Getty Images And MuslimGirl.com Partner To Promote Positive Images Of Modern Muslim Women

Muslim Women via Getty Images

Getty Images, a world leader in visual communications, and MuslimGirl.com, the largest Muslim women's online platform in the United States, today announced an exclusive content partnership that aims to tackle misrepresentation of Muslim women in marketing and advertising. Together, they've created an offering of high quality images that authentically represent Muslim women in a fresh and contemporary light.

The partnership seeks to diversify the depiction of Muslim women online and flood the internet with positive imagery to push back against broad misconceptions of the Islamic community. Joining the Getty Images community as a contributor, MuslimGirl.com aims to provide a collection of images that seeks to take back the narrative and raise the profile of the young modern Muslim woman.

Available for commercial use to encourage a more positive depiction of Muslim women, images feature girls with and without a hijab, are shown doing every day activities, at home, with friends, and in the workplace, and their style and strength is front and center. In each photo, they are portrayed as the protagonist to project and normalize a modern view of Muslim women today.

Embed from Getty Images

"Getty Images has a deep belief in the power of visuals to incite change and shift attitudes," said Pam Grossman, Director of Visual Trends at Getty Images.  "Visual literacy is so prolific with today's generation, that photos are now absorbed and processed with unprecedented immediacy. Positive imagery can have an impact on fighting stereotypes, celebrating diversity, and making communities feel empowered and represented in society.  We're so proud to partner with MuslimGirl.com to increase the visibility of these kinds of images in the world."

"One of the ways I open up my talks is by asking the audience to search 'Muslim women' images on their phone browsers, which is always met with their awe at the unsettling results," says Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder and editor-in-chief of MuslimGirl.com. "I don't want to be able to use that example anymore, and I could not be prouder to partner with Getty Images on finally taking on such an important and influential task."

Pam Grossman adds: "Keyword searches for Muslim have gone up 107% on GettyImages.com over the past year, so it's even more important to ensure images like these are surfaced at the top of our results."

>> View the MuslimGirl.com images here <<

Embed from Getty Images

SOURCE: press.gettyimages.com

UK: Stop Rupert Murdoch Taking Over Sky! [Petition]

Rupert Murdoch - image via 38degrees.org.uk

Fresh from my email's inbox: Rupert Murdoch is at it again!

Read the following email that was sent to me by the peeps at 38 Degrees and, as usual, act accordingly. Thanks in advance.

Stay safe!

Loup Dargent 

The Email:

"Dear Loup,

Urgent: Rupert Murdoch has just submitted his bid for a total takeover of Sky TV. [1] If this deal goes ahead he’ll control what’s beamed into 22 million homes - making him the most powerful media owner in the UK. [2]

We have just 10 days to push the government to block the bid. [3] Karen Bradley, the minister in charge of newspapers and TV, has the final say. She could refer the bid to OfCom - an independent body with the power to stop Murdoch. [4] Or, she could wave it through.

Last time he launched a takeover bid in 2011, public opposition sank Murdoch's chances, thanks to the phone-hacking scandal. [5] Now he’s hoping we’ve forgotten his past dodgy dealings. A huge petition, delivered on Monday before time runs out, will prove that he’s wrong: the public don’t want Murdoch to get more power.


Loup, please add your name now. It only takes a minute:
SIGN THE PETITION

Murdoch’s power grab will give him even more control of what news we see. One man's personal opinions and politics would skew the news that million of us watch and read. Democracy only works if voters can get at the facts - fake news, biased reporting, and Murdoch's media power grabs all add up to a big threat to democracy.

10 days is all we have to convince Karen Bradley, the media minister, to tell OfCom to investigate. Right now, she'll will be huddling with her advisors, trying to figure out what to do. And you can bet that Murdoch’s lobbyists will be throwing everything they can at influencing her. All of our signatures, added together, are our best bet for outweighing that pressure.

