It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, January 06, 2023
ALL CONSPIRACIES ARE RIGHT WING FANTASIES OF POWER
WHAT WAS THE PAZZI CONSPIRACY?
BY ANDREW AMELINCKX/
JAN. 4, 2023 7:14 PM EST
On the morning of Sunday, April 26, 1478, Lorenzo de' Medici and his younger brother, the handsome and well-liked Giuliano, attended mass at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo, in Florence. The priest raised the host and the sanctuary bells rang out. This architectural masterpiece filled with Renaissance treasures suddenly became a chaotic and bloody scene as two priests pulled out blades and attacked Lorenzo, the Florentine city-state's de facto ruler known as "the Magnificent." One priest only managed to knick Lorenzo's neck with his weapon before Lorenzo pulled out his sword and counterattacked and then made it to safety, according to ReidsGuides.com.
At the same time, two other men, Francesco Pazzi and Bernardo Baroncelli, rivals of the Medici family, attacked Giuliano. "Here, traitor!" Baroncelli shouted, as he stabbed Giuliano in the chest. Pazzi followed up with a frenzied attack with his blade, per "April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici." Giuliano collapsed on the cathedral floor and died from 19 stab wounds.
WHAT HAD BEEN BEHIND THIS BRUTAL ATTACK?
While the conspirators staged their attack inside the Duomo, Archbishop Francesco Salviati of Pisa and a small band of armed men attacked Florence's city hall but the Florentines overwhelmed and captured them, according to "Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome." The conspirators had believed the residents of Florence would rise up against the Medici family. Instead, they hanged every one of the killers and co-conspirators they could lay their hands on.
Since 1434, the Medici family, wealthy bankers, had ruled Florence, with Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano ascending as rulers in 1469, per History and Britannica. Lorenzo was a poet and patron of the arts, supporting Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, among others. But he and his brother had made many powerful enemies along the way, especially the Pazzi family, another influential Florentine dynasty involved in banking, per History On This Day. It wasn't only the Pazzi family who wanted the Medici brothers dead. Pope Sixtus IV also had issues with them and unofficially backed the plan to murder Lorenzo and his brother.
A DECODED LETTER REVEALS A SECRET CONSPIRATOR
When Pope Sixtus IV learned of the assassination plot led by the Pazzi family, he declined to actually help in the murders, but remarked, " ... I would not have [Lorenzo de' Medici's] death, but only a change of government," according to "A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome." Lorenzo had refused to loan money to the pope and the two men again butted heads over Sixtus IV's appointment of Francesco Salviati as archbishop of Pisa, which the Medici family refused to acknowledge, and which led Salviati to participate in the conspiracy, per Ultimate History Project.
It wasn't until 2001 that another of the conspirators, possibly its mastermind, came to light, when the historian Marcello Simonetta discovered a coded letter he deciphered, according to his 2008 book "The Montefeltro Conspiracy: A Renaissance Mystery Decoded." The letter showed that Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, who historians have always portrayed as a humanist, had been in on the plot to kill his friend Lorenzo de' Medici.
Vice president touts bridge funding in Chicago: ‘We will finally fix this problem’
Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Chicago is part of the Biden administration’s united effort to highlight how the bipartisan infrastructure law is driving the economy.
By Tina Sfondeles | Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday, Jan. 4,2023
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks about the Biden administration’s infrastructure investments on a visit Wednesday to Crowley’s Boat Yard, across from the 95th Street Bridge on the Southeast Side. Ashlee Rezin / Chicago Sun-Times
With a very literal backdrop of the 95th Street Bridge on the Southeast Side, Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday came to Chicago to tout the effects of the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, which includes a $144 million grant to rehab four bridges along the Calumet River.
Harris’ visit to Illinois — her sixth since taking office — came as President Joe Biden visited the Brent Spence Bridge in Kentucky and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg traveled to Connecticut to visit the Gold Star Bridge, all part of a united effort to highlight how the administration is growing the economy and making an impact on communities throughout the country.
It was also an effort to highlight bipartisanship in a newly divided Congress, as Biden thanked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his role in passing the massive infrastructure plan.
“After two years in office, I can say with confidence, we are building that better future,” Harris said in Chicago. “We are building an economy, as President Biden often puts it, from the bottom up and the middle out. And I’ll add from the outside in.”
Vice President Kamala Harris discusses the Biden-Harris Administration’s economic plan to rebuild infrastructure during a speech at Crowley’s Boat Yard, across from the 95th Street Bridge over the Calumet River, on the Far South Side, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023. Ashlee Rezin / Chicago Sun-Times
The grant of $144 million through the bipartisan infrastructure law will rehabilitate the 92nd Street, 95th Street, 100th Street and 106th Street bridges along the Calumet River.
