The long-read articles thread.
Posted: Sat May 08, 2021 7:56 am
This, on a parent coaching his young daughter's football team, is lovely.
Wait, I'm sorry, this was on the ZX Spectrum?A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 2:11 am Unbelievable, and truly fascinating.
https://if50.substack.com/p/1992-silverwolf
It's interesting to think about this in the context of nation-building. This bourgeois/protestant fixation with defilement, in the form of foreign influence - the corrupting influence of the colonial power on the nation; the corrupting influence of the city on the countryside; the corrupting influence of international finance on "productive" work...Swiss-Presbyterian missionary Henri-Alexandre Junod (1863-1934) was one of the main proponents of this vision. Like most of his contemporary colleagues, Henri Junod was convinced that the effects of industrialization in southern Africa were destroying the picturesque aspects of native life and fostering moral decay. Along with their imperialist wars, he claimed, European civilization brought “vices, curses, debasing influences, and immoral customs that paganism itself had never known.” Besides the scientific aims of its ethnographic material, his monumental two- volume book, The Life of a South African Tribe (1912/1913), is a moral treatise on how to guide the “heathen natives” in their inevitable transformation in face of the challenges of modern industrialization, or, in his own words, a “remedy” for the “native problem.” Junod’s volumes are filled with lamentations of the negative influences of modernity on Africans, chief among them alcoholism, prostitution, the breakdown of family units and disrespect for social hierarchies. Junod argued that the missionary enterprise in southern Africa had to be devoted to saving the “natives” from degeneracy and a fall from grace.
Oh do I know...Having analyzed the political and moral behavior of Uria Simango, characterized by counterrevolutionary action, opportunism, ambition, corruption and irresponsibility, the Central Committee concluded that he does not have the qualities to be a member of Frelimo and decided to expel him from our organization.
This mode of condemnation became the new trend in the party’s lexicon and political culture. A heavily moralist, puritanical, belittling, and often ambiguous language
Macandya found it difficult to get a “civilized” girl to marry him in KaMpfumu (the local name for the district of Lourenço Marques). He went to Johannesburg several times to earn the money for lobolo, but the women he found fell short of his expectations. The first one could not write, so he “ended up forgetting her” while in the mines in South Africa. The second one could write, and he was “so in love” with her. But when he returned, he brought meat and asked her to prepare beef. He was shocked to learn that she did not know what beef was. He left her and went to the Swiss Mission “to find” another potential wife. The girl he found at the mission was educated, but was not prepared to handle the duties of housekeeping. He concluded that the girls of KaMpfumu were “spoiled” (va bolile), and therefore the men of Mozambique had no country to call their own.
I found myself arguing alone against the majority opinion and then I made still another amazing discovery. I saw that even those who agreed with me would not support me. At the meeting I learned that when a man was informed of the wish of the party he submitted, even though he knew with all the strength of his brain that the wish was not a wise one, was one that would ultimately harm the party’s interests.
It was not courage that made me oppose the party. I simply did not know any better. It was inconceivable to me, though bred in the lap of Southern hate, that a man could not have his say. I had spent a third of my life traveling from the place of my birth to the North just to talk freely, to escape the pressure of fear. And now I was facing fear again.
If you find his view interesting you might want to check a book called "The God That Failed". It's essays written by people who fell out of love with Communism.
Well you hit the nail on the head but it got a little bent going in. The problem with its time of publication is it served as a work that politicians and Red Scare advocates used as ammunition to fuel the flames of regarding all socialistic ideals and prinicables into a nice little box that should be burnt. Arthur Kostler contribution really was damming but most of his work is bull shit in my opinion ( Darknes At Noon gets a pass.) I am not sure but I am almost positive McCartey quoted it during his inquisition but I am sure he never read it since he was perpetually drunk his whole life. Sounds like some one had a semi intelligent intern. Honestly I read it when I was 19 and a few weeks later I was no longer a party member. I’l always be a socialist In the concept Toney Blair described as “The Third way” . Between that book and the horror stories my relatives and their friends would tell me their live in Poland and Prauge. There must be a way where there is a free market economy and adaquit social programs to help people. I grew up in Cicero IL and I know that people would not be selling drugs and robbing if they knew that the had food, a place to live, access to eduction for their children, continuing education for them selves, and some safety net so that if they do get sick they are not a slave to medical debt for decades. The book might have done more harm than good. In 1998 I heard both arguments, n 2021 I have hear both arguments. Worth reading. And if you hate your copy I’ll buy it from you. I can never have enough books.