Places Journal: The Anti-Cairo

The new capital of Egypt has no residents. It doesn’t have a local source of water. It just lost a major developer, the Chinese state company that had agreed to build the first phase. You might say the planned city in the desert 45 kilometers east of Cairo doesn’t have a reason to exist. Urban planner David Sims told the Wall Street Journal, “Egypt needs a new capital like a hole in the head.”

What the project has going for it is a president who likes to talk big. Five million inhabitants big. An amusement park “four times the size of Disneyland” big. Seven hundred hospitals and clinics, 1,200 mosques and churches, 40,000 hotel rooms, 2,000 schools — that kind of big. 2 Yes, and fast, too. Standing with the Emir of Dubai beside a model of the new city, in March 2015, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi declared that construction would proceed immediately. “What are you talking about, ten years?” He turned to his housing minister. “I’m serious. We don’t work that way. Not ten years, not seven years. No way.”  [...]

The project gained momentum last fall when two Chinese state companies stepped in to replace Emirati developers who had backed out the year before. Now one of the Chinese deals has fallen through, which means the financial risk falls to the Egyptian government and local contractors. 5 That’s a heavy burden for a country on the brink of economic collapse, propped up by foreign aid from gulf states and stringent loans from the International Monetary Fund. 6 And yet, plans for the new capital are advancing, shrouded in bombast and uncertainty. TV reports show pipe being laid, earth moved, apartment blocks rising on the windswept desert. The housing ministry says more than 17,000 units are nearly finished and sales will start next month. 7 [...]

The unofficial truth is that the government finds it easier to finance blank-slate development and promote real-estate speculation in the desert than to invest in infrastructure that would serve the urban majority. There are no plans to build new metro lines or extend services to the city’s informal neighborhoods, the ashwaiyat where more than half the population lives, in tightly-packed brick buildings separated by dirt alleys. Instead, there are PowerPoint presentations of spacious, green, “modern” neighborhoods from which all of Cairo’s governance problems — and most of its population — have been scrubbed clean. [...]

As Mohamed Elshahed wrote in Places in the midst of that revolution, Egyptians discovered “that their fight for democracy [was] inseparably linked to their ability to assemble in urban space.” 15 But if the people knew this, the authorities knew it too. As protests continued after Mubarak’s ouster, the military surrounded Tahrir with barriers and checkpoints, enormous cinder-block walls that cut off entire streets. The subway station was closed for years. After Sisi came to power, there was a fierce crackdown on public expression throughout the capital. Authorities forbid demonstrations, shut down street theater and outdoor concerts, erased graffiti, raided cafés, and harassed cultural venues such as art galleries and publishing houses — anywhere that people (particularly young people) might congregate.

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Salon: The affordable-art paradox: Do reasonable prices make pieces of art less desirable?

In my book on art forgery, I proposed an equation for the value of art: value = perceived (rarity + authenticity + demand). Most art is unique, so rarity refers to how many works by an artist exist at all (Giorgione died young and made far fewer paintings than his contemporary Titian, so a Giorgione is far more valuable than a Titian). Authenticity is an issue for antiques and Old Masters, not usually a factor for the contemporary artists of the Affordable Art Fair. Demand, or the perception of it, is key to driving up the price. You need at least two people who really want to buy something, and the competition, particularly at auction, can make prices rise dramatically. The price for works by established artists is usually based on past sales — a Picasso with a similar provenance, importance, quality and size that sold a few decades ago will be compared to a Picasso newly on the market and, after inflation, an estimated price is chosen. But the category of museum-quality art and antiques is its own rarefied world, with a minuscule number of potential buyers functioning in a sociological bubble distinct from what might be called “normal folks.” [...]

But fame is really the main driver. As Hancock says, “It holds a particular sway over art markets in our ‘recommendation culture.’” Name-recognition, either through the media or word-of-mouth within cadres of art collectors, surmounts all. There is a lot of art out there that does not display virtuosity that sells well, because some sort of buzz surrounds the artist. The million-dollar question, literally, is how to get that buzz, for with it comes fame, “talkability” (by which Hancock means a work of sufficient interest or shock value that it gets people talking), and the sense of exclusivity that prompts desire to own one of only a finite number of unique works by that artist. [...]

Art collecting must be divided into two halves for separate consideration. High price does encourage interest in the thin air of museum-quality sales and auctions. Back here on Earth, price gives the impression of an artist’s growing fame, but it does not encourage purchases, largely for the reason of the limited wallet-power of the potential buyer. In both worlds, price is equated with the (presumed) fame of the artist (a living artist can set very high prices and hope to impress), but in only one world does it encourage desire to own. For most, it’s about the initial aesthetic and emotional impact, with the price tag as an afterthought. As Harry Hancock says, “The Affordable Art Fair is great because it provides a venue for art that shows virtuosity and originality, but no fame.” It’s fame, in the end, that pays.

