77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming

And They're Horrified


By Olivia Rosane
May 13, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



Scientists engage in civil disobedience on the steps of the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, Spain on April 6, 2022. (Photo: Scientist Rebellion)

“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one expert said.

Nearly 80% of top-level climate scientists expect that global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5°C by 2100, while only 6% thought the world would succeed in limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a survey published Wednesday by The Guardian revealed.

Nearly three-quarters blamed world leaders’ insufficient action on a lack of political will, while 60% said that corporate interests such as fossil fuel companies were interfering with progress.

“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one South African scientist told The Guardian. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible—we live in an age of fools.”

“What blew me away was the level of personal anguish among the experts who have dedicated their lives to climate research.”

The survey was conducted by The Guardian‘s Damian Carrington, who reached out to every expert who had served as a senior author on an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report since 2018. Out of 843 scientists whose contact information was available, 383 responded.

He then asked them how high they thought temperatures would rise by 2100: 77% predicted at least 2.5°C and nearly half predicted 3°C or more.

“What blew me away was the level of personal anguish among the experts who have dedicated their lives to climate research,” Carrington wrote on social media. “Many used words like hopeless, broken, infuriated, scared, overwhelmed.”

The 1.5°C target was agreed to as the most ambitious goal of the Paris agreement of 2015, in which world leaders pledged to keep warming to “well below” 2°C. However, policies currently in place would put the world on track for 3°C, and unconditional commitments under the Paris agreement for 2.9°C.

The survey comes on the heels of the hottest year on record, which already saw a record-breaking Canadian wildfire season as well as extreme, widespread heatwaves and deadly floods. The first four months of 2024 have also been the hottest of their respective months on record, and the year has already seen the fourth global bleaching event for coral reefs.

“They can say they don’t care, but they can’t say they didn’t know.”

“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” Gretta Pecl of the University of Tasmania told The Guardian. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”

Scientists said that governments and companies that profit from the burning of fossil fuels had prevented action. Many also blamed global inequality and the refusal of the wealthy world to step up, both in terms of reducing their own emissions and helping climate vulnerable nations adapt.

“The tacit calculus of decision-makers, particularly in the Anglosphere—U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia—but also Russia and the major fossil fuel producers in the Middle East, is driving us into a world in which the vulnerable will suffer, while the well-heeled will hope to stay safe above the waterline,” Stephen Humphreys at the London School of Economics said.

Despite their grim predictions, many of the scientists remained committed to researching and speaking out.

“We keep doing it because we have to do it, so [the powerful] cannot say that they didn’t know,” Ruth Cerezo-Mota, who works on climate modeling at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told The Guardian. “We know what we’re talking about. They can say they don’t care, but they can’t say they didn’t know.”

Others found hope in the climate activism and awareness of younger generations, and in the finding that each extra tenth of a degree of warming avoided protects 140 million people from extreme temperatures.

“I regularly face moments of despair and guilt of not managing to make things change more rapidly, and these feelings have become even stronger since I became a father,” said Henri Waisman of France’s Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. “But, in these moments, two things help me: remembering how much progress has happened since I started to work on the topic in 2005 and that every tenth of a degree matters a lot—this means it is still useful to continue the fight.”

Peter Cox of the University of Exeter added: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5°C—it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2°C, which we might well do.”

“I’m not despairing, I’m not giving up. I’m pissed off and more determined to fight for a better world.”

Many of the scientists who still saw a hope of keeping 1.5°C alive pinned it on the speeding rollout and falling prices of climate-friendly technologies like renewable energy and electric vehicles. Also on Wednesday, energy think thank Ember reported that 30% of global electricity came from renewables in 2023 and predicted that the year would be the “pivot” after which power sector emissions would start to fall. Experts also said that abandoning fossil fuels has many side benefits such as cleaner air and better public health. Though even the more optimistic scientists were wary about the unpredictable nature of the climate crisis.

“I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5°C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years,” Henry Neufeldt of the United Nations’ Copenhagen Climate Center told The Guardian. “But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or several tipping points.”

Several scientists gave recommendations for things that people could do to move the needle on climate. Humphreys suggested “civil disobedience” while one French scientist said people should “fight for a fairer world.”

“All of humanity needs to come together and cooperate—this is a monumental opportunity to put differences aside and work together,” Louis Verchot, based at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, told The Guardian. “Unfortunately climate change has become a political wedge issue… I wonder how deep the crisis needs to become before we all start rowing in the same direction.”

The publication of The Guardian‘s survey prompted other climate scientists to share their thoughts.

“As many of the scientists pointed out, the uncertainty in future temperature change is not a physical science question: It is a question of the decisions people choose to make,” Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote on social media. “We are not experts in that; And we have little reason to feel positive about those, since we have been warning of the risks for decades.”

Aaron Thierry, a graduate researcher at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, pointed out that The Guardian‘s results were consistent with other surveys of scientific opinion, such as one published in Nature in the lead-up to COP26, in which 60% of IPCC scientists said they expected 3°C of warming or more by 2100.

James Dyke of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute argued that there was room for scientists to share more negative thoughts without succumbing to or encouraging defeatism.

“I hear the argument that we must temper these messages because we don’t want people to despair and give up. But I’m not despairing, I’m not giving up. I’m pissed off and more determined to fight for a better world,” Dyke said on social media.

NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus shared the article with a plea to “please start listening.”

“Elected and corporate ‘leaders’ continue to prioritize their personal power and wealth at the cost of irreversible loss of essentially everything, even as this irreversible loss comes more and more into focus. I see this as literally a form of insanity,” Kalmus wrote, adding that “capitalism tends to elevate the worst among us into the seats of power.”