Harris said the 95th Street Bridge, built in 1958, hasn’t had major repairs in decades — causing detours and delays, raising delivery costs and disrupting supply chains, all of which trickle down to families, small businesses and workers.
“The consequences of infrastructure underinvestment have been a familiar story in cities and states across our nation,” Harris said. “About 43,000 bridges, almost 1 in 10, show signs of severe distress in our country. And you know, for years people talked about this problem, but now I am proud to say, we will finally fix this problem.”
The funds are part of more than $2 billion in investments from the bipartisan infrastructure law that will be used to upgrade economically significant bridges across the country, the White House said.
The bipartisan infrastructure law invested $40 billion to repair and rebuild the country’s bridges, which the White House touts as the single largest dedicated investment in bridges since the construction of the Eisenhower-era interstate highway system.
“Rehabilitating these bridges will undoubtedly reap massive, local, regional and national benefits, as well as reinforce our city’s many competitive advantages, including our centrality, proximity to critical resources like fresh water, and of course, an unmatched talent pool,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at the event. “And did I mention? This means, jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle also attended the event.
The vice president also snuck in a couple of minutes to visit the nearby Calumet Fisheries, a well-known and beloved smoked seafood stop along the river. She picked up two bags of food, including smoked salmon and trout, and told a Calumet Fisheries employee that trout was her husband’s favorite.
Harris has been a frequent visitor to Illinois since taking office. She last stopped in Chicago for a get-out-the-vote rally Nov. 6.
A neuroscientist had a paper mansplained to her. Plot twist, she wrote it.
Please do not assume that the people that you talk to do not know anything.
Doctor receives unsolicited advice on a paper for which she was the author.
Mansplaining is not a science, but an art. It's when a man explains to a woman what she actually means. It comes with the assumption that the speaker doesn't know what she's talking about, even if she's literally an expert in the field. And it's annoying AF.
Dr. Tasha Stanton, an associate professor of clinical pain neuroscience at the University of South Australia, encountered a mansplainer at an Australian Physiotherapy Association Conference. Her experience is pretty relatable, even if you don't have "Dr." in your title.
After talking with a man, he, unsolicited, told Stanton she should read a paper. A paper that she wrote. "Friends at conferences – please do not assume that the people that you talk to do not know anything. I just got told that I should read what Stanton et al found about pain," she posted on Twitter. "I. Am. Stanton." Mic. Drop.
The man had no idea who he had been talking to. Stanton said she knows she can't expect someone to know what she looked like based on seeing her name on a paper. However, she should be able to expect that the person she's talking to treats her like someone who knows her stuff. "Just to be clear: I would never expect people to know what I look like! The more hilarious part of this was that the earlier part of the conversation had more of a condescending tone with recommendations of what I should read, which happened to be MY paper," she wrote.
Stanton said he was "visibly shocked. There was an "awkward silence" and "some attempted backpedaling." But Stanton took it in good stride. "[W]e both had a laugh. I told him that it was a massive compliment that he recommended my paper, that I am glad he enjoyed it and found it useful ... but that in the future he might want to be careful not to assume that other people don't know things ... especially when you are at a conference. We all make mistakes -- I know I certainly have -- but hopefully the message got across."
After Stanton posted her experiences on Twitter, other women chimed in with their own experiences of getting mansplained
“@Tash_Stanton As a graduate student, I was once standing at my poster, with my name tag on, and was basically asked when "Swann" would be coming. When I said I was "Swann" the person said "Oh, from your work I thought you would be a man." He didn't seem the least bit troubled or embarrassed.”
Stanton said it's important to speak up when someone cuts you off by saying, "Well, actually…" It's the only way we can grow. "It's really important to be able to stand up and call it as it is because that's not a great way to interact with someone at a conference," Stanton told Good Morning America. "People will never learn if you don't call it out."
Why should someone refrain from mansplaining? If anything, it's just good manners. "It's not about trying to be the smartest or showing anyone up. It's literally about connection and the best way you're going to connect with someone is by actually asking questions about them. ... that can result in an amazing collaboration that you might never have thought!" Stanton told GMA. "Don't be that guy."
It is astounding that this many women were able to chime in with their own experiences of being told to read something they wrote. The only silver lining to this story is that the mainsplainer didn't chime in with, "Well actually, what happened was…"
Two years after January 6 attempted coup, Republican fascists deadlock the House
The US House of Representatives adjourned Wednesday night, still deadlocked over the selection of a Speaker, with a group of 20 fascist Republicans refusing to support the party’s nominee, Kevin McCarthy, and denying him the 218 votes required for election. Six votes had taken place on Tuesday and Wednesday, with McCarthy’s total actully declining by two, from 203 to 201, in the course of the series of roll calls. Given the narrow margin for the incoming Republican majority, 222-213, McCarthy could afford to lose only four Republicans, but instead lost five times as many.
