Meaghan Wilson Anastasios's Blog

An Archaeologist’s Reckoning with Science, Faith and the Inevitable Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

It’s a strange thing to be living through a timeline during which you can ask the question, “is the fucker dead yet?” and everyone knows who you’re talking about.

Meanwhile, every second of every minute of every hour of every day, decent human beings breathe their last, including my fine father-in-law, who embarked on his final journey on the weekend.

Tragically for a man who embodied dignity, kindness and strength his entire life, he didn’t give up easily, even though it was well beyond time.

His body was a husk. But his spirit wouldn’t let go.

As I watched him battle forces he would never defeat, it reminded me how ill-equipped so many of us in the West are to confront life’s last adventure: death.

“Life is a sexually transmitted, inevitably fatal, disease.”

My dad was a surgeon.

His favourite saying?

“Life is a sexually transmitted, inevitably fatal, disease.”

Because there are just two things that you can absolutely count on if you’re fortunate enough to take a turn on this great, big, spinning ball of rock we call home.

You will be born.

And you will die.

The “being born” bit is pretty much out of your hands. Although many spiritual traditions would disagree.

But there’s no quibbling with the fact that the death side of the equation is coming for you.

I know that for a fact because my first career out of the blocks was as an archaeologist. Yes, I know. If you’ve met me here before, you’ll know I’ve also done time as a historian, a university lecturer, an art auctioneer, and a journalist, and am currently doing the rounds as an author and screenwriter.

What can I say? I bore easily.

And I’ve seen things. Lots of things.

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I also hate Nazis

You’ve seen Indiana Jones, right?

We archaeologists spit in death’s eye and flip it the bird.

We laugh in the face of mortality.

Nazis, not so much. We hate Nazis.

But death? A doddle.

I was fascinated by death as a child and couldn’t get enough of long-dead civilisations. It was inevitable I’d end up knee-deep in the dust wielding a trowel.

Top that off with a childhood crush on Han Solo which evolved into a teen obsession with Indiana Jones… and my fate was sealed.

Yeah. You’re sensing a common theme.

Harrison Ford.

Probably not the wisest way to plan a career path. Intergalactic piracy was off the cards. Because, physics. And count me lucky the crush didn’t persist into adulthood, or I may have ended up a shrink.

Instead, I got myself a degree in archaeology and headed off to the Mediterranean.

Along the way, I dug up my very own, real-life Indy. We were wed in a crusader fortress on the Aegean and have been blissfully happy together ever since… but that’s a story for another day.

This is about confronting the inevitable.

The end of all…. **this**

Archaeologists aren’t afraid of death

First, a ghost story…

It’s not that archaeologists don’t believe in the spirit world. We just don’t think about it too much.

We’re not superstitious, and we’re not squeamish.

But something happened one day that made me think differently about what I was doing.

We were excavating a Hellenistic burial—so, around 2,300 years old—in far-eastern Turkey. It was just one of many in an ancient burial ground. But what made it special was that a man and woman were buried together in the grave, side by side.

They were spooning; the man’s arm resting over the woman’s waist. We were witness to the final expression of love between the couple, and the people who laid them to rest.

Yes, I wept. It was impossible not to.

There were five of us working on the grave, and we all took photos, including the dig photographer, who had three professional cameras. The rest of us had our own SLR film cameras (yes, kids, that was what we had to do back in the days before mobile phones.)

We gathered up the bones and the two silver coins from the soil beneath the man and woman’s hips (the fee for the ferryman across the River Styx that would have been tucked into their clothes when they were buried) and packed them away in the dig house in plastic bags… yeah, I know.

As I said. Tears aside, it’s a very pragmatic profession.

That night, I was in a deep sleep in the room I shared with two other archaeologists.

A freezing blast of wind woke me.

I sat up. Both my roommates were also jolted awake.

“Hey, shut the window, would you, Lisa?” I said.

Lisa checked. “Not open,” she replied.

The door and the window were both closed, and there was not a breath of wind outside.

Weird enough.

But when we got home and developed our photos from that day, none of us had a single shot of the burial on our cameras.

Not. A. Single. One.

Decades later, I still get goosebumps when I think about it.

Why so squeamish?

In the West, we’re so fucking squeamish about death. Sure, we’ll line up to see slasher pics on the big screen and beat our breasts about the loss of innocents in wars far outside our borders.

But as for the thought that death will one day be knocking at our own door?

No thanks. Move along.

I’ve got a theory about that.

Nothing unusual about that. I’m full of them. Theories, I mean.

Hear me out.

During the Renaissance, the big brains of the day tapped into the wisdom of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

From that, the West got humanism, which places humankind at the centre of the universe.

Human beings made in God’s image.

That gives us the idea that the planet is our plaything. We are masters of all we survey.

It seeped into all aspects of our lives. For one thing, artists were no longer just craftspeople… talented people who made beautiful stuff. They became “geniuses,” channelling God’s creative spirit here on earth. So, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo and Donatello became household names. They also became Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

This couldn’t be less like Islam, where under the strictest interpretation of the law, it’s seen as blasphemy to paint anything from nature because it challenges Allah’s divine power as creator of all things on earth.

Christianity, by contrast, applauded human achievement as a “gift from God.”

This thinking also set scientists off the leash. Armed with new technology—microscopes (invented in 1590) and telescopes (invented in 1608)—they started asking “why?” to questions that had, until then, been answered with the catch-all response: “because it’s God’s will.”

I mean, human beings were God’s favourite children, so, sure. What could possibly go wrong?

The blink of a cosmic eye

The scientific advances since that time have been truly extraordinary.

But from a chronological perspective, four hundred years is nothing… The blink of a cosmic eye.

It’s no wonder the reality of the 21st century world we’ve created for ourselves in the West has given us all a chronic case of whiplash.

Think about it this way. If you’re fifty or so, your grandparents were probably born in the first decades of the 1900s.

Presuming you knew them, imagine you high-fived your grandma when she was still around. That’s you “touching” 1900.

If your grandma knew her granddad and high-fived him, it takes her back to 1800 or so. Do that another two times between generations, and it takes you back to 1600.

So, just four high-fives, and you’re in the Age of Enlightenment. The person you’re connected to back then may have been peeling apples with Isaac Newton.

See what I mean? Blink of an eye.

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The greatest puzzle of all

Even though it’s only been four hundred years since western science started strutting its way across the global stage, we’ve thrown all our hats in that particular ring.

Got a problem? No worries, friend. Science will find an answer.

But there’s one puzzle that’s stumped us. Not because we’re missing a piece or two.

Because we’ve got nothing.

Death.

We have a fair idea why it happens.

We can even have a guess when it’ll happen.

As for a cure? Forget about it.

That terrifies us. Because even people of faith don’t really know what happens afterwards.

And the rest of us have replaced faith in God with faith in science. Yet neither can give us an answer.

That’s troublesome. Because most of us suspect that death is not the end.

Life is brief, but we all make a mark

Even if you don’t believe our souls persist after our bodies wind down, we all leave pieces behind in our wake.

When I was an archaeologist, I saw it in the thumbprint of the potter who, four-thousand years ago, shaped wet clay into an urn.

I felt it in the chisel mark in the block of stone chipped by a stonemason from a quarry hundreds of kilometres away then carted to a hilltop to become one of thousands in a vast temple built to a god long since forgotten.

And I sensed it in the worn leather of a sandal we discovered; its sole rubbed to a dull patina by whoever abandoned it on the plaster floor of a home two-and-a-half-thousand years ago.

Those people were here. They made their mark. And then they departed.

One day, it will be me.

And one day, it will be you.

Regardless of what you believe happens to our soul after we migrate from our body, that is all that remains: the marks we made while we were here.

Our suit of skin will be a car abandoned by the side of the road.

Without a driver, it will simply rust away.

It might sound odd, but I find that comforting.

Death doesn’t frighten me. Perhaps, in part, because my husband and I fell in love as we used dental picks and trowels to scrape dirt away from the mortal remains of a girl laid to rest five-thousand-years ago.

She was around ten when she died. She lay on a straw bed on top of a slab of flat stones. A spiral of bronze the girth of your forefinger lay in the dirt behind her; a fastening for what would have been a braid of hair long since disintegrated into the soil.

Beside her head was an ornate painted pot, burnished black with geometric designs, crushed flat from the thousands of years of pressure from the soil above her.

We’ll never know who she was, or who buried her with such care and love. And it doesn’t really matter. She was just a girl passing through a fertile river plain with her nomadic family in the far east of what is now known as Turkey.

But she was a human being, no different to you and me in a physical sense.

What did she dream?

Was there a flower she particularly loved that grew beside the stream her people returned to, year after year, on their migration to the summer mountain pastures?

Did she seek out the sweet taste of wild honey on her tongue from hives tangled in the top branches of the poplar trees?

No idea at all.

It’s enough that she was here.

Butterfly wings, and all that.

Who knows what her birth—and death—meant for the people around her, and what small things she may have done that reverberated through time to reach us today? In the smallest way, she may have changed the world.

What I learnt most of all that day was that humanity—the connection between people—is universal and eternal.

It was there in the effort it took to hack a hole in half-frozen soil deep enough to make sure scavengers didn’t disturb the grave.

It was there in the grave gifts; they were prized and valuable possessions. Yet they were not carried away and used as exchange for food, or beasts of burden. They were left, instead, for the girl they buried that day.

Most of all, it was there in the way she was curled up with her hands tucked carefully beneath her head.

Not dead. Just sleeping.

Whoever did that for her loved her. And would miss her.

We need to talk about death.

Because without death, there is no life.

Everything on our planet is in a state of constant flux. Glance down at your hand for a moment. You are looking at atoms that may once have been a dinosaur’s hide… a falling star… a chill wind… a boulder tumbling down a mountainside… the breath of someone you love.

No matter how you feel about the idea of reincarnation, the truth is that even if we put the human spirit to one side, we are literally walking around in a case made of atoms that have existed since the beginning of time.

We borrow these bits and pieces from the cosmic tub of Lego and form them into something else for the time we are here.

After that, we return them to the planet and they are transformed again.

And again.

And again.

And they will be forever more.

That is what living for eternity means.

So why all the mystery?

We know that Neanderthals were burying their dead 70,000 years ago. We’ve since come up with almost as many ways of disposing of human bodies as we have had civilisations.

In sky burials, our bodies are fed to vultures.

We expose our flesh and bones to the elements, or bury them beneath the soil, then gather what remains and stack bones in charnel houses.

We ritually consume pieces of flesh to preserve the spirit of our ancestors, then burn what remains.

We remove the organs and dry our bodies in salt, then wrap our remains in linen bandages and store them in decorated caskets.

We use plaster to reanimate our skulls, and set the eyes with shells, setting them in altars in our homes as shrines to our ancestors.

