Culture

The proposed coin depicts Trump in profile on one side (the obverse). On the other side (the reverse) the president raises his fist in defiance accompanied by the words “fight, fight, fight”.

While only a draft proposal, the coin could be minted in 2026 to mark 250 years since the US declaration of independence. But an old law prohibits the “likeness of any living person” from being “placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, fractional or postal currency of the United States.”

More than 2,000 years ago, the depiction of living figures on Roman coins caused similar ructions.

It came at a time when the Roman republic was in trouble. The republic would crumble altogether soon after, ushering in the long period of Rome being led by emperor-kings who saw themselves as almost akin to gods.

Perhaps the American republic is at a similar stage.

Sulla’s image on a coin

Rome was said to be founded by the mythical king Romulus, who killed his own twin (Remus). The fledgling state was led by seven kings before it became a republic in about 509 BCE.

By the late second century BCE it was led by Roman general and politician Gaius Marius. Marius and his later rival, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, broke many of the republic’s long-held conventions. They also fought Rome’s first major civil war.

In 88 BCE, while consul, Sulla marched an army on Rome to defend the city from “tyrants” (by which he meant the faction of Marius, who had ousted him). After Sulla won the civil war that followed, he held the dictatorship from 82-79 BCE. Dictatorships were only to be held for six months in times of emergency. Sulla claimed the emergency was ongoing.

As part of this he ordered a list (known as proscriptions) of enemies drawn up. Hundreds or even thousands were killed and had property confiscated.

In the same year a silver coin (called a denarius) was minted in Sulla’s name. One side featured Sulla himself riding in a four-horse chariot.

This was the first time a living person was depicted on a Roman coin. Up to this point only gods and mythological figures had that honour.

It was highly unusual.

Caesar’s challenge to the old republic

Sulla was the first but he wouldn’t be the last leader of the Roman republic to have his image on a coin.

In 44 BCE Julius Caesar went a step further. Only months before his assassination, coins appeared with Caesar’s bust dominating their obverses. Some included the words dict perpetuo meaning “dictator for life”.

By this time, Caesar and many before him, including Marius and Sulla, had broken the mould of the old republic.

Early in 44 BCE, Caesar took the dictatorship for life.

From 46-44 BCE he held the consulship, which was only meant to be held for a one-year term at a time. (Sulla held the dictatorship three years running, which partly set the scene for Caesar’s later emergence and the final breakdown of the republic.)

For many at the time, it seemed Caesar was moving the republic in the direction of monarchy. In January 44 BCE, when a throng hailed him as “rex” (king) Caesar responded, “I am Caesar and no king”. His very name was by now more powerful.

The coins of 44 BCE containing a profile bust of Caesar were an important part of his public program, and part of his challenge to republican convention.

Sulla paved the way 40 years before.

The parallels with Trump are hard to miss

Some emphasise that Caesar did not directly order his image to be placed on coins. Those wanting to curry favour read the room and Caesar did not object.

A similar scenario appears to be playing out with the coin design bearing Trump’s image.

The parallels with Trump are hard to miss. Trump has signed more than 200 executive orders in less than nine months. His predecessor Joe Biden issued 162 in his entire presidency.

Trump’s deployment of federal troops to US cities under emergency decrees provokes cries of tyranny. Sulla’s march on Rome and the proscriptions that followed drew a similar response.

The possibility of a one dollar coin depicting Donald Trump on both sides echoes the coins of Sulla and Caesar.

They might not technically break the law but they would break convention. In the process they also symbolise a notable shift in the US from democracy to autocracy.

When the “no kings!” demonstrations took place in the US earlier this year, they reminded us of a key motivation for the declaration of independence.

A coin celebrating its 250-year anniversary may well symbolize its journey to demise.

Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many people commenting on the press conference reacted to this confusing reference to Valhalla with a mixture of amusement and disdain, with some pointing out the contradiction of eulogizing a Christian nationalist with reference to the pagan afterlife.

For scholars of the Vikings, Patel’s reference to Valhalla looked like something far more sinister. To understand why, we need to know both what Valhalla meant to the Vikings, and what it means in political discourse today.

The Norse peoples had a developed concept of the afterlife. The desirable destination for Norse warriors was Valhalla, the hall of the slain, where Odin watched over his band of chosen warriors as they prepared for Ragnarök, the world-destroying battle against the giants. Only those who died a heroic death in combat were brought to Valhalla by the Valkyries.

Those who died by sickness, old age or accident – or who had committed murder and other dishonourable crimes – seem to have been excluded from this martial afterlife. Some believed that you could cheat the Norse gods by arranging to be buried with deliberately worn and damaged weapons as if you had seen heavy combat. There’s a lot we don’t know.

What we do know is that in the 1930s the concept of Valhalla, along with the image of the heroic Viking and many of the symbols of Norse mythology, had a profound appeal to Nazi thought leaders. They looked to Norse mythology as a survival of a wider “Germanic” culture that had been erased by Judeo-Christian dominance.

The Nordic “race” was held up as the Aryan ideal. Norse cultural remnants were used to add legitimacy to the idea of a glorious German past. Heinrich Himmler in particular repurposed Norse symbols for use by the SS.

Today, many white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups continue to brand themselves using a widening range of symbols taken from Norse mythology. One aspect of Norse culture that has gained increasing prominence in the past few decades is the specific co-opting of Valhalla by those who are prepared to kill, and die, in the cause of “protecting” an endangered white supremacy.

Valhalla in terrorist manifestos

The most chilling example of the co-option of the phrase “see you in Valhalla” is found in the manifestos published by far-right terrorists in the wake of their atrocities.

