The Diplomatic Archives of Ardeshir Zahedi

Diplomatic archives are of valuable importance for historians, but as any source, it should be considered with critical attention.

Shah´s long standing ally and friend, Ardeshir Zahedi - that he described as ´my friend, my father-in-law and beloved King´ - is living since the fall of the regime in his father´s Villa des Roses in Switzerland, somewhere near Montreux and Chillon. A US and UK ambassador to Iran in the 1960s and the minister of Foreign Affairs, he belongs to a family with a steady presence in the Iranian history. His father, General Zahedi, was a short-time replacement of Mossadeq, but has a very tormented political relationship with the Pahlavis and died far away from the country he was exiled from. His mother belongs to the family of Hossein Pirnia (Mo´tamen al Molk) active at the beginning of the 20th century in the political modernisation of Iran. His sister, Homa, represented Hamadan in the Parliament.

Zahedi - his name means ´people of piety´ - graduated agricultural studies at the Utah University but he got mentions for his diplomatic service and a relatively juicy source of gossips for the various court intrigues - that seem to almost got him killed by a bomb after he married Princess Shahnaz, the only child of the Shah and the Egyptian Princess Fawzia Fuad. Zahedi and his wife introduced Farah Dibah to the Shah. Their own marriage was short lived though and Shahnaz, who also lives in Switzerland remarried later Khosrow Jahanbani, son of a top general member of the Qajar dinasty and a St. Petersburg-born Russian aristocrat. 

The handwritten notes by Zahedi published in the volume Window into Modern Iran may not be always all informative relevant but are just a small part of a wider collection that was donated to the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. There are handwritten notes translated from the original Persian, as well as a couple of English telegrams, ´thank-you´ letters but also accounts of various meetings on local issues, such as King Faisal or the King of Jordan. The discussion with King Faisal, for instance, focuses on the dangers of Saddam Baath party for the regional balance, as well as its threats for the traditional Shi´a places of worships in Iraq. It is a mindset of someone who is not religious, part of a government that encouraged secularism, but acknowledging the religious significance of historical connections.

Zahedi remained a patriot of Iran, a patriotism that he understood in his own way. Loyal to his King - the highly respectful ways in which he addresses the Shah in the correspondence is an example of protocolar communication - and one of the few to not leave him as he was forced into Exile - he even made tremendous efforts to secure entry for him, not always successful (for instance, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan refused it) - he also never gave up his country. He remained a proud Iranian and in his frequent public appearances he is never using radical judgements against his people. Ardeshir Zahedi is decent presence in a radicalized public space. 

The Law of Blood. Inside the Nazi Mindset

Going deep into the mindset of a political and intellectual movement requires a lot of attention and hard work. From the small details of the everyday ways of thinking, an academic analyst can pursue the mentality pattern, its genesis, reproduction and alterations. In times when the far right is becoming a frequent mention in political reports, it is about time to return to a recognition process of their roots.

La Loi du Sang. Penser et agir en nazi (The law of blood. Think and act as a Nazi), by Johann Chapoutout that I´ve read in the original French language, is a well research investigation into the history of the Nazi mentality. It focuses on Germany, based on an exhaustive investigation of an impressive intellectual sources and production that covers several decades.

Despite the amount of information filtered, used and quoted, the author succeeds in organising the material in a systematic way, covering main topics which describe the best the intellectual Weltanschauung of the Nazi regime. 

There are so many subjects that are explored in addition to the main topics which help to reveal the deep Nazi mentality. For instance, the relationship between human and nature, which continues to permeate the right (alt-right) mindset, as it assesses a global perspective where the human individuality should be abandonned, mirroring the supreme categorisation based on racial categories. An authentic return to the essentiality of the race is passing through the return to the natural human condition that, according to the intellectual supporters of this idea was derailed by both the Jewish and Christian interpretations of nature. The opposition to ritual slaughtering which is a current thema nowadays has its roots in the cruelty against animals (Tierquälerei) a predilect topic in the Nazi works.

Also nowadays, we can easily read and hear, in newspapers, social media and in the public discourse politicians and media pundits complaining about how the society was corrupted by foreigners who are accepted into the body of the nation if they are following not only the neutral laws, but equally the traditions and cultural norms of the majority (Leitkultur). 

I´ve found this book a real revelation which at a certain point frightened my mind, as I recognized so many patterns of thinking spread all over the public discourse in Germany and abroad. Book like La Loi du Sang are such a helpful intellectual tool for those who will not give up in tracing and countering the far-right intellectual pollution of the public space. It is also a good reminder that the mentalities do have a long history and dealing with all the details of a specific topic is such an extraordinary adventure of the mind.

Rating: 5 stars

#FreeNasrin

In a world half of the time devoid of role models and glamour on rust, there are women fighting for the right of their children to a lies-free world. Women like Nasrin Sotoudeh and Narges Mohammadi in Iran, for instance.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human rights activits in Iran, active in defending especially children and women rights and opposer of death penalty and compulsory hijab. Mother of two, she is one of the bravest and most genuine voices in Iran, a role-model for all the prisoners of conscience all over the world. A voice for the voiceless. Modest, humble, strong in her belief in building a better world.

Sotoudeh, who was released shortly a couple of weeks ago, is serving a 38-year sentence for her human rights activism. 

Directed by Jeff Kaufmann, the movie Nasrin, recently released at the Berlin Human Rights Film Festival, was filmed illegally in Iran. From the fragments of various testimonies and snapshots from Sotoudeh´s everyday life, the movie draws the portrait of one of the most inspirational women of this century. There are many women and dissidents associated those days with the fights for rights in Iran, vocal and highly promoted. Nasrin Sotoudeh belives in what she is fighting for with no reward in sight. Her humble fight on behalf of those lacking the right justice and basic freedoms is an example of humanity. Together with Shirin Ebadi, who also appears in the movie, and Narges Mohammadi who appears episodically, Nasrin Sotoudeh is the voice of the prisoners of conscience from Iran and all over the world. 

Nasrin is the diary of a woman whose main superpower is fighting on behalf of the powerless. Strong against tyranny by the force of her fragility.

Academic Freedoms under Attack

Academic freedoms, scholars and students are under threat from governments and non-state military actors from all over the world, according to the latest report issued by Scholars at Risk Network. Covid19 created additional pressures and problems for the academic realm, with universities positions reduced and online harassment increasing. 

It´s my first time reading this report and found it very relevant for the state-of-the arts of academia nowadays. It copes less with legislation and more with different itrusive, aggresive and violent actions of state and non-state actors against members of academia. 

All over the world, campus and academics are not a convenient partner. Universities are places of dissent due to their main intellectual mission. Although supported by the state, financially and logistically, they are the guarantee of freedom and progress. When academics are in chains, the whole country is so. When academics are under permanent threat, including physical one, like in the case of Afghanistan, for instance, where Talibans are regularly raiding campuses and academic compounds killing ramdomly students and teachers, the higher the political and social risks im the country. 

For me, it was interesting to follow up the dramatic situation of the academic life in Yemen, after five years of intense civil war, as well as the latest development in Turkey, where academic life is under threat for years following the escalation of Erdogan´s power, a situation that practically forced many academics to leave the country.

Such reports are very important for the state of the world nowadays, because they show how much is at stake when it comes to academia. And why it is important that academics are protected against the various state-based attempts to give up.

Book Review: The Shadow Commander by Arash Azizi

Today, as never before was such a need for intellectual clarity and extensive information about the main actors - political, military, other - in the Middle East. Despite the abhorrent character and crimes perpetrated by some, it is important to know to whom belong those names that suddenly make it on the Breaking News. 

