Research shows gaps in how EPA, oil industry measure methane

By Carlos Anchondo, Mike Lee | 08/20/2021 06:43 AM EST

Flared natural gas is burned off at a natural gas plant in the Permian Basin on Feb. 5, 2015, in Garden City, Texas. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Before EPA and the energy industry can address climate-warming methane emissions from oil and gas production, they’ll have to improve how they track and estimate it.

That’s according to a recent study that highlights problems with EPA’s data-collection methods and other research showing that major oil companies and some state regulators are underestimating oil field methane emissions.

The evaluations come at a critical time. EPA is preparing to announce tighter regulations on greenhouse gases from the oil and gas industry, and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said addressing short-term pollutants like methane is crucial to limiting the rise in worldwide temperatures (Climatewire, Aug. 10).

"For a long time, in both U.S. and international climate policy-making, it could be said that CO2 sucked all the oxygen from the room,” David Doniger, director of the climate and clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in a blog post yesterday. "But that’s now changing, as scientists, advocates, and government officials recognize the need to curb multiple pollutants — CO2, methane, and other potent short-lived climate pollutants like HFCs — at the same time."

EPA’s method of calculating methane pollution has been widely criticized for underestimating emissions from the oil and gas industry, one of the biggest sources of the potent greenhouse gas (Energywire, Jan. 30, 2020).

Today, the agency calculates its inventory of methane emissions by multiplying the number of potentially leaky components — such as valves and thief hatches on well heads and storage tanks — with an estimate of the average emission rate for each part.

Some groups have said that such a “bottom-up” approach — where a national estimate of emissions is built by scaling up measurements taken at a small sample size of wells or facilities — leads to an underestimation of emissions. They’ve cited the potential to miss so-called super emitters, or a small number of sources that contribute a large percentage of overall emissions.

Studies with a “top-down” approach — using satellites or aircraft to determine total emissions from multiple sites — have found total methane emissions that were double EPA’s estimates.

A study published this month in Nature Communications investigates the gap between “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches.

Researchers from Stanford University, the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and other institutions say EPA’s “detailed, engineering-based” approach works — but it’s relying on faulty data.

EPA is still using equipment counts based on industry self-reporting and a decades-old study, said Arvind Ravikumar, a research associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and study co-author. While the number of some components hasn’t changed, others have, especially because of the surge in shale drilling in the 2010s.

“When the fracking revolution happened, the type of equipment at oil and gas facilities changed,” Ravikumar said. That means today’s equipment could have a different number of components like valves or connectors.

The Stanford researchers focused on the bottom-up approach because it’s the method used by EPA when it writes regulations, and it’s widely used by other governments. They examined "component-level measurement data" drawn from previous studies and concluded EPA’s current estimates underreport emissions caused by liquid storage tanks.

The liquids frequently have methane and other gases dissolved in them, which can be released during normal operations or when hatches and valves are inadvertently left open.

“It’s like opening a beer,” Jeff Rutherford, one of the paper’s authors, said in a news release. “It’s liquid as long as there is high enough pressure, but if you release the pressure, the gas quickly escapes.”

A spokesperson for EPA said the agency looks forward to reviewing the findings.

As the agency prepares its Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, it assesses new studies for data that could inform updates to the annual report (Energywire, March 30).

Ravikumar said he hopes state governments and EPA use the study results to improve their methane estimates.

“It is helpful simply to identify that there is a problem,” Rutherford said in the news release. “But, beyond that, our model offers up some clear actionable steps to improve our inventories and ways operators can adjust their practices that could really make a difference in reducing the amount of methane entering the skies."

“What we find is that if you use more modern data and slightly modified approaches … that the EPA approach can be used to produce an accurate inventory estimate,” Rutherford added in an interview.

Flaring flyovers

Other research shows oil producers that plan to cut their emissions still have problems with methane.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to the equivalent of zero by 2050, had the highest methane intensity among the 15 biggest oil companies, according to data compiled by Geofinancial Analytics and first reported Saturday by Reuters.

The firm analyzed emissions using more than 600,000 satellite images of oil and gas wells and compared the data to the oil companies’ public statements and disclosures. The top three U.S. producers — Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips — also had higher-than-expected emissions intensity, the company said.

The oil companies questioned Geofinancial’s interpretation of the satellite data, saying it may attribute emissions to their wells that were produced by pipelines or other third parties.

“Over time, their models and analysis have the potential to improve as additional information becomes available to them,” a Chevron spokesman told Reuters.

In a separate report published yesterday, researchers with environmental group Earthworks said that more than two-thirds of the gas flares in part of Texas’ Permian Basin have not been permitted by state regulators. The flares are typically installed at oil wells to burn methane and other gases that would otherwise leak to the atmosphere.

Earthworks focused on 227 flares in Reeves County, in the southern part of the Permian Basin near the New Mexico border, and compared them to state permit records. The analysis found that 69% to 84% of the flares didn’t have the required paperwork from the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil regulator. Some of the sites belong to top producers like Shell and Exxon.

“What the commission fails to track, it can’t govern,” the report says.

Industry trade groups and oil and gas companies widely condemned the Earthworks report as misleading and repeatedly noted that some flaring is permissible under a commission rule.

“A short-term observation of a flare from a flyover and absence of an explicit exception does not necessarily mean the observed flaring is illegal,” a spokesman for the Railroad Commission said in an email.

However, the commission — along with oil companies mentioned in the report — didn’t respond when asked for more details about how the unpermitted flares complied with the rules.

When we talk about emissions, we need to talk more about methane

Methane traps 80 times more heat than CO2, so eliminating it first would buy us more time to cut the rest of emissions.

[Photo: felixmizioznikov/iStock]

WORLD CHANGING IDEAS

08-20-21 

FAST COMPANY

In the fight against climate change, CO2 gets more attention than any other greenhouse gas. That’s not surprising: It’s the biggest driver of global warming, and every pound of CO2 emitted now will be around for centuries. But the recent report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also spelled out the importance of reducing the emissions of methane, an even more potent gas. And because methane doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere, any steep cuts in methane emissions now can help buy the world a little more time as we simultaneously work to cut CO2.

“Methane is the next crucial, fast, climate-stabilization prize,” Rick Duke, White House liaison for the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, said at a press conference after the IPCC report was released. “There’s simply nothing that comes close for securing our near-term climate future, buying us crucial time to decarbonize energy and to develop advanced options like negative-emissions technologies.”

Methane, which comes from leaks in oil and gas production, rotting food in landfills, cow burps, and other sources, traps around 80 times as much heat as CO2 when it’s first emitted. But unlike CO2, it’s also gone from the air in roughly 12 years (once it rises high enough, it reacts with other chemicals in the atmosphere and breaks down).

“Half of today’s warming that we’re experiencing from CO2 is from 100-plus years of burning fossil fuels and burning down forests,” says Ilissa Ocko, a senior climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. “So it’s this buildup over time. Methane only lasts in the atmosphere for around a decade.” Right now, methane is responsible for more than a quarter of the global warming that we’re experiencing, and the impacts from reducing it can show up faster than cuts in CO2.