In 2019, Brenton Tarrant carried out mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. He published a rambling manifesto in which he attempted to justify his actions, and touted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory which holds that Jewish elites are deliberately engineering the replacement of white populations through immigration.

This has since become a far-right talking point and was pushed by Charlie Kirk on his show. Tarrant signed off his diatribe against multiculturalism and “white genocide” by saying “Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.”

Tarrant in turn influenced other far-right terrorists. One such terrorist, Peyton Gendron, was convicted of the Buffalo mass shooting in 2022 in which ten black Americans were murdered. Gendron plagiarised much of his 180-page manifesto, and similarly ends his screed with the statement: “I hope to see you in Valhalla.”

By invoking Valhalla, these terrorists are attempting to cast themselves as warriors in the Viking tradition. There is, of course, nothing remotely heroic about gunning down unarmed civilians.

But the point is that this reference doesn’t require any understanding of the Norse tradition. In this context it comes directly from the Nazi’s fetishisation of violent death to secure the racial purity of Germany.

From terrorists to the FBI

Rather than borrowing from extremist discourse, Patel may have been influenced by the use of “til Valhalla” by the US marines to honour fallen comrades – including those who died by suicide. This is a use which has been traced back to the influence of Norwegian Nato forces in Afghanistan, who may have used “til Valhalla” as a kind of battle cry. Of course, the optics of using a military honorific to commemorate the assassination of a civilian is problematic in itself.

Patel’s “see you in Valhalla” was much closer in its wording to the sign off used by far-right terrorists – but even this phrasing was unlikely to have been lifted directly from extremists. It is more likely an example of a phenomenon often observed in the study of the far-right online ecosystem, which is the seepage of extreme right discourse into more mainstream spaces.

Neo-Nazi groups use memes, s--posting and humour as a deliberate strategy to seed increasingly extreme ideas into groups amenable to their message.

It isn’t hard to find references to Valhalla commercialized, repackaged as inspirational Viking quotes for MAGA consumption, referencing cancel culture, or even using Norse video games as a gateway to white supremacy. In this way, the more mainstream right often ends up sharing and amplifying extremist messaging.

Patel’s reference to Valhalla was at the very least a huge misstep by a government official trying to appeal to the MAGA base and elevate Kirk’s tragic killing into a heroic warrior’s death.

While he may not have made his reference to Valhalla in knowledge of its association with far-right terrorism, it nevertheless served as a signal to white supremacists. As reported elsewhere, there was a lot of engagement from the extreme right on social media, but their posts tended to ridicule Patel.

His words prompted memes on social media playing on the apparent absurdity of someone of Patel’s ethnicity cosplaying as a Viking. And among this racially tinged mockery, there was also some revelling in the fact that a stock phrase of violent white supremacy had found its way into the mouth of the director of the FBI.

Tom Birkett, Professor of Old English and Old Norse, University College Cork

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If past is prologue, these efforts may backfire.

In 2018, I published my book “Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock.”

A devout evangelical Christian, Comstock hoped to use the powers of the government to impose moral standards on American expression in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. To that end, he and like-minded donors established the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which successfully lobbied for the creation of the first federal anti-obscenity laws with enforcement provisions.

Later appointed inspector for the Post Office Department, Comstock fought to abolish whatever he deemed blasphemous and sinful: birth control, abortion aids and information about sexual health, along with certain art, books and newspapers. Federal and state laws gave him the power to order law enforcement to seize these materials and have prosecutors bring criminal indictments.

I analyzed thousands of these censorship cases to assess their legal and cultural outcomes.

I found that, over time, Comstock’s censorship regime did lead to a rise in self-censorship, confiscations and prosecutions. However, it also inspired greater support for free speech and due process.

More popular – and more profitable

One effect of Comstock’s censorship campaigns: The materials and speech he disfavored often made headlines, putting them on the public’s radar as a kind of “forbidden fruit.”

For example, prosecutions targeting artwork featuring nude subjects led to both sensational media coverage and a boom in the popularity of nudes on everything from soap advertisements and cigar boxes to photographs and sculptures.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs of racy forms of entertainment – promoters of belly dancing, publishers of erotic postcards and producers of “living pictures,” which were exhibitions of seminude actors posing as classical statuary – all benefited from Comstock’s complaints. If Comstock wanted it shut down, the public often assumed that it was fun and trendy.

In 1891, Comstock became irate when a young female author proposed paying him to attack her book and “seize a few copies” to “get the newspapers to notice it.” And in October 1906, Comstock threatened to shut down an exhibition of models performing athletic exercises wearing form-fitting union suits. Twenty thousand people showed up to Madison Square Garden for the exhibition – far more than the venue could hold at the time.

The Trump administration’s recent efforts to get comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air have similarly backfired.

Kimmel had generated controversy for comments he made on his late-night talk show in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. ABC, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., initially acquiesced to pressure from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr and announced the show’s “indefinite” suspension. But many viewers, angered over the company’s capitulation, canceled their subscriptions of Disney streaming services. This led to a 3.3% drop in Disney’s share price, which spurred legal actions by shareholders of the publicly traded company.

ABC soon lifted the suspension. Kimmel returned, drawing 6.26 million live viewers – more than four times his normal audience – while over 26 million viewers watched Kimmel’s return monologue on social media. Since then, all network affiliates have resumed airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

‘Comstockery’ and hypocrisy

In the U.S., disfavored political speech and obscenity are different in important ways. The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment provides broad protections for political expression, whereas speech deemed to be obscene is illegal.

Despite this fundamental difference, social and cultural forces can make it difficult to clearly discern protected and unprotected speech.

In Comstock’s case, the public was happy to see truly explicit pornography removed from circulation. But their own definition of what was “obscene” – and, therefore, criminally liable – was much narrower.

