Review of "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed

Another walk book. Coming so soon after High Caucasus, it really is enough to put you off the idea of hiking holidays for life - the fear, the wild animals, the risk of death...

I'd already watched the film and mainly liked it. The book is less elegiac, more about the mechanics of the trip and the pain of actually walking that much. Cheryl doesn't hide the multiple bad decisions she makes, and even though I knew she survived to write the book parts of it were really scary. Some of it was not good to be reading last thing at night, even though it was gripping. Lots about her addiction, bad relationships, and troubled upbringing. 

Review of "Flags in Berlin: An account of life in Berlin 1928-1945" by Biddy Youngday

A self-published book written by the grandmother of my friend Charles (Bill) Brimacombe, with support from his aunt (I think), this is a very matter-of-fact account of life in Germany during the rise of the Nazis and then their rule. Biddy was an upper-middle class woman who had led a sheltered life, but was "spirited" and ran away from her family to Germany, where she married a working-class German man. They both became Communists, and she writes about their activities - in the tail end of Weimar and then under Nazi rule - in a somewhat dispassionate way, though the book is all the more revealing for that.

Biddy's British passport was cancelled so that she could stay in Germany, but she held on to the document, which enabled her and daughters to leave the Soviet occupation zone and return to Britain at the end of the war. Her account of her mental breakdown, and time inside various psychiatric facilities, when she's back in Britain is the hardest part of the book to read.

Review of Mango

Fairly lame and predictable Danish romcom about a hard professional woman in the hotel business who is sent to the south of Spain to buy up a mango farm and turn it into a luxury hotel, but ends up implausibly falling in love with the (Danish) owner and repairing her relationship with her teenage daughter into the bargain.

Watched on Netflix, and not good enough to justify the subscription.

Review of "High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia’s Haunted Hinterland" by Tom Parfitt

I was expecting a sort of "Between the Wood and The Water" set in the Caucasus, but it turned out to be not so much of a posh-boy jaunt with heartwarming characters, and much more gruelling. Lots more fear (bears and wild boar, and the constant scanning for Islamist fighters), lots more unpleasantness - the food is shit much of the time, the accommodation terrible, the police and bureaucrats corrupt and menacing. From time to time he appreciates the beauty of his surroundings, but he also details the physical discomfort of lots of walking - feet, legs, hips...

And in the background there's his PTSD from his experiences in actual terrorist episodes in Beslan and elsewhere. 

So not an easy read, or a good one for night-time, but worth the time.

Review of American Fiction

Surprisingly thoughtful and interesting film, about the world of books and authors, but also about race and class in contemporary America. The central character is a Black professor who writes high-culture novels that don't sell very well, overshadowed by other writers who do "ghetto" novels even though they are no more out of the ghetto than he is. As a prank he writes a ghetto novel, and then...well, I don't have to spell it all out.

Definitely worth watching. We watched it on BBC iPlayer via our smart TV's native capabilities - i.e. not via casting from the smartphone app.

Review of "The Rose of Sebastopol" by Katherine McMahon

Not completely sure about this one. I didn't enjoy it all that much. It was a bit dull some of the time, and I found myself grinding through it very slowly, which is never a good sign. Some of the writing felt very clunky, like it could have done with a further edit.

And yet I kept going, partly because I wanted to find out what happened to the characters, and along the way I found a lot that I hadn't known about Victorian medicine, and battlefield medicine (apparently the Russians invented triage), and about the Crimean War - I hadn't appreciated quite how bloody that was, almost like a trial run for WW1.

Review of The Ballad of Wallis Island

Beautiful slow poignant movie, which nevertheless manages to be quite funny. It's about a folk duo who were lovers but broke up and stopped playing together, and a lottery-winner superfan who wants to get them together for a private concert, just for him, on a lonely island off the Welsh coast.

Watched via informal distribution and USB stick.

Review of O Brother Where Art Thou

Watched again in the Middle Floor at Springhill, from a DVD, and realised that though I had warm and fuzzy feelings about this film, I'd forgotten almost all of it.

Anyway, it was great, even after 25 years - fabulous music, sharp dialogue, a good and funny plot, and good politics. The set-piece with the KKK rally, the discovery that the "reform" anti-corruption candidate for governor is the Grand Wizard, all feels very topical.

Feeding the hand that bites us

Last weekend I attended some of the Festival of Commoning, held in Stroud. There were lots of interesting talks and discussions, but there was one particularly significant moment for me. Jem Bendell, famous as a guru of XR and Deep Adaption, was down to speak on “Great Reclamation”. In retrospect the title of his talk ought perhaps to have rung a few alarm bells, but it didn’t - one assumes that an event like this ought to be a relatively safe place. 