In a study published earlier this year, Ocko and other scientists looked at existing solutions for reducing methane emissions and found that it would be possible to cut emissions in half this decade. As the total concentration of methane drops, it would have a cooling effect that could help counteract the overall trend. It can’t reverse global warming, since CO2 emissions are still rising. But the researchers calculated that it could slow down global warming by 30%.

Some of the changes needed are easy to make and have little or no cost, and the majority need to happen in the oil and gas sector. “Once you know where the emissions are coming from in the gas sector, it can be very simple and straightforward to reduce the emissions,” Ocko says. “It can be as simple as just closing a vent or tightening a valve. There are really simple measures that can be done that are basically plumbing. But the reason why they haven’t been done is because it has been a challenge to identify where the emissions are coming from.” Now, she says, it’s getting easier to track methane emissions through remote sensing tools. The Environmental Defense Fund, for example, is working with partners to launch a methane-tracking satellite in 2022 that will share data about emitters publicly.

At landfills, where rotting garbage releases methane, it’s possible to employ pipes to capture the gas and use it to make electricity or fuel. Composting food waste also significantly reduces methane. On farms, changing the diet for livestock—such as cattle feed supplements made from seaweed that can reduce cow burps—also reduces methane emissions. Manure can be converted into energy. Rice farmers can use techniques like adding compost to reduce methane emissions from rice paddies. In the future, direct air capture machines could also potentially be used to pull methane from the air in the same way that early machines are already capturing CO2.

Some other methane emissions are being driven directly by global warming, as hotter temperatures release more methane from wetlands and melting permafrost—even more reason to do everything possible to slow down warming now.

Methane didn’t initially get as much attention as CO2 because of the way that scientists chose to calculate “global warming potential”: If you look at a longtime horizon, methane doesn’t appear to be quite as bad as it actually is. It was only as the popularity of natural gas grew—ironically, because it was supposed to be a more climate-friendly option than coal—that scientists began focusing on methane. Partly because of the growth of natural gas, methane emissions have grown quickly in the last decade.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to propose new regulations to cut methane leaks and flaring from oil and gas. He also wants to cap thousands of leaking, abandoned oil and gas wells, an initiative that’s part of the current budget reconciliation bill.

Ocko argues that governments also need to set clear goals to cut total methane emissions so that all the solutions that are feasible now are implemented. “I think if we set methane targets by country, or as part of the Paris Agreement,” she says, “it would really speed up the implementation of these options. Because these options exist.”


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley, and contributed to the second edition of the bestselling book "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century."

 

CCS ‘hubs’: Climate fix or boon for fossil fuels?

By Lesley Clark, Carlos Anchondo | 08/12/2021 06:02 AM EST

The Biden administration is supporting the concept of building out regional "hubs" for capturing carbon dioxide from various facilities and moving them along a shared pipeline network, reducing costs for carbon capture and storage developers. Claudine Hellmuth/E&E News (illustration); Francis Chung/E&E News (White House); ProjectManager/Wikipedia (pipeline)

The Biden administration and members of Congress are pushing regional carbon capture “hubs” as a way to slash emissions, despite persistent concerns from environmental justice advocates about the technology.

The massive infrastructure package passed by the Senate this week,, for instance, has provisions that could help create hubs, which would link multiple carbon capture and storage projects in a region. The bill includes the "Storing CO2 And Lowering Emissions (SCALE) Act," which would support the build-out of more CO2 transport and storage infrastructure, including pipelines.

White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy also recently touted the hub concept, connecting the idea with administration goals such as creating jobs in hard-hit energy-producing communities while making progress on climate.

McCarthy cast carbon capture projects — and the build-out of regional hubs — as indicative of how the administration is looking to tackle climate change: by protecting the jobs of energy workers, advancing technology and investing in communities.

President Biden “is not interested in moving forward with a climate strategy that isn’t about creating good union jobs,” said McCarthy, who appeared virtually last month at an event organized by the Labor Energy Partnership, a joint initiative of the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) and the AFL-CIO labor federation, which backs the concept of regional hubs.

She told former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, EFI’s president and CEO, that hubs are “not only essential to get the deployment and scale that we actually need” but an “on-the-ground, in-your-face example of what we have and how we can build it — so people can realize we’re investing in them.”

But how would CCS hubs operate? And how far could they go to cut emissions?

A CCS hub involves shared infrastructure — and a shared pipeline network — that multiple carbon capture projects in the same region feed into. Instead of having each facility that traps CO2 determine its own storage solution and build a pipeline to it, the idea is to first build a shared network of pipelines that would facilitate carbon-capturing projects to spring up around it.

Backers say the development of hubs is critical if the CCS sector is to grow at a large enough scale to address climate change. The concept could lower costs of CCS technology significantly, they say.

“If you want efficiency and cost reductions over time, you need a much larger network in terms of the CO2 transport infrastructure, because the economies of scale and transport — in this case, compressed CO2, or almost anything in a pipeline — are vastly improved if you build a larger pipe to start,” said Brad Crabtree, director of the Carbon Capture Coalition and vice president of carbon management at the Great Plains Institute.

But critics of carbon capture note that multiple projects tied to power plants and large emitters have been canceled in the past decade, raising the question of whether enough CCS projects could affordably come online to support a hub. Others say the technology would extend the life of fossil fuels rather than helping cut emissions in the long term.

“A focus on carbon capture also distracts from the work needed to advance a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels,” said Stephanie Thomas, a researcher and community organizer with Public Citizen in Texas. “Many are interested in fighting climate change. Reducing emissions by ending fossil fuel extraction is the best way to slow the climate crisis.”

Building hubs also will require several key policy changes — and money — that will need to be passed through legislation, observers said, both to increase the number of carbon capture projects and to build out the pipeline infrastructure needed to move greater amounts of carbon dioxide.

Regardless, the hub concept is not an idea that industry is ignoring. One closely watched hub proposal, floated by Exxon Mobil Corp. in April, aims to capture CO2 from manufacturing, petrochemical and electricity generation facilities along the Houston Ship Channel and surrounding industrial areas (Energywire, April 20).

The CO2 would then be “piped into natural geologic formations thousands of feet under the sea floor,” according to Exxon.

John Thompson, technology and markets director at the environmental nonprofit Clean Air Task Force (CATF), said “if you are more serious about addressing climate change, which I think the nation is becoming, then it sort of pushes hubs further into the foreground.”

“The value of a hub is that you improve the economics of transport and storage by either minimizing the distance or increasing the size of pipelines, so that they take advantage of economies of scale, and likewise economies of scale on injection,” he said.

A June report from the Labor Energy Partnership described regional hubs as an “essential step” toward the goal of gigaton-scale emissions cuts in the United States, saying they have been a “successful tool” overseas to encourage the private sector to participate in CO2 capture from a range of emission sources (Energywire, June 30).

Lee Beck, international director of carbon capture at CATF, pointed to hubs under development in Europe and how companies — knowing that there’s a storage destination for their CO2 — have then decided to pursue carbon capture at their facilities.