The Shadow Commander. Soleimani, the US and Iran´s Global Ambitions by Arash Azizi is a noteworthy and the first substantial research in English on the biography of the general Qasem Soleimani, killed in an American drone attack at the beginning of this year near Baghdad International Airport. 

A ´boy from the margins of the society´, a provincial karateka, his seamless raise on the top of the revolutionary Iran hierarchies and complicated intrigues occured during the Iran-Iraq war and further on, by leading various local operations in his native Kerman. Since January 1988 he was appointed on the top of the Quds - from Arabic al-Quds, ´the Holy one´ referring to the city of Jerusalem - Force that he will lead until his death, turning it ´into the most ambitious expeditionary army in the history of the modern Middle East´.

The soldier-diplomat Soleimani become feared and appreciated - depends on which side of the Sunni-Shia divide one´s stand - for his bloody attacks he perpetrated and the direct, sometimes spontaneous, involvement in various local battles. His death was celebrated openly in Iraq and Syria where his survival victims were still having fresh memories of his attacks. In Iran, a majestic set-up was ordered and display, soon after massive protests all over the country ended in a brutal crackdown. Soon after, the authorities hit accidentally - but refused to acknowledged for a long time - an Ukrainian airplane killing the 176 passengers on board, mostly young people searching for a stable and brighter life in Canada. Indeed, while busy to play bloody cards in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, what a big achievement of the Islamic Revolution and its proxies to be the cause of the massive brain drain in the country´s history!

The current minister of Foreign Affairs, Javad Zarif, is portrayed - frequently and uncritically - as a fine diplomat, aimed to charm and sometimes charmed too, by a Western audience. He may have been more than once in conflict with Soleimani but the fact that he played on his music and acquiesced to the placing of Quds ´diplomats´ that perpetrated or planned acts of terror using the diplomatic network doesn´t diminish his responsibility within the regime. 

Although the book deals with complex Middle Eastern policies, it is written in a very captivating style, with political facts evolving sometimes with a cinematic alacrity. The journalistic, non-pretentious yet informative style helps a lot to avoid information overload. After all, Soleimani was not any kind of academic, but a person of action and this approach suits both the reader and the subject.

Even for someone with basic to middle level of knowledge about local politics and Iranian ambitions, it was interesting to observe how Tehran in the post-Islamic Revolution realm ambitioned in turning into a Moscow of the Middle East. The desperate internationalism with a pregnant Shia Islam outreach ended up by creating deep divisions within the fellow Muslim countries. It also recalibrated dramatically the regional alliances until this very day: Once upon a time, countries like Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia were part of a larger policy of alliances endeavoured by Israel to counter the vocal - but often just for the sake of the cameras - Arab bloc. Nowadays, it´s the other way round, as both Iran and Turkey are lead by personalised regimes endangering the fragile post-Cold War geopolitical balances.

The damage in the region made by violent outtakes authored by Soleimani is hard to evaluate as for now. In the case of the beloved ´Palestinian case´, Soleimani´s interposers played and still playing more or less consciously a game that does not serve a long term solution to the conflict. Actually, it fuelled it by supporting radicalised actors whose only raison d´etre is a permanent state of conflict, otherwise they may be out of work. ´The Quds Force might still claim that it was a ´´voice of the oppressed´´ but in practice it had become an instruments of Iran´s state-based foreign policy of extending Iranian influence in the Aran world and doing so through sectarian Shia proxies´. Although I´ve found a bit forced more than once the comparisons between the left internationalist movements of the Cold War and the Shia-oriented one, when it comes to the Middle East, both Moscow and Tehran may be proud of playing their own dirty games in full disrespect of the free will of the everyday Palestinians. 

Books like The Shadow Commander, on other main regional and Iranian players - no matter their despicability - aimed at an international audience are a very useful source of information for a different, realistic approach of a region that for the time being has the highest potential of ongoing frequent mentions on the Breaking News reports.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review 

Book Review: The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and Its Global Entanglements

 The Shah of Iran regime is generally evaluated and judged through overcritical lenses. The most frequent - and in most of the cases justified - references are to the deep corruption of his regime, the abuses against human rights and religious freedom and the lack of democracy. However, the job of an academic researcher is to outline the mentality patterns and directions which, when using the right neutral theoretical matrix, may reveal new and interesting aspects.

The Age of Aryamehr. Late Pahlavi Iran and Its Global Entanglements edited by Roham Alvandi is an outstanding collection of essays covering a big variety of topics related to the late years of the Pahlavi regime. Some of them are relatively well known, such as the Shiraz Festival of Arts or the 1971 Persepolis Celebrations, but what in my opinion stands up is the divergence of all the studies towards identifying global trends and the move towards a different political and geopolitical identity for Iran.

What for my own interests was equally relevant were the articles and points dedicated to intellectual history, specifically of the European left and it´s misreading of the Islamic revolution (the article by Claudia Castiglioni). The intellectual West was unable ´to fully capture the meaning and the possible implications of the Iranian revolution´. ´Universal in scope, but with a strong national connotation, anti-communist, despite the global emphasis placed on social justice, fought under the banner of religion despite the professed secularism of many among its protagonists, the Iranian revolution presented a conundrum for intellectuals, especially those of leftist orientation´. 

The ways in which the political representatives of the late Shah tried to use culture as an efficient tool of soft power was more than an abusive way of self-embelishment of the Shah - which at a certain extent it was - but a powerful statement trying to reposition Iran on the global trends, particularly during the complexities of the Cold War. From the mid-1960s, the Shah tried to create his own pattern of political alliances, playing the global card with the big players of the bi-polar blocks. He tried to integrate the cultural assumptions of a Great Civilisation - tammadon-e bozorg - into a larger geopolitical narrative. 

However, no matter what, he lost all his local cards and he was not the only one who was taken away by the debacle. 

This book is an example of quality intellectual discourse on topics that in most cases ignite ´for´ and ´against´ mindset. It shows how much the academic research and advancement of thoughts may win when the research is driven exclusively by intellectual curiosity and desire to find the truth.

Rating: 4 stars

Short Dream about Cosmopolitanism...

Some ideas are so easy to practice, but it´s frustrating to see that the easier the way the harder the acceptance.

The Ghanian-British philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has an optimistic outlook: cosmopolitanism has a chance because of intellectual curiosity and openness. Differences can be easily overcome as long as there is an openness to understand and accept the differences.

Written in the post-9/11 environment, and taking fully into account the new identity challenges, this relatively short book about cosmopolitanisn - that I´ve read in the German translation - goes through a variety of examples, mostly from the literary realm. He sees cosmopolitanism as ´an adventure´ and ´an ideal´ that takes into account the differences as they are, without trying to circumvene them to other universal category than the humanity as such.

Interestingly, by explaining various examples from the religious world, it outlines how the religious universalism may exclude in fact the difference and be insensitive to tolerance.

Although I´ve found that the book does not go beyond the general - optimistic - approaches of the topic, it creates a certain frame for an ideal world where cosmopolitanism is a possibility, a high one. It´s mostly a free choice, but one of the best one can make, in fully knowledge of the intellectual advantages of such a position.

Rating: 4 stars

What Covid 19 Crisis Brought to the Intellectual Debate

The unfolding Covid 19 Crisis brought a couple of interesting ideas and debates that affect not only the everyday practice of the state of law, but equally issues that on the medium and long term may change the approach to citizenship and solidarity.