Please add your name to petition now:
SIGN THE PETITION

Thanks for being involved,

Tom, Amy, Maggie, David and the 38 Degrees team"

NOTES:

• [1] Independent: Rupert Murdoch moves step closer to full takeover of Sky
• Gov.uk: Department of Culture, Media and Sport press release: Statement in response to the formal notification of the proposed merger between Sky and 21st Century Fox
• [2] The Guardian: From films to Fox News: Rupert Murdoch’s far-reaching media empire
• [3] Gov.uk: Department of Culture, Media and Sport press release: Statement in response to the formal notification of the proposed merger between Sky and 21st Century Fox
• [4] See note 3
• [5] 38 Degrees: Victory! Murdoch withdraws BSkyB bid

Virtual Reality Calling for Humanity

RCS Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Calling supporting Video, Voice and Chat by Summit Tech (CNW Group/Summit Tech)

Summit Tech  has launched real-time RCS virtual reality and augmented reality calling – VRcalling.com.  The solution allows wireless carriers to add support for RCS services such as IR.92/94 from within VR/AR environments.

Whereas many VR experiences isolate users from real life, Summit begins by connecting real people through real-time 360° live video streams including support for virtual environments.  Users connect through globally standardized communication services such as RCS and VoLTE ensuring mass reachability by allowing VR users to share their experience with, well, virtually anyone with a smartphone.

Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or Gear VR users connect to live VR streams, then by simply VRcalling their friends on RCS or ViLTE enabled devices, users share their experiences in real-time – no app required. Additionally, while connected to streams, users can publish their social presence allowing for communication between any user connected to the stream. VR calling enables new, high-value experiences such as:

• Immersive live-streaming entertainment - by connecting to 360° streams from sporting events or music concerts, carriers can put their subscribers in the center of the action, allowing them to look around and experience the location like a physical attendee while sharing the stream with friends through RCS.
• Immersive meetings/training – by giving visual context and 360° views of attendees and location, immersive business meetings bridge the divide between flat telepresence sessions and physical attendance.
• Immersive edutainment – students can explore educational locations like museums, galleries and observatories and interact with students in distant locations through overlaid video calling and group chat.

RCS is the next generation communication and conversation platform being deployed by operators with services ranging from enriched calling to chatbots. Not limited to RCS smartphones, users access VR calling through VR headsets or AR glasses for immersive experiences, or tablets and web browsers as easily accessible alternatives.

Alido Di Giovanni, President of Summit commented: "We want to empower operators to rapidly launch VR/AR services and secure new revenue streams. To facilitate carriers in piloting RCS VR, we are also demonstrating a white-label IMS cloud service."

Summit Tech will also demonstrate the innovative IMS-enabled connected car and operator-managed connected living services supporting Cat M1 and NB-IoT.

SOURCE: Summit Tech

Shocking Footage Reveals Reality Of Cruel Trade In Russian Beluga Whales

Shocking footage reveals reality of cruel trade in Russian beluga whales. (c)International Fund for Animal Welfare

The cruel trade in Russian beluga whales (the white whale), captured in the wild for sale to aquaria and travelling shows, has been condemned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) as shocking new footage reveals the true depth of the animals' suffering for human entertainment.

The hard-hitting documentary, Born to be Free, follows 18 beluga whales captured from the wild in Russia in 2013 for display at the Georgia Aquarium in the US, who are stuck in tiny holding tanks for years while their ultimate fate is decided. Public outrage led to an import ban, which started long judicial proceedings and left the belugas in limbo. At least one of the whales featured died and the surviving whales were finally sold and transported to aquariums in China.

The film, showcasing the first investigation of its kind in Russia, shines a light on the secret and often murky international trade in marine mammals. Examining all aspects of the supply chain, it gives a revealing and distressing insight into the reality of a life in captivity for the animal victims.

Masha Vorontsova, IFAW Russia Director, said: "Beluga whales are highly intelligent animals with a very complex and social family structure. IFAW believes that belugas and all whale species are not suited to a life in captivity and belong in the wild.

