Dave Rubin is one of the dumbest online pundits on the planet, and he’s also one of those people caught with his hands in the Russian cookie jar. Rubin weighed in on Taylor Swift’s endorsement, and it’s one of the sleaziest, most repulsive takes you’ll see.

“Let’s talk a little bit about how this fits into the pop culture part of this, because the pop culture is a huge driver of the cultural narrative,” said Rubin. “Poor Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris on Instagram after the debate on ABC, proudly calls herself ‘a childless cat lady.’ Elon Musk, who they hate, saw that and he wrote this: ‘Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.’ So he’s mocking and exposing the ridiculousness, right?”

“It’s like Taylor Swift, you are a young, pretty girl,” said Rubin. “Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do to young, pretty girls? It ain’t pretty. So what do we have to do? We just have to keep finding each other to whatever extent we can, we have to keep waking people up, it is the only chance we have in these remaining 60 days.”

Seriously, dude? “Vote for Trump or you’ll be raped by a Venezualan gang”? Combining racism, classism, and threats of sexual assault is an ugly mix, you know. That’s just how desperate the Trumpers are getting.

I told you I’d try to get better pictures of that nest in my yard.

I learned my lesson. I used 8 feet of PVC pipe to increase my reach. Next time, 20 feet.

Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris/Tim Walz.

Lest you think the Republicans will be steamrollered, have no fear: Donald Trump quickly countered.

When asked Wednesday morning about Swift endorsing the Democratic nominee, Trump tried to shake it off, telling Fox News he prefers Swift’s close friend Brittany Mahomes over the singer.
“I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “She’s a big Trump fan. I was not a Taylor Swift fan.”

Who?

I looked her up on Wikipedia.

Brittany Lynne Mahomes (née Matthews; born August 31, 1995) is an American sports team co-owner and former soccer player who played as a forward for Icelandic club UMF Afturelding. She is a founding co-owner of the Kansas City Current, a team in the American professional top-division National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).

She is married to Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

OK, I’m still saying, “Who?”

It’s a good thing that the election won’t be decided by celebrity endorsements, but I do think Harris might have an edge here.

---

This is rather horrible.

He’s just confirming that the Trump cult is weird and creepy.

I did. I sat through the whole thing, and I did not enjoy it.

Harris said nothing radical. No surprising policy changes; she wants to stay the course with Israel, demanding a cease fire and release of the hostages, but what I wanted to hear was that she would leverage the sale of arms to pressure Israel into ending the genocide — nope, she couldn’t say that. She did promise other positive changes, though with a $6K tax credit for new families and $50K for new business startups. Otherwise, she hammered on Trump a bit, as expected. “In this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” she predicted. She was exactly right.

Trump glowered through the whole thing. He looked resentful at being there, and yeah, he kept returning to immigration. He really hates a lot of people, and wants to deport millions of people, all those dangerous criminals pouring over the border, released from prisons and insane asylums. He repeated that nonsense about immigrants hunting down your beloved pets and killing them and eating them.

Asked about abortion, he claimed that everyone, including women, Democrats, and professors, loved the fact that he killed Roe v. Wade. No, they do not. Asked if he would veto a bill that proposed a nationwide abortion ban, he dodged the question. Asked about January 6th, he said “I didn’t do it.” He’s a liar and a coward.

Here’s a 20 minute summary of the whole thing.

The highlight for me, though, was when he was asked about what he planned to replace Obamacare with, he admitted he didn’t have any specific plans, he had concepts of plans.

He’s a hate-filled sack of shit. He’s got nothing but jingo and contempt for anyone who doesn’t look like him.

Maybe that will be enough to get him elected, unfortunately.

What to expect from the debate tonight: as we get closer and closer to the election, the lies get more and more extreme.

Former President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that children are undergoing transition-related surgeries during their school day, exacerbating existing fears among conservatives that educators are pushing children to become transgender and aiding transitions without parental awareness.

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house, and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school, and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state, on Saturday.

What the hell is wrong with Trump and his audience? And he repeats it again!

When asked by the group’s co-founder how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the United States nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere.

My transgender friends are constantly complaining about how many hoops they have to jump through, how many years it takes to get approval, and how many states won’t even allow you to buy the drugs for maintenance. I’ll have to inform them that all you had to do was say that you used a different pronoun in middle school, and zip, you’re sent to the school nurse, who has a fully equipped surgery, and the sex change is done in a day.

Yeah, right.

And the MAGA idiots will believe it, and are ready for the next lie.

Which happens to be that Haitian immigrants are flooding the country and stealing your pets to eat raw in their apartments in the slums. Sure, fully believable. Everyone knows that housecat is the national dish of Haiti.

Blood transfusions save millions of lives every year, but they come with a critical caveat: compatibility. Using the incorrect blood type will result in immediate rejection, which can cause kidney failure and ultimately death.

Humans have four main blood types – A, B, AB and O – determined by the presence or absence of specific sugars, called glycans, on the surface of red blood cells. These act as antigens, to which your immune system reacts if it doesn’t recognise them. Type O blood lacks these antigens, making it suitable for transfusions to anyone. It is especially useful in emergencies when there’s no time to determine a patient’s blood type, so demand for it far outstrips supply.

As a result, scientists have long sought out ways to remove the A and B antigens from red blood cells, converting them into O-type blood. Recently, a Scandinavian research collaboration has made a significant leap forward using microbial enzymes derived from a bacterium that thrives on mucus in the human gut. The sugars in the mucus are very similar to those on the surface of A and B blood types. As a result these enzymes can prune the A and B antigens from red blood cells.