In 1905, Comstock attempted to shut down a theatrical performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” because the plot included prostitution. The aging censor was widely ridiculed and became a “laughing stock,” according to The New York Times. Shaw went on to coin the term “Comstockery,” which caught on as a shorthand for overreaching censoriousness.

In a similar manner, when Attorney General Pam Bondi recently threatened Americans that the Department of Justice “will absolutely … go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” swift backlash ensued.

Numerous Supreme Court rulings have held that hate speech is constitutionally protected. However, those in power can threaten opponents with punishment even when their speech clearly does not fall within one of the rare exceptions to the First Amendment protection for political speech.

Doing so carries risks.

The old saying “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” also applies to censors: The public holds them to higher standards, lest they be exposed as hypocrites.

For critics of the Trump administration, it was jarring to see officials outraged about “hate speech,” only to hear the president announce, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

In Comstock’s case, defendants and their attorneys routinely noted that Comstock had seen more illicit materials than any man in the U.S. Criticizing Comstock in 1882, Unitarian minister Octavius Brooks Frothingham quoted Shakespeare: “Who is so virtuous as to be allowed to forbid the distribution of cakes and ale?”

In other words, if you’re going to try to enforce moral standards, you better make sure you’re beyond reproach.

Free speech makes for strange bedfellows

Comstock’s censorship campaign, though self-defeating in the long run, nonetheless caused enormous suffering, just as many people today are suffering from calls to fire and harass those whose viewpoints are legal, but disliked by the Trump administration.

Comstock prosecuted women’s rights advocate Ida Craddock for circulating literature that advocated for female sexual pleasure. After Craddock was convicted in 1902, she died by suicide. She left behind a “letter to the public,” in which she accused Comstock of violating her rights to freedom of religion and speech.

During Craddock’s trial, the jury hadn’t been permitted to see her writings; they were deemed “too harmful.” Incensed by these violations of the First and Fourth amendments, defense attorneys rallied together and were joined by a new coalition in the support of Americans’ constitutional rights. Lincoln Steffens of the nascent Free Speech League wrote, in response to Craddock’s suicide, that “those who believe in the general principle of free speech must make their point by supporting it for some extreme cause. Advocating free speech only for a popular or uncontroversial position would not convey the breadth of the principle.”

Then, as now, the cause of free expression can bring together disparate political factions.

In the wake of the Kimmel saga, many conservative Republicans came out to support the same civil liberties also advocated by liberal Hollywood actors. Two-thirds of Americans in a September 2025 YouGov poll said that it was “unacceptable for government to pressure broadcasters to remove shows it disagrees with.”

My conclusion from studying the 43-year career of America’s most prolific censor?

Government officials may think a campaign of suppression and fear will silence their opponents, but these threats could end up being the biggest impediment to their effort to remake American culture.

Amy Werbel, Professor of the History of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The cancellation is a harbinger of what could happen under a fundamental restructuring of U.S. media that will take place if the proposed Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved by the Trump administration.

The deal, first revealed on September 11, 2025, would erase one of the five remaining movie studios and concentrate oversight of two of the country’s most prominent newsrooms – CNN and CBS, both targets of the Trump administration’s ire – under one owner with strong ties to Donald Trump.

Based on research from the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project, our analysis shows that Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery would gain control of more than a quarter of the US$223 billion U.S. media market, along with influence over film, television, streaming and the cloud infrastructure upon which digital media increasingly depends.

The combined entity would acquire nearly half of the cable television market, including HBO and CNN. The merger would nearly double Paramount’s share of the video streaming market, uniting HBO Max, Paramount+ and Discovery.

By combining two major Hollywood film studios, it would also capture nearly one-third of the film production market.

This is exactly the type of merger that U.S. antitrust agencies have historically scrutinized because of concerns that excessive market concentration gives too much power to a few companies.

In media markets, such concerns are pronounced: Concentration threatens media diversity and increases the risk of media bias and ideological manipulation.

A mega-conglomerate like Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would control a vast share of U.S. viewership. Subject to pressure from or, worse, alignment with the Trump administration, the merged company could promote and protect the administration’s interests.

Cloud control

By combining media production and valuable brands such as Harry Potter, DC Comics and Barbie, the merged giant would gain great negotiating power with competing streaming companies, advertisers and distributors. The merged companies could also secure more lucrative streaming deals, better licensing windows and higher per subscriber and ad rates with cable providers.

The 2023 Hollywood writers and actors strikes opposed the exploitative impact of streaming and AI on creative workers’ compensation. The new media giant would wield significant bargaining power over those media workers.

The merger’s potential detrimental impact extends beyond film and television industries.

Paramount is helmed by David Ellison, and the merger is backed by his father, Larry Ellison. Ellison senior owns the world’s fifth-largest cloud provider, Oracle.

Cloud providers are the critical infrastructure for streaming platforms, ferrying digital content from streamers to viewers. As streaming becomes the dominant mode of media consumption, the Ellison family’s control over this infrastructure could give Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery another lever of power over its competitors.

Diversity denied

With potential size and reach to rival Disney and Comcast’s NBC Universal, Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery could become another massive media outlet with right-wing ties.

The proposed deal follows the Trump administration’s $1.1 billion cuts in public media funding. These cuts – affecting PBS, NPR and more than 1,500 affiliated local news stations across the country, all accused by Trump of “partisan bias” – effectively accelerate the ongoing demise of local, independent news.

Concurrently, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. has settled its dynastic succession, ensuring Fox remains a core channel for the American right.

If the merger is approved, Fox Corporation, the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting and Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would control one-third of all U.S. media.

This consolidation would further cement the partisan media model driving deepening political polarization in the U.S., as public and local news media lose funding. The deal also would undermine already declining media independence, fundamental to holding the powerful – whether corporations or politicians – to account.