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Salon: Paranoia, conspiracy theory and a plan to make America great again: The Illuminati panic of the 1790s

Over the course of the 2016 election, I and other commentators drew parallels between Trump’s conspiratorial ethno-nationalist politics and the brief 1850s emergence of the “Know-Nothings,” whose American Party briefly eclipsed the Republicans in rising from the ashes of the dying Whigs. Another less successful third party, the Anti-Masonic Party, emerged briefly a bit earlier than that, from 1828 to 1838. But the earliest example of this brand of paranoid politics actually appeared in the United States of America’s first full decade, the 1790s. It didn’t emerge from some populist third-party fringe, but from religious elite leaders close to the heart of the ruling Federalist Party.

The French Revolution had set much of Europe into a panic, and the writings of two authors, John Robison (“Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe“) and Abbé Barruel, promoted a continent-wide hysteria over the notion that the revolution had been fostered by a short-lived, extinct organization, the Bavarian Illuminati (1776-1785), allegedly through a French Masonic lodge. In 1798, President John Adams proclaimed May 9 a national “day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer” in response to this nebulous threat. Jedidiah Morse, a leading conservative Congregationalist minister, preached a scathing jeremiad against the Bavarian Illuminati in response. In doing so, Morse broke with the traditional jeremiad formula with his finger-pointing toward an outside source of evil. [...]

Third: The alleged conspirators do not actually exist. While other conspiracy-theory episodes have had at least some foothold in reality — exaggerating threats posed by people who actually existed — the Illuminati scare stands out for the fact that there literally was no such thing. The organization no longer existed in Europe: The Illuminati had been disbanded before the French Revolution, under penalty of death for recruiters — and banishment and confiscation of property for anyone attending a meeting. It certainly didn’t exist in America, where no known meetings had ever been held. As noted above, America did have Freemasons. It never had organized Illuminati. 

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Slate: Traveling America in Search of Community

In an age of increasing social media–driven isolation, what does community look like in America?

That’s the question photographer Alec Soth and writer Brad Zellar set out to answer when they started roaming the country in 2012. Over the next two years, the pair traveled together for weeks at a time, showing up at dances, festivals, and other intimate gatherings to look for signs of social life. In Soth’s exhibition and book, Songbook, which was published by Mack in December, he shows what they discovered—a mix of nostalgia and strangeness that feels distinctly American. [...]

The pair began their journey near Minneapolis, where Soth lives, and traveled all across the country, from upstate New York to Silicon Valley to Colorado. Inspired by the approach of Sherwood Anderson’s protagonist in the classic short story cycle Winesburg, Ohio, everywhere they went, they introduced themselves as reporters from a made-up local newspaper called the LBM Dispatch, which, eventually, they ended up publishing for seven issues. While the Dispatch has the look of an actual newspaper, Soth’s distinct photography collection, Songbook, strips away that documentary material for a more lyrical approach. 

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Quartz: A radical fringe group refuses to admit the German Reich is over, and it’s getting violent

In Germany, the Reichsbürger movement, which translates as “citizens of the Reich” or “imperial citizens,” has been around since the 1980s, in some shape or form. Until recently, members of this fragmented, leaderless group were dismissed as a collection of unsavory but obscure losers. Among other things, many of them believe Germany is an American colony run by Jews, and that the upstart right-wing political party Alternative for Germany was in fact set up by chancellor Angela Merkel (herself is a “Jewish Freemason”). Holocaust denial, anti-immigrant feelings, and neo-Nazi leanings are prevalent. [...]

This month, Germany’s head of domestic intelligence, Hans-Georg Maassen, said the “Reichsbürger scene” now numbered around 10,000, mostly middle-aged white males. Between 500 and 600 of those were known right-wing extremists, many of whom have gun licenses. Maassen said the community was becoming increasingly radicalized, mainly via social media, and showing “a considerable willingness to employ violence.”

Police have carried out a number of raids on members of the Reichsbürger movement in the past year. Recently they launched coordinated searches in North Rhine-Westphalia, confiscating guns and ammunition and arresting two. Peter Fitzek, a Reichsburger and and self-declared “King of Germany,” was just jailed for three years for setting up an illegal bank and embezzling €1.3 million ($1.4 million) from the 600 people who gave him their money.

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