From the very beginning: I am a strict mask wearing follower, with a problematic immunity condition. I respect the lockdown - partial and complete - decisions in my home country of Germany, I am trying as much as possible to limit my human contacts, and using intensively the online tools video options for connecting both to my work, academic and personal contacts. I am working from home since mid-September and me and my mini-family we spent religious holidays and birthdays and other personal encounters in very reduced format. I did the Covid test preventively twice and every time I have to attend a doctor meeting, I keep a track of my symptoms and temperature, at least 5 days in advance. I didn´t travel out of Germany and actually out of Berlin since the beginning of March. I am pushing for extra caution and I do not put into question the state decisions regarding the overall rules and regulations as well as responsibility during the pandemics.

However, as a political scientist and historian of mentalities, I am observing trends and challenges and I am keeping an eye on the eventual consequences for human rights and freedoms. There are a couple of aspects that I´ve noticed in the last months that I would outline, without making any clear conclusions as the situation is on the run as for now and most probably there will be more challenges taking place. My observations are based on everyday interactions with people and news and analysis pertaining to a large diversity of sources mostly from US, France, Germany, Sweden, Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe. I wish I have more available time and resources to extend my observations to other corners of the world, such as Latin America, Australia or Africa.

-  An important aspect that is common all over the world is the critical situation of the medical system. No matter where and what. There is not enough medical personnel and the hospital beds simply do not reach the high demand not only for Covid 19 patients, but generally. The sector is underpaid and so is the personnel. 

- The full chain of support for the medical personnel is also lacking, and this applies as well to the people working in other essential sectors, such as rule of law - justice and police - or educational personnel. 

- Single parents and people with a precarious social situation - including refugees and old people - are directly affected by the economic restrictions and laydowns that enfolded in the last months. Some countries are lacking a proper social system to compensate those staying at home or unable to work during the pandemic. The number of people at high social risk increased significantly and it´s a very dangerous situation from the social point of view.

- There are categories at risk - women and children - of being the target of an increased domestic violence. The fact that the institutions and organisations in charge with preventing such abuses were on ´home office´ which often meant unreachable either by email or by phone and without access to basis files and information - at least the case in Germany - complicated the situation.  

- From the scientific point of view, we are far from fully understanding how the virus operate, what and how fast are the mutations and what exactly we can do to prevent its spread. The lockdowns operated pretty well, but once people are back to normal, the number of cases are increasing. The solution of a vaccine is welcomed, but how life will look like in one year or two is hard to evaluate. The rules of the scientific research may require a lot of analysis and investigation and careful conclusions and there is a pressure on behalf of the society, including for economic reasons, to find a solution. Scientists cannot operate properly under such conditions.

-  As for now, it is not clearly known how the virus spreads. The dynamics within a family, for instance, can vary, with cases when both parents were infected, while children not. For children growing up in a climate of fear and suspicions that they may be the cause of infection for their beloved ones it is a high risk of psychological trauma. The fact that they may go to school and requested to limit their contact with their peers, as well as with their parents and grandparents adds on more distress. 

- The old people, some of them isolated for months in care facilities do experience their own trauma as well, besides the inevitable problems of the old age. Many of them died alone, some are unable to have contact with their beloved one which increases their anxiety and alienation. 

- People living separated from their beloved one also represent a category of mental health risk. Living alone in a foreign country, for different reasons, separated from your beloved ones, that may be themselves in critical situations, creates difficulties that video calls may diminish but still cannot replace the reality of a close hug. The therapists and mental health personnel are faced with new situations and proper answers are relatively improvised solutions as for now.

- Let´s talk statistics. First and foremost, in countries with a limited or non-existent democractic system, the official data released regarding the Covid 19 rates of infection and death are largely put into question. Reporting a high number of data may create credibility issues for the political regime therefore hiding the truth is what the local politicians will rather do. On the other hand, when it comes to democratically elected countries, there are still difficulties in offering a credible account of the extent of the pandemic as sometimes the medical causes of death are not corroborated with previous medical conditions. The ways in which data are reported, from the statistical point of view is also largely different from a country to another and, in case of federal systems, from a region to another. Therefore, when political decisions are based on those data, there may be slight issues. 

- What about civil liberties? The decisions to introduce the lockdown were mostly imposed by political decision makers, without democratic debate, on the argument of high security. Some countries even used in this respect tracking systems in order to secure the full implementation of those measures. The respective personal data were shared by intelligence agencies creating high suspicions about how easily those information can be politically instrumented. The freedoms of movement were limited and controlled by agents of the state authority - mostly police. Security was considered prevalent for freedom, on the base of the emergency. For non-democratic systems it was automatically possible based on their authoritarian reflexes. In democracies, it created a big debate and the state actors aimed to protect the rule of law and human freedoms started to impose different decisions on political rulings - particularly in Germany. The question is also: Will this create a precedent of retraining political liberties? What are the democratic antibody that should activated in this case? 

- Responsibility and solidarity: Angela Merkel´s discourses related to the Covid 19 often mentioned the need of solidarity and responsibility towards each other. The decision of wearing a mask and respecting the social distance, as well as the minimal sanitary measures is an expression of responsible free will. We are more than isolated individuals, but we are part of a human network and social context that involves a minimal solidarity. What are the daily rituals that build this solidarity? How do we become responsible for one another? On the other hand, there are cases when people do request the intervention against fellow citizens as purposely not implementing the lockdown requirements. Such situations reveal a mistrust in people belonging to different cultural and religious groups therefore expressions of a deep mistrust and discrimination tendencies. 

I am looking forward to follow many of those ideas, hopefully from the comfort of a location safe from the health point of view and while enjoying at least a minimal social contact with my beloved ones. 

Giving Voice to Women in Spy Stories

Let´s talk women in the more or less history of espionage...Automatically, it comes to mind the glamours of Mata Hari and the swings of Josephine Baker and some equally glamorous counterparts of James Bond. However, although unequally represented on the economy of jobs, women working in espionage, all over the world, mean more than that. And, contrary to the generally accepted stereotype, they can do more than being ´honey pots´.

A French freelance author Chloé Aeberhardt had the idea of writing a book about various women from all over the world famous intelligent services. A tremendous and not always successful work because of the secretive and sensitive nature of the work. The book was recently turned into short animated series on Arte that I just finished watching today. 

Truth to be told, the life of women involved in intelligence is limited. The life of a woman in general is limited by family, children, family and house-related obligations. But more and more women are able to make it through and succeed. Because, in fact, there is no intelligence related job that a woman cannot do. Only that society is limiting a woman´s ability to outperform. Sometimes, women too are resigning to accept their limitations, which is also a matter of choice.

The women featured in the TV mini-series (I have the book too and hopefully will be able to read and review it soon) are former operatives of CIA, KGB, French intelligence, Stasi and Mossad. My favorite case, for her freedom is the hero of the episode Yola and Hotel Mossad featuring a former ELAL flight attendant, part of a massive Mossad operation in Sudan aimed to smuggle endangered Ethiopian Jews to Israel. The story was recently featured in a movie on Netflix, The Red Sea Diving Resort but probably the reality was even more complex than the fiction. One of the stories I never heard about was how the Manuel Antonio Noriega was caught out of the Embassy of Vatican where he took refuge following the American invasion of Panama.

Another woman featured in the movie is a former Stasi operative in the then West Germany that was recruted through the so-called Romeo-network of the famous Markus Wolf, the head of the Main Directorate for Reconaissance, the foreign intelligence division of Eas Germany´s Ministry for State Security. The so-called Romeos were Stasi agents sent to the West Germany to recruit women working in top/sensitive working positions. They were usualle falling for the boys and were further recruited to work for the East. At a great extent, the success of this operation confirmed the weakness label of women leading to women being considered as a liability therefore not deem of a trustworthy work within the security network, unless it involved sex. Gabriele Gast, interviewed in the movie, started to collaborate with the East for a purposely love story, but ended up working for convinctions, without accepting any payments.

It´s one of the many new beginnings in she-writing the history with a focus on female actors and although it is just a start, it´s worth continuing because it not only allows to make a difference, but equally create a space for new debates and understandings.

Decadence&Downfall: The Shah of Iran´s Ultimate Party

The Shah of Iran´s tragical story has not only historical consequences for the Pahlavi dynasty itself but equally for the country itself that was thrown in decades of turmoil and abuses. What if the Shah would have understood better that it is about time to really understand its people? Unfortunatelly such projections are too late and historically toxic.

Decadence&Downfall: The Shah of Iran´s Ultima Party was released by BBC in 2017. The 1h30 documentary is primarily featuring the grandiose celebrations of 2,500 Years of Persian monarchy in 1971, where 2,500 guests from all over the world were offered lavish celebrations for three days spending an amount that was three times the annual budget of the rich Switzerland.

The movie features fragments of interviews with the Shah and Farah Diba - speaking a very elegant French and English - as well as with people involved at various level of organising the festivities, from the serving personnel to foreign journalists and local politicians at the time, as the former and loyal diplomat Ardeshir Zahedi, who happened to be the son-in-law of the Shah who never ceased to be a proud Iranian. 

´I have a divine command of doing what I am doing´, is the Shah confessing in one of those interviews. The megalomanic party and his entire court routine and display of outrageous luxury in a country where half of the people still leaved below the poverty line. The display of diamonds and majestic richness was more than part of the westoxification - gharbzadegi - a very popular concept among the opponents of the Shah, introduced by Jalal Al-e Ahmad. It was a statement of independence and of assumed bold stake in a world that was becoming strongly bi-polar therefore with no concerns for the ambitions of the ´King of Kings´ - the title that Shah Reza awarded himself in 1967. But in this respect as well, the Shah ignored the realities. In the end, he was a victim of his and his entourage ´bubble life´. His beloved people would be the victim of his errors until today.

The documentary is relatively fair and informative and the archive recordings are alternating with interviews of various people involved in the preparations of the ceremonies as well as connected with the Iranian monarchy. 

Personally, I am looking forward this weekend to read more about the global entanglements of the former Shah, but this movie is an eye-opening especially as it offers a strong visual approach to the historical identification and continuity with the reign of Cyrus the Great - Khoros, in Persian - who is nowadays under the reign of the Islamic Republic reduced to the silence of history. 

About Racism, in Germany

I am glad that there are so many books taking frontally racism in Germany, especially the everyday racism. That kind of racism that people not born here and with a different skin colour and obvious religious observance has to deal with every day.

Alice Hasters´ Was weisse Menschen über Rassismus hören wollen aber wissen sollten (in my approximate translation What white people don´t want to hear about racism but should know about) is partly a personal memoir of a woman of colour born and living in Germany but partly is an overview of racism atittudes in the everyday life. Indeed, you don´t have to be a Nazi to be a racist. It´s enough to start with that question: Where are you coming from, originally? Or to address in a broken English a person with a non-German sounding name and a darken skin colour. 

´We are here, in Germany´, sounds the micro-agression in the Kita when one parent insists that pork is part of the German culture therefore he requests in a a kindergarten with a high diversity of children to introduce the aforementioned animal on the daily menu. That´s my experience that I will explain in detail on another occasion, maybe.  

The book is written in a very personal, authentic style creating an open dialogue with the reader. It´s a kind request to try changing the way of looking at people, considering more than their hair and their skin colour, but also taking into account historical perspectives and colonial burried past, acknowledged only in the last decade. It is also a request to reconsider critically not only the Enlightment period - which was far from being enligthened, as it revealed a system of thought that lead to racist mindsets, especially in scientific research - but also symbol thinkers and philosophers, like Kant and Hegel. 

Alice Hasters covers a lot of issues, from the family connections and relating to her white German grandparents and relatives, to school relationships, cultural appropriation and the wrongs of acting white. Through the examples, it serves very well as a kind of guide and orientation for white people helping them to stop being racist. As there is nothing like good racism anyway.

I had access to the book in audio format, in the reading of the author.

Another reliable source of information about what does it mean being a POC in Germany is the book by the journalist Marvin Oppong: Ewig anders. 

Rating: 5 stars

´The Education of Kim Jong-Un´

The current North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Un is often read in an ironic, comic-book like key. Or he is considered a cruel tyrant killing not only his people, but also his own family members - which probably is. But what´s the intelligent approach to his rule?

Jung H. Pak worked for the CIA as intelligence community analyst on Korean issues and is a Brookings Institute Senior Fellow, as well as on author on topics related to Korea, particularly the North. The Education of Kim Jong-Un is a very short - under 50 pages book - yet insightful approach to the man who´s both despised and admired but for sure has a mind of his own, which is mostly unpredictable if following the wrong analysis matrix. 

Compared to other books I´ve read this year about Kim Jong-Un this short introduction is very useful if one wants to get familiar with ´the hardest of the hard targets´. A spoiled boy who lived his own life under the sign of priviledge, that was on a boarding school in Switzerland while his people was starving, Kim wants to raise high. It´s a new type of dictatorship he is practising but placed under times of tremendous change and unpredictibility. Hence, the need of a more elastic, creative approach of his regime and, eventually, post-Kim North Korea.

´Kim has made it clear that he will not tolerate any potential challenges. And his rule through terror and repression - against the backdrop of that pastel wonderland of waterparks - means that the terrorized and the repressed will continue to feed Kim´s illusions and expectations, his grandiose visions of himself and North Korea´s destiny´.

In other words, it´s a smarter game taking place out there than you may read in the media - at the time the book was read, there was not too much a fuss about Kim´s health and the raising of her sister on the top of the party hierarchy. Adding Kim in a box with the stamp of ´Craziness´ on the top of it would have been too easy. The guy who did an over 100 kilotons bomb test in 2017 - for the sake of the comparison, as mentioned in the book, the bomb the Americans threw on Hiroshima had just 15 kilotons - has also the power. Nuclearization is an important asset of this regime and ignoring or deriding it is as dangerous as dancing with the bombs. 

Instead, Jung H.Pak suggests a suple and subtle approach, which involves increasing the regional alliances - particularly between US (that´s from an American perspective that the author considers the facts and further developments), South Korea and Japan, as well as through efforts of cutting the resources that fund the nuclear weapons program, a constant cyber war, raising awareness about human right violations and, one of the most important things, creating an alternative vision for a post-Kim era. What I´ve felt is missing for the analysis is the mention of other - less-democratic - interests in the region, such as China and Russia, which would have create a better picture of the real situation on the ground.

The Education of Kim Jong-Un is a practical and insightful read about North Korea and its leadership, which includes fine observations and useful future political projections. The future only will tell what´s the best and how things will evolve in the next months and years.

Rating: 4 stars

The State of the Arts of Mathematics in France

Children don´t like mathematics in school, and it´s not only their fault. Actually, the biggest share of this disgrace is due to the old methodologies and lack of understanding, at the institutional level, about the importance of this domain to everyday life.

The series: Conversation sur les mathématiques is part of a collection of publications aimed to outline various scientific domains and their relevance for the everyday life and institutional politics. It reunites dialogues between experts in a domain of study on topics related not only to theoretical and conceptual approaches but also to common relevance.

