Anti-Americana: You Don't Scare Us

"You Don't Scare Us" reads this Russian-language Soviet poster, vintage 1984. It shows a burly Soviet worker, with hammer and sickle on his hardhat, getting his job done, while a wormy looking American politician threatens to push "the button" while military jets labelled "US" scramble in the background. "Pushing the button" was of course shorthand for launching an apocalyptic nuclear attack against the Soviet Union.

The occasion for this poster was no doubt the disturbing "joke" played by the senile U.S. president at the time. On August 11, 1984, cold warrior Ronald Reagan made this quip during a soundcheck before his weekly radio address: "My fellow Americans I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." The audio was subsequently leaked. While it had no apparent effect on his landslide reelection in a few short months, some of us were shocked.

In time-honored tradition, President Reagan joked about committing nuclear genocide. Some of us didn't find it so funny. The poster below (I had a copy) was soon popular on the left. This was the climactic height of the cold war, an era of renewed nuclear terror when the threat of apocalypse seized the popular imagination. Check out the films "Threads" (viewable on Youtube!) and "The Day After" (Youtube link) for a taste of what it was like to live with that terror.

 

The cold war and threat of nuclear destruction were even repeating themes of popular music. There was Nena's "99 Luftballons" (English or original German versions) which speculated about a war being triggered by misunderstanding, or the brutally cynical "Two Tribes" (when two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score) by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Different versions of the Frankie song were released, but here's one video version from 1983:

This all seems timely with mildly-renewed tensions between the United States and the now post-Soviet, utterly de-socialized Russian Federation. Authoritarian (elected) strongman Vladimir Putin seems to relish posturing against western imperialism, despite the fact that Russia is now far from the twin superpower it once was. One wonders whether tension over Iran and Syria, or Russia's granting of temporary asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden are markers of a sort of renewed cold-war style tension. Obama and the U.S. are pretty clear that they're holding the stronger hand of cards and so have reacted at least publically temperately, but it's also clear that the U.S. won't suffer real competition for world hegemony.

The bullying foreign policy of the U.S. is one of the reasons I've been slow to make a public stand on the developing Stoli Vodka/Olympics boycott over outrageously repressive anti-gay laws being passed by the Russian government. I'm heartened to see clarity on the part of New Zealand revolutionary queers organizing support for the boycott under the slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow but international queer liberation." Homonationalism is a real threat in the U.S., especially given the Obama government's pro-gay posture. The Wellington Queer Avengers slogan makes it really clear that cheering on imperialism isn't a road to liberation. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this subject later.

Anyway, cold war 2? Fun times ahead, again?

Anti-Americana is a regular feature of Anti-American art from around the world here at The Cahokian.

Anti-American Art: When Wars Were Cold

Here's a cold-war era Soviet cartoon, I'm guessing ca. 1960. That's a giant Soviet Warrior wielding an enormous nuclear missile and a massive shield labelled "Warsaw Pact." Funny that he's supposed to look modern and menacing when he's decked out like a medieval knight and his hat is a cross between a Russian knight's helm and an early Red Army cloth hat. Anyway he's facing down a pint-sized chubby American with a puny little nuclear missile, riding a funny mule/missile headed hybrid labelled "NATO." Six years of Russian study and I don't remember what "Nadezhny Strazh" means, there on the bottom.

Somehow the world survived that nightmarish confrontation without nukes actually being used after the opening shot laid across the Soviet Union's bow by the United States in 1945. (You know, by the "good guys.")

See, there IS a God.

Anti-American Art: Spies Keep Out!

"No American agent will pass through our village" reads this cold-war vintage poster from the former Czechoslovakia. The watchful Communist border guard and vigilant citizen link arms to keep American spies out.

Art & translation snagged from James Branam's blog.

Apocalypse Then

I just read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." I started it on a subway ride home, and didn't put it down until I finished it. It's pretty bleak post-apocalyptic fiction: though what has happened to make the world so empty and awful is never explained in the short novel, its portrayal of ecological disaster and roving bands of starving cannibals was compelling and horrifying. I haven't seen the movie yet.

But I was reminded how much I used to be obsessed with post-apocalyptic fiction. As a kid in the 1960s and 1970s and into my young adulthood I used to read every piece of it I could find.

The cold war was certainly the background to the first half of my life: I remember Reagan's chilling "we begin bombing in five minutes" joke. It just wasn't hard to imagine the missiles and the bombers being sent on their way, and it just wasn't hard to imagine what would happen when they were.

I don't remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1961, but my parents assured me that they had bags packed at the door waiting for the sirens to go off. We no longer had "duck and cover" exercises in my youth, but the air raid siren used to go off every week in Chicago as a test...I think it was Tuesday or Thursday at 10 am? Maybe 4pm. Anyway it was like clockwork.