Sadly little thought is given to welfare in this trade driven by profit. A captured beluga, once it has been trained to eat dead fish instead of hunting live prey in the wild, can fetch up to US $1million. When I heard that three daring young Russian women wanted to document this issue I was very pleased that IFAW could help them tell the story and bring it to public attention. Anyone who doubts the suffering of these animals need only watch this film.

IFAW urges the Russian government to ban all future wild capture of belugas and other cetaceans. We also ask members of the public not to support shows involving belugas or whales, which fuel this lucrative and unacceptably cruel trade."

IFAW has worked for more than 20 years to protect Russia's beluga whales from commercial exploitation for the whale meat trade, aquaria and harmful tourism activities. Since 1995, IFAW and researchers from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology have operated a non-invasive research station monitoring belugas off the coast of the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea and assessing threats to the species. In 1999, IFAW successfully campaigned for a ban on the commercial hunting of Russian belugas to supply whale meat to Japan.

The film, directed by Gayane Petrosyan, will premier in Russia on February 24 at the ECOCUP Green Documentary Film Festival. It is being distributed by Reflexion Films and Dogwoof International and will be available on Netflix starting March 21. 

Born to Be Free Movie Trailer:

About IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare):
Founded in 1969, IFAW rescues and protects animals around the world. With projects in more than 40 countries, IFAW rescues individual animals, works to prevent cruelty to animals, and advocates for the protection of wildlife and habitats.

 

SOURCE: International Fund for Animal Welfare

Mr. President & The First Lady Are Egg-Specting Two Eaglets!

World-Famous Bald Eagle parents, Mr. President & The First Lady, have welcomed their second egg of 2017 into their Washington DC nest.

On February 19, The First Lady laid her first egg of 2017 LIVE on the DC Eagle Cam (dceaglecam.org). The world has been watching and waiting to see if she and her faithful eagle companion, Mr. President, would have the chance to raise two eaglets again in 2017, and now that opportunity has arrived.

On February 23 at around 4:26 pm EST, almost 4 days after the first, the mother eagle laid her second egg! (But, don't worry if you've missed it... you can watch the video at the end of this post.)

From this point forward, both parents will take turns diligently and vigilantly incubating and protecting their future-eaglets. Be it rain, hail, snow, thunder, lightning, predators, or even hurricanes, eagle parents are very protective and will weather all types of situations to keep their eggs safe and warm.

The approximate 35-day incubation countdown to hatching has now begun, which means the American Eagle Foundation (AEF), its DC Eagle Cam Project partners, and viewers will be on "hatch-watch" the last week of March.

In 2015, these eagle parents raised one eaglet (deemed DC1) in their nest at the top of this Tulip Poplar Tree in the U.S. National Arboretum. In 2016, they raised two eaglets (which were deemed DC2 & DC3 before the public officially nicknamed them Freedom & Liberty).

"If all goes well, we will be inviting DC4 & DC5 into the world in about 5 weeks! The fact that we only have two years of previous nesting data on these birds, however, still begs to question whether it's possible that The First Lady could lay a third egg this week, especially since their nest is slightly larger this year," says AEF representative Julia Cecere. "All we can do now is watch and wait. We are more than ecstatic about these two eggs...but watching three eaglets raised in one nest would be such a thrill for viewers everywhere."

For all of the DC Eagle Cam fans who have fallen in love with watching this eagle pair, there is now a beautiful hardcover book documenting the pairs' first two nesting seasons in the National Arboretum. The book can be purchased on www.eagles.org or by visiting www.dceaglecam.org.

"Eagles have been the proud and majestic symbol of freedom for the USA for 235 years," says AEF Founder and President Al Cecere. "During our second season online, we hope this American Eagle family reality show will again captivate, inspire, and educate many millions of animal and nature lovers, as well as die-hard patriots and Bald Eagle fans. This is certainly a wonderful experience that all Americans can rally around, embrace and feel united about."