McCarthy is no moderate. He is backed by Trump, and voted against certifying the election of Joe Biden, even after the mob attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. His opponents have few political differences with him. They are blocking his election as part of an effort by sections of the US ruling elite to shift the Republican Party and the entire structure of American capitalist politics even further to the right.
Members walk on the House floor in the House chamber in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023. [AP Photo/Andrew Harnik]
The selection of a Speaker is enormously consequential in terms of the functioning of Congress, and the whole American government. It is not at all a ceremonial position. The Speaker is the chief political and administrative officer of the House of Representatives, a position established in the US Constitution, and is second in line of succession to the presidency, after the vice president. Until one is chosen, the House is effectively paralyzed, members cannot even be formally sworn in and take their seats, or committees form and begin to hold hearings.
The Speaker appoints the majority of members of the Rules Committee, which lays down the conditions for debate, amendment and voting on every piece of legislation. He or she decides which committee will handle legislation and when it will be called up for debate and vote, chooses members of select committees and conference committees, oversees the selection of members for each regular committee, and manages the administrative officers of the House, including the Sergeant-at-arms.
McCarthy’s opponents have made increasingly aggressive demands for changes in the rules of the House that would give them effective control over its operations, both legislative and investigative. McCarthy has already agreed to restore a rule allowing a motion to vacate the chair—essentially a new vote for Speaker—at any time during the two-year session, only requiring five members to support it.
The Republican leader also agreed to the establishment of a special committee on “the weaponization of the federal government,” with the power to investigate any federal action which the fascist right could portray as a political attack. This would include, among other things, retaliating against a Justice Department prosecution of Trump or any member of Congress for their role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. It would also “investigate” the cases of hundreds of fascist thugs already prosecuted and jailed for their roles in the violence.
McCarthy only balked at the demand that Representative Scott Perry, a member of the group of 20 and one of the organizers of the January 6 coup, be named chairman of the special committee and be given the power to select all its other members, usurping the power of the Speaker to do so.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., talk to reporters as he walks to his office, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana]
Such demands demonstrate the direct connection between the January 6 events and the current crisis on Capitol Hill. The same House members who helped organize the coup attempt and then pleaded with Trump, after its failure, to give them blanket pardons, are now spearheading the campaign against McCarthy: Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Perry of Pennsylvania and similar figures.
Significantly, the Conservative Action Project issued a statement Tuesday night, condemning McCarthy and backing his 20 Republican opponents, signed by dozens of leaders of ultra-right groups. Among these were three key participants in the January 6 coup plot: Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; John Eastman, the attorney who devised the “theory” that Vice President Pence had the authority to overturn the 2020 election; and Cleta Mitchell, one of Trump’s election lawyers, who set up the notorious phone call in which Trump demanded that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” enough votes to win him the election.
The political resurgence of the former coup plotters refutes the report by the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack which put the blame solely on Trump, and sought to whitewash the role of key institutions of the capitalist state, including the military-intelligence apparatus and the Republican Party.
Trump is himself backing McCarthy, at least for now, but that has not resolved the crisis for the Republicans. Far from being chastened by the failure of the January 6 coup, the fascists feel strengthened by the refusal of the Biden administration and the Democrats to take any serious action against them. They should be in prison cells for conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution and overturn an election, but instead are seeking to dictate the operations of the House of Representatives.
An atmosphere of chaos, uncertainty and potential violence again hangs over Capitol Hill. One of the most ominous steps was the removal of metal detectors at the doors of the House chamber at noon Tuesday, with the expiration of the rule adopted by the House after the January 6 attack. Fascists like Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who publicly chafed at the prohibition of weapons on the House floor, are now undoubtedly armed during debates and votes. This raises the prospect of the type of violence that erupted in the halls of Congress before the American Civil War, but with far bloodier results.
The crisis on Capitol Hill, without any parallel for the last 100 years, poses enormous dangers. It is not the negligible matter of the personal fortunes of McCarthy, or of the dysfunction in Congress, one of the key institutions of the capitalist state. What is revealed is the growing power and aggressiveness of the fascist right, which is directed ultimately against the working class and all democratic rights.