The Rest Must Die, Red Alert, and Alas, Babylon are prime examples of one sub-genre of apocalyptic fiction: the you are there at the minute it all ends subgenre. Fail Safe and War Day are others. The Rest Must Die is a hoot: it's about New Yorkers trapped in the subways when the nuclear war happens. I remember hilariously dated scene where, in the face of imminent doom, one woman rips open her dress and cries, "aren't there any REAL men left?"

Then there's the "what do we do now" subgenre. Books like Earth Abides, Malevil or Stephen King's more supernatural The Stand are good examples. It seems like the more optimistic of these books tend to man-made disease apocalypses more than the nuclear kind, assuming it's only most of the people who go away. Books like On The Beach don't allow much in the way of silver lining.

The third subgenre is the back-to-the-stone-age epics. I love this cover to Andre Norton's Daybreak 2250 AD. But there's also A Canticle for Liebowitz, Clifford Simak's City, and the Davy series by Edgar Pangborn, which I have lately dusted off to re-read. These are the books where we are literally bombed back to the stone age and society rebuilds: usually slowly and badly.

I wonder if younger people are still haunted by these dark man-made end-times fantasies. It's not impossible to imagine a nuclear exchange between the US or Russia or China, but it sure seems more distant. And even nuclear armed terrorists, well that's a scary thought but it's not quite apocalypse. Disease or ecological catastrophe on the other hand: maybe the whole global warming thing is just the newest twist in mankind's fantasy of its own oblivion?

Anyway, only two years til 2012. Good times ahead!

Anti-American Art: Babykillers

This exceptionally gruesome example of the genre dates from the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur is shown stabbing a Korean mother and her baby with a bloody knife, while an American plane bombs the city behind them. In this era of relative friendship between the US and the China, it's worth remembering that the Korean war of 1950-53 was pretty much a war between our two countries, Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee notwithstanding. Having grown up with the caricatures of evil Chinese communists in old war movies, it's pretty interesting to see that the "other" side was spinning its own tale as well. This is a 1950s Chinese poster I found on the net.

Anti-American Art: Brawn vs. Naval Blockade

This Soviet poster dates back to 1956, to the blockade of Port Said, Egypt, during the 1956 Egypt-Israeli war. Here the enemy is the navy of the US and the UK; and the hero is a muscled rifle-bearing bedouin. My Russian is rusty but it says something like "Stop the Aggressors!" Interesting to me that this piece of propaganda from the height of the cold war is purely nationalist in its appeal: no workers or red banners this time.

Oh yeah, and you can get this one on a tee-shirt or mug!

Congratulations, Condi!

Let's hear it for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice! This so-called "expert" on the former Soviet Union has just single-handedly restarted the cold war, with only slight assistance from her boss, the imbecile warmonger George W. Bush.

First they try to strong-arm the foolishly pro-American governments in Poland and the Czech Republic to adopt some "missile defenses" to defend against Al-Qaeda's ICBM launches (!?) in Russia's front yard. And thank goodness Bush already abrogated every arms-control treaty ever signed with Russia and its predecessors, because now that "democratic" and capitalist Russia has a new prime-minister for life, they can just send some missiles back to Cuba and hey, it's 1963 all over again.

Then they support an ass-kissing pro-Israel regime in Georgia, then tell them, "hey we'll back you up" in private all the while urging moderation in public in their dealings with their neighbor whose landmass and army is only like 300 times the size.

Having provoked Russian aggression by backing independence for one European micro-state but not another... and the Russian tanks are rolling. But hey, gas prices are coming down!

So yes, see you in a local fallout shelter. Hope those 1959 biscuits and watercans are still tasty. Go Condi!!

Newly released photos of weapons of mass destruction

A fascinating set of photos, found on an unknown camera, has been released after a 60-year embargo on publication. They're of the aftermath of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and unlike most published photos, show the human aftermath and not just damaged buildings. They're hard to look at, but as we contemplate Hillary Clinton's pledge to obliterate Iran they're a useful reminder that one nation--not Iran, not the old Soviet Union--has used nuclear weapons of mass destruction against civilian targets and that nation is the U.S.A.

The collection can be seen here.

Hello Imperialism!

If you know me you know of my inexplicable weakness for the iconic Japanese universe of Hello Kitty. Something about the simple bold line of its graphic sensibility and its bright color palette really works for me, despite my general loathing of brainwashing little girls with corporate sameness. Maybe I'm just gullible to Hello Kitty in a way I'm not to My Pretty Pony or Barbie.

Anyway it's not exactly tribute nor parody but I finished my design for my two Scarlet Menace calendars for 2008, and one of them is aptly entitled "Hello Imperialism!" with a cartoony graphic style based on bright un-communist gradients and Chinese cultural revolution comic book elements. The second is my Cold War Veteran's "Dead Dictator Chic" calendar and features a more traditional take on Stalin/Lenin/Mao/Kim Il Sung with a socialist realist sensibility. Both of these, as well as some accessorizable tee-shirts matching the calendars can be found here!

There's some other new stuff in there so shop around.