Authoritarianism/AltRight/Nazis

Environ

Communic

Art/Design

The Central Files Department maintained the core administrative records of the New York World's Fair 1939 /1940 Corporation and served as a vital resource to the hundreds of executives and administrators responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Fair.

*(jpegs) 1939–40 World's Fair digitized image archive tagged to Files

https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/new-york-worlds-fair-1939-1940-records#/?tab=navigation

Jessica Weglein, Wendy Scheir, Jill Peterson, Susan Malsbury, and Michelle Schwartz

Provenance, scope, guide, index for the Central Files

https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/nywf39fa.pdf

placesjournal.org

*(illus) How the 1939 World’s Fair anticipated our current obsession with urban data science and “smart” cities.

https://placesjournal.org/article/indexing-the-world-of-tomorrow-1939-worlds-fair/?cn-reloaded=1#0

Armen Avanessian and Suhail Malik

dismagazine.com

Time is changing. Human agency and experience lose their primacy in the complexity and scale of social organization today. The leading actors are instead complex systems, infrastructures and networks in which the future replaces the present as the structuring condition of time. As the political Left and Right struggle to deal with this new situation, we are increasingly wholly pre-empted and post-everything.

http://dismagazine.com/discussion/81924/the-time-complex-postcontemporary/

Armen Avanessian and Suhail Malik

dismagazine.com

Alex Williams & Nick Srnicek

dismagazine.com

Every ‘future’ inscribes a demand upon the present. This is so whether at the level of human imagination, or within the sphere of political or aesthetic action necessary to reach towards their realisation. Futures make explicit the implicit contents of our own times, crystallising trajectories, tendencies, projects, theories and contingencies. Moreover, futures map the absent within the present, the presents which could never come into actuality, the wreckage of dreams past and desires vanquished. Futures are speculative, libidinal, suggestive and, perhaps, ultimately unattainable.

http://dismagazine.com/blog/81975/what-is-at-stake-in-the-future-alex-williams-nick-srnicek/

vimeo.com/blog/post/staff-pick-premiere-american-psychosis

*(video) Pulitzer-prize winning Journalist, Author and Activist Chris Hedges, discusses modern day consumerism, totalitarian corporate power and living in a culture dominated by pervasive illusion. Hedges caught the eye of filmmaker Amanda Zackem, when he succinctly spelled out the problems with totalitarian capitalism and corporate power. The issues of totalitarian capitalism and totalitarian corporate power need to be discussed more openly and honestly in our national dialogue,” says Zackem. ..Our current culture leaves no time for emotional processing or reflection, instead we simply move on to the next headline or viral video. We live in a culture of distraction. The humanities reason for existence is to stimulate critical thought. Once critical thought is replaced by overt and subliminal consumer messaging there are no more humanities, and even more sadly, we begin to lose our own humanity. ..The film initiated discussion about the difficulty in creating art that elicits emotion, critical thought, and action, and how this film provided a vessel for all. This film has instigated conversation about how consumerism and corporate power should not be what unites us, and inspired people to get involved in changing these structures. Americanpsychosis.com americancanary.org

Westinghouse TIme Capsule dedication with Robert Moses

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1941-10-04#folio=014

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/technology/inside-amazon-go-a-store-of-the-future.html

https://www.ukpressonline.co.uk/ukpressonline/?sf=express

orwelldiaries.wordpress.com

https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/3939-greenwich/

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm

Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs, Benjamin wrote the brief essay shortly before attempting to escape from Vichy France, where French collaborationist government officials were handing over Jewish refugees like Benjamin to the Nazi Gestapo. Theses is the last major work Benjamin completed before fleeing to Spain where, fearing Nazi capture, he committed suicide in September 1940.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm

enneadlab.org

http://www.enneadlab.org/projects/rethinking-refugee-communities

Many tech workers are forcing their employers to reconsider how their products are being used by the federal government. When will that activism begin at Twitter?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/technology/employee-uprisings-twitter.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/technology/flying-taxis.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/science/falcon-heavy-spacex-elon-musk.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/14/business/detroit-auto-show.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

The automaker said, in a filing with the Commerce Department, that new trade barriers “could lead to a smaller G.M.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/business/automakers-tariffs-job-cuts.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

