“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”
George Orwell
The English poet W.H. Auden went to Spain in 1937 at the outbreak of the civil war there. He intended to volunteer his services as an ambulance driver on behalf of the left-wing government (the “Loyalists”), fighting against the right-wing insurgents led by General Francisco Franco (the “Nationalists”).
He was not accepted in the ambulance unit – he claims because he was not a Communist- and spent a couple of desultory months there before going back to England. He then wrote a poem, “Spain, 1937”, which suggested that as a politically committed author one must be prepared for the “conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder.”
Many interpreted this to be a glib rationalization of the atrocities committed by the Loyalists’ side, e.g. 12,000 churches burned, six thousand Roman Catholic clergy executed, including 12 bishops and 283 nuns (some of whom were tortured and raped before they were killed).
One person who took particular offense at this phrase was George Orwell, who actually did fight for the Loyalist cause, being gravely wounded in the process. To add insult to injury, Orwell and his wife barely escaped Spain because the Stalinists in the Loyalist government wanted him executed as a political apostate, i.e. supposedly a “Trotskyite”.
Orwell, who knew a thing or two about totalitarian regimes, said the reason Auden could speak so flippantly of the acceptance of murder is because:
“He has never committed a murder, perhaps never had one of his friends murdered, possibly never seen a murdered man’s corpse.”
He goes on:
“Personally, I would not speak so lightly of murder. To me, murder is something to be avoided. So, it is to any ordinary person. The Hitlers and Stalins find murder necessary, but they don’t advertise their callousness, and they don’t speak of it as murder; it is “liquidation,” ‘Elimination,’ or some other soothing phrase.
Mr. Auden’s brand of amoralism is only possible if you are the kind of person who is always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled.” Orwell’s Essay, “Inside the Whale”, excerpted in Welded Vertebrae, March 2013.
Someone who should understand exactly why this sort of sophistry is so dangerous is Julian Zugazazoitia, the current director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Julian’s grandfather and namesake was a journalist and Minister of the Interior of the Loyalist government in Spain at the end of the civil war, which Franco’s Nationalists won in 1939.
(Zugazazoitia was a long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party, a Marxist entity but one opposed to the Stalinist faction that worked to liquidate fellow leftists like Orwell in the waning years of the regime.)
Zugazazoitia went into exile in France after the civil war but was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 and handed over to Franco to be shot.
You would think his grandson would shy away from supporting any kind of authoritarian ideology, left or right.
Imagine my dismay when I learned that Zugazazoitia ordered all Kansas City Police off the grounds of the Nelson the weekend of May 30 & 31st at the height of the rioting in midtown Kansas City
Zugazazoitia explained that having a police presence on the museum property sent a message “exactly the opposite of what we stand for.”
The Julian Zugazazoitia that was executed in 1940 after being captured by the Gestapo
Zugazazoitia further explained that the police presence caused “deep hurt” and that he pledged to re-establish “trust” after police used the museum grounds as a possible staging area to respond to the riots.
Who is the “we”?
What is it that “we” stand for that is the exact “opposite” of cooperating with the Kansas City Police?
Is the royal “we” everyone who is a stakeholder in the Gallery? The museum staff? The donors? The public which enjoys the Gallery? The Board of Trustees? How can Zugazazoitia speak for the whole institution?
What does the Nelson “stand” for?
Violence and destruction as long as its in a good cause?
Who was “hurt” by the Nelson’s security department’s initial decision to let the police park squad cars in the museum driveway? How were they “deeply” hurt?
Whose “trust” was violated by that decision? (In response to a police request, I must stress!)
How was that “trust” violated? Was it the implicit “trust” by Black Lives Matter and Antifa that as a fellow leftist Zugazazoitia would do nothing that would undermine The Cause? (“We side with Black Lives Matter”, statement of Zugazazoitia in Art News, June 2, 2020)
The more I looked into this whole quandary the more I realized that the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree, that the latter day Zugazazoitia’s actions are explained by his slain grandfather’s, both of them typical left-wing intellectuals.
The phrase “No enemies to the Left!” was used by Popular Front governments (i.e. coalitions of Socialists and Communists) in Europe throughout the 30’s.
Spain was no exception. This meant that even decent Socialists like Zugazazoitia the elder would never criticize their political allies on the Left, like the Anarchists or the Communists, no matter how extreme and authoritarian.