Previous efforts in the 1980s, such as using α-galactosidase from coffee beans, made initial strides in converting B-type blood but didn’t fully eliminate antigen reactivity. The latest research has uncovered additional antigens that contribute to immune responses and shows promise in converting B-type blood into O-type with significantly fewer immune reactions.

When the converted B-type blood was mixed with O-type blood plasma containing antibodies to B-antigens, approximately 95 per cent of converted blood did not result in an immune response.

Although these findings bring the quest for universal blood closer to reality, there’s still work to be done, particularly with A-type blood, which presents more complex antigenic structures. Moreover, extensive safety studies and regulatory approvals are needed before this technology can be widely implemented.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Dogs bark, cats meow. Birds chirp and dolphins squeal. In between the vast array of sounds made by animals of all shapes and sizes, meaning is conveyed in ways that help these creatures form social bonds, mate, establish hierarchies and forage together. But of all the meanings biologists have uncovered after centuries of studying animal communication, a new one has just been revealed: name-calling.

In a new study published in Nature, an international team of scientists, led by Michael Pardo at Colorado State University, found that elephants appear to make specific sounds when calling to each other in the wild. The team carried out two experiments, one using a computer model and another in the field. In the first, they used machine learning to analyse the deep rumbles made by wild female African savannah elephants and their families in Kenya. They found patterns that suggested the calls were specific to particular individuals – in short, they call each other by name.

In the second experiment, the scientists played recordings of rumbles over loudspeakers to 17 wild elephants. The team filmed the elephants’ responses to either a call originally directed at them or a call directed at another individual. Whenever a rumble was the correct name, the scientists found that the observed elephant responded enthusiastically, lifting its head, flapping its ears and rumbling back as it walked towards the loudspeaker. In cases where the sound played by the scientists didn’t match the elephant’s name, the animal didn’t seem to respond as proactively.

Elephants have complex social interactions and are often separated from their close social companions. These rumbles are important for them to communicate over long distances, ensuring that they stay connected even when they are out of sight. But appearing to call each other by name is an incredibly unique phenomenon, only found elsewhere in humans. This has intrigued researchers – how is it that elephants and humans have a seemingly similar way of calling each other, when we evolved from very different ancestors?

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Last year, Ayesha Shikalgar was excitedly looking to the future. She and her husband, in their early 30s, were trying for a baby and harbouring dreams of building a business. Their quiet life in the village of Pusesavali, in Maharashtra, seemed to them as idyllic as the Sahyadri mountain ranges nearby. Shikalgar had known Nurul Hasan, a civil engineer, for only a year or so, but the romance felt like it was meant to be. “We had been married for just nine months, but people felt we had known each other for years,” she told me. It felt like a dream. It ended as swiftly, too.

In September, Hasan was lynched by a mob of right-wing Hindu extremists who attacked a mosque in the village. The spark that led to the attack was a string of social media posts including derogatory references to Hindu Gods. Screenshots of the posts were shared around the village, causing outrage among some villagers. The posts looked like they had been sent by three young Muslim men from the village but all three denied ever making such offensive comments, and maintained that the screenshots had been doctored by far-right Hindu groups.

Not everyone believed them. Over the next few days, little-known Hindu right-wing groups – consisting of young men from the village and adjoining villages – held protests in Pusesavali. In a petition filed in January in the Bombay High Court, locals alleged that these groups had links with Vikram Pawaskar, a senior leader from Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who they claim incited the groups against Muslims in at least two public speeches in the days before the attack.

Shikalgar said her husband was disturbed by the animosity building up between Hindu and Muslim villagers. “He used to have more Hindu friends than Muslims and he was always a part of Hindu festival celebrations in the village,” she recalled. Yet, on the evening of 10 September, when Hasan decided to go and pray at the local mosque, a rampaging mob of 60-100 men armed with stones, sticks and wooden rods attacked him, along with the other worshippers. Hasan was killed on the spot.

Violence between religious communities is on the rise in India, particularly against religious minorities like Muslims and Christians. Many say that Prime Minister Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP are at least partly to blame. Between 2014, when Modi was first elected, and 2022, there was a 500 per cent increase in reports of speech defined as “promoting enmity” between groups, including religious groups (India has no exclusive legislation defining hate speech). When the BJP lost its parliamentary majority in June, the results were hailed as a rejection of the politics of hate. But will Modi’s diminished power be enough to stem the tide of anger that has engulfed sections of the Indian population?

"Hindutva is no longer in the BJP's control"

In early June, more than 600 million Indians cast their votes, delivering a blow to Modi. The BJP’s seats in parliament fell from 302 to 240, forcing Modi to form a coalition. This followed an electoral campaign that openly targeted the country’s 200 million Muslims, accusing them of trying to dominate the Hindu population by having too many babies, and calling them “infiltrators” – a reference to the idea of India as an essentially Hindu country, with Muslims cast as outsiders. The rhetoric was aimed at galvanising the country’s 960 million Hindus to back the BJP as “their” party – even as an opposition alliance, named INDIA, accused Modi of failing on key economic targets, such as job creation and taming inflation. The INDIA alliance won 234 seats in the parliament, only a few dozen short of a majority. But not everyone is hopeful about the result.

“It is very wrong to read this verdict as a defeat of communal forces,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an author and journalist who has been tracking far-right Hindu nationalism. He points to the data behind the headlines. The June vote saw the lowest share of Muslim MPs being elected to parliament in six decades, while the total number of Muslim candidates dropped to a meagre 78 out of 8,360. The BJP put up only one token Muslim candidate, who lost. Muslims were being “invisibilised” in the country’s politics, Mukhopadhyay said. “There is a certain amount of caution, even in non-BJP parties, that they should not be seen taking up the Muslim cause.”