JH: You talk about this idea of “administrative evil.” You explain that when they’re part of a bureaucracy that affirms their actions, individuals do things that they would not necessarily do outside of that system. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
MG: Administrative evil is a psychological concept that came out after the Holocaust when people started trying to explain how ordinary Germans could have participated in this genocide. The theory is that when people are part of large bureaucracies like the criminal-justice system, and everyone is sort of moving in lockstep, in unison, and they’re following certain policies, they can do things that cause great injustice. Things that are really unfair, like fight to keep an innocent person in prison. When you work in a bureaucracy like that, the values of the bureaucracy—and the steps you’re supposed to take to function within it—replace your internal moral compass.

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-does-our-justice-system-fight-so-hard-to-keep-innocent-people-behind-bars/

Among the items for sale on the site were Nazi-themed action figures and onesies for babies stamped with alt-right images, the report said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/amazon-racist-white-supremacist-report.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

The company will be taking part in the suppression of freedoms abroad while espousing high-minded values at home.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/opinion/apple-china-data.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Inmates are barred from reading titles from best-selling publications to the obscure because they run afoul of prison guidelines, like having graphic sexual content.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/us/banned-books-texas-prisons.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

NY Review of Books

Book review on: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America; and The One Percent Solution: How Corporations are Remaking America One State at a Time

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/07/big-money-rules/

NY Review of Books

Book revieew on The Second Coming of the KKK; and Ku Klux Kulture

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/07/ku-klux-klambakes/

http://susanbuckmorss.info

The dream of the twentieth century was the construction of mass utopia. As the century closes, this dream is being left behind; the belief that industrial modernization can bring about the good society by overcoming material scarcity for all has been challenged by the disintegration of European socialism, capitalist restructuring, and ecological constraints. The larger social vision has given way to private dreams of material happiness and to political cynicism. ... (also: her website's 'constellations construction as model for 'pavilion' metaphor...)

http://susanbuckmorss.info/books/dreamworld-and-catastrophe/

http://www.librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/

*(interactive) Harvard MetaLab database documentary with film on the Harvard Library Depository Annex (great narrative structure)

http://susanbuckmorss.info/text/visual-empire/

Just when the nation-state appeared to be waning in significance, national sovereignty is back in the spotlight.

Workers across the technology industry are forcing their employers to reconsider how their products are being used by the United States government...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/technology/employee-uprisings-twitter.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=793857

Dept. of Defense: Nuclear Weapons Personnel Reliability Program

The internet itself is physically rooted in environmentally taxing servers — it would be “the sixth largest country if based on how much electricity it consumes.”

Keith Collins and Jasmine Lee

*(interactive) Trade war dynamic diagram and timeline

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/11/business/trade-war.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

President Trump has inspired widespread outrage and disgust with his crude, racist disparagement of Haiti, El Salvador and African nations and the predominantly black and brown immigrants from these places...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/opinion/trumps-anti-immigrant-racism-represents-an-american-tradition.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Smithsonian.com

From xenophobia to conspiracy theories, the Know Nothing party launched a nativist movement whose effects are still felt today

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/

Oxford Univ. Press

When Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1924, he held up a foreign law as a model for his program of racial purification: The U.S. Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which prohibited the immigration of those with hereditary illnesses and entire ethnic groups...

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-nazi-connection-9780195149784?cc=us&lang=en&

He has been president for more than a year — so why is he still holding rallies?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/magazine/donald-trump-rallies-campaigning-president.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Fascism poses a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/sunday/trump-fascism-madeleine-albright.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975 collects two decades of Hannah Arendt’s essays.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/books/review/hannah-arendt-thinking-without-a-banister.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Katie Rogers and Peter Baker

Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian officials on Monday, joining a coordinated campaign by two dozen countries to retaliate for the poisoning ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/world/europe/trump-russia-expel-european-union.html?emc=edit_th_180327&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=488277160327

The high probability that the Russian state had carried out the poisoning of a former Russian spy on British soil.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/world/europe/russia-poisoning-expulsions.html?emc=edit_th_180327&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=488277160327

Since the end of World War II, the victorious powers have promoted, trade, democracy and collective security. Now, that order is under assault.. In the aftermath of World War II, the victorious Western countries forged institutions — NATO, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/business/nato-european-union.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