SOURCE: American Eagle Foundation

The Video:

Thailand's Infamous Tiger Temple Plans To Reopen Under Another Name

To make them pose for photos with tourists, tiger cubs are separated from their mothers and brutally trained. World Animal Protection wants to end this cruel practice and believes that wild animals belong in the wild. (CNW Group/World Animal Protection)

An investigation by international animal welfare charity World Animal Protection has exposed that Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple Co. Ltd. is planning to re-open under the new name Golden Tiger (Thailand) Co. Ltd.

The charity is extremely concerned about these developments, given the appalling circumstances and conditions that led to the closure of Tiger Temple, and is calling for the Thai government to not issue a zoo license to Golden Tiger (Thailand) Co. Ltd. to open another venue.

Tiger Temple Co. Ltd, once a well-known tourist attraction because of its large collection of tigers, was recorded to have at least 147 tigers in 2016. After years of allegations of illegal breeding and trafficking of the tigers and their parts, in May of last year more than 500 officers from Thailand's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) raided the venue uncovering dead cubs in freezers alongside tiger skins, amulets and tiger teeth trinkets.

The Golden Tiger (Thailand) Co. Ltd. is currently constructing a new venue in Kanchanaburi (in the West of Thailand) and have already been issued a provisional license by the DNP for this new business venture. However, a full zoo licence will not be issued unless they meet 11 specified conditions within six months. These include enclosures deemed large enough for the tigers and vet care, but worryingly it fails to ban breeding or tourist interactions with tigers at the proposed new venue.

Also, legal cases and police investigations into the illegal wildlife trade allegations against Tiger Temple Co. Ltd. are still ongoing, and granting a zoo license would allow them to continue running a tiger business that potentially harbours cruelty.

In 2016, World Animal Protection handed over a petition to the DNP calling for a thorough investigation into all captive tiger facilities in Thailand, and to ban the breeding of tigers at commercial venues which serve no conservation benefit for tigers in the wild.

Dr. Jan Schmidt-Burbach, senior wildlife advisor at World Animal Protection says:

"Tiger farms have nothing to do with conservation – they just bring extreme suffering to these wild animals whilst living in appalling conditions.

"These venues need to be stopped in their tracks because they clearly have links to the dark side of wildlife trafficking rings."

Last year World Animal Protection released a study on tigers used for entertainment in Thailand which documented a 33% increase in the number of tigers at tourism facilities over a five-year period.

The main welfare concerns witnessed by the investigators at these tourist venues include:

• Tiger cubs cruelly separated from their mothers, two to three weeks after they are born
• Young cubs used as photo props with tourists, constantly viewed and mishandled hundreds of times a day, which can lead to stress and injury
• Tigers being punished to stop aggressive unwanted behavior. One staff member told our researchers that starvation is used to punish the tigers when they make a 'mistake'
• Most tigers were housed in small concrete cages or barren enclosures with limited access to fresh water. 50% of the tigers we observed were in cages with less that 20sqm per animal, a far cry from the 16-32km they would roam in a single night in the wild
• One in ten (12%) of the tigers we observed showed behavioral problems, such as repetitive pacing and biting their tails. These behaviors most commonly occur when animals feel they cannot cope with stressful environments or situations.

Dr. Schmidt-Burbach adds: 

"Tourists need to be aware that their once in a lifetime opportunity to get up close to a tiger causes a lifetime of suffering. A selfie with a tiger is cruel, so don't do it."

>> Find out more about our campaign. << 

More Info:

• Since January 2017, World Animal Protection has written two letter to the DNP to not issue a license to the Golden Tiger Co. Ltd and impose a breeding ban.
• Read the charity's report about Thailand's tiger entertainment industry.
• Visit World Animal Protection's campaign site for more information on wild animals used for tourist entertainment.

SOURCE: World Animal Protection

ASLA Statement On Bill To Abolish The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) strongly opposes the recently introduced H.R. 861, which would terminate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Society today sent a letter to Representative Matt Gaetz (Florida), the author of the bill, urging him to withdraw consideration of the proposed legislation.