Pratik Sinha is co-founder and editor of Alt News, a fact-checking website known for debunking disinformation around Hindutva – a political ideology aligned with the aim of establishing Hindu hegemony in India. “These elections showed that [divisive] rhetoric might no longer give electoral dividends,” he said, but the Hindutva project remains in the BJP’s DNA. He added that the strength of right-wing Hindu nationalism was not wholly dependent on votes. “The Hindutva project is not an electoral project, it’s a much wider project no longer in the BJP’s control.”

Thousands of kilometres away, Shikalgar speaks to me on the phone while feeding her baby daughter Ashnoor, born months after Hasan was lynched. She agrees with Sinha’s analysis. The electoral results haven’t changed her life at all. Following her husband’s death, her family disintegrated. She now lives with her parents in the city of Satara. Hasan’s parents also left the village for ever.

Meanwhile, communal violence keeps occurring. Since the elections on 4 June there have already been four major instances. Three days after the election, two Muslim men were beaten to death by a mob of Hindu right-wing vigilantes in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, while another Muslim man at the scene died soon after. The vigilantes suspected the men of smuggling cows for slaughter, although police did not investigate the claim. Many Hindus believe the cow to be sacred and slaughtering cattle is banned in many Indian states. Days later, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, another Muslim man – 35-year-old Mohamed Fareed – was beaten to death with wooden sticks by a Hindu mob who suspected him of theft. Instead of pursuing the accused, local BJP officials came out in their defence, prompting the police to file a case of theft against the dead man, who was charged posthumously. The week after, a Muslim man named Salman Vohra was killed by a group of Hindu men at a cricket tournament in Gujarat after a dispute over parking. Eye-witnesses said Hindu spectators had heckled and chanted religious slogans aimed at Muslim players during the match that preceded the killing.

And the hatred isn’t only directed at the Muslim population. While Muslims are the biggest religious minority in the country, Christians come second at 28 million, according to the latest census. Hindu far-right groups have routinely attacked Christian communities, launching attacks on churches as well as pastors. According to a report from the US State Department, attacks on Christians in India rose from 599 incidents of violence in 2022 to 731 in 2023. On 24 June, a Christian woman in Chhattisgarh named Bindu Sodhi was killed by her relatives, ostensibly angered by her conversion to Christianity. Fewer than 33,000 people in India define themselves as atheist, but they are also threatened by the Hindutva agenda.

The Hindutva Watch website, which tracks religious violence in India, logged at least 36 public speeches inciting hate being delivered by far-right Hindu nationalists in the month after election results day. They also logged at least nine instances where “cow vigilantes” intercepted vehicles carrying cattle or animal meat and assaulted the Muslim drivers, as well as a pattern of violence and intimidation against those celebrating Eid ul-Adha in June. The website’s founder, Raqib Naik, is based in the US, partly for his own safety. “Online and offline hate is as rampant as before [the elections],” he said. “In fact, it might be even more than before because the BJP lost its majority and far-right voters are blaming Muslims.” WhatsApp groups run by Hindu nationalists and BJP sympathisers went into overdrive following the results, he said. Some posts contained covert or overt threats of retribution, including calling for violence and for people to boycott Muslim businesses.

A spike in hate speech

Is this trend likely to continue, or even escalate? Modi’s divisive campaign may have emboldened actors on the Hindu right, regardless of the electoral result. Some of this rhetoric was aimed at opposition parties. Home Minister Amit Shah, for example, criticised the immigration policy of West Bengal’s ruling party, Trinamool Congress, saying they had allowed the “infiltration” of migrants from Bangladesh to appease Muslims and that their slogan should be changed to “Mullahs, Madrasas and Mafias”. Another senior leader, Himanta Biswa Sarma, falsely accused the main opposition party Congress of planning to build a mosque over the newly-inaugurated temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu God Ram. Sarma also accused Muslim men of seducing Hindu women by posing as Hindus online, in order to further their agenda of dominating the Indian population. “The leaders spouting such rhetoric knew it could incite mass violence against the Muslims,” said Naik.

The prime minister’s own rhetoric seems to be followed particularly closely. On 21 April, Modi, addressing a rally in Rajasthan, singled out Muslims more directly than usual. “When the Congress was in power, they said Muslims had the first right to the property of the state,” he said. “This means they want to collect these properties and give them to the ones who have more kids. They will give it to the infiltrators.” Modi’s remarks were factually inaccurate. He was referring to a 2006 speech by then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had emphasised the need to prioritise the development of traditionally disadvantaged social castes and communities, not just Muslims. After this, Hindutva Watch noticed a spike in people posting hate-filled speeches delivered by BJP and far-right activists. “Before, we would get 1-2 hate speeches a day” from political leaders, Naik said. “But after, we started seeing anywhere between 8–15 speeches each day.”

This seems to indicate that the rhetoric and policies of the BJP, and particularly of Modi himself, are a major contributing factor to communal violence. The BJP’s current dependence on its political allies may therefore bode well for the country. After winning his second term in a landslide victory in May 2019, Modi presided over a government that undermined the rights of Muslims. In August of that year, they stripped the constitutional autonomy from India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, placing thousands under house arrest and imposing a curfew in the region. In December, they passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which discriminated against Muslims by fast-tracking citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from India’s Muslim-majority neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Such bold partisan moves might be unlikely in the near future, as the BJP’s crucial allies – the southern Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the northern Janata Dal – both count Muslims as their voters. For example, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh before they lost their majority, the BJP had talked about scrapping affirmative action for Muslims. Currently, 4 per cent of public sector jobs are reserved for 15 communities within the Muslim population that are considered to be the most socially and economically disadvantaged, a policy introduced by Congress. But having secured a position as “king maker”, TDP leader Nara Lokesh has said his party will continue the policy. “It’s a fact that the minorities continue to suffer and that they have the lowest per capita income. As a government, it is my responsibility to bring them out of poverty,” Lokesh said in a TV interview after the vote.