However, he took issue with the idea that a future of unchecked climate change would be only “semi-dystopian.”

“We’re also at risk of losing any gradual bending toward progress, and equity, and compassion, and love,” Kalmus said. “All social and cultural struggles must recognize this deep intersection with the climate struggle.”

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht

There is something sinister about the Canadian Tax system. It is declared that we must file taxes by Midnight April 30. This is Walpurgisnacht, or night of the witches, the ancient pagan festival of fire; Beltane, and consumption of the last of the salted meat from harvest in celebration of the new life of spring.

Death and Taxes as they say. Leads to rebirth new life.

Walpurgisnacht,night of the witches the celebration of the end of darkness and the fire rituals of spring. We pays our taxes and hopes we gets some back from the tax man. A sacrifice, even if it is in coin, as the season demands.

Goethe and Mendelssohn express this Euroean pagan tradition in verse and song.
Mendelssohn's Choral arrangement is a modernist paenan to paganism. But damn we still must give unto Caesar; the real meaning of the festival of fools........

Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht
Conductor : Valérie Fayet
Walpurgis Night, based on a work by Goethe, celebrates the popular tradition which talks about pagan gatherings taking place on the “witches' mountain” during the night of May 1 st.
Mendelssohn's work is admirably clear, colourful and full of energy.

Die erste Walpurgisnacht Op. 60: So weit gebracht, dass wir bei Nacht

Listen

Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, cantata for chorus & orchestra, Op. 60 So weit gebracht, daß wir bei Nacht
Composed by Felix Mendelssohn
Performed by Chamber Orchestra Europe
Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt

A period of travel and concert-giving introduced Mendelssohn to England, Scotland (1829) and Italy (1830-31); after return visits to Paris (1831) and London (1832, 1833) he took up a conducting post at Düsseldorf (1833-5), concentrating on Handel's oratorios. Among the chief products of this time were The Hebrides (first performed in London, 1832), the g Minor Piano Concerto, Die erste Walpurgisnacht, the Italian Symphony (1833, London)

5. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: Ouverture: 1. Das schlechte 2. Der Ubergang zum Fruhling -
6. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: I Es lacht der Mai! -
7. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: II Konnt ihr so verwegen handeln? -
8. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: III Wer Opfer heut' zu bringen scheut -
9. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: IV Verteilt euch hier -
10. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: V Diese dumpfen Pfaffenchristen - Kommt mit Zacken und mit Gabeln -
11. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: VII So weit gebracht - VIII Hilf, ach hilf mir, Kriegsgeselle - IX Die Flamme reinigt sich vom Rauch -

O+1+2.nwc:	0: Overture
:	1: Now may again
:	2: Know ye not a deed so daring?
3+4.nwc :	3: The man who flies
:	4: Disperse, ye gallant men
5+6+7+8+9.nwc:	5: Should our Christian foes assail us
:	6: Come with torches brightly flashing
:	7: Restrain'd by might
:	8: Help, my comrades
:	9: Unclouded now, the flame is bright

"...don't you think this could become a new kind of cantata?" Rituality, Authenticity and Staging in Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht

Assuming a potential analogy between art and ritual, or between art and the interpretation of ritual as a Gesamtkunstwerk, the question arises as to what degree boundaries or transitions between aesthetic presentation, staging and identification with ritual can be determined in art. This topic could be discussed in terms of reception-aesthetics, with the question of the participation of an implicit or exclusive audience in ritual or in art. On the other hand, the perspective of this question can also be developed, as in this article, in terms of production-aesthetics, using the model of a musical composition based on a preexisting literary text. In Goethe's and Mendelssohn's texts,' not only their cultic-religious rituality will be investigated, but also the problem of how far beyond the cultic subject the immanent formative principles of ritual in terms of music are effective. Although in his early ballad Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night) of 1799 Goethe distinguished the pagan Walpurgis night from the classical and romantic in both stages of Faust, in his own way Mendelssohn related these three forms of ritual directly to one another within one work.

Cantata - LoveToKnow 1911

In modern times the term cantata is applied almost exclusively to choral, as distinguished from solo vocal music. There has, perhaps, been only one kind of cantata since Bach which can be recognized as an art form and not as a mere title for works otherwise impossible to classify. It is just possible to recognize as a distinct artistic type that kind of early r9th-century cantata in which the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than the oratorio style, though at the same time not exclude ing the possibility of a brilliant climax in the shape of a light order of fugue. Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick is a brilliant "pot-boiler" in this style; Weber's Jubel Cantata is a typical specimen, and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht is the classic.

The Jews seem fated to wanDer forever among other nations and be faced perpetually with minority status and a legitimate pressure to acculturate and assimilate. If one compares the ending of The Eternal Road to Felix Mendelssohn's setting of Goethe's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one is struck by a vital difference. Mendelssohn, although bearing the most celebrated name in early nineteenth-century German-Jewish history, had been converted and become a devout Protestant. Nevertheless through his music he celebrated with empathy and pride the courageous resistance of the Druids to the siege on their traditions and beliefs laid by violent Christian attackers. In contrast, The Eternal Road ends much more ambiguously with a vague hope for a return to Zion among a defeated and divided community, bowing to a fate of perpetual exclusion, persecution, and powerlessness.


Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night
The Heathen Muse in European Culture, 1700-1850
John Michael Cooper


Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night is a book about tolerance and acceptance in the face of cultural, political, and religious strife. Its point of departure is the Walpurgis Night. The Night, also known as Beltane or May Eve, was supposedly an annual witches' Sabbath that centered around the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains.
After exploring how a notoriously pagan celebration came to be named after the Christian missionary St. Walpurgis (ca. 710-79), John Michael Cooper discusses the Night's treatments in several closely interwoven works by Goethe and Mendelssohn. His book situates those works in their immediate personal and professional contexts, as well as among treatments by a wide array of other artists, philosophers, and political thinkers, including Voltaire, Lessing, Shelley, Heine, Delacroix, and Berlioz.
In an age of decisive political and religious conflict, Walpurgis Night became a heathen muse: a source of spiritual inspiration that was neither specifically Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim. And Mendelssohn's and Goethe's engagements with it offer new insights into its role in European cultural history, as well as into issues of political, religious, and social identity -- and the relations between cultural groups -- in today's world.

Among some of his (Goethe’s) most engaging/compelling musical experiences of his late maturity were the visits of Felix Mendelssohn, who was 12 years old in 1821 and had been introduced to Goethe personally in Weimar by his (Mendelssohn’s) teacher, Zelter. Further visits took place in 1822, 1825, and 1830. Goethe had Mendelssohn play for him and explain to him technical matters concerning music and music history. This relationship became one of tender devotion on the part of Goethe towards Mendelssohn: in 1822 Goethe said to Mendelssohn: “I am Saul and you are my David,” and in his last letter to Mendelssohn, Goethe began with “My dear son.” Mendelssohn dedicated his Piano Quartet in B minor, opus 3 to Goethe and composed music for “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” (1^st version in 1832)…. Goethe was eager to hear instrumental music which was played by Reichardt, Kayser, Zelter, Eberwein, Hummel, Spohr, Beethoven, Baron Oliva, Szymanowska (female pianist), J. H. F. Schütz, and finally by Mendelssohn whom he repeatedly asked to play something for him.”]


Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one of his greatest cantatas, was based on Goethe's Faust, and on Goethe's personal interpretation of the scene (Grove Dictionary 146). Mendelssohn's friendship with the poet lasted for a great many years, up until Goethe's death in 1832.

The first Walpurgisnacht

The Ouverture represents the transition from the winter to spring. The beginning in A-Moll is overwritten with “the bad weather”, while with the idiom into the Dur variant approaching the Walpurgisnacht in spring is announced. It is described in the following, as the priests and Druiden of the Celts meet secretly in the inhospitable mountains of the resin, in order to address after old custom with fire their prayer to the all father of the sky and the earth. Since their rites are forbidden by the Christian gentlemen however, everything must happen in the secret one. With cheat and to linings the soldiers of the Christians were frightened in such a manner that the Celts in peace can celebrate their Walpurgisnacht.
There are two Walpurgisnächte in Goethe's work. Admits is above all that from that fist I, in which a typical Hexensabbat is sworn to in visionär grotesque way. On the other hand Goethe takes poem the first Walpurgisnacht a heidnisches victim celebration developed to 1799 in that during thunderstorm eight to the cause to confront two incompatible ways of thinking and being LV each other.
Whole 19. Through century the romantic composers let themselves fist be inspired again and again from the picture world of the I and fist II, while the first Walpurgisnacht remained almost unknown. Only Carl Friedrich Zelter, Goethe friend and musical advisor, have try, the poem tone. It kept full fifteen years it under its papers, before it took distance finally from a project, which exceeded its imagination.
That was introduced by Zelter at that time twelve-year-old boy Mendelssohn with around sixty years the older Olympier Goethe, whom time and fame had coined/shaped. By Beethoven and Schubert to judge, understood the old gentleman not much about music. In its youth he had heard some of the Mozarts' works, whose clarity and harmony it zollte still at the age attention and acknowledgment; and it found favours to feel with the citizen of Berlin miracle child from good family the aftereffect of those melodies in those the ideal of its own youth lived. It would be inaccurate to speak of a co-operation between Goethe and Mendelssohn. The first important piece, to which the poet energized the young musician, was the Ouvertüre sea silence and lucky travel, which arrived only in the year 1832, Goethe's death year, at the public performance. That Goethe would have known to appreciate a music, so clearly under Beethovens the influence is to be doubted. Just as little it the score of the first Walpurgisnacht would have probably behagt. The work, in which orchestras and voices verwoben closely into one another are, becomes not completely fair the central thought of the artist Philosphen. From its “Faible for witches” seduced, Mendelssohn stated little interest in the deeper meaning of the poem: the always-lasting conflict between the instinktiven natural forces on the one hand and the mental clarity of a thought world coined/shaped by the clearing-up on the other hand. With the primarily romantic treatment of the article it remains on the level of a descriptive poem and tears us in tumbles uncontrolled thunderstorm eight.
The 1831 completed first minute of the score experienced substantial changes, before she arrived to 1842 at the premiere. Goethe did not experience no more, which regulation to his verses assign became, whose Vertonung lends a fascinating juvenile fire to them. Mendelssohn proves here as genuine romantics. It uses a pallet of magnificent tone qualities, lets the horns from the supple fabric of the Streicher step out and gives to the Holzbläsern a most personal note. The choirs are from a Schlichtheit, which lends occasionally the serious character of a Volksliedes to them, while proper large airs are assigned to the soloist.
The whole wealth of the romantic opera is united in this musical illustration of a poem, which reminds at the Feenzauber of shakespearscher scenes. The choir of the Druiden (No. 6 of the score) is from an imaginativeness, which only the late Verdi in the last act of its Falstaff reaches again. The composer, at whom Goethe estimated the causing its own youth, somehow not completely up-to-date one, appears here surprisingly as one of the prophets of the music 19. Century. With deciveness it secures the transition from Beethoven to the large rhapsodies of Brahms.