Zugazazoitia Sr. was even mentioned by name by Orwell in his classic account of Stalin’s betrayal of the Spanish Republic, “Homage to Catalonia.”
He apparently said that the Loyalist government let Stalin’s minions do “things we don’t like,” i.e. murder anyone who strayed from Communist party line, even erstwhile political allies. Zugazazoitia Sr. rationalized this by saying the Loyalist government had no choice but to accede because they were dependent on Russian aid.
What is his grandson’s excuse now for siding with present day totalitarians BLM and Antifa?
How can the director of an art museum, of all people, side with those who are vandalizing monuments and statues all over the country?
Did it occur to Zugazazoitia that the vandals might turn their wrath on the Nelson?
Even if they never got into the building there are tens of millions in value in outdoor sculptures by Rodin and Henry Moore (both “Dead White European Males”) that could be damaged or destroyed by a mob, just as they have destroyed scores of other works of art in the U.S. and Western Europe in recent days.
Who will protect the museum from vandalism and theft if the police are “defunded’?
Maybe Zugazazoitia has realized this and his groveling is meant to placate the extremists, just as his grandfather and namesake tried to do with Stalin and the Comintern.
We know how that turned out.
Remember the words of another Spaniard, the philosopher George Santayana:
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Impressive article, good journalism. Looks like we have a marxist/communist in town. Is he a member of Antifa?
Did you contact the BOD of the Nelson or Zugazazoitia for a comment?
I’m sending copies of my post to the individual board members,although I doubt any will respond. As for The Z-Man,he is a doctrinaire leftist (like the Star editors) and will not even acknowledge the existence of criticism,let alone address it. Why should you bother when those disagree with you are racist,sexist,classist,genderist and heteronormative?
Ope! Your computer auto-corrected “rioting” when you meant to type “protesting”. I hate it when that happens!
I’m sure the Nelson-Atkins Board will not protest when the mobs loot, destroy, and burn everything they can in the place – as they have threatened to do to the Cathedral in St Louis, and in other places. They have destroyed hundreds of millions worth of irreplaceable public art in other places, with the full approval of municipal governments. No sculptor alive today could come close to being able to reproduce that work, and if it can be destroyed at the whim of a mob, there’s no point in replacing it. The same goes for the rest of the contents of the Nelson, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist mobs would have a field day inside, and they’d be glad to do it, given their track record. Supposedly the mission of the Nelson is to preserve art – but it looks like the present leadership has no intention of even attempting to do that, in the face of imminent mob action. If I were giving money to the Nelson, I’d cease doing it until the present leadership has been summarily removed in its entirety, and replaced by people who would do what it takes to defend the place from the Maoist-Fascist mob.
Excellent point, Luce…
My take is – and I realize I may be reaching – is that Julian did and said what he did tottery and buy favor with the BLM crowd.
Just as a number of businesses around the country try that were the crosshairs did to try and buy sympathy.
Didn’t seem to work for them, so we’ll see.
Best thing the Nelson has going for it is they’re pretty much off the radar for the sort of people that seem to frequent the Plaza and Westport.
Sp they’;re likely safe.
Then again, if they decide to congregate in the park, Shuttlecocks beware!
Knowing a few of those people first hand, I’d say that the Nelson as a collection of “bourgeois art” is very much on the radar. Some of these same people – in Kansas City, by the way – have told me that they’d kill me if it came to a revolution. It looks like that time is getting close. If I were in Kansas City, I’d be locked and loaded.
Cute but not funny! What happened that weekend was rioting,not protesting. Not only were there many stores on the Plaza that had their windows smashed and their inventory stolen,but the vandalism extended all the way up Main Street to 39th Street. A crane being used on the Nordstrom’s project on the west side of the Plaza worth $500,00 was set on fire. Trio Restaurant was looted of all its liquor and wine stocks,being simultaneously broken into at the front and back entrances and the contents carried off. The police were attacked with bricks,stones,and bottles,some of which had been prepositioned at street corners. The violence and destruction was beyond anyone’s definition of protest,unless looting jewelry from Helzbergs and Tivols and sneakers from Nike was your idea of an eloquent protest against systemic racism. Or maybe you will claim that if any rioting occurred it was done by white supremacists,as the KC Star has. You know, the same white supremacists that assaulted Jussie Smollet and left the noose in Bubba Wallace’s garage. Your intellectual dishonesty is repulsive and frightening.
