Barefoot Gen Volume One A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima by Keiji Nakazawa

Keiji Nakazawa's semi-autobiographical Japanese comic book series Hadashi no Gen has been translated as Barefoot Gen in a 10-volume series. I read Volume 1, and I have immediately requested Volume 2 from my public library. 

Sometimes it's hard for me to sit in a social gathering listening to "normal" conversation when I think that humans have accumulated enough nuclear weapons to destroy themselves hundreds of times over. I hope I never lose that anxiety, and I don't understand people who are blasé about how close we are to destruction at our own hands.

Review: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart

Katherine Stewart, author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on American's Children, which I reviewed earlier, explores how Christian Nationalists have gained influence & power in various areas of life in the United States and elsewhere since the mid-1970s. As such The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism goes beyond Good News Club to place this threat to liberal democracy in a broader historical context and therefore should rise to a high priority in your "to-read" list.


A book with similar themes is Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.

While there is important information in this book, I disagree with the author's exhortation in epilogue to vote harder. While voting is a tool, the USA's and the world's veering towards fascism isn't going to stop because liberals win an election here or there.

Film: We Believe in Dinosaurs

The IMDB entry for the documentary film We Believe in Dinosaurs will tell you that it explores the people behind the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter Park in Kentucky. I'm telling you it is an understated cry for anti-fascist action. And if you think that's a hyperbolic statement, then you haven't been paying attention to my entries tagged fascism at this blog and at my other blog. You are Günter Grass's Social Democrat.

Review: Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying - The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer

Sönke Neitzel & Harald Welzer. Jefferson Chase, translator. Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying - The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs. Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2012.

Jennifer Teege, author of My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, spoke in my town. I asked her about English language books which might help me understand the mentality of Germans during fascism, and she recommend this book.

Sönke Neitzel, a historian, and Harald Welzer, a social psychologist, analyzed declassified transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of German prisoners of war in British & American prisons during World War II. These transcripts confirm both the shocking level of violence fascists unleashed and the suitability of the psychological and institutional structures of a modern capitalist, industrial society to support this violence. Reading it in the United States of America in 2019 increases the urgency of radical resistance to oligarch-inspired labor docility, militarism and global genocide through ecological destruction.

Favorite Quotes: Günter Grass, "The Tin Drum"

Günter Grass received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, and his most famous book is Die Blechtrommel, translated into English as The Tin Drum. The June 4, 2007 New Yorker published his account of his participation as a teenager in the German Nazi war effort. Because he had not disclosed these matters publicly, despite his reputation as a critic of post-war Germany's attempts to forget its fascism and its crimes and their popularity, he received much criticism.

I read the 1961 Ralph Manheim translation, but some of these quotes are from the Breon Mitchell 2009 translation. Click to enlarge images.

Favorite Quotes - Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here"

Harold Finch from CBS's "Person of Interest"
reading It Can't Happen Here

The first Sinclair Lewis novel I read (heard on CDs, actually) was Dodsworth. Some satirical passages were entertaining, but I never felt like I learned/felt/thought anything profound. Frederic Rich's Christian Nation quoted from Lewis's book It Can't Happen Here, so I decided to read it. Overall, it's a vigorous defense of Liberalism from Fascism and Communism, yet it does allow room for criticism of Liberalism. I'm excerpting some lengthy passages from the book, the text of which is available for free online. I've prefaced each passage with a header. So just like al-Imam al-Bukhari, my thoughts are in the headings and the passages I've chosen to excerpt.

The University of California system produced a reading guide which looks really interesting. Also, Donald Trump's campaign has sparked new interest in the novel.

For more thoughts on fascism, read Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism. Also, check out my other blog entries tagged fascism.

Review: Christian Nation by Frederic C Rich

Frederic C. Rich retired from one of the United States's largest law firms. He also found time to write a speculative fiction (by now, nearly alternative history) novel set in our time about the takeover, via election, of the United States by Christian dominionists and reconstructionists.

The author maintains a website with more information about the book and a list of questions for discussion. You can search for the book at your local independent book store or at a library near you.

Review: The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim by Nicholas Kulish & Souad Mekhennet

The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim
By Nicholas Kulish & Souad Mekhennet
(Doubleday, Hardcover, 9780385532433, 320pp.)
Publication Date: March 25, 2014

I originally learned about this book following tweets regarding a January 10, 2015 newspaper article by Nicholas Kulish entitled "Old Nazis Never Die." Many twitter users came to the conclusion that escaped Nazis exerted strong influence in Egypt and Syria, and many attributed some of the animosity in those countries to the Zionist project to Nazi-style anti-antisemitism. A French film, which I have not seen, explores Nazis who fled to Egypt and Syria. See this article written by its director, Géraldine Schwarz, and published in Le Monde of January 2, 2015.

So I wanted to read this book to learn about this influence, but that is not its main focus. The authors focus on the process of denazification after World War II, from whose chaotic, unfocused, politicized origins emerged human rights laws and eventually war crime tribunals.

Umberto Eco: Heresy and Ur-Fascism

My local book club read Umberto Eco's In the Name of the Rose. While the book itself is a mixed bag through which I struggled (which is not an indictment of the novel, since I struggled through Moby Dick as well), there's a remarkable chapter about the origin of heresy. If you don't want to read the novel, it's worth borrowing it off the library or bookstore shelf and turning to Second Day, Chapter Nones (p. 196). Here are some highlights of the dialogue between William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk.

Film: The Refusal-Story of Franz Jägerstätter, a martyr for justice

THE REFUSAL - Story of Franz Jägerstätter from GNV Team on Vimeo.

I purchased this DVD at the School of the Americas Watch rally in Columbus, Georgia, USA in November 2008. The movie was originally released in West Germany in 1971. This DVD has English subtitles available on-line, but no extra features. It runs for 95 minutes. The DVD label includes the web site for the Center for Christian Nonviolence. I spoke with John Carmodi of the center on January 26, 2009, and he told me that the web site's store was being rebuilt and it should be available again shortly. In the meantime, people who want the DVD can call 302.235.2925. [May 13, 2009-New English language translation of Franz Jägerstätter letter's and writings from prison].