Journal articles on the topic 'Multi-battle Conflict'

This article describes the newest doctrine of the U.S. Armed Forces, i.e. the Multi- Domain Battle (MDB) concept. It constitutes a description of several operational principles related to a potential conflict with the People’s Republic of China or the Russian Federation, such as the time and space for conducting military operations, the operating environment, the forces (base of operations), the target, the concentration of forces and the operational leeway. The article looks at the origins of the doctrine, the circumstances under which it was formed and people who contributed to its development. The authors also refer to historical U.S. doctrines, such as the AirLand Battle or AirSea Battle concepts. Along with the authors’ enthusiastic approach to MDB, the article also features some critical opinions which imply that the U.S. Army is not ready for MDB operations. The research methods that were used by the authors included analysis, synthesis, comparison and generalisation. Much space is devoted to analysing the U.S. Army’s official documents, including Multi-Domain Battle: Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century 2025-2040, FM 3-0 Operations and TRADOC Multi-Domain Battle: Combined Arms for the 21st Century. The authors believe that Multi-Domain Battle is about to become the official military doctrine of the U.S. Armed Forces. In spite of the criticism, transformations of individual combat teams in the MDB spirit should be expected in the upcoming years. This doctrine also provides a military response to the geo-political changes occurring in the world, manifested as the United State’s limited role in certain regions, China’s growing power and Russia’s aggressive foreign policy. The conclusions formulated in the article may serve as the starting point for further studies dealing, inter alia, with the Polish Army’s readiness for conducting military operations, based on the MDB doctrine, jointly with the U.S. Army, the Polish Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) capabilities and the role of military technologies in the MDB doctrine. The article makes use of the exact translation of the term, i.e. “Multi-Domain Battle.” However, the reader should bear in mind that it describes capabilities not only at the tactical level but also in operational terms, enabling the accomplishment of the strategic objective.

"The military operations conducted on the territory of Ukraine during the conflict started by the Russian Federation on 24 February 2022 show that the chances for large-scale combat operations in Europe have significantly increased. Consequently, the way those operations are carried out must be carefully reconsidered. Adapting to the requirements of the modern battlefield requires a rapid multi-domain integration of new technologies and modern weapon systems. Therefore, doctrinal changes are required. There is no doubt that the Battle of Kiev is a valuable source of information for military leaders, regarding the conduct of military operations at each level. Therefore, a pertinent analysis in relation to the factors that have contributed to the battle’s outcome could be very helpful. The main objective of the analysis is to highlight lessons on the topic of planning and carrying out military operations at tactical level. It emphasises both the determining factors for the failure of the Russian offensive and the features that gave the Ukrainian forces the upper hand, ensuring the successful defence operation. The research methodology is based on the qualitative evaluation of the available information, to enable an assessment of the battle from the combat functions perspective with the aim to identify possible gaps in Western armies’ way to carry out combat operations."

Our article seeks to determine the functions of visual communication design through the lens of modern conflict and public archaeologies. The Battle of Aslıhanlar, which took place in the triangle of the villages of Çal Köy, Allıören, and Yüğlük in Kütahya from 29 to 30 August 1922, was the focus of our experimentation. Our archaeological survey project was carried out in 2013; interviews with local people, a review of the literature available and our observations of local myths and traditions that emerged after the war constitute the basis of our article. We categorized these sources for the project design in order to form a storytelling narrative, so that the viewer could participate in the process of conflict as well as the ongoing research. We foresaw three major challenges while categorizing this complex dataset: equivalence of visual language; variable outputs of the multi-dimensional research methods; and interactivity for creating a live social platform. We responded to these challenges by developing a graphic design concept and an interactive map of the data. Our design surrounds the viewer with a historical timeline, which includes all of our research findings in one interactive interface.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Research Task Group IST-152 developed a concept and a reference architecture for intelligent software agents performing active, largely autonomous cyber-defense actions on military assets. The group released a detailed report, briefly reviewed in this article, where such an agent is referred to as an Autonomous Intelligent Cyber-defense Agent (AICA). In a conflict with a technically sophisticated adversary, NATO military networks will operate in a heavily contested battlefield. Enemy malware will likely infiltrate and attack friendly networks and systems. Today’s reliance on human cyber defenders will be untenable on the future battlefield. Instead, artificially intelligent agents, such as AICAs, will be necessary to defeat the enemy malware in an environment of potentially disrupted communications where human intervention may not be possible. The IST-152 group identified specific capabilities of AICA. For example, AICA will have to be capable of autonomous planning and execution of complex multi-step activities for defeating or degrading sophisticated adversary malware, with the anticipation and minimization of resulting side effects. It will have to be capable of adversarial reasoning to battle against a thinking, adaptive malware. Crucially, AICA will have to keep itself and its actions as undetectable as possible, and will have to use deceptions and camouflage. The report identifies the key functions and components and their interactions for a potential reference architecture of such an agent, as well as a tentative roadmap toward the capabilities of AICA.

The mitochondrial genome is an evolutionarily persistent and cooperative component of metazoan cells that contributes to energy production and many other cellular processes. Despite sharing the same host as the nuclear genome, the multi-copy mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) follows very different rules of replication and transmission, which translate into differences in the patterns of selection. On one hand, mtDNA is dependent on the host for its transmission, so selections would favour genomes that boost organismal fitness. On the other hand, genetic heterogeneity within an individual allows different mitochondrial genomes to compete for transmission. This intra-organismal competition could select for the best replicator, which does not necessarily give the fittest organisms, resulting in mito-nuclear conflict. In this review, we discuss the recent advances in our understanding of the mechanisms and opposing forces governing mtDNA transmission and selection in bilaterians, and what the implications of these are for mtDNA evolution and mitochondrial replacement therapy.

Constitutional Court Decision No. 14/PUU-XI/2013 mandated national elections simultaneously between elections executive (President and Vice-President) and legislative (House of Representatives, Provincial and District/City). After the 1945 amendment to experience a variety of complications in the Indonesian political system nationally. Democratization deliver the Indonesian people switching system of government, ie from a presidential system to the parliamentary system. Elections as a democratic process to the leadership of the government elected by the people as a sovereign State. The system of government by consensus of the people, by the people and for the people has implications for improving the effectiveness and stability of the country. The Problem is the electoral system with the current political party system is less effective in the election which is actually held separately between the presidential election, and the election pileg. Giving rise to various problems of the complexity of government (central and local governments). In the hierarchy, the presidential system is less relevant to the separate electoral system between national elections (pileg and presidential) election and the multi-party system. Political reality with the current system adopted, lead to conflicts among constituents, a very high political costs for the government and the candidates (candidates), strengthening of money politics is difficult to avoid the impact of a majority vote, a negative effect on the psychology of candidates when lost or won in battle politics, coalitions are not “healthy” in the implementation of the government, due to various political ideologies and individual interests, as well as the problems of the strategic policies of government. The correlation between electoral systems simultaneously with a multi-party system is a simplified alternative solution in presidential systems strengthening to improve the welfare of the whole people of Indonesia.

This article addresses the issues surrounding the Yugoslav Civil War by offering my personal narrative in relation to loss and disappearance resulting from the exposure to war and sanctions in the nineties and the “Merciful Angel“ operation of the bombing of Serbia by NATO in 1999. It thus focuses on the female interpretation of people, ways of life, buildings and human artifacts belonging to the historical period of communist Yugoslavia which once were, yet no longer remain. The work with archives, especially the photographs which originate from my personal family possession, brings closer these ghosts of the past times to the present moment. At the same time, photography is a means to investigate the position and treatment of women during and after the period of Yugoslavia, their efforts and struggles for emancipation. The usage of photography as a visual narrative allows an insight into the lives of women during communism through the lens of my closest female family members. The article tackles different issues concerning women in communist Yugoslavia, and follows certain steps in their history, from the emancipation following the Second World War and participation of women in battle as combatants and nurses, their efforts in rebuilding the country and subsequent reestablishment of patriarchal values which occurred at the start of Yugoslav Civil war and conflicts that marked it. Autoethnography as a research method combined with personal narrative allows a deeper understanding of culture and values of Yugoslav society and their subsequent clash. In addition to this, it celebrates the importance of female voice and activism in the constant battle against patriarchy and women who chose to defy it by acknowledging responsibility and the patriarchal nature of war. Photographic practice-based research allows an insight into individual stories which form a deeper understanding of the pre- and post- war Yugoslav society and political circumstances surrounding it. Author(s): Ivana Mancic Title (English): Outside of Memories We Belong, Women of Yugoslavia Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 82-88 Page Count: 7 Citation (English): Ivana Mancic, “Outside of Memories We Belong, Women of Yugoslavia,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 82-88. Author Biography Ivana Mancic, Nottingham Trent University Ivana Mancic is a Ph.D, researcher in Fine Art, School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University, U.K., with the focus on art practice aimed at the production of multi-disciplinary artworks, videos and installations, the purpose of which is to display the personal narrative to address the issues of war, loss and belonging, related to the specificity of the ex-Yugoslav context in order to contribute to the developing of the female voice of artists and pacifists in contemporary art. The personal narrative is presented in the written form through artworks, texts, essays and reflections on war experiences and current world crises through intersections between the present and the past.

В статье, посвященной 300-летию Российской империи и 350-летию со дня рождения Петра Великого, речь идет об отражении в фольклоре петровского времени некоторых важных военных событий: Северной войны со Швецией 1700-1721 гг. и ее кульминации - Полтавской битвы. Отмечается, что в исторических песнях о Северной войне есть не только изображение военных событий, но и окрашенный лиризмом, психологически верный показ душевного мира персонажей, их ожиданий и надежд. Представляет интерес и песня о русских солдатах, готовящихся к сражению со шведами, с иносказательным мотивом приготовленного врагам «угощения». Внимания заслуживает и устная историческая проза Петровской эпохи: предания, легенды, анекдоты и сказки. Воображение народа пробудила неординарная личность первого императора России и необычный образ жизни этого царя, «работника на троне». Так, смелое решение Петра I - перелить часть монастырских колоколов в пушки - отразилось в нескольких преданиях и анекдотах: эта идея приписывается и пушечному мастеру, и мудрому патриарху, и самому царю. Резко выражены социально-политические конфликты и мотивы в исторических песнях, анекдотах и бытовых сказках об А. Д. Меншикове. В песнях народное недовольство неблаговидными деяниями петровского временщика выражено прямо, в едкой и насмешливой форме. В фольклорной прозе противоречивость натуры царского фаворита и сподвижника передается более тонко, как, например, в сказке о царе и кузнеце, в одном из вариантов которой кузнецом оказывается Меншиков. Безбоязненно обличается в исторических песнях и преданиях взяточник и казнокрад, первый сибирский губернатор М. П. Гагарин, казненный за свои провинности по приказу Петра I в 1721 г. Сделан вывод, что в исторических песнях и устной прозе наблюдаются жанровые отличия в изображении Петра I и его времени, и только во всей совокупности текстов разных жанров образы людей и событий представлены разносторонне, с присущими им противоречиями, передающими не правду факта, а дух эпохи. This article, dedicated to the 300 th anniversary of the Russian Empire and the 350 th anniversary of Peter the Great’s birth, deals with the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 and its culmination, the Battle of Poltava, as they are reflected in the folklore of Peter’s time. Historical songs about the Great Northern War not only feature military events, but also present a lyrically colored, psychologically convincing portrayal of their characters. The songs include one about Russian soldiers getting ready for battle with the Swedes preparing various allegorical “dishes” prepared for their enemies. The article also examines the oral historical prose of the era, including legends, anecdotes and fairy tales. The extraordinary personality of the first emperor of Russia and his unusual way of life as “a worker on the throne” caught the people’s imagination. Several legends and anecdotes describe Peter’s decision to recast monastery bells as cannons, an idea they attribute to the cannon master, the patriarch, and to the tsar himself. Historical songs, anecdotes and household tales about A. D. Menshikov express socio-political conflicts and motifs. The songs reflect discontent with the unseemly deeds of Peter’s favorite and associate in a caustic and mocking form. In folklore prose, Menshikov’s contradictory nature is conveyed more subtly, as, for example, in a fairy tale about the tsar and a blacksmith, in one variant of which Menshikov himself turns out to be a blacksmith. Other historical songs and legends denounce M. P. Gagarin, the first governor of Siberia, bribe-taker and embezzler, whom Peter the Great had executed for his crimes in 1721. The image of Peter the Great and his time differs in historical songs and oral prose, due in part to differences in genre. However, taken in their entirety, the texts present a multi-faceted picture of people and events that, along with their inherent contradictions, convey not the factual truth but the spirit of the era.