Jean Francois Labie
(Translation: Ingrid trusting man)

G O E T H E ' S   P A G A N   P O E T R Y

Goethe, a genius with unmistakable Pagan sympathies,
excelled as a poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist,
philosopher and scientist (his works occupy 140
volumes!).  Here are several of his Pagan poems,
including his ballade "The First Walpurgis-Night," in
which the Pagans score a Discordian victory over their
oppressors.  (I'm sure Goethe now dwells happily among
the Pagan Gods.)  The ballade has been set to music by
Mendelssohn (Die Erste Walpurgisnacht), which is quite
good, but not suitable for small group performance.
Perhaps the Muses will help some modern Pagan to
compose a version for contemporary witches' sabbats.
Although only the God (Allvater) is mentioned, I've
left Goethe's text unchanged; it's easy to substitute
"Mother" for some or all of the "Father"s if you like.
           -- John Opsopaus


THE FIRST WALPURGIS-NIGHT
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A DRUID.

Sweet smiles the May!
The forest gay
From frost and ice is freed;
No snow is found,
Glad songs resound
Across the verdant mead.
Upon the height
The snow lies light,
Yet thither now we go,
There to extol our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know.
Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Thus pure the heart will grow.

THE DRUIDS.

Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Extol we now our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know!
Up, up, then, let us go!

ONE OF THE PEOPLE.

Would ye, then, so rashly act?
Would ye instant death attract?
Know ye not the cruel threats
Of the victors we obey?
Round about are placed their nets
In the sinful Heathen's way.
Ah! upon the lofty wall
Wife and children slaughter they;
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.

CHORUS OF WOMEN.

Ay, upon the camp's high wall
All our children loved they slay.
Ah, what cruel victors they!
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.

A DRUID.

Who fears to-day
His rites to pay,
Deserves his chains to wear.
The forest's free!
This wood take we,
And straight a pile prepare!
Yet in the wood
To stay 'tis good
By day till all is still,
With watchers all around us placed
Protecting you from ill.
With courage fresh, then, let us haste
Our duties to fulfil.

CHORUS OF WATCHERS.

Ye valiant watchers now divide
Your numbers through the forest wide,
And see that all is still,
While they their rites fulfil.

A WATCHER.

Let us in a cunning wise,
Yon dull Christian priests surprise!
With the devil of their talk
We'll those very priests confound.
Come with prong and come with fork,
Raise a wild and rattling sound
Through the livelong night, and prowl
All the rocky passes round.
Screech-owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!

CHORUS OF WATCHERS.

Come with prong, and come with fork,
Like the devil of their talk,
And with wildly rattling sound,
Prowl the desert rocks around!
Screech owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!

A DRUID.

This far 'tis right,
That we by night
Our Father's praises sing;
Yet when 'tis day,
To Thee we may
A heart unsullied bring.
'Tis true that now,
And often, Thou
Favorest the foe in fight.
As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Who e'er can crush Thy light?

A CHRISTIAN WATCHER.

Comrades, quick!  your aid afford!
All the brood of hell's abroad:
See how their enchanted forms
Through and through with flames are glowing!
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms,
On in quick succession going!
Let us, let us haste to fly!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing,
And the arch fiend roars on high;
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.

CHORUS OF CHRISTIAN WATCHERS.

Terrible enchanted forms,
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing!
See, the arch fiend comes, all-glowing!
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.

CHORUS OF DRUIDS

As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Whoe'er can crush Thy light?

[Bowring translation]


THE CONSECRATED SPOT

When in the dance of the Nymphs, in the
moonlight so holy assembled,
Mingle the Graces, down from Olympus in secret
descending,
Here doth the minstrel hide, and list to their
numbers enthralling,
Here doth he watch their silent dances'
mysterious measure.
[tr. Bowring]


[All selections from "The Poems of Goethe," New York:
John D. Williams, 1882.]

   finis

The Romantic Mendelssohn: The Composition of Die erste Walpurgisnacht

THE FAUST LEGEND IN MUSIC

Monday, April 30, 2007

Trump, Genocide, and Profit Seeking Suicide – The Devil Is No Longer In Disguise

By Michael Albert

April 26, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




What to do. What to do. Consider our times. Do you feel, like I feel, massive confusion at what is happening out there. Even if I confine myself to considering perhaps the three largest current instances of mind madness, confusion abounds.

The three are the Orange Trumpist or fascist onslaught in the U.S. and elsewhere; the still raging and even spreading genocidal violence in the Mideast; and the steady ecological devolution of survival prospects worldwide.

I am sorry that all that horribleness is center staged in this essay, but at least the confusions addressed here are about potential corrections.

So what’s with the title, The Devil Is No Longer In Disguise.

Well, it is either clickbait and I got ya, or by undisguised devil I simply mean the evil of these three issues are not hidden. The rot is not even trying to hide. You can’t avoid the horrific details. The perpetrators brag more than they try to hide.

Okay, so for the first topic, I came across a description of Trump by a British writer Nate White, who I otherwise know absolutely zero about. It was in an online dialog like cyber platform program, put there by someone else. I hope Nate won’t mind my also quoting him at length. I usually hate over focusing on Trump, but this is to go to not share:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?

“A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

“Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

“Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

“There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

“And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

“So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

“This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

“God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

“And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’

It would seem the British writer, Nate White, whoever he is, can certainly turn a phrase. You might wonder, however, why there isn’t any reference to Trump’s actual views. But wonder not. I would guess Nate’s point is that beyond what is offered, Trump’s views don’t actually exist. They are mere noise, not his essence.