A far-right ecosystem

With allies pushing for compromise, the BJP may not be able to push its ideologically driven legislation and executive actions through to the same extent. However, some analysts believe this could spur the far-right Hindu nationalist ecosystem – from little-known cow vigilante groups to local outfits and right-wing influencers on social media – to double down on the Hindutva agenda, in a quest to regain the core Hindu vote bank that seems to have lost some of its allegiance to the BJP.

Mukhopadhyay believes that on-the-ground Hindutva activities might now gather steam. “It is very unlikely that four and a half decades of communalisation are going to be rolled back suddenly,” he said. “Instead, in its attempts to consolidate losses, we might even see the orchestration of [more] communal skirmishes.”

The journalists and fact-checkers I talked to are preparing for grimmer times. Naik said his team at Hindutva Watch was trying to figure out ways to raise more resources and expand their team. “We will also do more to demand accountability from social platforms, because they allowed hate speech to flow,” he said. Alt News is shifting its focus from fighting all kinds of misinformation to specifically tracking hate speech and crimes, Sinha, the co-founder, said. “Social media has ensured that Muslims are looked at with disgust,” he added, “and this process of normalisation has been through constant misinformation.”

Sinha’s words echo in the village of Pusesavali, several months after the lynching. Tensions appeared to die down for a while. But in June, as Muslims prepared for Eid ul-Adha, WhatsApp groups in the village were buzzing non-stop. Videos were shared showing the slaughter of cows by Muslims – later, several fact-checkers found that the videos had been taken in Bangladesh where, unlike in India, cows and buffaloes are commonly sacrificed as part of the Eid festivities. Irshad Bagwan, a local lawyer and a friend of Hasan’s, saw these messages streaming into his phone. “Some Hindus don’t talk to us at all now, others talk, but just briefly,” Bagwan said. “Outwardly, everything is inching back to normal, but the suspicion remains. Muslims don’t know what local Hindus are saying and thinking.”

For many like Bagwan, growing up in Hindu-majority Pusesavali, religion was seldom a marker of identity. Now, he confesses many are struggling to cope, as local Hindu right-wing outfits go about the village trying to keep the embers burning. “Our Hindu friends tell us how local right-wing groups often try and use wedding and birthday celebrations to incite Hindus against us, telling them how they need to seek retribution from Muslims for insulting Hindu Gods,” Bagwan said. The Muslim community in the village is grappling for answers. Some have left. Others continue to live there under a cloud of anxiety.

Communities fight back

Elsewhere, communities are finding new ways to tackle hate. Mumbai’s Malvani area had previously been a site of communal tension, breaking out into violence. In 2022, the Hindu festival of Ram Navami saw a procession led by local BJP leaders who shouted provocative slogans and insisted on playing loud music outside a mosque. Last year, when the day of the festival came round again, there was another massive turnout with revellers marching across Malvani. But as the procession reached a mosque the event descended into chaos, with slippers and stones hurled by Hindu revellers and Muslim bystanders.

What led to the violence is disputed. Anwar Shaikh, head of the Islamist organisation Jamaat-e-Islami’s local chapter, was standing not too far away. Shaikh and others said the Hindu revellers chanted aggressive slogans and played music with insulting lyrics while passing before the madrasas. The police chargesheet said that some local Muslims had made an “illegal assembly” near the mosque and hurled objects at the processionists while chanting “Allah-u-Akbar”. The police registered a case against 12 Muslim men and 400 unidentified persons. No Hindus involved in the incident were charged.

The processions, and the reaction by police, have added to rising tensions between the two communities. “Slowly, the way people here [were] speaking about other communities started changing,” Shaikh said. “I saw many [of my] Hindu friends start speaking the same language as the far-right activists,” he added, referring to jokes and digs now regularly thrown into daily conversation. “Among Muslims, there was a sense that we had been abandoned, that nobody would come and stand up for us”.

But Shaikh and other like-minded activists got together and decided to fight back. They soon got a chance to put their resolve to the test. In March this year, as residents were slowly beginning to put the memories of last year’s clashes behind them, a BJP leader, Nitesh Rane, known for delivering provocative speeches against Muslims, decided to lead a march organised by local right-wing outfits. Local NGOs asked the police to stop the event, but they refused. In online videos, Rane is seen delivering a speech in which he insists that Hindus in Malvani are “living in fear”, though he avoids mentioning Muslims explicitly. “Will you show them your strength or not?” he asks the crowd of Hindus gathered before him. “Look at them – if anyone looks at them with an evil eye, 100 of them will gather in half a minute. And look at us – we need to coax our people to mobilise them.”

Rane’s speech seemed to vindicate the fears of Shaikh and his friends. They approached the police again, asking them to prosecute Rane, but heard nothing. Refusing to give up, they adopted a new strategy: summoning the courts. “We approached the Bombay High Court, presented the evidence of the hate speech, and asked the Court to direct the police to prosecute Rane,” he said.

It took a few weeks, but by the end of the April, the residents of Malvani had claimed their victory. On 23 April, the court ordered the Mumbai police to charge Rane for “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion”, punishable with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine, or both.

The ideology has spread

For the residents of Malvani, this wasn’t just a sweet victory but a timely reminder that the law can protect them, said Shaikh. “Rane would say in his speeches that Hindus should do whatever they think is right to protect themselves, meaning violence against Muslims, and that the BJP government will protect them,” he said. This was not what the Constitution says, Shaikh and his friends told themselves.