These dangers are ignored by the corporate media and covered up by the Democratic Party, which has responded to the crisis in an entirely unserious fashion, treating it either as a joke, which will hurt the Republicans politically, or as an obstacle to the type of bipartisan collaboration to which Biden and the Democratic congressional leadership are committed.
Biden spent his Wednesday at a public relations event where he and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell celebrated the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which paid for a bridge across the Ohio River connecting Covington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio. On his way there, Biden bemoaned the impact of the House deadlock on the global position of the United States. “I know you know international relations,” he told reporters. “It’s not a good look, it’s not a good thing. This is the United States of America and I hope they get their act together.”
The sole concern of Biden and the Democrats—and of the financial aristocracy that both parties represent—is that the turmoil in the House should not disrupt the US proxy war in Ukraine, or endanger payments on the federal debt. As long as these vital interests are looked after, they are prepared to make concession after concession to the ultra-right.
The aggressiveness of the fascist right does not reflect growing political support in the American population. If the 2022 election showed anything, it was that candidates closely associated with Trump’s claims of a “stolen election” and the violent attack on the Capitol fared poorly, despite only token efforts by the Democrats to raise the question of the coup.
Instead, the fascists feel growing support from within the US ruling class. Class tensions are exploding, with a strike wave sparked by a runaway cost of living, the impact on the working class of a new wave of COVID and other respiratory infections, and the threat of a widening imperialist war in Ukraine.
Already, the capitalist state has resorted to openly authoritarian actions, with bipartisan legislation passed by Congress last month and signed by Biden to outlaw a rail strike and impose contract terms on 115,000 rail workers that they have rejected, and which slash their real wages and worsen working conditions.
As the ruling class increasingly turns to the methods of repression and dictatorship, it requires the mobilization of extreme-right forces against the working class. To defend itself against this threat, the working class must draw the lessons of the whole experience from January 6, 2021 to the present.
The response of the Democratic Party to the attempted coup to keep Trump in power—the first attempt in American history to overturn the results of a presidential election—was to cover up the responsibility of the Republican Party and pin the blame solely on Trump. Biden proclaimed his desire for a “strong Republican Party,” in order to preserve the two-party system on which the political domination of big business depends.
The defense of democratic rights can only be accomplished through the mobilization of the working class against all the institutions of the capitalist state, including the Democratic and Republican parties, the military-intelligence apparatus, Congress and courts.
The working class must mobilize its own vast class strength through the building of an independent mass political movement, based on a socialist and antiwar program.
On the second anniversary of the storming of the US Capitol, a first-hand account recalls the carnage of the day Donald Trump’s supporters tried to seize power
Thousands of people were already moving up the National Mall, advancing over the long lawn slowly but steadily, as if pulled by a current. A few Trump supporters shouted out encouragements, but mostly there was an eerie sense of inexorability mixed with apprehensive hesitation. The mood was quiet and subdued. It reminded me of certain combat situations: the slightly stunned, almost bashful moment when bravado, expectation and fantasy crash against reality.
I’d left the Washington Monument a little before one o’clock. At roughly the same time, two pipe bombs were discovered outside the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters, a few blocks from the Capitol. While searching the area, officers found a pickup truck containing 11 Molotov cocktails, a semi-automatic rifle with a scope, a shotgun, three handguns, several high-capacity magazines, a crossbow, machetes, a Taser, smoke devices, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and a piece of paper with a handwritten quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “We the people are the rightful masters of both the Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
As officers pulled weapons from the truck, and explosive ordnance technicians disabled the pipe bombs, and Ted Cruz and his colleagues settled into the House of Representatives for a historic joint session of Congress, a couple of hundred Proud Boys fell in with a crowd of Trump supporters on the west side of the Capitol. Steel barricades cordoned off the grass. A few police stood nearby. Cell phone footage documents the ensuing confrontation. “Back the fuck off!” one man tells the officers; another removes his denim jacket, turns his red MAGA hat backward, and begins pushing and pulling the barricades as officers on the other side struggle to keep them upright. A female officer falls, hits her head, and suffers a concussion; the Trump supporters plough over her peers.
How is it possible that the perimeter of the US Capitol, on this day, could be so poorly defended and breached with such shocking speed and ease? Where was the militarised and vastly disproportionate force that had been marshalled to “dominate” racial-justice protesters in Minneapolis and Portland? Around 1,200 officers were on duty. After the pipe bombs were discovered, many of them were moved from their posts to help evacuate nearby congressional buildings. During Senate testimony, Steven Sund, who resigned as Capitol Police chief after January 6, would speculate that the purpose of the explosives had been “to draw resources away,” and that it was no accident that the Proud Boys assaulted the perimeter while his officers “were not at full strength.” Sund would add: “I think there was significant coordination with this attack.”
It’s an interesting theory. But like many interesting theories, it distracts from an essential truth: after months of cracking down on antifascists and Black Lives Matter protesters, no federal or local authority viewed the Patriots as dangerous.
On the west side of the Capitol, where presidential inauguration ceremonies had been held since 1981, two broad flights of marble steps descended from an outdoor terrace, on the third floor, to the National Mall. In anticipation of Joe Biden’s swearing-in, huge bleachers had been erected over the steps and a 10,000-square-foot platform constructed between them. After the officers at the outer perimeter were overrun, they retreated to these bleachers, where they formed a back line with colleagues in riot gear and members of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Trump supporters gain access to the US Capitol Building in a bid to overturn the result of the 2020 US presidential election. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty
“We need some reinforcements up here now,” one officer told dispatch, in an audio recording made public during Trump’s impeachment hearing. “They’re starting to pull the gates down. They’re throwing metal poles at us.” Another officer reported “multiple law enforcement injuries.” As I approached the melee, I could hear the dull thud of stun grenades and see their bright flashes. “It’s us versus the cops!” a man in camouflage yelled. Someone let out what sounded like a rebel yell. A makeshift gallows stood near a statue of Ulysses S Grant. People paused to climb the structure’s wooden steps and take pictures of the Capitol framed within an oval noose.
“We the people make the law!” a man shouted. “Trump won!” Beside the gallows, a woman held a sign that read: the storm is here. Paramedics rushed by, pushing a stretcher loaded with equipment. A limping man was helped towards an ambulance. Scattered groups wavered, debating whether to join the confrontation. “We lost the Senate – we need to make a stand now,” a bookish-looking woman in a down coat and glasses appealed to her friend. “This is it.”
The bleachers had been wrapped in ripstop tarpaulin, creating a solid monolith that functioned as a kind of rampart. Trump supporters were using barricades as ladders to scale the balustrades and cutting through the fabric with knives. Officers blocked an opening at the bottom of the bleachers, but they were outnumbered and obviously intimidated as the mob pressed against them, screaming threats and insults, pelting them with cans and bottles. Some people shoved and punched individual officers; others linked arms and rammed their backs into the row of riot shields, eyes squeezed shut against blasts of pepper spray. A few Trump supporters countered with their own chemical agents. A man in a cowboy hat lifted his jacket to reveal a revolver tucked into his waistband. The stone slabs underfoot were smeared with blood. “To protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies – foreign and domestic!” someone yelled.
At 1.49pm, about 10 minutes after I arrived at the base of the Capitol steps, Chief Steven Sund called General William Walker, the commander of the DC National Guard, and asked him for assistance. While each state’s National Guard is controlled by its governor, units in DC answer to the White House. Typically, their activation is approved or denied by the secretary of the army and the secretary of defence, who do so on behalf of the president. Thousands of National Guard troops were mobilised in DC after George Floyd was killed. In December, Mayor Muriel Bowser had submitted a written request to General Walker for support with crowd control on January 6, in downtown areas beyond the Capitol Police’s jurisdiction. Walker had sought approval from the secretary of the army, Ryan McCarthy, who agreed to make the troops available but imposed two caveats: there would be no quick-reaction force, or QRF – in this case, an element of soldiers equipped with riot gear, trained and organised to quell violent unrest – and if at any point Walker wished to move personnel from one location to another, McCarthy must first sign off on it. In a Senate hearing in March, Walker would call both of these requirements “unusual.” He would also describe the “frantic call” that he received on January 6 at 1.49: “Chief Sund, his voice cracking with emotion, indicated that there was a dire emergency on Capitol Hill, and he requested the immediate assistance of as many Guardsmen as I could muster.” After getting off the phone, General Walker immediately contacted the Pentagon and asked for permission to send troops to the riot. He would receive the green light more than three hours later.
While Sund was appealing to Walker, a man using a bullhorn plastered with Infowars stickers made his way along the police line. “You’re a bunch of oath breakers!” he barked. “You’re traitors to the country!” Following behind him were half a dozen Proud Boys. Seconds after they passed me, the mob overwhelmed the officers at the opening in the tarpaulin, and everyone flooded into the understructure of the bleachers.
“Storm!” people yelled as they scrambled through the scaffolding’s metal braces and up the granite steps. Towards the top, a temporary security wall contained three doors, one of which was instantly breached. Dozens of police stood behind the wall, using shields, nightsticks and chemical munitions to prevent the mob from crossing the threshold. Other officers took up positions on the planks above us, firing a steady barrage of pepper balls into the horde. As rounds tinked off metal and a caustic miasma filled the space like the inside of a fumigation tent, more and more Trump supporters crammed into the bleachers, crushing those towards the front against the wall. A few people baulked: “We need to retreat and assault another point!” But most remained resolute.
