Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970)

The Rohingyas in Myanmar, the Uyghurs in China and the women of Afghanistan constitute some of the most oppressed minorities in the world. Unspeakable accounts of atrocity have emerged from the civil war in Darfur where both starvation and mass rape have become sickening almost routine factors of life. Where is the humanity? In the comfort of Western households with well stocked cupboards, outrage is disingenuous and easy to muster. Then back to the argument about where to go to dinner if which top university will send the letter your child's  been waiting for. "Decolonization" has been become a chic byword of educated speech, but there's a dissonance between theory and practice. Should one give back the lands under which wealthy metropolises have produced so-called civilization? "Radical chic" was the term Tom Wolfe used to describe Leonard Bernstein lionizing the Black Panthers. Abhorrence is a sport amongst elites who secretly gloat that the savagery is far away (like the gladiatorial sports of ancient Rome) not happening  to them as they succor their Lafites.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn