Showing posts from category: Biographical
Transient Small ‘e’ empires in the Americas: The Méxican Experiment 1
During the first half-century of México’s independence, having freed itself from the Spanish Empire in 1821, the country was subjected to two brief periods of monarchical rule. The two emperadores de México, whose reigns were separated by 40 years, were elevated to the Méxican throne through very different circumstances, though ultimately they both met the same fate.
The first emperor, Agustín de Iturbide, was a Méxican caudillo (military chieftain) who after initially supporting Spain in the Méxican war for independence, switched sides, allying with the radical insurgents and took command of the independence movement. Iturbide formulated the Iguala Plan which called for an independent México to be ruled by a prince from the (Spanish) Bourbon house (or failing that, a Méxican one), with equal rights for creoles (mixed race citizens) and peninsulares (of Spanish ancestry born in either Spain or México). The Plan, also advocating the retention of all powers for the army and the exclusivity of the Roman Catholic Church, won a consensus of approval within Méxican society. The viceroy of New Spain, with a new liberal government in charge in Spain, acquiesced to the Plan (Treaty of Córdoba), and Iturbide, basking in the glory of his role of El Libertador de la Nueva España took the helm of the new state.
(Image: www.onthisday.com)
Road to empire Iturbide initially became the president of the governing Council of Regents. By May 1822, having several times previously declined appeals by the populace at large❋ to become emperor of México, Iturbide finally concurred and was crowned as Agustín the First in July. The empire of New Spain which fell to Iturbide certainly warranted the imperial tag, comprising an area of “Greater México” which included, in addition to modern-day México, the areas of Alto California right up to the Oregon territory, Arizona, New México, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, plus all of lower Meso-America down to Panama.
Mismanaging the finances Within a few months things in Agustín’s empire had started to go badly “pear-shaped” and the image of Iturbide who had led the country to an almost bloodless war of independence was receding in peoples’ minds. Despite the country’s shaky financial situation the Agustín administration overspent catastrophically – a cost blowout of more than 25,000 pesos a month, nearly five times that of the New Spain Viceroyalty. Equally scandalously, the extravagance and imperial pomp of Agustín’s court drew widespread criticism and fostered republican sentiment at a time when ordinary Méxicans were bearing the brunt of salary cuts and newly imposed taxes [Anna, Timothy E. “The Rule of Agustin De Iturbide: A Reappraisal.” Journal of Latin American Studies 17, no. 1 (1985): 79-110. Accessed November 13, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/157498]. In addition, Agustín increasingly couldn’t afford to pay the army (his power base) which to was prove critical to the chances of his own political longevity.
México, 1825 (image: Library of Congress (US)
Emperor v Congress From the onset of the empire Agustín was at loggerheads with an increasingly hostile Congress, eventually resulting in a more authoritarian response by the ruler…press freedoms were curtailed, an alleged conspiracy within the parliament gave Iturbide a pretext to jail republican member, suspend Congress and replace it with a 45 man-junta. Key sections of the army deserted the emperor in 1823 including his most trusted generals. Other leading army generals, Santa Anna and Victoria, declared the Casa Mata Plan, calling for Agustín’s ouster and the installation of a republican form of government✫. Finding his position untenable Agustín abdicated in March 1823 and sought exile in Europe. Unaware that Congress had sentenced him to death in absentia, Iturbide returned to México in 1824 and was arrested and promptly executed. Iturbine’s constitutional monarchy was replaced with a federalist structure along US lines—de Los Estados Unidos Méxicanos, the ‘USM’—a constitution giving more power to the legislative branch than to the executive.
PostScript: Agustín the ‘Unpraised’ Historians on the whole have tended to give Iturbide rather short shrift, especially when compared to the other, lavishly acknowledged, great liberadores of Spanish American history such as Bolivár and San Martin. Many seem have taken a leaf from the book of Iturbide’s contemporaries who unrestrainedly vilified him, eg. the opposition El Sol Méxican newspaper who labelled the emperor “a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man” (30th April 1823)✪, “betraying his patria (homeland) for personal wealth and tyrannical power” [Review, Timothy E. Anna, The Mexican Empire of Iturbide, (1990), Michael P. Costeloe, (Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009, www.cambridgeunivesitypress.org/].