“Keep pushing!” they screamed. “Shoot the politicians!”
“Push forward! We’re winning!”
Martial bagpipes blared through portable speakers. I was tightly pinned, unable to move. Each time the mob heaved, it lifted me off my feet. One of the people I was pressed against wore a helmet, a gas mask, and an army combat uniform with a patch that read “armor of god”.
I looked behind me. Tens of thousands of Trump supporters filled Pennsylvania Avenue, stretching as far back as I could see. Although the people at the rear had no way of knowing what was happening here, from my vantage point they all bled together, comprising a single entity animated by one purpose. In the video I recorded at this moment, individual features become progressively more distinct as they approach the foreground. A man with meticulously coiffed silver hair, in a military dress coat adorned with medals; a man wearing swimming goggles and a motorcycle helmet printed with a skull and crossbones; a man in wire-frame bifocals, clothed from head to foot in animal pelts; and then, a couple of feet away, leaning all his weight into the bodies directly beside me, a corpulent and goateed man whose black baseball hat is embroidered with the letters “TAT”.
The meaning of the acronym – “Take Action Today” – had changed somewhat dramatically since Jason Howland first started wearing the hat as a marketing gimmick for the Jason Howland Corporation. In one promotional video, three years before he co-founded the American Patriot Council, Howland had averred: “I want to be an example of Christ for people in business, show people that you can become a master in your market space through honesty and integrity and doing the right thing every time.” I now watched that would-be example of Christ drop his head, plant his feet, and add his considerable mass to the human thing churning over the Capitol Police. Balanced on a crossbeam above Howland was his partner, Ryan Kelley, who, in June, had thanked law enforcement “for standing up for our communities” and insisted: “We are here demanding peace.” A cell phone video would capture Kelley yelling at rioters: “This is war, baby!”
While I was under the bleachers, Lauren Boebert, the newly elected congresswoman from Colorado, rose to deliver the first speech of her career in the House of Representatives. The lawmakers had broken off from the joint session after Ted Cruz objected to the votes from Arizona, the third state in the certification process, which proceeds alphabetically. Both chambers were now debating independently, after which they would reunite and continue to Arkansas. “The members who stand here today and accept the results of this concentrated, coordinated, partisan effort by Democrats, where every fraudulent vote cancels out the vote of an honest American, has sided with the extremist left,” Boebert warned her fellow Republicans. But she also had a message for Nancy Pelosi: “Madam Speaker, I have constituents outside this building right now.”
It was dark and lights were glowing in the windows of the rotunda when, at 5.40pm, three hours and 19 minutes after the Capitol Police requested their assistance, 154 National Guard soldiers arrived. By then, with the help of officers from Maryland and Virginia, the building had been secured. I linked up with the photographers Balazs Gardi and Victor Blue. Balazs and I had walked together up the National Mall from the Washington Monument but were separated in the chaos under the bleachers. He had entered the Capitol on the same level as I but ended up in a space beneath the rotunda known as the Crypt. Victor had gone to the Capitol earlier that morning. He had witnessed the Proud Boys overpower the officers on the outer perimeter, and had been with the mob that tried to break into the Speaker’s Lobby. While I was following the crowd into the Senate chamber, Victor was taking pictures of Ashli Babbitt as she died.
Four years earlier, when Trump defeated Clinton, Victor and I had been in Mosul, where the immediacy of the civil war raging around us seemed to dwarf the significance of the American election. That felt like a long time ago now.
Protester Richard Barnett sits inside the office of US speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on January 6, 2021. Barnett’s trial begins on January 9. Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty
Mayor Bowser had imposed a curfew, and as the three of us headed back towards our hotel, downtown DC was quiet. Scattered bands of Trump supporters roamed the streets. We were walking up the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, talking about where we had been and what we had seen, when a young man ahead of us stopped and turned around. I think we all expected some kind of confrontation. The man, however, only wanted to share something with us. “Check this out,” he said excitedly, holding forth a black cube with a plastic lens. Balazs, Victor, and I leaned over to inspect the object. It appeared to be a body camera.
“I took it off a cop,” the man said.
We stood there mutely staring at the thing. I was aware that I should be asking questions. I knew the questions that I was supposed to ask. Who was he? Where, when, and how had he done it? Why? But I did not want to hear his answers. I didn’t care. After a while, our failure to congratulate the man seemed to make him regret showing us his prize. He shoved it back in his coat pocket. A cold wind was gusting down the avenue. The man shrugged and continued on his way. We watched him disappear into the empty city.
