Paul Beatty - The Sellout

The style is a little claustrophobic for me. Sentences are too heavily loaded with description and qualification and the whole structure seems to groan with the excess weight. In places, this can create vivid scenes and images but, on the whole, I found it too cluttered and busy.

The Sellout’s early life is tragic and cruel to me. Perhaps it’s his Father’s interest in Psychology that make his mistreatment of his son that little bit more acute. I didn’t find it amusing or funny. The admixture of serious, sometimes heartbreaking, suffering with jocular, sometimes surreal, plot and character details was also a little jarring. If I had to defend this, I would say that all lives involve humour and that just because something is horrifying to you, a white, middle class man, that needn’t mean that those were the only emotions of people experiencing it first hand. The character of the Sellout himself is surreal. In some ways he is portrayed as a kind of hood superhero with his incredible horticultural skills, his surfing and his equestrianism. Details that seem unlikely, incongruous and more suitable to a fairy story. Equally, his relationship with his father and his responses to it are unusual. He disagrees with and hates his father, but never does anything about it. Stoically accepting his childhood role as psychological lab rat. Perhaps this is understandable, how could he know any better? But as he grows older his reverence for his father and his adoption of various parts of his character, for example “nigger whispering” or continuing to farm and live in the same place even after his father dies and he inherits a lot of money, become less understandable. Maybe it is a comment on how black people's lives are destined to repeat those of their parents, which occurs as a theme elsewhere in the book, because of the historical and societal obstacles they face. From a strictly individual perspective, I found it hard to comprehend the Sellout’s actions following his father’s death and this feeling would only increase as the book went on! Why is someone as intelligent, resourceful and reflective as The Sellout making these choices and behaving like this?

My best explanation for what happens in the rest of the rest of the book is that the Sellout becomes increasingly mad.  Is it the experience of being an intelligent black man in America that makes him go mad? Incidentally, it is never entirely clear to me why he is called a Sellout; perhaps because he took compensation money from the police after they shot his Dad? In any case, the Sellout’s program of segregation begins engagingly with Hominy’s desire to be his slave and bring back the old days. Hominy’s birthday party on the bus was probably the high point of the book for me. The scenes are wild, raucous and surreal but enjoyable too. The revellers discuss identification by skin tone, why it only happens to black people and the relative importance of class vs. race in the organisation of society.

From this point on as the segregation increases, so does my confusion! As Sellout’s segregational activities broaden to encompass shops, the hospital, the school and even the construction of another, “whites only” school, the connection with reality begins to weaken. The actions seem to be less about Hominy, as they were at the beginning, and more about the Sellout’s own agenda. Has he become, or is he becoming, as mad as Hominy? Eventually, we find famous black luminaries at the meetings of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, white children trying to force their way into the school and Sellout high as all hell at the Supreme Court represented by a hustler with an extensive wardrobe! How much of this is fantasy and how much of it is intended as critique or ridicule was somewhat lost on me in the confusion.

Clearly, this is a work of satire but it wasn’t clear to me exactly what was being satirised. Early in the book, Sellout argues with the wonderfully ridiculous Foy Chesire about his desire to remove the word ‘nigger’ from his version of Huckleberry Finn. He reflects that it is braver and more valuable to explain the word, its history and its usage to children rather than simply trying to blank it out and pretend it never existed. He says, “That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.” This part was powerful and meaningful for me. As Faulkner tells us, “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past”. People can’t just forget slavery, forget forced labour and forget segregation like it never happened. So is the satire of this book that people can’t forget it but they aren’t allowed to remember it either? From this perspective, Sellout is trying to awaken the collective memory of his community but isn’t allowed to; another oppression to compound the multiple original oppressions? This could be true but one aspect of Sellout’s segregation that doesn’t seem to fit with this is the improvement in social indicators that takes place as segregation increases. Nonetheless, there does seem to be a sense in which it is far more convenient for white people to forget this history than it is black people; Beatty seems to argue Black people are stuck with it whether they like it or not. However, would be even less acceptable to society if Sellout was white? I find it simply impossible to believe that the author would genuinely consider that racism and the ‘spectre of segregation’ really make people realise how far they’ve come and bring them together, as the book itself suggests. So is the book mocking the idea of segregation? Another way of approaching this satire may be to see it as mocking the idea of society “post-segregation”. Sellout lives in, and shows us, a segregated society, which is totally legal, but when he points out that it is segregated and labels it as such that is a crime and he is punished. Physically segregating people is fine, so long as you don’t call it by name. The problem with this approach is that Dickens shouldn’t see any change when the signs go up if Sellout is simply calling the situation what it is. Unless people's awareness of segregation is what drives their improved behaviour? Again, I struggle to believe we are supposed to take this at face value. Lastly, I got the impression that the book may be intended to satirise the constitution and judicial system of the US. The 1st, 13th and 14th amendment occur regularly throughout the text. I didn’t know these amendments but 1 seems, broadly, to defend freedom of speech and religion, 13 bans slavery and 14 protect the rights of citizens of the USA. Is Sellout saying that the constitution is contradictory because people can’t truly be said to be free unless they can bring back slavery and segregation? Or is it more that the first amendment can never feel true for a community that was historically so horrifically mistreated?

Suffice to say, it wasn’t clear to me what the point of the book was! To be sure, it made some excellent observations and critiques in the course of the story but, when I considered the narrative as a whole, I struggled to identify the key criticisms or themes. Much like the busy, cluttered style of the prose, I felt like the narrative was so chock full of surreal twists and appearances, nonstop action and unusual tangents that it became hard to identify the author’s main purpose. It was enjoyable enough to read, and insightful in places but too chaotic for my tastes...or too advanced for my comprehension! As with, Ta-Nehisi Coate’s Between The World And Me I found more description and diagnosis of symptoms than prescriptions for recovery but perhaps that is the nature of the illness.

Carlo Ancelotti - Quiet Leadership... & The Beautiful Game...