In the June post, Beck said “at least three projects and one industrial cluster project cite the Northern Lights Project as a potential storage location,” referring to a carbon capture and storage project that aims to take CO2 captured from industrial sources and sequester it under the North Sea.

“When we get this kicked off, it really will demonstrate viability in a way that’s going to attract the private sector,” McCarthy said of hubs, adding the administration is “sending all kinds of signals to the private sector about how we want to rebuild our economy. And this is an essential piece of that.”

A ‘chicken and egg’ problem

Hubs are getting more attention in the United States partly because of the threat posed by the climate crisis and changing public perception about it, according to administration officials and analysts. The International Energy Agency and other organizations have produced analyses finding it’s near impossible to reach global climate targets without extensive growth of carbon capture technology.

Jennifer Wilcox, the principal deputy assistant secretary for Fossil Energy at DOE, said last month that the world is “seeing changes in climate every day” and that opportunities for hubs, in the Houston metro and in other parts of the country like the Ohio River Valley, would help to commercialize carbon capture technologies so “that they are economically viable.”

In fiscal 2022 budget documents, DOE mentions CO2 storage hubs and calls for "field projects that advance characterization and certification of storage complexes in regions."

One of the biggest obstacles to the development of hubs is what some describe as a “chicken and egg” problem, where investors are unlikely to put money into CO2 capture without certainty that there will be storage for the greenhouse gas. Investors on the storage side also may not want to finance those projects unless they’re confident that a steady stream of CO2 is headed their way.

Building a large-volume, high-capacity pipeline system from the start can address that problem, but it’s difficult to get enough participants to fill that capacity from the beginning, according to Crabtree, director of the Carbon Capture Coalition.

To develop a pipeline system where capacity goes unused for a period of time — and get past the “chicken and egg” problem — Congress needs to pass legislation, namely the "SCALE Act" that moved through the Senate, according to Crabtree.

Reintroduced in March before ending up in the infrastructure package, the act was put forward by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, and includes a low-interest loan program for CO2 transport infrastructure projects and grants for initial excess capacity on new infrastructure.

That’s important because beyond the interests of companies involved, there is also a public benefit to CO2 pipelines, Crabtree said.

“This investment will pay itself back over and over again,” Crabtree said, adding “it’s just that from an upfront financing standpoint, it’s hard to do that with private capital, because that’s just not how pipelines are financed in this country.”

Hubs will still emerge over time without legislation like the "SCALE Act," but they won’t happen nearly as fast, Crabtree maintained, which is problematic considering the gravity of climate change.

Other policy changes that could help the development of hubs are updates to the federal 45Q tax credit to make it more valuable, said Thompson at CATF. The incentive, originally enacted in 2008 but reformed in 2018, provides a tax credit per metric ton of CO2 that is stored.

The value of the credit for saline storage should be increased from $50 per ton, as it is now, to $85 per ton, Thompson said.

Another sought-after change is to the credit’s “commence construction” window — or the deadline by which developers have to start construction to claim the credit — which Thompson said should be extended by five to 10 years. Projects currently have until the end of 2025 to begin construction, a change authorized by the omnibus package that passed last year (Energywire, Dec. 23, 2020).

The infrastructure package does not update 45Q but includes funding for four hubs with direct air capture, which involves pulling CO2 directly from the air rather than from large emitters like factories or power plants. The language further calls for development of regional clean hydrogen hubs, including one that would demonstrate production of clean hydrogen from fossil fuels, which could require carbon capture.

DOE, Exxon and environmental justice

Top officials at DOE have recently said there is wisdom in developing CO2 infrastructure in places where there’s a lot of emissions sources and proximity to geologic storage sites.

However, they have also acknowledged concerns from front-line communities disproportionately affected by fossil fuel infrastructure, saying the development of hubs should be coupled with meaningful public engagement.

“The reality is … there are communities that’ve been pushing back against our dependence on fossil fuels and the legacy that fossil fuels have had, and we want to be … able to show that we can use fossil fuels responsibly and that we can minimize the environmental impacts,” said Wilcox, appearing virtually last month at an event hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership, a Houston area chamber of commerce.

“We have the technologies to do this,” Wilcox continued.

A spokesperson for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) said the agency is turning to local leaders and advocacy groups to discern what kind of engagement is needed for different projects, communities and technologies.

“It is a priority for DOE to ensure that the energy transition is inclusive and equitable, and we take the community feedback and input gained from conversations and listening sessions into our decision making,” the spokesperson said in an email.

“As we pivot to demonstration and deployment for the critical technologies that FECM focuses on, environmental justice and public engagement will be at the forefront,” the spokesperson added.

Environmental justice advocates, however, have pushed back on the Biden administration’s plans to build “next generation industries," such as carbon capture in distressed communities, including in a May report from the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (Energywire, May 17).

Thomas of Public Citizen said carbon capture can be an important technology for limited use where electrification is not an option. But “using it as a mechanism to prolong the life of fossil fuels is not a good use of our energy and resources, whether it’s to create a hydrogen hub, build out [liquefied natural gas] infrastructure or attach to a coal plant,” she added.

Even so, those pursuing CCS hubs say they are planning to solicit community input.

At the same event as Wilcox, a representative from Exxon called it “absolutely essential” to listen to local communities about the company’s so-called CCS Innovation Zone in Houston.

“As we look at specific communities, you have to look at specific needs and issues in those communities,” said Guy Powell, vice president of planning and business development with Exxon Mobil Low Carbon Solutions.

“This is not a very generic thing,” Powell said, adding, “This is something … you have to go in and be very specific on. … What is that community needing or desiring or what issues do they have?”

Todd Spitler, an Exxon spokesperson, said the company has had meetings with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and the Biden administration, and will “continue to meet with all interested officials.”

FRACKING IS FUN

Plaza man publishes second children’s book in a series about oil and gas industry

Lucas Wurtz and his book "Bob the Big Pumper"(KFYR)

By Jody Kerzman
Published: Aug. 20, 2021

PLAZA, N.D. – Last spring, we told you about a children’s book written by a Plaza man.

Lucas Wurtz is a facility specialist for Marathon Oil Corporation, a new dad and an author.

He wrote his first book, “Oscar the Little Pumper” to bring awareness to kids and their parents about the importance of the oil and gas industry.

Now he’s written a second book in the series.

This is the story of “Bob the Big Pumper.” It is the second in a series of books Wurtz is writing to shed some light on the importance of the oil and gas industry.

“We talk in this book about the different things that oil makes, from toothpaste to rocket fuel,” he explained.

It is also a story about friends helping friends.

“Just like in the Oscar book, he has a problem, and then he has a friend who comes to help,” Wurtz said.

Wurtz is also exploring stories outside the oil and gas industry, including one titled “Don’t Eat the Sand.” It was inspired by a recent family vacation to the beach, where his son did nothing but eat sand.

“I thought it would make kind of a cute kid’s book,” Wurtz said. “There’s a turtle and a dolphin that come up and tell him that he shouldn’t be in the sand. I don’t want to give away the end of the book, but there’s a twist at the end.”