Wielding regulation

The Trump administration has not shied away from using antitrust law and communications regulation to exercise political control over media.

Before initiating its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount was acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance Media. Ahead of the government’s merger review, amid regulatory signals it could affect the review process, Paramount-owned CBS paid $16.5 million dollars to Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit Trump filed based on allegations of “deceptive” editing of an interview with his political opponent Kamala Harris. Editing of interviews is a standard editorial practice.

Shortly after, the merger was approved by the FCC with strict political conditions: hiring an ombudsman to oversee CBS’s reporting and eliminating all of the network’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

David Ellison accepted these conditions, promising to eliminate all of Paramount’s U.S.-based DEI programs. For the ombudsman role, he hired Kenneth Weinstein, former CEO of the conservative Hudson Institute and ambassador to Japan under the first Trump administration.

Since then, the Paramount CEO also has pursued Bari Weiss, a prominent conservative voice, to guide “the editorial direction” of the CBS news division. Ellison’s moves signal that editorial independence at CBS, and soon perhaps CNN, may be subject to ideological oversight.

Meanwhile, Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, has ties to Donald Trump going back to the first Trump administration. The New York Times in an April 2025 profile said that Ellison “may be closer to Mr. Trump than any mogul this side of” Elon Musk.

The senior Ellison has been playing a key role in negotiations over the future ownership of TikTok. His ties to Trump run deep enough to likely make him one of the main beneficiaries of the TikTok deal currently in negotiation between the United States and China.

Trump has shown an appetite for coercing media companies. For instance, ABC settled a Trump lawsuit in late 2024 with a $15 million donation to the as-yet-unbuilt Trump Library.

By placing two major news outlets in the hands of a family with ties to Trump, the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger would facilitate such control.

What Orbán did – but faster

This is the “Hungarian model” on speed.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian leader, spent a decade asserting increasing control over that nation’s media.

The Trump administration is poised to accomplish the same in less than a year – and at greater scale.

In addition to helping allies buy a growing share of U.S. media, in his first eight months Trump also has managed to score conciliatory overtures from the nation’s tech billionaires, who fired fact-checkers at major social media platforms, curbed moderation of hateful content and asserted rigid editorial control over the op-ed pages at The Washington Post, one of the country’s most prominent newspapers.

If the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved and Larry Ellison joins Andreessen Horowitz as part of the impending TikTok deal, a movie studio, CBS, CNN, Fox, 185 Sinclair-owned TV stations and a major social media platform will have owners with strong ties to Trump.

We believe the promised benefits of a Paramount-Warner Bros. Disovery merger, including lower streaming prices, pale next to the damage it would do to media diversity and pluralism.

By acquiring greater control over film production, TV and streaming, the merger would dramatically reconfigure the very media institutions that shape U.S. culture and politics.

The Trump administration’s review of this merger may further cement the administration’s political control over the U.S. media.

Pawel Popiel, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Washington State University; Dwayne Winseck, Professor of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University; Hendrik Theine, Postdoctoral fellow, Johannes Kepler University Linz, University of Pennsylvania, and Sydney Forde, Postdoctoral Fellow in Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bella Ciao (literally, “hello beautiful” or “goodbye beautiful”) is a traditional Italian folk song known for its association with the anti-fascist resistance in Italy during the second world war.

It has since moved beyond its usage as an Italian resistance song, appearing internationally in TV series, video games and TikTok videos.

It’s unclear how the reference on the bullet casings was intended to be read, but here’s what we know about the song, and its ties to the history of Fascism in Italy.

What is Fascism?

Fascism was a political movement conceived in Italy. It came to power for the first time in 1922 with the “March on Rome” of the fascist “Black Shirt” squadrons, led by Benito Mussolini.

The movement reframed the concept of freedom in society as possible only under the rule of a dictator.

Traits included the repression of political opposition, complete control of the media, intense propaganda campaigns and racial laws.

Atrocities were committed, including with military invasions and occupations in Africa in attempts to recreate an Italian empire.

Fascism in Italy coincided with advancements in the economy and industrialisation. By the 1930s, fascist political movements appeared across Europe including in the United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Norway and, most notably, in Germany.

A common misconception today is to equate Fascism and Nazism. Fascism refers to a broad array of often contradictory authoritarian political philosophies. German Nazism falls under the broad banner of fascism, but there was only one Nazism, based in specific theories of racist suprematism.

The definition of fascism has always been ambiguous, but after the demise of the Italian Fascist and German Nazi regimes, it lost much of its political meaning in commonplace use.

In a 1946 article for the Tribune newspaper, George Orwell declared:

the word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.

Giving examples such as referring to someone who adheres to a strict diet as a “health-fascist”, or someone who advocates for the environment as an “eco-fascist”, in 2013, political theorist Roger Griffin noted:

The term ‘fascism’ continues to be bandied about by those clearly more interested in its seemingly inexhaustible polemical force than in anything resembling historical or political fact.

Some scholars in Fascism, such as Ruth Ben Ghiat, warn against the authoritarian tendencies of leaders including Donald Trump.

But the unwieldy labelling of politicians or commentators operating within democratic systems of government as “Fascist” is misguided. It dilutes the meaning and memory of Fascism.

What is the song Bella Ciao?

Like many traditional songs, the origins of Bella Ciao are not definitively known.

The melody is thought to date back to 1919. The first documentation of the lyrics is from 1953.

Oral traditions trace the origin of the meaning to the Apennine mountains in the Italian region of Emilia. There, during the second world war, anti-fascist fighters with modest resources stood up to the power of the Fascist regime.

The lyrics recount the solemn story of a fighter bidding farewell to his loved one, preparing to sacrifice his life for liberty.

