Politics:
I spent the last week reading Stefan Zweig's posthumously published autobiography The World of Yesterday (Die Welt von Gestern, in German). It's a tragic book in the sense that the author writes about his deep affection for a world that no longer exist - the Habsburg Vienna of his early years - and from a position of indefinite exile in Brazil with no prospect of ever returning to his home. Zweig died in Petrópolis in 1942. What struck me about the book is how Zweig reckons, as a self-declared non-political artist who is driven by reverence for great masters of the arts, many of whom he name-drops in the book (and has long-standing friendships with), with the radical changes in the world after WW1. Zweig approaches this not as a politically engaged person or activist, but as a (culturally and socially - there are sequences in the 20s that find him horrified at the prospect of women cutting their hair short and men becoming more feminine, and a very bourgeois - he's only in his thirties at this point! - outrage at queerness) conservative, widely read and highly respective establishment artist who realises bit by bit what is happening and how dangerous it is becoming - for the most part perched in Salzburg (there isn't much reflection on Austria's homegrown Dollfuß/Schuschnigg authoritarianism that made the ground so fertile for the Nazi takeover) and watching what is occurring across the border in Bavaria. The two avenues we have now, in 2025, to diagnose the rise of authoritarianism and fascism, is comparisons with the past (not available to Zweig) and keeping track of the things that would have been unthinkable and out-of-the-ordinary but have now become normal (from Zweig's perspective: the deliberate cruelty of the new laws, the deliberate use of bureaucracy to terrorise people, his shunning by society). As much as I found parts of the book frustrating, especially his rose-coloured view of a past from the perspective of someone extremely privileged and not really considering how other classes or people in other parts of the empire may have experiences the same years, I've found it useful as a document for reference.
The great In Bed With the Right podcast has been running a series of episodes that tracks the Nazi regime month-by-month through 1933 as those months are passing in 2025 with the same goal of focusing on how quickly the concept of "normal" radically changed and how it affected people. It's been in my mind while watching the videos and reading the reports about the protests against the escalating Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Los Angeles, which are targeting regular people who are going to work, daycare centres, or attending church services. The decision to go over the Governor of California's head to federalise the California National Guard (a federal judge's order to overturn this has been blocked by the US appeals court), which hasn't happened since Lyndon Johnson sent troops to protect civil rights protestors in Alabama, feels like a test case to see how far the judiciary has been undermined and how willing the country is to tolerate a militarisation of the streets (Trump also deployed active-duty Marines to LA). The disproportional response has highlighted the level of violence deployed by police against peaceful protestors and journalists.
In Minnesota, a politically motivated gunman disguised as a police officer killed Democratic former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and attempted to assassinate another Democratic lawmaker, John Hoffman.
And into this context of rising political violence and a changed international order comes Israel's bombing campaign against Iran, "which began with attacks on air defences, nuclear sites and the military chain of command, but appears to have drifted towards a war of attrition focused on Iran’s oil and gas industry and on the capital."
Pop Culture:
I've been re-watching all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine over the first half of 2025, which has been my first full revisiting of the show since I originally watched it when it came out, and it still stands out as the most ambitious show to ever come out of the Star Trek universe. It's almost prophetic in its recasting of Starfleet and the Federation as a less idealistic construct than before (or since) - here, there's a secret organisation within that is willing to commit genocide against an opponent (it is almost prophetic as a show that ended before 9/11 happened but shows the length that a threatened institution will go to in the face of an enemy that can't be clearly identified), and so many episodes of the show focus on the shades of grey within a resistance movement against a brutal military occupation (and then there's episodes like Far Beyond the Stars, which stand out as some of the best television ever made). I've followed it up by catching up with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which goes the opposite direction: it's a love letter to the original show, the idea of scientific research and beauty (sometimes horror) of diversity in these new frontiers, telling mostly self-contained stories (that frequently feel like they are, or are based on, short stories), with so much love and sense of humour and an unapologetic moral compass (one episode is essentially dedicated to the idea of asylum - the grace of an organisation that can grant it and provide safety, and the moral imperative to do so when asked). The cast is amazing throughout, but I think there's something particularly magical in Ethan Peck taking up such a beloved character and making him his own. I didn't expect to love it as much as I do but it functions like a balm without feeling like it ignores the world that has created it. It's strange to have this duality of Andor's second and final season, which feels like the most relevant season of television for this particular moment, and Strange New Worlds, a hopeful portrait of a different future that seems so impossible to reach now.
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