Opportunists gonna opportune! It was not the point of the protests, it was not what was experienced at the protests and it was not what the public took away from the protests. Much to your chagrin.
Let’s unpack this. When do “mostly peaceful protests” become riots? How many people have to be injured or killed? How much property has to be destroyed? What does,”It’s not what was experienced” mean? Since BLM started ten policemen have been killed and nine hundred injured by its supporters.Numerous private citizens have been savagely beaten and killed.Many peoples’ businesses and jobs have been destroyed. How would you describe what they experienced? Do you think they think better of what happened to them because it occurred during “mostly peaceful protests”? As for “what people took away” true believers like yourself and Companero Zugazazoitia take away what they want,which may have little relation to reality,as this exchange has demonstrated.
Great article. Dwight, as usual, hits the nail on the head. BLM and Antifa do not appear to be racially motivated, but more political. It makes no sense to do away with the police and not expect a militia or other armed group to not fill the void. There are big differences between urban and rural settings. To the Nelson, getting rid of police protection is writing checks neither your body nor your mind can’t cash.
“BLM launched in 2013 with a Twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Trayvon Martin killing. Radical Left activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi claim credit for the slogan and hashtag. Following the Michael Brown shooting in August 2014, Dream Defenders, an organization led by Working Families Party (ACORN) activist and Occupy Wall Street anarchist Nelini Stamp, popularized the phrase “Hands Up–Don’t Shoot!” which has since become BLM’s widely recognized slogan.
Garza, Cullors and Tometi all work for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), one of the four largest radical Left organizations in the country. The others are the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). Nelini Stamp’s ACORN—now rebranded under a variety of different names—works with all four organizations, and Dream Defenders is backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others.
FRSO is a hereditary descendant of the New Communist Movement, which was inspired by Mao and the many communist revolutions throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s. FRSO split into two separate groups in 1999, FRSO/Fight Back and FRSO/OSCL (Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organizacion Socialista del Camino para la Libertad). Black Lives Matter and its founders are allied with the latter group. Future references to FRSO in this article refer to FRSO/OSCL.” https://www.aim.org/special-report/reds-exploiting-blacks-the-roots-of-black-lives-matter/
BLM is pretty solidly Mass Line Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get considerable financial support from the Chinese Communist Party. They’re certainly working hard to destabilize the US, by trying to ignite racial conflict and general societal unrest. This, along with the Red Chinese-produced and spread pandemic, has kept the US – and the rest of the world – busy with internal affairs, and unable to respond to Red Chinese land grabs in Northern India, Nepal, and as of a couple of days ago, Bhutan. Hong Kong is now very decisively controlled by Beijing, and it looks like the end of the system established by the 1998 treaty, in measures taken in the last two weeks, and in addition to that, Red China is actively threatening Taiwan, and expanding its control over the South China Sea, thus threatening Vietnam and the Phillipines. With this in view, BLM can easily be seen as a Chinese Communist fifth column organization working within the borders of the United States, with the full collusion of the Democratic Party.
I agree. What’s really sad is how the media is gladly going along with all the protesting/rioting/looting/destruction of property and life. Local TV stations are running BLM (marxist) propaganda as their station’s identity promos now — just saw one on Channel 4. National media like CNN, MSNBC and the NYT are lost causes.
The big question is ….. how and when do we fight back?
That’s a $64 TRILLION question, J Springer…
We live in a bizarre, Alice in Wonderland world where – regardless of you past, present or future politics – things make little to no sense.
A source in Lawrence – a fairly grounded, successful businessman – said to me rather casually earlier tonight – it feels like we are in an end-of-days scenario.
I chose not to argue the point
Dwight, I don’t always see eye to eye with what you write but you slam this one clear out of the ball park. Very good factual and awesome read. Our city and too many of those in charge has lost touch with reality is my take on the issue. When your Mayor is kneeling along with those who are a part of the violence we have seen here in KC so far you can’t help but wonder why any business would want to stay in this town. But to tone down your security wants or needs when it relates to items that are irreplaceable hinges on total insanity to a degree that would the courts not rule in your favor if you pursued the removal of the board for being incompetent to hold the positions they do?
Some rambling thoughts…
It seems like the country has lost the middle ground. Yes, apologizing for a police presence is ridiculous. It’s also ridiculous for the police to look (and be armed) like the military. And people wonder why all of our cities & states are broke (financially).
All of the exaggerating doesn’t help. Obama’s a communist. Trump’s a white supremacist. Hillary is God only knows what.
The left keeps getting more assertive. They’ve learned they can cower a lot of people by calling them racist, sexist, etc. First you had to do some dastardly deed to be considered a racist. Then all it took was using the n word. Now, standing for the national anthem, or merely being a conservative, makes you racist. I guess that schtick works on some people, but I’d rather be called a racist (though I’m not) than a sheep.
The media jumps on board. The corporations are beyond pathetic (me, I’ll never buy another “whatever the newly named Eskimo Pies are” again). Social media (I don’t use it) is nothing but an echo chamber of retards. Unfortunately, politicians & media pay heed to it and think it’s representative of the country. Us introverts, that don’t think it’s important to tell the world what we ate for lunch, are fucked.
I wonder how widespread the liberalness is though. Sure, it’s loud, but Trump DID win the last election.
Something should be done about voting laws. I don’t know what the answer is, but right now politicians are doing nothing but buying votes. Witness the continual income tax decreases (while sales taxes continue their unending rise), stimulus payments, welfare payments, etc. You know, a recession isn’t the end of the world.
Rules for radicals is working for the liberals since Obama and until people can stand up in the business world to being called names if they don’t go along they will keep it up.
Politicians are like CEOs in that all they want to do is hold on to their jobs whether it is voters or the stockholders who would vote them out.
The media and Democrat’s are lost causes we have to hope people get engaged and try to figure out the truth on their own.
As a former trustee and current supporter of the Nelson-
Atkins Museum, I am compelled to respond. You’ve got the facts wrong. Not only can fair-minded and sound thinking folks object to your statement of the facts and analysis, some might characterize your views as those of the diminishing and discredited minority of Americans longing for a return to the “halcyon” or “great” days when Black Americans could be systematically deprived of equal rights and opportunities without recourse. What have you and people like you done to stand up for the rights of Blacks in this country today or in the past? Instead, you support—reflexively and uncritically—police notwithstanding clear and convincing evidence of appalling abuses, including behavior by some cops that may fairly be characterized as murder on one hand. On the other, you reflexively excoriate Black Lives Matter and its supporters without conceding many of its laudable efforts in furtherance of equity and justice for all in our fine nation. Finally, be careful how you use the “fascist” moniker. Some may say—“takes one to know one!” Black Lives Matter!
Can’t wait to see Dwight’s reply to this one
In my post I simply took the statements of The Nelson director that were in the public record and raised questions about their meaning and implication.I also gave some of his family background to point out the terrible irony of a victim of a totalitarian ideology having a descendant who also falls prey to such an ideology. I fail to see what facts you are talking about when you say I misstated the factual record. Please enlighten me.
I also fail to see how a group of dedicated Marxists trying to trigger a race war is a “laudable effort in furtherance of equity and justice.” (“Give us what we want or we’ll burn this country down!” That’s a phrase for the ages!) This is especially true when BLM has used fake hate crimes to whip up racial hatred,e.g. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Jussie Smollett, Bubba Wallace, Skip Gates,the MU demonstrations,etc.Nor is it clear how the brutality of a Minneapolis cop necessarily means the Kansas City Police Department is racist and must be regarded with loathing and suspicion. As far as what “people like you” have done to stand up for the Black community, as you should know, Maurice, my family has raised (and given personally) millions of dollars to Children’s Mercy,the KU Medical Center,St.Luke’s Hospital, and Shawnee Mission Medical Center. so that everyone in Kansas City can have access to first class healthcare, regardless of cost,efforts which help black people among others. As you also know full well, members of my family have been generous with their time and money for the Nelson, an institution that serves ALL Kansas Citians. I myself have received the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association award for legal services to the poor for the pro bono cases I have handled, most of them for African-Americans. I have also volunteered to work in food pantries in the inner city and tutored children of all races in math and reading. The fact that you hurl the “racist” epithet at me rather than answer my questions and resort to the childish taunt of “ takes one to know one” shows the intellectual poverty of your position. You know me,Maurice,and my post and the issues it raises deserve a cogent response,not the hysterical ad hominem attack you have made.
Now what?
Crickets, obviously. That’s the usual response.
The rest is silence- Hamlet