However, there has still been no action by the police against Rane, and he doesn’t seem to be cowed by the court order. Less than a month later, in the run up to the elections, he commented publicly that Hindus must vote for the BJP for their own safety, adding that a vote for the opposition parties would be a “vote for love jihad and land jihad” – a reference to the Islamophobic trope that Muslims are seeking to dominate India through buying up land and tempting Hindu women into marriage and reproduction. Shaikh said he wasn’t surprised that there hadn’t been action yet. “After all, Rane’s party is in power in the state.” But he believed that the court’s intervention created pressure on the police, and has opened up a new path for activists.

Meanwhile, Vikram Pawaskar has also been charged for “promoting enmity” through his public speeches and is being investigated for his role in Hasan’s murder and the injury of 12 others in Pusesavali. Yet the police have already been accused of dragging their feet on the case, perhaps reluctant to act against such a senior BJP leader.

Naik, from Hindutva Watch, said there has been more evidence since the election that the police cannot be relied on to uphold the law in a neutral manner. Last month, police in the BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh searched fridges in the homes of Muslim families in Mandla district and claimed to have found beef inside them, accusing the families of partaking in the illegal cattle trade. They then ordered the demolition of 11 homes overnight before any trial could take place, alleging that the homes had been built illegally on government land.

The Modi government in coalition may have to rein back its Hindutva agenda. But, as Naik said, “This ideology has made its way into the entire socio-political fabric of the country.” The BJP may not need to pursue top-down policies to see this agenda furthered on the ground. Hatred between religious communities has already taken hold across many areas of India, while the police cannot always be relied on to enforce the law equally. Hindu right-wing and vigilante groups have set up networks with local people, capturing imaginations, and online hate is rampant, with no sign of regulation. While those sitting in parliament might now tread more carefully on communal issues, the mobs on the streets are unfettered. And the mobs do not fear the new coalition.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

This thread has been created for thoughtful, rational discussion on subjects for which there are not currently any dedicated threads. Please note that our Comment Policy applies as usual. There is a link to this at the foot of the page. If you would like to refer back to previous open discussion threads, the most …

Year: 1943. Somewhere in occupied Europe a brave band of brothers are trying to sabotage Nazi infrastructure. Well, actually, it’s 1975 in a south London park. My teenage brother and his friends are making a war film on their little cine-camera. My sister and I have been allowed to tag along and watch. The resulting footage is a strange mix of live action shoot-outs and deaths dripping with fake blood, alongside cutaways of plastic tanks and toy soldiers melting slowly in flames. The family photo album attests that the Ahmed summer holiday that year was, thanks to big brother’s obsession, a road trip around the Second World War battle sites of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

It is this generation of boys in particular, born in the 50s and 60s, for whom the “We Have Ways of Making You Talk” podcast was made – boys raised on a diet of Second World War films and comic books, taught by men who had fought themselves. The podcast is hosted by historian James Holland and comedian Al Murray. It was so successful that it spawned a weekend festival in 2019, where hundreds gather for talks, costumed re-enactments and screenings. The latest took place in July in Buckinghamshire.

This year holds particular weight, as it marks the beginning of commemorations marking 80 years since the end of the war, with the very last survivors of those battles. In Britain, these centred around D-Day in June. When the then prime minister Rishi Sunak chose to leave the remembrance ceremony early, it was particularly shocking because it suggested a fundamental failure of respect and understanding for the terrible human cost of the Normandy landings, which marked the start of the defeat of Nazi Germany. It’s a day that has inspired a string of classic films, including 1962’s The Longest Day and Steven Spielberg’s 1998 epic Saving Private Ryan. Such films inspire much discussion among the history enthusiasts at “We Have Ways of Making You Talk”.

But the war in the Pacific took much longer to turn. And as the cycle of the year progresses through the anniversaries of key battles leading up to the Japanese surrender in August 1945, it is worth reflecting on why that front has been the relatively forgotten war.

Perhaps from a British perspective it’s the scale of imperial humiliation. The fall of Singapore in February 1942 was the largest surrender of British forces in history – even though they far outnumbered the invading Japanese troops.

As a result, it’s been best remembered in works of fiction about the civilians swept into camps. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute and J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun were both turned into successful films, while the 1990 Australian film Blood Oath tackled the great betrayal after the Japanese surrender, when the US exempted many Japanese military commanders from war crimes trials.

And while the European story is replete with much celebrated heroism – stories of bouncing bombs, Enigma code crackers and SOE operatives risking it all to aid the resistance – in the east, bravery was tied to battle on a more industrial scale. The “Pacific theatre” encompassed a massive terrain, and underlying the conflict was a sense of racial hatred on both sides. Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ 2010 series The Pacific recounted human rights abuses by US troops, while the Japanese military, trained to think of death before the dishonour of surrender, saw Allied prisoners of war as subhuman.

The Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan won the Booker Prize in 2014 for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, inspired by the harrowing experiences of his father, who survived Japanese forced labour camps. For Australia and New Zealand’s surviving POWs, who bore the brunt of Japanese violence in captivity, there was the additional moral complexity of knowing that it was the dropping of two atomic bombs, killing more than 100,000 civilians, which saved their lives. In his latest memoir, Question 7, Flanagan starts with the knowledge that his father would never have survived if not for Hiroshima.

Crucially, in Japan (in stark contrast to Germany), war crimes remain unacknowledged in history books or school curricula. The last Korean survivors kept in Japanese wartime rape camps as “comfort women” have continued to fight for justice. But as the 80th anniversary of 1945 approaches, I wonder when the lifting of the veil of silence will come. It will be another tragedy if the war in the Pacific is properly remembered only after the survivors and veterans are gone.

