1. As Ghislaine Maxwell's trial starts, worth remembering the man in her life who had mysterious wealth, was an asset for multiple intelligence agencies, loved to secretly record those who visited him, and died under murky circumstances (suicide? murder?): Robert Maxwell
2. Robert Maxwell: born in abject poverty in a shtetl in Czechoslovakia in 1923, family destroyed by Nazis, distinguished military service, reinvention in England & rapid rise to wealth as a publisher, business fraud, dead naked body off of yacht (jumped, fell, pushed?)
3. Robert Maxwell had 9 children of whom the favorite was Ghislaine. Maxwell's last days on earth were spent aboard the yacht called The Lady Ghislaine. Ghislaine herself doted on her dad, and learned from him the art of making herself useful to a difficult, capricious man.
4. @bellye66 & I read John Preston's solid new biography of Robert Maxwell and use it as a jumping point to talk about the useful monsters who flourish (briefly) while they serve establishment interests: Robert & Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, more. jeetheer.substack.com/p/podcast-ghis…
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1. This tweet and the accompanying article got a lot of attention when it came out, but we should be clear that they are merely stating a long held orthodoxy on American right: that some forms of fascism are benign & preferable to anti-fascism.
2. I'd say going back to 1930s (or perhaps 1930s) the dominant mode of conservative thought has been that figures like Mussolini & Franco are useful bulwarks against working class militancy & anti-fascism (because it involves an alliance with left) is itself dangerous.
3. Philio-fascism or fascist fellow travelling is pervasive on right and was especially strong from circa 1935-1975. It went into slight abeyance with rise of "human rights" & pro-democracy talk as anti-communist tool, but has come back with vigor in last 10 years.
1. Greenwald seems very touch about his appearances on Fox News, and for good reason. It's very hard to square his professed politics with his buddy-buddy act with Tucker Carlson.
2. A few useful distinctions are worth making. There's nothing wrong with going on Fox to reach their audience, as Bernie Sanders & Obama have done. But neither Sanders nor Obama praise Carlson as socialist & give credence to Carlson's claims of supporting racial equality.
3. Nor is there anything wrong with ignoring Fox because there are bigger fish to fry as Noam Chomsky does. But again, that's different from making common cause with Carlson or praising hi.
1. There was once a boy in Texas who grew up in New Yorker worshipping household. He wanted more than anything to enter into the world of the New Yorker. And when he became a filmmaker he imposed himself on its former film critic. This is story about Wes Anderson & Pauline Kael.
2. There's a recurring Wes Anderson character, the young boy or teen or barely adult man who yearns to enter into the world of adult hood, who pushes himself into the world of adults & becomes emotionally entangled with their lives. It's hard not so see that as autobiographical
3. Rushmore (1998) was Anderson's second film but the first one with his signature style of deadpan artifice. Kael had already retired from the New Yorker when he made it, but Anderson wanted to get her stamp of approvalz; the Andersonian callow youth winning adult approval.
1. This is a photo of Geordie Greig, a big-wig in British journalism and until recently editor of the Daily Mail, propping up Ghislaine Maxwell. It's the type of scene you'd avoid using in a novel because it's too apt a metaphor.
2. I know what you're thinking. "Jeet, we know the British press is depraved and incestuous. But surely there are limits to even their moral degeneracy. Surely they wouldn't stoop to sympathy for Ghislaine Maxwell." I have bad news for you.
3. The Rachel Johnson piece about her "old chum" Ghislaine got much attention but it's important to know it's part of larger patter of stories expressing concern for Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice. Like this Daily Mail piece.
Rachel Johnson, sister of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, writes in the Spectator, a magazine once edited by Boris Johnson, in sympathy with for a woman credibly accused on facilitating mass child rape.
There have been a few odd articles in right-wing British media expressing sympathy for Ghislaine Maxwell. One possibility is that they are sending a message: "you're still part of the club. Be a good girl and keep quiet."
"We met briefly at Oxford" is Humblebrag meets Humbert Humbert.
1. So, one week after being announced on Bari Weiss, the "University of Austin" is turning into an epic clown show. Two prominent members of Board of Advisors (Pinker, comically, below and Robert Zimmer) are out. A third (Gordon Gee) is openly distancing himself from its mission
2. I'm reluctant to call this place "University of Austin" by the way because there already is a University of Texas at Austin (one of the world's great universities, actually!) and this new enterprise, among its other frauds, is clearly intent on brand confusion.
3. So instead of calling this place "University of Austin" it would be better to give it a more accurate name: Potemkin University: it's not so much a real school as a facade of a school designed to fool the credulous and the indoctrinated.