Newsletter: Week 1, 2023
My plans for the newsletter this year, plus this week's reading and listening
After a couple of weeks off, I am back with my weekly newsletter. Rather than my usual three small items of analysis, I thought as I’ve had a bit of an influx of new subscribers I should explain a bit about my work, and what I hope to do with the newsletter this year.
Most of the new interest in the newsletter has come via my article The Best Interests Of The Abuser – about how family courts worldwide have been captured by the concept of “parental alienation” – leading to an institutional suspicion towards mothers and a careless indifference to the welfare of children. This has become an issue I have spent a lot of time working on over the past few years, and have been able to develop a network of extraordinary women who work tirelessly to try and improve the legal and social services systems in their countries.
However, primarily my work is in foreign affairs and political science. Yet, that does not mean that these are mutually exclusive issues. There is a strong psychological link between the behaviours of abusive, controlling, men and authoritarian regimes. Or, more broadly, between domestic violence, war and terrorism. If the main objective of the field of International Relations is to establish peace and stability then it needs to take the world’s primary security problem – domestic violence – far more seriously. These linkages I sought to explain in an article called Our Reckoning With Machismo, written after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For a wider-screen explanation of the ideas that inform the newsletter – and its name – you can read an explanatory piece here.
Moving forward into 2023 there are will be a few different styles of posts I will make. The first will be the continuation of the weekly newsletter which will provide some small items of analysis, some of the articles and podcasts I’ve read and listened to over the past week, and a themed playlist. You can find a cumulative playlist here. The newsletter will also feature a photo I’ve taken during the week.
Several weeks ago I launched a new feature by writing a profile of Aditi Mukund from the Kubernein Initiative in Mumbai. I have several other amazing researchers identified that I am keen to write on. The hope is to publish a profile each fortnight. There are many great emerging thinkers who don’t get the exposure they deserve – these profiles will be mostly women – so I am hoping to provide a platform for their ideas, and my engagement with their work.
Alongside these profiles I shall also publish essays on a range of topics that interest me. These will mostly be my attempts to try and explain broader, more widescreen, issues, rather than responses to news events. I have several essays in the works, but these are usually complex, long term projects that take a while to come together, so there won’t be a schedule for these posts. They will just be published when I’m happy with them.
There may also be some cross-pollination from my much-neglected music site Lunch Hour Pops – where I take albums or songs and place them in their wider cultural context, or explore their political or philosophical themes (all very pretentious stuff).
Hopefully I will be able to provide enough interesting articles and ideas to be worthy of your generous subscriptions.
This Week’s Reading and Listening
Moral Authority: Australia At The Crossroads
Grant Wyeth - The Diplomat
“Consideration of how Australia projects a clear set of positive values to the world should not be considered naive or an extravagance. We are currently in an era of heightened cynicism, where trust in institutions is low and hypocrisy is deemed to be the currency states trade in. This is a deeply destabilising force that requires regaining people’s trust by demonstrating moral intent.
Australia rightly recognises that support for Ukraine is one of the great moral tests of our era, but the principles that underpin this support should be extrapolated and applied to climate change, the treatment of asylum seekers and domestic violence as well. These are not unrelated issues; they are about placing a commitment to human security at the heart of Australia’s national strategy.”
Australia: The Complacent Country?
Grant Wyeth - The Diplomat
“Each country has a story that it sells to the world based on what it produces, what its geography entails and what kind of culture it has. For Australia this story has been fairly simple – it’s a country that digs stuff up and ships it overseas and then goes to the beach for a barbeque. While this may overlook much of Australia’s diversity – and also its being an overwhelmingly urban country – it is in general an external image that Australia is comfortable with. Or at least one that the country has made no real effort to change. “
Helen Lewis - BBC Four
An excellent podcast series from Helen Lewis on the phenomenon of online '“gurus” who have become ubiquitous and highly influential over the past decade – from peculiar wellness coaches, male supremacists, or crypto bros. The series seeks to understand why we are so susceptible to grifters claiming they hold superior or suppressed knowledge, and the new forms of anti-social socialisation created by the digital world.
What’s a ‘Corrected’ Version of Indian History?
S.K Arun Murthi - The Wire
“Teaching a ‘corrected’ version of history, needless to say, is just another attempt on the part of the government institutions to glorify India’s ‘ancient traditions’ as something unique and progressive.
In its effort to showcase India’s glorified past, the current dispensation’s penchant for tracing any modern idea in any field of study – be it science or politics or even any of the social sciences – to the ancient Indian civilisation continues unabated. It appropriates particularly those ideas which enable it to demonstrate the superiority of the ancient Hindu civilisation.”
Benedict Rogers - Foreign Policy
“Throughout last year, the junta continued its crackdown with extraordinary intensity. At least four pro-democracy leaders, including a former parliamentarian, were executed while another 10 leaders—including seven university students—were sentenced to death. The military torched the home village of the country’s first ever Catholic cardinal, Charles Maung Bo, possibly as a deliberate warning to Charles Maung Bo, who is an outspoken activist, and killing seven civilians, including a 9-year-old boy. Dozens of airstrikes have hit villages across the country, around 13,000 political prisoners languish in jail, and thousands of people have been killed or driven from their homes.”