Staphylococcus aureus is a frequent cause of chronic nosocomial skin and soft tissue infections that can spread to muscle, bone and connective tissue. During the normal inflammatory response to infection, a heterogeneous population of circulating and bone marrow (BM)-derived cells are recruited to the site of injury that collectively contributes to host defense and tissue repair. Included among these are polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN), which serve a critical role as the first-line of defense in the innate immune response to S. aureus. Through detection and intervention of the number of PMN accessing the wound in a transgenic mouse model of S. aureus infected skin wounds, we discovered that a subset of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC) that are lineage negative, Sca-1+ and c-kit+ (LSK cells) traffic to the site of infection, where they undergo local granulopoiesis and account for up to 30% of total PMN found within the abscess. Blocking trafficking of LSK revealed that local expansion into PMN is critical for clearance of bacteria and efficient wound closure. To determine if toll like receptor (TLR) signaling contributed to local granulopoiesis, we compared the capacity of multi-potent LSK cells from WT, TLR2-deficient or MyD88-deficient mice transferred into wounds functioned in a similar manner to those trafficking into WT wounds in terms of PMN expansion and resolution of infection. LSK isolated and adoptively transferred from BM of WT mice into WT, TLR2-deficient or MyD88-deficient mice produced equivalent numbers of PMN and contributed to wound resolution. In contrast, LSK derived from TLR2- or MyD88-deficient mice that were transferred into WT wounds produced few PMN, indicating that TLR2 and MyD88 are both necessary for local granulopoiesis in response to S. aureus infection. The signaling pathway involved downstream production of PGE2 that acts in an autocrine manner to signal LSK cell expansion and myeloid proliferation. Local administration of PGE2 to infected wounds of TLR2- or MyD88-deficient mice restored PMN production and rescued resolution of infection in knockout mice. These findings shed light on a novel innate immune mechanism by which stem and progenitor cells traffic to S. aureus-infected wounds and produce PMN following direct stimulation in a manner dependent on TLR2/MyD88 signaling. Current studies are focused on the process of local granulopoiesis in terms of: The local granulopoietic niche and comparing it with myeloid proliferation in BM; The antibacterial capacity of PMN locally produced versus systemically recruited to the wound; Identification of molecular pathways parallel or downstream of PGE2 that are critical for on demand production of PMN within infection. An overall goal is to strategically manipulate the process of on demand production of PMN to more efficiently battle chronic and persistent infections as may occur in immune compromised patients. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

AbstractNational and ethnic conflict have assumed new prominence in world politics. This article builds upon Robert Putnam's model of multi-level games to assess both the dynamics of conflict and conditions favoring settlement in the case of the on-going battle between the Turkish government and Kurdish separatists. In this case, interaction among issues and forces at inter-ethnic, domestic politics, and international levels affect prospects for a negotiated settlement. Particularly crucial elements have been the structure of Turkey's government and the constraints on free expression. These factors severely limit the chances to resolve the dual Prisoners' Dilemma and find a means to achieve mutual cooperation.

The western hype over Abraham Accords is evident from their exploitation of the overused phrase “historical moment” in international relations. A shift in Arab-Israeli relations has been stamped with the signing of Abraham Accords, whereby the Arab veto over the recognition of the Palestinian state, in return for Israeli recognition, is practically over. The unexpected shift of alliances in Middle East have defined new battle lines. Israel has joined forces with UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia – against perhaps Iran and Turkey. Despite the commitment to halt further settlements, Palestine is the ultimate victim. The two-state solution, in spirit, is all but buried. Comprehensive peace processes are multi-level and multi-layered and involve pragmatic efforts to build the widest consensus possible around a shared future. However, Abraham Accords lacks just that; it is both elitist and imposed. The paper is an attempt to explore the changing ground realities by exploring both history and the contemporary scenario. It examines both long-term and short-term impact of the accords on the stakeholders and the regional players.

Abstract Objective: Summarize the Hybrid War’s core characteristics and humanitarian and medical impacts. Method: A Systematic Literature Review according to PRISMA guidelines, using the following keywords, Hybrid War; Humanitarian Law; Human Rights; Lawfare, and search engines, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Gothenburg University’s database to collect literature from 2000 to 2022 in English. The eligibility of qualified articles was assessed, an inductive qualitative thematic analysis was applied, and the scientific evidence of each selected piece was evaluated. Results: The objectives of a Hybrid War are to achieve the tactical and strategic goals in a battle rather than to save civilian lives. It involves networks of state and non-state actors with various means of military and militia influences and strategies, creating difficulties in implementing, controlling, and evaluating the “International Humanitarian Law’s A State responsibility” principle, to gain insight into an armed conflict. It targets populated civilian areas and raises ethical and moral concerns by using Lawfare. Conclusions: Hybrid War’s multi-domain action should be met with multi-dimensional approaches and “acceptable losses” doctrine. Its characteristics and consequences should be learned and taught. Several measures need to be implemented to counteract its impacts, and a flexible surge capacity should be designed, planned, and executed.

David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) is an extraordinary film that explores an often-violent intersection between the conditions of late-capitalist consumer society and contemporary masculine identities. Through examining examples of “fighting” in Fight Club, the article will discuss male bonding through homosocial (and somewhat homophobic) relations, and the blurring of “good versus evil” by an examination of problematised male subjectivity and representations of “inner” conflict. The article’s title “whom do you fight?” reminds us of a particularly powerful message in Fight Club about the workings of difference. The desire to create “others” and to fight them demonstrates a culturally specific failure to adequately address the psychical and physical issues of individuals, and cultures as a whole. Similarities and differences between Fight Club, the events of September 11 and it’s anti-terrorist backlash ensures that issues raised in Fight Club about fighting are now, more than ever, powerfully relevant in white western industrialised context. “Cut the foreplay and ask:” Male Belonging, The Homosocial and Homophobia In Fight Club, the male body is a site where the meanings, limits and excesses of contemporary masculinity are tested, defined and redefined. The afflicted male body in Fight Club—bruised, bloodied, broken, weak—is constructed as the more “masculine” or more “real” body in the film, in contrast to the clean white, crisp, upright, besuited male body of Jack’s boss. Bruised eyes, cut lips, and broken noses all produce modes of recognition, a group identity, and a sense of belonging between the men when they are outside of Fight Club. In daylight hours, fellow members nod and wink to one another in recognition and in tacit acknowledgement of shared belonging and secrecy of the club. Fight Club demonstrates the ways in which the fight-worn body is directly involved in struggles of power and claims of “authenticity” and identity. These vulnerable and excessive male bodies actively construct heterosexual masculine identity that depends upon, as Jonathan L. Beller notes, the “delimitation of homoeroticism via the narrative-prohibition of homosexuality” (Beller 1999). The continuum between the homosociality and homophobia has been well documented by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985). Sedgwick’s exploration of “male homosocial desire within the structural context of triangular, heterosexual desire” (16) is also relevant to the ways in which Jack and Tyler’s love interest, Marla Singer, provides a channel for, or disruption of, male homoerotic desire and homosocial bonding. The highly physical fighting that works to bind Jack and Tyler together is evocative of an unrealisable homosexual desire between the two men. The film self-consciously and humorously explores the homosexual undertones in a scene outside Lou’s Bar. When Jack wonders where he is going to stay the night Tyler states, “cut the foreplay and ask.” After their first fistfight outside the bar they sit next to each other exhausted, satisfied and content. Jack suggests “we should do this again sometime” while Tyler leans back, smoking a cigarette. When Tyler takes Jack back to his place, he leads Jack to a mattress. Pointing to separate rooms Tyler states “you, me, toilet, ok?” The scene of Tyler and Jack’s first fight is one of highly charged physicality, bodily contact, bloodletting and sexual references. When paralleled to the “you, me, toilet” dialogue it is suggested that now they are in a different and more personal environment (inside and private rather than outside and public), their bodies and fluids should not mingle. These adjacent scenes exemplify an idea that continues throughout the remainder of the film—that male physical bonding, even in the illegal and physically charged confines of Fight Club, is ultimately a heterosexual affair. When Jack becomes jealous that Angel Face (a member of Fight Club and Project Mayhem) may replace him as Tyler’s favourite, Jack viciously beats his face almost to the point beyond recognition. When Tyler questions Jack about the beating of Angel Face, Jack replies simply, “I felt like destroying something beautiful.” Hence, Jack not only “fights” to reassert his position in the masculine hierarchy of Fight Club and Project Mayhem, but also jealously ensures that Tyler (and thus himself) will not find Angel Face sexually and physically desirable. By making homoeroticism forbidden in the context of Fight Club, fighting works as an outlet for this desire. Fighting in Fight Club simultaneously draws attention to and attention away from homoeroticism. In another scene, the direct transmission of fluids between men, particularly blood, proves particularly powerful and horrifying. Tyler takes a violent beating from Lou, the owner of the bar where Fight Club is being secretly held. With his last ounce of strength Tyler pulls Lou down onto the ground spitting and spraying blood from his mouth onto Lou’s face, screaming, “you don't know where I’ve been, Lou! You don't know where I’ve been!” Out of horror, fear and revulsion, Lou and his sidekick beat a hasty retreat agreeing to let Fight Club stay in the basement of his bar. In this case, Lou’s fear of Tyler’s blood (in the wake of AIDS and other blood related diseases) is stronger than Tyler’s physical weakness at having been beaten savagely. This scene demonstrates the fine line between the acceptability of male bodies and fluids merging in a fight or brawl, but the horror of blood and other bodily fluids transmitted so blatantly between men. “Not my head, Tyler, our head:” Good Versus Evil or Inner Conflict? When Jack discovers that Tyler is he (and he is Tyler), he decides to put a stop to Tyler’s plan to blow up the buildings of major credit card companies. Here, the fight turns to one of good versus evil characterised by the idea of inner conflict. Tyler begins to function more recognisably as Jack’s doppelganger or “bad-self”; a villainous figure that must be found, destroyed and expelled from Jack’s head as well as the film’s narrative to give closure. Although Jack becomes a “good self” with moral conscience once he realises who Tyler is, his horrific, violent battle with Tyler is physically and psychically a battle with himself. Shots of Tyler and Jack fighting as two “separate” people, and then of a solitary Jack beating himself up and throwing himself down a flight of stairs captured by security cameras, demonstrate the complexity with which the fight between good and evil becomes a graphic struggle within a divided “self.” This is reminiscent of an earlier scene between Jack and his boss. In order to manipulate and blackmail his boss, Jack beats himself up by making it appear that his boss was responsible. In these two examples “fighting” works to suggest that the narrator is his own worst enemy. It implies that constructions of “otherness” (i.e. the flamboyant, hyper-masculine Tyler or Jack’s peevish, effeminate boss) in narrative cinema are projections of the narrator’s fears and desires; these characters exist only in relation to the narrator. The narrator needs these “others” in order to have a notion of “self”—but in this case the narrator’s self does not become stronger by fighting his enemies. In fact, the film explores how he is inextricably part of their construction. It demonstrates how much Jack is a part of the system and subjectivity he wants to fight. Fight Club 1999 and September 11, 2001: Whom Do You Fight? In 1999, Andrew O’Hehir said that the idea of destroying credit-card companies in the name of some form of liberation was, although a good idea, very unlikely. The likelihood of this happening, however, became apparent on the morning of September 12th 2001, when I told by a friend to turn on the news. “It’s like Fight Club!” I was assured. I am sure I was not the only one who noticed the disturbing parallels between the exploding buildings of Fight Club’s finale and the burning Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. The similarity was thematic as well as visual. In both cases, “covertly” trained “terrorist” groups, populated by disaffected, disenfranchised young men with a hatred for capitalism, aim targets at symbols of U.S capitalism and economic prosperity. While the potential problems, complexities and controversies of comparing a “fictional” film, such as Fight Club, with a “real life” event such as on September 11, are beyond the scope of this article, there are perhaps some ways in which the fight in Fight Club might inform how media constructions of the “war against terror” might be unpacked post-September 11. In Fight Club, the U.S gaze was turned inward and on itself, marking a moment that examined the conditions under which a violent retaliation against consumer capitalism might occur. It is worrisome that the same cultural reflexivity seen in Fight Club seems to have given way to renewed desires to fight the “other,” to name and identify “evil,” to declare a war on peoples and practices that seem foreign to some white western ways of life. It seems that the gaze that was momentarily turned inwards in Fight Club has now, in an act of psychic and cultural self-defence, turned outwards onto a Middle Eastern “other.” Perhaps now, more than before, Fight Club’s complex, multi-layered and self-reflexive examination of “fight,” and its ever-shifting relationship to the construction masculine identities in contemporary societies, is of particular cultural importance and relevance. Works Cited Beller, Jonathan L. ‘Fight Club's Utopian Dick.’ Pop Matters, 1999. http://popmatters.com/film/fight-club.html [accessed January 16, 2000]. O'Hehir, Andrew. ‘Fight Club,’ Salon.com, 1999. http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/1... [accessed November 2000]. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Links http://popmatters.com/film/fight-club.html http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/1999/10/15/fight_club Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Iocco, Melissa. "Whom do you fight?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/08-whodoyou.php>. APA Style Iocco, M., (2003, Feb 26). Whom do you fight?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/08-whodoyou.html