(attributed: JA Huerta)
Historian TE Anna proffered a fresh reappraisal of the embattled first emperor of México three decades ago in an attempt to give some balance. On the charge that Iturbide usurped power for himself, while conceding there were lingering questions of legality about his accession to the throne—Congress lacked the required quorum to ratify the move—Anna nonetheless contends that there was no substantial nationwide opposition to the imperial elevation at the time. Anna also evidences Iturbide’s reluctance to assume the title of emperor, noting that it was only at the urging of others that he eventually took the job. Moreover he affirms that the consensus in favour of Iturbide reflected the existence of a “cult of Iturbide”, a genuine and spontaneous groundswell of popular support that was “not manufactured by the Hero himself”. On the question of why did Iturbide, having already consolidated power in his hands, go the emperor route, Anna argues that there was very few voices raised against the establishment of a monarchy in 1822 (mainly Fray de Mier and El Sol)…and that Méxicans, after centuries of rule by the Spanish viceroys, were accustomed to an imperial form of government▣. Anna also addresses why Agustín made the decision to abdicate, concluding that he “gave up because the political price of remaining on the throne was more than he would pay”. To continue as emperor, Anna argues, Iturbide recoiled from the grim prospect of having his power emasculated… conceding sovereignty to Congress meant imperilling the planks of his cherished Iguala Plan (Anna).
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❋ excluding republicans
✫ Santa Anna’s other co-conspirators against Agustín were generals Guerrero and Echàverri
✪ Other pejorative adjectives heaped on Agustín include ‘fraud’, ‘usurper’, ‘dictator’…his decriers have even described him as “México’s most significant non-person” [Anna Macias, TIMOTHY E. ANNA. The Mexican Empire of Iturbide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1990. Pp. xii, 286. The American Historical Review, Volume 96, Issue 2, April 1991, Pages 642–643, http://doi.org/10.1086/age/96.2.642-a]
▣ conversely the republican form of rule was still not very well understood at the time, even by its advocates
✦ Anna’s basic thesis seems to be that at heart Iturbide wanted the Méxican regime to be a constitutional monarchy but was thwarted by enemies in and outside of Congress (Macias)
Sifting the Devil from the Dragon: Dracula versus Vlad Ţepeş
(Image: Lonely Planet)
Romanians, especially those from the region of Transylvania, must view Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula with at best mixed feelings. On the one hand, the immense popularity of Stoker’s imaginative work of fiction helped put Transylvania on the international tourist map…on the other hand, its dark and ghoulish tale of chilling evil with its genesis in the mountains and forests of trans-silvae (“the land beyond the forest”), projects a negative and deceptively gloomy picture of the country. The association of one of the greatest heroes in Romanian history and a defender of Christianity, the Medieval ruler Vlad Ţepeş III, with the fictional Dracula, would be displeasing to many patriotic Romanians.
Dracula’s transformation into a classic of the Gothic horror genre captured the imagination of film-makers, inspiring numerous silver-screen interpretations of Dracula – from the silent German feature Nosferatu to countless Western film versions which made actors such as Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee famous – and typecast. The Dracula character’s pervasion of especially American popular culture has seen the trope extend to parody cartoon versions on TV (Duckula), to female teen “vampire-slayers” (Buffy) and even to “blaxploitation” movies asserting the emergence of a self-conscious black culture in the US (eg, Blacula).
Vlad’s signature punishment In some screen interpretations of the novel, like the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the identities of Dracula and Vlad Ţepeş are presented as if they are one and the same person! (see also PostScript). Entirely fanciful of course but Stoker’s character did draw inspiration from the real-life Vlad Ţepeş III (or Vlad Împalatul). Vlad was the voivode✱ of Wallachia in the mid-15th century, infamous for impaling victims such as his own troublesome boyars or foreigners captured in conflicts (Ottomans, Bulgarians, Saxons, Hungarians▣). Such an horrific torture technique earned him the nickname “the Impaler”.
⇩ 1499 woodcut, Vlad the Impaler
Vlad Ţepeş, voivode and resident of Wallachia, not Transylvania Stoker did get the name ‘Dracula’ from the Medieval Romanian prince, or at least from his family. Vlad’s father—Wallachian voivode before him—was Vlad II, also known as Vlad Drâcul…Drâcul (or Drâc) was a word for ‘dragon’ in the 15th century※, today in Modern Romanian it means “the devil” – something noted by Stoker in his research for the book as an apt descriptor for his fictional arch-nemesis. There is however a great deal of the character of Count Dracula that Stoker didn’t derive from the circumstance of Vlad Ţepeş. The Impaler had nothing to do with vampires or any supernatural beings and his associations with Transylvania were largely peripheral and tenuous. Vlad was supposedly born within Transylvania in Sighişoara although there are some doubts about this (an alternative view has his birthplace in Wallachia). Bran Castle, a Transylvanian tourist attraction identified with Stoker’s Dracula, has no connection with Vlad at all [Florin Curta, referenced in ‘The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler’, (Marc Lallanilla), Live Science, (2017), www.livescience.com].
⇩ Bran Castle (Photo: Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images)
Constructing the Ur-vampire
Transylvania, being to outsiders, “a mysterious land of vampires and other supernatural things”, handed down a long tradition of folklore and legends, it’s not surprising that Stoker drew on this source for inspire and inform his vampire story. Superstitions and beliefs of Romanian peasants in Stoker’s time fuelled a plentiful supply of tales about vampiri (vampires), vârcolaci (werewolves) and other supernatural monstri. Stoker’s library research would also have acquainted him with the strigol, a Romanian figure of legend—“a reckless spirit that returns to suck the lifeblood from his relatives”—the type of vampirish “undead souls” that would find a place in Stoker’s horror novel [‘The Use of History in Dracula Tourism in Romania’, (Tuomas Hovi), www.folklore.ee].
⇧ Whitby, England (Image credit: www.visitwhitby.com)
Non-Romanian influences on Dracula In the Dracula novel the undead Count travels to Britain in search of more victims, journeying to Whitby in Yorkshire. This echoes Stoker’s own earlier visit to Whitby in which the author was reportedly quite taken with the town, its colony of bats circling round the churches, its whole creepy atmosphere, all of which he would have found good material for a Gothic novel [‘How Dracula Came to Whitby’, English Heritage, www.english-heritage.org.uk]. Stoker apparently found more inspiration in Port Erroll (these days, Cruden Bay) in Aberdeenshire – Slains Castle with its “fang-like rocks” is thought to have also inspired the Transylvanian Dracula castle home in the book [‘Slains Castle’, www.visitabdn.com].
Vampires: not the exclusive preserve of Transylvania⦿ Bram Stoker was Irish and never visited Romania in his lifetime, prompting some to speculate that the Dracula story may equally have been influenced by the author’s own experiences growing up in Ireland. Stoker would have been exposed to homegrown myths of the supernatural (such as those involving the sidhe, the fairy people of Irish folklore), as well as to the nightmarish ordeal of living through a cholera epidemic [‘How Bram Stoker creates Dracula with the aid of Irish Folklore’, (Leonie O’Hara), Irish Central, 04-Oct-2020, www.irishcentral.com].
PostScript: Vampire tourism Vampire tourism in Transylvania has not been waylaid by coronavirus, tourist operators in Romania are still offering up a raft of tour packages—with titles like “7-Day Dracula Highlights Tour” and “Fun With Fangs: Vampire Tours in Romania”—to lure the “vampire-curious”. The tours, tend to wallow in all the predictable cliches and stereotypes, milking the prevailing craze for all things vampire, staying in Dracula-themed hotels, etc. Vampire tourism is an intriguing admixture of history, tradition and fiction…taking a leaf from Hollywood some of the tours indulge in considerable conflating of the historic Vlad Ţepeş with the fictional Count Dracula (Hovi).
↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↜↝↜↝↜
✱ ruler, a sort of military governor of a region
▣ Prince Vlad’s political fortunes generally hovered in the vacuum between the two regional powerhouses Hungary and the Ottomans, who he fought both with and against at different times
※ Drâculeşti is the patronymic – Vlad Ţepeş was also known as Drâculea, “son of the dragon”
☒ descendants of Saxon (German) merchants and craftsmen who migrated to Romania, commencing in the 12th century
⦿ though the tradition is a strong one in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, eg, Greece vrykolakas, Albania shtriga
Inspiring the Creation of Secret Agent 007: The Template of a World War 2 Yugoslav Spy
The James Bond film series, is the world’s most successful and enduring movie franchise, since 1962, 24 completed feature films and with another currently cooling it’s post-production heels in Covid lockdown…a franchise that seemingly has not yet run out of steam. The 007 phenomenon has inspired countless imitations in cinema and television. This has ranged from blatant rip-off imitators trying to capitalise on its impetus in the Sixties (“Matt Helm”, “Our Man Flint”, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, etc.) to playing it for laughs parodies (“Get Smart”, “Austin Powers”, “Johnny English”).