Abridged from The Storm is Here: America on the Brink by Luke Mogelson, published by Riverrun.
In Turkey, a festival revives a jewel of the Sephardic world and aims to break stereotypes
Izmir, a hub of Sephardic history, is drawing tourists with a synagogue restoration project
Restorations of the the Etz Hayyim Synagogue revealed a Hebrew inscription next the Torah ark which reads “Makom Hashushvinin,” meaning “place of the groomsman.” Whether the specific area was used for weddings is unclear. (David I. Klein)
IZMIR, Turkey (JTA) — Prague has the dubious honor of being chosen by Adolf Hitler to be a record of what he hoped would be the vanquished Jews of Europe. The Nazis left many of the city’s synagogues and Jewish sites relatively intact, intending to showcase them as the remnants of an extinct culture.
That has made Prague a popular tourist destination for both Jewish travelers and others interested in Jewish history since the fall of the Iron Curtain: the city provides an uncommon look into the pre-war infrastructure of Ashkenazi Europe.
Could Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city, become a Sephardic Prague, in terms of history and tourism? That’s the goal for Nesim Bencoya, director of the Izmir Jewish Heritage project.
The city, once known in Greek as Smyrna, has had a Jewish presence since antiquity, with early church documents mentioning Jews as far back as the second century AD. Like elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, though, its community grew exponentially with the influx of Sephardic Jews who came after their expulsion from Spain.
At its peak, the city was home to around 30,000 Jews and was the hometown of Jewish artists, writers and rabbis — from the esteemed Pallache and Algazii rabbinical families, to the musician Dario Marino, to the famously false messiah, Shabbetai Zevi, whose childhood home still stands in Izmir today.
Today, fewer than 1,300 remain. The establishment of the state of Israel, coupled with a century of economic and political upheaval, led to the immigration of the majority of Turkish Jewry.
“From the 17th century, Izmir was a center for Sephardic Jewry,” Bencoya told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We can’t recreate that, but we cannot forget that either.”
Izmir is located on Turkey’s Aegean coast. (David I. Klein)
Celebrating in the former Jewish quarter
Bencoya, who is in his late 60s, was born in Izmir but spent most of his adult life in Israel, where he led the Haifa Cinematheque, but he returned to Izmir 13 years ago to helm the heritage project, which has worked to highlight the the culture and history of Izmir’s Jewish community.
Over nine days in December that included the week of Hanukkah, thousands attended the annual Sephardic culture festival that he has organized since 2018. The festival included concerts of Jewish and Ladino music, traditional food tastings, lectures on Izmir’s Jewish community, and — since it coincided with Hanukkah and also a Shabbat — both a menorah lighting ceremony and havdalah ceremony were conducted with explanations from Izmir’s leading cantor, Nesim Beruchiel.
This year’s festival marked a turning point: it was the first in which organizers were able to show off several of the centuries-old synagogues that the project — with funding from the European Union and the local municipality — has been restoring.
The synagogues, most of which are clustered around a street still called Havra Sokak (havra being the Turkish spelling of the Hebrew word chevra, or congregation) represent a unique piece of cultural heritage.
Nesim Bencoya speaks from his office next to the restored Sinyora Synagogue in Izmir.
(David I. Klein)
Once upon a time, the street was the heart of the Jewish quarter or “Juderia,” but today it is right in the middle of Izmir’s Kemeralti Bazaar, a bustling market district stretching over 150 acres where almost anything can be bought and sold. On Havra Sokak, the merchants hock fresh fruits, and hopefully fresher fish. One street to the south one can find all manner of leather goods; one to the north has markets for gold, silver and other precious metals; one to the west has coffee shops. In between them all are other shops selling everything from crafts to tchotchkes to kitchenware to lingerie.
Several mosques and a handful of churches dot the area, but the synagogues revive a unique character of the district that had been all but lost.
“The synagogues here were built under the light of Spain. But in Spain today, there are only two major historic synagogues, Toledo and Cordoba, and they are big ones. You don’t have smaller ones. Here we have six on one block, built with the memory of what was there by those who left Spain,” Bencoya said.
Those synagogues have been home to major events in Jewish history — such as when Shabbetei Zvi broke into Izmir’s Portuguese Synagogue one Sabbath morning, drove out his opponents and declared himself the messiah (he cultivated a large following but was later imprisoned and forced to convert to Islam). The synagogue, known in Turkish as Portekez, was among those restored by the project.