Two books.  Quiet Leadership: Yaddayaddayadda (QL, 2016) and The Beautiful Game of An Ordinary Genius (TBG, 2010).  One man:  Carlo Ancelotti.  With the exception of the six years that separate the two, the material is much the same in both books. In some cases it is identical and has simply been re-written.  Throughout, the difference in style is extremely marked.  Let’s start with what’s bad about QL, the major issue is the style.  The branding of this book clearly identifies it as sports-biography-cum-business-book in a manner I find only slightly less ridiculous than Peep Show’s Business Secrets of The Pharaohs.  Ancelotti is undoubtedly a capable football manager, and was a capable football player too, but what either of these things have to do with the incredibly vague term ‘business’, and further still its successful execution, is truly anyone’s guess.  What is definitely not anyone’s guess is whether or not men like sport nor whether or not there are lots of sport loving men in the corporate world.  A world that no doubt has more money and a higher propensity to read than the world of pure football fandom.  There can be little argument with the assertion that attempts to make the material more businessy have not improved it at all. Whether it's the other writers, Chris Brady and Mike Forde, who are to blame or the publishers, Portfolio Penguin, or Ancelotti himself, whoever’s idea it was it was a bad one.

            I remain decidedly unconvinced that Ancelotti's experiences in football can be relied upon as a fount of business wisdom. Football is very different to most other businesses.  Any one given business is very different to most other businesses.  Too much is made of the transferability of sports success into business success because people like sport more than work.  Some of the business reflections of QL are at best underdeveloped! For example, the following quote appears without further supporting argument and seems to have little rhyme or reason to it:

“In one way we are very lucky in football because we mostly have very clear ownership.  I look at companies like VW and see complex ownership, and maybe that’s why it’s in so much trouble with the emissions scandal” QL, p180

That's it. No further explanation! By almost all measures, VW is a far more successful business than any football club.  Also some football clubs, like Juventus, are listed and thus owned in a very similar, if not identical, fashion to VW.  Nonetheless, there were interesting ideas amongst the fun stories about players, rival managers and owners over the years. However, I would stop short of calling them leadership secrets. To make matters worse, the entire book was delivered in repulsive business jargon!

To give a flavour for the kind of management consultancy claptrap that was given free reign throughout QL one need only look to the subtitle, ‘winning hearts, minds and matches’.  Further infuriation was never far away as each chapter came complete with a nauseating MBA style, bullet point summary.  These simultaneously annoying, irrelevant and extraneous examples of management consulting bullshit gone wild purport to summarise the chapter but in reality are just inane collections of observations. They seem to add nothing. If these jargon filled bullet points are the main points in the chapter, as the summary claims, then that should be clear in the chapter itself!  Who is to say what is the most important point in a chapter, surely it depends on the reader?  The summaries give the impression that readers are considered too stupid to make up their own mind about what is important in the text and need it restated for them, inaccurately and in business speak.  Sometimes the summary introduces new ideas or even seems to contradict the points made in the chapter itself.  These useless precises are delivered in a style akin to standing in a windtunnel someone has filled with management consultants. Verbal MBA slurry such as “managing up”, “onboarding new talent” and “over communicating”, which is apparently a desirable thing, should suffice as examples.  In short, the summaries were the worst part  of the book's tripartite structure.  In first place, the interviews with players were good and gave interesting perspectives albeit delivered via jargonised text.  In second place, the chapters themselves were so-so; football stories dressed up as business exemplars. Finally, the chapter summaries and other passages written about how to interpret the book so as to reveal leadership secrets were dreadful.  

            The squalid stylistic state of QL was thrown into particularly sharp relief by my reading of TBG. It's style is much better suited to the material. QL contained the same material as TBG but seemingly re-written by business consultants. Whereas in TBG the other writer, Alessandro Alciato, and / or publisher, Rizzoli, have done a much better job in terms of the tone and style of the prose.  In TBG, Ancelotti is always making jokes about eating and being fat, recounting practical jokes with the relish, reliving hi jinx and teasing his former colleagues. While in QL the style is pseudo-academic, a bit patronising and quite boring.  So how do I justify the claim that TBG is better than QL and not merely more to my particular tastes?  Well, reading the various player testimonies recorded in the two books one key theme recurs; that of laughter and making light of serious situations. Maldini, Ibrahimovic and Cristiano Ronaldo all recall him making jokes before big games to calm the atmosphere.  For example, Ronaldo says:

“Carlo would joke a lot, sometimes about being angry or to make you worry.  He would sometimes say to me, ‘Cristiano, tomorrow you’re going to rest.’  Everyone knows I want to play every game, so I would be upset and say, ‘What are you talking about?’ He would tell me I must rest and we would go back and forth and then he would say, ‘You must rest at 3 o’clock tomorrow...but when the game starts at 4, you can play.’  And then he would laugh” p58

And Maldini too,  and here I’ll quote from the TBG even though the exact same interview is contained in QL re-written.  Comparing the two gives a good indication of the disparities in style between the two writing teams:

“In his management of the locker room and team meetings; Carletto remains what he has always been: an unparalleled comedian.  He manages to crack jokes even before the final game of the Champions League.  He talks about roast dinners, he cocks an eyebrow, and we go on to win, because we are relaxed.  People imagine that a coach has to make tear jerking speeches to his team at the most decisive moments, and in fact there have been tears shed at times like that - but it was always because we were laughing so hard.” TBG, Foreword

He says it himself, “I’m a friend, not a father” and advises that in high pressure situations one should try to be oneself and not who you think you should be in that moment.  As such, and of course it is a subjective judgement, I find Ancelotti the joker, the self deprecator and the bawdy raconter far more convincing and coherent than Ancelotti the dreadfully dull management consultant we encounter in QL.  Hence, while it communicates largely the same raw material in terms of content, TBG is far superior as it has an authenticity of tone that seems to depict Ancelotti realistically rather than dressing him up as something he is not.