The kids in our house are making a public comeback. They are surfacing from the private recesses of the house out into the more communal space of the family lounge room. After years of being holed-up in their bedrooms they are back – thanks to pay TV. Foxtel has presented them with a smorgasbord of programs, tempting enough to entice even the most die-hard gamer or teenage recluse out of the bedroom and into the throes of lounge room politics. In some ways, our newly populated lounge room is reminiscent of David Morley’s Family Television with television viewing “situated firmly within the politics of the living room”(19). This article explores the notion that the introduction of pay TV in Australia challenges the general movement towards an individualisation of media consumption in the family home. Due to pay TV’s limitations of one outlet per household, children and teenagers are leaving the privacies of their own bedrooms and returning to the family lounge room. With this return, many family members are having to relearn the art of sharing (or getting your fair share of) this limited resource. This situation may also be a particularly Australian one, as it seems that pay TV with its multi-channel viewing is more readily available on multiple television sets within homes in other countries (Tidhar, Chava and Nossek 16) Family television viewing seems to be part of a relatively recent (round the hearth) tradition, which followed from the family piano, phonograph and the radio. These traditions re-established the home and family as a place where parental authority overrode the dangers of the outside world. Radio broadcasters in the 1940s endorsed the family radio as a way to promote family togetherness because (as they saw it) “the house and hearth have [had] been largely given up in favour of a multitude of other interests and activities outside, with the consequent disintegration of family ties and affections” (Lewis qtd. in Flichy 158). Television viewing followed suit as another round-the-hearth family tradition during the earlier period of domestic television. David Morley (1986) explored the domestic consumption of television in the context of everyday family life during this time, a time when only one television set was available to most families – a time when dads, and the occasional mum, ruled the television viewing habits of the family. Morley’s approach to television viewing was one in which the household (or family) was central to interpreting the television audience; where there were gendered regimes of watching and program choice which often reflected existing power relationships in the home. Today most Australian families have more than one television set (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), leading the way to more individualised and fragmented modes of television watching within Australian homes. The introduction of computers, the Internet and video consoles in many family homes seems to have further dispersed family members to more private spaces in the family home, diffusing existing conflict surrounding the family television. Therefore, "if television once brought the family together around the hearth, now domestic technologies permit the dispersal of family members to different rooms or different activities within the same space" (Livingstone 128). The geographical migration of the television set, along with new digital technologies, to the bedrooms and secondary living spaces in many family homes has brought with it new dynamics for social space within the household and a “reciprocal (re)construction of the meanings and functions of both the technological objects and the domestic spaces they inhabit” (Caron 3). Equipping bedrooms with television and digital technologies has the ability to change the room’s conventional usage – both spatially and temporally. In this way our 11-year-old’s bedroom has been transformed into a specialised bedroom culture – a gamer’s paradise. By locating a television and game console in this bedroom the technologies are identified as personal property while at the same time allowing for a space that functions as both communal and private, for sharing with siblings and friends and solitary gaming. The upside of this general movement towards a separate bedroom culture (or private media spaces) is that there are more spaces to engage with media technologies and therefore more viewing choice for family members. These extra media spaces have freed up the lounge room possibly allowing for more harmony and accord within the family, while at the same time bringing about the opportunity for some family members to retreat from the social togetherness of family television viewing. However, with the limitations of one outlet per household in Australian pay TV, the lounge room has again become the focus of family television viewing in some Australian homes. With over twenty percent of Australian homes now subscribing to pay TV (Australian Film Commission) some Australian families may again be experiencing the togetherness (and the inevitable struggles) of sharing one television set. In the days when one television set was the norm, Morley explored the way in which family viewing habits reflected existing power relationships in the home, focussing mainly on issues concerned with gender and class in the UK home. Twenty years later, in our house on the other side of the world, similar battles are taking place – Dragonball Z vs. Ocean Girl, Robot Wars vs. Buffy and World Series Cricket vs. Changing Rooms. However, unlike Morley’s Family Television the results of these gendered battles are too close to call. Perhaps, with forty or more channels to choose from, and programs designed to appeal to specific family members, the stakes are even higher and the battle has only just begun. Today’s media-rich home environments, with multiple television sets and digital technologies, seem to have gone some way to resolving household conflicts over television viewing allowing for more choice and individualisation of media consumption. However, the introduction of pay TV in Australia has seen a return to the living room politics of family television viewing somewhat reminiscent of Morley’s Family Television where sharing the family television reflected and highlighted existing family power relationships and struggles. Works Cited Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Australia in Brief: Way of Life. Commonwealth of Australia. 2 March 2003 <http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib2001/media.php>. Australian Film Commission. Get the Picture: Fast Facts. 2002. 3 March 2003 <http://www.afc.gov.au/GTP/wptvfast.php>. Caron, Andre. "New Communication Technologies in the Home: A Qualitative Study on the Introduction, Appropriation and Uses of Media in the Family." Young People and the Media. Sydney: International Forum of Researchers, 2000. Livingstone, Sonia. "The Meaning of Domestic Technologies: A Personal Construct Analysis of Familial Gender Relations." Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. Eds. Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch. London: Routledge, 1992. 113-30. Morley, D. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Pleasure. London: Routledge, 1986. Tidhar, Chava E., and Hillel Nossek. "All in the Family: The Integration of a New Media Technology in the Family." Communications 27 (2002): 15-34. Links http://www.afc.gov.au/GTP/wptvfast.htmlhttp://www.dfat.gov.au/aib2001/media.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Holloway, Donell. "Sharing Foxtel" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/06-sharingfoxtel.php>. APA Style Holloway, D. (2003, Apr 23). Sharing Foxtel. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/06-sharingfoxtel.php>

Disclaimer: The situation on PixelCanvas is constantly changing due to raids from both sides. The figures in this article represent the state as of April 2020. In the politicized digital environment, the superiority of the alt-right’s weaponization of memes is often taken for granted. As summarized in the buzzword-phrase “the left can’t meme”, the digital engagements of self-identified leftist activists are usually seen as less effective than the ones of the right: their attempts at utilizing Internet culture described as too “politically correct” and “devoid of humour”. This supposedly “immutable law of the Internet” (Dankulous Memeulon) often found confirmation in research.Described by Phillips and Milner, Internet culture – “a highly insular clique”, now seeping into popular culture – is by design rooted in liberalism and fetishized sight. Through its principles of “free speech”, “harmless fun”, and dehumanizing detachment of memes from real-life production and consequence, meme-sharing was enabling deception, “bigoted pollution”, and reinforcing white racial frames, regardless of intentions (Phillips and Milner). From Andersson to Nagle, many come to the conclusion that the left’s presence online is simply not organized, not active, not transgressive enough to appeal to the sensibilities of Internet culture. Meanwhile, the playful, deceptive online engagements of the alt-right are found to be increasingly viral, set to recruit numerous young rebels, hence upholding a cultural hegemony which has already transcended over to the offline world. This online right style is one where a rejection of morality and nihilistic nonconformity reign supreme – all packaged in carnivalesque laughter and identity-bending “trolling” (Nagle 28-39). Even if counterculture and transgression used to be domains of the left, nowadays the nihilistic, fetishizing landscape of online humour is popularized via alt-right aligned message boards like 4chan (Nagle 28-39).Left-wing alternatives, encompassed by Nagle in the term “Tumblr liberalism”, were often described as “fragmented” through identitarianism and call-out-culture, enclosed in echo chambers, “nannying, language policing, and authoritarian” (68-85). This categorization has been rightfully criticized for reductionism that lumps together diverse political strands, focuses on form only, and omits the importance of subcultural logic in its caricature of the censorious left (Davies). However, it would be difficult to deny that this is exactly how the online left is, unfortunately, often perceived by the right and liberals/centrists alike, evidenced by its niche quality.The solutions to the problem of the right’s dominance in the memeosphere – and their Gramscian cultural hegemony – offered by Phillips and Milner could include disavowing fetishized sight while maintaining “slapdash, quippy, and Internet Ugly” qualities to deconstruct meme culture’s whiteness; Davies suggests that “if the left is to have the same degree of success in translating online cultures into political movements then it needs to understand both the online world and its own IRL history”.Nonetheless, some strands of the online left have been rather close in style and form to the ones of the alt-right, despite their clear difference of “stance” (Shifman 367). In this article, I demonstrate an example of a multi-faceted, united, witty, and countercultural meme leftism on PixelCanvas.io (PixelCanvas): a nearly unlimited online canvas, where anyone can place coloured pixels with an obligatory cooldown time after each. Intended for creative expression, PixelCanvas became a site of click-battles between organized dichotomous extremes of the left and the alt-right, and is swarmed with political imagery. The right’s use of this platform has been already examined by Thibault, well-fitting into the consensus about the efficiency of right-wing online activity. My focus is the rebuttal of alt-right imagery that the radical left replaces with their own.With a brief account of PixelCanvas’s affordances and recounting the recent history of its culture wars, I trace the hybrid leftist activity on PixelCanvas to argue that it is comparably grounded in dissimulation and transgression to the alt-right’s. Based on the case study, I explore how certain strands of online left might reappropriate the carnivalesque, deceptive, and countercultural meme culture sensibilities and forms, while simultaneously rejecting its “bigoted pollution” (Phillips and Milner) aspects. While arguably problematic, these new strategies might be necessary to combat the alt-right’s hegemony in the meme environment – and by extension, in popular culture.PixelCanvas as a Metapolitical Platform of Culture WarsPixelCanvas affords a blend of 4chan-style open-access, no-login anonymity and the importance of organized collective effort. As described by Thibault, it is an “online ‘game’ that allows players to colour pixels ..., either collaborating or competing for the control of the shared space” (102). The obligatory cooldown period on PixelCanvas results in most of the works requiring either dedication of long periods of time or collaboration: as such, the majority of canvas art has a “shared authorship” (102). As a space for creative expression, PixelCanvas encourages expressing aspects of genuine personal identity (political views, sexuality, etc.) albeit reduced to symbols and memes that rarely remain personal. Although the primary medium of information transfer on the platform is visual, brief written catchphrases are also utilized. While the canvas is not lacking in free areas, competition for space is prevalent: between political viewpoints, nationalist groups (Bakalım), and other communities (PixelCanvas.io).Given this setup, it might be expected that battling for hegemony took over the game. The affordances of PixelCanvas as accepting anonymous unmoderated expressions of identity/political views encourage dissimulation similarly to boards such as 4chan; its immediate visual/one-liner focus overlaps with the prerequisites of meme culture. Meanwhile, the game’s competition aspect leads to large-scale organization of polarized metapolitical groups and to imagery that is increasingly larger, more taboo-breaking, and playful: meant to catch the eye of a viewer before the opponents do. PixelCanvas, as such, is a platform fitting into transgressive, trolling, fetishizing, and “liberal” affordances of Internet culture: the same affordances that made it, according to Nagle or Phillips and Milner, into a space of desensitized white supremacy and right-wing dominance.Such a setup may seem to work in favour of the 4chan-style raids and against the supposed identitarianism of “Tumblr liberalism”. One could recall the importance of united collective efforts on 4chan: from meme-sharing to Gamergate raids (Beran). Meanwhile, suggested by Citarella, a problem of the online left is its fragmentation, and its “poorly organized and smaller followings” (10). As he observed on Politigram, “DemSocs, Syndicalists, ML’s, AnComs, … and so on, all hated each other. The online right was equally divided but managed to coordinate cultural agitations” (Citarella 10).Indeed, the platform displayed the effects of alt-right virality multiple times, involving creations of self-identified Kekistanis (KnowYourMeme), anarcho-capitalists, 4chan-aligned “bronies” (My Little Pony fans), etc. However, since 2017, the left joined the game, becoming another example of a united, well-organized and strongly participatory group, which continuously resists alt-right attacks and establishes its own raids, often gaining an upper hand.Named “Battle of Pixelgrad”, the influx of leftist activity began to combat the forming Reich Iron Cross posted by “a user on 4chan's /pol/” which has caught the attention of Leftbook/meme groups and subreddits (PLK Wiki) (Wrigley). The groups involved spanned “all beliefs under a unified socialist umbrella” (Pixel Liberation Front) ranging from communism through anarchism subtypes to identity politics: all associating with the “left unity” flag that they replaced the Iron Cross with. Their efforts against alt-right raids were coordinated through Discord servers and a public Facebook group. Soon, a Facebook page for Left Unity Fighting Front (LUFF) was set up, with the PixelCanvas flag in the banner and the description: “We decided to form the new rival of 4chan, LUFF. We are the new united front of the internet. Promoting left unity, trolling Nazis, and taking on sectarianism.”Figure 1: The ’Left Unity’ flag. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-1554,3594.The concept of left unity has been criticised before, as one that would lead to “the co-optation of anarchism under a Marxist leadership”, charged with the history of anarchist-Bolshevik clashes in USSR, and marred by a “lack of willingness among some Marxists to actually engage with anarchists in legitimate debate” (Springer). Still, the PixelCanvas left unity is one of the rare instances of Marxist, anarchist, and other leftist online groups working together on rather equal grounds, without cracking down on discourse and historical contexts: which is afforded by a subcultural logic and focus on combating a common enemy. The PixelCanvas leftists support common projects, readily bending their beliefs/ identity to create an efficient community that can resist 4chan: self-identifying as an “allyship” with anonymous “soldiers”/comrades belonging together on the left side of the pixel “war” (Pixel Liberation Front). While the diversity of their beliefs is made clear through the variously aligned flags/thinkers they choose to represent with pixels, the union stands without in-fighting, emulating simplistic versions of history as a dichotomous struggle between left and right (which deliberately rejects centrism): from Nazi/communist battles to Cold War imagery. Although reductionist, this us/them thinking is especially necessary in the visual, time-sensitive, and competitive space of PixelCanvas. No matter how extreme the common projects are, what matters in the pixel war is camaraderie and defeating the enemy in the most striking manner possible. After all, the setup of the platform (and the immediacy of Internet culture) supports attention- grabbing transgression and memes better than nuanced discourse. Figure 2: Representation of the left uniting against Nazism and anarcho-capitalism. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-143,-782.As of April 2020, hardly any Nazi/4chan/ancap imagery on PixelCanvas stands without being challenged by the Left Unity. Although some of the groups involved in Pixelgrad do not exist anymore, Discord servers (e.g. RedPixel) and Pixel Liberation Front (PLF) Facebook group remain, defending the platform from continued raids. These coordinating bodies are easily accessible to anyone willing to contribute (shall one wish for complete anonymity, they are also free to participate without joining the servers). Their efforts could be understood as “clicktivism” (Halupka); however, the involved leftists view it as a “war” (PLF) or “Memeolution” (Wrigley), an important way in which the “virality of right-wing populism” (Thibault) must be resisted. This use of language highlights their serious awareness of the need for combating the right’s digital hegemony, no matter how playful their activity seems.Even if this phenomenon is specific to PixelCanvas, one should acknowledge that the identity-bending unity of the left has been enough to challenge continued raids. Niche practices, as seen through 4chan, might break into the mainstream: according to Hobson and Modi, online spaces “are a rich recruiting ground for previously antithetical/apolitical young people” (345) who find refuge in memes and trolling. The agenda of the PixelCanvas left (counterplatforming activism) in this case differs from 4chan’s. However, the forms they assume to reach their goal are often “pithy, funny, or particularly striking” enough to potentially make one “pause to think, and/or laugh” (Hobson and Modi 345) regardless of political alignment.The Form, Content, and Stance of PixelCanvas Left ActivityDespite the unity in the organization of the PixelCanvas left, the approaches/strategies of its various pixel artworks are far from uniform. At the first sight, the creations of RedPixel members already appear as a multi-faceted (and potentially confusing) mixture of serious real-life agenda and playful Internet culture. Guided by Shifman’s communication-oriented typology of memes, I analyze the different “contents, forms, and stances” (367) that the PixelCanvas left displays in its creations. For analytical clarity, I distinguish three main approaches which overlap and play various roles in contributing to the collective image of RedPixel as simultaneously activist, serious, inclusive, and Internet-culture-savvy, transgressive, deceptive.The first approach of PixelCanvas leftist creations is most serious and least grounded in Internet culture. A portion of RedPixel activity directly reproduces real-life protest chants, posters, flags, murals, movement symbols, and portraits of leftist icons, with little alteration to the form other than pixelating. The contents of such creations vary, however, they remain serious and focused on real-life issues: voicing support for contemporary leftist movements (Black Lives Matter, pro-refugee, Rojava liberation, etc.), celebrating the countercultural, class-centric leftist history (anarchist, communist, socialist victories, thinkers, and revolutionaries), and representing a plethora of identities within hyper-inclusive flag clusters (of various sexualities, genders, and ethnicities). The stance of these images can be plausibly interpreted as charged with serious/genuine “keying” (Shifman 367), and “conative” (imperative) or “emotive” (367) functions. Within those images, the meme culture’s problematic affordances (“fetishization” and “liberalism” (Phillips and Milner)) are disavowed clearly: exemplified by a banner on the site suggesting that “just a meme” mentality created a shield for “meme Nazis” that led to the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting. Although this strand of RedPixel’s works could be criticized as “humourless” and rather detached from the platform’s affordances, its role lies in displaying the connection to the real world with potential suggestions for mobilization, the awareness of meme culture’s problematic nature, and the image of radical left cooperation. Figure 3: The Christchurch memorial. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-2815,3321. Figure 4: Posters and symbols in support of Rojava, Palestine liberation, and Black Lives Matter. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@5340,4121. Figure 5: Early Paris Commune poster reproduced on PixelCanvas. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@7629,2134. Figure 6: Example of a PixelCanvas hyper-inclusive flag cluster. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@2741,-3508.The second approach, while similar in the diversity of content, adopts memetic forms, and the light-hearted “harmless fun” of Internet culture. Through popular meme formats (molded to call for action), slang expressions, pop-cultural references (anime/cartoon/video game characters), to adopting “cutesy” aesthetics, these creations present identity politics, anti-fascism, and anti-capitalism in a light, aestheticized form. Popular characters, colourful art, and repetitive base colour schemes (red, black, rainbow) are likely to attract attention; recognition of the pop-cultural references, and of known meme formats might sustain it, urging one to focus on the only uncertain element: the politics behind it. Being visually and contextually appealing to online youth, this political-memetic imagery is well-adapted to the platform. Simultaneously, the carnivalesque forms contrast with the frequently more transgressive contents this approach employs. As a result, the tone of their work seems lighthearted even in its incitement to “kill the Nazis” and “eat the rich”. Clearly aware of the language of its opposition, RedPixel reacts similarly to how 4chan reacted to Tumblr liberalism: responding to “lightly thrown accusations” (Nagle) by intensifying them to the point where they can be seen as “owning” the labels they have been given – instead of “getting offended”. Through memes and reappropriated posters they present themselves as “Red Menace,” as a direct threat to 4channers, and as a “trigger-warning” club, using the existing criticisms to self-identify as formidable enemies of the right. While the transgression in RedPixel style often remains acceptable by radical left standards, it is certainly not the same as “virtue signalling”, “hypersensitive”, “vulnerable” Tumblr liberalism (Nagle 68–85); and it might be shocking or amoral to some. Much of their imagery is provocative: inciting violence, glorifying deeply problematic parts of communist history, using religious symbols in a potentially blasphemous way, supporting occultism/ Satanism, and explicitly amplifying (queer) sexuality. In the mix of (sometimes) extreme contents and forms that suggest a light-hearted attitude, it might be difficult to determine the keying of their stance. Although it is unlikely that RedPixel would avow politics they do not actually believe (given the activist, anti-fetishizing agenda of their first approach), their political choices are frequently amplified to their full “tankie” form, and even up to Stalin support: raising the question how much of it is serious intent masked with humour, and what could be written off as deliberate identity play, deceptive “trolling” and jokes, similar in style to 4chan’s. Figure 7: Revolution-inciting appropriation of a popular meme format. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-1765,3376. Figure 8: Fictional characters Stevonnie (Steven Universe) and Cirno (Touhou) with leftist captions. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-847,-748. Figure 9: Call for fighting fascism referencing a Pacman video game and Karl Marx. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-712,-395. Figure 10: Joseph Stalin reimagined as a My Little Pony character. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-1197,966. Figure 11: “A spectre is haunting Kekistan.” Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-2196,3248. Figure 12: “Trigger Warning Gun Club” badge. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@2741,-3508.Figure 13: “Have you heard that Nazis get vored?” anime catgirl. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@1684,928. Figure 14: Rainbow genitals on a former Kekistan flag. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-2513,3221. Figure 15: “Eat the Rich — OK Boomer” wizard ghost. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-4390,-697.The third approach can be read as a subset of the second: however, what distinguishes it is a clearly parodic stance and reappropriating of 4chan’s forms. The PixelCanvas activists, unlike the supposed “anti-free speech” left (Lukianoff and Haidt) do not try to get the alt-right imagery removed by others, and do not fully erase it. Instead, they repurpose 4chan memes and flags, ridiculing them or making them stand for leftist views. An unaware viewer could mistake their parodies of 4chan for parodies of the left made by 4chaners; the true stance sometimes only suggested by their placement within RedPixel-reclaimed areas. Communist and LGBTQ+ Pepes or Ponies, modified Kekistan flags, and even claiming that “the right can’t meme” all point to an interesting trend that instead of banning symbols associated with alt-right groups wants to exploit the malleability of memes: confusing and parodying their original content and stance while maintaining the form and style. This aim is perhaps best exemplified in the image The Greatest Game of Capture the Flag where Pepes in anarcho-communist, communist, and transgender Pride hoodies are escaping from a crying white man while carrying a 4chan flag. Interpreted in context, this image summarizes the new direction that leftists take against 4chan. This is a direction of left unity (with various strands of radical left maintaining their identities but establishing an overarching collective “allyship” identification), of mixing identity politics with classic ideologies, of reconciling Internet culture with IRL socio-political awareness, and finally, of reappropriating proven-effective play, dissimulation, and transgression from 4chan. Figure 16: Pride flag cluster with Pride-coloured Pepes. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-1599,3516. Figure 17: Communist/anarchist thinkers and leaders reimagined as Pepes. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-1885,3203. Figure 18: “The Right Can’t Meme.” Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-1885,3203. Figure 19: The reclaimed Kekistan area. Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-2439,3210. Figure 20: “The Greatest Game of Capture the Flag.” Source: https://pixelcanvas.io/@-1885,3203.ConclusionThe PixelCanvas left can serve as an example of a united stronghold which managed to counterplatform the alt-right: assuming dominance in 2017 to later rebuild and expand their pixel spheres of influence after each 4chan raid. Online culture wars are nowadays recognized as Gramscian in their roots: according to Burton, “the young people confronting this reactionary shift head-on with memes normalizing are … on the front lines of a culture war with global repercussions” (13). By far, this “war” for digital hegemony has been overwhelmingly evaluated as one that the alt-right is simply better at, due to the natural affordances of Internet culture. However, the “united front of the internet” “promoting left unity and trolling Nazis” (LUFF) exemplifies a possible direction which the online radical left could follow to take on 4chan’s digital dominance. This direction is complex and hybrid: with overlapping/combined approaches. The activities of PixelCanvas left include practices that are well-adapted to the immediate meme culture and those based on IRL movements; practices similar to 4chan’s problematic transgression and those that are activist, disavowing fetishized sight; serious practices and deceptive/ironic ones. Their 2017 PixelCanvas victory and later resistance persisting despite continuing raids might suggest that this strategy works, with the key to its coordination laying in the subcultural logic of an “allyship” that privileges fast-paced mobilization and swift comebacks over careful nuance: necessitated by meme culture affordances. Although only time can prove if this new left digital language will become more widespread, it has the potential to become an alternative to “hypersensitive Tumblr liberalism” and to challenge the idea that meme culture is doomed to be right-wing.ReferencesAndersson, Linus. “No Digital ‘Castles in the Air’: Online Non-Participation and the Radical Left.” Media and Communication 4.4 (2016): 53–62.Bakalım, Seyret. “Pixel io Türkiye vs Brezilya [Turkey vs Brazil] Pixel War.” YouTube, 23 June 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPHVNpB8Hg>.Beran, Dale. “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump.” Medium, 14 Feb. 2017. <https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb>.Burton, Julian. “Look at Us, We Have Anxiety: Youth, Memes, and the Power of Online Cultural Politics.” Journal of Childhood Studies 44.3 (2019): 3–17.Dankulous Memeulon. “The Left Can’t Meme.” UrbanDictionary, 11 May 2018. <https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Left%20can%27t%20Meme>.Davies, Josh. “Tumblr Liberalism’ vs the Serious Authentic Left: On Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies.” Ceasefire Magazine, 8 Sep. 2017. <https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/tumblr-liberalism-authentic-left-review-kill-normies/>.Halupka, Max. “Clicktivism: A Systematic Heuristic.” Policy & Internet 6.2 (2014): 115–32.Hobson, Thomas, and Kaajal Modi. “Socialist Imaginaries and Queer Futures: Memes as Sites of Collective Imagining.” Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production. 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Rejecting Left Unity and Raising Hell in Radical Geography.” Anarchist Studies, 28 Jan. 2018. <https://anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-anarchist-rejecting-left-unity-and-raising-hell-in-radical-geography/>.Thibault, Mattia. “A Picture of the Internet: Conflict, Power and Politics on Pixelcanvas.” Virality and Morphogenesis of Right-Wing Internet Populism. Eds. Eva Kimminich and Julius Erdmann. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018. 102–12.TheCissKing. “Tucute.” Urban Dictionary, 17 Jan. 2019. <https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tucute>.Wrigley, Jack. “Battle of Pixelgrad.” YouTube, 24 July 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJa1Hi2j1_E>.