Today, only two of Izmir’s synagogues are in regular use by its Jewish community, but the others that were restored are now available as exhibition and event spaces. Educating non-Jews
Hosting the festival within Izmir’s unique synagogues has an additional purpose, since the overwhelming majority of the attendees were not Jewish.
“Most of the people who come to the festival have never been to a synagogue, maybe a small percentage of them have met a Jew once in their lives,” Bencoya said.
The festival included concerts of Jewish and Ladino music, traditional food tastings and lectures on Izmir’s Jewish community.(David I. Klein)
“This festival is not for Jewish people to know us, but for non-Jews,” Bencoya said. Now, “Hundreds of Turkish Muslim people have come to see us, to listen to our holidays and taste what we do.”
Kayra Ergen, a native of Izmir who attended a Ladino concert and menorah lighting event at the end of the festival, told JTA that until a year ago, he had no idea how Jewish Izmir once was.
“I know that Anatolia is a multicultural land, and also Turkey is, but this religion, by which I mean Jewish people, left this place a long time ago because of many bad events. But it’s good to remember these people, and their roots in Izmir,” Ergen said. “This is so sad and lame to say out loud, but I didn’t know about this — that only 70 years ago, 60% of this area here in Konak [the district around Kemeralti] was Jewish. Today I believe only 1,300 remain. This is not good. But we must do whatever we can and this festival is a good example of showing the love between cultures.”
“I think it’s good that we’re respecting each other in here,” said Zeynep Uslu, another native of Izmir. “A lot of different cultures and a lot of different people. It’s good that we’re together here celebrating something so special.”
Izmir’s history as a home for minorities has not been all rosy. At the end of the Ottoman period, the city was around half Greek, a tenth Jewish and a tenth Armenian, while the remainder were Turkish Muslims and an assortment of foreigners. In the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922 — remembered in Turkey as the Turkish War of Independence — the Greek and Armenian quarters of Izmir were burned to the ground after the Turkish army retook the city from the Greek forces, killing tens of thousands. A mass exodus of the survivors followed, but the Jewish and Muslim portions of the city were largely unharmed.
Izmir is not the only city in Turkey which has seen its synagogues restored in recent years. Notable projects are being completed in Edirne, a city on the Turkish western border near Bulgaria, and Kilis, on its southeastern border near Syria. Unlike Izmir, though, no Jews remain in either of those cities today, and many have accused the project of being a tool for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to assuage accusations of antisemitism, without actually dealing with living Jews. Losing Ladino and a ‘quiet’ mindset
Bencoya lamented that he is among the last generation for whom Ladino — the Judeo-Spanish language traditionally spoken by Sephardic Jews, but only spoken by tens of thousands today — was at least a part of his childhood.
“When you lose language, it’s not only technical, it’s not only vocabulary, it’s a whole world and a way of thinking,” Bencoya said.
The project is challenging a local Jewish mentality as well. Minority groups in Izmir, especially Jews, “have for a long time preferred not to be seen, not to be felt,” according to Bencoya.
That mindset has been codified in the Turkish Jewish community’s collective psyche in the form of a Ladino word, “kayedes,” which means something along the lines of “shhh,” “be quiet,” or “keep your head down.”
“This is the exact opposite that I want to do with this festival — to be felt, to raise awareness of my being,” Bencoya said.
The Bikur Holim Synagogue is one of the few still functioning in Izmir.
(David I. Klein)
One way of doing that, he added, was having the festival refer to the community’s identity “as Yahudi and not Musevi!” Both are Turkish words that refer to Jews: the former having the same root as the English word Jew — the Hebrew word Yehuda or Judea — while the latter means “follower of Moses.”
“Yahudi, Musevi, Ibrani [meaning Hebrew, in Turkish] — they all mean the same thing, but in Turkey, they say Musevi because it sounds nicer,” Bencoya said. “To Yahudi there are a lot of negative superlatives — dirty Yahudi, filthy Yahudi, and this and that. So I insist on saying that I am Yahudi, because people have a lot of pre-judgements about the name Yahudi. So if you have prejudgements about me, let’s open them and talk about them.”
“I am not so romantic that I can eliminate all antisemitism, but if I can eliminate some of the prejudgements, then I can live a little more at peace,” he added.
So far, he feels the festival is a successful first step.
“The non-Jewish community of Izmir is fascinated,” Bencoya said. “If you look on Facebook and Instagram, they are talking about it, they are fighting over tickets, which sell out almost immediately.”
Now, he is only wondering how next year he will be able to fit more people into the small and aged synagogues.
“For Turkey, [the festival] is very important because Turkey can be among the enlightened nations of the world, only by being aware of the differences between groups of people, such as Jews, Christians, others, and Muslims,” he said.