At any rate, I am here, in America. And I look around, mostly on Youtube, at interviews of Trumpers and at descriptions or quotes of his current utterances, and at his talks, and what all else, and I find myself confused about the same concern as this Britisher.

Why does a third of the U.S. population support Trump in any way at all, and why does some subset of that group support him to the point of what appears to be worship? Trump to my eyes is Oxycodone incarnate. An addiction which, once it’s got you ravages you or your brain, at any rate. But that isn’t much of an answer to why, so what is? And what can one do to reduce and reverse the support?

Before trying to answer, however, let’s name the second and third top stories that confuse me and confuse many others.

Israel goose steps bombs across Gaza to demolish hospitals, homes, and pretty much everything else. As if punctuating that, Israel starves people as overt policy, and acknowledges that death is the aim. So, as with Trump worship, I wonder, how can we understand such baffling as well as nauseating assessments of Israel’s genocidal policies. How does one confront that?

And my third focus of confusion is the trajectory of the world that is currently right out in the open displayed for all to see in the world’s steadily worsening ecological dissolution, and, again, how do we explain people’s reactions to that?

So, our topics here, how is it possible for so many people to support Trump? And then, two, how is it possible for the vast bulk of otherwise sane Israeli souls to support Massacre and Mayhem that even calls itself, well, revenge unto death, and also, how is it possible for so many otherwise presumably caring sensible souls in the U.S. to also support genocide and be horrified by and even repressive toward growing support for Palestine? And finally, three, how is it possible for an incredibly large number of sentient humans to effectively ignore or tut-tut the suicidal trajectory of the planet they inhabit?

A hard rain is falling and yet so many ignore or even run from but don’t rise up against the already raging and everywhere impending floods?

In a nutshell, on these scores, what’s going on in peoples’ heads? It feels to me like one has to have a feel for that to impact where we are all headed.

In a book titled Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut has a passage where a character tries to address the same underlying question as is vexing me, though far more creatively than I can muster.

The character comments:

“I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even by a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell.


“The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. ‘You’re completely crazy,’ he said.


“Jones wasn’t completely crazy. The dismaying thing about classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, thought mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.


“Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell – keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.


“The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.


“The wilful filling off a gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information – That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keeley, Vice-Bundesfuehrer Krapptauer, and the Black Fuehrer could exist in relative harmony –


“That was how my father-in-law could contain in one mind an indifference toward slave women and love fora a blue vase.


“That was how Rudolf Hess, Commandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz great music and calls for corpse-carriers –


“That was how Nazi Germany sense no important difference between civilization and hydrophobia.


“That is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I’ve seen in my time.”

So that is Vonnegut’s attempt. But what does that moving dismissal say one should do when a great many one hears of, works with, or even lives with seem to have in their heads one or another cuckoo clock in Hell—or when one fears there may be willfully missing truths in one’s own head as well.

My answer is, I can only guess. I am not sure. I am confused. But I think how we answer matters for a host of reasons.

First, to prevent fascism, curb wars, and preserve planetary habitability is going to require that many who currently favor or ignore insanity, injustice, and or social suicide change views. Second, whatever allows people to take otherwise absurd, self-denying, other-denying, reason-ignoring, and even suicidal stances in these three cases that I have mentioned occurs in countless other domains as well, albeit perhaps less screamingly visibly. Here are some: guns, immigration, AI, vaccines, health generally, abortion, salaries, incentives, book banning, and all kinds of fundamentalism including sectarianism, and sexism, racism, and classism in all their forms.

So back to our topics, first, why do folks like or even purport to love Trump?

I think we can confidently answer only for a very few. For example, the rich and powerful who support him typically expect largesse in return. No confusion about that. And I suppose a connected or ancillary explanation is that those who anticipate him re-occupying the Oval Office comes the election don’t want to be on his enemies list. This is also not confusing, albeit grossly cowardly.

A second oft-touted explanation is that a subset of Trump’s supporters are literally, even genetically, little Trumps who he has released from hiding their vile side by his parading his violent side. This explanation says Trump’s vulgar racist and sexist outbreaks, wherein the Devil struts about in all his grotesque perversion, has freed others from making believe they aren’t racist and sexist to now let go and openly strut like their pied piper. Then the question of course arises, why do however many of these folks exist have these inclinations in the first place, but it is in any case a plausible explanation for some of Trump’s support.

So one group supports him as a lackey to serve their interests or so he won’t punish them. A second group supports him as a pied piper who legitimates their preferred inclinations.

Next there are what folks looking on who say his followers are ignorant and deceived. So, they explain, some Trump supporters actually believe Biden stole the election and believe Trump cares about them. Some supporters, that is, have fallen down the rabbit hole of Fox reporting, and once down there they protect themselves from others who lie about their buddy.

Finally, we also have two more groups or perhaps it is two components of one group. This whole constituency can see that Trump is a horrible person. For one part of them, however, he is also a wrench in society’s works. He is not same-old same-old but is instead so wildly berserk that he just might upset existing norms and habits enough for things to get better. So these folks support Trump literally because he is off the rails. And they hope for good to come from the messes that he creates. The other half of those who can see he is a horrible person, ironically, support him as the lesser evil. That is, these folks quite reasonably trust very little that comes out of any politician’s mouth. They rightly know they are hurting. They feel it. feel that the country is going to hell in a hand cart. They don’t really know what another Trump regime will mean but they do feel that they know what another Biden regime will mean. It will mean more of what they have suffered. So, for them Biden is just business as usual, and they tend to think that nothing replacing business as usual could be worse than business as usual. So for them the Orange man is the lesser evil. Imagine that. And since politics is sleight of hand anyhow, why not at least beat the system.