This article is from New Humanist's autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.

Clare Chambers is a professor of political philosophy and a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge. Her work deals with contemporary liberalism, social construction, feminism, and social justice. Her latest book is "Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body".

Clare will be talking at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest ideas and music festival, taking place from 21-22 September at Kenwood House, London. She will be speaking in the festival debate ‘Girl Power’, exploring what femininity and what a more feminine world looks like.

Enjoy 20 per cent off festival tickets with code NEWHUML24 here.

You have this concept of the “unmodified body”. But aren't all bodies modified in some way?

Yes of course, all bodies are modified in some way. I mean the very fact that we're sitting here having this conversation, rather than going for a run or whatever, is affecting the way our bodies are. Everything we do changes our body. So the unmodified body isn't a literal concept. It's a political idea. The unmodified body is a body that is allowed to be good enough, just as it is, however it is – whether that's with makeup or without, with tattoos or without, and so on. Now that might sound very trivial, and in one sense, it is. It's a simple idea. But it's actually very radical, very difficult to achieve, because we are absolutely surrounded by pressure on every side that tells us constantly that our bodies are not good enough just as they are, that they should always be better – thinner or more muscly, less gray hair, whatever it might be… more beautiful.

That wording you use, “allowed to be” enough, seems to point to external factors as opposed to our personal choice. But choice is a tricky concept, isn't it?

Lots of my work, including [my 2022 book] Intact and across my philosophical work, is about this complicated concept of choice. In liberal democratic societies, we tend to prioritise choice, and that's because we're wanting to protect against ideas of coercion or prohibition. We have to protect people's freedom. We don't want to force people to do things that they don't want to do, particularly concerning something as personal as our bodies, right? So from that point of view, yes, I respect people's choice to do what they want to do to their bodies.

But I really want to problematise that idea of choice. Firstly, we choose in a context. We are affected by what is available and what our context tells us is appropriate. So you can see this in all kinds of examples – like Botox, right? Maybe 10, 15 years ago, Botox was not very well known. I remember when the first articles in newspapers started to come out and it was kind of a shocking thing. Whereas now Botox is understood as more like routine maintenance. Women of ever younger ages – even in their early 20s – are thinking that they should start with a Botox regime. It's not choice that explains that. It's the availability of the procedure and the extent to which that procedure is presented as normal and expected and required. Very often, our attitude to our bodies is not shaped so much by choice as it is by shame.

We’re talking very generally, but what is the evidence for this?

The empirical evidence shows us the overwhelming weight of shame about our bodies that almost everybody feels. There's one very large study that continues to resonate with me, of tens of thousands of adults, and it found that 70 per cent of adult women felt media pressure to have a perfect body. So not just a nice body, but a perfect body. For men, that was not quite the same. Two thirds of men in that same study felt ashamed of their bodies.

What do you think of the growing popularity of Ozempic? Although it’s not been licensed as a weight loss drug, people are taking it to help with obesity – but so are people who don’t have a medical problem.

People often say, surely there are some kinds of body shame we ought to be emphasising, and we need to do something to combat obesity. But nobody is obese because they don't know that they should lose weight. Everybody knows that society wants them to be slim. So the question then is, why are obesity levels as high as they are? And that's a highly complex question, which is to do with a set of interactions between food availability, what's in food, what's affordable, the nature of our eating habits… there's a whole complicated interaction behind all of this, which gives us the unhappy result that the vast majority of diets fail. I think it's something like 95 per cent of diets fail in the sense that you can lose weight on the diet in the short term, but for almost everybody that weight comes back in the longer term. In that context, weight loss drugs look like the answer, right? But the [use of Ozempic for weight loss] is in the very early days – it's unclear what the long-term effects will be, whether it will be overall an evidence-based solution. And I think we're just back in that same cycle of heaping on the shame, the blame, and individualising the problem.

Your event at HowTheLightGetsIn festival will discuss the re-emerging trend for traditional feminine aesthetics, in the wake of the Barbie movie for example. What's your take on this?

I don’t think it ever really went away. The emphasis on gender norms is always there for femininity and masculinity. It slightly shifts, but it doesn't ever go away. One of the things that's come back in fashion is 90s pop culture and the kinds of body shapes that women were expected to have in that era – they were very, very thin. There’s been more of a focus on curves and buttocks and breasts in the decades since, but the demand for slimness never went away. Heather Widdows has this wonderful book called Perfect Me, where she describes a kind of beauty ideal as having various facets, one of which is you have to be slim but with curves, right? The question then becomes, how big should the curves be, and how slim should slim be?

But I do think there have been noticeable trends in the last 10 to 15 years with the overwhelming impact of visual culture – smartphones, selfies, social media, having a camera in our pocket all the time. Always being able to take pictures of ourselves and if you don't like it, you take another one and another one and another one. So we have this constant mirror reflecting back on ourselves. And that, I think, is partly why some of the makeup trends have developed as they have – the contouring, very high levels of makeup, intended to shape the face, and trying to create an airbrushed or filtered look.

Digital filters modify the body but only through that particular platform or medium. What new challenges do they pose?

On the one hand, it might seem that the filter is the better form of modification, because it is temporary, reversible, completely side effect free in terms of your physical health. Right now we’re talking on Zoom and I could be wearing Zoom lipstick, and then I also wouldn't have to spend the money on real lipstick. And when you're thinking about more serious surgical interventions, like Botox and fillers, you might think, well, doing that with a filter takes away the risk and the cost. But what we do when we filter our image is we alienate ourselves ever more strongly from our actual bodies, and the separation between what we really look like and what our image is becomes greater – and that, I think, can bring with it an increase in shame.