1. Guy Debord in the Land of the Long WeekendIt’s the weekend – leisure time. It’s the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the “total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the organization and management of production” in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily “treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness, in their new role as consumers.” But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of “political economy”: “the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the ‘perfected denial of man’.” (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the “perfected denial” of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our working practices and private identities.This Saturday The Weekend Australian runs an opinion piece by Christopher Pearson, defending ABC Radio National’s Stephen Crittenden, whose program The Religion Report has been axed. “Some of Crittenden’s finest half-hours have been devoted to Islam in Australia in the wake of September 11,” Pearson writes. “Again and again he’s confronted a left-of-centre audience that expected multi-cultural pieties with disturbing assertions.” Along the way in this admirable Crusade, Pearson notes that Crittenden has exposed “the Left’s recent tendency to ally itself with Islam.” According to Pearson, Crittenden has also thankfully given oxygen to claims by James Cook University’s Mervyn Bendle, the “fairly conservative academic whose work sometimes appears in [these] pages,” that “the discipline of critical terrorism studies has been captured by neo-Marxists of a postmodern bent” (30). Both of these points are well beyond misunderstanding or untested proposition. If Pearson means them sincerely he should be embarrassed and sacked. But of course he does not and will not be. These are deliberate lies, the confabulations of an eminent right-wing culture warrior whose job is to vilify minorities and intellectuals (Bendle escapes censure as an academic because he occasionally scribbles for the Murdoch press). It should be observed, too, how the patent absurdity of Pearson’s remarks reveals the extent to which he holds the intelligence of his readers in contempt. And he is not original in peddling these toxic wares.In their insightful—often hilarious—study of Australian opinion writers, The War on Democracy, Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler identify the left-academic-Islam nexus as the brain-child of former Treasurer-cum-memoirist Peter Costello. The germinal moment was “a speech to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue forum at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2005” concerning anti-Americanism in Australian schools. Lucy and Mickler argue that “it was only a matter of time” before a conservative politician or journalist took the plunge to link the left and terrorism, and Costello plunged brilliantly. He drew a mental map of the Great Chain of Being: left-wing academics taught teacher trainees to be anti-American; teacher trainees became teachers and taught kids to be anti-American; anti-Americanism morphs into anti-Westernism; anti-Westernism veers into terrorism (38). This is contempt for the reasoning capacity of the Australian people and, further still, contempt for any observable reality. Not for nothing was Costello generally perceived by the public as a politician whose very physiognomy radiated smugness and contempt.Recycling Costello, Christopher Pearson’s article subtly interpellates the reader as an ordinary, common-sense individual who instinctively feels what’s right and has no need to think too much—thinking too much is the prerogative of “neo-Marxists” and postmodernists. Ultimately, Pearson’s article is about channelling outrage: directing the down-to-earth passions of the Australian people against stock-in-trade culture-war hate figures. And in Pearson’s paranoid world, words like “neo-Marxist” and “postmodern” are devoid of historical or intellectual meaning. They are, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy repeatedly demonstrate, mere ciphers packed with the baggage of contempt for independent critical thought itself.Contempt is everywhere this weekend. The Weekend Australian’s colour magazine runs a feature story on Malcolm Turnbull: one of those familiar profiles designed to reveal the everyday human touch of the political classes. In this puff-piece, Jennifer Hewett finds Turnbull has “a restless passion for participating in public life” (20); that beneath “the aggressive political rhetoric […] behind the journalist turned lawyer turned banker turned politician turned would-be prime minister is a man who really enjoys that human interaction, however brief, with the many, many ordinary people he encounters” (16). Given all this energetic turning, it’s a wonder that Turnbull has time for human interactions at all. The distinction here of Turnbull and “many, many ordinary people” – the anonymous masses – surely runs counter to Hewett’s brief to personalise and quotidianise him. Likewise, those two key words, “however brief”, have an unfortunate, unintended effect. Presumably meant to conjure a picture of Turnbull’s hectic schedules and serial turnings, the words also convey the image of a patrician who begrudgingly knows one of the costs of a political career is that common flesh must be pressed—but as gingerly as possible.Hewett proceeds to disclose that Turnbull is “no conservative cultural warrior”, “onfounds stereotypes” and “hates labels” (like any baby-boomer rebel) and “has always read widely on political philosophy—his favourite is Edmund Burke”. He sees the “role of the state above all as enabling people to do their best” but knows that “the main game is the economy” and is “content to play mainstream gesture politics” (19). I am genuinely puzzled by this and imagine that my intelligence is being held in contempt once again. That the man of substance is given to populist gesturing is problematic enough; but that the Burke fan believes the state is about personal empowerment is just too much. Maybe Turnbull is a fan of Burke’s complex writings on the sublime and the beautiful—but no, Hewett avers, Turnbull is engaged by Burke’s “political philosophy”. So what is it in Burke that Turnbull finds to favour?Turnbull’s invocation of Edmund Burke is empty, gestural and contradictory. The comfortable notion that the state helps people to realise their potential is contravened by Burke’s view that the state functions so “the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection… by a power out of themselves” (151). Nor does Burke believe that anyone of humble origins could or should rise to the top of the social heap: “The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person… the state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule” (138).If Turnbull’s main game as a would-be statesman is the economy, Burke profoundly disagrees: “the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern… It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection”—a sublime entity, not an economic manager (194). Burke understands, long before Antonio Gramsci or Louis Althusser, that individuals or social fractions must be made admirably “obedient” to the state “by consent or force” (195). Burke has a verdict on mainstream gesture politics too: “When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition [of the state] becomes low and base” (136).Is Malcolm Turnbull so contemptuous of the public that he assumes nobody will notice the gross discrepancies between his own ideals and what Burke stands for? His invocation of Burke is, indeed, “mainstream gesture politics”: on one level, “Burke” signifies nothing more than Turnbull’s performance of himself as a deep thinker. In this process, the real Edmund Burke is historically erased; reduced to the status of stage-prop in the theatrical production of Turnbull’s mass-mediated identity. “Edmund Burke” is re-invented as a term in an aesthetic repertoire.This transmutation of knowledge and history into mere cipher is the staple trick of culture-war discourse. Jennifer Hewett casts Turnbull as “no conservative culture warrior”, but he certainly shows a facility with culture-war rhetoric. And as much as Turnbull “confounds stereotypes” his verbal gesture to Edmund Burke entrenches a stereotype: at another level, the incantation “Edmund Burke” is implicitly meant to connect Turnbull with conservative tradition—in the exact way that John Howard regularly self-nominated as a “Burkean conservative”.This appeal to tradition effectively places “the people” in a power relation. Tradition has a sublimity that is bigger than us; it precedes us and will outlast us. Consequently, for a politician to claim that tradition has fashioned him, that he is welded to it or perhaps even owns it as part of his heritage, is to glibly imply an authority greater than that of “the many, many ordinary people”—Burke’s hair-dressers and tallow-chandlers—whose company he so briefly enjoys.In The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton assesses one of Burke’s important legacies, placing him beside another eighteenth-century thinker so loved by the right—Adam Smith. Ideology of the Aesthetic is premised on the view that “Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body”; that the aesthetic gives form to the “primitive materialism” of human passions and organises “the whole of our sensate life together… a society’s somatic, sensational life” (13). Reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Eagleton discerns that society appears as “an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects”, like “any production of human art”. In Smith’s work, the “whole of social life is aestheticized” and people inhabit “a social order so spontaneously cohesive that its members no longer need to think about it.” In Burke, Eagleton discovers that the aesthetics of “manners” can be understood in terms of Gramscian hegemony: “in the aesthetics of social conduct, or ‘culture’ as it would later be called, the law is always with us, as the very unconscious structure of our life”, and as a result conformity to a dominant ideological order is deeply felt as pleasurable and beautiful (37, 42). When this conservative aesthetic enters the realm of politics, Eagleton contends, the “right turn, from Burke” onwards follows a dark trajectory: “forget about theoretical analysis… view society as a self-grounding organism, all of whose parts miraculously interpenetrate without conflict and require no rational justification. Think with the blood and the body. Remember that tradition is always wiser and richer than one’s own poor, pitiable ego. It is this line of descent, in one of its tributaries, which will lead to the Third Reich” (368–9).2. Jean Baudrillard, the Nazis and Public MemoryIn 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Third Reich’s Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe was on loan to Franco’s forces. On 26 April that year, the Condor Legion bombed the market-town of Guernica: the first deliberate attempt to obliterate an entire town from the air and the first experiment in what became known as “terror bombing”—the targeting of civilians. A legacy of this violence was Pablo Picasso’s monumental canvas Guernica – the best-known anti-war painting in art history.When US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on 5 February 2003 to make the case for war on Iraq, he stopped to face the press in the UN building’s lobby. The doorstop was globally televised, packaged as a moment of incredible significance: history in the making. It was also theatre: a moment in which history was staged as “event” and the real traces of history were carefully erased. Millions of viewers world-wide were undoubtedly unaware that the blue backdrop before which Powell stood was specifically designed to cover the full-scale tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica. This one-act, agitprop drama was a splendid example of politics as aesthetic action: a “performance” of history in the making which required the loss of actual historical memory enshrined in Guernica. Powell’s performance took its cues from the culture wars, which require the ceaseless erasure of history and public memory—on this occasion enacted on a breathtaking global, rather than national, scale.Inside the UN chamber, Powell’s performance was equally staged-crafted. As he brandished vials of ersatz anthrax, the power-point behind him (the theatrical set) showed artists’ impressions of imaginary mobile chemical weapons laboratories. Powell was playing lead role in a kind of populist, hyperreal production. It was Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernism, no less, as the media space in which Powell acted out the drama was not a secondary representation of reality but a reality of its own; the overheads of mobile weapons labs were simulacra, “models of a real without origins or reality”, pictures referring to nothing but themselves (2). In short, Powell’s performance was anchored in a “semiurgic” aesthetic; and it was a dreadful real-life enactment of Walter Benjamin’s maxim that “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war” (241).For Benjamin, “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate.” Fascism gave “these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves.” In turn, this required “the introduction of aesthetics into politics”, the objective of which was “the production of ritual values” (241). Under Adolf Hitler’s Reich, people were able to express themselves but only via the rehearsal of officially produced ritual values: by their participation in the disquisition on what Germany meant and what it meant to be German, by the aesthetic regulation of their passions. As Frederic Spotts’ fine study Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics reveals, this passionate disquisition permeated public and private life, through the artfully constructed total field of national narratives, myths, symbols and iconographies. And the ritualistic reiteration of national values in Nazi Germany hinged on two things: contempt and memory loss.By April 1945, as Berlin fell, Hitler’s contempt for the German people was at its apogee. Hitler ordered a scorched earth operation: the destruction of everything from factories to farms to food stores. The Russians would get nothing, the German people would perish. Albert Speer refused to implement the plan and remembered that “Until then… Germany and Hitler had been synonymous in my mind. But now I saw two entities opposed… A passionate love of one’s country… a leader who seemed to hate