US bases are wreaking havoc to the health and well-being of communities across the world.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-us-has-military-bases-in-172-countries-all-of-them-must-close/

The American Bipartisan Policy Establishment Declares Its ‘Second Cold War’ vs. Russia After Years of Denying It

The most influential US foreign-policy membership society has issued a report affirming the new Cold War and its eagerness to fight it.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-american-bipartisan-policy-establishment-declares-its-second-cold-war-vs-russia-after-years-of-denying-it/

The National Archives, UK

Oswald Mosley's political movements the New Party and the British Union of Fascists; ..

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/f3ac1d22-9e2a-4462-bb89-838224ba08cb

Marc Santora and Hana de Goeij

A presidential vote will help decide whether the Czech Republic continues to be drawn east toward Russia and China or fully re-embraces the European Union.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/14/world/europe/czech-election-populism-milos-zeman.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Brand USA hosts 13th annual U.S. – China Tourism Leadership Summit in Seattle, Washington

https://www.thebrandusa.com/

Brand USA, the destination marketing organization for the United States, joined the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, to host the 13th annual U.S. – China Tourism Leadership Summit in Seattle, Washington, from September 18-20. ...

https://www.thebrandusa.com/media-events/news/brand-usa-hosts-13th-annual-us-%E2%80%93-china-tourism-leadership-summit-seattle

Caligula; concerns about his mental health, awakened a dormant memory of a scene in the 1970s TV adaptation of Robert Graves’s classic novel of ancient Rome, “I, Claudius.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/opinion/mr-president-your-toga-is-showing.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Tariffs and other misguided policies have isolated the United States when it needs strong alliances to deal with China’s growing power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/opinion/us-allies-china-g7-canada-tariffs.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

American Collapse Might be the Fastest and Hardest in Modern History. Here’s Why.

https://eand.co/why-americas-collapsing-at-light-speed-da304156dff0

Migrants Are on the Rise Around the World, and Myths About Them Are Shaping Attitudes

Eduardo Porter and Karl Russell

*(infographic) Immigration is reshaping societies around the globe.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/20/business/economy/immigration-economic-impact.html

NBC/YouTube

*(video) Everyone In China Is Getting A 'Social Credit Score'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4Gr-HLM7Qk&feature=youtu.be

With millions of cameras and billions of lines of code, China is building a high-tech authoritarian future. Beijing is embracing technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence to identify and track 1.4 billion people. It wants to assemble a vast and unprecedented national surveillance system, with crucial help from its thriving technology industry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-technology.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Nancy Bauer, Alice Crary and Sandra Laugier

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/opinion/stanley-cavell-and-the-american-contradiction.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Jeremy W. Peters and Nathaniel Popper

He was pushed out of the White House and then Breitbart News. Now he is focused on cryptocurrencies, which he thinks can disrupt the financial world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/technology/steve-bannon-bitcoin.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Under development for six years, IBM Debater reflects a push toward machines that talk like humans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/technology/ibm-debater-artificial-intelligence.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Trump turns his back on everything that made us great.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/opinion/immigration-trump-children-american-empire.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Authoritarianism is on the march across much of the world, but its advance tends to be relatively quiet and gradual, so that it’s hard to point to a single moment and say, this is the day democracy ended. You just wake up one morning and realize that it’s gone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/opinion/trump-democracy.html?searchResultPosition=1

Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Penguin Random House

Once a would‑be authoritarian makes it to power, democra­cies face a second critical test: Will the autocratic leader subvert democratic institutions or be constrained by them? America failed the first test in November 2016, when we elected a president with a dubious allegiance to democratic norms. How serious is the threat now? Many observers take comfort in our Constitution, which was designed precisely to thwart and contain demagogues like Donald Trump.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/

A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.”