How does this relate to your idea of shametenance?

We do lots of things to maintain shame. Some of the things are just practices like removing body hair or keeping menstruation very secret, all the things we do to conceal our real bodies. But the bigger the difference between those two things [our actual bodies and how we appear], the more reason there is to hide and to conceal the real self. So at least if you're putting on your makeup in the real world, you can then go out into the real world with your makeup on, but you can't take the filter with your Zoom lipstick and so on. So it's the prison of the screen.

In the world of cosmetic surgery, Tehran is the capital of the nose job, while in countries like Korea skin whitening and the creation of double eyelids are popular procedures. Is this the promotion of white European beauty standards?

It’s interesting how we think about this. So if you think about the UK and the continuing popularity of sun-beds and tanning products, we don't understand that as white women wanting to look less white. We say they want to look beautiful, and that is the same understanding you'll have with the practices that you've described. It's not “I want to look white”, it's “I want to beautiful”. And so the question is, what is beautiful? And again, it's about this increasingly homogeneous sort of globalised idea that to be beautiful, you have to have this set of characteristics, each of which are picked from certain kinds of ethnic stereotypes, but none of which are accessible to anybody from a particular background.

What do you think is driving the increase in cosmetic surgery worldwide?

There are all kinds of reasons. The availability of procedures is a huge driver. In the “appearance industry”, the supply of a procedure and product creates demand for that thing. There's so many bits of our bodies which we might have thought were unproblematic until we see that a product or a procedure exists for that. The most recent example of this is eyelash serum, right? Now you can moisturise your eyelashes. So you go on TikTok, or go to Boots, and you see eyelash serum, and you think, do I need that? Maybe I do.

What about products and procedures for men?

We can see shifts in the idea of masculinity through the history of competitive bodybuilding. Because bodybuilding has always been about images of the ideal man, and when it was first developed as a competitive sport in the mid 20th century it was about looks, but also career and hobbies, and generally, being an all-round virtuous person. And that shifted over the decades leading into the 21st century into just being about size and bulk. And that shift has happened in masculinity generally, right? The example I often use is from the TV series The Good Place, where one of the characters is a geeky philosophy professor, and at one point he takes off his shirt and he's got the most toned gym body you have ever seen. So men too have to [now] worry about their bodies – even if they're philosophy professors, even if they're older.

How does body modification relate to the condition of body dysmorphia?

If you talk to cosmetic surgeons, and if they understand themselves as practicing ethically (which many of them, of course, take deeply seriously) they'll say body dysmorphia is a contraindication for cosmetic surgery, and if they suspect that someone is suffering from it, they will not proceed. It’s clearly understood that this kind of deep distress or dissociation from one's body is not something that is cured with bodily changes. Nichola Rumsey, who's a psychologist of appearance, she puts it a wonderful way where she says, people don't graduate from low body confidence, it just finds a new target. In the gender context, we have a different way in which it's being thought of, which is the idea that if you have gender dysphoria, then that is something that can be solved with surgery, and it’s quite interesting to note that distinction. So I think clearly there needs to be a proper evidence-based focus on that question.

When there is that great feeling of deep distress or dissatisfaction or dissociation from our bodies, the question is always what is causing that, is the cause of that really the body, and will the solution to that be a change in the body, or is the cause something else? Does it come from another clinical condition? Does it come from a culture that constantly tells us our bodies are wrong? Does it come from a mixture of all these kinds of things?

Are there any reliable statistics on levels of satisfaction following cosmetic surgery procedures?

A few years back, I was involved in a big report on this done by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. We undertook a several-year interdisciplinary report into cosmetic procedures, and what we found then was that there is a woeful lack of evidence on this question. So cosmetic surgeons will do post-operative follow ups where they check that wounds are healing, that kind of thing, and typically they will also ask about satisfaction. And satisfaction rates in that short term are very high, as you would expect. You wanted the operation, and now you've had the operation. Also the person asking you is the same person who has done the procedure, and most of us feel a sense of social constraint around that. But there just isn't any systematic medium or long term follow up of cosmetic surgery patients. So we just don't know.

Why do you think it's important to debate beauty standards and body modification, as you’ll be doing at HowTheLightGetsIn festival next month?

Firstly, it makes us see that we are not alone. This sense of crushing anxiety and shame about our bodies is something that we all share, and yet it is highly individualised. And so having these debates and seeing the ways in which other people maybe find peace and satisfaction with their bodies in ways that we do not, or struggle with their bodies in ways that we do not, sort of helps to show us that it's not the bodies that are the problem, it's the society. So I think that engaging in debate and discussion is always good, but it's particularly good when it's getting at this privatised, individualised form of shame, where we can get that out in the open a little bit and say, 'Look, it's not actually me that is the problem'.

Don’t miss Clare Chambers debating "Girl Power’"at HowTheLightGetsIn this 21-22 September at Kenwood House, London. With speakers including Sadiq Khan, Carla Denyer, Sam Harris, Yoshua Bengio, Nadhim Zahawi, and Ruby Wax, this isn’t an event to miss. Enjoy our special offer of 20 per cent off tickets using the code NEWHUML24.

Get your discounted tickets here.

