This really happened. The most grotesque thing you could imagine (until the next thing, at least). This is indeed the TRUTH that Donald Trump posted this morning. He wasn’t hacked, and it wasn’t a hoax. In what more auspicious possible circumstance could I return to write the first post on this blog since I left things off nearly a year ago?

The reasons for the hiatus? Briefly - I got completely saturated with the films that I was watching (which doesn’t mean the same as “bored”, only that I needed a long break), and then I got completely consumed in transferring this blog over from Blogger into my own lovingly crafted space. And here it is, part of a whole ecosystem of websites which I’ve been creating for the last half year and a bit. Nearly done now, although a few things might still be barebones if you’re reading this soon after posting.

Apart from EVERYTHING that it says without needing to comment, what ELSE is there to say about this video? It’s of course not my intention to attempt to tie it in with any of the films that are discussed in this project, as that would be an insult to all but a few of them. The films discussed in this blog mostly concern themselves with showing the complications of the Middle East in all their dimensions, while this video sees the world in a maximum of two dimensions.

Watching this video made me think of a French intellectual, called Olivier Roy, who I heard on Yascha Mounk’s podcast half a year ago (the precise date was 15/6/24). In the interview he talked about what he called “the flattening of the world”. Having earlier talked about how Global English has reduced the riches of the English language to no more than two or three thousand necessary terms, in such a way that a higher level knowledge of the language starts to become a handicap, he went on to broaden the point about the way that globalisation seems to have reduced character and intention to a very limited set of vectors, which don’t do any justice to the complicated internal life which most of us experience.

Of course it’s pretty ironic that I’m referring to that intellectualisation in the contextual frame of a place which has been quite literally flattened; but that’s not really why my mind turned to him. What he was talking about was the way that human life in the 21st century does indeed seem to have lost depth. We’re all now just background cartoon shadows in Elon’s AI animation movie, and when we try to break out of that straightjacket we get caught up in a no less shallow discourse about gender or language on the “liberal Marxist” (joke) Left.

Language fucking matters - I recently heard a millenial say that on a podcast. They were talking about the “R” Word. I had to ask ChatGPT to clarify what the “R” word is, since their hearts were too sensitive to utter it, despite not feeling the same about liberally applying the “F” Word (obviously offensive to people of my mother’s age) and even using the word “cumbucket” at one point. I can’t say I’d heard the word “retard” previously referred to as the “R” word, but I suppose I had worked it out before ChatGPT confirmed my suspicion. It’s not a word that I’ve used too many times in my life. Too American, maybe, for me. Maybe I prefer a word like “pillock”. Not sure. Never mind my preferences - the “R” Word fucking matters, but the “F” Word doesn’t, and thus language is fucking flattened to be only about the things that those using it want it to be about. My truth, etc.

And so I’m sure that many of those who are so deeply upset by the “R” word (God forgive me for spelling it out earlier) have far fewer qualms about liberally interposing the words “Zionist” and “Nazi”. Language fucking matters, but it’s their truth. I am capable of writing several paragraphs, hell maybe even a whole book, about the ideological roots of Zionism and Nazism in nineteenth century European nationalism and Romanticism, both in the light of and as reactions against the Enlightenment. That’s fine. We can talk about that, for sure. And we can talk about the evolution of the once socialist State of Israel (for all its original sins, of which there are plenty) into an abominable rogue state, of which we can now say - no longer with any suggestion of hysteria - that it is carrying out a programme which we can fairly objectively describe with the “G” word (I think you don’t need ChatGPT to figure that one out). We can employ the metaphor of the abused child growing up into an abusive parent, and what now seems to be the triumph within Zionism of its racist, Jewish-supremacist Kahanist wing (nice - not so nice - article here), which I already saw plenty of during my time in Jerusalem in the nineties. We can safely do all of that, and I don’t find any of that especially controversial any more. I’m very comfortable with referring to Smotrich, Ben Gvir et al as Jewish-supremacist fascists. And if that’s not enough for you, I guess you can “F” word orf.

BUT I won’t tolerate the juxtaposition of the words Zionism and Nazism, for simple reasons of good taste, and I won’t talk any more about this subject to anyone who does that, because language fucking matters, OK? Don’t ask me to explain why. If you don’t know why the history doesn’t allow for that, I don’t know what history you’ve ever looked at. And history fucking matters.

Not that Donald Trump gives a shit about any of what I just wrote. He doesn’t care if you’re a Zionist, a Nazi, a Sheikh, a football player, a disgraced member of the British royal family, a moustachioed dictator, or an avant-gardiste of the Chinese Communist Party, as long as you’re happy to invest in a bit of Trump Coin. He’s a very baaaaaaaaad man (yes, Donnie, I’m “very nasty” - come sue me), and apropos that badness the only really useful comment to make about that short film is that I just thought it was very flattening in its my-middle-finger-in-your-face vulgarity, its intentional nonchalance vis-à-vis the reality of that place and the tragic history that created it.

That video is of course the antithesis of what I’m all about here, but I suppose it does provide an interesting counterpoint to my attempt to look at the depths and hidden corners of a conflict that Trump wants to turn into a beachfront development, without any sense of irony or self-parody. Needless to say that I’m not exactly happy to be recommencing writing here in a world where this video is even possible in someone’s imagination. I’m stupid enough to have clung onto a strong hope in my heart that they wouldn’t vote for the fat bastard again. But they did, and here we are. I guess I won’t mention him too much more on this blog - unless Elon’s orcs release another masterpiece some time soon - but it’ll be hard to avoid keeping his name off my other blog, which is going to be about pretty much anything, apart from this very specific and circumscribed project. The next proper film post will be coming soon. There are a few of them queued up in drafts, so hopefully it’s not going to take another year.

---

“The most grotesque thing you could imagine (until the next thing, at least)”☝🏼🫣

Of course it didn’t take long for the next thing to come along, and they didn’t even need AI. The Staatsunterführer Gauleiter JD Nosferatu Vance stirred up a bit of agitprop today in the Oval Office. Obviously everyone has seen it. As Donald said (And I think he really enjoyed saying it) - it was GREAT TV. And maybe that was all it was meant to be - never mind about those 20,000 kidnapped children. Anyway, I will, as it happens, have a few things to say about Ukraine on my other blog. The more I think about it, the more intimately I find that conflict to be connected with the content of this project. But that’s going to be a pretty long post.

Merci, Fat Donnie. Every time you open your mouth, you bring the good parts of humanity together a little bit more.