We burn everything and hold the ashes in Chinoiserie urns on mantlepieces.

We section bodies and inter them in terracotta urns… alabaster jugs… hollow painted timber logs.

But human beings are much more than animated skin suits.

That’s why we need to let go of our fear of death.

Think of someone you love. Those physical bits are not the first things that come to mind. It’s the intangible things that exist within.

Where do those things come from? No fucking idea. Just as I know that no matter how much science has given us, it is still a long way from mapping the human soul, much less explaining where it goes after our body taps out.

Because one thing is certain.

Life is an extraordinary thing.

I still marvel every time I take a seed and drop it into the soil.

It’s been sitting in a paper sleeve for months. Years, even.

Yet add water, sun and light, and it knows it’s time.

Something magical happens as it bursts through its desiccated skin and sends a green tendril reaching for the sky.

Life never dies. It just changes form.

This is true no matter your faith. Or lack thereof.

The closer we westerners come to embracing this, the less terrified we’ll be about shedding our skin.

And wherever my wonderful father-in-law is now, I trust his spirit has found peace with his departure from his earthly woes and discovered a lasting peace.

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The post Why the West Is Terrified of Death first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

Why the Heritage Foundation’s new family plan should terrify you this Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day. Love it or hate it. It’s almost upon us.

Colliding as it does with a moment in time when the ghastly truth about a global enterprise in the rape, exploitation and disposal of girls and young women seeps out from between the cracks of a silo built of rotting lies and decaying carcasses… Well. What can I say?

It made me think about the whole girl-meets-boy thing.

Then, I hear about Moya. An AI-powered robot “designed for human companionship,” apparently. She’s biomimetic, which as far as I can tell means she can walk, has micro-expressions – hey, look! she can wink! – plus, she keeps herself at an oh-so inviting body temperature of between 32 and 36 degrees Celsius, and has “dense” skin, whatever the fuck that means.

For just US$173,000, she can be your very own, uncanny, pink-haired best friend.

Because, yeah. I’m sure all the cashed-up incels lining up to get their hands on Moya are looking for a bot to share “meaningful conversations” with.

There’s not enough Lysol in the world to clean up the mess they’re going to leave behind. Unless, like an oven, Moya comes in a self-cleaning version.

Why go plastic, when real women are amazing?

Given technological advances, it was inevitable.

Like we need a reminder that for most of our time on earth as a species, women have been possessions. Objects to be traded. Used till worn out. Then discarded.

The truth is that it has been a purple patch for women in the west of late. And, when I say “of late,” let’s be quite clear. I’m only talking fifty years or so. My lifetime, basically.

I’m mother to a daughter. One day, I may be grandmother to granddaughters. I also think women are fucking amazing.

So, looking at what’s going on through the lens of my expertise as a historian and student of human nature terrifies me.

Because the release of an influential report last month from the same people who gave us Project 2025 shows they’re playing hardball.

If they have their way, we’re headed back to the dark ages.

We ignore this at our peril.

You think Valentine’s Day today is an ordeal?

Unless we push back it’s just reverting to form, unfortunately.

I’m sure it all stems from women’s unique ability to… well… create life.

Take THAT, fellas!

No wonder they get shitty with us. Went to the moon? Discovered the Theory of Relativity? Yeah, whatevs. I can grow a human being inside me.

Back to Valentine’s Day. As with so many other festivals, it all comes down to procreation.

But you think Valentine’s Day today is an ordeal?

Could have been worse. Trust me. You could have been celebrating it in Ancient Rome.

Valentine’s Day as we know it began with the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia.

Young men and women would start off by drinking a fair amount and getting naked. Yeah, that sounds familiar.

Not so much the next stage.

The men would then sacrifice a dog and a couple of goats and cut thongs from the dead animals’ skin.

They’d chase the women and try to smack them with the bloody (and, I do mean bloody) thong. A successful strike would make a woman fertile.

Next would be the Ancient Roman equivalent of the ‘70s key party, as the young men drew women’s names out of a jar. The couples would pair up for the duration of the festival and let nature take its course.

When two men, both named Valentine, were executed in the third century on the same day as Lupercalia, and a pope merged the two festivals in the hope it would drive out the pagan tradition, we got ourselves St Valentine’s Day.

The weaker sex?

Ever since, the story we’ve been told is that human relationships are all about women succumbing to men’s needs and desires.

Because, science.

But is it really that simple?

The late 1960s gave us the theory that prehistoric men were doing manly things like running across the plains hunting woolly mammoths while women were doing ladylike things such as giving birth, breastfeeding, and crawling through the undergrowth gathering seeds, nuts and berries.

Both were crucial to the early evolution of the human species. But recent research suggests it might not have been that straightforward, and that child rearing may have had a more communal dimension to it so that women could hunt as well.

Either way, there’s no questioning the crucial role played by women as primary caregivers to newborn children in prehistoric human societies.

For one thing, the human brain is only able to develop to its disproportionately large size because babies are born utterly useless. A baby antelope will be up on its legs, drinking from its mother’s teats within minutes of being born. That’s where its energy goes.

Not a human baby, though. Without a mother to pick it up, point it in the direction of her boob, and lug it around with her, that baby would be picked off by predators in seconds. If the first human mums had dumped their babies and run, it would have been a very short human race.

But because human beings look after their babies, most of a newborn’s energy goes into brain development. That energy comes in the form of supercharged, sugary breast-milk. The bonus of that? The vocalisation and eye contact that passes between the baby and the person doing the breastfeeding (because, yes, prehistoric humans did the whole wet-nursing thing, so it wasn’t always the mother).

There’s a good chance that this exchange laid the foundation for the beginnings of complex oral communication we enjoy as human beings. Without that, we’d still be hanging around in trees grunting at each other.

So, the connection between mother and child is primal and important.

Sowing the seed

Because so much effort and energy goes into raising a human child, because the little buggers are so dependent for so long, even in prehistoric times a man wanted to make sure the kids running around the cave were going to be carrying his genetics, rather than the DNA belonging to smooth-talking Grug from across the way. Because, I mean, have you seen the pecs underneath that mat of hair on his chest? Dude is ripped.

That attitude has persisted through the ages.

It’s why chastity belts.

It’s why “no, you can’t leave the house to go shopping unless one of the blokes in the house goes with you.”

That’s why “no, you can’t get a licence and drive a car.”

As for a passport without your husband or father’s permission? Forget about it.

Underpinning it is the idea that women are untrustworthy, soft-minded creatures who are easily led astray.

Meet, the female orgasm.

Once experienced, never forgotten.

Women have been chasing the orgasm for tens of thousands of years. That’s the reason dildos date back as far as 40,000 years (yes, really), with double-ended variants appearing 19,000 years ago.

But the female orgasm is not so wonderful for a man who wants to control what goes into a woman’s womb. Because if she heads out in search of an orgasm because she’s not getting what she wants at home, who knows where she might end up?

It’s why there are religious extremists who hack off a woman’s external genital organs, including the clitoris. Because without that, she’s not going to have much fun in the sack. So, the reasoning goes, she’s less likely to step out on “her” man.

Are you my mother?

Between ladies exercising their rights to sample the menu, and the whole rape thing, it’s why some human societies are based on a matrilineal heritage.

Most of us know who our mother is. But our father? Given that can be a simple case of dump and run, that can be hit or miss.

A 2022 survey of 23,000 users of FamilyTreeDNA found that 7 per cent of people discovered their dad was not who they thought it was. Oopsies.

It’s thought that a woman takes a husband’s surname to signal her fidelity to her spouse and his paternal grandparents in the hope that they will then invest emotionally and materially in her children.

Women as chattels

And so we end up here.

With women running around desperately seeking the big “O,” is it any wonder men started treating women as possessions? Why would you give your lady free rein if she was at risk of stepping out on you and filling her womb with another man’s child? (In case you didn’t get it, that’s me being sarcastic. What can I say? I’m Australian. Sarcasm is our third native language. Swearing is our second).

Even as a little thing, I couldn’t understand why my mother wrote her name as “Mrs William Wilson.”

But that’s the other reason for the tradition of taking your husband’s name. It’s like changing the name on a vehicle’s registration when you buy it. It marks that thing as taken. Owned. Possessed.

Love and marriage… horse and carriage?

Well, that didn’t age well, did it Mr Sinatra? Guess “marriage” isn’t an easy one to rhyme. Also… “disparage”? Props for working that into a song, though.

You know the other thing that went together with marriage until distressingly recently? Rape.

Because: see prev. “Ownership.”

Yeah.

It starts, of course, with the troublesome “obey” bit of the 500-year-old traditional marriage vow. You know the one. The thing the woman has to say. Not the man.

Remember when Whitney Houston released “I’ll Always Love You”? That was in 1993.

Until that year, married women were compelled to “Always Love” their husbands in America, whether they felt like it or not. Because it wasn’t until 1993 that all U.S. states had removed formal marital rape exemptions.

Why? Because…

How do you steal something you already own?

The word “rape” comes from the Latin, rapere, meaning “to steal.”

The basis for marital immunity from rape prosecution is traced back to 1736, when Sir Matthew Hale ruled that: “The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.”

The laws weren’t amended in the west until the 1980s and ‘90s.

Even today, a quarter of the countries in the world still give marital rape the old thumbs up, including China, Syria, India, and Palestine.

What rights?

It was more than the right to turn down a roll in the hay.

Until recently in the west, a woman gave up all legal rights as an individual when she walked down the aisle.

In America, she couldn’t get a credit card in her own name until 1972.

Until 1974, a woman needed a male co-signatory for a mortgage and signed permission from her husband.

No Australian woman could list her occupation as ‘farmer’ on the census until 1994.

Women seldom appeared on juries until the 1960s… the film was called “Twelve Angry Men” for a very good reason.

“Covered woman”

All this was a hangover from the legal doctrine of coverture, dating back to Norman times.

It also affected a woman’s right to work.

Thanks to the so-called “Marriage Bar,” married women were barred from the Australian Public Service until 1966. A woman who walked down the aisle had to hand in her resignation papers the next day or keep her marriage secret.

It was the same in America, where during the Great Depression, married women who worked were described as: “a menace to society, a selfish, shortsighted creature, who ought to be ashamed of herself.”

Nine states had work bans on married women. Bear in mind, this isn’t even a hundred years ago.

It’s always been about control

Even if a married woman was permitted to earn a crust, her income went to her husband.

And she didn’t inherit property, because what was the point? She wasn’t allowed to own it.

Women needed to marry to make sure they had a roof over their heads. But once they did, they owned literally nothing. Not even the clothes on their backs. If a woman left her husband, she wouldn’t see her children again.

And good luck getting that divorce. It wasn’t legally available to women in America until the mid-19th century. And even then, a woman had to approve “aggravated” adultery.