We could stop there, and most who think about Trump’s support do, I think, but why even guess at what yields support for Trump, for for fascism? It ought to be to ask, how can we constructively address Trump supporters?

So, okay, how about talking to the rich who want to get richer? We know that will go nowhere. Power alone will affect them. We get that. We have to pressure them. Raise costs for them until they relent. And finally, remove them. It is lesson one of activism.

How about the previously closeted or out in the open but significantly restrained racists and sexists who now happily follow Trump’s bombastic lead? Can we address them with evidence, reason, and even empathy? Maybe, sometimes, that might work. For us to say no, don’t bother—is that wisdom or is it evidence of a clock in our heads with a very nasty flaw?

What about the group who thinks Trump will do less harm—in that case, evidence and reason should matter. Such Trump supporters dislike things worth disliking. They just think that with Trump there is more chance those ills will be muted or stopped. They don’t know the error that involves, and so to make a case that reveals that error seems worth undertaking. Indeed, it seems essential.

I know that lots of people think that supporting Trump, and especially that workers supporting Trump is the really inexplicable mindset of our times. They chalk it up to untouchable broken gears. I am not one who thinks that. I agree there is some ignorance and myth involved, but whose fault is that? The stacked system is at fault, of course, but, beyond that, aren’t activists like me and you who have known otherwise but who in fifty years haven’t communicated sufficiently well with working people for them to even be immunized against supporting a billionaire buffoon, also at fault.

And before throwing rocks at Trump’s working class male, female, white, and black supporters, consider the upside down views of the non-Trump millions who think that attacking our government is vile. Who think hating politicians is vile. Who think rage at doctors who push drugs, at lawyers who plea bargain lives into prisons, and at teachers who purport to know more but actually know less and teach inanities, are vile.

So yes, of course, there are Trumpers who are now out of their minds, who were drawn slowly into a cult-like defense of their prior support for Orange man, and who now manifest grotesquely deep racism and sexism, but I actually think most of the support for Trump is no more peculiar, given the facts, than actual positive support felt by many for Genocide Joe.

I certainly want Biden to win, absolutely, because Trump is an outright megalomaniacal egomaniacal fascist lunatic and as horrible as new liberalism is, fascism is a helluva lot worse—really, it is—but to feel literally positively for a guy who has armed, rationalized, and even cheered on Israel’s brazenly open extermination policies? Does that evidence a clock in good order?

And that brings us to our second example.

How do we explain much less relate to support for such visibly, undeniably, genocidal policies as perpetrated in Gaza? Consider a subset of the Jewish community in the U.S.

They video-saw Hamas horribly kill Israelis. They assessed and presumably decided right off, or later, that decades of open air imprisonment, random deaths, colonial occupation, denial and indignity, and being deemed vermin, didn’t justify that. It was Terror.

But then those same people who have themselves also suffered through history Hitler imposed denigration, death, more death, unto genocide—decided to unleash their own American emblazoned military might in unyielding assault. They do unto others what had been done unto them. They announce it, they prepare it, they do it, they celebrate it, they sing praises to it, they admire their intentionally aimed bombs blasting everything—homes, hospitals, limbs, and souls—until there is nowhere for Palestinians to run that isn’t bursting with death and destruction because Hamas’s actions justify it. In that case, what do Israel’s actions justify?

Well, some in my country think Israel’s actions warrant praise. Some think they warrant support. Some think that to oppose Israel’s genocidal, planned, praised actions and U.S. support for them is anti-Semitic and such protesters should be silenced. And those people don’t bow and pray to Trump but, well, what would Vonnegut who described Nazi cuckoo clock mind’s say about this horrible reversal?

So, two down, and what have I offered. Maybe just a little clarity along with a whole lot of confusion. My apologies that I don’t have better for you. And so we come to our third focus.

Outside your window, every window. The world faces fire, faces ice, faces flooding, faces starving. High water rising.

On the one hand, mired in the rat race, fancy captains of industry clutch at profit to enrich themselves and, one would think, their off-spring, even while they simultaneously pursue the oil-drenched death of everything that breathes, including their off-spring. Is that Cuckoo clock brains at work, or it just just profit-seeking identities wedged into perpetual self aggrandizement, even unto death?

And on the other hand, so many other heads just look away. Don’t look. See only what you want to see. Is that fear? Is it ignorance? Is it surrender? Is it being too busy? Are we going over the edge because, well, that’s where the mob is going? What do you say to that if you would like to try to help save everything?

Dylan in a different time but distraught at what he saw It’s Alright Ma. When I heard that, I turned left. Hard Left. Dylan didn’t. A pity that. But maybe give it a listen.

Dylan’s a poet but It’s Alright Ma isn’t meant to be read, but I present it as text anyhow. The whole thing. So sue me, and see in it whatever you want, which is, I hope less like what Dylan saw, and more like, dare I suggest it, what I saw.