(Photo: Britannica)
But where did the original creator of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, get his inspiration for the iconic character from? We know that Fleming’s own lived experience and background—as a British naval intelligence officer in WWII—made him an insider in the world of espionage, double deceptions and counter-agents. Obviously when the Caribbean-domiciled Fleming came to put pen to paper and create the fictional James Bond in the early Fifties, he drew on many of the real-life acquaintances he had met in the ‘workplace’❋.
In his lifetime Fleming never said definitively who the principal model for 007 was, but the consensus seems to gravitate towards a Serbian double agent Dušan (‘Duško) Popov, someone Fleming came across in the course of his own intelligence career. A famous scene in Casino Royale (Fleming’s first James Bond novel) further advances the association of the world’s most celebrated fictional spy with Popov. Bond’s besting of a powerful Russian criminal at the baccarat table in Casino Estoril (Portugal) in the book/film mirrors an exchange Fleming observed first-hand when the real-life spy spectacularly called the bluff of a boastful Lithuanian gambler in a baccarat game at the same location.
Popov stumbled into the espionage game after being arrested by the Gestapo. To get out of that pickle Popov agreed to spy for the Abwehr (German intelligence agency). While in England he was recruited by MI6 and turned double agent✫. During the war Popov managed to feed a steady stream of misinformation to the Nazis about the Allies’ movements, strength, etc. Most productive for the Allies was his role in Operation Fortitude – Popov helped to convince German military planners that the D-Day invasion of France would occur in Pas de Calais, not Normandy, the actual landing point. As a consequence of Popov’s disinformation, when Operation Overlord was launched in 1944 there were seven German divisions stuck in Calais and unavailable to the Reichswehr in Normandy [‘My name is Popov, Duran Popov’, (Marta Levai), www.0011info.com].
(Image: Getty)
The Serbian counter-spy also tried in August 1941 to alert the US military as to high-level Nazi and Japanese interest in Pearl Harbor, however the critical information which could have averted the military disaster on 7th December was blocked from reaching its target by CIA director Hoover. Hoover distrusted Popov as a double agent, an attitude not allayed by Popov’s reputation as a womaniser and playboy.
(Source: www.newspapers.com)
After the war Popov’s services were rewarded by the Brits with an OBE, but it wasn’t until 1974 that Popov himself lifted the cover on his war-time espionage activities when he published his autobiography. When asked about comparisons between himself and 007, Popov was dismissive of the hedonistic, jet-setting spy as portrayed on the big screen, remarking that “a spy who drank like Bond would be drunk the first night and dead the second” [‘From the archive: the real James Bond, 1973’, (Observer archive), (Chris Hall), The Guardian, 22-Mar-2020, www.theguardian.com].
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❋ and on those Fleming only knew of, such as the legendary master spy Sidney Reilly [‘Novel Man’, (William Cook), New Statesman, 28-Jun-2004]
✫ at one point Popov was also spying for the Yugoslav intelligence service, making him a triple agent
The Fiume Enterprise and d’Annunzio: A Peculiar but Prophetic Prelude to the Italian Fascist State
In the aftermath of the Great War, among the numerous issues facing the post-world war peacemakers was what to do about the status of Fiume, which had been part of the (dissolved) Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS), and Italy, laid claims to the city whose population included significant numbers of Italians as well as Croats and Slovenes. While the Paris Peace Conference deliberated over Fiume’s fate❈, an Italian poet-adventurer named Gabriele d’Annunzio took advantage of the city’s state of flux to invade with a small private force in the name of Italian irredentism.