So, not just the garden variety version. We’re talking bigamy, incest, sodomy, or bestiality.

You read that correctly. Bestiality.

“The disintegration of family life”

In Wisconsin in 1935, lawmakers said married women who dared get a job were the “calling card for disintegration of family life.”

“The large number of husbands and wives working for the state raises a serious moral question,” they continued, “as this committee feels that the practice of birth control is encouraged, and the selfishness that arises from the income of employment of husband and wife bids fair to break down civilization and a healthy atmosphere.”

After creating a situation where a married woman was completely dependent on her husband, and had no rights as an individual, is it any wonder where we ended up?

Who’s the boss?

How could women not be viewed as “the weaker sex”?

It was first posited in… surprise, surprise… the Bible, when the Apostle Peter ordered husbands to bestow “honour on the woman as the weaker sex.”

Coupled with the whole Garden of Eden and apple thing, what chance did we have?

But it’s not as if it’s a thing in all animal species.

Many of the most impressive creatures on earth, including lions, big deer, elephants, and orcas, live in matriarchal societies. They wisely recognise that although it’s useful having a man around for their sperm, and to help defend the tribe, their furious competitive spirit sees them end up in punch-ups with other fellas over mating rights.

They’re just not seen as level-headed or trustworthy enough to lead. They’re too competitive to think of the good of the tribe, rather than holding onto the chance to impregnate a whole herd of women.

So, the role of leader falls to an older female member of the herd.

If only.

Heritage Foundation

Which brings us to this. Because all the things you’ve just read that had you gasping in horror would have the Heritage Foundation leaping with joy.

In January, the ultra-conservative right-wing think tank, which also penned Project 2025, put out its latest report, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.”

It should strike fear into the heart of every woman who has ambitions to be anything other than a Stepford Wife, because it’s a direct attack on women’s rights, as well as marriage rights for same-sex couples.

The report declares the family as the “foundation of civilization, and marriage—the committed union of one man and one woman… its cornerstone.”

As for the greatest threat to western civilisation? That would be “a decline in stable married households headed by a father and mother.” It is “a menace to the future of every developed country.”

“[T]o restore the nation’s health, society must return the family to its pride of place.”

The report’s writers bemoan the loss of the “incentives” for large families in recent times, including the fact that fewer Americans live in rural areas, meaning the “labor potential” of children on farms and coal mines has been lost.

For sure. Such a shame we’ve moved beyond children labouring in coal mines…. (yes, that’s sarcasm again).

Every child gets a prize!

Their solutions? Financial incentives for couples to marry earlier, to remain married, and to procreate. Early, and often.

It’s a cash bonanza! Every child gets a prize! Literally.

A big part of it is to unpick the damage done by those troublesome feminists, who, according to the authors, “commanded a crusade that promoted sexual, financial, and familial “freedom” for women. Women were encouraged to “liberate” themselves from a patriarchal culture that insisted they stay at home and raise a family. In their worldview, a husband and children were limitations on a woman’s freedom to truly express her authentic self.”

“According to contemporary feminists, marriage and motherhood are traps created by men, not gifts granted by God.”

“Over-credentialling”

According to the authors, the way around this is to discourage women from “over-credentialing.” In case you missed it, that means no more university degrees for women, because, babies.

Perish forbid.

Sweeteners will be offered to keep families together, as divorce laws are tightened to make separation next-to impossible.

Suggested incentives include an “official commendation” from a governor… yeah, because if I’m stuck in a miserable marriage, a signed certificate from a politician is sure to keep me from walking out the door.

Proving their break with reality, the ideal, frugal, prolific American family they hold up as an example, is the Brady Bunch.

Yes, really. They use a fictional TV family to illustrate their point.

No words.

A Brave New World…?

There is one thing I agree with in the Heritage Foundation’s otherwise horrifying report.

That’s their stand against what they call the “pro-natalists.” They’re the people working towards automated factories with artificial wombs that can gestate made-to-order human babies from the moment of fertilization.

Think Brave New World.

There’s no doubt at all in my mind that Moya, the pink-haired “companion” bot, is the first step towards making women redundant.

I may violently disagree with almost everything the Foundation has to say about women and the family.

But I do wholeheartedly agree with that.

Because who wants a world where a select group of wealthy men sit in their high castles and grow babies in bottles?

Definitely not me.

Tell me what you think in the comments. Because this is a conversation we need to be having.

Now.

Before it’s too late.

The post Who Owns Women? first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

I put my papery baby out into the world with some trepidation. It's always the way. I love Sunday Reilly and the world she inhabits, but I have spent so much time with her, it's easy to lose perspective.
Thank you for embracing her and choosing to join her on her journey!
Fingers crossed you love it as much as I've enjoyed bringing it to life.
And in answer to the many of you who have been asking, yes, a sequel is in the making. Sunday's whispering in my ear and telling me where she wants to go next as we speak.
Cheers,
Meaghan

It was a top-secret intelligence report written in 1943. But it could have been written today.

It’s fucking inevitable.

As a day of reckoning looms on the horizon, the ship will spring a leak or twenty.

That’s because rats aren’t renowned for hanging around and going down with all hands-on-deck. They start to look around for something to cling to in the stormy seas. Because if nothing else, they’re survivors.

And so, they begin to chatter. Off the record. Anonymously.

Once they start, they can’t stop.

Perhaps it feels good to get it off their chests.

Could be they’re looking for sympathy.

Or maybe they think that by fessing up, they’ll position themselves on the right side of history.

And so it begins: “The world has come to know him for his insatiable greed for power, his ruthlessness, his cruelty and utter lack of feeling, his contempt for established institutions and his lack of moral restraints.”

“… Human life and human suffering seem to leave [him] completely untouched as he plunges along the course he believes he was predestined to take…”

“… Earlier in his career the world… watched him with amusement. Many people refused to take him seriously on the grounds that ‘he could not possibly last.’ As one action after another met with amazing success and the measure of the man became more obvious, this amusement was transformed into incredulousness. To most people, it seemed inconceivable that such things could actually happen in our modern civilisation.”

No. Not Trump. Though, yeah. I can see why you’d think that.

My fault. Should have been more specific.

This is Adolf Hitler.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

But there’s more. Much more.

You see, a handful of years ago I wrote a couple of TV series on the rise of Adolf Hitler.

It was 2020, and I was deep in the heart of COVID lockdown here in Melbourne. So, yeah. An… er… uplifting project for some pretty dark times.

The good news story at the time was that Biden had won the US election, and many believed the nightmare was over.

Not being wise after the event here, but even then, I was fairly sure Trump would be back. With around 35% of the population signed-up MAGA obsessives in a nation without compulsory voting, it looked like a very tough road for the Democrats.

That suspicion made me sit up and pay attention when I stumbled across an extraordinary document online in the National Archives.

The mind of a monster

Compiled in 1943, it offers a glimpse into the mind of a monster.

Drawn from first-hand accounts and interviews with people in Adolf Hitler’s inner circle and compiled at the height of the Second World War, the intimate portrait it paints is uncanny. And terrifying.

It reveals that tyrants—and tyranny—are puzzles to unpick. But they are all cut of the same cloth. And the parallels with what we see at play with the rise of authoritarianism in America and across the globe are chilling.

“The madness of the leader has become the madness of a nation”

Try this, for a start:

“The madness of the leader has become the madness of a nation …. these are not wholly the actions of a single individual but that a reciprocal relationship exists between him and the people and that the madness of the one stimulates and flows into the other and vice versa.

It was not only him, the madman, who created the nation’s madness, but the nation’s madness which created him…. we are forced to consider him, not as a personal devil, wicked as his actions and philosophy may be, but as the expression of a state of mind existing in millions of people.”

Yeah.

The people who wrote this knew what they were talking about.

Here’s another example:

Compensating, much?

“His passion for constructing huge buildings, stadia, bridges, roads etc., can only be interpreted as attempts to compensate for his lack of confidence. These are tangible proofs of his greatness which are designed to impress himself as well as others. Just as he must be the greatest man in all the world, so he has a tendency to build the greatest and biggest of everything.”

Hitler saw himself as an architect.

I mean, not ideologically. Literally.

He once said that if Germany hadn’t lost the First World War, “I would have become a great architect—something like Michelangelo, instead of a politician… We build in order to fortify our authority.”

The centrepiece of Hitler’s plans to redesign Berlin was a triumphal arch, three times larger than Paris’ Arc de Triomphe. That’s almost as tall as the Washington Monument.

“[H]is image of himself must become ever-more inflated in order to compensate for his deprivations and the maintenance of his repressions. He must build bigger and better buildings, bridges, stadia… as tangible symbols of his power and greatness and then use these as evidence that he really is, what he wants to believe he is.”

Trump’s proposed triumphal Arch for Washington is 250 feet, towering over the White House at 90 feet, and the Lincoln Memorial at 100 feet.

Just saying.

Top-secret, classified US Government report

Sun Tzu had it right in The Art of War.

Know thy enemy.

In 1943 as war raged across Europe, the precursor to the CIA launched an unconventional weapon against Hitler.

That’s where this mind-blowing document comes from.

Harvard-based psychologist Walter Langer was put to work psychoanalysing the German leader.

The plan was to understand Hitler’s psychological make-up and devise cunning new ways of defeating him. The methodology Langer applied pioneered the science of criminal profiling that became a thing in the second half of the 20th century.

The Freudian method Langer used to draft Hitler’s psychological profile is not without its problems. Many have challenged the approach because his diagnosis was formed without any direct contact with the subject. There’s plenty of terminology in there that would be dismissed today as “psychobabble.” And being Freudian, there are phallic references aplenty.

But the testimony from informants published in the so-called “Hitler Source Book” stretches to a thousand pages. It included close personal friends and family members, and some of his earliest political allies.

Based on those interviews, Langer struck on some uncannily accurate predictions about the way Hitler’s last days would unfold.

“A weakling masquerading as a bully”

“There will be no surrender, capitulation, or peace negotiations,” Langer wrote. “The course he will follow will almost certainly be the road to ideological immortality, resulting in the greatest vengeance on a world he despises.”

“As the war turns against him,” he said, “his emotions will intensify and will have outbursts more frequently. His public appearances will become much rarer, because he is unable to face a critical audience.”

Langer predicted the failed 1944 assassination attempt known as Operation Valkyrie, and foreshadowed Hitler’s “Scorched Earth” or Nero Decree, saying that, as a ‘weakling masquerading as a bully,’ the Führer would choose to destroy Germany rather than face defeat.

Langer also concluded that Hitler would die by his own hand rather than dying in combat or being taken alive.

I’ve read it so you don’t have to. But if you do want to wade through the report yourself, you can access it here.

But, be warned. It makes for some unsettling reading.

First, some background.