In Italy, the song has become revered as an almost sacred tribute, sung on occasions such as the anniversary of the liberation of the country from Fascist rule in 1945.

In recent years, Bella Ciao has become popular outside of Italy. It featured in the Spanish Netflix series Money Heist (2017) and on the soundtrack of the first person shooter video game Far Cry 6 (2021).

With a catchy tune and innocuous chorus, Bella Ciao has been remixed in dance music, and featured on TikTok videos. These adaptations pay limited or no attention to the political meaning.

But some new uses of the song, while drawing on its uninformed popularity, are politically reinfusing it for purposes different to its original context.

In October 2024, members of the European Parliament on the political left chanted the chorus in response to a speech by Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban.

No formal explanation was given, but here the use of the song can be understood as a loose attempt to indirectly associate Orban with Fascism.

Making meaning

Bella Ciao has developed conflicting meanings, stemming, at least in part, from the many modern meanings and interpretations of Fascism.

We do not know what was intended by inscribing bullet casings with this traditional song, or what the inscriber’s understanding of Fascism and Nazism are.

But by understanding all of these conflicts, we can avoid collapsing the meanings into a single, monolithic phenomenon – and avoid the dangers of trivialisation and misappropriation.

Justin Mallia, PhD Candidate in Art History and Theory, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The film pushes hard against the gendered conventions of the sci-fi genre, re-pointing them to unexpected ends.

Inner growth in outer space

The film is structured around a basic quest narrative. Can introspective Princess Saira rescue her ex-girlfriend, Kiki, from the evil clutches of a rogue group of incels known as the Straight White Maliens?

Low on self-confidence and belittled by her royal lesbian mothers, Saira sustains an unshakeable attachment to Kiki, a soft-butch bounty hunter who is as attachment avoidant as Saira is clingy.

Saira battles through the beautifully drawn pink-hued reaches of constellations and moonscapes in a spaceship (depressively voiced by Richard Roxburgh). As she reluctantly traverses outer space, she must step up to its greatest challenge: plumbing the messy depths of her inner world.

Saira hails from Clitopolis, a place reputed to be hard to find but actually quite easy (one of many running jokes that tap into lesbian takes on heterosexual inadequacy). She has grown up in an exclusively gay space, kept safe by the bubble of drag.

But once this camp seam is pierced, she finds herself in a masculinist universe dominated by Straight White Maliens and others determined to steal her totemic labrys. The Maliens appear as cigarette shapes devoid of colour. Their differences are delineated only by the amount of anger and frustration conveyed in their single-line eyebrows.

They hector and rage in their aptly named man cave, where they train themselves in the old arts of mansplaining and making non-consensual advances. Desperate to pull “hot chicks”, the Maliens have no idea how to build relationships with women.

On the other hand, the lesbians don’t seem to know how not to. They meet, they crush, have great sex, and then the intensity of attachments gets too much. Almost instantly, one starts “friendzoning” the other.

This take on next-gen lesbian relationships is an amusing counter to the slow-burn tedium of the sapphic costume dramas that have won so many fans, chief among them Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019).

Like the Wachowskis’ Bound (1996) and David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001), Lesbian Space Princess comes from the counter-tradition in which the sex happens early – then gives way to the ecstatic pulses and rhythms of story.

In this case, the outer-space story is the stimulus for an inner journey in which Saira comes to understand herself differently. She comes to see herself not as a needy young princess capable of pleasuring others with her magic hands (astute viewers will notice she has been gifted an extra finger on each hand), but as a competent, caring and self-reliant person.

Affect over adventure

Ultimately, Lesbian Space Princess delivers Saira to her destiny as a quirky and isolated royal whose emotional sustenance comes from self-love rather than crushes. This character development arc is supported by the guitar-based songs laced through the frenetically paced genre mayhem of the film.

Derived from familiar indie genres, the songs are a welcome respite from the propulsive quest mechanism that drives the story.

Beginning with a comic scene of Ed Sheeran busking in outer space, the songs bring depth to the flatly drawn world of the space adventure story. The musical interludes are drawn and filmed with the spatial depth of Japanese anime. They’re more in line with the psychic dreaminess of Hayao Miyazaki than the many 90s animations that inspired the noodle-armed citizens of Clitopolis.

This inward turn enables Saira to ditch both Kiki, the outlaw ex, and Willow, her emo-goth replacement. With the girlfriends out of the picture, the film achieves sentimental closure by zooming in on the odd-couple friendship that has developed between Saira and the jalopy of a spaceship that has been supporting her all along.

Rather than provide lesbian romantic satisfaction or ground its utopian energies in the bold new world of queer community, Lesbian Space Princess lands in the relatively unexplored space of allosexuality. The way desire is experienced by the self is more important than who or what it is directed toward.

Lesbian Space Princess is in cinemas now.

Lee Wallace, Professor, Film Studies, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A large part of Kirk’s political activism centered on what education should look like. Amy Lieberman, The Conversation’s education editor, spoke with Daniel Ruggles, a scholar of conservative youth activism, to better understand the beliefs about education that influenced Kirk and the connection he tried to make with young people.

What is most important to understand about Charlie Kirk’s views on education?

Charlie Kirk’s education philosophy was founded upon the idea of not being on the left. One of the problems with that approach is that it’s harder to explain your ideas and values in a positive way instead of just being “anti” left.

Conservatives, well before Kirk’s time, have been trying to reclaim education from liberals whom they view as valuing equity and belonging instead of timeless values of order and traditional values in society. This philosophy overall focuses on reclaiming education from liberals.