Darkness at the break of noon

Shadows even the silver spoon

The handmade blade, the child’s balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

To understand you know too soon

There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn

Plays wasted words, proves to warn

That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door

You follow, find yourself at war

Watch waterfalls of pity roar

You feel to moan but unlike before

You discover that you’d just be one more

Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear

A foreign sound to your ear

It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall

Private reasons great or small

Can be seen in the eyes of those that call

To make all that should be killed to crawl

While others say don’t hate nothing at all

Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark

As human gods aim for their mark

Make everything from toy guns that spark

To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark

It’s easy to see without looking too far

That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates

Teachers teach that knowledge waits

Can lead to hundred-dollar plates

Goodness hides behind its gates

But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged

It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge

And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con

You into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life outside goes on

All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear

You suddenly find you got nothing to fear

Alone you stand with nobody near

When a trembling distant voice, unclear

Startles your sleeping ears to hear

That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit

Yet you know there is no answer fit

To satisfy, insure you not to quit

To keep it in your mind and not forget

That it is not he or she or them or it

That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules

For the wise men and the fools

I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority

That they do not respect in any degree

Who despise their jobs, their destinies

Speak jealously of them that are free

Cultivate their flowers to be

Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized

To strict party platform ties

Social clubs in drag disguise

Outsiders they can freely criticize

Tell nothing except who to idolize

And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire

Gargles in the rat race choir

Bent out of shape from society’s pliers

Cares not to come up any higher

But rather get you down in the hole

That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault

On anyone that lives in a vault

But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs

Limited in sex, they dare

To push fake morals, insult and stare

While money doesn’t talk, it swears

Obscenity, who really cares

Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see

With a killer’s pride, security

It blows the minds most bitterly

For them that think death’s honesty

Won’t fall upon them naturally

Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed

Graveyards, false gods, I scuff

At pettiness which plays so rough

Walk upside-down inside handcuffs

Kick my legs to crash it off

Say okay, I have had enough

what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen

They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

What can I say? Fuck the Devil in disguise and also the one who parades unbidden. And keep kicking.



Michael Albert
Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.

 

Canary Islands plead with British holidaymakers not to cancel trips despite surge in anti-tourism protests

19 April 2024, 13:34 | Updated: 19 April 2024, 13:49

The Canary Islands tourism minister has urged British holidaymakers not to cancel their trips. Picture: Alamy

By Jenny Medlicott

@JennyMedlicott

The Canary Islands tourism minister has pleaded with British holidaymakers not to cancel their holidays despite anti-tourism protests set to take place

Locals have voiced their outrage in recent weeks over water usage, a lack of housing and pollution across the islands - and have blamed the issues on over tourism.

Messages of 'go home' have been written in graffiti across walls, leaving some feeling unwelcome in the region.

But despite the recent outbreak of anti-tourism rhetoric in the area, the regional tourism chief Jessica de León has stressed that the islands are still open for business.

She told the Telegraph: “It is still safe to visit the Canary Islands, and we are delighted to welcome you.”

Ms de León acknowledged the frustrations of locals over matters such as a lack of housing but added it was “unfair to blame tourism”.

Meanwhile, the Canary Islands president Fernando Clavijo suggested that some of the sentiments expressed by locals “smack of tourist-phobia”.

“People who come here to visit and spend their money must not be criticised or insulted. We are playing with our main source of income,” Mr Clavijo said.

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Anti-tourism protesters have claimed the Canary Islands 'have a limit'. Picture: Alamy

It comes as British holidaymakers have reportedly been calling hotels in Tenerife to ask if it’s still safe for them to visit amid a series of protests planned across the islands.

Tourism accounts for roughly 40 per cent of the local economy in the Canary Islands, as the region welcomes some 12.3 million each year.

Foreign visitors spent more than €20.3 billion in the region last year, accounting for around a fifth of spending throughout Spain.

Last year alone, the islands hosted some 16.2 million tourists, 5.6 million of which were British tourists.

Activists are scheduled to hold a mass demonstration in Arrecife and Lanzarote on Saturday to fight for the “conservation of natural spaces, a tourist moratorium, and tougher regulation for foreigners buying property”.

Flyers for the event assert that the islands “have a limit”.

Activists are planning further marches across Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and La Palma in protest against ‘over tourism’.

They allege that the tourism industry is behind increasing rents and a lack of homes, as landlords snap up properties to use as Airbnbs and tourist lets.

Last week, some activists went on a hunger strike in protest of the effects of mass tourism on island life.

Activists have blamed lack of housing on over tourism. Picture: Alamy

They said they wanted the authorities to halt two tourist projects, one over the construction of a five-star hotel by one of Tenerife’s remaining virgin beaches called La Tejita.

Addressing the housing concerns, Ms de León said: “The problem is that the last five years have seen an average of 3,000 homes built on the islands, when demand is for 20,000.

“Last year just 200 public housing units were built.”

Helen, a Scottish regular visitor of Tenerife expressed sympathy with the locals who work in the tourism sector, who earn an average of €1200 a month.

She said: “I think the government should address these concerns and not dismiss them as just a few cranks. Otherwise, the situation probably will escalate.”

Meanwhile, Gabriel González, a councillor for the hard-Left Podemos party in the resort town of Adeje, said: “We have the feeling that we are not living off tourism; it is tourism that is living off us.”

Tourism industry leaders have flagged concerns over the rise in anti-tourism sentiment across the islands.

One restaurant owner in Tenerife, Carlos Magdalena said: “Tourists are worried and they tell us so.“We are being fools right now - they’ll be rejoicing elsewhere.”

He also blamed “savage development” for the area’s environmental issues and lack of housing and public service funds.

Néstor Marrero, secretary of a Tenerife ecology group called ATAN, said: “The number of tourists should be reduced. We should aim for higher-quality visitors, not people in all-included resorts who don’t leave the hotel or interact with locals and our culture in any way.

“Tourists are allowed to behave in ways here that they would not be allowed to at home. Do they fall drunk off balconies in London or Wales, or drive their cars where it is prohibited in a nature reserve?”

Mr Marrero said that if the region does nothing about the situation, it would be the best way to “create tourist-phobia” as he claimed locals are “sleeping in their cars as they cannot afford rents”.

Ms de León said Mr Clavijo’s government had just passed a housing emergency law to free up space for housing and also tighten rules on short holiday lets to ensure they stay on the rental market for locals.