The first “dictators” were the good guys

Yes, really.

When Ancient Rome was up to its neck in shit, a “dictator” was appointed to help navigate the Republic into calmer waters.

The dictator outranked all other political and military leaders. He assumed full powers of the state and complete authority over the military.

But the catch? Although he (because it was always a “he”) was given licence to do whatever was required to sort out a specific problem, once everything was sorted, he’d relinquish his powers.

Dictators were also accountable for their actions. They could be prosecuted after their terms ended if they had stepped out of line during their time at the helm.

The most celebrated Roman dictator was Cincinnatus (458 BCE) who saved the Roman Republic from attack and returned to his farm after a tenure of just sixteen days. And, yes, that’s where “Cincinnati” comes from: named in honour of George Washington’s Society of the Cincinnati, named for the dictator who became a model of Roman civic virtue.

This is why the first dictators were admired.

Even today, many of the people elevated to positions of great power recognise the gravity and responsibility that comes with the mantle they assume. And they treat it with the respect it demands.

Cincinnatus walked away because he was a decent human being.

It’s the same reason America’s Founding Fathers left so many loopholes in the constitution; loopholes now being used to dismantle American democracy.

Having sent the British crown packing, they couldn’t imagine a world where one of their own would bulldoze the pillars of democratic rule they had so carefully erected in its place.

But they were wrong. Because what is true for Cincinnatus is not true for a man who would be king.

Beware the Ides of March

The last Roman dictator was Julius Caesar, of et tu, Brute? fame. He transformed dictatorship from what was supposed to be a “sometimes” thing into a “hold onto this by the short and curlies” thing in 44 BCE, when he nominated himself dictator perpetuo – “dictator in perpetuity”.

It didn’t go down too well with the locals.

A few weeks after his grab for power, Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March: 15 March, 44 BCE.

But it was the beginning of the end for the Roman Republic. The power grab that followed birthed Rome’s Empirical era, with emperors taking the reins and seizing the powers formerly held by the sometime dictators.

Autocratic populism

Don’t run away. This isn’t going to become a gnarly tangled in jargon. I promise.

But given what we’re talking about here, it’s important to grapple with the idea of populism as a new form of authoritarian leadership.

Three out of every four human beings on the planet live under authoritarian regimes. Yes, I know. That sounds like a lot. But it’s true. There’s research. Really.

The most common form nowadays is what’s called authoritarian populism.

It starts with a charismatic leader who presents himself as an outsider who embodies the will of the people and goes in to bat against corrupt elites and institutions. It’s all about bringing the marginalised into the centre.

Citizens who are disillusioned and feel let down by the status quo find their champion.

Now, where have I heard that before?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

But, tyranny isn’t just about ideology or behaviour. It’s about distribution of power within a state.

Back in the day, a tyranny meant there was one individual who, along with their closest supporters, monopolised power and wealth.

Rule number one of a tyranny? When a state’s institutions allow a leader to consolidate power. And that power corrupts absolutely.

Greek historian, Herodotus, recorded the debate amongst Persian nobles in 520 BCE or so while they were deciding what to do with their constitution. They recognised that in the absence of checks and balances, in time, the temptation to exploit power would eventually prove irresistible.

And that’s not good for anyone. Because authoritarian regimes are (surprise, surprise) deeply corrupt and poorly governed.

“Opposition to his plans, from whatever side it may come, is sacrilege”

“For God’s sake don’t excite him – which means do not tell him bad news – do not mention things which are not as he conceives them to be.”

“To contradict him is in his eyes a crime of lese-majeste, opposition to his plans, from whatever side it may come, is a definite sacrilege, to which the only reply is an immediate and striking display of his omnipotence.”

Yeah. That’s Hitler again.

As with most of the observations in the Langer Report, putting aside the specifics about Hitler’s creepy relationship with his mother, and alleged penchant for poop and wee-wee (yes, really), it’s dictatorship 101.

Decision-making in an authoritarian regime is erratic at best. And because tyrants surround themselves with bootlickers and yes-men and women, the internal workings are gummed up by repression and woefully poor advice, while the messaging to the outside world is piecemeal and dense… in both senses of the word.

“He can no longer bear either criticism or contradiction.”

“Those who surround him are the first to admit that he now thinks himself infallible and invincible. That explains why he can no longer bear either criticism or contradiction.”

That’s Hitler again.

Strongmen have no checks on their behaviour because they control who occupies the nation’s seats of power.

The people they put in place are either woefully underqualified to do the job and so represent no threat to the will of the tyrant, or they’re so beholden to him and his interests they’ll never turn on him.

This was Hitler himself speaking: “I do not look for people having clever ideas of their own but rather people who are clever in finding ways and means of carrying out my ideas.”

Because in an authoritarian regime, there is only one voice.

“If you try to tell him anything,” one of Hitler’s close associates said, “he knows everything already. Though he often does what we advise, he laughs in our faces at the moment, and later does the very thing as if it were all his own idea and creation. He doesn’t even seem to be aware of how dishonest he is.”

Pointing out how familiar this sounds is becoming redundant.

“He has fallen in love with the image he, himself, created…”

The most peculiar thing about authoritarian regimes is that even when things turn to shit, as they invariably do, the strongman’s most faithful followers refuse to turn on their master.

Their faith remains intact, even as the tyrant grasps onto power by deliberately creating conditions that make it unbearable for his people.

For one thing, strongmen love a state of war. Almost two-and-a-half thousand years ago, Aristotle wrote that “the tyrant is a stirrer-up of war, with the deliberate purpose of keeping the people constantly in need of a leader.”

Aristotle knew stuff. You know what else he said?

[The tyrant aims] to set men at variance with one another and cause quarrels between friend and friend and between the people and the notables and among the rich. And it is a device of tyranny to make the subjects poor…that the people being busy with their daily affairs may not have leisure to plot against their ruler. Instances of this are the pyramids in Egypt … and the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus … (for all these undertakings produce the same effect, constant occupation and poverty among the subject people).”

As things change, so they remain the same, right?

Just ask the man who knew the inner workings of Hitler’s addled mind better than most.

“He has managed to convince millions of other people that the fictitious image is really himself,” Langer wrote. “The more he was able to convince them, the more he became convinced of it himself on the theory that eighty million people can’t be wrong. And so he has fallen in love with the image he, himself, created and does his utmost to forget that behind it there is quite another person who is a very despicable fellow.”

“[W]e find the spectre of possible defeat and humiliation as one of his dominant motivations.”

Yep. Hitler again.

What makes the Langer report so compelling is that it was written during Hitler’s lifetime and drew on first-hand accounts from people who knew him well.

It kicked off a cottage industry of people trying to the psychological make-up of the hideous little moustachioed Austrian after his ghastly reign came to an end.

In short, he was a neurotic psychopath bordering on schizophrenia who, “when cornered, would destroy everything around him before taking his own life.”

He ticked the boxes of what one psychologist describes as “a ‘Big Six’ constellation of behaviours: sadistic (cruel), paranoid (hypersensitivity to perceived threats), antisocial (disregarding the rights and feelings of others), narcissistic (self-centered, self-aggrandizing, power-seeking), schizoid (loners with poor emotional attachments to others) and schizotypy (weird thoughts, unusual beliefs, socially awkward).”

Most of all, people displaying this kaleidoscope of personality disorders are “not bothered by or are aware of their negative effect upon others. This abnormal behaviour category has the diagnostic label disorder because it so often causes other problems for the people who interact with the person with a personality disorder.”

Know thy enemy

If you’re not already exhausted, what you’ll find below is a list of excerpts I’ve pulled out of Langer’s report. Or you can just skip straight forward to the conclusion if you’re convinced already. But it makes for interesting reading.

I’ve always wondered how Nazi Germany happened. How was it that one man was able to drag an entire nation into a Dantean inferno?

Watching what’s going on in America today, I no longer wonder.

And if you want to understand the strongmen at the helm of authoritarian regimes around the globe, Langer’s report should be compulsory reading.

I present this here as a case study. Nothing more. Take from it what you will….

“He is, in fact, unable to face real opposition on any ground…”

“We find this same insecurity at work when he is meeting new people and particularly those to whom he secretly feels inferior in some way…. He is, in fact, unable to face real opposition on any ground. He cannot speak to a group in which he senses opposition but walks out on his audience.”

“He wants things his own way and gets mad when he strikes firm opposition on solid ground.”

“Never admit a fault or wrong…”

“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

“He has a matchless instinct for taking advantage of every breeze to raise a political whirlwind. No official scandal was so petty that he could not magnify it into high treason.”

“He was greatly adverse to experts…”

“He remembers things that he has heard and has a faculty for repeating them in such a way that the listener is led to believe that they are their own.”

“Of secondary importance is the training of mental abilities.”

“What is known as the mastery of material was quite unimportant to him. He quickly became impatient if the details of a problem were brought to him.”

“He was greatly adverse to experts and had little regard for their opinion.”

“When he was then confronted by contradictory facts he was left floundering.”

“His judgments are based wholly on emotional factors and are then clothed with an intellectual argument.”

From Hitler himself: “Over-educated people, stuffed with knowledge and intellect, but bare of any sound instincts…. These impudent intellectuals who always know everything better than anybody else.”

“He is afraid of logic…”

“He is unable to match wits with another person in a straight-forward argument. He will express his opinion at length but he will not defend it on logical grounds.”

“He is afraid of logic…. he evades the issue and ends by throwing in your face an argument entirely remote from what you were talking about.”

“He does not think things out in a logical and consistent fashion, gathering all available information pertinent to the problem, mapping out alternative courses of action and then weighing the evidence pro and con for each of them before reaching a decision.”

“His mental processes operate in reverse. Instead of studying the problem as an intellectual would do he avoids it and occupies himself with other things until unconscious processes furnish him with a solution. Having the solution he then begins to look for facts which will prove that he is correct…. his thought processes proceed from the emotional to the factual instead of starting with the facts as an intellectual normally does.’

“He was unable to justify his point of view on an intellectual level—he was at a terrible disadvantage. In order to remedy the situation he began reading all kinds of political pamphlets and attending political meetings but not with the idea of understanding the problem as a whole, which might have enabled him to form an intelligent opinion, but to find arguments which would support his earlier conviction. This is a trait that runs throughout his life. He never studies to learn but only to justify what he feels.”

“He has a passion for the latest news and for photographs of himself.”

“If the official Party photographer, happens to appear or someone happens to enter his office with a newspaper he will interrupt the most important meeting in order to scan through it.”

“Very frequently he becomes so absorbed in the news or in his own photographs that he completely forgets the topic under discussion.”

“He seldom sits in a cabinet meeting because they bore him.”