"EPA's role, protecting human health and the environment, intersects with ASLA's work in leading the design and stewardship of land and communities," said ASLA Vice President and CEO Nancy C. Somerville, Hon. ASLA. "More than ever, public health and safety depend on joining together to protect our nation from pollution and the effects of climate change. We urge Representative Gaetz to withdraw the bill from consideration."

Drinking water and wastewater systems are deteriorating and are costing municipalities and ratepayers billions of dollars in maintenance and repairs. Many communities are looking to employ less costly green infrastructure solutions to address stormwater runoff—the major contributor to water pollution and unsafe drinking water supplies. Landscape architects, working with communities nationwide, rely on the EPA's programs and tools, including grants, research and other technical assistance to implement green infrastructure projects that address stormwater management and other water quality issues.

These EPA resources have a proven track record in the design and implementation of green infrastructure projects. If enacted, H.R. 861 would halt these critical programs and leave state and local jurisdictions without vital programming, guidance and technical assistance.

ASLA respectfully urges Representative Gaetz to withdraw consideration of the bill and to work with congressional colleagues to improve the EPA's programs and resources for the benefit of current and future generations.

American Society of Landscape Architects logo. (PRNewsFoto/American Society of Landscape Architects) 

About ASLA
Founded in 1899, the American Society of Landscape Architects is the national professional association for landscape architects, representing more than 15,000 members in 49 professional chapters and 72 student chapters. Members of the Society use "ASLA" after their names to denote membership and their commitment to the highest ethical standards of the profession. Landscape architects lead the stewardship, planning and design of our built and natural environments; the Society's mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education and fellowship.

SOURCE: American Society of Landscape Architects

South Thanet: Will Nigel Farage (Former #UKIP Leader) Be Investigated By The Police?

Nigel Farage - image via HOPE Not Hate

Wow! The email I've received earlier from Nick Lowles of HOPE Not Hate has definitely got my full attention... not only it contains claims of some alleged wrongdoings during the 2015 General Election in a place relatively close to where I live (around 2 hours and half by car) but, some people I'm not, to put it midly, a fan of are also being mentioned... Nigel Farage (of course) and (one of Breitbart's poster boys) Raheem Kassam.

For those of you who have never heard of Breitbart, here are three (kind of) related posts previouly published on here:

• Let's Denounce Trump's Appointment of Steve Bannon!
• Tell Colleges: Don't Let Milo Yiannopoulos Harass Your Students [Petition]
• A Storm In A Twitter Cup... [The One About That Milo Unverified Account Thing]

So, yes, sure, I'm more than happy to share it with you guys.

Enjoy... and stay safe!

Loup Dargent

PS: I would have liked to ask Raheem what he had to say about the whole affair but, unfortunately, the little snowflake blocked me on Twitter ages ago.

(But do feel free to tweet him the link of this post and ask on my behalf though. ;-) Thanks in advance)

Raheem Kassam and Nigel Farage - image via HOPE Not Hate

The Email:

"Dear Loup,

HOPE not hate is writing to the Electoral Commission and Kent Police to demand that they investigate the flouting of electoral law by UKIP during Nigel Farage's unsuccessful campaign to become an MP in 2015 in South Thanet.

A two-month investigation by HOPE not hate's new investigations team has found UKIP failed to declare significant election expenditure, misallocated spending and ignored electoral convention by dividing costs evenly between general election and local council candidates. We have calculated that Nigel Farage's campaign failed to appropriately declare at least £26,302 in its electoral returns and possibly well over £35,000.

You can read the full story here: www.hopenothate.org.uk/features/farage-election-overspend/

While candidates were allowed to spend £15,087.30 in the 'short' campaign, the period from 9 April 2015 until polling day on 7 May 2015, our investigation has found UKIP spent at least £26,000 - almost twice as much as they were allowed to spend.

Our investigation found campaign staff, billboards and mobile advans omitted from the South Thanet electoral returns. We found thousands of pounds of campaign expenditure in the party's long returns (where it is allowed to spend more) even though the labour and materials were used in the short campaign.

And we found Farage's team ignoring Electoral Commission guidelines by equally dividing his campaign expenditure amongst 65 district and parish candidates. This led to the ridiculous situation where his taxi fares were divided 65 ways!