his people” (Sereny 472). But Hitler’s contempt for the German people was betrayed in the blusterous pages of Mein Kampf years earlier: “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous” (165). On the back of this belief, Hitler launched what today would be called a culture war, with its Jewish folk devils, loathsome Marxist intellectuals, incitement of popular passions, invented traditions, historical erasures and constant iteration of values.When Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer fled Fascism, landing in the United States, their view of capitalist democracy borrowed from Benjamin and anticipated both Baudrillard and Guy Debord. In their well-know essay on “The Culture Industry”, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, they applied Benjamin’s insight on mass self-expression and the maintenance of property relations and ritual values to American popular culture: “All are free to dance and enjoy themselves”, but the freedom to choose how to do so “proves to be the freedom to choose what is always the same”, manufactured by monopoly capital (161–162). Anticipating Baudrillard, they found a society in which “only the copy appears: in the movie theatre, the photograph; on the radio, the recording” (143). And anticipating Debord’s “perfected denial of man” they found a society where work and leisure were structured by the repetition-compulsion principles of capitalism: where people became consumers who appeared “s statistics on research organization charts” (123). “Culture” came to do people’s thinking for them: “Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown” (144).In this mass-mediated environment, a culture of repetitions, simulacra, billboards and flickering screens, Adorno and Horkheimer concluded that language lost its historical anchorages: “Innumerable people use words and expressions which they have either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes” in precisely the same way that the illusory “free” expression of passions in Germany operated, where words were “debased by the Fascist pseudo-folk community” (166).I know that the turf of the culture wars, the US and Australia, are not Fascist states; and I know that “the first one to mention the Nazis loses the argument”. I know, too, that there are obvious shortcomings in Adorno and Horkheimer’s reactions to popular culture and these have been widely criticised. However, I would suggest that there is a great deal of value still in Frankfurt School analyses of what we might call the “authoritarian popular” which can be applied to the conservative prosecution of populist culture wars today. Think, for example, how the concept of a “pseudo folk community” might well describe the earthy, common-sense public constructed and interpellated by right-wing culture warriors: America’s Joe Six-Pack, John Howard’s battlers or Kevin Rudd’s working families.In fact, Adorno and Horkheimer’s observations on language go to the heart of a contemporary culture war strategy. Words lose their history, becoming ciphers and “triggers” in a politicised lexicon. Later, Roland Barthes would write that this is a form of myth-making: “myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things.” Barthes reasoned further that “Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types”, generating a “cultural logic” and an ideological re-ordering of the world (142). Types such as “neo-Marxist”, “postmodernist” and “Burkean conservative”.Surely, Benjamin’s assessment that Fascism gives “the people” the occasion to express itself, but only through “values”, describes the right’s pernicious incitement of the mythic “dispossessed mainstream” to reclaim its voice: to shout down the noisy minorities—the gays, greenies, blacks, feminists, multiculturalists and neo-Marxist postmodernists—who’ve apparently been running the show. Even more telling, Benjamin’s insight that the incitement to self-expression is connected to the maintenance of property relations, to economic power, is crucial to understanding the contemptuous conduct of culture wars.3. Jesus Dunked in Urine from Kansas to CronullaAmerican commentator Thomas Frank bases his study What’s the Matter with Kansas? on this very point. Subtitled How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Frank’s book is a striking analysis of the indexation of Chicago School free-market reform and the mobilisation of “explosive social issues—summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art—which it then marries to pro-business policies”; but it is the “economic achievements” of free-market capitalism, “not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars” that are conservatism’s “greatest monuments.” Nevertheless, the culture wars are necessary as Chicago School economic thinking consigns American communities to the rust belt. The promise of “free-market miracles” fails ordinary Americans, Frank reasons, leaving them in “backlash” mode: angry, bewildered and broke. And in this context, culture wars are a convenient form of anger management: “Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire planet must remake itself along the lines preferred” by nationalist, populist moralism and free-market fundamentalism (5).When John Howard received the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award, on 6 March 2008, he gave a speech in Washington titled “Sharing Our Common Values”. The nub of the speech was Howard’s revelation that he understood the index of neo-liberal economics and culture wars precisely as Thomas Frank does. Howard told the AEI audience that under his prime ministership Australia had “pursued reform and further modernisation of our economy” and that this inevitably meant “dislocation for communities”. This “reform-dislocation” package needed the palliative of a culture war, with his government preaching the “consistency and reassurance” of “our nation’s traditional values… pride in her history”; his government “became assertive about the intrinsic worth of our national identity. In the process we ended the seemingly endless seminar about that identity which had been in progress for some years.” Howard’s boast that his government ended the “seminar” on national identity insinuates an important point. “Seminar” is a culture-war cipher for intellection, just as “pride” is code for passion; so Howard’s self-proclaimed achievement, in Terry Eagleton’s terms, was to valorise “the blood and the body” over “theoretical analysis”. This speaks stratospheric contempt: ordinary people have their identity fashioned for them; they need not think about it, only feel it deeply and passionately according to “ritual values”. Undoubtedly this paved the way to Cronulla.The rubric of Howard’s speech—“Sharing Our Common Values”—was both a homage to international neo-conservatism and a reminder that culture wars are a trans-national phenomenon. In his address, Howard said that in all his “years in politics” he had not heard a “more evocative political slogan” than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”—the rhetorical catch-cry for moral re-awakening that launched the culture wars. According to Lawrence Grossberg, America’s culture wars were predicated on the perception that the nation was afflicted by “a crisis of our lack of passion, of not caring enough about the values we hold… a crisis of nihilism which, while not restructuring our ideological beliefs, has undermined our ability to organise effective action on their behalf”; and this “New Right” alarmism “operates in the conjuncture of economics and popular culture” and “a popular struggle by which culture can lead politics” in the passionate pursuit of ritual values (31–2). When popular culture leads politics in this way we are in the zone of the image, myth and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “trigger words” that have lost their history. In this context, McKenzie Wark observes that “radical writers influenced by Marx will see the idea of culture as compensation for a fragmented and alienated life as a con. Guy Debord, perhaps the last of the great revolutionary thinkers of Europe, will call it “the spectacle”’ (20). Adorno and Horkheimer might well have called it “the authoritarian popular”. As Jonathan Charteris-Black’s work capably demonstrates, all politicians have their own idiolect: their personally coded language, preferred narratives and myths; their own vision of who “the people” might or should be that is conjured in their words. But the language of the culture wars is different. It is not a personal idiolect. It is a shared vocabulary, a networked vernacular, a pervasive trans-national aesthetic that pivots on the fact that words like “neo-Marxist”, “postmodern” and “Edmund Burke” have no historical or intellectual context or content: they exist as the ciphers of “values”. And the fact that culture warriors continually mouth them is a supreme act of contempt: it robs the public of its memory. And that’s why, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy so wittily argues, if there are any postmodernists left they’ll be on the right.Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and, later, Debord and Grossberg understood how the political activation of the popular constitutes a hegemonic project. The result is nothing short of persuading “the people” to collaborate in its own oppression. The activation of the popular is perfectly geared to an age where the main stage of political life is the mainstream media; an age in which, Charteris-Black notes, political classes assume the general antipathy of publics to social change and act on the principle that the most effective political messages are sold to “the people” by an appeal “to familiar experiences”—market populism (10). In her substantial study The Persuaders, Sally Young cites an Australian Labor Party survey, conducted by pollster Rod Cameron in the late 1970s, in which the party’s message machine was finely tuned to this populist position. The survey also dripped with contempt for ordinary people: their “Interest in political philosophy… is very low… They are essentially the products (and supporters) of mass market commercialism”. Young observes that this view of “the people” was the foundation of a new order of political advertising and the conduct of politics on the mass-media stage. Cameron’s profile of “ordinary people” went on to assert that they are fatally attracted to “a moderate leader who is strong… but can understand and represent their value system” (47): a prescription for populist discourse which begs the question of whether the values a politician or party represent via the media are ever really those of “the people”. More likely, people are hegemonised into a value system which they take to be theirs. Writing of the media side of the equation, David Salter raises the point that when media “moguls thunder about ‘the public interest’ what they really mean is ‘what we think the public is interested in”, which is quite another matter… Why this self-serving deception is still so sheepishly accepted by the same public it is so often used to violate remains a mystery” (40).Sally Young’s Persuaders retails a story that she sees as “symbolic” of the new world of mass-mediated political life. The story concerns Mark Latham and his “revolutionary” journeys to regional Australia to meet the people. “When a political leader who holds a public meeting is dubbed a ‘revolutionary’”, Young rightly observes, “something has gone seriously wrong”. She notes how Latham’s “use of old-fashioned ‘meet-and-greet’campaigning methods was seen as a breath of fresh air because it was unlike the type of packaged, stage-managed and media-dependent politics that have become the norm in Australia.” Except that it wasn’t. “A media pack of thirty journalists trailed Latham in a bus”, meaning, that he was not meeting the people at all (6–7). He was traducing the people as participants in a media spectacle, as his “meet and greet” was designed to fill the image-banks of print and electronic media. Even meeting the people becomes a media pseudo-event in which the people impersonate the people for the camera’s benefit; a spectacle as artfully deceitful as Colin Powell’s UN performance on Iraq.If the success of this kind of “self-serving deception” is a mystery to David Salter, it would not be so to the Frankfurt School. For them, an understanding of the processes of mass-mediated politics sits somewhere near the core of their analysis of the culture industries in the “democratic” world. I think the Frankfurt school should be restored to a more important role in the project of cultural studies. Apart from an aversion to jazz and other supposedly “elitist” heresies, thinkers like Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer and their progeny Debord have a functional claim to provide the theory for us to expose the machinations of the politics of contempt and its aesthetic ruses.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso, 1979. 120–167.Barthes Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans: Paladin, 1972. 109–58.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zorn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. 217–251.Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Charteris-Black, Jonathan. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994.Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.Grossberg, Lawrence. “It’s a Sin: Politics, Post-Modernity and the Popular.” It’s a Sin: Essays on Postmodern Politics & Culture. Eds. Tony Fry, Ann Curthoys and Paul Patton. Sydney: Power Publications, 1988. 6–71.Hewett, Jennifer. “The Opportunist.” The Weekend Australian Magazine. 25–26 October 2008. 16–22.Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Pimlico, 1993.Howard, John. “Sharing Our Common Values.” Washington: Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute. 5 March 2008. ‹http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,233328945-5014047,00html›.Lucy, Niall and Steve Mickler. The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006.Pearson, Christopher. “Pray for Sense to Prevail.” The Weekend Australian. 25–26 October 2008. 30.Salter, David. The Media We Deserve: Underachievement in the Fourth Estate. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Picador, 1996.Spotts, Frederic. Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. London: Pimlico, 2003.Wark, McKenzie. The Virtual Republic: Australia’s Culture Wars of the 1990s. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1997.Young, Sally. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising. Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2004.