“When he is confronted by a difficult situation…. his procrastination becomes most marked. At such times it is almost impossible to get him to take action on anything. He stays very much by himself and is frequently almost inaccessible to his immediate staff. He often becomes depressed, is in bad humour, talks little, and prefers to read a book, look at movies, or play with architectural models.”

“He works for a time and as soon as the job is underway ‘he loses interest in it’ and slips back into his leisurely life in which he does nothing except what he is forced to do or likes to do.”

“[I]t was almost impossible to keep him concentrated on one point…. his attention would be distracted by the sudden discovery of the newspaper and he would stop to read it, or he would interrupt your carefully prepared report with a long speech as though you were an audience.”

“He dislikes desk work and seldom glances at the piles of reports which are placed on his desk daily. No matter how important these may be or how much his adjutants may urge him to attend to a particular matter, he refuses to take them seriously unless it happens to be a project which interests him.”

“He withdraws from society, is depressed and dawdles away his time until ‘the situation becomes dangerous’ then he forces himself to action.”

“He seldom sits in a cabinet meeting because they bore him. On several occasions when sufficient pressure was brought to bear he did attend but got up abruptly during the session and left without apology. Later it was discovered that he had gone to his private theatre and had the operator show some film that he liked.”

“Even after he became the undisputed leader of the nation, he could not rest in peace.”

“[H]e feels insecure in his new role and in order to rid himself of his uneasiness he must prove to himself, over and over again, that he is really the type of person he believes himself to be. The result is a snowball effect. Every brutality must be followed by a greater brutality, every violence by a greater violence, every atrocity by a greater atrocity, every gain in power by a greater gain in power, and so on down the line.”

“Each successful step served to convince him that he was the person he believed himself to be but brought no real sense of security. In order to attain this he had to go a step higher and give additional proof that he was not deluding himself. Terror, violence and ruthlessness grew with each advance.”

“Even after he became the undisputed leader of the nation, he could not rest in peace. He projected his own insecurities onto the neighbouring states and then demanded that they bow to his power…. It was also inevitable that the war would be as brutal and pitiless as possible for only in this way could he prove to himself that he was not weakening in his chosen course but was made of stuff becoming to his conception of what a victor should be.”

“He can never take a joke on himself.”

“This is not a single personality but two which inhabit the same body and alternate back and forth. The one is a very soft, sentimental and indecisive individual who has very little drive and wants nothing quite so much as to be amused, liked and looked after. The other is just the opposite – a hard, cruel and decisive person with considerable energy – who seems to know what he wants and is ready to go after it and get it regardless of cost.”

“He takes himself very seriously and will flare up in a temperamental rage at the least impingement by act or attitude on the dignity and holiness of state and Führer.’

“Almost anything might suddenly inflame his wrath and hatred… But equally, the transition from anger to sentimentality or enthusiasm might be quite sudden.”

“Close collaborators for many years said that he was always like this – the slightest difficulty or obstacle could make him scream with rage or burst into tears.”

“The whole personality is a grossly exaggerated and distorted conception of masculinity as he conceives it. The personality shows all the earmarks of a reaction formation which has been created unconsciously as a compensation and cover-up for deep-lying tendencies which he despises.”

“Roosevelt, however, seems to be an enigma to him.”

“He is unable to understand how a man can be the leader of a large group and still act like a gentleman.”

“He… does not give anybody an opportunity to speak, while he himself makes fun of everybody.”

“Roosevelt, however, seems to be an enigma to him. How a man can lead a nation of 130,000,000 people and keep them in line without a great deal of name-calling, shouting, abusing and threatening is a mystery to him.”

“Vicarious gratifications through fantasies become substitutes for the satisfaction obtained from real achievements.”

“If a thing is good for the Party a crime is not a crime.”

“If it is good for the country, a crime is not a crime.

“The course he will follow will almost certainly be the one which seems to him to be the surest road to immortality and at the same time wreak the greatest vengeance on a world he despises.”

From Hitler himself: “We shall not capitulate… no, never. We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us… a world in flames…. we should drag half the world into destruction with us and leave no one to triumph.”

“Each defeat will shake his confidence… and limit his opportunities for proving his own greatness to himself…. he will feel himself more and more vulnerable to attack from his associates and his rages will increase in frequency.”

“He will fight as long as he can with any weapon or technique that can be conjured up to meet the emergency…. He will probably try to compensate for his vulnerability by continually stressing his brutality and ruthlessness.”

Where are the cool heads?

Did you make it through all that without suffering such chronic eyeroll you’re suffering permanent eyestrain?

It’s quite the thing, isn’t it?

The biggest cautionary note from all this is that when mortality comes knocking, the only thing that puts a stop to a tyrant’s most destructive impulses are the cool heads of those around him.

Towards the end of his life, Hitler was a junkie and a fucking mess. He was on barbiturates to help him sleep, an early form of oxycodone, a bull-semen based testosterone booster, twice-daily shots of cocaine, and a form of crystal meth. He was a threat to himself and everyone around him.

Increasingly erratic, the only reason his scorched earth policy wasn’t carried through was that Albert Speer and other on-the-ground military leaders refused to cooperate.

Deep scars

When Hitler took his own life, as Langer had predicted, Germany’s nightmare was over, and it could begin to rebuild.

But the scars left behind were deep. Because tyrants shape their world in their own image. And there’s no getting over that quickly.

As Langer put it, two years before Hitler’s death: “It is as though he has paralysed the critical functions of the individuals and has assumed the role for himself. As such he has been incorporated as a part of the personalities of his individual supporters and is able to dominate their mental processes.”

“It is this phenomenon which lies at the very root of the peculiar bond which exists between Hitler, as a person, and the people and places beyond the control of any purely rational, logical or intellectual appeal. In fighting for Hitler these persons are now unconsciously fighting for what appears to them to be their own psychological integrity.”

Because strongmen are a symptom of a much more serious societal malaise.

Like gangrene, tyranny never blossoms on a healthy limb

“To remove him may be a necessary first step,” wrote Langer, “but it would not be the cure. It would be analogous to removing a chancre without treating the underlying disease…. we must ferret out and seek to correct the underlying factors which produced the unwelcome phenomenon.”

That is the takeaway from all this for those of us who are a little bit in love with democracy.

We must tend our garden. Prune the deadwood and root out the diseased growth. Water, fertilise, and nurture the soil.

It’s the only way we can ensure the rot does not take hold.

What are your thoughts on this?

Let me know what you think below.

Because this is a conversation we must be having. And we must be having it now.

The post Inside the Mind of a Monster first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

Censorship, control, and rewriting American history

I’ve discovered the line in the sand for corporate America.

It’s not invading a sovereign nation to kidnap its leader.

It’s also quite OK to take potshots at peaceful protesters and disappear American citizens into human cattle pens.

As for sabre rattling and threatening allies and friends? Knock yourself out.

And let’s not get all up in a flap about the rights of children to attend places of learning rather than lining up as targets in shooting galleries.

But the one thing that has corporate America clutching at its pearls?

Swears.

Yes, really.

I found that out the hard way when I discovered that the only Amazon platform I can’t use to advertise my latest novel, Sunday Reilly is All Out of F*cks to Give, is the US.

And you know what that got me thinking about, don’t you?

That’s right. Strongmen and censorship.

Because, “fuck.”

Yeah, I know. I was being a little too cocky back there about ignoring the advice that came my way about being a little less fruity in the title.

Care factor? Meh. Cue me channelling my inner Piaf. Non, je ne regret rien.

Even if it stops me from promoting my new book to the largest English-speaking market in the world, that “fuck” means too much to me.

It’s not like I just throw a random jumble of words at a page, et voila! There’s my book. Every word is a choice.

Because words carry weight. And that gives them power.

It’s why words make strongmen quiver in their Pampers.

The pen is mightier than the sword

Truth.

Although whoever said that never found themselves at the pointy end of a Valyrian blade.

Yeah. I’m a GOT tragic. Sue me.

But it’s never wise to get too literal with figures of speech.

When my mum advised my daughter to say to the school bully, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” my daughter very wisely decided that she wouldn’t do that because, she said, “then Amanda will just get sticks and stones and hurt me.”

The truth is that words can hurt.

But there’s another thing.

Words can change the world.

They’re also the vehicle through which the significant events we’re living through will be transmitted to the future.

That’s why strongmen like to corral words, break them in, and hitch them to their wagons.

It’s how they make sure that the stories being told reflect their view of the world and, most importantly, paint a portrait of themselves for posterity that measures up to their bloated ambition.

It’s the way they write themselves into history.

Here’s an example right out of the headlines

Melania.

Never has there been a less likely biopic candidate.

If stories and words don’t matter, why would so much time, money and effort be going into screening what will almost certainly be the greatest filmic stinker of all time, and eventual winner of all the Razzies on offer in 2026?

Melania Trump’s greatest life achievement has been to… how can I put this politely?… marry well.

Two hours of watching her story? I’d rather shit in my hands and clap.

Judging by early box office figures, I’m not alone in that.

But this has become a thing because the Trump family is trying to rewrite the historical record.

There’s a conga-line of sycophants lining up to help them.

It isn’t the first time in history this has happened. There are plenty of precedents.

Here’s just one.

In 1475, to curry favour with the all-powerful Medici family, a Florentine banker paid famed Renaissance painter, Sandro Botticelli, to depict three of the Medici as the Three Kings in a portrait of the infant Christ in his manger.

Playing the part of the banker, Gaspare di Zanobi del Lama, in our story, is Jeff Bezos.

As the owner of the Washington Post, Bezos was an oversized thorn in the side of the first Trump administration.

After losing a US$10 billion government contract due to perceived anti-Trump bias at his masthead, Bezos sued the Pentagon. That didn’t go down well.

So, when Trump Mk II looked to be headed for the White House, Amazon was in trouble.

Bezos had some catching up to do.

He started by pulling an editorial endorsing Harris for president, then followed up with a US$1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration.

But the clincher was Amazon’s US$40 million bid to secure Melania’s life rights; triple the nearest offer from rival studio, Disney. US$28 million of that will be funnelled directly into the First Lady’s pocket.

Because my career is chaotic, in addition to being an author, I’m also a screenwriter in film and TV. And I can tell you that this is a disproportionately huge sum of money for a project like this.

To put it in context, Netflix paid the Beckhams US$25 million for their life rights. Netflix got a series out of that one. And what do you reckon the Elvis estate was reportedly paid for the Baz Luhrmann biopic? US$5 million. Yes, you read that correctly.

To date, Bezos has ponied up US$75 million to get Melania’s vanity project up on screens around the world.

Just to put that in perspective, with budgets adjusted for inflation, $75 million would get you a killer bundle deal: Casablanca ($20 mi), The Silence of the Lambs ($44 mi), and On The Waterfront ($11 mi).