Much like Lucas’ life has been twist after twist; not many would have predicted this oilfield worker would also be a published author.

Wurtz has also just released a coloring book with scenes from both the Oscar and Bob books.

You can purchase all of Wurtz’s books on Amazon.

Copyright 2021 KFYR. All rights reserved.

MANITOBA
Confirmation of a 50-year archaeological potential project


Anne Davison / Virden Empire-Advance
AUGUST 18, 2021 

Alicia Gooden, President of the Manitoba Archaeological Society.
PHOTO/ ANNE DAVISON

The area could offer decades of digging and cataloguing to plumb the depths of the treasures in the Gainsborough Creek watershed.

The Manitoba Archaeological Society (MAS) and Dr. Mary Malainey concluded their dig at the Gainsborough Creek Wildlife Management Area (the Olson site) on Thursday, Aug. 5. Alicia Gooden, President of MAS, and a Virden resident said that while it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the discoveries of the 2021 exploration near Melita, it was very fruitful.

Gooden said, “Site Director, Dr. Mary Malainey, confirms we have uncovered two separate occupations in both the western prairie level and the valley bottom at the Olson site.”

She said that the earlier, deeper occupation is believed to be Besant, which dates to 1,000 - 2,000 years ago. That means that people lived there around the time of Christ or as late as 1000 AD.

The Archaeologists say the evidence points to people who were agriculturalists. Gooden explained, "The later, shallower occupation represents the horticultural population from around 500 years ago; that is at the forefront of Dr. Malainey's current research. She (Malainey) states, ‘The area was so densely populated that we could probably spend the next 50 years excavating and still find stuff.’”

Meanwhile, the work continues as the Olson site artifacts are analyzed and catalogued in the lab.

AUSTRALIAN TV
A satanic ritual suddenly appears in the news
CORY WEINBERG AUG 22, 2021



A mysterious sequence of satanic rituals appeared during an Australian news broadcast. The ABC channel did not comment

Chatting with the devil, or almost. An Australian television news broadcast on ABC showed a satanic ritual briefly on screen.

This amazing story happened on Friday 20th August. Yvonne Yong introduced the newspaper and announced the headline about police dogs. It started and we see bureaucrats chatting among themselves.
Satanic system

Just then a satanic ceremony suddenly appears, and for exactly two seconds, a masked protagonist greets a crowd by pronouncing “Hi, Satan” – “Hello, Satan”. A Catholic cross in red neon creates the background in red conditions similar to horror films.

Before starting the next topic, the film will return to the editor who manages to be without the image.

If the channel does not provide any explanation for this mysterious appearance, according to the site Inside, This video may come from The Nusa Temple of Satan, a satanic group based in Queensland. Their aim is to encourage the Australian government to allow Satanists to teach religious subjects in schools.

Police say Melbourne anti-lockdown protest ‘most violent in nearly 20 years’


Saturday’s rally was the first time police used non-lethal weapons during a lockdown protest, with at least nine officers ending up in hospital

Victoria police were pelted with projectiles, punched and kicked by some members of a 4,000 strong crowd who turned out to protest Melbourne’s Covid lockdown. Photograph: Dave Hewison/Speed Media/REX/Shutterstock

Australian Associated Press
Sun 22 Aug 2021 04.02 BST

An anti-lockdown protest held in Melbourne on Saturday was one of the most violent the city has seen in 20 years, Victoria’s top police officer says.

Chief commissioner Shane Patton said his officers had no choice but to use non-lethal weapons to defend themselves from an angry mob that came armed and appeared intent on attacking them.

It is the first time during a lockdown protest, police have used such tactics that included rounds of pepper spray projectiles and canisters.

At least nine officers ended up in hospital after being pelted with projectiles, punched and kicked by some members of a 4,000 strong crowd who turned out to protest the city’s Covid-19 lockdown.

The mostly unmasked protesters let off flares, yelled slogans and blasted music as they moved through the CBD.

More than 700 extra Victorian police officers were deployed to contain the lockdown protest.

Patton said he was nothing short of disgusted with the conduct of some in the crowd

“What we saw yesterday … was probably one of the most violent protests we’ve seen in nearly 20 years,” he told reporters on Sunday.

More than 200 people were arrested including some on remand for previous crimes. At least 19 will be taken to court rather than issued with fines in excess of $5,000. Two people will face assault charges.

He said many in the crowd came armed with projectiles that were hurled at police and it was clear they were there not to protest for personal freedom but to “confront and attack”.

Eight of the nine wounded officers have since left hospital but one remains for further examination. Injuries included blows to the body, cuts, bruises, suspected broken noses, one possible incident of loss of consciousness, and one leg injury.

“It appears to us that they came in with an intention of that violence,” Patton said.

“This wasn’t a group that had a specific leader. It seemed that it was angry men … between 25 and 40,” he said, “who were intent on causing this mayhem, intent on being involved in this criminal activity.

“I just hope it doesn’t result in the mass spread of Covid-19. The risk that those people have now posed to the rest of the community, by their conduct yesterday, was disgraceful and selfish.”

Patton also revealed 48 people have been fined almost $5,500 each over an illegal engagement party in Caulfield North, including the future bride and groom.

That number is expected to rise with eight other attendees yet to be interviewed.


Australia anti-lockdown rallies: protesters violently clash with police in Melbourne

The rest of the people at that party were children. They’ve been warned and won’t receive fines.

On Sunday, hundreds of protesters gathered at the NSW-Queensland border for an anti-lockdown protest, waving signs reading “open the border now” and “I was born free”.

Video showed a man riding a horse encouraging people to cross the border, which Queensland has closed to all but essential workers who have received at least one vaccine dose.

NSW police arrested eight people and issued 50 infringement notices to protesters, while Queensland police arrested one person for disorderly conduct.

The police minister, David Elliott, said he was disappointed by the protest.

“Communities, across New South Wales are sick and tired of the abhorrent actions of the minority. We have seen this sort of behaviour result in further lockdowns; the very thing these individuals are protesting against,” Mr Elliott said.

Tweed residents, on the NSW side, have been hit hard by Queensland’s strict border rules.

It had asked NSW to notionally move the border south, to the Tweed River, but NSW refused, saying it would just shift the problem further south.

New South Wales police also arrested 47 people and fined more than 260 in relation to protests on Saturday.

They issued 137 tickets after stopping around 38,000 cars approaching Sydney city, while a 32-year-old man who allegedly assaulted an officer was arrested and charges were expected to be laid.

The constable was taken to hospital for head and neck injuries.

More than 2,000 people also gathered in Brisbane City Botanic Gardens on Saturday to rally against the lockdown and vaccine measures. Queensland police said no arrests had been made.

'Roaring Twenties': Are we entering a new age of hedonism?




By Cath Pound

BBC

10th August 2021

An exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao centres on the 20th Century's wildest and most creative era. What can we learn from the 1920s' many parallels with today, asks Cath Pound.

