Gegen Ende wird's dann doch ein wenig sentimental in U. Sinclairs "Petroleum": Insgesamt aber doch lesbar. Und angesichts der us-amerikanischen Zustände durchaus aktuell: Korruption allüberall, Geldgier - und je reicher und skrupelloser desto größer der Erfolg. Insofern wäre Harding auch 100 Jahre später ein "würdiger" Präsident. Die Kontinuität von Rückgratlosigkeit und Rücksichtslosigkeit.

#Literatur
#UptonSinclair

#UptonSinclair’s “#TheJungle” 120 Years Later: Still Lethal After all These Years

https://socialistplanningbeyondcapitalism.org/upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-120-years-later-still-lethal-after-all-these-years/
#book #books #classicliterature #literature

Die Lektüre von Upton Sinclairs "Petroleum" ist bislang eine eher positive Überraschung. Nach dem etwas durchwachsenen Lesevergnügen der "Römischen Vision" waren meine Erwartungen gering: Aber die Figuren sind weniger schablonenhaft, klischeebehaft als in der "Vision". Dass ein offen mit der Linken sympathisierender Autor in den USA (natürlich auch in der ganzen Welt) so erfolgreich sein konnte, überrascht immer noch.

#Literatur
#UptonSinclair

📖 #ElFinDelMundo, gran novela de #UptonSinclair. Paso a paso, sin prisas, te introduce en una historia que deseas leer pero que no acabe. Por desgracia para mi bolsillo, creo que voy a ser del club de amigos de Lanny Budd. 8/10. #Literatura.

We live in worrying times. Fascism is on the rise across Europe and America, according to the consensus of many commentators. In this post, I will highlight SF that has speculated on the rise and activities of fascism. In a later blog post, I’ll discuss science fiction that has thought about ways to resist.

Science fiction in the 1930s had its fair share of authoritarian dictators. Upton Sinclair’s It Can’t Happen Here is a famous warning novel that feels all too relevant. In Sinclair’s vision, a populist demagogue takes power on the promise to halt immigration and make America great once more. But there is a lesser-known standout work that tried to warn the world of what was to come. Published under the alias Murray Constantine, Swastika Night (1937) projects a future in which the Nazis and Japanese won and have divided the world. Jews have been eradicated, Christians live in reservations, women are reduced to a voiceless and a near-invisible drudge caste, and the world is ruled by Teutonic knights. One aspect of the book that jumps out is the degree to which women have collaborated in their own oppression—a scenario that looked ridiculous to me on first read, but isn’t as funny in a world of “trad wives.”

Immediately after the Second World War, in the UK, people were trying to envisage a better future. Others were pushing back. In Marghanita Laski’s Tory Heaven; or, Thunder on the Right (1948), the ultra-right wing launch a coup and re-create their “natural order.” On a desert island, five people have constructed a meritocracy. When they are rescued, protagonist James Leigh-Smith (think Jacob Rees-Mogg) prays, “God, let it be as it might have been. Alter the clock, fix the election, do it any way you please, but let me see the England of all decent Conservatives’ dreams.” He finds himself in a country in which everyone is assigned to their correct social class, with the aristocracy and gentry given fixed incomes and told what to think, what to enjoy, who to marry, etc. It doesn’t end well. James discovers that while he has been given a place, it is conditional on his absolute support. He isn’t, as he thought, one of the rulers.

After the war, there were a slew of alternative history novels warning that “it could have happened here,” of which my favorites are Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953) about a Confederate America, or Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle (1962), one of the works from the 1961-1962 era being celebrated in Seattle. However, these books are consolatory in that it didn’t happen here. I’m more interested in texts that say, “If this goes on, this is where we are heading.”

Recent examples of warning novels include Octavia Butler’s Parable (or Earthseed) series, where the second book tracks the rise of right-wing fundamentalist Christians. In the television series Babylon 5, the space station becomes one of the holdouts against a fascist earth, but the series neatly ignores that the station is not a democracy. It is at best a benevolent military meritocracy. Lucy Ferris’s The Misconceiver (1997) is told through the voice of an underground abortionist in a world in which the right has rolled back all freedoms for women, gay people, and non-whites. Most recent warning books are focused on race and sexual freedoms, but some take up fundamental and systemic issues that warn of rising facism. Ken MacLeod’s Corporation Wars series (2016-17) envisages bitter war around the fundamental ideological differences between fascism and humanism, a future divided between those who see only themselves as truly human and those who still feel humanity is (or should be) structured around collectivity and the acknowledgement of others’ realities.

Since the 2016 U.S. election, and the extreme behaviour of the (many) British prime ministers in the past decade, fascism has felt ever more threatening in the Anglosphere. Lorraine Wilson’s This Is Our Undoing (2021) is set in a fractured and fascist Europe and explores the interrelationship between the personal and the political. In Marisa Crane’s I Keep My Exoskeleton To Myself (2023) and Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023) by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the carceral state has found new ways to abuse and exploit the underclass. In The Disinformation War (2023), SJ Groenwegen takes on the disinformation that has infected the landscape of social media. Claire North’s Notes from the Burning Age (2021) explores the rise of authoritarian nationalism in a post-collapse future after a time of rebuilding and prosperity.

We have been warned. This time round we know what’s coming.