Not that it’s any skin off the nose of the world’s… what is he now? Can’t be fucked checking… fourth-richest human? He’d find that in loose change between the sofa cushions.

Provided JD Vance didn’t get there first.

Why the First Lady?

This is about erasing the legacy of the First Ladies who came before Melania.

Just as Trump bulldozed the spiritual home of those women—the East Wing to house an obscene monument to himself.

Just as he paved over the Kennedy Rose Garden, an enduring monument to the best-loved First Lady of the modern era, and turned it into a shopping-mall food court, complete with cheap patio furniture and ghastly, phallic umbrellas.

Trump is censoring history. He’s shaping the cultural record.

Presidential Walk of Infamy

Let’s take a stroll down the newly inaugurated “Presidential Walk of Fame,” shall we...

If you can look past the ghastly goldening that would be more at home in a suburban Thai restaurant, you’ll notice that the plaques beneath the photos are a masterclass in petty spite.

But they’re also rewriting history to serve a strongman’s whim (oh, how I hate that word, because leaders like Trump, although always men, are rarely actually strong).

Obama was “one of the most divisive political figures in American History.”

Reagan was “a fan of President Donald J. Trump.”

And “Sleepy Joe Biden” was, according to the Trump Manifesto, “by far, the worst President in American History.” He’s represented in the lineup by a photo of an autopen.

Damnatio Memoriae

There’s a name for what he’s doing. And it’s the oldest form of censorship.

Damnatio memoriae. Yes, it does sound like something you’d learn at Hogwarts.

It means to condemn someone’s memory. And, yes. Damnatio comes from the same Latin root as “damn”, so “damn you!” means to condemn someone. Don’t say I never teach you anything.

In Ancient Rome, damnatio memoriae was a big thing. For example, historians still squabble over how much of what we think we know about the batshit fucking crazy Emperor Caligula was true, and how much of it was the equivalent of what Trump’s trying to do with his predecessors’ reputations.

Did Caligula really appoint his horse to the senate?

Was it true that he wanted to be worshipped as a god, and tried to erect a statue of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem?

Was he really sleeping with his three sisters?

And did he turn the imperial palace into a brothel to raise funds?

I should stop. Might give someone ideas.

Imagine the gaslighting

There’s no doubt that rewriting the record to serve the interests of a narcissistic leader has been going on for as long as we’ve been capable of abstract thought.

Imagine the gaslighting that would have gone on back in the day as control of the ceremonial leadership cudgel passed hands back in Palaeolithic cave-dwelling times.

The first historical record we have of it happening was in Ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ushered in a cultural golden age and was wed to the famed beauty, Nefertiti, decided Egypt needed a new religion.

It was out with the old polytheistic faith, and in with Ra, the sun god. All references to other gods were erased from temples and monuments.

When Akhenaten died, the gods had their revenge. Akhenaten’s name was chiselled from statues and monuments, and the temples he built were knocked down.

Damnatio memoriae 2028-style

Between the ballroom, the triumphal arch, the Rose Garden Club, the Presidential Walk of Fame, and the Trump Kennedy Center of Performing Arts, the damnatio memoriae officers of the future will be working overtime.

It’s already happening, and it started in 2016, during Trump’s first presidency. Buildings bearing the Trump name were rebranded as feelings towards the president soured to the point of utter distaste.

If it had been another time in history, citizens would have been chiselling genitals and heads off statues, smashing inscribed tablets, and levelling buildings.

Oh, and burning books that mention him.

But as tempting as that is, burning books is never a good thing.

“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature… but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself” John Milton, Areopagitica , 1644.

This is where things get tricky. Because if you’re a fan of history, then you’re a fan of all history, warts and all. Not just the chapters you enjoyed.

Before the invention of the printing press in 1440, it was much easier to control and rewrite the record. Because manuscripts were handwritten, extremely expensive, and generally preserved in monasteries and the palaces and mansions of the world’s wealthiest.

There wasn’t any point in being literate, because unless you were one of the elite, there was nothing to read.

But after Gutenberg gave Europe the means to reproduce text, the world changed.

With books, came knowledge, and with that the appetite to learn. Ordinary people could transform their lives because knowledge was no longer a commodity controlled by the elite.

It’s why authoritarian regimes always go for the books.

They want to wind back the clock to a time before the populace had knowledge at their fingertips. Because knowledge is power.

It happened in 213 BC, when first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang—he of the terracotta army—burnt all the scrolls and books that spoke of the past, so that history began with his dynasty.

Destroying a civilisation’s written records was also a function of conquest. When the Mongols overran Baghdad in 1258, it was said that the Tigris River ran black with ink from the books tossed into the water from the famed House of Wisdom.

Hitler. Mao. Stalin. Putin. The Aztec leader, Itzcoatl.

They all do it.

And it’s happening in America today.

If they can’t burn it, they ban it. According to PEN America, there were over 22,000 instances of book banning from 2021-25.

Censor this

The difficult part these days is knowing who to blame for all this.

Used to be that the official government censor had an office. You could write a complaint.

The first ‘censor’ was appointed in 443 BC in Ancient Rome. The word comes from the Latin for “appraise, value, or judge.”

The censor oversaw public decency and morals. He—because of course it was always a ‘he’—could punish citizens for everything from ‘improper divorces’ (whatever that means), cruelty to slaves, perjury, excessive luxury… even failing to maintain your fields.

The position was abolished around 22 BC, when the Republic became an Empire, and the emperor decided he’d like those powers for himself, thank you very much.

The emperor would decide what did, and did not, qualify as “indecent.”

Indecent exposure

It’s that rule—public decency—that I upset by including a curse word in my book’s title.

Because censorship in its most benign form is intended to protect society’s fragile sensibilities from things that might upset it.

Like swear words.

America has been particularly vigilant about shielding its people from offensive things.

They even have a fabulously named law that governs it. And in a roundabout way, it’s the law I fell afoul of.

Comstockery

The Comstock Law was passed in 1873. It made it illegal to distribute pornography, birth control, sex toys, or any information about those things through the US Postal Service.

So, you read that correctly. Sex toys were a thing in 1873. They have actually been a thing for thousands of years. Yes, really.

But I digress.

The idea with the Comstock Law was that erotica and sex toys encouraged illicit sex, and that any birth control or information about abortions or contraception transmitted via post would have the American population rooting around like randy teenagers.

Pearl clutching

So, America does have form.

Ever wondered why all those classic black-and-white movies and TV series show married couples in two single beds, rather than a double? There’s a reason.

During the Depression, studios tried to lure cash-strapped audiences back into the cinema with increasingly scandalous movies like Scarface (1932) and Baby Face (1932) featuring boozing, sex, and glamourised violence.

The Hays Code was introduced to rein in the industry. It prohibited profanity, nudity, graphic violence, and racy sexual behaviour.

Which is why no shared beds.

Also, no toilets. Because bodily functions? No thank you, ma’am! And certainly no flushing ones, until Alfred Hitchock broke that taboo in Psycho.

One of the more memorable and effective movies that bypassed the Hays Code censorship of homosexuality was Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). The gay character, Sebastian, was introduced only in flashback, and purely by reputation. But the audience is left in no doubt what was meant by it.

Head in the clouds

That was the Golden Age of Hollywood, right? McCarthyism and the Black List. Good times.

But social media and the internet are a whole other thing.

Smash those together with Generative AI, which has us all questioning the truth of everything we see, and we’re headed for a whole new era of censorship.

I’ve experienced it myself on a small scale.

Over on Threads, I have a bit to say about the shitfuckery that’s going on over in America. Some 13,000 people are interested in what I have to say, lord help them. And for most of the past 12 months, I was clocking five to seven million views a month.

Until I wasn’t.

It happened overnight. My post views fell off a cliff as I experienced the thing called shadow-banning. It’s how social media platforms restrict reach without explicitly censoring it. I’m back in their good graces now for some reason because nothing’s changed from my end. But it became clear how easy it is for social media to control the narrative, even by stealth.

In openly authoritarian regimes like China, North Korea, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, they don’t even pretend. The internet and social media platforms are banned outright or strictly monitored.

In the wake of the death of Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE in Minneapolis, TikTok users including Senator Chris Murphy and singer Billie Eilish accused the platform of censoring their posts. Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener called TikTok “state-controlled media.”

Given TikTok is now under the control of Trump’s henchmen, Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch, it shouldn’t come as any surprise.

That’s why books are so important

I have a vast library of books. Some of them were printed hundreds of years ago.

Yes, in a nod to the post-truth era we’re living in, I do understand that the reality they capture was shaped by the times and circumstances the authors were living through.

Truth has always been a fluid thing.

But the reality of what’s between those pages can’t be altered. The interpretation of the contents might change. But the content itself remains the same.

That can’t be said for so many of the cultural products of the current era.

When the White House posts a digitally altered image of a protestor, Nekima Levy Armstrong, that shows her with darker skin than the original, and makes it appear that instead of holding her head high while being cuffed, Nekima was crying as she was arrested, we have entered very murky waters.

Can’t believe your eyes

This is all happening at a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe what we see.

AI is producing artificially generated visual material that’s indistinguishable from the real thing.

What this is doing is training us to question everything. To believe nothing.

Think about what that means for a moment.

Is there anything more malleable than a population that no longer knows what to believe?

It doesn’t stop there

Because, of course it doesn’t.

While this is going on, sources of once-reliable information are being dismantled.

Trump is stripping federal funding from public broadcasting.

He’s bullying and silencing journalists.

He’s using financial shake-downs and threats to bring the major broadcasters to heel.

He’s suing those who refuse to comply, even when those legal claims are widely believed to have no merit at all.

He’s having prominent critics silenced.

And many of those companies are folding to keep shareholders happy.

Of course, he’s also rewriting history. Museums are being forced to toe the party line according to a cultural manifesto right out of Maoist China, masked as an executive order entitled: “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

And at the National Portrait Gallery, Trump’s portrait was replaced with a White House sanctioned photograph.

The plaque was changed to remove references to his impeachments and the January 6 insurrection.

Words matter

I do what I do here and elsewhere because I believe that words matter.

They are fuel that keeps the fire of opposition burning.

I’m half a world away from what’s happening in America right now. But it’s a rallying call to those of us who believe that democracy is something worth fighting for.

So I’m not going to censor myself. And I’ll keep doing what I can to keep the flame alive.

Because I do give a fuck. I really, really do.

This piece is commentary and opinion, based on publicly reported information.

The post Who’s Really Afraid of the Word “F*ck”? first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

Hey there! Nice to meet you!

Just wanted to say thanks. I'm so grateful for the response to Sunday Reilly and her story.

If you've just dived in, I really hope you love Sunday as much as I do.

Sure, I'm a little biased. But right about now, I'd like nothing better than to sit down with her beneath an ancient grape vine in a taverna by the Aegean, and have a chat over an Aperol Spritz or three.