Discussing the interaction between representation and narrative structures, Anthony Mandal argues that the Gothic has always been “an intrinsically intertextual genre” (Mandal 350). From its inception, the intertextuality of the Gothic has taken many and varied incarnations, from simple references and allusions between texts—dates, locations, characters, and “creatures”—to intricate and evocative uses of style and plot organisation. And even though it would be unwise to reduce the Gothic “text” to a simple master narrative, one cannot deny that, in the midst of re-elaborations and re-interpretations, interconnections and interpolations also appear, a collective gathering of ideas and writing practices that construct what is known as “the Gothic intertext” (Mishra 235). As far as storytelling, characterisation, and symbolism are concerned, the Gothic finds strength in its ability to develop as well as negate expectation, re-moulding the culturally known and the aesthetically acceptable in order to present its audience with a multi-faceted and multi-layered narrative. Although the Gothic has traditionally found fertile ground in literary works—a connection that is now a legacy as much as an origin—other contemporary media, such as animation, have offered the Gothic a privileged chance for growth and adaptation. An evocative example of the mergence between the Gothic mode and the animated medium is Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls. This visual text provides an example of the reach of the Gothic within popular culture, where intersecting hideous creatures and interconnected narrative structures, although simple and “for children” on the surface, reveal the presence of a dense and intertextual Gothic network. Those interlacings are, of course, never disconnected from the wider cultural framework, and clearly occupy an important part in unravelling the insidious aspects of human nature, from the difficulties of finding “oneself” to the loneliness of the everyday. Gravity Falls is an animated television series created by Alex Hirsch. It premiered on the Disney Channel in the United States on 15 June 2012. Now scheduled for its second season of running, Gravity Falls follows the adventures of 12-year-old twin siblings Dipper and Mabel Pines while on their summer vacation in the small town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. The choice of “twins” as main characters reveals, even at such an embryonic level, a connection to Gothicised structures, as the mode itself, as Vijay Mishra suggests, finds an affinity with doublings and “specular identifications” that “confuse the norm” (63). The presence of twins makes the double nature of character, traditionally a metaphorical and implicit idea in the Gothic, a very obvious and explicit one. Dipper and Mabel are staying with their eccentric and money-grabbing Great Uncle Stan—often referred to as “Grunkle Stan”—who runs the local curiosity shop known as the Mystery Shack. It becomes very obvious from the very beginning that an air of mystery truly surrounds the Shack, which quickly lives up to its name, and the eponymous town. In an aptly Gothic manner, things are definitely not what they seem and the twins are caught in odd plots, eerily occurrences, and haunted/haunting experiences on a daily basis. The instigator for the twins’ interest in the odd manifestations is the finding of a mysterious journal, a manual the relays detailed descriptions of the creatures that inhabit the forest in the town of Gravity Falls. The author of the journal remains unknown, and is commonly known only as “3”, an unexplained number that marks the cover of the book itself. Although the connection between the Gothic and animation may be obscure, it is in fact possible to identify many common and intersecting elements—aesthetically, narratively, and conceptually—that highlight the two as being intrinsically connected. The successful relation that the Gothic holds with animation is based in the mode’s fundamental predilection for not only subversion, excess and the exploration of the realm of the “imagination”, but also humour and self-reflexivity. These aspects are shared with animation which, as a medium, is ideally placed for exploring and presenting the imaginative and the bizarre, while pushing the boundaries of the known and the proper. Julia Round suggests that the Gothic “has long been identified as containing a dual sense of play and fear” (7). The playfulness and destabilisation that are proper to the mode find a fertile territory in animation in view of not only its many genres, but also its style and usually sensational subject matter. This discourse becomes particularly relevant if one takes into consideration matters of audienceship, or, at least, receivership. Although not historically intended for younger viewers, the animation has evolved into a profoundly children-orientated medium. From cinema to television, animated features and series are the domain of children of various ages. Big production houses such as Disney and Warner Bros have capitalised on the potential of the medium, and established its place in broadcasting slots for young viewers. Not unlike comics—which is, in a way, its ancestral medium—animation is such a malleable and contextual form that it requires a far-reaching and inclusive approach, one that is often interdisciplinary in scope; within this, where the multi-faceted nature of the Gothic opens up the way for seeing animated narratives as the highly socio-historical mediums they are. And not unlike comics, animation shares a common ground with the Gothic in requiring a vast scope of analysis, one that is intrinsically based on the conceptual connections between “texts”. Round has also aptly argued that, like comics, animated series lend themselves to malleable and mouldable re-elaboration: “from the cultural to the aesthetic, the structural to the thematic”, graphic media always reflect the impact of “intertextual and historical references” (8). Animation’s ability to convey, connect, and revolutionise ideas is, therefore, well-matched to the aesthetic and conceptual idiosyncrasies of Gothic tropes. Dipper and Mabel’s vacation in the town of Gravity Falls is characterised by the appearance of numerous super- and preter-natural creatures. The list of “monsters” encountered by the twins is long and growing, from gnomes, goblins, mermaids and zombies, to ghosts, clones, and a wide and colourful variety of demons. And although, at first glance, this list would appear to be a simple and simplistic grouping of bizarre and creatively assembled creatures, it is made quickly apparent that these “monsters” are all inspired, often very directly, by “existing”—or, at least, well-known—Gothic creatures, and their respective contexts of development. Indeed, the links to the Gothic in contemporary popular culture are unavoidable. The creatures in Gravity Falls are presented with subtle references to Gothic literature and cinema, from John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984), to Stephen King’s The Shining (1977) and Needful Things (1991). Borrowing from these texts, the creatures in the series all have strange names that rely on play-on-words and re-inventions, and the rubric twists that they undertake are part of a system of both homage and conceptual interdependency. One can find, for instance, “Manotaurs”—creatures that are half-bull and half-man, and that value “manliness” in their society above all else—and the “Gremlobin” – a gigantic monster somewhere in between, we are told, a “gremlin” and a “goblin”, whose eyes can show “your worst nightmares”. But the range extends to other bizarre “creatures” that are clearly very spooky, such as the “Summewrween Trickster”—a large, shadowy, purple/orange monster with a “jack-o’-melon” mask – the living “mailbox”—a sentient and omniscient object—and the truly haunting Bill Cipher—a mind demon that can be summoned through an incantation and enter a person’s subconscious. The connection to the Gothic in popular culture is instrumental for the construction of the Gothic intertext in Gravity Falls. In episode One, “Tourist Trapped” (1.01), Mabel is kidnapped by a tribe of gnomes, who are set on making her their queen. The gnomes are incongruous creatures: on the one hand, they are vengeful and spiteful, recalling the horror monsters found in movies such as the questionable Blood Gnome (2004). On the other, however, they wear red pointy hats and white beards, and their friendly smiles recall the harmless appearance of actual garden gnomes. When the gnomes grow upset, they throw up rainbows; this strange fact destroys their potential as a Gothic horror icon, and makes them accessible and amusing. This subversion of iconography takes place with a number of other “creatures” in Gravity Falls, with the Summerween Trickster—subverting the “terror” of Hallowe’en—being another fitting example. When the gnomes are attempting to woe Mabel, they do not appear to her in their real form: they camouflage themselves into a teenage boy— one who is moody, brooding, and mysterious—and become Mabel’s boyfriend; the “boy’s” interest in her, however, is so intense, that Dipper suspects him to be a member of “The Undead”, a category of monster that is closely described in 3’s journal: due to their “pale skin” and “bad attitudes”, they are often mistaken for “teenagers”. Clues to Dipper’s doubts include the teenage boy’s hand “falling off” while he is hugging Mabel, a clear sign—it would seem—that the boy is obviously a decaying, zombie corpse. The intertextual connection to several horror visual narratives where limbs “fall off” the undead and the monstrous is clear here, with apt film examples being Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Fly (1986), horror comedy Army of Darkness (1992), and, more recently, television’s The Walking Dead (2010-). The references to well-known horror films are scattered throughout the series, and comprise the majority of the lampooned cultural context in which the creatures appear. In spite of Dipper’s suspicions, the situation is revealed to have a rather different outcome. When the boyfriend tells Mabel he has a big secret to reveal, her mind wanders into another direction, choosing a different type of undead, as she expectantly thinks: “Please be a vampire…please be a vampire”. It is not difficult to spot the conceptual connection here to narratives such as Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga (2005-2008), both in its literary and cinematic variations, where brooding and mysterious teenage boys find ideal incarnations as the undead creature. The romanticised nature of teenage fictional narratives such as the Twilight saga is also mirrored in Mabel’s distinctive love-centred interest in the potential vampire, revealing an intertextual and highly contextual association to seeing the creature as part of an amorous relationship, as opposed to a blood-thirsty murderer. Mabel’s dreams of vampric love are unfortunately shattered when the boyfriend is revealed to be several gnomes carefully assembled to operate a human-like body, rather than one immortal lover. Irrespective of its desire to parody the Gothic, however, Gravity Falls still maintains unavoidable links to the notion of terror. Clear evidence of this is to be found in the fact that all “creatures” in the series present a level of anthropomorphism about them, and this is interpreted by the characters—and the viewers—as one of their scariest aspects. Leigh Blackmore suggests that a special brand of terror can be found in “anthropomorphic beings” that are in fact not human (Blackmore 95). Most of the creatures in the series are humanoid in shape, and can speak like humans. From gnomes to mermaids, mailboxes and demons, the creatures act as humans, but they are in fact something “other”, something that only recalls the human itself. This idea of being “almost human”, but “not quite”, is disturbing in itself, and connects the presentation of the creatures to the Gothic via the notion of the uncanny: “a crisis of the natural, touching upon everything that one might have thought was ‘part of nature’ […] human nature, the nature of reality and the world” (Royle 1). The uncanny nature of the creatures in Gravity Falls is maintained through their profound inhumanity, and their simultaneous links to human ways of acting, speaking, and even thinking. Indeed, most of the creatures are presented as petty, bitter, and childish, and often seen as greedy and sulking. In a way, the creatures lampoon some of the most intrinsic qualities of the human species, what separates us from animals. The supernatural creatures operate here as a critique of the humans themselves, exposing, as the Gothic often does, the most disturbing parts of humanity. The creatures are presented initially as scary, recalling—albeit very briefly—notions of terror and horror, but that façade is quickly destroyed as their “real nature” is exposed. They are de-terrorised by not only making them common, but also ridiculing their habits and de-constructing their thinly-veiled Gothic personas. The creatures in Gravity Falls are a subversion of the subversion, a re-thinking of the Gothic through parody that allows their conceptual, and culturally relevant, function to be rapidly exposed. The impact of the Gothic intertext in Gravity Falls is not only visible in its representational forms—its monsters and “creatures”—but also extends to its structural organisation. Jerrold Hogle has argued that, although they maintain a heterogeneous construction of texts and contexts, there are certain qualities applicable to “Gothic texts”: an antiquated space (often decaying); a concealed secret from the historical past; a physical or psychological haunting; and an oscillation between “reality” and the “supernatural” (3). Although Hogle’s pinpointing of what he calls the “Gothic matrix” (3) is mainly focused on the literary world, a broader and more wide-reaching understanding of the Gothic text allows these qualities to be clearly identifiable in other narrative mediums, such as an animated series. Indeed, Gravity Falls presents the main elements of the “Gothic matrix”: the Mystery Shack is an old and isolated place, physically crumbling and in constant state of disrepair; it is made clear that the Shack harbours many secrets—filled as it is with hidden passageways and underground vaults—connected to the shady past of Grunkle Stan and its unresolved connections to mysticism and magic; there are plenty of hauntings to be found in the series: from physical ones—in the form of demons and ghosts—to psychological ones, condensed in Dipper and Mabel’s difficulties with their approaching puberties and “growing up”; finally, the line between reality and supernatural is constantly challenged by the appearance of multiple creatures that are clearly not of this world, and even though several characters doubt their existence within the story, their very presence challenges the stability of the boundaries between real and unreal. On the surface, the series is presented as a standard linear narrative, where the linear journey of each 20-minute episode culminates with the resolution of the main “haunting”, and the usual destruction or appeasing of the “creature”. And while the series’ use of cliff-hangers is, in true television style, a common presence, they also expose and recall the unresolved nature of the narrative. Indeed, the story’s structure in Gravity Falls is reliant on narrative undertellings and off-shoots that often lie underneath the logical “line” of the plot. Sub-plots reign supreme, and multiple motives for the characters’ actions are introduced but not expanded upon, leaving the series impregnated with an aura of uncertainty and chaos. The focus of the storytelling is also denied; one moment, it appears to be Dipper’s desire to discover the “secrets” of the forest; the other, it is Grunkle Stan’s long-time battle with his arch-nemesis Gideon over the ownership of the Shack. This plot confusion in Gravity Falls continues to expose its narrative debt to the Gothic intertext, since “structural multiplicity”, as Round suggests, is “a defining feature of the Gothic” (19). The series’ narrative structure is based on numerous multiplicities, an open denial of linear journeys that is dependant, paradoxically, on the illusion of resolution. The most evocative example of Gravity Falls’ denial of clear-cut structures is arguably to be found in the narrative underlayers added by 3’s monster manual. It is obvious from the beginning that 3’s stay in the town of Gravity Falls was riddled with strange experiences, and that his sojourn intersected, at one point or the other, with the lives and secrets of Grunkle Stan and his enemies. It is also made clear that 3’s journal is not a solitary presence in the narrative, but is in fact only one in a triad of mystical books—these books, it is suggested, have great power once put together, but the resolution to this mystery is yet to be revealed. As Grunkle Stan and Gideon fight (secretly) over the possession of the three books, it is openly suggested that several uncovered stories haunt the main narrative in the series and, unknown Dipper and Mabel, are responsible for many of the strange occurrences during their stay at the Shack. Jean-Jacques Lecercle has long argued that one of the defining characteristics of the Gothic, and its intertextual structure, is the presence of “embedded narratives” (72). In Gravity Falls, the use of 3’s manual as not only an initiator of the plot, but also as a continuous performative link to the “haunted” past, uncovers the series’ re-elaboration of the traditional structure of Gothic narratives. As a paratextual presence in the story—one that is, however, often responsible for the development of the main narrative—3’s manual draws attention to the importance of constructing layered stories in order to create the structures of terror, and subsequent horror, that are essential to the Gothic itself. Although it often provides Dipper with information for solving the mysteries of the Shack, and subduing the supernatural creatures that overtake it, 3’s manual is, in reality, a very disruptive presence in the story. It creates confusion as it begins storytelling without concluding it, and opens the way to narrative pathways that are never fully explored. This is of course in keeping with the traditional narrative structures of the Gothic mode, where ancient books and stories— belonging to “antiquity”—are used as a catalyst for the present narrative to take place, but are also strangely displaced from it. This notion recalls Victor Sage’s suggestion that, in Gothic narratives, ancient books and stories paradoxically “disrupt” the main narrative, starting a separate dialogue with a storytelling structure that is inevitably unexplored and left unanswered (86). Canonical examples such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) inevitably come to mind here, but also more recent cinematic examples such as the Evil Dead franchise (1978-), where ancient books and old storytellers uncover hoary secrets that instigate, as well as obscure, the main narrative. In Gravity Falls, the interaction with 3’s manual is inherently performative, and continuously intertextual, but it is also deeply confusing, adding to the feeling of strangeness and mystery that is the conceptual basis for the series itself. The intertextual connections that drive the narrative in Gravity Falls construct lampooned versions of both the traditional concepts of Gothic horror and Gothic terror. Hogle has suggested that Gothic terror is apparent in the construction of suspense, achieved through an exploration of psychological hauntings, human nature and its un/limitations, and that which is kept out sight, the expected “hidden secrets” (3). Gothic horror, on the other hand, is characterised by the consequences of these occurrences; the physical manifestation of the “haunting”, so to speak, is achieved through the presentation of something repulsive and horrific, the monstrous in its various incarnations (Hogle 3). In Gravity Falls, the connection to the traditional Gothic intertext is made clear through both elicitations of “terror”, and subsequent manifestations of “horror”. Indeed, the “hidden secrets” of the Shack, and to some extent, the fears and insecurities of the characters, are mediated through the appearance of horrific machinery and creatures. The Shack always conceals something hidden, a magical element of sort that is kept secret by intricate passageways. The shadowy nature of the building – evoking the psychological hauntings of Gothic terror – inevitably causes the appearance of something physically disturbing, finding its apogee in a Gothic horror experience. A clear example of this can be found in the episode “Double Dipper” (1.07). Desperate to impress his co-worker and secret love-interest Wendy, and “haunted” by his lack of self-worth, Dipper roams the rooms of the Shack and discovers a very old and enchanted photocopier machine; the machine copies “people”, making clones of the original. The “clones” themselves are a manifestation of horror, a presence that breaks the boundaries of propriety, and worries its viewers in view of its very existence. The cloning copy machine is strongly intertextual as it not only provides conceptual links to numerous cinematic and literary examples where a “haunted machine” threats to destroy humanity— in examples such as Stephen King’s Christine (1983) —but also evokes the threat of “doubles”, another powerfully Gothic conduit (Royle). As it is often the case in Gravity Falls, Dipper loses control of the situation, and the dozens of clones he unwittingly created take over his life and threaten to annihilate him. Dipper must destroy the “horror” —the clones—and confront the “terror”—his haunting insecurities and personal secrets—in order to restore the original balance. This intertextual dynamic validates Hogle’s contention that, in Gothic narratives, both the physical and the psychological “hauntings” rise from view “within the antiquated space” and “manifest unresolved conflicts that can no longer be successfully buried from view” (Hogle 2). The “hidden secrets” of Gravity Falls, and their manifestations through both Gothic horror and terror, are clearly connected to explorations of human nature and deeply existentialist crises that are put forward through humour and parody. These range from Grunkle Stan’ inability to commit to a relationship—and his feeling that life is slipping away in his old age—to the twins’ constant insecurities about pre-teen amorous encounters. Not to mention the knowledge that, in reality, Dipper and Mabel were “abandoned” by their mother in the care of Stan, as she had other plans for the summer. As Round has argued, the Gothic’s most significant development seems to have been the “transvaluation of moral issues”, as notions of “monsters have become less clear cut” (18). The series’ successful engagement with the wider “monstrous” intertext, and its connection to moral issues and “hidden” preoccupations, uncovers the ability of the Gothic, as Catherine Spooner puts it, to act as “commodity”, no longer a marginalised cultural presence, but a fully purchasable item in consumer-capitalist systems (Spooner 2007). The evocations of both horror and terror in Gravity Falls are, naturally, unavoidably diluted, a homage as much as a direct encounter. The use of the monstrous and the haunted in the series is domesticated, made accessible so that it can be presented to a younger and more commercial audience. The profound interlacings with the Gothic intertext remain, however, unchanged, as the series reconciles its subversive, uncanny elements with the inevitably conventional, Disney-fied context in which it is placed. References Blackmore, Leigh. “Marvels and Horrors: Terry Dowling’s Clowns at Midnight”. 21st Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000, ed. Danel Olson. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 87-97. Gravity Falls. Disney Television. Disney Channel, Los Angeles. 2012-2014. Hogle, Jerrold. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture”. The Cambridge Companion of Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 1-20. Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. “The Kitten’s Nose: Dracula and Witchcraft”. The Gothic, ed. Fred Botting. D.S Brewer: Cambridge, 2001. 71-86. Mandal, Anthony. “Intertext”. The Encyclopaedia of the Gothic, ed. David Punter, Bill Hughes and Andrew Smith. Basingstoke: Wiley, 2013. 350-355. Mishra, Vijay. The Gothic Sublime. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Round, Julia. Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. Royle, Nicholas. The Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Sage, Victor. “Irish Gothic: C.R. Maturin and J.S. LeFanu. A Companion to the Gothic, ed. David Punter. Oxford; Blackwell, 2001. 81-93. Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion, 2007.

Wandering the aisles of my local Woolworths in April this year, I noticed a large number of chocolate bilbies replacing chocolate rabbits. In these harsh economic times it seems that even the Easter bunny is in danger of losing his Easter job. While the changing shape of Easter chocolate may seem to be a harmless affair, the expulsion of the rabbit from Easter celebrations has a darker side. In this paper I look at the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, and the implications this mediated conservation move has for living rabbits in the Australian ecosystem. Essential to this discussion is the premise that studies of ecology must take into account the impact of media and culture on environmental issues. Of particular interest is the role of narrative, and the way the stories we tell about rabbits determine how they are treated in real life. While I recognise that the Australian bilby’s struggle for survival is a tale which should be told, I also argue that the vilification of the European-Australian rabbit is part of the native/invasive dualism which has ceased to be helpful, and has instead become a motivator of unproductive violence. In place of this simplified dichotomous narrative, I propose an ethic of "ecological remembrance" to combat the totalising eradication of the European rabbit from the Australian environment and culture. The Bilby vs the Bunny: A Case Study in "Media Selection" Easter Bunny says, ‘Bilby, I want you to have my job.You know about sharing and taking care.I think Australia should have an Easter Bilby.We rabbits have become too greedy and careless.Rabbits must learn from bilbies and other bush creatures’. The lines above are taken from Ali Garnett and Kaye Kessing’s children’s story, Easter Bilby, co-published by the Australian Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation as part of the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the eco-politically correct Easter bilby. The first chocolate bilbies were made in 1982, but the concept really took off when major chocolate retailer Darrell Lea became involved in 2002. Since this time Haigh’s chocolate, Cadbury, and Pink Lady have also released delicious cocoa natives for consumption, and both Darrell Lea and Haigh’s use their profits to support bilby assistance programs, creating the “pleasant Easter sensation” that “eating a chocolate bilby is helping save the real thing” (Phillips). The Easter bilby campaign is a highly mediated approach to conservation which demonstrates the new biological principle Phil Bagust has recognised as “media selection.” Bagust observes that in our “hybridised global society” it is impossible to separate “the world of genetic selection from the world of human symbolic and material diversity as if they exist in different universes” (8). The Australian rabbit thrives in “natural selection,” having adapted to the Australian environment so successfully it threatens native species and the economic productivity of farmers. But the rabbit loses out in “cultural selection” where it is vilified in the media for its role in environmental degradation. The campaign to conserve the bilby depends, in a large part, on the rabbit’s failures in “media selection”. On Good Friday 2012 Sky News Australia quoted Mike Drinkwater of Wild Life Sydney’s support of the Easter bilby campaign: Look, the reason that we want to highlight the bilby as an iconic Easter animal is, number one, rabbits are a pest in Australia. Secondly, the bilby has these lovely endearing rabbit-like qualities. And thirdly, the bilby is a beautiful, iconic, native animal that is struggling. It is endangered so it’s important that we do all we can to support that. Drinkwater’s appeal to the bilby’s “endearing rabbit-like qualities” demonstrates that it is not the Australian rabbit’s individual embodiment which detracts from its charisma in Australian society. In this paper I will argue that the stories we tell about the European-Australian rabbit’s alienation from Indigenous country diminish the species cultural appeal. These stories are told with passionate conviction to save and protect native flora and fauna, but, too often, this promotion of the native relies on the devaluation of non-native life, to the point where individual rabbits are no longer morally considerable. Such a hierarchical approach to conservation is not only ethically problematic, but can also be ineffective because the native/invasive approach to ecology is overly simplistic. A History of Rabbit Stories In the Easter Bilby children’s book the illustrated rabbit offers to make itself disappear from the “Easter job.” The reason for this act of self-destruction is a despairing recognition of its “greedy and careless” nature, and at the same time, its selfless offer to be replaced by the ecologically conscious Bilby. In this sacrificial gesture is the implicit offering of all rabbit life for the salvation of native ecosystems and animal life. This plot line slots into a much larger series of stories we have been telling about the Australian environment. Libby Robin has observed that settler Australians have always had a love-hate relationship with the native flora and fauna of the continent (6), either devaluing native plants, animals, and ecosystems, or launching into an “overcompensating patriotic strut about the Australian biota” (Robin 9). The colonising dynamic of early Australian society was built on the devaluation of animals such as the bilby. This was reflected in the introduction of feral animals by “acclimatisation societies” and the privileging of “pets” such as cats and dogs over native animals (Plumwood). Alfred Crosby has made the persuasive argument that the invasion of Australia, and other “neo-European” countries, was, necessarily, more-than-human. In his work, Ecological Imperialism, Crosby charts the historical partnership between human European colonisers in Indigenous lands and the “grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, buzzing, self-replicating and world-altering avalanche” (194) of introduced life that they brought with them. In response to this “guilt by association” Australians have reversed the values in the dichotomous colonial dynamic to devalue the introduced and so “empower” the colonised native. In this new “anti-colonial” story, rabbits signify a wound of colonisation which has spread across and infected indigenous country. J. M. Arthur’s (130) analysis of language in relation to colonisation highlights some of the important lexical characteristics in the rabbit stories we now tell. He observes that the rabbits’ impact on the county is described using a vocabulary of contamination: “It is a ‘menace’, a ‘problem’, an ‘infestation’, a ‘nuisance’, a ‘plague’” (170). This narrative of disease encourages a redemptive violence against living rabbits to “cure” the rabbit problem in order to atone for human mistakes in a colonial past. Redemptive Violence in Action Rabbits in Australia have been subject to a wide range of eradication measures over the past century including shooting, the destruction of burrows, poisoning, ferreting, trapping, and the well-known rabbit proof fence in Western Australia. Particularly noteworthy in this slaughter has been the introduction of biological control measures with the release of the savage and painful disease Myxomatosis in late December 1950, followed by the release of the Calicivirus (Rabbit Haemorrhage Disease, or RHD) in 1996. As recently as March 2012 the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries announced a 1.5 million dollar program called “RHD Boost” which is attempting to develop a more effective biological control agent for rabbits who have become immune to the Calicivirus. In this perverse narrative, disease becomes a cure for the rabbit’s contamination of Australian environments. Calicivirus is highly infectious, spreads rapidly, and kills rabbits en masse. Following the release of Calicivirus in 1995 it killed 10 million rabbits in eight weeks (Ponsonby Veterinary Centre). While Calicivirus appears to be more humane than the earlier biological control, Myxomatosis, there are indications that it causes rabbits pain and stress. Victims are described as becoming very quiet, refusing to eat, straining for breath, losing coordination, becoming feverish, and excreting bloody nasal discharge (Heishman, 2011). Post-mortem dissection generally reveals a “pale and mottled liver, many small streaks or blotches on the lungs and an enlarged spleen... small thrombi or blood clots” (Coman 173). Public criticism of the cruel methods involved in killing rabbits is often assuaged with appeals to the greater good of the ecosystem. The Anti-Rabbit research foundation state on their Website, Rabbit-Free Australia, that: though killing rabbits may sound inhumane, wild rabbits are affecting the survival of native Australian plants and animals. It is our responsibility to control them. We brought the European rabbit here in the first place — they are an invasive pest. This assumption of personal and communal responsibility for the rabbit “problem” has a fundamental blind-spot. Arthur (130) observes that the progress of rabbits across the continent is often described as though they form a coordinated army: The rabbit extends its ‘dominion’, ‘dispossesses’ the indigenous bilby, causes sheep runs to be ‘abandoned’ and country ‘forfeited’, leaving the land in ‘ecological tatters’. While this language of battle pervades rabbit stories, humans rarely refer to themselves as invaders into Aboriginal lands. Arthur notes that, by taking responsibility for the rabbit’s introduction and eradication, the coloniser assumes an indigenous status as they defend the country against the exotic invader (134). The apprehension of moral responsibility can, in this sense, be understood as the assumption of settler indigeneity. This does not negate the fact that assuming human responsibility for the native environment can be an act of genuine care. In a country scarred by a history of ecocide, movements like the Easter Bilby campaign seek to rectify the negligent mistakes of the past. The problem is that reactive responses to the colonial devaluation of native life can be unproductive because they preserve the basic structure of the native/invasive dichotomy by simplistically reversing its values, and fail to respond to more complex ecological contexts and requirements (Plumwood). This is also socially problematic because the native/invasive divide of nonhuman life overlays more complex human politics of colonisation in Australia. The Native/Invasive Dualism The bilby is currently listed as an “endangered” species in Queensland and as “vulnerable” nationally. Bilbies once inhabited 70% of the Australian landscape, but now inhabit less than 15% of the country (Save the Bilby Fund). This dramatic reduction in bilby numbers has multiple causes, but the European rabbit has played a significant role in threatening the bilby species by competing for burrows and food. Other threats come from the predation of introduced species, such as feral cats and foxes, and the impact of farmed introduced species, such as sheep and cattle, which also destroy bilby habitats. Because the rabbit directly competes with the bilby for food and shelter in the Australian environment, the bilby can be classed as the underdog native, appealing to that larger Australian story about “the fair go”. It seems that the Easter bilby campaign is intended to level out the threat posed by the highly successful and adaptive rabbit through promoting the bilby in the “cultural selection” stakes. This involves encouraging bilby-love, while actively discouraging love and care for the introduced rabbits which threaten the bilby’s survival. On the Rabbit Free Australia Website, the campaign rationale to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby claims that: Very young children are indoctrinated with the concept that bunnies are nice soft fluffy creatures whereas in reality they are Australia’s greatest environmental feral pest and cause enormous damage to the arid zone. In this statement the lived corporeal presence of individual rabbits is denied as the “soft, fluffy” body disappears behind the environmentally problematic species’ behaviour. The assertion that children are “indoctrinated” to find rabbits love-able, and that this conflicts with the “reality” of the rabbit as environmentally destructive, denies the complexity of the living animal and the multiple possible responses to it. That children find rabbits “fluffy” is not the result of pro-rabbit propaganda, but because rabbits are fluffy! That Rabbit Free Australia could construe this to be some kind of elaborate falsehood demonstrates the disappearance of the individual rabbit in the native/invasive tale of colonisation. Rabbit-Free Australia seeks to eradicate the animal not only from Australian ecosystems, but from the hearts and minds of children who are told to replace the rabbit with the more fitting native bilby. There is no acceptance here of the rabbit as a complex animal that evokes ambivalent responses, being both worthy of moral consideration, care and love, and also an introduced and environmentally destructive species. The native/invasive dualism is a subject of sustained critique in environmental philosophy because it depends on a disjunctive temporal division drawn at the point of European settlement—1788. Environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren points out that the divide between animals who belong and animals who should be eradicated is “fundamentally premised on the reification of a specific historical moment that ignores the changing and dynamic nature of ecologies” (11). Mark Davis et al. explain that the practical value of the native/invasive dichotomy in conservation programs is seriously diminished and in some cases is becoming counterproductive (153). They note that “classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology” (153). Instead, they promote a more inclusive approach to conservation which accepts non-native species as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low). Recent research into wildlife conservation indicates a striking lack of evidence for the case that pest control protects native diversity (see Bergstromn et al., Davis et al., Ewel & Putz, Reddiex & Forsyth). The problematic justification of “killing for conservation” becomes untenable when conservation outcomes are fundamentally uncertain. The mass slaughter which rabbits have been subjected to in Australia has been enacted with the goal of fostering life. This pursuit of creation through destruction, of re-birth through violent death, enacts a disturbing twist where death comes to signal the presence of life. This means, perversely, that a rabbit’s dead body becomes a valuable sign of environmental health. Conservation researchers Ben Reddiex and David M. Forsyth observe that this leads to a situation where environmental managers are “more interested in estimating how many pests they killed rather than the status of biodiversity they claimed to be able to protect” (715). What Other Stories Can We Tell about the Rabbit? With an ecological narrative that is failing, producing damage and death instead of fostering love and life, we are left with the question—what other stories can we tell about the place of the European rabbit in the Australian environment? How can the meaning ecologies of media and culture work in harmony with an ecological consciousness that promotes compassion for nonhuman life? Ignoring the native/invasive distinction entirely is deeply problematic because it registers the ecological history of Australia as continuity, and fails to acknowledge the colonising impact of European settlement on the environment. At the same time, continually reinforcing that divide through pro-invasive or pro-native stories drastically simplifies complex and interconnected ecological systems. Instead of the unproductive native/invasive dualism, ecologists and philosophers alike are suggesting “reconciliatory” approaches to the inhabitants of our shared environments which emphasise ecology as relational rather than classificatory. Evolutionary ecologist Scott P. Carroll uses the term “conciliation biology” as an alternative to invasion biology which focuses on the eradication of invasive species. “Conciliation biology recognises that many non-native species are permanent, that outcomes of native-nonnative interactions will vary depending on the scale of assessment and the values assigned to the biotic system, and that many non-native species will perform positive functions in one or more contexts” (186). This hospitable approach aligns with what Michael Rosensweig has termed “reconciliation ecology”—the modification and diversification of anthropogenic habitats to harbour a wider variety of species (201). Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Mark Bekoff encourages a “compassionate conservation” which avoids the “numbers game” of species thinking where certain taxonomies are valued above others and promotes approaches which “respect all life; treat individuals with respect and dignity; and tread lightly when stepping into the lives of animals”(24). In a similar vein environmental philosopher Deborah Bird Rose offers the term “Eco-reconciliation”, to describe a mode of “living generously with others, singing up relationships so that we all flourish” (Wild Dog 59). It may be that the rabbit cannot live in harmony with the bilby, and in this situation I am unsure of what a conciliation approach to ecology might look like in terms of managing both of these competing species. But I am sure what it should not look like if we are to promote approaches to ecology and conservation which avoid the simplistic dualism of native/invasive. The devaluation of rabbit life to the point of moral inconsiderability is fundamentally unethical. By classifying certain lives as “inappropriate,” and therefore expendable, the process of rabbit slaughter is simply too easy. The idea that the rabbit should disappear is disturbing in its abstract approach to these living, sentient creatures who share with us both place and history. A dynamic understanding of ecology dissipates the notion of a whole or static “nature.” This means that there can be no simple or comprehensive directives for how humans should interact with their environments. One of the most insidious aspects of the native/invasive divide is the way it makes violent death appear inevitable, as though rabbits must be culled. This obscures the many complex and contingent choices which determine the fate of nonhuman life. Understanding the dynamism of ecology requires an acceptance that nature does not provide simple prescriptive responses to problems, and instead “people are forced to choose the kind of environment they want” (189) and then take actions to engender it. This involves difficult decisions, one of which is culling to maintain rabbit numbers and facilitate environmental resilience. Living within a world of “discordant harmonies”, as Daniel Botkin evocatively describes it, environmental decisions are necessarily complex. The entanglement of ecological systems demands that we reject simplistic dualisms which offer illusory absolution from the consequences of the difficult choices humans make about life, ecologies, and how to manage them. Ecological Remembrance The vision of a rabbit-free Australia is unrealistic. As organisation like the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation pursue this future ideal, they eradicate rabbits from the present, and seek to remove them from the past by replacing them culturally with the more suitable bilby. Culled rabbits lie rotting en masse in fields, food for no one, and even their cultural impact in human society is sought to be annihilated and replaced with more appropriate native creatures. The rabbits’ deaths do not turn back to life in transformative and regenerative processes that are ecological and cultural, but rather that death becomes “an event with no future” (Rose, Wild Dog 25). This is true oblivion, as the rabbit is entirely removed from the world. In this paper I have made a case for the importance of stories in ecology. I have argued that the kinds of stories we tell about rabbits determines how we treat them, and so have positioned stories as an essential part of an ecological system which takes “cultural selection” seriously. In keeping with this emphasis on story I offer to the conciliation push in ecological thinking the term “ecological remembrance” to capture an ethic of sharing time while sharing space. This spatio-temporal hospitality is focused on maintaining heterogeneous memories and histories of all beings who have impacted on the environment. In Deborah Bird Rose’s terms this is a “recuperative work” which commits to direct dialogical engagement with the past that is embedded in the present (Wild Country 23). In this sense it is a form of recuperation that promotes temporal and ecological continuity. Eco-remembrance aligns with dynamic understandings of ecology because it is counter-linear. Instead of approaching the past as a static idyll, preserved and archived, ecological remembrance celebrates the past as an ongoing, affective presence which is lived and performed. Ecological remembrance, applied to the European rabbit in Australia, would involve rejecting attempts to extricate the rabbit from Australian environments and cultures. It would seek acceptance of the rabbit as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low), and aim for recognition of the rabbit’s impact on human society as part of dynamic multi-species ecologies. In this sense ecological remembrance of the rabbit directly opposes the goal of the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia to eradicate the European rabbit from Australian environment and culture. On the Rabbit Free Australia website, the section on biological controls states that “the point is not how many rabbits are killed, but how many are left behind”. The implication is that the millions upon millions of rabbit lives extinguished have vanished from the earth, and need not be remembered or considered. However, as Deborah Rose argues, “all deaths matter” (Wild Dog 21) and “no death is a mere death” (Wild Dog 22). Every single rabbit is an individual being with its own unique life. To deny this is tantamount to claiming that each rabbit that dies from shooting or poisoning is the same rabbit dying again and again. Rose has written that “death makes claims upon all of us” (Wild Dog 19). These are claims of ethics and compassion, a claim that “we look into the eyes of the dying and not flinch, that we reach out to hold and to help” (Wild Dog 20). This claim is a duty of remembrance, a duty to “bear witness” (Wiesel 160) to life and death. The Nobel Peace Prize winning author, Elie Wiesel, argued that memory is a reconciliatory force that creates bonds as mass annihilation seeks to destroy them. Memory ensures that no life becomes truly life-less as it wrests the victims of mass slaughter from “oblivion” and allows the dead to “vanquish death” (21). 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