When curator Catherine Hug began planning an art exhibition about "The Roaring Twenties" she had no idea how much it would end up resonating with people today. Of course, the 1920s have always held a powerful place in the public imagination, but there are some unquestionable parallels with our own times: both decades arrived on the back of economic depressions and pandemics, although thankfully in our case not a World War. These parallels have created an irresistible desire to look back 100 years in order to speculate on how the post-Covid-19 era may play out.

In Western societies, the 1920s was a decade of progress and backlash against years of trauma and deprivation caused by World War One and the 1918 flu epidemic. While many countries battled with the fallout from the collapse of empire, revolution and the ongoing impact of colonialism, the US and Europe enjoyed an unprecedented period of creativity and innovation. Cities were growing at breakneck speed, the mass production of cars was transforming both daily life and urban planning, gender norms were being questioned and racial prejudices challenged. A newly awakened thirst for life was quenched in the jazz-filled clubs of Montmartre and the decadent nightclubs of Berlin.

Artists thought that society had to be changed not only on the political and economic levels, but also the educational, cultural and artistic ones – Catherine Hug

Undoubtedly after a year-and-a-half of being stuck indoors, many today identify with the perceived hedonism of that era, leading to speculation that after Covid-19, some societies could enter a new "Roaring Twenties". But people also identify with the post-war, post-pandemic awareness of the fragility of the world and the need to make it better. "Many people felt that things had to be changed in order to [prevent] any future world war. Artists thought that society had to be changed not only on the political and economic levels, but also the educational, cultural and artistic ones," says Hug, who co-curated the Roaring Twenties exhibition that is at the Guggenheim in Bilbao until mid-September.

"It was the beginning of democratic politics and democratic states, the idea that everyone could participate in a peaceful society. One of the interesting consequences that was reflected in art was places like the Bauhaus… [which] saw education and culture as necessary to build a better society," explains Hug.

In Cité Fruges at Pessac, Le Corbusier created worker's housing consisting of a series of rectangular blocks of modular housing units, each with its own terrace (Credit: Alamy)


Architects such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius sought a socially responsible architecture that was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. "The notion of a healthy way to live was a lot of air, a lot of light and the visibility of nature. That's why it was the decade of large windows," says Hug. Although many of those designs proved theoretical, Le Corbusier was able to turn some of his ideas into reality with the Cité Fruges at Pessac, a suburb of Bordeaux, where he created worker's housing consisting of a series of rectangular blocks composed of modular housing units, each with its own terrace, in a garden setting.

The increasing emancipation of women was evident in art, fashion and dance. German painter and photographer Christian Schad's portrait of his partner Maika (1929), with her bobbed hair and sleeveless dress, shows a modern woman firmly in control of her own image and body. Meanwhile, fellow German artist Jeanne Mammen, herself one of the new independent career women, portrayed gay women revelling in their sexuality in Weimar's raucous nightclubs. However, she also depicted bored-looking prostitutes forced to resort to the oldest profession in order to survive. "What they show is the ambiguity, and also the complexity of transformation at this time," says Hug of these works.

Christian Schad's Maika (1929), with her bobbed hair and sleeveless dress, shows a modern woman in control of her own image and body (Credit: VEGAP, Bilbao, 2021)


The fashion and hairstyles of the era, which saw women turning their back on elaborate up-dos and restrictive corsetry in favour of cropped hair and loose shift dresses that daringly revealed legs and ankles, were undoubtedly a sign of liberation. Yet many other factors were also at play. "After World War One it became difficult to get domestic staff, lifestyles had to be scaled down, you had to be able to get dressed yourself and maintain your clothing yourself," explains Cally Blackman, who teaches Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins in London. Blackman also cautions against overplaying the link between fashion and female emancipation. Coco Chanel's designs might have made women's clothing more comfortable, but she didn't necessarily intend to empower those who wore them. "She believed in women's weaknesses, she wasn't a feminist," says Blackman.

That could shatter some illusions – but if we want evidence of a truly independent female icon of the 1920s, who challenged not only gender but also racial boundaries, we only have to look to the dancer Josephine Baker. Her expressionistic dances oozing with sensuality came to epitomise the pleasure-seeking Parisian nightlife of the era. Although her most famous outfit – which consisted of a banana skirt, necklace and little else – might appear to be pandering to gender and racial stereotypes, Hug insists "she was very self-determined about her body. She was playing with the male gaze and the clichés that she was very much a victim of in the US."

'A search for meaning'

The joie de vivre of the wild Jazz Age that Baker embodied is something many will be longing to relive in the 2020s. Having studied the impact of pandemics on human behaviour over the centuries, Nicholas Christakis, a Yale epidemiologist and author of Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way we Live, believes our own times will certainly echo the 1920s in that respect. "People will relentlessly seek out social interactions and nightclubs and bars and restaurants and musical concerts. People will start spending their money, there'll be an economic boom and I think we'll see an effervescence of arts and entrepreneurship and creativity," he tells BBC Culture.

When people are cooped up at home and have a lot of time on their hands, they'll think about what's important in their lives and what's important in their societies – Nicholas Christakis

However, having undergone a collective trauma the likes of which most of us have never endured before, we are also likely to share with the artists of the 1920s a profound desire to change society for the better. "When people are cooped up at home and have a lot of time on their hands, they'll think about what's important in their lives and what's important in their societies. We see this search for meaning in the form of political developments in our society. The Black Lives Matter protests were a response to decades of racialised policing in our society… but in addition I think it was a search for meaning," says Christakis

.

The 2020s could see artists and communities come together around social justice issues like Black Lives Matter and the environment (Credit: Valery Hache / Getty Images)


Greg Hilty, curatorial director of the Lisson Gallery in London, certainly believes the pandemic has been a time of reflection for many artists. They "have used the time to review the essence of their work and working practice, away from the surface demands of the art industry. For most, this has been a positive outcome, reaffirming their values and their sense of purpose arising from the work itself rather than its consumption," he tells BBC Culture. In terms of the type of work this might inspire, he says: "the pandemic has drawn our attention to the wider shifts in consciousness relating to the precarity of our relationships between peoples and with the natural world. We can expect more and deeper reflections on our current condition.

"Issues that many artists have been long engaged with have over the past year received both more intense and wider appreciation culturally – the climate emergency, social justice and in particular the continuing fight for the value of black lives," as has "the gulf between dominant cultural values, such as those expressed in monuments, and more nuanced and plural values," says Hilty. This suggests that the 2020s may see a growing relationship between artists and their public as both strive towards diversity and social justice. Hilty observes that there has already been a "shift to a more direct engagement between artists and institutions on the one hand, and their audiences and communities on the other."

Diversity and inclusion have become part of every conversation in America – Su Ku

A sense of community with shared social values is likely to have a major impact on the fashion we choose to wear in the 2020s, too. "Diversity and inclusion have become part of every conversation in America, whether it's politics or family values or economic support for people in need, therefore retailers who share values of sustainability and diversity will have a connection with the younger generation especially, who see that as an absolute necessity," says Su Ku, a tutor on the Fashion Institute of New York's fashion programme.