Hope you feel the same way!

And thanks for joining her on her travels.

x Meaghan

Life might be telling Sunday Reilly she’s past her use-by date. But she’s not planning to go quietly.

‘It’s two months on a Greek island,’ I said, ‘working holiday, I’ve got the next draft of my novel to finish.’

‘The kids didn’t mention anything,’ he said.

‘That’s because they don’t know yet,’ I said.

Neither did I till that moment.

Cue me realising that this might just be the worst decision I’ve ever made.

You don’t know me very well yet, but believe me, that’s a very high bar.

Sunday Reilly has been many things. An author. A mother. A wife. A daughter. A friend. A lover. But that’s all about to change. Because, whether she likes it or not, Sunday is stuck on a hormonal steam train that’s smashed through everything she thought she knew about herself. And she can’t find the emergency brake.

“Sunday is the kind of character you instantly want as your best friend.”

“Funniest book of 2025. 5 stars!”

“I am absolutely in love with Sunday! This book is one of those rare gems that makes you laugh out loud on public transport and not even care who’s watching.”

“This hilarious tale will resonate with all women.”

“Has you doing pelvic floors and weeping with laughter!”

“Sunday is the kind of character you instantly want as your best friend—flawed, funny, real, and so incredibly relatable.”

“I am absolutely in love with Sunday!”

This is Sunday’s story as she upends her life and takes off for the Greek islands on a whim in search of adventure and romance. She figures her life is halfway done anyway, so what has she got to lose?

Nothing goes to plan, which for Sunday has become par for the course. What was meant to be a retreat to work on her new novel becomes something else altogether as she pursues creative and romantic inspiration in one of the most beautiful corners of the planet.

As she barely makes it through a string of riotously funny near disasters, Sunday picks up the pieces and learns to embrace a new kind of freedom. A journey that was meant to be a distraction from truths she would rather forget becomes an opportunity for transformation as she embarks on a new phase of life.

SUNDAY REILLY IS ALL OUT OF FUCKS TO GIVE is funny, outrageous, angry, and heartbreaking, because life for women of a certain age is all those things. This is an uplifting and tender coming-of-age story for the middle-agers about the search for a new chapter in life full of love, meaning, and purpose after all those things have been stripped away.

Sold? Want to dive into the Aegean with Sunday right now? Off you go, then! Pack your bags, don’t forget sunscreen, and click here.

Want to try a few chapters for free before committing?

Fair enough. Here you go. Download this. Come back when you’re done! And, enjoy the ride!

Sunday-Reilly-is-all-out-of-fcks-to-give-PrintDownload

The post Meet Sunday Reilly. You’ll love her. Trust me. first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

Because Jacinta and Brian of ABC Melbourne are letting me loose in the studio

Yes, really. Question is, will I be able to behave myself, or will they need to call on the famous “dump” button? Spoiler alert: no they won’t, because I’m dead professional like that.

If you’re interested in hearing me bang on about my latest novel, SUNDAY REILLY IS ALL OUT OF F*CKS TO GIVE, and whatever else might come up, tune in at 1.40pm on 774 ABC Melbourne, or via the ABC Listen app across Australia or internationally.

Worst case scenario, you’ll get to hear Jacinta and Brian, who are absolute fucking legends. And their show has been my favourite Friday afternoon escape for yonks. To be able to hang out with them for a bit = bucket list stuff.

You can download the ABC Listen app here:

ABC Listen app Book Giveaway

Meantimes, for homework – if you haven’t already met the good-ship Sunday Reilly as she runs ashore in the Aegean, follow the link below to where Goodreads is running an eBook giveaway until 8 February.

I mean, sure. You could also buy an eBook or paperback instead. Writers have to eat, after all. If you want to do that, you can buy my book here:

Buy Sunday Reilly is All Out of F*cks to Give

But, no. Enter the giveaway. I know I would.

Goodreads Book Giveaway Sunday Reilly is All Out of F*cks to Giveby Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

Giveaway ends February 08, 2026.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

The post Got a spare minute or ten this Friday 30 January? first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

Because who the fuck doesn’t need a holiday, right? We’re only in January, and I’m already done with 2026.

So, it’s time to hit the road with Sunday Reilly.

Can I share some exciting news with you?

SUNDAY REILLY IS ALL OUT OF F*CKS TO GIVE was released into the wild two days ago, and to my enduring shock/delight, it’s already making waves on the Amazon bestseller lists! Add to that, five-star reviews… it’s an absolute “pinch-me” moment.

Now, the weekend is here, and it’s a long one for those of us in Australia. If you don’t have a summer trip to the Greek islands lined up, and want a fun, sweary holiday read, join Sunday on her ill-advised escape from reality. I promise you’ll have fun. 

Don’t believe me? Fair enough, I am a little biased.How about these Goodreads reviewers, then?

“Sunday is the kind of character you instantly want as your best friend.”

“Funniest book of 2025. 5 stars!”

“I am absolutely in love with Sunday! This book is one of those rare gems that makes you laugh out loud on public transport and not even care who’s watching.”

“Has you doing pelvic floors and weeping with laughter!”

“Filled with laughs from the opening page, tears and plenty of WTF moments, this is a fun summer read that is tempered with poignant moments.”

“Sunday is the kind of character you instantly want as your best friend—flawed, funny, real, and so incredibly relatable.”

Dip your toe into the Aegean before you commit!

I’m sending you the first three chapters to sample in case you missed your chance to download a free copy of the ebook. Link below!

If you read it and loved it so much you want it in paperback (yes, people are doing that already!)

… you can grab your copy here via Amazon as an eBook or paperback.

To the many people who have already met Sunday—thanks for your overwhelmingly enthusiastic responses. Made me quite teary. I absolutely adore Sunday and am so glad you do as well.

Want to help Sunday fly? Then spread the love! 

Tell your friends

If you did enjoy joining Sunday on her shambolic, but ultimately life-affirming, journey, you could do us both a favour. Recommend her book to your friends! 

Tell the world

Like so many things in life these days, novels sink or swim based on ratings, reviews, and rankings. It will make all the difference to me and Sunday if you can take a minute and jump on Amazon and/or Goodreads to post a review.

You can do that here: Amazon

And here: Goodreads

Thanks so much, friends. 

Best thing about navigating all the shitfuckery going on in the world right now is having you along for the ride. 

Sunday wouldn’t exist without you because you keep me sane. 

x Meaghan

PS – Don’t forget those free sample chapters below!

Sunday-Reilly-is-all-out-of-fcks-to-give-PrintDownload

The post Want to run away to the Greek Islands with Sunday Reilly? first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.

How culture outlives strongmen and rewrites history to win the war over imagination

Photo by Dylan Shaw on Unsplash

Tinpot dictators fucking hate art.

Given where the world seems to be headed, that fact both empowers and terrifies me.

Because for people like me, it means there’s work to be done.

But it also means we’re on a path that leads to artists who tell the truth finding themselves in the crosshairs.

I’m a writer who produces work in many forms. My latest novel, SUNDAY REILLY IS ALL OUT OF F*CKS TO GIVE, came out on Tuesday. Is it political? No. On paper, it’s a funny, sweary read about a woman of a certain age who upends her life and takes off to the Greek islands.

But if you’ve known me around these parts for a bit, or follow me on Threads, you’ll know that I have an opinion or two. I also have an agenda to push. That agenda finds its way into everything I make. So, while you’re reading about Sunday’s often disastrous, but ultimately uplifting, adventures in the Aegean, there’s something else at play.

Reviewer Ashleigh Miekle gets it: “This is a book about being yourself. About standing up against judgment and not caring about what the world or people who look down on you think. And about embracing that…. This is a book for anyone and any woman who has ever felt this way or wants to make a change and start being seen as her own person, not an extension of the identities society puts on her.”

And she’s bang-on. It’s exactly what I was trying to say.

Why should that matter for the Trumps, the Putins, the Modis, and the Orbáns of the world?

With all the power clutched in their unnaturally stubby, grubby, grabby little fingers, why would they even care?

How much of a threat can come from a woman of a certain age like me? Or a dancer working three jobs to pay for her lessons? Or a half-starved photographer who makes art for an audience of three including at least one parent and a landlord who hopes to one day see a rent cheque come through?

Because one day, that artist might make something like this. Pierre Lavie, 2026.

It’s an image that will go down in the annals of frontline photography.

When John Abernathy threw his Leica camera to fellow photojournalist, Pierre Lavie, last week in Minneapolis, the single frame Lavie captured said more about the urban warfare tearing an American city apart and the regime that’s encouraging it, than any long-winded, sternly-worded missive from a politician ever could.

That potent image is out in the world. It condemns the regime by virtue of its very existence. There’s no stuffing the toothpaste back in the tube.

It’s something I know a bit about. Not toothpaste. Art and authoritarianism.

Because before I decided to make things myself rather than write about other people who make things, I clocked up a PhD in art history. , with one covering the intersection between totalitarian governments and the exploitation of visual culture. Yeah. Colour and movement.

And I can tell you with absolute certainty that artists are, and will always be, the most potent voices of the revolution.

That’s because would-be dictators can meet violent resistance head-on.

Intellectual rebellion is another thing altogether. Because it exists in our minds.

I’m not just talking high art

… Yeah, yeah. Save the Snoop Dog jokes, thanks.

I mean everyone from comedians, rappers, and street artists, to screenwriters, playwrights, and country music singers. Even authors of popular novels who fling shit on social media.

Every person who uses their skills and voices to reach an audience is a threat. Because artists speak in tongues. If they’re halfway good at what they do, they communicate in subtext. They don’t inflame; they inspire.

It’s that connection to an audience that terrifies would-be strongmen.

Because the war on culture is all about control

Real artists don’t take too well to being put on a leash… unless it’s something fabulous and bespoke in soft leather by an Italian designer that’s just the ticket for the Venice Biennale vernissage.

But even when they appear to be playing nice, they’ll be pissing on the rug under the table when you’re not looking.

Dictators despise art because it exists in a liminal zone between the subconscious mind and the physical world. It’s the place where imagination takes flight. And imagination is the sworn enemy of authoritarianism, because it allows people to picture a world without walls.

Tens of thousands of years ago, the first human artists were necromancers; spiritual leaders; a bridge between the spirit world, and the physical world.

They were truth tellers. Seers. Visionaries.

Attempting to control them is like trying to bottle the wind… grasp the clouds in your hands… trap birdsong in a bottle.

True art – and artists – cannot be tamed

There are no shackles that can bind thoughts and dreams.

That’s true of all of us. But artists are the conduits between the deepest, darkest corners of our souls and the bright light of consciousness. They give physical form to our fears, our hopes, and our dreams.

The best art bypasses awareness and speaks directly to our souls.