For instance, why mathematics are important for the everyday life? For instance, for being able to manage your costs and savings, or medical reasons or for setting up your business? What distinguishes a certain policy in the field from a country to another? What are the geopolitics of mathematics nowadays? What happened to France and what are the consequences of the daily decline of the educational measures in this field? What are the failures of communication between the French mathematicians and other scientists?

I´ve read this book of dialogues - among mathematicians with very complex life trajectories - as a long intellectual story, with fascinating insights into the everyday struggles of the scientific elites. I can´t wait to read the other conversations on other theoretical topics as well.

Rating: 4 stars

The Poles of Tehran

From the early 1940s until the end of WWII, Iran hosted between 114,000 and 300, refugees from Poland, that come on the way from Siberia via Uzbekistan. They arrived to the port city of Bandar e-Anzali and they settled in Tehran, but also in Isfahan and other locations like Ahvaz. Most of them left either back to Poland, after the war, or left for New Zealand or UK, but there were also a few - some hundred - that stayed there, settled and eventually married.

Some of the stories of those refugees are the topic of a documentary movie made by the film director and author Khoshrow Sinai, who died this August of Covid 19, The Last Requiem available for free on YouTube (it lasts 1h35). He gathered testimonies of the then refugees between 1971-1983, to which archive films and photos were added.  He is not the only one to cover this topic, among those who documented this Exodus being the photographer Gholam Abdol-Rahimi. 

The wandering started once Poland was occupied by the Germany, with hundred of thousands of people running - sometimes on foot - to the Soviet Union, where they were sent to camps in Siberia. Malnourished and maltreated, some were able to go out and reached Iran, where according to the testimonies they were welcomed with open heart, fed and hosted by the locals. ´They made us feel humans again´, says one of the person interviewed then. Many were sent back to the front but there were many who temporarily or for good worked here, as nannies or music teachers. Polonia, a former bar and restaurant in the centre of Tehran, was a meeting point not only for the local Polish but also by the American and British soldiers stationed in the capital. Sinai is wandering though the Christian cemetery in Tehran or visiting the local church trying to understand what they feel and how they feel now about their past. 

At the time of the production, given the so-called ´friendly´ relations between USSR and Poland, the movie was not distributed in the country, as it openly approaches the hardships the Poles had to suffer on behalf of the Russians. After the end of the Cold War though, Sinai was awarded a high Polish state distinction for his contribution to the understanding of this specific chapter of common history.

Among those hundreds of thousand of refugees, there were also around 1,000 Polish Jews that were saved from the Nazis while being offered temporary refuge in Iran. The survivors, calling themselves ´Tehrani´, do still reunite once the year in Israel to celebrate their escape through Iran. Unfortunately, this topic is not approached in the movie, but in those demented times we live now, it is a good reminder that, in fact, the kindness of the people can easily overpass the craziness of the political regime in power in Tehran. 

Book Review: China´s Next Strategic Advantage. From Imitation to Innovation

 

China´s Next Strategic Advantage. From Imitation to Innovation by George S. Yip and Bruce McKern is an useful introduction to doing business in China, especially for multinational companies. It helps at a great extent - but mostly at a theoretical level - to understand the details of mergings and business management in this country, as well as the state policies in the field of development and innovation.

It combines the features of a business guidance book based on a variety of case studies from various industries. For someone interested in doing business in China, this book can help at a significant extent. For those already operating on the ground, not so much, as they are probably well acquainted already with the limitations of a party system that is present through its structures in any middle-sized entreprise as well as the frequent harassment foreigners operating in the mainland especially are targeted (both legally as physically with police officers visiting them late at night apparently for some regular documents checking). I personally think that such aspects cannot be ignored, especially in a book that has to do with the business developments aimed at a foreigner audience.

Rating: 3 stars

Russia´s Ghosts are Never Dead

Academics tend to disapprove and disgrace journalistic inquieries as lacking a theoretical and ideatic basis, but for contemporary analysts of political events they need the backbone provided by journalists in order to create realistic interpretations of facts. 

Russia is not an easy topic to write about and live in. Under Putin´s reign for too many years to remember when it really started, the country is playing the maskirovka game internationally where its people are battling poverty and restriction of their basic rights. Internationally though, and in the field of memory policies, there is business as usual, with new and old ideologies being concocted for political survival reasons.

The Long Hangover: Putin´s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past is a work of journalistic investigation into the genesis of the memory revival and policies underwent by Putin. Through interview with simple people, some of them inmates in the Gulag or former participants to WWII-related events, Shaul Walker the then Moscow correspondent of The Guardian, offers a lot of hints about the directions of the politics of memory as dictated by Putin and his trustees. Taking over a country in a desolate state of affairs the Russian president played hard the cards of pride and identity, reshaping collective memory and reigniting feelings of pride and self-reliance. Such moves operate on medium-term and according to the interviews related in the book, almost succeeded. 

I would have been keen to read - or hear, as I had access to the book in audio format - more critical perspectives and maybe some theoretical sources too, but journalistic work, as I know myself well, does not have too much time to deal with this part of the investigation, as it needs to stay connected on facts and specific details.

At the history scale, the strategies and policies implemented in the field of memory policies deserve a more extended academic consideration. I would be very curious to explore more into detail those moves and their unique genesis applied to other countries from the region, including former Soviet republics, as Russia and the Soviet Union in general is part of their history and everyday life.

Neglected for various reasons, this part of the world continue to offer interesting topics of study for academics and researchers of contemporary politics and mentalities. No matter how fast the geopolitical interests are shifting, keeping an educated eye into this region is rewarding and always intellectually challenging.

Rating: 3 stars

What´s in a Name?

At the beginning of a very inspirational workshop I took part to at the beginning of this week, organised by LADS Akademie in Berlin, on topics of anti-racism, the participants were asked to tell the story of their name: what does it mean, what is the origin, what is the story or the stories associated with it.

A very good start of a long discussion about racism and discrimination, in Germany and elsewhere, because, more often than not, a name may carry a heavy history. A name is not only a choice of your parent - with all the positive and negative aspects involved by that - but especially for those living as minorities or displaced from their countries of origins, it carries a tragic destiny. 

Especially when, in Berlin, for instance, a foreign-sounding name (especially if labelled of outside Western Europe, Arabic or Slavic) may limit your chances to rent an apartment. Or, when you are forced to change it for a more ´majority´-sounding one, in order to better fit the sound and the music of oppressive majorities.

When your own place of birth changes political hands, your name may be despised as belonging to a relative minority or majority. It can be wrongly written and pronounced in official contexts and, eventually, changed against your will. Your identity documents are the proof of how one or another authority decided against your will to modify your name. According to one hilarious family story, the brothers of my maternal grandfather were each and every one of them had their family name written completely different up to the various moods and levels of literacy of the officials that registered their births. At least in one instance, my great-great parents were told: What name is that? Doesn´t sound local? So they automatically made it sound so...

Learning how to correctly pronounce one name is a sign of respect and consideration, the first step towards acknowledging someone´s identity, and therefore respecting it. 

Everything starts with a name and indeed, a name means so much. Sometimes, a whole rich story extended across time, geography and generations.

Essay on the New French Elites

It was a long time since I´ve read a French-language essay, by Pierre Birnbaum, about the circulation of elites. His latest, Où va l´Etat. Essai sur les nouvelles élites du pouvoir published in 2018 by Seuil was an easy yet informative read on the changes underwent lately by the French elites. 