Fashion in the 2020s will be increasingly focused on sustainability and diversity 

(Credit: Photo by Claudio Lavenia / Getty Images)


But fashion in the 2020s looks likely to be as much about vintage as socially conscious brands. One of Blackman's students is writing a dissertation on sustainability on the red carpet. "She's done an amazing amount of research on celebrities who go out of their way to wear second-hand clothes. Once that begins to happen and people like Kim Kardashian start to join in, it's unstoppable, because they have such power and influence over the mainstream buyer," says Blackman. "Whereas high street retailers may have gone by the board, the market in vintage and pre-used clothing is surging," she observes.

This suggests that fashion historians of the future are going to have a much harder time tying down the decade stylistically than in the 1920s. "In comparison to the 1920s, we have complete sartorial freedom. I think lockdown has cemented that," says Blackman.

Changing public spaces

When it comes to imagining how our cities might develop over the coming decade, it seems that 2020s architects share many of the social concerns of their 1920s contemporaries. However, where once the car was king when it came to urban planning, now nature takes precedence.

A year of meeting and eating outdoors, wherever possible, will change our view of the public realm – Eleanor Young

For their Rethink: 2025 competition, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) asked architects and students to consider what life and the built environment might look like in the post-pandemic world. All three winning entries had the environment, quality of life and social justice at their core. One, which focused on redesigning streets to create high-quality outdoor spaces for people and encourage cleaner, more physically active methods of transport has effectively come into being already. "Within weeks of the competition's launch we saw widened pavements," says RIBA's Eleanor Young. "A year of meeting and eating outdoors, wherever possible, will have to change our view of the public realm," she says.

Nature will take centre stage when it comes to urban planning in the 2020s 

(Credit: Getty Images)


Another entry imagines repurposing redundant office space to house the homeless. "It just makes a lot of sense," says Young. Obviously, landlords, not known for their altruism, are still going to want to make money, but as Young says: "if you've got a 1960s office building standing empty, having a charity in there that pays you rent is probably better than nothing."

But by far the most ambitious project envisages transforming London's metropolitan area into an ecologically diverse, agricultural landscape, in part as a response to the premise that industrialised food production has made us vulnerable to diseases transmitted from animals to humans. "What is particularly interesting about that is that they had done some mapping which showed that some of those things were happening already like city farms and marshlands," says Young. "It could change London and make it a much better place to live. That kind of resetting of ideas about us and nature. Not just in terms of health but also our mental health," she says. And these are ideas that could potentially be adopted by cities everywhere. "If you can apply that to London, you can apply it anywhere," says Young.

It seems like the 2020s could well have some of the hedonism that characterised the "Roaring Twenties," although we must hope it does not echo the end of that decade, which saw economic depression and the rise of fascism. There is reason for optimism as, alongside that understandable yearning for pleasure, it is clear there will also be the same desire to build a better society that pandemics have always inspired. A growing concern with social justice and the fragility of our environment will be reflected in the culture all around us. The clothes we wear to go clubbing or to the theatre will be vintage or sustainable. Our cities are less likely to roar than murmur as the car is increasingly confined to the outskirts and green spaces proliferate. And artists will, as they always have, offer reflection on our current condition while seeking to inspire their audience to improve the world around them. It would be wonderful if this time they were able to succeed.

The Roaring Twenties is at Guggenheim Bilbao until 19 September 2021.

EXCERPT

“THE SCARIEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE”: HOW THE “GROUND ZERO MOSQUE” MELTDOWN SET THE TABLE FOR TRUMP

The transformation of a proposed Lower Manhattan cultural center into an anti-American edifice—framing pushed by the right and reinforced by the mainstream media—was a crucial victory for the nativist coalition that would later rally behind the 45th president.

BY SPENCER ACKERMAN

AUGUST 9, 2021

BY CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGES.

In the old Spanish city of Córdoba, Islam had built a European pluralism that anticipated cherished American values. Faisal Abdul Rauf considered it a place America would embrace. The lessons of an ancient city, the New York imam thought, could help resolve the post-9/ 11 crisis afflicting both America and Islam.

Founded in the eighth century, Córdoba was the intellectual center of Europe, a haven of tolerance, education, and achievement. The wealthy city, centerpiece of a breakaway Umayyad emirate, attracted and nurtured Christian, Jewish, and Islamic scholars and cosmopolitans. Founding ruler Abdel Rahman I, who had fled the dominant Abbasid caliphate, wrote wistful poetry about being a refugee. A citywide midsummer festival celebrated John the Baptist.

But over centuries, under the stresses of internal political fracture and external war, Córdoba’s multiculturalism broke down. In his 2004 book, What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America, Rauf hailed native son Moses Maimonides, the titan of Jewish philosophy and theology. Maimonides, however, fled Córdoba when the conquering Almohad dynasty revoked protections for dhimmi—Jewish and Christian minorities—and persecuted Spanish Jewry, even separating children from their parents.

Rauf considered American history a narrative of progressive triumph over such prejudices. After Pakistani jihadis murdered the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl for being Jewish, Rauf delivered a moving address to the Upper West Side’s B’nai Jeshurun congregation. He told Pearl’s grieving father, Judea, “Today I am a Jew. I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.”

“We strive for a ‘new Córdoba,’” Rauf wrote, “a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims and all other faith traditions will live together in peace, enjoying a renewed vision of what the good society can look like.”

Rauf had been preaching twelve blocks from the World Trade Center since 1985. He located his new Córdoba there. At 45 Park Place was a mid-nineteenth-century building left vacant after undercarriage debris from the doomed planes cratered several floors of what was then a Burlington Coat Factory. Aided by Sharif El- Gamal, a real estate developer and self-described “shark,” Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, purchased the property for $4.85 million in July 2009. They planned to restore it as the thirteen-story Cordoba House, which would feature a community center, pool, restaurant, performance space, mosque and culinary school. Rauf conceptualized it as a Muslim version of the 92nd Street Y, a Jewish space on the Upper East Side that plays a cherished role in the intellectual life of New York City. The site of the new Córdoba struck Rauf as poetic, even sublime. It was a chance, he said, to send “the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.”

But to Rauf’s horror, several in New York’s 9/11 survivor community did not believe the project was sending a different statement at all. When Khan unveiled Cordoba House to a Manhattan community board’s finance committee early in May 2010, Rosemary Cain, mother of fallen 9/11 firefighter George Cain, said it was “atrocious that anyone would even consider allowing them to build a mosque near the World Trade Center.” Khan, shaken, explained to the committee that she and her husband felt “an obligation as Muslims and Americans to be part of the rebuilding of downtown Manhattan.”

Fanning the flames was Pamela Geller, who blogged that a “monster mosque” was coming to Ground Zero, an “insulting and humiliating…victory lap” celebrating terrorism. A veteran of the business side of the ruling-class broadsheet New York Observer, Geller was radicalized by 9/11. She told New York Jewish Week that she was embarrassed not to have known who it was that attacked America, so she turned to authors and journalists who revealed that the culprit was Islam. Geller was also a birther, though not one tied to any particular theory of Barack Obama’s origin; she once published a reader’s theory positing that his real father was Malcolm X. Her ally against Cordoba was Robert Spencer, whose books lined the FBI library at Quantico. Spencer claimed Rauf was erecting a “victory mosque.” Together, they created a pressure group called Stop Islamization of America. Asked by The Washington Post if he was being deliberately provocative, Spencer replied, “Why not? It’s fun.”