So what can we learn from Ancelotti’s style and character?  The three key themes, that appeared throughout both books, were family, loyalty and respect. To me, it is a sensible approach; almost everyone has some conception or experience of family life and so it is a natural and readily understood model for everybody. Ancelotti talks a lot about football clubs as families, with his favourite example being AC Milan where he spent so many years as a player and as a coach.  The atmosphere he praises most highly is one where everyone must feel indissolubly linked together, targets must be set as a group, the group must joke together and tease each other but all within an environment of love and respect.  Predictably, just as eating together is held out as an important part of happy family life, culinary concerns are central for Ancelotti too.  For example at PSG:

“We organised a small restaurant in the training ground for the players to have breakfast when they arrived together and develop some team spirit.  We didn’t impose any of this.  We just organised things for the players and made it welcoming for them to stay, so that they would want to stay” p34, QL

He would also eat regularly with the senior Chelsea players and would try to mix different groups of nationalities at meal time while at Real Madrid.  Ancelotti claims to have zero tolerance for cliques, which also reminds me of family dynamics:

“You have to address this early in your relationship with the players and get them to understand that cliques are not acceptable” p71, QL

The results of this familial loyalty, claims Ancelotti, can transcend a team’s individual talent.  For example, of the AC Milan team that won the Champions Leagues under his stewardship he says:

"there were only 3 genuine thoroughbreds: Baresi, Gullit, Donadoni....What really made the difference for that team was our sense of being a group, and a strong sense of belonging, of loyalty. Loyalty to the team, to the owners, to our colours" TBG

Closely allied to these ideas of family and loyalty is respect.  Everyone within the football club should be respected, bringing a sense of harmony and relaxation to the group.  Two quotes should demonstrate this point:

“My approach is born of the idea that a leader should not need to rant and rave or rule with an iron fist, but rather that their power should be implicit.  It should be crystal clear who is in charge, and their authority must result from respect and trust rather than fear.  I believe that I have earned the respect I am shown, partly through a successful career delivering trophies for my clubs, but perhaps more importantly because of the fact that I respect those I work with.  These people trust me to do the right thing, just as I trust them with their roles in the organization” QL

“My opinion is that players do their best when they are comfortable, not when they are uncomfortable.  I have a story to tell about this.  Two people each have a horse each and they have to get their animal to jump a fence.  The first owner stands behind the horse and uses a whip to force the horse and the horse jumps the fence.  The second owner stands in front of the fence with carrots in his hand to invite the horse over and his horse jumps over it too.  They both jumped the fence this time, but if you use the whip, sometimes the horse will kick back instead of jumping.  That’s the problem.” QL p106

Intertwined with this idea of preferring carrot to stick is an abhorrence of blame as this would, in many cases, present an abrogation of loyalty and respect:

“Sometimes to explain a defeat people have to make something specific responsible for it, instead of thinking more coolly about it.  My preference is to find a solution, not to look for the guilty to blame.” p43, QL

Some of this philosophy is also visible in the reputation Ancelotti has of being a gentleman.  Even though he has been guilty of his own tetchy exchanges with Mourinho while both were managing in Italy, it is true that Ancelotti indulges in fewer theatrics than most high profile managers. He links it explicitly with respect:

“I take pride in behaving respectfully with my players, the club and myself.  It is not my style to defame opponents or referees in pursuit of a psychological gain.  I fight with my team on the pitch, nowhere else.” p232, QL

Prior to reading these books I had a conception of Ancelotti as a tactical maestro, the famed inventor of the Christmas tree formation instructing his players on how best to fulfil their specific roles.  However, the reality seems much more collaborative and adaptable. As Ronaldo says in his interview on Ancelotti in QL, “if a guy is faster than you and jumps higher than you, this is not tactics” (p57) and in most of his recent managerial jobs he would probably have had the players who can run faster and jump higher.  As such, it is far more important to establish tactics or strategies that everyone believes in.  Speaking about his experience at Reggiana:

“I brought the players together and said to them, ‘I have my own beliefs about how we should play and behave.  If you agree with them, we can stay together.  If you don’t agree, I don’t want to wait for the owner to sack me.  I will go now.  If we’re not together we can finish here and now’” p12, QL

Other, similar examples abound; writing a list of objectives with the players at Chelsea in the season they were knocked out of the Champions League before going on to win the double, adapting Pirlo’s role to deep lying playmaker while at AC and this example from his assistant Paul Clement:

“My favourite story about this side of Carlo was prior to the FA cup final against Portsmouth.  He put the responsibility to come up with tactics totally on the team.  I wrote it up on the board as the players were saying it and - Bam! - That was the team talk and we went and won the FA Cup” QL

However, once objectives or a strategy have been decided upon then they must become immutable and the manager’s job is to protect and defend the philosophy from deterioration:

“The negotiation and flexibility come in the decision making, but the strictness is applied once the decision has been made” p181, QL

While Ancelotti espouses bringing players into the decision making process he also stresses the need to insulate them from external pressures.  He puts it simply on p108 of QL, ‘protect the players’.  In a managerial environment that included colourful owners like Berlusconi, Perez and Abramovich, all of whom clearly get involved in their club's transfer dealings, this could be a sizeable, and highly delicate, job!  Ancelotti denies that any owner tried to influence his team selection but does recount:
“during that great run of games we lost 3-1 to Wigan.  It was just a blip, to my mind, but Abramovich came to the training ground the next morning to demand answers” and “we won the first game of the new season 6-0, but I was still summoned to Abramovich’s house that night to receive a ‘dressing down’, as they said in England, for the performance” and “The night before [CL QF vs Man U] the second leg, Abramovich addressed the players, telling them they had to win or there would be huge changes to the team” pp27-30

Ibrahimovic is full of praise for Ancelotti’s abilities to protect the players, “no matter how much chaos there was, Carlos handled it” (p89).

