"Fascism Is the Banal Dream of Tiny Men and Deserves Its Place in the Sewage of History"

"Self-described socialists have made many mistakes. Some of these have been brutally tragic and ruthlessly genocidal. Authoritarian socialists like Stalin committed mass atrocities that serve as a chilling reminder of the horrors that can be inflicted by those mouthing well meaning platitudes.. But the ethical core of socialism remains inspiring because, in sharp contrast to fascism, it makes far greater demands of us. Socialists want a world where, even if everyone won't be happy, ordinary human misery will replace unnecessary suffering. This is a goal that is so ethically demanding we've yet to fully build a society that realizes it. Despite all the bombast about heroism and power, in the end fascism resonates because it appeals to our lowest instincts. It is so tempting to imagine one's self a dispossessed racial aristocrat, in part because that makes it so much easier to push aside all ethical demands that get in the way of our greed and lust for power. Fascists strive impotently for a bigness the shrunken aspirations of their soul can never reach."

Matt McManus at Current Affairs explains "Why Fascists Always Come for the Socialists First."

"Also Serves as a Reminder of the Need for a Wider Lens When Thinking About Enslavement and Freedom Throughout the Americas Today"

"Slavery shaped the Americas for four centuries, blighting the entire hemisphere. The long struggle to dismantle it did not happen only in the U.S. or only in the South; in fact, in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil it continued for decades after the U.S. Civil War. Simple narratives such as 'California banned slavery at its founding' and 'slavery ended in 1865' obscure much of its connection to this larger story. What happened to California illuminates the unevenness of abolition and the many false promises of freedom. It also serves as a reminder of the need for a wider lens when thinking about enslavement and freedom throughout the Americas today."

Carrie Gibson at the Los Angeles Times discusses slavery in California.

Francoism Is Still Dead

"He was repressive; Spain successfully democratized after his death, while the institutional prestige of the Church collapsed. The Spanish Republic had been anti-clerical, but the government sought to moderate against opposition and prevent anti-clerical violence. Instead, the catastrophist right instigated violence to destabilize the Republic. Franco's conduct in Spain's Civil War, which began as a right-wing coup, was not heroic but brutal and methodical and supported by Mussolini and Hitler. They overstated the crimes of the Republicans, and buried the far greater crimes of the Nationalists, and misunderstood the role of the Soviet Union."

Joshua Tait at The Bulwark writes that, in regarding Francisco Franco of Spain, "[t]he fact that American conservatives were willing to overlook all this in a sympathetic strongman should give today's Hungary enthusiasts pause."

"Fear of Islam Shaped His View of Native Americans"

"The answer lies in Columbus'—and Europe's—long history of crusading against Islam. The crucible of centuries of these religious wars, and the increasing encroachment of the Ottomans and other Muslims in the years after 1453, forged the notion of Islam as an enemy in the minds of Columbus, Cortés and the thousands of other Europeans who fought Muslims in the Old World and then American Indians in the New World."

Alan Mikhail in the Los Angeles Times discusses the "centrality of Islam" for Christopher Columbus.

"Celebrated as a Foundational Moment in Our History for Generations"

"White actors reenacted the baptism for decades: near the historic site itself, in the nearby city of San Clemente, in plays across Southern California and even on floats in everything from Veterans' Day marches to the 1957 Tournament of Roses Parade. These events served to replenish our self-conception of a California where the eternal good life was possible for anyone, if only they truly believed."

Gustavo Arrellano in the Los Angeles Times tells the story of La Cristianita.

"It Is a Difficult Habit to Kick"

"The contradictions have frequently been noted: he was a socialist intellectual whose finest achievements included a mordant critique of the hypocrisy and double standards displayed by the socialist intellectuals of his day; a patriot who held most of his country's institutions in contempt; a passionate defender of historical truth who chose to write under an assumed name and who occasionally told lies; a self-styled champion of decency who backed causes that, had they prevailed, would have produced outcomes in which decency would have been difficult to discern; an atheist who decreed that his funeral should be conducted by the Church of England and that he should be buried in a rural parish churchyard. It is often the contradictions in an individual's character that give it distinction; in the case of Orwell, these were more marked and more numerous than in most, but it is not clear whether he was even aware of them. Yet it is these which explain why he is claimed by those on opposing sides—by socialists and libertarians, by conservatives as well as radicals, by patriots and internationally minded progressives. In a sense, he is up for grabs. All sorts of people can identify with him and claim him—or almost claim him—for their own and are keen, even desperate, to do so. The 'almost' is important: many of his admirers feel that if only he had fully grasped the implications of the part of his work of which they happen to approve there would be no doubt about the matter. Admirers, including this one, are eager to read the latest interpretation of his thought in the forlorn hope that this will confirm that he really would have been on their side."

Gerald Frost at The New Criterion discusses George Orwell in Spain.

Servants into Slaves

"Even in 1700, Africans were hardly the only unfree colonists, for a majority of those laboring in Virginia were people bound to service. They were indentured whites. Population numbers are crucial in understanding the demography of labor in early Virginia. By 1680, only about 7% of Virginians were of African descent; 20% of Virginians were of African descent by 1700, and by 1750, the 100,000 enslaved Virginian men and women accounted for more than half the population. Here lies the demography of enslavement."

Nell Irvin Planter at The Guardian reminds readers that the first Africans in colonial Virginia were not enslaved.

And Olivia B. Waxman at Time discusses August 1619.