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Hello! As they say, “there are only so many hours in a day.” Modern life makes it very difficult to keep up with our own to-do lists, much less everything else going on in the world. We need to prioritize to maintain our sanity from day to day. …

This thread has been created for thoughtful, rational discussion on subjects for which there are not currently any dedicated threads. Please note that our Comment Policy applies as usual. There is a link to this at the foot of the page. If you would like to refer back to previous open discussion threads, the most …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Hello! What a difference a few weeks can make. Last month in this space, I noted a warning from California Representative Jared Huffman of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, who wrote that the United States is “sleepwalking into theocracy.” Since then, the sleepwalk has turned into a full sprint …

This thread has been created for thoughtful, rational discussion on subjects for which there are not currently any dedicated threads. Please note that our Comment Policy applies as usual. There is a link to this at the foot of the page. If you would like to refer back to previous open discussion threads, the most …

Two quick bits of news from me.

First, my new book on how learning magic promotes wellbeing is out very soon. It’s called Magic Your Mind Happy, and I am very excited because it provides a new perspective on magic. I will be doing lots of events to promote the book and it’s available to pre-order here.

Second, I have invented a new optical illusion! Well, to be more accurate, a new variant on a known illusion. The Beuchet Chair is one of my favourite illusions and involves a person appearing to be much smaller than they are. Invented by Jean Beuchet in the 1960s, it relies upon forced perspective created by chair legs that are close to the observer, and a large chair seat further away.

I have come up with a variant. This one centres around a plinth rather than a chair. The legs of the original chair are replaced by two pieces of hinged cardboard (these can easily be cut from foamboard and hinged with tape), and the large seat and back of the chair are replaced with a piece of cloth.

The hinged screen forms the base of the plinth and is positioned in front of the photographer, and the cloth appears to form the top of the plinth and is placed on the floor behind the screen. To help to create a sense of continuity between the large cloth and the plinth, two small pieces of matching cloth are draped along the top of the screens. The front and side panels of the screen help to conceal the front and left edge of the cloth, and make lining up the photograph much easier than in the original illusion.

This entire set up can be constructed in a short space of time, is quick to set up, and folds flat after use. Because of this, it’s ideal for those wanting to create a convincing version of this classic illusion that is easy and cost effective to build, assemble, move, and store. I hope that you like it.

UPDATE: So, it turns out that illusion creator Olivier Redon had exactly the same idea  a few years ago. You can see his great version here and watch his other illusion videos here.

Hi there,

I am delighted to say that I am back performing at the Edinburgh Magic Festival this year.

First, on the 28th December I will be exploring the strange world of illusion, mystery and magic in a show called MIND MAGIC. This will involve showing some of the best optical illusions in the world, revealing whether paranormal phenomena really exist, showing how we can all achieve the impossible, explaining how to transform a tea towel into a chicken, and much more. All the info is here.

Then, on the 28th and 29th December, I am presenting a new and experimental show about the invention of magic. This will be an intimate affair for a small number of people. It will examine how magicians create magic, and explore the mind and work of a magical genius who created the world’s greatest card trick. Info here.

So, if you are around, please come along, and fun will be had!

Some exciting news from me! I have just written my first book for children.

It uses magic to teach youngsters a range of essential life skills, including social skills, confidence, creativity, lateral thinking and much much more. Readers will learn how to perform lots of seemingly impossible feats, including how to defy gravity, read minds, pluck coins from thin air, and predict the future. Most important of all, these tricks have been carefully chosen to help boost mental wellbeing and resilience. It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s magic!

I am delighted to say that Magic Your Mind Happy will be published by Wren and Rook in May 2024, and is available to preorder now here.

check, 1, 2…is this thing on? hi everyone! it’s been a while.

Two quick bits of news.

First, The Royal Society have kindly given me the prestigious David Attenborough Award. This is a lifetime achievement award for my work promoting psychology and critical thinking, and focuses on my research combatting pseudo-science and examining the psychology of magic. Previous recipients include Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam and Professor Alice Roberts, and I will give an award lecture about my work in August 2024.

Second, I have a new academic magic book out! It is part of the well-known Arts For Health series and reviews work examining how watching and learning magic is good for your wellbeing, including how it boosts confidence, social skills, dexterity, curiosity and much more. It was lots of fun to write and also includes interviews key practitioners, including Richard McDougall (Breathe Magic), Julie Eng (Magicana), Mario the Maker Magician (USA), David Brookhouse (UK), David Gore and Marian Williamson (College of Magic), and Tom Verner (Magicians Without Borders).  More details here.

I am delighted to say that the second series of our On Your Mind podcast has launched today!!

Each week, science journalist Marnie Chesterton and I will explore aspects of the human psyche, including astrology, how the clothes we wear influence our thoughts, attraction, friendship, dreaming, mind control and much much more.  We will also be joined by some special guests as we attempt to answer all of your questions about psychology. The first series reached No.1 in Apple Podcast’s Science charts, and so we hope that you can join us. 

Our first episode looks at creativity and explores how to have good ideas and whether children are more creative than adults. You can listen here.

Someone contacted me hoping to find young atheists who might be interested in being part of a new series. I’m not particularly interested in having my mug on TV, but I would love to have some great personalities represent atheism on the show, so I offered to repost his email on my blog: My name […]

All throughout my youth, I dreamed of becoming a writer. I wrote all the time, about everything. I watched TV shows and ranted along with the curmudgeons on Television Without Pity about what each show did wrong, convincing myself that I could do a better job. I flew to America with a dream in my […]

A friend linked me to this. I was a sobbing mess within the first minute. I sometimes wonder why I feel such a strong kinship to the LGBT community, and I think it’s because I’ve been through the same thing that many of them have. So I watched this video and I cried, because, as […]

UPDATE #1: I got my domain back! Many thanks to Kurtis for the pleasant surprise: So I stumbled upon your blog, really liked what I saw, read that you had drama with the domain name owner, bought it, and forwarded it here. It should work again in a matter of seconds. I am an atheist […]