            Ancelotti's adaptability is another facet of his character we can admire alongside his congeniality, jocularity and ability to form a familial environment amongst his colleagues.  He always learns the language of the club where he is coaching and insists the players do the same.  This would seem to have clear benefits for the fostering unity in the group.  It also shows a willingness to adapt to the cultural norms of that club’s home nation.  While at Chelsea and Real Madrid he adopted and adapted the existing training because the players felt comfortable with it.  Furthermore, while at Chelsea he worked with the existing coaching staff rather than bringing in his own team.  At the time it was a new experience for him but he seems to reflect on it positively:

“My experience at Chelsea taught me that you don’t necessarily need what you think you want.  Working with staff who are already part of the business you are joining can be a huge advantage.  Maybe if David Moyes had given the incumbents at Man U a chance, things might have been different for him.  I thought not having my confidants around me would be a big problem, but it wasn’t because I made new ones” p78, QL

At Juventus, he abandoned his favoured 4-4-2 to accommodate Zidane in a role behind the strikers.  Equally, while at Real Madrid, Ancelotti had thought of playing Ronaldo in a 4-4-2 formation but adapted to a 4-3-3 when attacking to accommodate Ronaldo’s desire to cut in from wide positions.

And what of the negative side of Ancelotti? Abramovich criticised him for being too weak and advised him to be “stronger, tougher and more rigorous with the players” (p31, QL) but this would seem to go against the central tenets of his leadership!  However, there is a slightly more roguish side to Ancelotti revealed in both books, which may be partially displayed by his favourite film: The Godfather.  For someone who condones openness, honesty and fair-dealing in other passages of his books, Ancelotti’s signing for AC Milan is hardly a shining example.  Having been sacked by Juventus, Ancelotti is negotiating a return to Parma with whom a contract is all but signed. He receives a phone call from AC Milan, promptly switches off his phone so Parma can’t get in contact with him and signs for AC Milan!!  Hardly honourable behaviour.  I assume that the world of football, like politics, is so dirty that this sort of thing is considered completely normal.  All the same, this incident and his various flirtations with other clubs rather spoil the image of the consummate gentleman!  He might well complain that football clubs are hardly model employers for their head coaches either!  Interestingly, when Real Madrid approach him while he is at AC Milan he insists that no deal can be done without AC’s consent, a far cry from the communication blackout that Parma were treated to!  Perhaps there is some secret, mafioso pact with Berlusconi and other Milanese made men?  The last example of Ancelotti’s wise guy tendencies occurs while he still a player and may be, therefore, unfair. A young Ancelotti tried to influence a referee he knew (Lo Bello) before a game to ensure that he wouldn't get a yellow card and be suspended for AC's game against his former club Roma. The referee rebuffs his totally inappropriate and illicit advance.  During the game he got a card, subsequently swore at the ref in the tunnel and got written up in the match report both for swearing and his pre-match visit to the referee's room.  As such, Ancelotti seems wholly culpable for this regulatory and disciplinary fuck up but then has the audacity to call the referee in question "a traitor" in the book for writing him up! As if he has somehow violated his rights as a made man!

In conclusion, while the content is much the same one book is delivered in a jocular, locker room style, which all the evidence suggests is closer to Ancelotti’s personal demeanor, while the other tries to turn fun football stories into MBA case studies with the unsurprising result that they sound forced and lose authenticity in translation.  Quiet Leadership may sell more copies because of this rebranding but The Beautiful Game Of An Ordinary Genius is a far better book!

George Orwell - 1984

I’ll start with what I didn’t like because there wasn’t that much of it.  Perhaps it’s the speed with which Orwell constructs a whole world, complete with politics, economics, social customs and habits and some semblance of history, within a few hundred pages but I felt some parts of the narrative where left unsatisfactorily unexplained.  In learning about Winston Smith’s life in dystopian Oceania we encounter memories of his passionless, party fanatic wife.  Meanwhile he is currently in the throes of an illicit love affair with Julia.  I should say, I presume it to be illicit given the rigamarole involved in its execution.  However, this begs the question as to why it’s forbidden.  Is it because she is too young?  Or because he is married?  How did he meet his last wife? How does one court in a party approved manner?  How did they separate?  Where is she now?  Smith indicates that he knows she is alive but there is scant explanation of the means he uses to acquire this knowledge.  How did they part ways? Could he get a divorce?  Would there be a way of him meeting other women in a party sanctioned fashion after that?  Why does the party disapprove of his relationship with Julia so long as they both love Big Brother and are loyal party members? In short, the wife raises more questions than she merits given her importance as a character and I found this annoying.  In any case, the separation is problematic and clumsily handled insofar as it goes almost totally unexplained.  I almost expect a party maniac, as she is described, to take vengeance on Smith for the failure of their marriage.  The possibility is discussed and the wife is dismissed as too stupid to realise her husband’s dissent although this isn’t totally convincing.

As well as the topic of romantic love, the topic of familial love is treated in an unusual and radical way.  People still hold attachment to children, albeit in a nightmarish inversion of normality, and have not surrendered them to common ownership but are said not favour their children over the interests of others or the Party.  This strikes me as highly unlikely because you can see from the example of Communist countries that many people still favour their families even when it is strictly against their system of government; indicating it is a deeply held inclination.  Possibly to the extent it is genetically hard-wired.  Also, characters in the book express some tenderness or preference for their own children including Smith’s detestable next door neighbour who’s proud of his daughter for reporting him to the secret police! Another example might be the man Smith sees in prison who offers to kill children in exchange for not being taken to room 101, which seems to indicate the offer still held currency as demonstration of a last resort.

These are two very minor criticisms of an otherwise impeccably constructed nightmare!  Orwell’s wonderful, readable prose captures a dark, oppressive, anaemic impersonation of normal life and shows it to us in depressing, dystopian detail.  It is beautifully constructed, from the foundation of the political-economic functioning of the world, to the frightening familiarity of “newspeak” and “doublethink”.  If the under-explanation of love and family in Oceania stood out to me it is largely because so much is explained in such a lucid way.  Orwell has captured the feeling of being in a country like North Korea, China, Vietnam or Russia and reproduced it via amazing details like the smell of cabbage everywhere that may not literally be true but bring to mind the exact mental sensation one experiences even in the absence of that particular smell!  In this sense, it seemed to me to be quite a pro-capitalist novel.  Smith’s joy at purchasing items on the black market seems to be a strong endorsement of the beauty and happiness that can arise from capitalism especially when considered in comparison with Oceania.  