There is a lot of alignment with Kirk’s education philosophy and the Make America Great Again movement, but his approach predates Donald Trump’s rise. It is focused on returning to what conservatives call Western and “traditional” values. This means rolling back the clock to an idealized time when men and women had set gender roles in society and life was more harmonious and wholesome. At its best, this education philosophy can be valuable – teaching what society views as virtuous behavior, ethics and tradition – but it can also prioritize tradition and privilege over justice and equity.

This philosophy also has to do with not feeling a need to apologize for one’s identity. A big divide between liberals and conservatives is how they explain disadvantage. Conservatives like Kirk believe they should not have to apologize for their identities, and other people’s identities should not be a reason for special treatment.

This philosophy is not so much about making education more effective as much as it is about not being “woke.” De-woking the classroom is usually the overall goal. This involves ridding the classroom of what is known as grievance politics – meaning someone believes they have been marginalized because of their identity, race, gender or sexuality.

How far back can you trace this educational philosophy?

The 1960s had an explosion of progressive activism amid the New Left and antiwar movements as young adults realized that they could now demand certain rights. At the same time, there were a lot of young conservatives on campuses who felt fine with the way things were or who were concerned about some of the more radical ideas promoted by the New Left.

Universities became more inclusive in the 1960s, too. Generally, there were not any gender studies programs at American universities until the 1960s and 1970s, nor were there any race and ethnicity programs. Some conservatives pushed back on the emergence of these programs, saying that if there is an African American studies department, they want to see a conservative studies department, too.

After the 1960s, conservative education fights died down. Conservatives still wanted their voices heard on campus, but their merit-only based education philosophy seemed less relevant when left-wing campus protests had declined significantly.

How did Charlie Kirk capitalize on the conservative feelings regarding education?

Kirk founded his political nonprofit, Turning Point USA, in 2012. Kirk didn’t originally support Trump, but he became friends with Donald Trump Jr., and eventually became close with the president. Like Trump, Kirk saw academia as the source of a plethora of problems in American society. His goal was to make college campuses more friendly to conservative students by making conservative ideas like free market economics and traditional gender roles more popular.

There was a lot of foundation laying over time for Kirk’s conservative education philosophy. Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel, as well as the subsequent war in Gaza and Palestinian rights protests in the U.S., offered a moment for conservatives like Kirk to brand progressives at schools as this huge threat.

What was Kirk’s tour focused on accomplishing?

Kirk and others in the conservative youth movement want their followers to have a close relationship with them. This helps conservatives influence government and society, using college campuses to recruit young adults as conservative voters and activists, making the university appear less progressive in the process. Let’s say progressive college kids have Bernie Sanders or Che Guevara posters hanging in their dorm rooms. Conservatives like Kirk have built an all-encompassing, alternative world for young conservatives to become involved in, where they have proximity to political and thought leaders, including Kirk. Turning Point has used flashy slogans, signs and bumper stickers to help make conservatism cool on campus.

Kirk’s tour had just begun, but he had planned to make stops at universities in Colorado, Utah, Minnesota, Montana and other states. It was important that Kirk himself was in the room with young people, and that they could ask him questions and talk with him. He was considered approachable in a way that most politicians would not be.

Conservatives have used this strategy for a long time. My own research shows how college students would write to conservative leaders like Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley in the 1960s and 1970s and these figures would write back. This kind of proximity between leaders and young supporters isn’t seen on the left. The goal is to cultivate a conservative movement community. Many of those conservative college students later worked for the government. Kirk’s tour was about continuing that kind of direct relationship between conservative leaders and young people.

Conservatives have a pipeline – meaning, let’s say you’re in high school and you discover conservative ideas by watching Charlie Kirk on YouTube. In college, you can go to Turning Point events and meet conservative leaders. After you graduate, you can even get a job with a conservative group through websites like ConservativeJobs.com. The point of the pipeline is to always give young conservatives a next step to becoming more involved in politics. While not everyone follows this pipeline, it helps the conservative movement cultivate new generations of talent. I think Kirk had a lot he was trying to accomplish, including building up a reservoir of young talent through Turning Point.

How is Turning Point distinct from the Republican Party and MAGA?

Turning Point isn’t the same as the Republican Party, but it’s helping to push the party further to the right. Turning Point has alienated other members of the conservative movement in certain ways. In 2018, the conservative youth group Young America’s Foundation accused Turning Point of taking over the conservative youth movement and crowding out other groups. Turning Point’s total revenue has grown considerably in the last few years, topping US$85 million in 2024 – that matters because money and attention help Turning Point push out other conservative voices.

Kirk and Trump agreed on a lot of policy issues. Kirk used Turning Point to define conservatism on his terms and to defend Trump. Education is the bulk of Turning Point’s work, a continuation of what has historically also been been the most important cultural issue on the right since the 1960s.

Daniel Ruggles, PhD Candidate in Politics, Brandeis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The sentiment is also portrayed in popular culture such as the hit TV show “Yellowstone.”

“It’s the one constant in life. You build something worth having, someone’s gonna try to take it,” says patriarch John Dutton. He was facing repeated threats by developers from “the city” to annex his land for a luxury hotel and resort development.

As a policy scholar, I’ve talked to and interviewed many dozens of people in rural areas in Colorado. I’ve also read hundreds of newspaper articles and watched hundreds of hours of legislative testimony that capture the sentiment of rural people being left behind, left out and snubbed by their urban counterparts.

Recently, I studied the divide between rural and urban Coloradans by looking at their responses to four statewide policies. A designated day to forgo eating meat, two political appointees and the ongoing wolf reintroduction.

These policies, while specific to Colorado, are symptoms of something larger. Namely, an ever-urbanizing, globalized world that rural, agricultural citizens feel is leaving them behind.

‘MeatOut’ or misstep?

My expertise doesn’t just come from my research – I’ve lived it.