That’s the genius in Pierre Lavie’s photograph. Even if you’ve never studied art, it will speak to you.

Why is it so powerful?

OK, I’ll do the art historian thing and break it down for you.

It begins with the flash of colour at the heart of the composition, drawing our eye into the maelstrom. An axis line leads us from that point to Abernathy, then through his airborne camera, and, beyond that, but out of sight, the unseen point of refuge: the safe hands of his fellow photographer.

The camera, and the images it holds, represent truth. Sanctuary is the clear space in the lower half of the composition, beyond the mad scramble at the centre.

But Lavie has captured a moment of perfect tension. Will the camera/truth make it to the safe zone? Will the sacrifice pay off? And what of Abernathy, who is martyring himself to make sure word gets out? He is the focal point while all around him is chaos.

He’s caught in the eye of the storm; trapped in a tangle of uniformed limbs and framed by the hypermasculine figure of a faceless attacker clutching his own genitals.

Abernathy is trapped behind a grid of jackboots and combat-gear-clad legs: the bars of an urban authoritarian prison. We know that whatever happens to him next will be dreadful. Despite that, he is calm. Resolute. Certain that what he is doing is important.

This is a portrait of good versus evil. Truth versus lies. Sacrifice versus violence.

Armed conflict makes for some powerful art Joe Rosenthal, Associated Press.

There are two strands of military art.

One is represented by the rousing triumphalism of the iconic photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal at Iwo Jima; a composition aped consciously or not, by Evan Vucci of Associated Press when he captured the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in 2024.

Evan Vucci, Associated Press, 2024.

But the images that change the narrative are those that fall into the same class as Pierre Lavie’s photograph. Nick Ut’s searing portrait of Vietnamese napalm victims after an American attack near Trang Bang. Eddie Adams’ shot of the moment a Viet Cong soldier is executed. And Robert Capa’s Falling Soldier, taken in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War.

These artworks change the world

And funnily enough, many of them come from Spain.

As a kid, one of my most treasured collections of books was a set of slimline editions called the Peebles Art Library. When I say kid, I mean under ten. Yes, I was peculiar.

The book on Romanticism contained a reproduction of Goya’s The Third of May 1808. I was obsessed. As I say… peculiar.

Francisco Goya, El Tres de Mayo 1808 en Madrid, via Wikimedia Commons

Even at that age, I recognised it as something remarkable. I’ve since learnt so much more about the wheres, whys, and hows of it. But even as a small human, its power spoke to me through a tiny reproduction on a page.

Painted during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain, the dehumanised line of French soldiers mowing down Spanish civilians in cold blood has been called the first truly great revolutionary painting.

It was the first conflict to be called a “guerrilla” war, from the Spanish guerra, meaning “war.” The French soldiers are dehumanised—faceless, bloodless, grey. They raise their bayonetted rifles against their victims, who plead for their lives; limbs sprawled, some already dead, blood streaming into the dust.

Our eyes are pulled in by the central figure in white, his arms outstretched, begs for clemency. It’s no accident that his stance echoes Christ on the cross.

Disasters of War Francisco Goya, plate 39, Grande hazaña! Con muertos! (A heroic feat! With dead men!)

Goya’s experiences of the French occupation inspired him to create the series of eighty prints, The Disasters of War (1810-20) that could be lifted straight out of a slasher pic. The gruesome and brutal compositions were so frank in their criticism of the French occupation and the Spanish monarchy that they were not published during his lifetime.

Goya was building on the foundation laid by the French artist, Jacques Callot who, in 1633, created what is called the first anti-war art in the western tradition. The eighteen tiny etchings graphically portray unimaginable military atrocities and civilian suffering during the Thirty Years’ War.

Four hundred years later, they still have the power to horrify.

Jacques Callot, Disasters of WarArtists hold power to account

A direct line can be drawn from Callot, through Goya, to the most famous anti-war painting of all time.

Picasso’s Guernica captures the artist’s horror and fury at the aerial bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German forces during the Spanish Civil War. The attack was planned by the Nazi blood-sausage in a suit, Hermann Göring, as a macabre birthday treat for the Führer. Yes, really.

With the chaotic composition focusing on the screaming mother and her dead child, dismembered soldiers, and a dying horse representing Spanish sovereignty, Picasso used a black and white palette to echo the medium of wartime photography.

No shades of grey

Artworks like Guernica are unambiguous. There’s no questioning the artist’s intent.

But the art that sends authoritarian leaders to DEFCON 1 is more subtle.

That’s because the messaging is subversive. It packs a punch, but it’s difficult to identify why. And that makes it almost impossible to police.

Here’s an example. Last week, I visited a Ron Mueck exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Renowned for his uncannily lifelike human figures, Mueck is an Australian artist who gained an international following as a member of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement. Yeah, I don’t know why Mueck qualified as “British” – the money-spinning YBA movement was an invention of the billionaire British ad impresario and art collector, Charles Saatchi. Ask him.

Ron Mueck, Couple Under an Umbrella (image: M. Wilson Anastasios)

Back to the art. Couple Under an Umbrella feels like it should be an intimate and affectionate portrait of a man and woman enjoying a day at the beach. But it’s unsettling. And it’s difficult to know why, unless you know where to look. Which I do.

I’ve studied more works of art, up close and personal, than I’ve had hot dinners. I can read the prompts. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Other times, it’s not. Sometimes I wish I could just sit in the moment and just feel. But as soon as a work of art grabs me – and it may be a book, a film, a song, or a sculpture – I can’t stop my mind searching for the things that are making me feel.

Here are my photos of the things in this artwork that make it something more than just an incredible technical feat.

Ron Mueck, Couple Under an Umbrella (image: M. Wilson Anastasios)

Look at the painfully tight clamp of the woman’s wedding ring around her finger. It’s suffocating. Constrictive. It’s uncomfortable to look at.

Then there’s the juxtaposition of the two figures. She’s not enjoying her day in the sun. She’s slumped down… resigned. Why is his head in her lap rather than the other way round? Why is he gripping her arm like that, so tightly it’s cutting off circulation?

Ron Mueck, Couple Under an Umbrella (image: M. Wilson Anastasios)

The woman is a piece of furniture in human form.

She’s a convenience and comfort to him. A possession.

What is he to her? A burden. An obligation.

Ron Mueck, Couple Under an Umbrella (image: M. Wilson Anastasios)This is what the best art does

It hits you in the solar plexus. Even when you’re not sure why. You know it, even if you can’t quite see it.

It’s also why art in service of the party line—art peddling a prevailing narrative—is not art.

It might be an artful object. But it is not art in the true sense of the word any more than a pretty colour-by-numbers landscape churned out in a factory and sold in IKEA as wall decoration can’t be called art.

It is a visual product. It may be pleasing to the eye. But it sure as fuck isn’t art.

It’s also why propaganda is not art. Yes, it’s a form of communication. It’s a craft, in the same way a beautiful piece of packaging can catch the eye, or a catchy advertising jingle can become an earworm.

Propaganda is not about expansion, exploration, or imagination. It’s not about feeling.

Propaganda isn’t art, it’s an instruction

True art isn’t about selling a product—whether that’s a pair of runners, a car, a politician, or a political slogan.

Because art lies at the core of what it means to be human.

It’s taking the seed of an idea and nurturing it into something that speaks to people. It may eventually become something that’s bought and sold. But that was never the reason for making it in the first place.

Monuments and triumphal arches speak of a moment in time. But they don’t speak of the messy, chaotic moments of life. They are how Great Men (because they are, always, men, although only a depressingly few of them are truly great) want to be remembered.

That’s all. There’s nothing meaningful about it.

Hitler loved art

Because he believed himself to be an artist.

He despised modernist art he called “degenerate,” because that art was associated with the European avant-garde promoted by, yes, Jewish patrons, collectors, and artists.

As he stole art across Europe to put in his proposed ‘Führer’ museum, he put together a collection of paintings that reflected his folksy, simplistic traditional values.

Most of the artists he admired were schlocky and unidimensional.

There was no room in his canon for nuance or complexity.

Because like all Great Men who claim to love art, what Hitler really loved was anything that reflected his own self-image.

What he really loved were lasting monuments to himself

In that desolate hour after midnight when mortality comes knocking, narcissists like Hitler know that they, too, are just worm meat in the end, just like the rest of us. So, they look for art that flatters them and will fight mortality on their behalf.

It’s why they allow artists into their orbit. And has been proved time and time again, vanity comes at a cost.

Back to Goya, his portraits of the weak-chinned, inbred Spanish Royal Family are a case study in throwing shade.

He skewered the half-wit king and his family. As a critic said at the time, “It looks as if the corner baker and his wife have won the lottery.”

Enter, the neckgina

Actually, don’t. Nobody needs that.

When Time Magazine published this cover photo of the notoriously vain American president (inexplicably so, given how little he has to work with), they created a meme for the ages.

The same is true of the remarkable series of portraits taken of Trump’s cabinet and published in Vanity Fair. They paint the subjects as cosplaying powerbrokers so far out of their depth they’re beyond salvation.

This is why people like Donald Trump hate artists.

They hate art that challenges them. Art that mocks them. Art that challenges their view of the world.

It’s no accident that some of the first people in Trump’s sights were network comedians. They are loud, they have a vast audience, and people listen to them. And they are channelling their fury about what’s happening through a medium that is extremely difficult to police. Because how do you challenge someone who’s just trying to make people laugh?

That’s why people like Donald Trump want artists under control.

Artists hold power to account

Often just by holding up a mirror.

So authoritarian leaders try to shut artists down. They defund cultural institutions or take the reins themselves (Trump-Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, anyone?). They shut libraries. Ban or burn books. Censor film and TV.

They’re trying to rewrite the record.

Trump has risen to the top as nothing more than a brand. The things he builds himself have, more often than not, gone bust. All he has is his name. And he’s putting that over everything.

He doesn’t build or make; he breaks

Look at the enshittification and goldening of the Oval Office. The Presidential Walk of Infamy. The Ballroom. The Triumphal Arch.

He’s writing himself into history in a manner he sees fit, to defy the record as it will be recorded by artists and historians across the globe.

But those attempts will, in the long-run, fail.

He’s trying to hold onto a handful of quicksilver.

Artists build, and they break boundaries

They amplify resistance to the status quo. They resist commodification in a world that seeks to reduce everything to a dollar value.

They also speak for the rest of us.

And that’s why art, and artists, are more important now than ever.

This is a battle to control the narrative.

It’s about reframing the way the future sees the present.

Because that’s how the future will learn about this timeline.

Through the cultural relics that we leave behind.

So, fight on. We will prevail. That’s a guarantee.

The post Why Dictators Don’t Fear Guns — They Fear Artists first appeared on Meaghan Wilson Anastasios.