The Ukraine War Has Made Predictions Futile
Lawerence Freedman - The New Statesman
“Over the past few months what has become extraordinary is the widening gap between Putin’s claimed objectives and the military capabilities at his disposal. There have been a number of points at which Putin might have moved to cut his losses – the retreat from Kyiv in late March or after the Ukrainian offensives in September. In both these cases he doubled down.
Since early September my analysis of Putin and his strategy has become much bleaker. He has come to frame this war as a sort of civilisational struggle, far more than an effort to protect Russian-language speakers in Donbas. As soon as the annexation of the four Ukrainian provinces was announced in September it was evident that he was making a serious peace deal almost impossible.”
There Is Nothing Cheaper In Russia Than Human Life
Klaus Stimeder - Der Standard
“Russian high culture is not uniformly and unambiguously in defence of imperialism. Still, it has long served to cloak the extreme violence and inhumanity that characterises Russian society and Russia's actions around the world. The true Russian tradition, say far too many well-intentioned people like Pope Francis, is that of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Tchaikovsky. They then turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated by successive Russian and Soviet tyrants, the mentality of the vast majority of Russian people, and the atrocious conditions of life in the country. Or they may admit that it is precisely due to the great suffering of the Russian people – and those around them – that we have Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Tchaikovsky.”
Russia’s Cultural War Amid Ukraine Conflict
Anonymous – New Lines Magazine
“These artists are part of a new generation that has risen to prominence since the Soviet Union’s collapse some 30 years ago. They are confident, independent and internationally connected, having traveled and worked with Western museums. While they forged a new identity, Russian art emerged onto the global stage. They have no intention of going back to socialist realism and communist isolation. Within Russians’ living memory, the Soviet state imposed its narrow definition of culture, forbidding ideas like abstract art, expressionism, conceptualism and more. Many artists defied the strict rules and worked underground, holding unofficial exhibitions within their own circles. But the KGB, the Soviet security services, infiltrated the underground art scene and, up until the 1980s, an uncompromising state quashed any signs of experimentation in culture.
Today, Russia’s contemporary artists present a powerful threat to the compliant, conventional Russian culture preferred by Putin, who never understood or liked their art, with its fluid rules and radical treatment of topics like national identity, history and gender.”
Aluf Benn - Foreign Affairs
“As he formed his new government, Netanyahu tried to distance himself from his ultra-Orthodox, racist, and homophobic partners. He gave interviews to conservative U.S. outlets in which he promised to be in charge rather than bow to his political partners, even as he negotiated deals that explicitly called for measures to promote Jewish supremacy. Netanyahu returned, in other words, to playing two roles at once: assuring liberals that he would protect their secular lifestyle from religious zeal while telling conservatives that he would fulfil their dreams.
In reality, of course, Netanyahu cannot have it both ways, and the radical coalition reveals his true, autocratic intentions. So do his proposed constitutional reforms, which sit explicitly at the top of the government’s agenda. They are aimed at destroying the independence of the judiciary and breaking up a system in which legal advisers have veto power over ministerial and bureaucratic decision-making: one proposal would give the government the power to overrule Supreme Court decisions.”
John Ganz - Unpopular Front
“Figures like Tate belong to the sociological category Arendt called “the mob,” whose leaders are typified by their “failure in professional and social life, perversion and disaster in private life.” To understand how she uses the term, imagine an identity between its two senses: an unruly, menace in the streets, and the Mafia, gangsters plotting in their hideouts. In its way, the mob is just the bourgeoisie stripped of hypocrisy—it possesses many of the same views of shared by normal people but “desublimated,” as it were. Respectable society has a certain admiration and even affection for the spirit and gumption of mobsters, as we witness in the occasional public adulation of people like John Gotti. Part of the cultural elite is also fascinated by the mob: to them they supposedly represent life lived with a laudable “honesty,” as opposed the boredom, convenient lies, and drabness of the mainstream. The mob loves strongmen and plebiscites, sees the world in terms secret plots and conspiracies, and turns frequently to forms of social Darwinism or racism to confirm its worldview. To paraphrase a fellow, for domination, veiled by religious and political illusions, the mob substitutes naked, shameless, direct, brutal domination.”
Cities Need to Realise the Value of Emotional Design
Thomas Heatherwick - Wired
“Modern buildings have become boring—flat, plain, shiny, rectangular, monotonous, anonymous, characterless, and dull. At best, these structures make us feel nothing. At worst, they can have a negative impact on our mental health and physical stress. For instance, in 1984 Roger Ulrich, a health care design researcher, conducted a pioneering study that proved a room with a view to nature accelerated the post-operative recovery of patients. Today, there’s much more evidence to show that bad design can have a range of negative consequences, with studies showing that it can cause mental stress and even lead to crime and antisocial behaviour.
By 2050, seven out of 10 people worldwide will live in a city. Yet, despite the modern world’s technological advances, we have continued to create soulless spaces that reflect none of this genius. Whether you’re in downtown Hong Kong, Paris’s financial district, or central Toronto, the human touch has vanished from urban design while social isolation is growing and people are feeling increasingly overwhelmed and burnt out.”
This week’s playlist is about emerging out of the break and generating some enthusiasm.