Despite the general tone, the book has to do with France - and only France. Birnbaum is a writer I used to quote often during my SciPo university classes and actually I was partially agreeing with his methods and conclusions. His researches are following the sociological methods integrated into a perspective of the historian of the state and I appreciate the mix of research perspectives and methods.

The analysis of Birnbaum starts with the raise to power of president Macron and inferrs further that the French state is currently under threat by the private sector, whose representative the current resident of the Elysée is. 

Long before Macron administration, the traditional path of circulation of elites - mostly via the Ecole Normale Supèrieure (ENA), the classical network of political representatives both at the local and central level - began to erode. Nowadays, according to Birnbaum whose analysis is based on research of professional CVs of the power representatives, the percentage of people belonging to the economic environment is over 50%. Besides a statistical account of persons, this challenge means that concepts of public management are entering the French political space which may on the long term challenge France with the concepts of the American society ´ouverte à tous les vents au monde du privé´. Besides the French existential fears when confronted with the American interference, Birnbaum also fears a higher occurence of corruption and he brings as arguments the increased frequency of mismanagement of public funds by political representatives from the last decade. The next effect of such changes may be the weakening of the state and the threat of populism.

I personally use this method of professional CV analysis when it comes to identify patterns and trends among elites. It is the easiest way to read the changes taking place within a society as well as the old and emerging centers of power.

However, only this approach is not enough for understanding a complex political system. For instance, Birnbaum´s analysis does not mention the fact that Macron won the power based on the support of a political party newly created. The essay does not have in any case any analysis about the situation of the current political party which is a pity for the overall evaluation of the situation. 

On the other hand, the fact that the traditional channels of power created by the selection of elites via ENA, for instance, is becoming obsolete is not necessarily a bad news as competition to this channel can offer more diversity and opportunities for the state configuration. 

Personally, I would have expect more than an essay about the new French elites, but I promise to return with more French analysis about the current system and its challenges, especially at the level of the intellectual elites. 

Rating: 3 stars

Hegel´s Lessons on Plato

When a philosopher is reading another philosopher, either it is having a critical stance or agrees with, in the end the aim will be to promote his or her own philosophical concepts and theories. This is especially when you have to deal with big names of the history of philosophy, in this case Hegel´s reading on Plato. A reading which is incomplete, fragmentary, subjective and in the end, serves exclusively the main philosophical narrative of the author. It does not reveal anything new and the observations and conclusion shall be regarded with a very critical eye. 

Reading Hegel again, although in a translation of the French translation from the original German - experience taught me to be vigilent to any philosophical French translation from German as it embelishes the vocabulary but does not always have the right liguistic tools to convene the original German meanings - was a novel intellectual experience for me. 

There, in the secret chamber of the lost books, Plato and his dialogues were as fresh as I left them more than a decade ago. Hegel and his acrobatic Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis - a triptic that I use often in various intellectual constructions by default - were also there. Only that my critical thinking evolved meanwhile which meant that I can read in many ways the use and often misuse various philosophical sources in order to build a different system of thought. It is an intellectual reflex of the modern age, overwhelmed with so much information and texts from the Antiquities onwards. Our age is left therefore only with the critical part. We rarely want to build anything and creating systems is a feareful approach which announces intellectual theologies - with low regard, if any, to individual freedoms. 

Philosophical exercises are useful mind-games but I don´t believe in the philosopher-king. I never did.

´Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe´

I don´t remember when I´ve read the last time about spy stories in Eastern Europe. It used to be a topic I dealt with as a historian, especially when reconstructing intellectual profiles and histories from this part of the world. Personally, I´ve considered it a real hole of rats that disgusted me deeply. Once you start searching through the files carefully set up by the so-called ´intelligence´ services of the time, there is no end of human ignominy. It helps when you try to avoid to have role-models but still, why they should be so low and accept to betray their neighbours, friends, relatives in exchange for money or priviledges that will never amount to the harm they did. I remember I met once a woman who once was recruited when she was in school, a teenager. She accepted. When the public discussion about collaboration and relationship with communist secret police was hot, that woman met me for a coffee and confessed that once she said candidly ´yes´. I tried to be polite with her, finish my coffee and avoid her for the rest of my stay. Simply, don´t want to have anything to do with such people and it is my personal choice for reasons of mental hygiene.

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe, edited by Valentina Glajan, Alison Lewis and Corina L. Petrescu. is a volume of stories collected from the Stasi archives, Romania´s Securitate and the Ukrainian KGB, among others. In addition, there are also chapter on the representation of the Cold War in movies on both sides of the Iron Curtain. 

If you are not familiar with the Cold War context and its intricacies do not expect to understand it by reading this book - that I had in audiobook format - but otherwise the stories outlined are really interesting for the specific topics addressed. For instance the story of a Romanian Jew that worked as a secret police officer before being dismissed after ten years of activity on an anti-Semitic ground - which happened very often at the time. Another chapter deals with the many faces of the GDR spymaster Markus Wolf. Literature and the production of books in general were a very important matter of interest for the secret services at the time. They use writers as informers and censors in a clear effort of divide the intellectuals and keep them under the state control. The story of the Romanian-born Hungarian Jew Ana Novac - her real name was Zimra Harsanyi - , a Shoah survivor, a plawriter and memorialist that died in Paris, is an example in this respect. People that were in contact with her were writing surveillance notes with a strong personal note of disdain for her burgeois habits and her sexual activities. Another topic that I´ve found personally very interesting regards the Turkish men working as seasonal labour force in the West that were recruited by the East during their trips to the communist part of Berlin looking for fun and sexual adventures. The story of the Orthodox priest who denounced his collaboration with the West that a couple of years after the end of the Soviet Union was among the ultranationalist Russian-speaking publication Zavtra is no surprise. 

Personally, I was interested in reading more stories from the secret files but that was maybe rather an intellectual voyeurism. I was entering the mood of terrible stories and was ready to remember that this is how the human nature works, regardless the intellectual preoccupations and the particular education. The final part of the book deals with the movies representations of the Cold War, through the analysis of a couple of the productions. The relevance of the topic of surveillance, in a post-Cold War context remains, but as in many respects regarding the multi-polar world, there is a lot of political ambiguity and circumstantial meaning. 

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe were not intended to be more than fragments of a complex mosaique that still has its own secrets. It has a critical box of tools as well as conceptual delimitations and definitions which are very helpful for the reader that have not experienced directly the political pressures of the time. Personally, I would be curious about the feedback about such stories from someone who never faced the restriction of democratic freedoms. 

Maybe it is about time to delve back into some Cold War stories or write more myself. One day...

Rating: 4 stars

Behind the Diplomatic Battle for the Iran Deal

Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumpf of Diplomacy by Trita Parsi is a detailed, step-by-step account of the heated debates for closing the Iran deal. Parsi, one of the founder and former president of the American-Iranian Council, is a frequent editorialist and commenter on issues pertaining to diplomatic developments in the Middle East, particularly Iran.

For someone interested to read more about the diplomatic steps and proceedings leading to the conclusion of this unique agreement, between two countries whose diplomatic relations were frozen for decades, the book is an useful read. How Obama succeeded to dupe his European partners while working hard to achieve the deal through mysterious ways, including by using a very secret Oman channel, is, among others, an important element to understand the post-Cold War diplomatic games. 

