Stop, Look, and Listen #19
A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.
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This post is part of the newsletter’s ‘Stop, Look, and Listen’ series, a digest of articles and podcasts (and occasionally programmes and films) that I’ve found engaging and insightful over the past week. I also maintain a regular record of all these via Substack’s ‘Notes’ feature; you can also read these via the Notes section of my site.
Content warning: Islamophobia; Murder.
Vested interests and the undermining of antiracism
Fiyaz Mughal announced over the weekend that he was withdrawing from his expected appointment to a role advising the UK government on tackling Islamophobia, citing both threats from the far-right and an ‘Islamist’ campaign to discredit him. Mughal is the founder of anti-Islamophobia hotline Tell MAMA, interfaith organisation Faith Matters, and Muslims Against Antisemitism. He featured in a post I wrote previously for the newsletter, as an example of the often complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which the experiences of ethnic minority groups influence the politics of their members. As I noted there, his apparent readiness to confront prejudice and extremism within Muslim communities could veer towards indirectly legitimising prejudices about Muslims.
Prior to Mughal’s public withdrawal, Byline Times carried this piece by
, in which he detailed his experience of having previously worked with Mughal and Tell MAMA. Ahmed was commissioned in 2016 by the organisation, with funding provided by the Office for Counter Extremism, to write a report investigating the electoral rise of the far right across Europe. His original report illustrated the extent to which many parties with distinctly Nazi heritage had courted respectability by publicly distancing themselves from antisemitism and demonising Muslims instead. However, Ahmed explains how Mughal subsequently disowned the investigation because the report also highlighted the closeness of the ruling Conservative Party’s ties with some of those same parties, and thereby jeopardised Tell MAMA’s patronage from government departments.Tammany Hall and New York politics
On the Unsung History podcast, Kelly Therese Pollock interviewed
about his new book The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age. It tells the story of the 1931 murder of Vivian Gordon and its role in ending Tammany Hall’s long dominance of New York City’s municipal government. Following her previous arrest and imprisonment for prostitution – for which she maintained that she had been framed – Gordon became a high-profile figure in New York’s underworld with political connections as well; and her killing culminated in an investigation into policing and subsequently judicial corruption in the city, culminating in its Mayor Jimmy Walker being forced to resign.Woolraich explained how the Tammany Hall machine had come to dominate the Democratic Party in New York, using its patronage to advance the careers of its members and to accrue economic benefits from government contracts. While this was at times geared towards reformism, Walker’s time as mayor was associated more with the glamorous image he cultivated for himself – public appetite for which declined significantly after the Wall Street Crash. They also discussed the role of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as Governor of New York State, in the scandal, with Woolraich highlighting his uneasy relationship with Tammany Hall, whose practices he was inclined to oppose but whose support he came to rely on, leaving him deeply conflicted as to whether to hold a major investigation into corruption in the city, until circumstances forced his hand.
Mission: Impossible and 1990s cinema
Jamelle Bouie and
discussed the 1996 thriller Mission: Impossible on their Unclear and Present Danger podcast. They emphasised how the film captured the cynicism and ideological uncertainty of the post-Cold War period, but also highlighted the positive opportunities of the era, reaffirming patriotism and duty, as well as entrepreneurialism. They also located it within the context of the so-called ‘Nokia Wave’ of films of the 1990s and early 2000s, which captured a sense of optimism about new digital technologies, when they were still apparatus to be used for exciting purposes by humans, rather than all-encompassing and parasitic.Netflix’s sporting documentaries
On the End of Sport podcast, Nathan Kalman-Lamb was joined by Guy Harrison to talk about, and rank, recent sports documentaries produced for Netflix. They considered the political economy behind this particular subgenre, and how Netflix was producing them partly because of their cheapness, at the same time as trying to reduce their staffing costs, somewhat mirroring sports’ own exploitation of athletes. They then explored the ideological content of these documentaries, and the way these can replicate particular narratives about sport that reify its negative aspects, such as individualism and ruthless competitiveness. Yet they also highlighted the positive potential in sports documentaries, in exposing harms inflicted upon athletes, demonstrating the commercial and communal significance of sport, and educating viewers about sports they know less about.
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