Why April Fools Day in France Involves Fish Pranks

It’s a long and fishy history.

BY AMELIA PARENTEAU

MARCH 31, 2024

"Allow me to address to you / With my deepest tenderness / This beautiful fish, fresh and discreet / To which I have confided my secret," says this April Fish card in French. 

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN France on April 1, don’t be surprised if something seems fishy. Maybe someone gives you a chocolate or a pastry in the shape of a cod? Perhaps you find a paper haddock stuck to your back, and then everyone erupts into laughter and starts pointing and shouting “poisson d’avril”? Don’t be alarmed, you’ve simply immersed yourself in the centuries-long French tradition of April Fool’s Day, known as poisson d’avril or “April Fish.”

“The idea of April Fool’s Day, or April 1, as a special day is murky,” says Jack Santino, a folklorist and Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “Every country has its own historical event they think gave rise to it.” But France’s tradition is the only one that involves aquatic life. Historians have many theories about the origins of this piscine tradition, but no overall consensus. The most common theories are connected to pagan celebrations of the vernal equinox, Christianity, a 16th-century calendar change, and the start of the French fishing season.

April fools may trace back to Ancient Rome, but France’s fish part is harder to pin down. 

Some historians date this tradition back to the Ancient Roman pagan festival of Hilaria, a celebration marking the vernal equinox with games and masquerades. Santino says ancient Roman and Celtic celebrations of the vernal equinox are likely forerunners. Connections to those rituals “provide a kind of cultural vocabulary that people can draw on,” according to Santino. However, he believes they probably don’t have a direct connection to the fish part.

For some, that’s where Christianity comes in. The “ichthus” fish—an ancient Hellenic Christian acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior”—is nowadays widely recognized as a symbol of Christianity, but was originally used as a secret marker of Christian affiliation. Moreover, the Lenten forty-day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday prohibits the consumption of meat, so fish is often served as a substitute protein during this period.

The depiction of Lent from 1893 shows how long fish has been a major part of the Christian tradition. 

As the end of Lent often occurs on or near April 1, celebrations including fish imagery would be apt to mark the end of the fasting season. Some even go so far as to surmise that poisson d’avril is a corruption of the word “passion,” as in “passion of the Christ,” into “poisson,” the French word for fish. Despite these cultural associations, Santino points out there is no actual evidence for this link to Christianity.

Then there’s the popular calendar change theory that has been widely discounted by experts today, but still comes up. In 1564, King Charles IX of France issued the Edict of Roussillon, which moved the start of the calendar year from somewhere in the period of March 25 and April 1 (different provinces kept their own calendars) to January 1.


Pope Gregory XIII standardized January 1 as the beginning of the calendar year throughout the entire Christian empire with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. One might surmise that those who still observed the start of the new year on April 1 rather than January 1 were the “April Fools” in question and therefore subject to pranks. However, references to poisson d’avril predate the 1564 edict, occurring in print as early as 1466, which debunks this explanation.

Now paper, people used to hook real dead fish onto the backs of fishermen.

 JACK GAROFALO/GETTY IMAGES

Another plausible theory involves actual fishing. As the days get longer in the northern hemisphere, the return of spring also marks the beginning of the fishing season in France, on or near the first day of April. Some posit that the prank of offering a fish was to tease fishermen who, at this time, either had no fish or an incredible abundance. They would either have to wait around for spawning fish to be of legal size before catching them or, once it was finally time, they would be overwhelmed by catching so many fish rushing upstream. According to this theory, real herrings were the original sea critter of choice for the prank, and the trick was to hook a dead herring onto a fisherman’s back and see how long it took him to notice, as the fish began to progressively stink over the course of the day.

The poisson d’avril tradition took another turn in the early 20th century, when friends and lovers would exchange decorative postcards featuring ornate images of fish. The majority of these cards were inscribed with funny rhyming messages that were often flirtatious and suggestive, but cloaked in humor. While most cards depict young women, flowers, and fish, the ocean and other marine animals are occasionally featured, as well as references to advances in technology, such as airplanes and automobiles. Pierre Ickowicz, chief curator of the Château de Dieppe Museum in Normandy, which houses an impressive collection of these cards, says the card exchange tradition seems to have died out shortly after World War I. The museum’s 1,716 postcards are mainly from the 1920s-1930s

.

Poisson d’avril postcards from the 1920s and ’30s were full of flirtation and fish. WELLCOME COLLECTION/PUBLIC DOMAIN; FOTOTECA GILARDI/GETTY IMAGES

These days in France, the most common observers of poisson d’avril are schoolchildren, who delight in taping paper fish to the backs of their siblings, classmates, and teachers. Although the execution has varied over time, from dead herring accessories to postcards to paper fish, the prankster nature has been consistent.

“This idea of playing pranks on people is something that would be obnoxious if it weren’t socially condoned on certain days,” says Santino. He notes that times of transition are often connected to rites of passage where societal rules can be broken. “If poisson d’avril has to do with a recognition of springtime, I would link it to the idea of a celebratory transition into a new period of time, and part of that celebration means we can do things that are not usually allowed.”

Today, people celebrate poisson d’avril in both neighboring Italy and in Quebec, Canada, a former colony of France. The exact origins remain murky, but the fish endures. Whether or not you participate in any kind of trickster behavior on the first of April, there’s surely some relief today that an actual dead, stinky fish is no longer a regular part of April Fool’s day—or at least hopefully that bit of history doesn’t plant any devilish ideas.

Children are the main culprits today, but anyone can end up with a paper fish on their back on April 1. KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GETTY IMAGES; LAURENT SOLA/GETTY IMAGES