The author´s appreciation for the Iranian top diplomat, Javad Sharif, is clear and compared to a certain part of the local Iranian elites, he certainly may deserve the praise. On the other hand, Sharif himself acknowledged recently in the Iranian Parliament, on an exasperating tone, how much he and his ´diplomats´ worked together to achieve political and ´revolutionary´ aims endeavoured by the militant side of the regime, including the late Qasem Soleimani. In a plain translation, diplomatic positions and outposts of Iran were used for undiplomatic aims, such as planning terror attacks or fuelling Hizbollah and its proxies. Candidly, in the book, Parsi mentions Hizbullah, which is funded regularly with money and ideology by the regime in Tehran, as ´a close ally of Iran´. For an academic approach, I would have expected a critical approach on Sharif and its interesting diplomatic game.

Also a critical stance is missing when it comes to Israel. Clearly, during the negotiations, the long-term prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a hawkish opposer of it, and a supporter of military strikes against Iran, despite the clear opposition of the Israeli intelligence and military establishment. But not all that glitters is gold and taking ad litteram Netanyahu´s declarations and accusing him and the ´lobby´ - that is not called throughoutly this but described in clear terms as one - does not bring any contribution to understanding the complexity of the problem. Blaming Netanyahu and the pro-Israeli voices for  the mishaps of an international system is wrong. Some people simply deserve each other.

As I had the book in audio format, a sidenote is for the pronunciation of non-English words: from Madrid to Persian and Hebrew names, the results are horrendous. Like the content of the book was not deceiving enough. 

Rating: 2 stars

A Modern History of Iran by Abbas Amanat

Iran: A Modern History by Abbas Amanat is a massive historical compedium, which resumes 20 years of work and a time span which covers five centuries. Iran is very often mentioned nowadays in purely political context but few are those - including among journalists and especially politicians - with at least a basic knowledge about this country.

The reason is not only because they might not want to but there is a relative scarcity of general, well-structured information about Iran. One can find snapshots of various kinds of information, but rarely a big picture which covers important data such as historical context, geographical delimitations, economic background, political evolution and cultural developments. 

Abbas Amanat, director of Yale Program in Iranian Studies, was able to introduce to the reader all those details in over 1000 pages of history. It starts with the 16th century with the Safavid Empire, but it offers an overview of the previous historical sequencies by placing the Persians in the world tempo of the previous centuries. The book relies on a multiplicity of sources, double checked and neutraly introduced into the narrative. The research ends with the Green Movement - the protests following the fraudulent presidential elections from 2009. 

The book combines chronological details while following mentality patterns and structures which helps to better understand the religious and political developments and the conflicts and interferences of the two, as well as the positioning of Iran in modern times in various geopolitical contexts. From the conceptual point of view it is an excellent way to offer a basic timeline while filling it with information that helps to understand not only the moment when the events are taking place, but also the bigger picture of the time, what F. Braudel and Ecole des Annales labelled as the long durée.

Personally, I reserved a couple of months to go through the information and most probably will need at least one year to get into more details of various historical time frames and events mentioned more or less in detail. Besides translating in a simple but not simplistic way the realities of six centuries of dense Iranian history, Iran: A Modern History is also a noteworthy example of how to write histories nowadays. Recommended to anyone curious to find more about Iran than what is usually featured in the media but also to historians patient enough to learn not only about a country, but also searching for their writing style.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Book Review: MBS by Ben Hubbard

MBS by Ben Hubbard is a journalistic investigation into the public life of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud that can be easily used as a a further basis for academic research into the Kingdom history and everyday life. 

After reading the well documented book - both from the journalistic as well as the academic point of view - by Kim Ghattas covering the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran I had relatively high expectations about Hubbard book. However, from many points of view it does not go beyond the news scren and the information that were already published in the international media about the Kingdom and its enigmatic Crown Prince. For instance, the case of the princes kept hostages in the Ritz Carlton or the killing of the journalist Jamal Kashoggi (which is covered in several chapters which is fine, but in my opinion the information could have been easily covered in one or maximum two, not because it is not relevant, but for simple reasons pertaining to the economics of the writing as such). 

By far, the final chapter, which puts into balance the good and the bad sides of the MBS dream of Saudi Arabia, is the most interesting and offers many directions for a further historical and political science investigation: the complete restructuration of the nature of power in the Kingdom, the elimination of the centers of power created by various members of the Royal House, starting the process of diminishing the influence of the clerics on the monarchy, the probable raprochement with the Jewish state. It is a pragmatic rather than an ideological approach which leaves open the long-term commitment and the degree of predictability of the Middle East political map. 

Probably I had high expectations from this book given its publicity and my own curiosity to finally find a good source to understand Saudi Arabia and its ruler. Hopefully, there will be more books and researches on this topic coming up in the next months and years, with a more serious, researched basis.

I´ve listened to the audio version of the book.

Rating: 3 stars

Against the Condescending Attitude in Academic Approaches

Personal accounts and experiences are a valuable addition to the serious, complex and complicated academic researches in human sciences. I deeply valuate both of them because it balances the mind and offer information that creates a full picture of a specific situation or mentality pattern. One without the other guarantee in most cases a misrepresetantion.

I am thinking right now to the recent academic and media takes on racism and white privilege in general. My area of study has to do mostly with ethnic minorities but the research tools used in the case of ethnic minorities can be sometimes used as well for the research in other sub-domains, such as gender and race approaches. 

I will talk less right now about race or my ethnic minorities studies. I want to share only some experiences regarding a certain condescending attitude that I´ve noticed myself among white, privileged, educated intellectuals - some of them academics, in a completely different context.

As a child, I grew up in a relatively privileged family. Although not always enjoying a top political appreciation, I belonged to a family that counted for at least three generation people with high-education, a high profesional mobility and urban background. High-education, that was intensively encouraged to acquire and was, actually, since now, a normal pathway for me and my siblings, was a guarantee against the ever changing political occurences. No matter what happens, you have a profesional qualification that will guarantee employment. Bonus: if you really want to be beyond good and evil, you gather as many qualifications as possible therefore your intelligence will be always praised, no matter what happens outside, in the world of decision makers. A theory that was at a great extent proved by my family members personal and professional journey. No matter how hard the dictatorship was at work in my country of origin, my uncles and mother were always needed for involvement in different scientific projects. No matter the country we landed for a long or short term, the knowledge of multiple languages, academic achievements and scholarhips always guaranteed a place among other intellectual peers.

On the other side, in relationship with the other professional and social groups, we knew our place so well that although some of my family members where genuinely sharing a very socialist/communist political belief, the ways in which those beliefs were put into practice ended up in a very condescending, kitsch-eque way. For instance, of course, we acknowledged the existence of illiterate members of the society, and we are keen to help on a voluntary basis to upgrade their level of knowledge, even teaching them an extra foreign language once their literacy was improving. But those people will always be those whom we helped to get out of illiteracy. Those people, no matter how far they will get, they will always remember based on their social class. Which was very unfair because, if communism did a lot of bad things the fact that it offered free education to everyone was one of the most important successes. 

In fact, we never mixed with those proletarians. They were our ´bon sauvages´ that we cultivate, but we don´t share bread with. The experience acquired through the contact with the masses was purely experimental and exhibitionists. We were curious to have a look at the way in which those people live and think, but at the end of the day we are happy to be home in our educated homes. 

I had later the same experience when I was doing some research about Roma minorities in the Balkans. NGOs and institutions provided with a generous budget were inviting journalists and academics active in the field of ethnic minorities to visit the villages of Roma. They were taking pictures, cautiously entering the mud huts where those people were living, were rolling their eyes looking at the children playing in the dirt together with various domestic animals. After one or two days or just a couple of hours spent in the midst of those people they were back to their clean offices, writing an academic report or some news and think nostalgically about those poor Roma and their poor destiny. 