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062802187/fascism-a-warning/

On a Sunday morning in 2016, Donald Trump retweeted a quote from Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, Nazi ally, and leader of the first major Fascist movement.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/madeleine-albright-warns-of-a-new-fascism-and-trump

Decades from now, we may look back at the first weeks of June 2018 as a turning point in world history: the end of the liberal order.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/opinion/sunday/trump-china-america-first.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Katie Rogers and Kenneth P. Vogel

protesters blasted audio of children crying in detainment centers and the homeland security secretary was heckled at a nearby Mexican restaurant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/trump-donors-america-first.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

My company, Cummins, and many other U.S. manufacturers needs strong ties to global markets to grow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/opinion/trump-tariffs-hurt-manufacturing-jobs.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

United States Steel Corporation, which owns a plant in Granite City, Ill., credits President Trump’s tariffs with enabling it to start up two idled blast furnaces.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/us/politics/trump-steel-tariffs.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

The president has embraced McCarthy-era scare tactics. We may need a constitutional amendment to guarantee that citizenship can’t be revoked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/opinion/trump-birthright-citizenship-mccarthy.html

A strong correlation has been observed between increases in hate crimes against French Jews and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/world/europe/france-new-anti-semitism.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

The isolated base is one of the most striking symbols of Beijing’s long push to transform Latin America and shape its future for generations to come — often in ways that directly undermine the United States’ political, economic and strategic power in the region.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/world/americas/china-latin-america.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Encyclopedia Britannica

Trump’s plan to roll back a major environmental rule and let cars emit more tailpipe pollution, ..

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/climate/trump-auto-pollution-rollback.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Scott M. Stringer and Javier H. Valdés

The industry running many immigrant detention facilities is morally abhorrent and fails a basic risk assessment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/opinion/private-prisons-immigration-divest.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Global unregulated sites: With their eyes on blockchain jobs and revenue, small countries and territories are competing to become the go-to destinations for entrepreneurs and projects.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/technology/cryptocurrency-bermuda-malta-gibraltar.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Even asking the people who work with blockchains to define the technology, you are likely to get a stuttering response.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/business/dealbook/blockchains-guide-information.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Nathaniel Popper and Guilbert Gates

Bitcoin process diagram, put near Lombardi global networks

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/27/business/dealbook/blockchain-currencies.html

ICIJ (Int'l Consortium of Investigative Journalists)

*(interactive) The Panama Papers expose the internal operations of one of the world’s leading firms in incorporation of offshore entities, Panama-headquartered Mossack Fonseca. The 2.6 terabyte trove of data at the core of this investigation contains nearly 40 years of records, and includes information about more than 210,000 companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/explore-panama-papers-key-figures/

Transparint Blog

The documents are a collection of 11.5 million leaked internal records from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, a leading firm in the incorporation of offshore entities. The 2.6 terabytes of data includes information from 1977 through the end of 2015, and highlight possible examples of money laundering, sanction and tax evasion.

http://transparint.com/blog/2016/04/03/leaked-documents-from-panamanian-law-firm-mossack-fonseca/

*(illus) The key difference is among regional cultures tracing back to the nation’s colonization (great map: put near Intolerance one)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/opinion/urban-rural-united-states-regions-midterms.html

To understand why white supremacists back the president, we have to understand the books that define their worldview.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/opinion/inside-the-world-of-racist-science-fiction.html

Tiffany Hsu and Alan Feuer

The varied efforts, in courthouses and legislatures, are aimed at Defense Distributed, a Texas-based nonprofit organization that won permission last month from the State Department to post schematics for homemade firearms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/business/downloadable-blueprints-printable-guns.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li

Belt and Road: But five years in, smaller, less impactful projects are finding cover under the umbrella of Belt and Road, using the program to slip past restrictions on foreign investment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/business/china-belt-and-road.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Cade Metz

Google, reeling from an employee protest over the use of artificial intelligence for military purposes, said Thursday that it would not use A.I. for weapons or for surveillance that violates human rights. But it will continue to work with governments and the military.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/technology/google-artificial-intelligence-weapons.html

Google’s efforts to build delivery drones and internet-beaming balloons are no longer just science projects.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/technology/google-drones-internet-balloons.html

But in the mid-20th century, businesses used it as a powerful tool in hiring and management, changing the trajectories of many workers’ lives.

https://forge.medium.com/the-capitalist-origins-of-the-myers-briggs-personality-test-309187757d4e

To examine a few of these strategies, let’s take a quick look at a single day in American news: August 30, 2018.

https://medium.com/@davepell/today-in-fascism-94b30d3944fb