I grew up in a rural community in Elbert County, Colorado, about an hour- and-a-half southeast of Denver.

In early 2021, Gov. Jared Polis declared via proclamation that March 20 would be a “MeatOut Day.” For health and environmental reasons, Colorado residents were encouraged to forgo meat for a single day.

Supported by the Farm Animal Rights Movement, MeatOuts have been promoted across the U.S. since the 1980s. Typically, gubernatorial proclamations, of which hundreds are passed each year and are completely ceremonial and devoid of any long-term formal policy implications, go largely unnoticed. And in Denver, Colorado’s metropolitan center, this one did too.

Not so in rural Colorado.

My neighbors in Elbert County promptly responded with outrage, flying banners and flags declaring their support for agriculture and a carnivorous diet.

One rancher from Nathrop painted a stack of hay bales to say, “Eat Beef Everyday.”

Communities all over the state, and even in neighboring states, responded with “MeatIns,” where they gathered to eat meat and celebrate agriculture and the rural way of life. They also coupled these events with fundraisers, for various causes, for which hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised across the state. While Polis backed off the MeatOut after 2021, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has, just this year, supported a similar “Eat Less Meat” campaign, prompting similar rural outrage.

Did I mention there are nearly 36,000 cattle in Elbert County? This is relatively typical of a rural Colorado county, particularly on the Plains.

In Colorado, 2.7 million cattle are raised annually, with a value of US$4.5 billion. The industry is consistently the top agricultural commodity and the second-largest contributor to Colorado’s GDP, at about $7.7 billion per year.

In early March 2021, Polis declared March 22 “Colorado Livestock Proud Day,” in response to the backlash.

Other policies

This came on the heels of several policies supported by Polis prior to the MeatOut controversy that critics considered anti-agriculture.

In 2020, he appointed Ellen Kessler, a vegan and animal rights activist, to the State Veterinary Board. Kessler criticized 4-H programs, designed to educate youth on agriculture and conservation, on her social media, insisting they “don’t teach children that animal lives matter.” Kessler resigned in March 2022, just days before she was cited for 13 counts of animal cruelty. More recently, in May 2025, Polis appointed Nicole Rosmarino to head the State Land Board. Rosmarino has ties to groups that oppose traditional agricultural practices, historically a key component of Colorado State Land Board operations.

Then came wolf reintroduction, passed by urban voters by just under 57,000 votes in the 2020 general election and supported by the governor. Those in support advocated for a return to natural biodiversity; wolves were hunted to extinction in the 1940s.

Rural residents voted decidedly against the initiative. Despite much legislative and grassroots action to oppose it, wolves were reintroduced in December 2023 in various areas along the Western Slope, in close proximity to many ranches. Several cattle have since been killed by wolves. Ever since, rural interests have been working to overturn wolf reintroduction on the 2026 ballot.

An American mess

Rural residents in Colorado have told me they feel excluded. This is not new or exclusive to Colorado, but a story as old as America itself.

University of Wisconsin political scientist Katherine J. Cramer wrote about this rural exclusion in Wisconsin, calling it “rural resentment.” Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild called it “stolen pride.” In their book, Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, and Paul Waldman, a longtime journalist, characterize it as “white rural rage.”

It’s a dynamic that descends from slavery. Isabel Wilkerson, in her book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” demonstrates that while Black Americans have historically been relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of an American caste system, poor white people are strategically positioned just above them but below white Americans of higher socioeconomic status. As Wilkerson explains, this is a durable system sustained by norms, laws and cultural expectations that feel “natural.” But they are entirely constructed and designed by the American upper class to intentionally exploit resentment of working-class white people.

The result is what sociologist Michael M. Bell calls a “spatial patriarchy” that characterizes rural America as dumb, incapable, racist, poor and degraded as “white trash.”

This spatial patriarchy is as old as industrialization and urbanization. One of the first policy iterations was rural school consolidation during the turn of the 20th century, designed to modernize schools and make them more efficient. Urban policymakers were influenced by eugenics and the assumption that rural schools “were populated by cognitively deficient children whose parents had not been smart enough or fortunate enough to leave the decaying countryside,” according to sociologist Alex DeYoung.

So, states around the country consolidated schools, the lifeblood of rural communities. Where a school closed, the town often died, as in small towns, schools are not just socioeconomic hubs but centers of cultural and social cohesion.

Environmental impact

The same concept – that urban policymakers know better than rural Americans – is manifest in the modern environmental movement. Like with the MeatOut, rural communities also distrust environmental policies that, in their view, intentionally target a rural way of life. Rural communities take the position that they’ve been made to bear the brunt of the transformations of the global economy for generations, including those that deal with energy and the environment.

For example, environmentalists frequently call for lowering meat consumption and enacting livestock taxes to lower global greenhouse gas emissions.

But, there’s a huge, untapped potential for environmental policies that use language consistent with rural attitudes and values, such as ideas about conservation and land stewardship. Political scientists Richard H. Foster and Mark K. McBeth explain, “Rural residents perceive, probably correctly, that environmental ‘outsiders’ are perfectly willing to sacrifice local economic well-being and traditional ways of life on the altar of global environmental concerns.” They instead suggest “emphasizing saving resources for future generations” so that rural communities may continue to thrive.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations attribute between 18% to 24% of greenhouse gas emissions to agriculture, while the International Panel on Climate Change places the estimate closer to 10%. However, agricultural producers point out that, while they may be responsible for that 10%, just 100 companies, such as BP and ExxonMobil, have produced 70% of all emissions. Agricultural producers say policies such as livestock taxes would disproportionately impact small-scale farmers and intensify rural inequality.