"1984 Is Watching You"

"We are living with a new kind of regime that didn't exist in Orwell's time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment. The state of mind that the Party enforces through terror in 1984, where truth becomes so unstable that it ceases to exist, we now induce in ourselves. Totalitarian propaganda unifies control over all information, until reality is what the Party says it is—the goal of Newspeak is to impoverish language so that politically incorrect thoughts are no longer possible. Today the problem is too much information from too many sources, with a resulting plague of fragmentation and division—not excessive authority but its disappearance, which leaves ordinary people to work out the facts for themselves, at the mercy of their own prejudices and delusions."

George Packer at The Atlantic reviews Dorian Lynskey's The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984.

The Great Settlement

"For years, people in and around Arkansas City have found artifacts—arrowheads, weapons and cooking utensils. But a translation done in 2013 by the University of California, Berkeley of the Onate expedition provided more details that Blakeslee was able to use to match geographical details with archaeological evidence.
"He began searching the area.
"What he found in Arkansas City, he believes, may rewrite American history."

Beccy Tanner at The Wichita Eagle discusses the newly discovered lost city of Etzanoa in southern Kansas.

"The Number of People Living in Mexico Fell From an Estimated 20 million to 2 million"

"Bos and her team have previously identified plague bacteria in the teeth of Black Death victims, but the cocolitzli samples presented a different challenge. Scientists already suspected that the Black Death was caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, but no one is as certain about the exact cause of cocolitzli. So Bos's team repurposed a method called metagenomics that sequences all of the DNA in a sample, generating a long list of all bacteria present in the teeth. One researcher went through the list by hand, and a specific strain of Salmonella enterica popped up repeatedly. Dental pulp samples from five people who died before European contact but buried in the same site contained no significant amounts of S. enterica."

Sarah Zhang at The Atlantic reports on recent research on the cause of "mysterious disease called 'cocolitzli'" in sixteenth-century Mexico.

Columbiana

Edward Burmila at The Nation and Heather Cox Richardson at We're History discuss the history of Columbus and Columbus Day, respectively.

"As Offensive as a Confederate Monument?"

"'The parallels are very obvious to us,' says Santa Monica activist Oscar de la Torre, a school board member, founder of the Pico Youth & Family Center and a prominent leader of the campaign to remove the mural. 'The European conquistadors, they practiced slavery. There was rape. There was murder. There was genocide.'"

Jason McGahan in the LA Weekly discusses the debate over the 1941 mural, History of Santa Monica and the Bay District, at Santa Monica City Hall.

"Or Didn't They?"

"It all starts in 1612, when an educated, bilingual, actual Irish spy named Thomas Shelton translates part one of the 'Quixote'—to rapturous acclaim and sensational sales —as 'The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant Don-Quixote of the Mancha.' About a year later, an aging William Shakespeare and his anointed protege, John Fletcher, co-write their third play together, 'The History of Cardenio.' That would be the same crazed, cuckolded Cardenio whom Don Quixote met in Chapter 23 of the novel, then helped reunite with his inamorata a hundred pages later.
"Yes, as the wittie Ring Lardner might have said, you could look it up. In 1613, almost surely without ever meeting in person, it was Shakespeare who helped usher Cervantes onto the British stage for the first time.
"Or so we think."

David Kipen in the Los Angeles Times wonders about connections between Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare, who both died four hundred years ago this month.

"The Heartbreak Is What Lingers Longest"

"The title comes from Albert Camus. Men learned in Spain, the French novelist wrote sadly, that 'one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and that there are times when courage is not rewarded.'"

Bob Drogin in the Los Angeles Times reviews Adam Hochschild's Spain Is in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.

"A Founding Father of a Completely Different Sort"

"California's missions were not simply places where Franciscans acted out their ambitious dreams but sites where Indians, in the face of disease and overwhelming pressure to assimilate to European ways, persisted in their beliefs under the most difficult of circumstances. The missions are also a reminder of California's place in a world history shaped by conquest and underscored by tragedy. Serra helped lay a foundation for California, as flawed as that foundation may be, and his ever presence can remind us of the achievements and costs inherent in his doing so."

After curating a new exhibit, Steven W. Hackel in the Los Angeles Times considers the three-hundredth anniversary of Father Junípero Serra's birth.

"The Romans of the New World"

"The book was sent to Spain during the Inquisition, when works written in indigenous languages were banned, and later given to the Medici Library. Largely forgotten until the early 19th century, it is available only to specialists and is seldom on public view. 'It is an incredible thrill to be able to borrow this iconic work,' Lyons says. 'This will be the first time it has returned to the New World.'"

In the Los Angeles Times, Suzanne Muchnic reviews "The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire" at the Getty Villa.

"A Parable about the Dangers of Utopianism"

"He grew up in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, witnessing revolutions and counter-revolutions. He was one of the first Zionist settlers in Palestine. He became a star in the Berlin of Sally Bowles' cabarets and a rising Adolf Hitler. He was jailed and nearly shot by Gen. Franco. He fled the Nazis through Casablanca, Morocco. He gave Albert Camus a black eye, George Orwell a holiday home, and Soviet communism an enema. He had sex with supermodel twins, took magic mushrooms with Timothy Leary*, and helped create Intelligent Design. Oh—and he was a rapist."

Johann Hari in Slate reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic.

To Wander Forever Between the Winds

"Far from being bit players in the drama of the Spanish colonial empire, the Comanches, especially after obtaining guns from French traders in the 1740s, had the edge in the continuing conflict with 'New Spain'. One single statistic is eloquent on the Comanches' rise to dominance in the American Southwest. Their population, 15,000 in 1750, had ascended to 45,000 by 1780 because of their superior diet and plentiful food supply. Their heartland was the so-called Comancheria - an area covering the valleys of the Arkansas, Cimarron, Canadian and Red Rivers, plus all the plains of northern Texas, especially the Llano Estacado in the Panhandle."

Frank McLynn reviews Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire in Literary Review.