Underlying the political functioning and aesthetics of this New World, Orwell masterfully riffs on the seemingly infinite adaptability and changeability of humanity.  Most of the menace in 1984, for me, comes from the fact that it is all entirely possible!   Our link with the past and historical truth are very fragile and subjective and could easily be manipulated.  As O’Brien mansplains in such chilling detail, the past doesn’t exist in any location, only in memories and in historical records.  So if you can change these you can change the past.  As O’Brien says:

"only the disciplined mind can see reality Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you.  But I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else"

Or even more terrifyingly, during one of their sessions in Room 101 when they discuss how many fingers O’Brien is holding up in front of Smith:

"sometimes Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane"

We are what we believe and, in a very real sense, this must accord quite closely to what others think or else we risk exclusion from society as insane or, in the case of Oceania, re-education or death.  These are terrifying and interesting questions for anyone, in any society to ponder.  The explanation of how dissidents are ‘vapourised’ to avoid leaving any historical trace that could later be construed as a martyrdom is suitably ruthless and efficient.

The need to continually foster war and feelings of hatred seemed to me to capture very succinctly the necessary mental climate for successful oppression:

"fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph"

This phrase would be equally at home in descriptions of Nazi Germany, Communist China or ISIS governed Iraq.  The psychological strategy is the same and, if executed correctly, it can be remarkably effective.  On a slightly lighter note, the treatment of boot production statistics reminded me a great deal of watching Bloomberg TV while a stream of meaningless statistic are blabbered out in frenzied tones:

"62m was no nearer the truth than 57m, or than 145m. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared"

Although in our society, we DO care even though the statistics in question maybe almost as dubious. Does that make us akin to jibbering party fanatics because we aren’t questioning the source or purpose of what is being presented to us as fact?  Again, interesting questions for anyone, regardless of their beliefs about what type of society they inhabit!

At the end of the book, I felt an instinctive repugnance to the solution offered to Smith by O’Brien in Room 101.  If reality is simply perception, what’s the difference between choosing O’Brien’s perception over one that we held prior to that?  However, again, I feel an instant impulse to reject this and argue for the primacy of my own free, empirical experience even though I know this too could be defective.  Even though Smith’s decision to yield is rational and understandable.  I still feel sad, like something has been lost in a battle between truth and falsehood despite having no clear concept of who is fighting this battle or where it is taking place!  Rationally, I think it probably doesn’t matter what version of reality you choose to believe in as time will march on and it will all eventually signify nothing.  But then why does invoke such strong feelings to the contrary?  Perhaps that is some evidence of the power of Orwell’s story.

Ta-Neishi Coates - Between The World And Me

The style is implacable but excellent and engaging.  Ranging from ubiquitous, almost humdrum scenes to high philosophy and metaphysics in the space of a few pages, paragraphs or sentences!  However, it’s highly readable and enjoyable.  It has a familiarity of subject and scene that established its appeal to me immediately.  It quotes rap songs from artists like Nas and Outkast that I knew and listened to growing up.  It deals with a world of poor, urban, African America, that’s at once alien to me, in terms of experience, but also familiar in terms of its position in popular culture and my own childhood.  It centered around recognisable aspects of life like interacting with family, hanging out with friends and going to school.  As I continued the narrative brought me feelings of warm curiosity.  Not necessarily because of the story’s content, albeit some of it is shocking and revelatory, but because of the insight the author brings to bear on that raw material of his own life.  These feelings of curiosity were warm because, despite the cruel and unjust episodes of Coates’ life, he seems to have escaped becoming angry and bitter about the segregation and racism he feels so sensitively and expresses so eloquently. The reasons for this are not spelled out in this letter / essay addressed to his fifteen year old son.  He acknowledges that he was angrier in the past, acknowledges the role of historical events like the American slave trade and the Civil War but stops short of providing a formulaic answer; either for his interpretation of racial culture in America or his response to it.  

Coates conveys a different perspective powerfully and eloquently.  There are great descriptions of childhood recollections like walking to school and getting beaten by his Dad, young adult experiences of university and getting pulled over by the police but, perhaps most arrestingly, experiences of casual strolls in NY once Coates has begun to venture out from the Baltimore he grew up in;

“They were utterly fearless. I did not understand it until I looked out on the street.  That was where I saw white parents pushing double wide strollers down gentrifying Harlem boulevards in T-shirts and jogging shorts.  Or I saw them lost in conversation with each other, mother and father, while their sons commanded entire sidewalks with their tricycles.  The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to others”

This passage brought home to me a perspective I never would have arrived at through my own thoughts as someone who had mastery communicated to them as a child and never endured the ubiquity of fear that Coates describes from his own youth.  In this manner, Coates simultaneously shows us something we know and a perspective or element of the familiar scene that we do not and herein lies the attraction of his writing for me.

One part of the book that made me stop and put the book down to reflect was the passage, or passages rather, concerning Saul Bellow’s quip, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?”.  I had never heard of Mr Bellow but considered the question on what I saw as its merits.  Tolstoy was a great writer whose works I have enjoyed and love.  Did the Zulus have any writers, or creators, of this calibre?  I wasn’t sure!  Probably they do, but it will be in a different form as it comes from a different, distinct culture.  But I still wondered to myself, but will it really be as good as Tolstoy if we could ever be objective about these things?  To be sure, I had treated it as a meaningful question.  A few pages later I was horrified to read,

“I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow’s quip.  ‘Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,’ wrote Wiley. ‘’Unless you find profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership’’ And there it was .  I had accepted Bellow’s premise”

And so had I! With all my pretension to being liberal, open-minded etc. etc. It is around then that some of Coates broader ideas about racism began to develop in my mind.  One, for example, was the idea of “believing that you are white”.  What was this? I thought when I first encountered it.  I am white.  I know I am.  I don’t allow it to make me think anything else about myself but I cannot escape it as a fact. I didn't understand how this could be construed as a belief.  However, after the Tolstoy incident I saw things differently.  I had identified with Tolstoy as Western and White, despite him being from a different country and period of history.  Furthermore, I had identified his works as something that ‘mattered’, to use Coates language, while not according that status to the Zulu culture!  It’s this kind of prejudice, concealed, or a least partially concealed, from even the person that holds it that seems to me to constitute a broader ‘belief in being White’ and the inherent ‘Whiteness’ of the world.