Soon the New York Post ran columns about “mosque madness” generating anger from “fed-up New Yorkers.” Fox News crusaded against it. By the end of May protesters holding signs reading SHOW RESPECT FOR 9/11. NO MOSQUE! packed a four-hour-long public hearing on Cordoba House. “This is humiliating that you would build a shrine to the very ideology that inspired the attacks of 9/11!” Geller lectured. Rauf, who had the support of New York’s power structure, was left pleading that they had “condemned terrorism in the most unequivocal terms.” El-Gamal described the anger at the meeting as “the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

By now the right-wing media, setting the tone for their mainstream counterparts, didn’t call Rauf’s project Cordoba House at all. They called it the Ground Zero Mosque. The demonization of Rauf followed. Rudy Giuliani told a radio host that Rauf had “a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism,” which was a complete fabrication. A Republican candidate for governor in New York, Rick Lazio, called Rauf a “terrorist sympathizer.” Donald Trump, the New York developer and reality-show host, portrayed himself as saving the city from the Islamist menace while operating as a shakedown artist. Trump wrote one of Rauf’s investors, “As a resident of New York and a citizen of the United States,” with an offer to buy out his share at a 25 percent markup. Rauf would have to move to an admittedly worse location, Trump said, “because it will end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse.”

The protests began that summer. Demonstrators carried signs reading SHARIA in a dripping blood-red font and spoke of a “hijacked Constitution.” A puppet dressed like a jihadi hung over a mock missile, advertising, OBAMA, YOUR MIDDLE NAME IS HUSSAIN, WE UNDERSTAND, BLOOMBERG, WHAT’S YOUR EXCUSE? The twenty-five-year-old nephew of a fireman who died at the World Trade Center seethed at the “level of defiance” he considered Muslims to be showing. “They’re saying, ‘We’re doing this whether you like it or not,’” he told the Times. At the end of August a cabbie named Ahmed Sharif, a Bangladeshi immigrant and a father of four children, picked up a blond film student named Michael Enright. Enright, seeming drunk and wielding a Leatherman knife, asked if Sharif was Muslim. “This is the checkpoint, I have to bring you down,” Sharif recalled Enright saying as he slashed and stabbed, “talking like he was a soldier.”



Order Reign of Terror on Amazon or Bookshop.

As thousands filled the streets on the ninth anniversary of 9/11 to denounce the Ground Zero Mosque, local Muslims rode out a terrifying moment. Geller led a protest at the site featuring signs objecting to “Obama’s Mosque.” One of the speakers was Geert Wilders, a Dutch legislator and Islam’s premiere persecutor in Europe, whom Geller introduced as a “modern-day Churchill.” He urged the protesters to “draw the line” against Rauf, “so that New York, rooted in Dutch values, will never become New Mecca.” Another speaker, by teleconference, was Bush’s U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, who Geller enthused spoke “bluntly and unequivocally” about the “affront to American values” the “mosque” represented. One protester told Time it was “the first stage of Saudi Wahhabist takeover of the United States.” He might have been more extreme than most, but by then, a CBS poll recorded 71 percent of Americans objecting to the “mosque.”

Rauf had few allies. President Barack Obama gave a statement of support for religious freedom, but several national Democrats preferred to appease Islamophobia, as the party had done so often since 9/11. The Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said the “mosque” ought to be “built someplace else.” Several Democratic congressmen from New York declared their opposition. New York’s Jewish community, which Rauf had supported, either kept silent or joined in the denunciation. As the High Holidays approached, B’nai Jeshurun’s Rabbi Rolando Matalon chose a sermon dwelling on “the tremendous polarization in our society” rather than the persecution unfolding downtown. Judea Pearl said Rauf’s project reflected “anti-American ideologies of victimhood, anger and entitlement” within American Islam and should relocate.

Rauf tried accommodation. He apologized for calling American policy “an accessory” to 9/11, conceding it was “insensitive” of him to suggest as much. Had Rauf known the outrage Cordoba House, now rebranded as “Park51,” would generate, he wouldn’t have chosen the same location. But if he moved, he explained, “the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse.”

It turned out capital was his biggest enemy. “I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a capitalist,” said Rauf’s partner, El-Gamal, who had not expected to become a pariah. He eclipsed Rauf from what would now never be Cordoba. By January, Rauf was marginalized. He remained a member of Park51’s board but no longer served as a spokesperson for the project. El-Gamal deemphasized and ultimately abandoned the community center aspect of the property in favor of, eventually, luxury condos. The protests dissipated.

Rauf continued expressing hope for reviving the sentiments animating Cordoba, but hope was all he had left. Rauf had discovered an invisible border marking the hard limit of American acceptance. America would not permit a new Córdoba, not even in the city Rauf already thought of as one. The transformation of Cordoba House into the Ground Zero Mosque marked the moment a presidency like Trump’s became inevitable.

“There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It’s fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have,” Rauf said in 2012. “Obama’s father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him. A kind of racism still exists in the United States, and Islamophobia is a more convenient way to express that sentiment.”

From Reign of Terror by Spencer Ackerman, to be published on August 10, 2021 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Spencer Ackerman.

The Meaning of Hitler: exploring our cultural fascination with Nazism

In a wide-ranging new documentary, the lasting and insidious influence of the Nazi dictator is put under the microscope

‘It’s more important to see what’s right in front of us which may, in fact, be more scary.’ Photograph: Courtesy of IFC Films


David Smith in Washington
@smithinamerica
Tue 10 Aug 2021 


Start a conversation about Donald Trump these days and it’s only a matter of time before someone mentions Adolf Hitler.

But if your subject is Hitler, how long before someone brings up Trump? Two minutes is all it takes in the film The Meaning of Hitler, a study of our undying fascination with the Nazi dictator directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker.


How the ‘art of the insane’ inspired the surrealists – and was twisted by the Nazis

“We might as well get on to his similarities with Trump,” says interviewee Martin Amis, the British novelist, identifying at least three: undermining the institutions of the state to magnify their own position; fanatical cleanliness; lying.

The documentary then cuts to a clip of Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman playing Hitler on late night TV, complete with toothbrush moustache and uniform, saying of Trump: “I agree with a lot he says, a lot. Like 90% of what he says, I’m like, this guy gets it!”

Trump has been moving up the autocrat analogy rankings for some time. In 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah, new host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, described him as the perfect African president, evoking Idi Amin of Uganda, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and especially Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

Elsewhere comparisons were drawn with Latin American populists such as Hugo Chávez of Venzuela. And when last year Trump returned from coronavirus treatment in hospital and peeled off his face mask in a macho display on the White House balcony, the homage to Italian fascist Benito Mussolini was unmissable to all but him.