The “Poet-Warrior” D’Annunzio was an international celebrity in his time, an unconventional, physically small but larger-than-life, multi-faceted character, an Italian man of letters who also saw himself as un uomo d’azione (‘a man of action’)⌖. Having seized the disputed Adriatic port of Fiume, d’Annunzio offered his prize to the Italian government who not wanting to endorse d’Annunzio’s dubious coup, rejected the offer [‘An Irishman’s Diary on Gabriele d’Annunzio — the “John the Baptist of Fascism” and would-be IRA quartermaster’, (Mark Phelan), The Irish Times, 07-Mar-2018, www.irishtimes.com]. Spurned, d’Annunzio reacted by declaring Fiume’s independence as the “Italian Regency of Carnaro”, AKA Impresa di Fiume (‘Endeavour (or Enterprise) of Fiume’).
Progressive reforms and a repudiation of the Versailles Treaty The constitution (la carta del Carnaro) of d’Annunzio’s unrecognised enclave contained an idiosyncratic “grab-bag” of ideas, including elements from both the Left and Right. The charter included many progressive articles – calling for the full equality of women in society, tolerance for both religion and atheism, a social security system, medical insurance and age pensions✪[Michael A Leeden, The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume, (1977)]. D’Annunzio’s regime was the first to recognise the Soviet Union and pitched the idea of a kind of “anti-league of nations” for (select) oppressed peoples of the world—which in d’Annunzio’s thinking was those countries which fared badly in the post-WWI territory carve-up and were holding a grudge—including offering assistance in the form of arms to the IRA in its struggle to free itself from British colonialism (🔺photo: d’Annunzio and some of his supporters in Fiume).
Culture, ‘counterculture’, plus proto-fascism
La carta del Carnaro made music a key principle of the state, the arts flourished with daily public poetry readings and concerts. Impresa di Fiume established a corporatist state along anarcho-syndalicalist lines. The Adriatic city exuded a veritable bohemian buzz, becoming, as Hughes-Halley notes, a “political laboratory” for all manner of political persuasion including anarchists, syndicalists, socialists and ultimately, fascists. It wasn’t all politics either…all manner of perceived ‘subversives’ and outliers, including the socially marginalised, the unorthodox and the disenfranchised, flocked to d’Annunzio’s enclave – fugitives, drug dealers (and takers), prostitutes, discontented idealists, ‘pirates’, dandies, homosexuals, artistic “drop-outs”, runaways, and so on⊞ [Lucy Hughes-Halley, The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War, (2013)].
Although the Fiuman duce wasn’t a fully-fledged fascist himself, his political ideas and his aesthetics in inspired an imitator in Benito Mussolini and informed the blueprint for the future Italian corporatist-fascist state – d’Annunzio’s legacy which prompted many to see him as a kind of “godfather of Italian Fascism” includes the staging of mass rallies, demagogic speechifying, black-shirted vigilantism and Roman salutes (Phelan). Moreover, d’Annunzio’s adventurism in the Regency of Carnaro contributed to a weakening of Italian democracy and paved the way for the Fascist takeover and consolidation of the corporatist state (Hughes-Hallett).
D’Annunzio’s exile and defenestration
Under a deal between Italy and KSCS (Treaty of Rapallo, 1920), the enclave’s name was changed to the Free State of Fiume. D’Annunzio refused to acknowledge the agreement and having failed to reach a modus vivendi with the Italian government, impetuously and unwisely declared war on Italy – with predictable, disastrous results. Fiume was bombarded and d’Annunzio was forced to flee—relocating in exile to Lake Garda in the eastern Lombard region—leaving his Reggenza and his schemes for a new world order in tatters. A later agreement (Treaty of Rome, 1924) sealed Fiume’s full annexation by Italy. Injuries sustained by the still popular d’Annunzio in 1922 when he mysteriously fell from a window (possibly an assassination attempt) worked to Mussolini’s favour, whether he was implicated or not. D’Annunzio withdrew from politics and Mussolini secured his continued inactivity through the payment of inducements. D’Annunzio however characteristically did not remain entirely mute, proffering advice to Mussolini whenever he felt the inclination◰, such as his warning, unheeded, in the 1930s to Il Duce not to enter into an axis pact with Hitler.
Topnymic end-note: Flume, Fiume, Rijeka Fiume today is the city of Rijeka (‘River’ in Croatian) within the Republic of Croatia (post-Yugoslavia space)… roughly, a bit over twice the size of Fiume in d’Annunzio’s day, it comprises the most important deep-water port on the Croatian coast.
⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜
❈ the Allies’ (and US president, Wilson’s) preference had been to make Fiume into a buffer state, a prime candidate for the headquarters of the soon-to-be created League of Nations
⌖ d’Annunzio was many more things as well — decadent artist and musician, aesthete, war-monger and war-hero, necromancer, pioneering aeronautist, serial debt-defaulter, libertine and cad, above all perhaps, an indefatigable self-publicist (Hughes-Halley)
✪ progressive platform aside, Comandante d’Annunzio retained an elitist perception of his own role in national affairs, inspired by Nietzsche, that of the Übermensch or superuomo (the “superior man” who rises above society’s mediocrity)
⊞ it would be interesting to know if the Fiume Enterprise had any influence on the creation of contemporary Užupis, the bohemian “independent republic” of artists ensconced within the city of Vilnius, Lithuania 🇱🇹 – see blog Vilnius I, Senamiestis & Užupis: From Old Town to Artistocrazy? (06-November 2015)
◰ Mussolini and d’Annunzio exchange some 578 letters and telegrams until the latter’s death in 1938 [Peterson, Thomas E. “Schismogenesis and national character: the D’Annunzio-Mussolini correspondence.” Italica, vol. 81, no. 1, 2004, p. 44+. Gale Academic OneFile, Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
Wondrous Origins of Wonder Woman
In a way the Wonder Woman story starts in Medford, Massachusetts, at Tufts University, in the 1920s. William M Marston, a young progressive and unorthodox psychology professor, teaches his own DISC theory＊ to his students. One particular female student takes a shine to Marston’s DISC ideas and to the professor himself. Next thing we know Marston immerses himself in a ménage a trios with the student (Olive Bryant) and his (initially quite reluctant) wife Elizabeth. The polyamorous relationship◵ allows Bill to explore a latent interest in BSDM and arrive at the conclusion that women are the “love leaders” of society, predicting that women would “take over the rule of the country, politically and economically, within the next hundered years” [Tim Hanley, Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, (2014)].
(Source: www.money.org/)
⍋ 1st sighting of the pioneering super-heroine: Marston uses the pseudonym “Charles Moulton” for the Wonder Woman comic books
Marston over the years tries his hand at many things in addition to psychology —inventing a systolic blood pressure test (which contributes to the development of the polygraph); writing screenplays for early silent films; authoring self-help books—without ever really attaining a measure of lasting success in any. Marston’s venture into creating comic books in 1940 turns that trend around. Always looking for a new business opportunity, especially after finding himself on the outer in academe, Marston finds a new way to champion his faith in female superiority by creating Wonder Woman, the first super-heroine in comics.
⍒ Wonder Woman on the lie detector
Marston’s ‘superwoman’ Having successfully pitched the idea to DC Comics boss Max Gaines, Marston’s Wonder Woman debuts in 1941 in All Star Comics #8, with cartoonist HG Peter supplying the pencilling which have a touch of art nouveau about it. Marston embodies WW with all the attributes and values that added up to his idea of perfect femininity (based seemingly on an amalgam of the brace of women in his life, Elizabeth and Olive). The make-up of WW’s character reflects Marston’s fascination with Greek mythology. She is depicted as an Amazonian princess◘ , as “strong as Hercules”, “wise as Athena” and “beautiful as Aphrodite”. Garbed in a sexy but patriotic suit of star-spangled red, white and blue, her accoutrements are distinctively martially potent – including the “Lasso of Truth”, a device to compel people to tell the truth (an idea germinating from Marston’s lie detector prototype). WW wears indestructible bracelets which deflect bullets, a golden tiara which doubles as a projectile and an ‘invisible’ jet to whisk herself away from danger [Wonder Woman Psychology: Lassoing the Truth, edited by Travis Langley & Mara Wood (2018)].
Wonder Woman, a comic book gender transgressor In the comics of the 1930s prevailing cultural norms are reinforced, superheroes are male by gender and violent in method – the stereotypical depiction of women was commonly restricted to evil seductresses, the girlfriends of heroes (eg, Lois Lane) or their ‘helpmates’. Wonder Woman represents a radical departure from the norm, her shtick is fighting fascism in America wherever she finds it – using her brains rather than the heavy-handed brawn exhibited by Batman, Superman and co. [‘A Psychologist and A Superhero’, (Margarita Tartakovsky), Psychology Central, updated 15-Mar-2019, www.psychcentral.com].