The ‘lack of control over your own body’, a phrase Coates uses to describe the African American experience, also gained in meaning and resonance as he shows us his own interactions with the police, those of his friends, including the tragically murdered Prince Jones, and contrasts them with those of wealthier, ‘whiter’ communities.  

“What I would not have given, back in Baltimore, for a line of officers, agents of my country and my community, patrolling my route to school!  There were no such officers, and whenever I saw the police it meant that something had already gone wrong”

This ‘lack of control over your own body’ amounted to constant subjugation to fear; fear of the streets, fear of the police, fear of failing school, fear of discrimination, fear of maltreatment, even fear of death.  This perennial fear expresses itself in different ways.  Fear as the rage of young men in gangs listening to rap “because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies”.  Fear as the excitement of running away from police or scrapping with rival gangs from different blocks.  Fear expressed as the gold jewelry and reinterpreted sportswear of ghetto fashion.  Fear as the violence of parents towards their own children, whom they feel incapable of protecting.

However, Coates does not allow this societally enforced fear to become a hatred of its most visible exponents.  Rather, he acknowledges the need we all have to use negative definition about ourselves in the face of our inability to say something more positive about ourselves, regardless of our identity:

“Hate gives identity.  The nigger, the fag, the bitch illuminate the border, illuminate what we ostensibly are not, illuminate the Dream of being white, of being a Man”

But this is scant cause for celebration for Coates because, he seems to feel, it would be better to have this repression foisted upon you by an unjust minority rather than a complicit majority?  Here, Coates demonstrates the bankruptcy of a model that holds the police culpable and places responsibility for its brutality solely in its own hands:

“But they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them.  The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority”

It is a credit to Coates deep understanding of the subject and to his powers of self-control that he doesn’t allow the brutality or injustice of what he has seen and experienced to dominate his thinking on these topics.  Rather he identifies racism and its effects in America more cerebrally:

“But race is the child of racism, not the father.  And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy.  Difference in hue and hair is old.  But the belief in the pre-eminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organise a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible - this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully to believe that they are white.”

However, this historical, cultural view of racism and its place in American history provokes both optimism and pessimism in response.  I’m heartened to know that racist attitudes do not emanate solely from people’s hatred of other races and the unknown.  Nonetheless, if the causes of prejudice and racism are rooted so deeply in America’s history of slave-trading, slave farming and construction using slave labour; what hope does the country have of escaping, or transcending, its own history?  Perhaps I have read him too pessimistically but I didn’t detect much hope in Coates' assessment of America.  Coming from such an intelligent and well educated voice on the topic, this is depressing although I sympathise with the determinism inherent in his argument.  

David Kilcullen - Blood Year

In the British comedy film Four Lions clueless wannabe jihadists discuss a strategy succinctly expressed as, ‘bomb the mosque, radicalise the moderates’.  It’s one of my favourite parts of the film, largely because, at the time I thought it was so outrageous and ill-conceived as to be ridiculous.  However, after reading this clear, concise and well reasoned summary of the ‘War on Terror’ and its aftermath in the region I recognised, with horror, that 9/11 had achieved almost exactly that on an international scale.  Al Qaeda’s attack on US soil had drawn such massive response it had thrown the whole region into turmoil, exacerbating sectarian grievances, precipitating huge numbers of  civilian deaths as collateral damage and radicalising tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.  As Kilcullen summarises in the book’s epilogue:

“The war in Iraq (commencing only 15 months after 9/11) alienated a host of potential partners and ultimately created AQI.  The disaggregation strategy, after 2005, atomized the terrorist threat, just as social media and electronic connectivity were exploding in such a way as to spread the pathogen throughout our societies, enabling remote radicalisation and leaderless resistance to an unprecedented degree.  The precipitate withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 revived AQI in the nick of time after it had been reduced to 90% and almost annihilated during the Surge.  The precipitate pullout from Iraq, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the AQ succession crisis that followed, and the failure of the Arab Spring - all in the same key year of 2011 - helped turn AQI into ISIS and gave it a global leadership role it proceeded to exploit with utter and unprecedented ruthlessness.  And complacency and hubris after bin Laden’s death, along with vacillation in the face of the colossal tragedy of the Syrian War, created the basis for a conflict that’s now consuming the Middle East and drawing regional and global powers into a hugely dangerous, and still escalating conflict”

I’ll attempt to summarise the main points of the narrative and analysis in what follows.The initial success of Afghan regime change and establishment of Karzai as new leader in 2001 lead to overconfidence about a new paradigm in warfare.  Most military advisors and professionals were more hesitant about this but political confidence was very high.  As a result, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was under-manned (200k should have been 400k) and left an incredibly dangerous power vacuum in the wake of Saddam Hussein's deposition.  The policy of de-Baathification alienated much of the middle class and disbanded much of the Iraqi army into ready-made insurgents and militia movements.