Rural communities have the distinct feeling that urban America doesn’t care whether they fail or flourish. Nearly 70% of rural voters supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election. He won 93% of rural counties. Rural Americans feel left behind, and for them, Trump might be their last hope.

Kayla Gabehart, Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy, Michigan Technological University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For the past decade, wave upon wave of protests against police violence and mass incarceration have drawn the public’s attention toward the continued significance of America’s color line, the set of formal and informal rules that maintain white Americans’ elevated social and economic advantages.

Meanwhile, an explosion of popular literature scrutinizes those rules and places white people’s elevated status in sharp relief.

How are white people making sense of these tensions?

In his 1935 publication “Black Reconstruction in America,” sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois described the “public and psychological wage” paid to white workers in the post-Reconstruction era on account of their being white. Today those “wages of whiteness” remain durable as ever. Nearly 60 years removed from the high water mark of the Civil Rights movement, its aims have not been met.

White people still enjoy better jobs, health care, housing, schooling and more.

I’m a sociologist of race and racism. My team of graduate student researchers and I have spent the past four years interviewing white people to understand how they make sense of their white racial status today. We concentrated our efforts among white people living in the U.S. South because that region is seen as more responsible for shaping what it means to be white, and the social and economic advantages of being white, than any other.

There is not much research on how white people think about what it means to be white. Meanwhile, popular and scholarly treatments of white Southerners as overwhelmingly conservative and racially regressive abound.

Some white Southerners we spoke with fit those tropes. Many others do not. Overall, we found white Southerners across the political spectrum actively grappling with their white racial status.

As Walter, 38, from Clarksdale, Mississippi, told us, “It’s a complicated time to be a white Southerner.” We use pseudonyms to protect anonymity.

Crises cast a long shadow

The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci defined a crisis as a historical period in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” Within this space between, Gramsci argued, “morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.”

Many people we spoke with lived through the defining ruptures of the 20th century that forever changed the South, and America too: the formal demise of Jim Crow rule, violent and bloody struggles over integration, and the slow, uneven march toward equal rights for all Americans.

Still others came of age against the backdrop of the defining shocks of this new century: 9/11 and the war on terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, the racial backlash to the election of Barack Obama, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

For some, the political rise of Donald Trump and his willingness to traffic in racist rhetoric constituted a crisis, too. “He embodies everything that is immoral,” said Ned, 45, from Vardaman, Mississippi. The town Ned is from is named for James K. Vardaman, former governor of Mississippi who once declared that “if it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”

Taken together, these crises cast a long shadow of uncertainty over white people’s elevated social position and anchor how white Southerners understand their white racial status.

Resistance to desegregation

Miriam, 61, from Natchez, Mississippi, grew up under the last gasps of Jim Crow. She recalled her parents pulling her from public school and sending her to a nearby private school shortly after the Supreme Court’s 1969 Alexander v. Holmes ruling, which ordered the immediate desegregation of Southern schools.

Her new school was one of hundreds of “segregation academies” founded across the South in the aftermath of the court’s ruling.

“You didn’t go over there, by the Black school,” Miriam recalled. “You stayed over by the white school. … I remember as a kid that made quite an impression.”

Reflecting on what it means to be a white Southerner today, Miriam drew from these experiences living under the region’s long shadow of segregation.

“There’s been so much hatred and so much unpleasantness. I want to do everything I can to make relations better,” she said. “I think that is part of being white in the South.”

Daryl, 42, a self-described conservative, lived in several Southern communities as a child, including Charlotte, North Carolina, in the mid-1980s as the city wrestled with its court-ordered school busing program. Daryl recalled his parents and other white people complaining about the poor quality of newly integrated schools, including telling him “stories of things like needles on the playground.”

Daryl rarely, if ever, talked with his own parents about race, but he broaches these topics with his own children today.

A self-described “childhood racist,” Daryl draws from his experiences to frame his conversations with his own children. “I remind them that there used to be this day where this was OK, and this is how things were thought of,” he says.

‘Good reason to be mad’

The region’s history also includes more contemporary crises.

Lorna, 34, is a registered Republican from Marion, Arkansas. She described how recent protests against police violence are affecting her understanding of America’s color line.

“I feel like Black people are mad or angry. They’re tired of violence and, you know, profiling,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s just in the South. I think it’s all over the United States. And they have a good reason to be mad.”

Kenneth, 35, lives in Memphis. Like Lorna and others, Kenneth’s sense of what it means to be white has been shaped by more recent crises, including the racial backlash to Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012 that motivated Trump’s election in 2016.

Reflecting on these episodes, Kenneth believes he has an obligation as a white Southerner to become more informed about “the legacy of racism in the South and the impact that it still has today.”

Becoming more informed, Kenneth says, “will cause me to reflect on how I should think about that, and what, if anything, I should do differently now.”

Uncovering what’s minimized or ignored

Our interviews reveal a range of beliefs and attitudes among white Southerners often discounted or dismissed altogether by more popular and scholarly treatments of the region.

Contrary to research that finds white people minimizing or ignoring their elevated social status, the white Southerners we spoke with showed a profound awareness of the advantages their white racial status affords them.

“I have to admit I’m glad I’m white,” said Luke, 75, from Melber, Kentucky. “Because in the United States you probably have a little advantage.”

Our research also shows that how white people make sense of who they are is also a matter of where they are.

Places – and not just Southern ones – are imbued with ideas and beliefs that give meaning and significance to the people within them. The region’s history of racial conflict, meanwhile, renders the “wages of whiteness” more plain to see for white Southerners in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Put plainly: Place matters for how race matters.

Emphasizing this more complicated understanding of race and place allows for a more complete account of the South, including how the unfolding racial dramas of the past several decades continue to shape the region and its people.

James M. Thomas, Professor of Sociology, University of Mississippi

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.