Read HOPE not hate's exclusive story.

Kent Police is already investigating claims that the Conservative Party candidate hid campaign expenditure during the South Thanet. Now, we are writing to Kent Police to demand that it widens the investigation to include Nigel Farage's campaign.

UKIP has clearly benefited by the breakdown in trust people have in politicians and the political system. Now we can reveal that it is UKIP that has flagrantly flouted the rules.

Thanks

Nick"

THIRTEEN To Stream "Take This Hammer," Historic Documentary About Author And Activist James Baldwin

James Baldwin, "Take This Hammer"

WNET, home to tri-state-area PBS Stations THIRTEEN, WLIW21 and NJTV, is making the groundbreaking 1963 documentary, Take This Hammer, available via Facebook Live on Friday, February 24 at 8 pm.

This event marks the first time WNET will release an archival film via Facebook. 

"We are privileged to have a broad archive of noteworthy film content from throughout our 54-year history," says WNET President and CEO Neal Shapiro, "And Facebook Live can serve as yet another way to broaden the channels we use to reach the public with high-quality, informative and free content."

In Take this Hammer, author and activist James Baldwin meets with members of the local African-American community in San Francisco in the spring of 1963. He is escorted by Youth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and is intent on discovering "the real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present."

Excerpts from Take this Hammer appear in the Academy Award-Nominated film, I Am Not your Negro, a film by Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety and Hébert Peck that explores Baldwin's plans to write a biography of Malcom X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr.

> Join the livestream of Take This Hammer on Friday, February 24 at 8 PM here < It will be available for viewing for one-week.

WNET is New York's flagship PBS station. (PRNewsFoto/WNET)

About WNET

WNET is America's flagship PBS station and parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21. WNET also operates NJTV, the statewide public media network in New Jersey. Through its broadcast channels, three cable services (KidsThirteen, Create and World) and online streaming sites, WNET brings quality arts, education and public affairs programming to more than five million viewers each week. WNET produces and presents such acclaimed PBS series as Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, PBS NewsHour Weekend, Charlie Rose and a range of documentaries, children's programs, and local news and cultural offerings. WNET's groundbreaking series for children and young adults include Get the Math, Oh Noah! and Cyberchase as well as Mission US, the award-winning interactive history game. WNET highlights the tri-state's unique culture and diverse communities through NYC-ARTS, Reel 13, NJTV News with Mary Alice Williams and MetroFocus, the daily multi-platform news magazine focusing on the New York region. In addition, WNET produces online-only programming including the award-winning series about gender, First Person, and an intergenerational look at tech and pop culture, The Chatterbox with Kevin and Grandma Lill. In 2015, 

SOURCE: WNET New York Public Media

SS-GB: Why The Renewed Obsession With Alternative Nazi Histories?

BBC/Sid Gentle Films Ltd/Laurie Sparham

By Sam Edwards, Manchester Metropolitan University

Nazis have taken over London – on screens at least. The BBC’s absorbing new series SS-GB, based on Len Deighton’s popular 1978 novel, imagines a world in which the Nazis have invaded and defeated Britain by 1941.

Such an imaginative conceit is by no means unusual. Similar dystopian visions of Nazi victory in World War II have long been popular. Take, for instance, Richard Harris’ Fatherland (1992), Stephen Fry’s Making History (1996), Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004) and CJ Sansom’s acclaimed Dominion (2012). There was even Iron Sky, the 2012 film which imagined that the defeated Nazis fled to the other side of the moon in 1945 only to plan a space fleet to return to conquer Earth some 60 years later.

As Gavriel Rosenfeld has eloquently argued, persistent rewriting of history is intimately connected to changing perceptions of the Third Reich’s real historical legacy as well as to subversive efforts to “normalise” the Nazi past in the West, and especially in the United States and Britain. Through imagining a life of defeat and occupation, Britons and Americans (who have authored, read or viewed the vast majority of these visions) are able to bathe in the still-lingering glow of victory while at the same time closing the distance between themselves and their wartime enemies.