He didn’t talk about climate or deep adaptation at all - the focus of his talk was a call for restrictions on foreigners buying or owning land in Britain. I don’t have a very strong view on this. I’m aware that lots of other countries have such restrictions, and there’s room for a balanced, evidence-based discussion on what the impact might be on the affordability of homes in Britain.

The trouble was that the language that he used was very strongly reminiscent of that used by the far right. He talked about “globalists” and “international bankers”. He spoke about how these people were “sucking the life blood out of our country”, and he said that this was directly linked to “our” children deciding not to have babies. It was all rather “Great Replacement”, and the title may have been a deliberate referece - if it wasn’t, then it’s shocking that no-one noticed. (You can see a version of what he said on his blog here, and judge for yourself whether my reaction was justified).

So when it was time for questions and contributions, I stuck my hand up and pointed this out, saying that on a day when Tommy Robinson had brought 100.000 foot soldiers on to the streets of London, it was a bad day to be fooling around with economic nationalism. I said that “globalists” was often a dogwhistle for Jews, and that focusing on “foreign” ownership of property made it seem as if it was OK for the Duke of Westminster to own huge amounts of property in Britain because he was “one of us” - in Bendell’s word, a citizen.

It would have been easy for him to have agreed that the language was - on reflection - a bit unfortunate, and that it wasn’t his intention to align himself with the far right, but he didn’t. He doubled down, said that “globalists” were the source of the problem, and that the suggestion that he might be unconsciously echoing racist and antisemitic rhetoric was just the sort of thing he’d be expecting from “guilt-ridden Guardianistas”. 

Somebody else from the floor joined in, saying that his language was wrong and bad, and that it was of a piece with the sort of thing one heard from the US far right; rather wonderfully, that person turned out to be Carne Ross, the “accidental anarchist” and former diplomat who was one of the later celebrity speakers at the event. Someone else called out that next he would start talking about the Rothschilds. Still Bendell was having none of it; he was in sympathy with Black and Brown people who couldn’t afford housing, and that was down to the globalists.

The final contribution came from a local activist with whom I’ve had my disagreements who made a generous and kind closing remark about me personally, and about the importance of being careful about language.

Afterwards a few people spoke to me - some of the organisers of the festival, who said that I’d been right to bring it up, and that Jem Bendell didn’t really mean it, and we probably agreed. A couple of others said that they’d never heard that “globalist” and “cosmopolitan” were used code-words for Jew, and I perhaps unkindly replied that they ought to get out more.

I was pretty shaken by the experience, though the solidarity I received helped make it better. Reflecting later, I thought it would of course be easy for Jem Bendell to show that he wasn’t a racist. There’s no sign that he’s an antisemite either, in the sense of someone who hates Jews. Apart from a recent engagement with the cause of Palestine and Gaza, he’s not said or written anything touching on the subject.

I think that’s the point. Antisemitism isn’t a feeling (hate), it’s an ideology - one which puts Jews at the centre of explaining how the world works and what’s wrong with it. It’s possible, and even common, to spread this ideology without personally hating Jews, and even to do it in places where there aren’t many Jews. 

And what’s wrong with it isn’t only that it’s hurtful to actual Jewish people, but that it makes everyone else stupider, and less able to understand the world as it really is. That’s the point about the expression “the socialism of fools”. Antisemitism isn’t just something that is promoted by stupid people, but something that helps to make people stupider.

AFTERWORD: Jem Bendell wrote a response to this post, which is published here. Once again, I wish to make it clear that I am not accusing Jem Bendell of being an antisemite. You can judge for yourself whether the language he uses is helpful to other people who are.

Review of Martha

A sympathetic biopic of Martha Stewart, that makes her seem almost nice. The bad parts aren't ignored, but they are spun and glossed. So we sort of know that she's horrible to minions, but it's OK because she's just a perfectionist, and everyone who was getting at her (like the SEC and the FBI and the DA) did it because she was a successful woman, not because she'd done anything really wrong.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of The Heartbreak Agency

Not-very-good German romcom - a woman starts an agency to help people suffering from heartbreak after break-ups, a journalist writes a mean article about it. He gets sacked by his new young boss because he won't retract, and finds himself grovelling for his job back which means he has to write another, nicer article, which includes receiving the heartbreak therapy...and he and the agency woman end up falling for each other, obvs...

The best bit is the location, which includes some stunning Baltic coastline, and now I want to go there. Someone seems to have described this as the "worst film ever", and it's not quite that bad.

Watched on Netflix.