Wonder Woman, “deer-hunting” ⍋
Comic bondage and a moral backlash
Marston is able to indulge one of his most cherished psychosexual beliefs through Wonder Woman, that “women enjoyed being bound”. In the comics it appears as a standard contrivance, we find WW being tied up by villains as some point or other in the story line. Sometimes WW herself ties up women, and to accentuate the kinkiness of her character, dresses them in deer costumes for a mock cervid hunt through the forest⁌ [‘Wonder Woman (comic book)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The BSDM preoccupation reflects a personal fetish of Marston’s but also can be linked back to the powerful influence the suffrage, feminist and birth control movements has on him (pioneering birth control activist Margaret Sanger was Olive Byrne’s aunt) ⌖. Wonder Wonder is an instant hit for the comic book-reading public (eventually reaching a weekly readership of five million), drawing the opprobrium of America’s moral guardians who object to the torture motif running through the stories, also considering WW’s outfit to be far too skimpy [‘The Surprising Origin Story of Wonder Woman’, (Jill Lepore), Smithsonian Magazine, October 2014, www.smithsonianmag.com].
⍒ Justice Society of America
At DC Comics Wonder Woman is invited to join the Justice Society of America (DC’s superhero team in the “Golden Age of Comic Books” as the period was known). WW’s elevation is hardly a step forward for gender advancement however as her designated role in the JSA is that of secretary for the male superheroes, while the ‘boys’ get on with the heroics of protecting the world from the designs of global criminal masterminds [‘The Truth About Wonder Woman’, Robert Kirkman’s Secret History Of Comics, (US documentary)].
Marston doesn’t get to appreciate the success of Wonder Woman for long, he contracts a form of cancer and dies in 1947, still in his early fifties (for the last two to three years he has an assistant, Joye Hummel, who helps ghost-write the WW stories when he is too ill). With the reins of the Wonder Woman comics passing from its originator to new hands, the iconic super-heroine’s persona and fortunes would undergo a number of transformations over the decades to follow. Initial sketch of WW by HG Peter (1941) ⍒ (Source: Smithsonian Libraries)
︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵
＊ Marston believes that the behavioural expression of emotions could be divided into four primary types – Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance [‘William Marston’, www.discprofile.com/]
◵ Elizabeth and Olive each have two children to Bill and everyone live under the same roof
◘ like Superman, Batman, etc, WW has a civilian alias – Diana Prince
⁌ such scenes may also have inspired by Byrne giving Marston a window into the activities of her sorority at Tufts University – “baby parties” where dominatrix women bind and discipline submissive sorority members [‘Curious Traditions of Times Past: Baby Parties’, (Yim Walsh), Tufts, 18-Sep-2014, www.dca.tufts.edu]
⌖ from this exposure Marston learns that the breaking of chains is “a powerful feminist symbol of emancipation” [‘A look back at Wonder Woman’s feminist (and not-so-feminist) History, (Michael Cavna), Independent, 30-May-2017, www.independent.co.uk].
♋️ ♋️ ♋️
The Palme Assassination, Sweden’s JFK Complex: A Coda?
THE modern history of Sweden has been one of continuous, peaceful state existence. Non-participation in any war since 1814, no political assassinations in the country for nearly two centuries (following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792). This remarkable run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent democratic socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.
Sveavägen murder scene 🔻
(Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)
‘Clouseauesque’ policing
The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/].
🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér
(Image: www.news.sky.com)
The police investigation was headed by Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other leads (injudiciously, witnesses with key information were ignored). After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service, 30-Jun-2020, www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.
The suspects and the conspiracy theories◘
In the 34 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both the superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements.
🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan
Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].
Political pressure for “a result”
Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen), The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite being bereft of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].
Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].
‘Skandiamannen’✪
Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.
Palme, then Swedish communications minister, (with actress Lena Nyman), appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ 🔻
‘Resolved’ but left up in the air?
Earlier this year the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].
(Source: www.latimes.com)Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga
The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).
(Source: www.cnbc.com/)
𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪
＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin
⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier
✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan
◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency
◕ among the multitude ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM, was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet