting peacefully, they were met with French gunfire. 45 000 Algerian were killed over the course of May and June. The French army, backed up by armed French settlers, launched a campaign of terrifying violence against the Algerians, using low level bombings, massacres and torture of anti colonial Algerians.

Clearly, the lauded principle of self determination did not apply to the darker skinned nationalities of the French and British empires. As we all now know, the former French territory of Vietnam waged a stubborn battle for independence after 1945. Where the French failed, the Americans stepped in.

April 30 was the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Saigon from American occupation. A hard fought campaign of resistance to colonial rule, the Vietnamese paid the price for American unwillingness to learn the lessons of colonial history.

Actually, in a way, the United States did learn from history. Closing its doors to European Jewish refugees during the war, Washington and Ottawa opened their doors to provide sanctuary for fleeing Nazi war criminals.

How about, this time around, we remember those who have been forgotten amidst the manufactured nostalgia surrounding World War 2. The prisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp were overjoyed to see American troops approaching their location in April 1945. The American soldiers were confronted by scenes of unimaginable horror and cruelty. But it would be a mistake to say that US forces liberated Buchenwald.

It was the prisoners who liberated themselves in Buchenwald. Forming underground action committees, and taking matters into their own hands, they bravely rose up and disarmed their fascist captors. Their heroism and collective spirit, even in such an inhumane and horrific place, could not be extinguished.

Gary Younge provides a cautionary observation for our times. It would be a perverse irony if the ideological descendants of ultranationalist and fascist parties, currently polling strongly across European nations, were to regain power through the ballot box 80 years after being defeated on the battlefield.

What are we to do when an elite sport player, musician or artist – outstanding in their particular field – turns out to be an obnoxious a*sehole in life?

A few years back, I wrote about the legendary chess player the late Bobby Fischer (1943 – 2008). A child prodigy at chess, he defeated his Soviet counterpart in the 1950s, thus earning his place in the pantheon of chess greats. However, as a person, he turned out to be a bigot, contemptuously sneering at anyone who disagreed with him.

Should we continue to admire a person who, while outstanding as a sportsperson or musician, is an obnoxious lout in life?

Let’s begin with baseball. I tried baseball in high school, and was never any good at it. I probably hit only 20 percent of the pitches I faced. Hitting a home run was a rarity. To top it off, I got more interested in squash, and so my incipient baseball career came to an end before it even started.

Baseball is not that big in Australia, in comparison to the Major Leagues in the United States. I never fully understood all the statistics of baseball playing – and I still do not. However, I can appreciate the ability of fans to accumulated vast and complex baseball data sets in their minds. I also think that elite baseball players are worthy of admiration.

Ty Cobb (1886 – 1961) was an exceptional baseball player, the absolute greatest of his generation. His baseball achievements hit record levels, and remained so for decades.

His approach to the game was one of tactical aggression, unafraid to confront his opponents absolutely head-on. Undeterred by threats from fans, he pursued baseball with an unmatched intensity, stealing bases, a steely-eyed gaze, anticipating his opponents’ moves and countering them. He was able to think quickly and decisively under pressure. Fearless and strong, he would deliberately crash into the opposing fielders at the bases, sparking numerous confrontations that became a hallmark of his career.

He was also an antisemite and obnoxious person, described by his friends and colleagues as a ‘son of a b*tch.’ Known for a hair-trigger temper, he was abusive and obnoxious to waiters, porters, hotel staff, his intimate partners and certainly towards other baseball players. Loudly and frequently disparaging his slightly younger contemporary, George ‘Babe’ Ruth, Cobb reserved a special hatred for Ruth’s superb hitting and sporting abilities.

Nicknamed the Bambino, Babe Ruth was a portly, stocky man, who grew up in relative poverty. Attending a reformatory school, nothing in his academic records suggested that he would amount to anything out of the ordinary. Preferring drinking and carousing to baseball training, there was no indication yet of his sporting abilities.

Yet, in his first season as a professional base baller, in 1920, Ruth scored an amazing 54 home runs for the New York Yankees. Ruth displayed a remarkable intelligence and resilience on the baseball field. Making decisions under intense pressure, he worked out the tactics of his opponents and decided how to outsmart them.

Elite sportspeople can be both physically adept, and intelligent in their field. Ruth confounded the stereotype of ‘great at sport, dumbo at academics.’ We have all confronted the ‘sports jock’ archetype – excelling in football, for instance, but barely passing their school subjects. In fact, to be an elite competitor, you need not just physical strength, but mental agility and flexibility.

Let’s change tack here….why am I talking about this particular subject now? The topic above – appreciating sport or music produced by scoundrels – has resurfaced in recent days.

American rapper and musician Kanye West (or Ye as he prefers to be know) is no stranger to controversy. A talented rapper with a global following, his gradual descent into mental health problems is no secret. His political deterioration into a MAGA-aligned far rightist has been the subject of analysis in the past. I have written about his antisemitic and ignorant recycling of conspiratorial misinformation previously.

Earlier this month, West released a single called ‘Heil Hitler’ from his forthcoming album. Praising the Nazi leader and architect of the Holocaust, West’s song is a mishmash of antisemitic outbursts and juvenile profanities. Identifying himself as a fellow traveler of Nazi ideology, West has been dropped by major music companies. His song, while also dropped from streaming platforms, nevertheless remains in circulation through AI-generated versions.

The song’s cover illustration resembles a swastika. The song ends with excerpts from a speech by Hitler. West is increasingly resembling an emotionally and mentally unhinged person. His narcissistic selfishness was previously excused on the grounds that he is a brilliant musician. His legions of fans either ignored or rationalised his outbursts.

However, West has now chosen to occupy a position in the foul cesspit of the MAGA cult’s ultra-libertarian and fanatical ‘America First’ nationalism. Trump, Musk, Vance, and the swamp of fascistic social media influencers have taken their toll on West, and now they are hailing their new musical recruit to their ideology.

It is not everyday that a black man, and an influential one at that, sings the same tune as MAGA – the modern day updated version of the Klan. It is only a small step from white hoods to red MAGA hats.

West needs help with his mental health issues, plus an extensive education in the history of racism, the American civil war, the Holocaust, and settler colonialism.

We would do well to remember, and learn from, the example of Jackie Robinson (1919 – 1972). An African American baseball champion who broke through the colour line, he maintained his integrity while never backing down against bigotry. Today’s American MAGA administration would have kept Robinson out of the Major Leagues, given the chance.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, a classic American novel. Taught in high schools and universities across the Anglophone nations, its message of financial opulence hiding dark secrets is still relevant in Trump’s United States.

There were numerous exhibitions and commemorative activities held in April this year, celebrating the publication of The Great Gatsby one hundred years ago. There are multiple themes and leitmotifs in that book, and it deserves to be hailed as the great American novel. F Scott Fitzgerald, the author, already had two commercially successful novels under his belt. The Great Gatsby, however, was not a financial success initially.

The exhibitions and literary events commemorating the book come at a difficult time for writers, libraries and museums in the US today. The Trump administration, under the guise of saving money, has issued numerous executive orders cutting the federal government’s funding of public libraries, museums and educational institutions. Trump himself has been compared to Gatsby, a nouveau riche hustler who equates financial success with possessing an ethical compass.

The main character of the novel, Jay Gatsby, is an enormously wealthy man. He hosts lavish cocktail parties, sumptuous gatherings and social events at his mansion at West Egg, New York. Beneath the glitz and glamour, there is a dark story; Gatsby, originating from an impoverished background, made his wealth through bootlegging and other criminal activities. Desiring nothing else than the love of the rich and already married Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby longs to be accepted by ‘old’ money families.

Indeed, if there is an Australian counterpart to Gatsby, it is convicted criminal and former NSW politician Eddie Obeid. The latter used his position and connections to amass a fortune in property development and real estate speculation. Charged and convicted of corruption and financial misconduct, he made a statement during the trial that indicates his personality.

During one of many heated exchanges with the prosecuting lawyer, Obeid remarked “I’ve spent more money than you have made in your entire lifetime.” He said that statement with pride, as if it is an accomplishment. The parallels with the Trumpian obsession with wealth are apparent. Nothing else matters except financial accumulation.

Obeid’s sneering remark reminded me of Jay Gatsby, the man for whom wealth is the ultimate measure of success. Reminds me of Trump for that matter. F Scott Fitzgerald, when asked why he wrote the novel, stated:

The idea that we’re the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over! Wait ten or fifteen years! Wait until the next war in the Pacific, or against some European combination!

Indeed, Jonah Raskin, in his article examining the Gatsby novel, states that class consciousness comes through in this book by Fitzgerald. The novel is set in the Roaring Twenties, when success seemed unstoppable, Fitzgerald wrote a kind of warning for his fellow Americans. Seduced by the seeming and superficial allure of capitalism, he was indicating that there was an emptiness and vacuity at the heart of this system.

There is one criticism that Raskin makes of the book – the near total absence of working class characters. Sure, there are servants, cleaners, the chatty motor mechanic. However, the great mass of workers, without whom any economic success would be impossible, are conspicuously absent in Fitzgerald’s tale.

Earlier, I alluded to the Trump administration’s sustained attacks on public libraries and museums. The executive order to gut funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) may not appear to be that harmful at first glance. The IMLS is responsible for funding and maintaining the thousands of libraries and museums across the nation.

Formed in 1996 out of a merger of existing government departments, the IMLS has had legislative bipartisan support throughout its existence until today. This institution, while handing out grants, is not just a funding body. It helps poor and isolated rural and urban working class communities of diverse backgrounds to access books, audiovisual materials, internet connections, educational presentations and adult education courses.

The US Congress allocated $266.7 million for the IMLS in the 2024 fiscal year. That is quite a chunk of money, to be sure. However, that figure constitutes 0.003 percent of the federal budget. Cutting that amount would save 75 cents per person. In contrast, the US military budget for fiscal year 2024 was $842 billion.

Cutting the financial support for the IMLS will mean the closure of educational programs for rural communities, the stopping of internet access and drinking water for isolated communities in the largely rural state of New Mexico, and the elimination of educational avenues for young people. In fact, it will be harder for students to come by a copy of The Great Gatsby, which is still in demand 100 years after its publication.

I have not touched upon all the knowledge capital that will be lost should museums go under. They are a trusted and easily accessible venue of scientific knowledge. A treasure trove of scientific information and communication will be gutted should the IMLS close its doors.

Just a brief note here regarding the frontal assault by the MAGA cult on books that the Trump administration deems to fall within the purview of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI). While we are quick to point an accusatory finger at communist or socialist governments that we feel are censoring books not aligned with official political ideology, let’s take a brief look at the free-market fundamentalism sweeping the US.

The US military, in line with Trump’s directives to remove books which promote DEI, one book that has been purged is Memorializing the Holocaust by Professor Janet Jacobs. Is this book so frightening, its subject matter so disturbing, that future US soldiers do not have the courage or resilience to read it? Perhaps the hyper masculine MAGA cult is too weak and sensitive (snowflakes perhaps?) to handle the difficult issues pertaining to the Holocaust.

Libraries and museums are not just something nice to have, but are part and parcel of what an educated and informed citizenry require. I think that is what today’s Gatsbys, the financial oligarchs of the MAGA cult, find absolutely terrifying.