The ‘Surge’ and introduction of David Petraeus were, according to the author, positive and necessary developments in the effort to address the violent and chaotic shambles that emerged in the aftermath of the US invasion.  Obama’s election was less so as he equated leaving with the end of the war, which it certainly was not.  Kilcullen feels that Obama viewed the war as not of his making, which it wasn’t, and not really his problem, which it certainly was, and thought his approach was more politically focussed than practical.  He had campaigned on leaving Iraq and was dead set on accomplishing this aim.  However, when American influence, troops and attention left Iraq, between 2009-11, sectarianism drastically increased.  Iraqi PM Maliki who had been moderate whilst under American supervision became more of a Shia supremacist.  This encouraged more Sunnis to turn to AQI for help and protection whereas previously its power and influence had been dramatically diminished.  AQI was also adept in encouraging sectarian violence, sometimes even committing atrocities against other Sunnis themselves, in order provoke quid pro quo exchanges, which eventually forced Sunnis to accept AQI as their protectors for a seeming lack of other options.  The killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 also gave false hope that the War on Terror was coming to a conclusion.  It did present Al Qaeda with leadership and succession issues during the crucial period of the Arab Spring movement but did little to address the root causes of extremism and insurgency that, in many ways, benefitted from the Arab Spring.

Maliki seems like a definite cause of deterioration in Iraq, his pro-Shia sectarian approach after the US left appears to have been very divisive and disenfranchised Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis.  AQI may have been substantially weakened by the ‘Surge’, the tribal ‘Awakening’ and Maliki's government but ISIS, or its forerunners, appear to have found strength via relocation and collaboration in, post Arab Spring, war-torn Syria with other insurgents vs. Assad.  AQI / ISIS maintained excellent networks in Syria where many foreign jihadists had trained or transitioned on their way to fight in Iraq. It then returned to Iraq post 2011 far stronger than AQI had ever been and was a more attractive proposition for Sunnis who had been abused by Maliki.  This Iraqi-Syrian collaboration, or blurring of borders, was very difficult for Western policy as in Syria it was supporting insurgents against Assad while in Iraq it was supporting the government against insurgents.  However, in both cases ISIS was a major player on the side of insurgency.  Thus by helping Assad to defeat insurgents, including ISIS, it was actually helping a regime more brutal than the insurgents themselves; at least in a Syrian context.  Here Kilcullen compares brutality via number of civilian deaths.  This may have been the motivation behind some of the seemingly confused foreign policy in the region perhaps best exemplified by Obama declaring a ‘red line’ concerning Assad’s use of chemical weapons only to then do pretty much nothing when it was widely acknowledged they had been used.  Iran and Russia’s foreign policies in the region had the benefit of being consistently pro-regime / anti-insurgent although it would have been hard for the US to be so pro-Shia / Iran region-wide.

The original policy of the early 2000s, disaggregation, held that local jihadi movements were being aggregated by regional and global players into a global jihad.  The response was to attempt to destroy the overarching, supranational bodies and leave local insurgents disconnected allowing local authorities to deal with them individually.  This strategy was quite successful insofar as AQ’s influence, and that of its affiliates, was much reduced 2003-2011.  However, ISIS post-2011 appears to have a much more effective three tier structure: 1) State like central operation in Iraq and Syria occupying considerable territory including social services (courts, hospitals, utilities, food distribution etc.) advanced military (tanks, columns etc.), control of major urban areas and collection of significant revenues (taxes, oil etc.) 2) ‘wilayat’ or provinces loyal to the centre and operating on their command but separate from it.  These existed in both Iraq and Syria but also in other countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Caucuses etc.) and were deemed to be more dangerous that former AQ ‘aggregates’ because they were more formally controlled by the centre. 3) International individuals conducting terrorist attacks, mainly in the West, with little or no formal association with ISIS but claiming affiliation for their actions.  As such, ISIS acted as a powerful brand, attracting dissidents in a highly informal and disaggregated way, highlighting the drawbacks of the disaggregation strategy.  Furthermore, individuals with almost no connection to the centre, often radicalised entirely via electronic means, are far more difficult for police to monitor and identify than more formal cells.

2015 appears to have been a very troubling year in terms of the strength and sophistication shown by ISIS and AQI across all levels of its three tier structure.  The ISIS capture of Ramadi, in central Iraq, was apparently textbook in military terms and demonstrated how advanced the organisation had become.  Also, the capture of Palmyra, in Syria, made many civilians far more well disposed towards ISIS.  The Assad regime had destroyed water, electricity and sewage facilities before fleeing the city in convoys prior to  ISIS’ arrival.  The regime also made it hard for ordinary citizens, many of whom had been helping the government troops, to leave the city despite their own retreat.  Furthermore, they bombed the city with little regard for civilians as ISIS arrived having failed to attack them during their approach over the open landscape surrounding the city.  However, when ISIS arrived they reestablished basic services, distributed food, provided clothing and made medical care available in Raqqi via a safe road.  As such,  many locals, unsurprisingly, had a very dim view of Assad’s government troops and saw themselves as having been rescued by ISIS!  This view may have changed following ISIS’ exploitation and destruction of the ancient ruins near the town that had been the lynchpin of the area's tourist driven economy.

The JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, July 2015) agreement between US-EU-Iran had interesting and far-reaching consequences for the foreign policy environment in Iraq-Syria.  While the US was anti-Assad and pro non-ISIS insurgents in Syria it was also lifting sanctions on Iran via the nuclear deal, giving them vastly increased access to capital and weapons.  Both Iran and Russia had been active in supporting an otherwise failing Assad regime in Syria.  As such, many moderate, anti-Assad, anti-ISIS rebels in Syria felt that the US had sold them out by agreeing to such a deal with Iran, which they saw as an acceptance that Assad’s regime could not be overthrown.  Furthermore, traditionally US friendly countries in the region, such as Saudi, Turkey, Egypt, Gulf States and Israel, were critical of the deal.  Egypt and Saudi launched a military force to counter Iranian backed Houthis in Yemen in the deal’s aftermath, representing an increase in proxy tensions in the region.  Turkey’s concerns centred on Iranian influence in the region, partly via an Assad regime it detested, and the risk of increasing Kurdish separatism within its own borders.  As such, it was probably less concerned about the nuclear aspects of JCPOA and more on the scope it gave Iran to increase its proxy war in Iraq-Syria.  After the treaty it entered the conflict by allowing the coalition access to its airbases and attacking Kurdish positions itself in Syria and Iraq.

