Putin's Russia has erected numerous statues of Joseph Stalin, arrested and imprisoned those who uncover Stalinist crimes, and suppresses any dissent.
How bad was Stalin? A good, brief article is here, "Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?" by Cynthia Haven about the book Stalin's Genocides by scholar Norman Naimark.
Link to New York Times article about the new Stalin monument is here.
Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, a racist comic book that depicts Polish people as pigs, has been censored -- because he insulted Trump. Trump has power; Poles and Polonians do not exercise power; so the anti Trump insult had to go, but the Polish-people-as-pigs garbage earns a Pulitzer. Full story here
Thunderbolts*
A Marvel movie even Martin Scorsese
might love
On May 2, 2025, Marvel Studios and Walt
Disney Studios Motion Pictures released Thunderbolts*. Thunderbolts* is
a superhero movie advertised as "Pure cinema," featuring "Not
heroes. Not super. Not giving up." In Thunderbolts*, a ragtag group
of flawed characters cooperate, in spite of their self-loathing and mutual
antipathy. They dismantle a deadly secret program, save Manhattan from Bob, a
rampaging monster, and help Bob defeat his own demons. They thus redeem
themselves.
Internet scuttlebutt insisted that Thunderbolts*
addresses important issues in today's society through real characters that
develop through real changes, and that audiences were actually tearing up.
This time fandom did not over hype. Not only did the characters in Thunderbolts* change. I changed. I am now willing to give Marvel movies another chance.
On March 11, 2025, Rutgers University
Press released At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and
Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives by Lucas F. W. Wilson, PhD. At
Home is 188 pages long, inclusive of an index, end notes, and a
bibliography. The book's goal is to analyze how children and grandchildren of
Holocaust survivors are traumatized by their parents' and grandparents'
experiences. The book focuses on how homes – that is, houses and geographic
locations – can transmit trauma from one generation to the next.
In an online biography, author Wilson says, "I am the
Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
Calgary." On a University of Calgary page, Wilson follows his name with
"Pronouns: he/him/his." In an
interview, Wilson says, "My work has largely centered on the
Holocaust, but given the rise in anti-queer and anti-trans violence, public
policy, and legislation, I redirected my attention on a main catalyst of
homophobia and transphobia today: white Christian nationalism … Both the Holocaust and conversion therapy are
inextricably connected to Christianity … The Christian scriptures and Christian
theology laid the seedbed for the Holocaust … Christianity has so easily lent
itself to such hatred." Christians have "genocidal intentions"
toward GLBT people, Jews, and "Indigenous folks in North America."
Wilson, though young, is an
exceptionally successful scholar, enjoying a degree of financial support and
accolades that most scholars can only dream of. "I have received several
fellowships and awards for my work." An incomplete list of his honors: The
Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi's Dissertation Fellowship; a European Holocaust
Research Infrastructure Fellowship; The Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman Memorial
Fellowship from the American Jewish Archives; a Regent Scholarship, two Edwin
L. Stockton, Jr., Graduate Scholarships from Sigma Tau Delta International
English Honor Society, an Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellowship, and a Zaglembier
Society Scholarship awarded by The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for
Holocaust Studies.
At Home with the Holocaust has received high
praise. Scholar and author Victoria Aarons says that the book "makes a
vital contribution to the research on second and third-generation Holocaust
descendants and the complex ways in which traumatic memory is passed along
intergenerationally." Alan L. Berger, the Raddock Family Eminent Scholar
Chair in Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University, says that At Home
"breaks new ground."
I can see how At Home with the
Holocaust meets the needs of a reader happily immersed and unquestioningly
invested in academic trends in writing styles, thought processes, ideology, and
ethics. I am not that reader. This book exemplifies serious problems in
contemporary academia, as I will detail in the review, below. First, a word on
why I care about this topic.
As soon as I saw the Rutgers University
Press ad for this new book, I was eager to read it. I have been swimming in the
water of post-World-War-Two trauma for my entire life. I'm a baby boomer, a
drop in the post-World-War-II demographic surge. I didn't give it much thought
in my childhood, but I was surrounded by post-war trauma.
On August 14, 1945, Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured "V-J Day in Times Square." A sailor is kissing a young woman wearing a medical uniform – white dress, white stockings, white shoes. The photo expertly captures the ecstatic jubilation of the end of worldwide horror and atrocity.
I just stumbled across this article. I have not fact checked it. I found it on the "Wayback Machine" so apparently it is otherwise unavailable. I'm no expert in WW II in Ukraine so I can't comment on the article's accuracy.
THE PRAGUE POST
NOT Everything is Illuminated
October 07, 2004
Everything Is Illuminated distorts
history by omitting crucial facts, including an important link to the Czech
Republic
By Ivan Katchanovski
As the recent controversy about The Passion of the Christ and the election of a movie star as governor of California show, movies are not only entertainment but also sources of negative and positive stereotypes. An upcoming Hollywood film, much of which was filmed in Prague this summer, promotes such negative stereotypes. Furthermore, the book on which it was based, Everything Is Illuminated, distorts history by omitting crucial facts.