Practically speaking, no matter the attitude of the actors, the fact that people wrote sympathetically about those poor Roma or the illiterate people were taught to read and write were obvious gains. However, on the long term, the class/caste system was strengthned and further reproduced. Some of my relatives genuinely believed that a fair social system is needed and an equal access to education no matter the social background is normal, but they also accepted to hire other people to do for them the manual work and housework that was considered low level for people with an education or refused to accept as full members of the family people from a lower educational status. 

Returning to the current state of the art in race and gender studies, I see some similarities. There is an open discussion right now about the white feminism and the fact that does not properly include and consider the needs of the POC women. In terms of racism studies, often the system is regulated by white researches that although are well intended it might not take into consideration the genuine list of priorities and problems that affect POC on a daily basis. 

From the academic perspective, inclusion of more POC and people with a background relevant for the problem is very important for a balanced, realistic perspective. In a perfect academic world, the gender, social background and race are irrelevant, as what matters for academic progress is the quality of the studies and complex approach of a specific topic. Academic diversity in human sciences is very important as for now, because it adds to the theoretical background personal approaches and testimonies that might lead to the a critical take of the privileges. One cannot change his or her family but a progressive critical approach can help to acknowledge that you are not alone and not special or that you have a mission to avoid taking your privileges for granted. The permanent critical and self-critical analysis helps to avoid perpetrating this attitude. 

On the Current War on Statues and Other Demons

I belong to a culture that discourages the visual representations of human body based on the belief that it represent an act of idolatry. You have to respect the other fellow humans, but their image in stone or other is an act of worshiping which does not suit the dynamics of the everyday relationship with God. Most of the synagogues do not have images or paintings and you will only find exquisite, colourful decorations in the Oriental-Moorish-style places of worship. No matter my current degree of religious observation, I am still reluctant towards the invasive presence of human representations but as a historian of mentalities I am always very curious to check the ways in which certain personalities are represented as well as the addenda associated with it.

The Western culture in its entirety is, on the other hand, organised and based on a complex system of visual representation, which originates from the Christian symbolism. Saints and their visual representations are intercessors to the God, according to the Christian belief, therefore churches and later, public spaces, are frequent spaces which host elaborated human images. 

The same frequent representation of images with a religious symbolism characterizes the Asian realm as well, with Indian and Japanese or Thai gods, among others, being worshipped intensively in and outside the temples, often by bringing offers and decorating their statues with clothes or flower guirlands.

The laicization of the public space in Europe led to a replacement of the originary religious meaning associated to the statues to a code aimed to reproduce the values of nationalism. The same system but read in a different key. The decision towards having a certain personality represented in the public space become a matter of political decision, as part of a symbolic repertoire that has to do with strengthening the sense of belonging and the national narrative in general. Having displayed a statue in a public space involves an array of administrative measures, with a symbolic weight, from the decision of the location, until the choice of the representation of the statue, usually a pitch during which various artists present their view on the specific personality and the funding of the work as such.

The extreme case of the Soviet-inspired visual propaganda is an illustration of the pressure towards creating a unified perspective which starts with the education of children in school, mostly the texts from the ´classical´ writers of the accepted dogma, and the further cultural productions - exhibitions, movie production, media focus. Once the communism was over, the masses out on the streets to celebrate the beginning of the reign of freedom attacked the statues of the communist idols - among others the ones in the memory of the ´Soviet soldier freedom fighters´ or the Lenin/Marx/Engels statues. Soon after, those were replaced by the new national heroes many of them controversial as well because they are representing values that are in open conflict with the democratic system the post-communist countries were supposed to embrace. The statues of the racist Admiral Horthy in Hungary or Marschal Antonescu in Romania are just some examples of such historical turn-outs.

In Western Europe and USA, the public spaces are shared with personalities whose inclusion within the national narrative are rarely contested. It is generally assumed that by the very fact of including them into the gallery of national heroes they were on the ´good´ democratic side as the countries themselves are associated with democracy and rule of law. 

The current war on statues that started in the American cities following the murdering of a black citizen, George Floyd, proves that when it comes to statues too, things are rarely just black and white. The removal of confederate monuments and personalities with a strong racist, white-supremacy message is a process that started at the beginning of the 2000s but it seems it is far from being properly underwent the middle of the process. On the other side of the pond, the well known racist writings of Cecil Rhodes haven´t discouraged his display at Oxford and even naming him for a prestigious scholarship operated since 1902. True is that in such wars, there are, as usual collateral victims, as the case of the statue of the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes whose statue was recently defaced in San Francisco. Was he took for the colonialist Columbus or someone was really disgusted by the war against windmills that his main character, Quixote, fiercely leads ?

Academically speaking, dealing with statues is far more complicated than dealing with controversial texts. In the case of the texts, one can use a critical apparatus in order to create the context and offer a different perspective as well as to reject the problematic affirmations. A statue is an inert piece of stone in the middle of a square and adding a critical text does not guarantee that someone will ever read it. Plus, removal of the statue means political AND administrative decisions which are not easily and wholeheartedly taken.

Should those statue stay there? The role of the academics is to lead the intellectual debate about those controversial figures and their role in the national(istic) representation. Historians of mentalities have the role of exposing, where necessary, the controverses and the inappropriate content for a democratic society. They have to assume a public role, as intellectuals, especially through articles in the main media outlets, that can create a debate at a different level and pressure the decision makers towards a decision for removing those statues. Such a background will lead possibly to a more peaceful and conflict-free approach of the issue and will also avoid confusions and a general outrage against innocent statues, as in the case of the poor creator of Quixote.

Talking about Race in 2020...

As I am a firm believer that street protests aren´t for me, I think that the discussion about race, on both sides - from minority to majority, no matter the color - is more than necessary. I am talking from the position of a priviledged white person. I cannot change my skin colour and my family, and I cannot put myself into other people´s skin, including fellow white peers. 

My everyday personal, professional and academic experience offered me the opportunity to critically assess various concepts including those applied on my own cultural bias.

A discussion about race is so necessary nowadays, especially in the media and academic circles because this is where the representations and mentalities are actually built. Based on those representations systems of power are created that will eventually reproduce the categories projected.

Everything should start, in my opinion, with a historical approach. Understanding how a certain idea originated and how affected the everyday life of a specific category is the most important gateway to countering its eventual effects. 

In Why I´m Not Longing Talking to White People about Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge prefers to abandon the self-explanatory discourse for a white audience. Instead, she is sharing her experiences and the researches into the deep roots of racism within the British society. A historical account of race, including the slavery episodes put the problem into context. The journalistic research reveals the race-biased institutional pattern, the pro-Brexit politicians replicated at a great extent.

Reni Eddo-Lodge is going beyond the everyday discourse and complains about race in relation with institutions, but reveals the persistence of ´whiteness´ in areas assigned intellectually as space of free exchange of ideas, no matter the colour. In fact, she rejects with few clear examples, the ´whiteness´ of feminism, self-centered and irrelevant for many of the minorities living in Britain and elsewhere.

Only those few points and it is enough to give a full list of topics to research and discuss about...The current political turmoil in America is a good opportunity to continue the conversation, but at a level that encompasses race approaches in general. Europe does not do it better, from all the wrong points of view.

Time for academics to take more seriously the challenge of accepting the voice of minority intellectuals as part of the dialogue as it offers not only a historical perspective, but an everyday experience that should be the basis of any further theoretical evaluations, especially when it comes to intellectual constructions about race.

Rating: 4 stars