This nightmare of a Nazi military victory – and of a Nazified world order – was in fact first explored in pre-war fiction, most notably Katharine Burdakin’s Swastika Night (1937). But it was not until the Cold War that the idea took hold, with a flurry of activity in the early 60s.

The year 1964 saw The Other Man air on ITV (with Michael Caine in the lead role) and 1965 the cinematic release of the powerful and provocative It Happened Here. Using deliberately grainy 16mm black and white film, this latter production offered a harrowing portrayal of what a Nazi occupation of Britain might have looked like.

In the United States, meanwhile, the most powerful vision of a Nazi victory was surely Philip K Dick’s 1963 story, The Man in the High Castle. Set in the 60s, Dick describes an America occupied in the West by Imperial Japan and in the East by the Nazis. The two victors of World War II are technically at peace, but tensions are mounting, particularly once the Japanese government learns that their Nazi “allies” may be developing new and terrifying weaponry in order to secure overall control of the North American continent.

Tellingly, these 60s stories are once again very popular. Dick’s frightening vision is the subject of a current Amazon Prime TV series, now in its second season. Similar imaginings have featured in the NBC series Timeless (2016), which features an episode given over to a rewriting of World War II, while the 2011 Welsh film Resistance (starring Michael Sheen) begins with the failure of D-Day and the subsequent German invasion and occupation of Britain.

The BBC’s adaptation of SS-GB is just the latest in this line. Clearly, alternative histories of a Nazified world again have commercial and cultural traction.

Nazi obsessions
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ideas and images offered by such a counterfactual Nazi world seem to have worked their way into contemporary political discourse.

Amid the ongoing cross-Channel rancour connected to Brexit, Boris Johnson, the current British foreign secretary, asked whether the French president François Hollande’s function within the EU was akin to a Nazi prison guard. And during a recent and now typical Twitter outburst, Donald Trump, the US president, responded to his antagonists (in the media and intelligence community) with a pointed question: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

Seen in this context, the contemporary fascination with counterfactual history is the popular culture counterpart to Trumpian political “truth”. In Trump’s pronouncements and press conferences, truth is invented and reinvented on a daily basis. Media critics are Nazis; civil rights leaders once battered by the baton are “all talk”; the families of heroic veterans can quickly become villains; and famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass is even resurrected from the dead.

Welcome to a Nazified London. Sid Gentle Films Ltd // Screen Grab

On TV, meanwhile, history is remade and re-imagined via the most persistent Anglo-American “what if” nightmare – Nazi victory. The popularity of this kind of television history in the “post-truth” age of fake news surely makes perfect sense: they are two sides of the same coin. While very different in purpose and power, both are suggestive of a world in which the lines between fact and fiction are increasingly blurred. But the apparently symbiotic connection between the two should also give us pause for thought, particularly when the last age of counterfactual fascination – the 60s – is kept in mind.

Now, beware a spoiler. At the very end of his story, Dick confronts the reader with a revelation. The “reality” of an Axis victory is a myth, and the counterfactual histories of Allied victory authored – to Nazi irritation – by the mysterious “man in the high castle” are instead the “truth”. It is a skillful plot device, arresting and jolting. It also invites a troubling thought: if the “man in the high castle” writes the truth from deep within a myth, what does this mean for Dick’s own relationship with – and to – the 1960s? Does it suggest that Dick was similarly in a high castle and that his counterfactual vision of Nazis in New York contained a “truth” of sorts?

Dick’s contemporaries later endured the Age of Nixon, witnessed frequent racialised brutality targeting African-Americans in the south, and encountered – and perpetrated – the massacre of My Lai in the Vietnam War (which one American soldier later admitted was a “Nazi kind of thing”).

As we enter our own counterfactual age, in which truth is twisted and lies disseminated, the renewed obsession with “alternative histories” provides a powerful cautionary reminder of what can happen when nightmares are made real.


About Today's Contributor:
Sam Edwards, Senior Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. .