But in 2021 it is springtime for Hitler. Last month Frankly, We Did Win This Election, a book by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal, reported that on a visit to Europe to mark the centenary of the end of the first world war, Trump told his chief of staff, John Kelly: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”

Another book, I Alone Can Fix It, by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, told how General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, compared Trump’s attacks on democracy to the 1933 fire at the German parliament that the Nazis used as a pretext to consolidate power, telling aides: “This is a Reichstag moment. The gospel of the Führer.”

German-born Epperlein and American-born Tucker – a married couple whose previous work together includes Gunner Palace, The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair and Karl Marx City – are better placed than most to tease out such parallels.

Speaking via Zoom from Berlin, a bicycle suspended on the wall behind him, Tucker says: “Clearly Donald Trump is not Hitler and sometimes that gets a little bit shrill and hysterical. It’s more important to see what’s right in front of us which may, in fact, be more scary.

“I think to both of us, by observing things and also meeting some of these experts, it became clear maybe we should be looking more at ourselves and what’s unlocked within us.”

Epperlein chimes in: “It’s not about comparing them. It’s more about seeing what happened before in history and what’s happening now or in the last few years – the normalisation of lying, for instance.

“That happened 80 years ago and that’s happened over the last few years and that is really scary because we all participate in that to a certain extent and where does it actually lead? That’s why it’s important to actually know about your history and also know about these details and what could happen.”

Photograph: Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films release.

Seventy-six years after his death, Hitler remains one of the most known men in the world and ubiquitous in western culture. He is the subject of endless books, TV documentaries (Hitler’s Zombie Army at 1am on Tuesday on the American Heroes Channel was followed by Hitler’s Messiah Complex at 2am) and film dramas (Downfall, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and many more). Tucker calls it a “Hitler industrial complex” unburdened by self-scrutiny.

He comments: “Clearly, it’s not like these materials stop the spread of the ideology or that they curb antisemitism. If anything, the more they’re presented without context, the more they propagate these ideas. Maybe it’s not that people are so fascinated by him or it as there’s something in them that’s just sort of unlocked.”

Determined to avoid contributing to the cult of personality, Epperlein and Tucker use excerpts from former Observer journalist Sebastian Haffner’s penetrating 1978 book The Meaning of Hitler as a narrative spine. They travel to Hitler’s birthplace in Austria, where a stone marker does not mention him by name, a car park in Berlin that sits above the bunker where he killed himself.

They interview historians and writers including Saul Friedlander, Francine Prose, Yehuda Bauer and Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld as well as an archaeologist forensic biologist, psychiatrist and sociologist in search of clues that might begin to explain how Hitler became Hitler.

But historian Deborah Lipstadt, nominated last month as US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, tells them: “When we try to figure out where Hitler’s antisemitism came from, what we’re trying to do is rationally explain an irrational sentiment.

“When people say, ‘Oh well, his mother was treated by a Jewish doctor and he couldn’t save her’, so what? The minute you’re trying to give a rational explanation for an irrational sentiment, you’re going to be lost.”
 

Photograph: Courtesy of IFC Films
Advertisement


Thus the film presents a paradox. To try to understand Hitler is to risk humanising him and reducing his culpability; but to admit that he defies all understanding is to risk elevating him to superhuman status, to make him a modern Lucifer.

Tucker reflects: “On one side, there’s the more you try to understand him, the more empathy you have: ‘Oh, poor Hitler.’ Then there’s the other part: he’s exceptional or it’s this break in history. The Holocaust is certainly exceptional, but the conditions that can lead to that certainly exist within all of us, so it’s a tricky terrain to navigate.”

Yet there is a “Rosebud” of sorts here, a biographical key that unlocks at least part of the thinking and power of Hitler and his imitators. Perceived victimhood.

Epperlein says: “After Germany lost world war one, that of course is perceived victimhood, and Hitler was able to channel all of this and unleash it in a way which was just unprecedented.”

Tucker adds: “Just here in Berlin last weekend, there were 5,000 Covid deniers running amok through the streets, supported by some pretty hardcore neo-Nazis and it’s astonishing to see the victimhood on display. It’s like they’re acting as if they’re living in some fascist dictatorship. The repetition of that is so telling.”

Perceived victimhood also goes to the heart of Trumpism. He gained political traction by telling crowds that they are the victims of cultural, economic and political elites, of unfair trade rules and violent illegal immigrants. He constantly portrays himself as a victim of media bias and deep state conspiracies such as the Russia investigation, impeachment and a “rigged” election. His supporters appear elated by their shared community of grievance and sense that vengeance has been legitimised.

Epperlein says of Hitler and Trump: “The magic to a certain extent is that they are able to give people permission to unleash their most terrible thoughts and ideas and to voice them and to do this all together.

“It makes them feel good and powerful and strong and it can be easily moulded into a movement. You see it with Donald Trump and his followers. You see it here with these Covid deniers because it’s kind of the same thing. It’s really dangerous.”
 

Photograph: Courtesy of IFC Films
Advertisement

The Meaning of Hitler includes an interview with discredited British historian David Irving, who is introduced with a giant on-screen caption (quoting from a court judgment) that says, “David Irving HOLOCAUST DENIER ANTISEMITE AND RACIST who associates with right wing extremists who promote Neo-Nazism.” Irving is seen “guiding” acolytes in Treblinka, an extermination camp in German-occupied Poland.

The film-makers debated long and hard whether to give him screen time but ultimately followed the example of Haffner’s book by engaging with him. Epperlein’s narration explains: “You can’t make a film about Hitler and not talk to his biggest admirer.”

Tucker adds via Zoom: “Yes, you can completely ignore him except if you Google he shows up everywhere. He was financially ruined by the Lipstadt case [in 2000 Irving sued Lipstadt for libel after she called him a Holocaust denier and lost] and yet has somehow flourished in this online world, as have many other people.

“He’s the granddaddy of all of this. He found a way to profitability, as have many other people who are pretty fringe and get amplified. At the same time, as shown in the film, people like Mark Zuckerberg [chief executive of Facebook] are acting as if this is just a case of people getting something wrong where this is deliberate.”

He also acknowledges: “There is a debate to be had. People like Lipstadt would say she believes in free speech, she doesn’t believe that Irving should be silenced.

“I also believe there should be a healthy, vigorous debate about this but as film-makers it was really important also to not fall into the trap: Irving is like a camera magnet, he’s like candy, he’s so compelling, he’s so twisted. In weird ways at times you feel not sympathetic for him, but you’re like, oh, he’s just an old guy and you want to understand him. But he’s -”

Epperlein interjects: “He’s full of hatred and he’s a terrible antisemite.”

The meaning of Irving, at least, is clear. Hitler, however, seems destined to continue tormenting the species that produced him, as unfathomable as he is demonic. Amis comments: “Our understanding of Hitler is central to our self-understanding. It’s a reckoning you have to make if you’re a serious person.”

This article was amended on 13 August 2021 to describe the Treblinka extermination camp as being in German-occupied Poland, in accordance with Guardian style guidance.


The Meaning of Hitler is released in select US cinemas and on demand on 13 August with a UK date to be announced