With thanks to Facebook friends for suggestions.

https://seattlein2025.org/2025/04/18/fantastic-fiction-fascism/

#Babylon5 #ClaireNorth #KenMacLeod #LorraineWilson #LucyFerris #MarghanitaLaski #MarisaCrane #MurrayConstantine #NanaKwameAdjeiBrendan #OctaviaButler #PhilipKDick #SJGroenwegen #UptonSinclair #WardMoon

Fantastic Fiction: Fascism: We live in worrying times. Fascism is on the rise across Europe and America, according to the consensus of many commentators. In this post, I will highlight SF that has speculated on the rise and acti… (#Babylon5 #ClaireNorth #KenMacLeod #LorraineWilson #LucyFerris #MarghanitaLaski #MarisaCrane #MurrayConstantine #NanaKwameAdjeiBrendan #OctaviaButler #PhilipKDick #SJGroenwegen #UptonSinclair #WardMoon)

Full post: https://seattlein2025.org/2025/04/18/fantastic-fiction-fascism/

Today In Labor History April 3, 1913: Pietro Botto, socialist mayor of Haledon, N.J., invited the Paterson silk mill strikers to assemble in front of his house. 20,000 showed up to hear speakers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Upton Sinclair, John Reed and others, who urged them to remain strong in their fight. The Patterson strike lasted from Feb. 1 until July 28, 1913. Workers were fighting for the eight-hour workday and better working conditions. Over 1800 workers were arrested during the strike, including IWW leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Five were killed. Overall, the strike was poorly organized and confined to Paterson. The IWW, the main organizer of the strike, eventually gave up.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #Patterson #strike #IWW #union #anarchism #PoliceBrutality #socialism #UptonSinclair #JohnReed #BigBillHaywood #ElizabethGurleyFlynn

It's like the facists are mining popular media and literature for ideas/nonideas to make the world in their emptiness... #1984 #brazil #theironheel #uptonsinclair
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.404.QeOw.RKF_wBfvseuo&smid=url-share

Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.

The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #breadandroses #policebrutality #union #elizabethgurleyflynn #bigbillhaywood #strike #picket #immigrants #poetry #novel #books #fiction #writer #author #uptonsinclair @bookstadon

Today in Labor History January 19, 1920: Crystal Eastman, Roger Nash Baldwin, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (from the IWW) and others founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Their original focus was freedom of speech, primarily anti-war speech, and supporting conscientious objectors. In 1923, they defended author Upton Sinclair after he was arrested for trying to read the First Amendment during an IWW rally. In 1925, they persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee's anti-evolution law in The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. Clarence Darrow, an ACLU member, headed Scopes' legal team. The ACLU lost the case and Scopes was fined $100. In 1926, they defended H. L. Mencken, who deliberately broke Boston law by distributing copies of his banned American Mercury magazine and won their first major acquittal. However, they kicked Elizabeth Gurley Flynn off their board in 1940 because of her Communist affiliations. And they refused defend Paul Robeson and other leftists in the 1950s.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #elizabethgurleyflynn #communism #aclu #evolution #uptonsinclair #PaulRobeson #clarencedarrow #hlmencken #freespeech #antiwar #education #school #freeppress #journalism #firstamendment @bookstadon

"The BBC journalists said they presented the document to Richard Burgess, the BBC‘s director of news content who oversees content across BBC platforms. His response: He did not “recognize the bias.”

#OwenJones, 2024

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/bbc-civil-war-gaza-israel-biased-coverage

Isn't there an old saying about that? Ah yes;

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

#UptonSinclair, 1934

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

(1/2)

Reddit comment of the day.

#reddit #redditcomment #redditcommentoftheday #unitedhealthcare #luigimangione #uhc #UptonSinclair

What I learned while working in the #insurance industry was that it’s all about the law of large numbers (i.e. #BigData) and, oh, the only people who don’t hate insurance are employed by the industry, like #UptonSinclair said, compensated for their labor and lack of understanding.

Diapositive avec photo et citation

Upton Sinclair
Auteur et militant américain, prix Pulitzer

"Il est très difficile d'expliquer quelque chose à quelqu'un quand il est payé pour ne pas le comprendre. "

#Pulitzer #UptonSinclair #Citation #Compréhension #Lobby ...

Literarischer #25November

„Der Kredit ist das Blut der Wirtschaft; die Kontrolle über den Kredit ist die Kontrolle über die gesamte Gesellschaft.“

#UptonSinclair Tod 1968

September 20, 1906 - Upton Sinclair's “The Jungle,” a realist novel, was published, exposing the dangerous conditions and deplorable sanitation in Chicago’s meat-packing plants. Reaction from readers was intense, including President Theodore Roosevelt who coined the term, muckrakers, to describe Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and other writers who exposed corruption in government and business [what we’d now call investigative reporting].

#UptonSinclair #TheJungle

Und weiter gehts ins zweite Jahr der Geburtstagsanagramme:

Heute vor 146 Jahren wurde Upton Sinclair geboren.

Upton Sinclair ist ein Anagramm von
Tip: nur Sinalco

#UptonSinclair #Geburtstagsanagramm #AnagrammTextperfekt #Anagramm #Anagramme #TeamAnagramm

@wdlindsy “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair #uptonsinclair

Am I the only one who remembers "The Jungle" by #UptonSinclair? Our educational system is failing us. #NoSurprise
#TheJungle #BoarsHead

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bugs-mold-mildew-inspection-boars-head-plant-listeria/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=568461145

"È difficile indurre un uomo a capire qualcosa, quando il suo stipendio dipende dal fatto che non lo capisca.”
.
Upton Sinclair, Oakland Tribune, "I, Candidate for Governor and How I Got Licked", 1934
.
#uptonsinclair #elzevirista #oakland