At around the same time, huge numbers of refugees began overflowing from Middle Eastern ‘safe havens’ like Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon into Europe causing a humanitarian crisis and bringing the effects of events in the region 2011-2015 into mainstream media focus.  While this was on-going, coalition troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan, which allowed Taliban units that had been hiding in Pakistan to regroup and, eventually, attack and capture the city of Kunduz in September 2015.  Following this ISIS groups from Pakistan and Afghanistan also conducted attacks in the Afghanistan / Pakistan region and ISIS vs Taliban power struggles intensified, perhaps partly owing to a knowledge of Mullah Omar, the erstwhile leader of the Taliban’s, death.

Russia’s increased presence in the Syria-Iraq region was inaugurated by Putin’s speech to the UN in September 2015, which contains some thought provoking, albeit hypocritical, remarks (pp185-6):

“We all know that after the end of the Cold War - everyone is aware of that - a single centre of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that if they were so strong and exceptional, they knew better and they did not have to reckon with the UN...We also remember certain episodes from the history of the Soviet Union.  ‘Social Experiments’ for export, attempts to push for changes within other countries based on ideological preferences, often led to tragic consequences and to degradation rather than progress.  It seems, however, that far from learning from others’ mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them, and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called “democratic” ones continues...I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realise now what you’ve done?...Tens of thousands of militants are fighting under the banners of the so-called IS.  Its ranks include former Iraqi servicemen who were thrown out into the street after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Many recruits also come from Libya, a country whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973.  And now, the ranks of radicals are being joined by members of the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition supported by Western countries.  First, they are armed and trained, and then they defect to the IS”

While the coalition had attempted to fight against ISIS, Russia’s strategy was very much to fight for Assad against all types of insurgents.  Their approach was far more heavy handed, providing much heavier air support, materiel and troops, and far less focussed on reducing civilian casualties, in keeping with Assad’s own style.  While most of the US-led coalition efforts had concentrated on ISIS, only around 10% of the Russian efforts focussed specifically on ISIS with the rest directed towards any and every enemy of Assad.  For all its shortcomings, Russia’s policy does have the advantage of being more consistent than the coalitions.  It is against any kind of insurgency and will back dictators, like Assad, or democratically elected governments, like in Iraq, in order to suppress them.  The US-led coalition, however, finds itself pro some insurgents, anti others and, in the case of Libya, arming some only to lose confidence in them and withdraw support.

This lack of leadership from the US has seriously compromised its position and credibility as the global police force and, in many ways, JCPOA has handed that role in the Middle East to Iran cooperating with, and supported by, Russia.  If Bush’s invasion demonstrated the error of maximalist policies and over-reaction then Obama’s muddling light-touch and overly hasty withdrawal has shown the error of under-reaction, hesitation and timidity.  The situation now is worse than it was immediately post 9/11 as the West now faces two (ISIS and AQ) far better organised, better armed, better trained and internationalised extremist organisations in a region riddled with sectarian conflict, violence and weak governance.  In a gruesome, morbid way you have to look at the actions of 9/11 as a huge success strategically for AQ / ISIS.  It catapulted them onto the international stage, garnered new recruits for its cause, encouraged new allegiances, inspired new insurgent organisations, drew a massive, destabilising response from the enemy, brought arms and money to the region, radicalised vast swathes of the population and has ultimately led to growth and proliferation of its world view and proponents who espouse it.  

For the author, leaving the region to look after itself or be overseen by Iran is a not a sensible option.There are two large, well armed and well organised extremist groups (ISIS and AQ) both with perhaps 35-40k troops.  They are attracting disaffected people in the region, many of them young, and motivating them to destabilise and do harm to more moderate and inclusive regimes, as well as to do harm to their allies and supporters in the West.  As such, a strategy of active containment appears to him as the best of a bad lot of strategic options given the fractured political landscape in the region. Will moderate insurgents in Syria fight against ISIS if it has no support from the West and the Assad regime it ultimately wants to dislodge is strongly supported by Iran and Russia?  Will any Iraqi government be inclusive enough to persuade Sunnis and Kurds to prefer it to their own separatist movements? Will the reduction in troops and presence in Afghanistan lead to a loss of territory and urban areas to AQ and ISIS as has happened in Syria and Iraq?  Whatever the case, the political and religious landscape in the region is so complex any solution or movement towards improvement will take a long time and there will  be no quick, easy solution to the problems.

The attacks in Paris during November, 2015 are particularly worrisome as they were of considerable sophistication and coordination.  Well drilled and resourced guerilla teams with access to military weapons, explosives, safe houses, vehicles and forged documents point to the existence of extensive underground networks existing in European cities like Paris and Brussels; perhaps even a IS Wilayat in an EU country.  In turn, this also raises the possibility that ISIS / AQI will use tactics similar to those used to escalate violence between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq; using violence to divide the population along Muslim / non-Muslim or White / Arab lines to encourage radicalisation.  The French response was to deploy an aircraft carrier, conduct extensive airstrikes on Syria and ask its fellow EU member states to join it in a ‘pitiless war on Islamic State’.

As someone who knows little about this complicated area of geopolitics, I found this book to be happily clear and methodical.  It introduces the main players, events and themes of the historical narrative without delving into the kind of detail that would make it five times longer and ten times less comprehensible to the non-specialist.  The author expresses views, and I’m not well informed enough to comment on their merit, but they’re all supported by reasoned argument and do not seem needlessly partisan or biased.  Indeed, Kilcullen isn’t afraid to apportion blame to everyone declaring at one point that there is more than enough of it to go round.  The language and style are clear and analytical.  There is, inevitably, some Australian American-style military jargon, e.g. “getting out in front of the imagination curve” but this is mercifully rare given the author’s background! All in all, I found it an enjoyable and informative read on what is, undoubtedly, a hideously complex topic but one that, sadly, may continue to grow in global significance over the coming years.