You should read - May 20

When I first heard of a shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last weekend, my first impulse was "This is America. That'll be forgotten in 20 minutes, if anyone notices at all." I guess it's a good thing that this shooting by a white supremacist definitely was noticed and definitely won't be forgotten? The real question is whether anything will be done about it.

Just one thing

The Rebellion Will Be Televised (Vanity Fair)

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series starts on Disney+ in about a week and the Lucasfilm/Disney PR hype assault has begun. A Vanity Fair feature replete with Annie Leibovitz photography feels entirely appropriate for where Star Wars is today - trotting out the same formulas and hoping familiar names and faces can deliver the fan service will somehow jumpstart a moribund franchise (I hate that word).

Having said that, I eagerly ripped through the article as soon as I saw it Monday morning. But it's such transparently a paid-for story, just hitting all the PR talking points. Just the tiniest nods to the behind the scenes catastrophe Star Wars has become, but broadly claiming the best is ahead. I don't buy it. I'm not terribly excited about Kenobi. The trailer is oddly underwhelming. I have no interest in the much-hyped return of Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, which is a bizarre casting to say the least. The Book of Boba Fett shows the Favreau/Filoni coupling is not the savior pairing everyone was hoping for. So my expectations for The Mandalorian Season Three are low.

Only Andor has me excited. Tony Gilroy's pitch to Diego Luna is exactly what I've been wanting to see and I'm hoping that with the spotlight on all the other more high profile projects, these two will be able to bring magic to Star Wars storytelling once again. Help me, Tony Gilroy. You're my only hope.

Fascist terror strikes again

In a replay of the 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas, a white supremacist went on a rampage last week in a predominantly Black community in Buffalo, NY. I started collecting relevant links to share here, but the sheer volume got to be overwhelming.

• The Buffalo Shooter Isn't a 'Lone Wolf.' He's a Mainstream Republican (Rolling Stone)
• Liz Cheney says GOP ‘enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism’ (The Independent)
• What "great replacement"? Right wants us to shut up about Buffalo shooter's ideology (Salon)
• Buffalo Shooter’s Racist ‘Great Replacement’ Theory Has Been Mainstreamed By GOP (Mother Jones)
• The new generation of white supremacist killer: shedding blood with internet winks, memes and livestreams (Penn Live)
• Republicans Must Answer for ‘Great Replacement Theory’ Violence (The Daily Beast)
• The Buffalo Shooter’s Manifesto Relied on the Same White Supremacist Conspiracy Pushed by Tucker Carlson (VICE)
• Buffalo pastor says white peers who won’t stand against white supremacy can ‘go to Hell’ (Christian Post)

I want to say this publicly, especially to my white pastors, don't tell me you're a friend of our community and you don’t address this today in your pulpit. Don’t tell me you love all people, and you don't stand up against racism, and you don't stand up against hatred, and you don't stand up against white supremacy.

You do your church over there, but as for us, we are grieving. And if you don’t stand behind that holy desk and acknowledge that there are still people who hate black people, you can go to Hell with the shooter for all I care because, at the end of the day, if you're silent right now, you're not a friend of mine. Don’t invite me to your repast. Don’t invite me to have words in your Black History Month.

This is the time for black and white people, for Jew and gentile, for Muslim, to stand up together and say no to hatred.

Bishop Darius G. Pridgen
True Bethel Baptist Church

Watch the May 15 service below:

More background on the very present and threat of right-wing terrorism:

• Right-wing terrorism (Wikipedia)
• Right-wing extremism: The new wave of global terrorism (World Economic Forum)
• A Dark and Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States (Anti-Defamation League)
• Assessing the right-wing terror threat in the United States a year after the January 6 insurrection (The Brookings Institution)
• January 6 panel evidence suggests Congress members led ‘reconnaissance tours’ of the Capitol before attack (The Guardian)
• White supremacists are convicted of training for a civil war in Michigan (Metro Times)
• It is happening here: Massachusetts has a growing neo-Nazi movement (WGBH Boston)
• Living With The Far-Right Insurgency In Idaho (Huffington Post)

"Progressive California" ain't immune. A small knot of Nazi clowns showed up in the town next door on that very Sunday.

The Ballot Battleground

Winning at the ballot box ain't going be enough when your opponent has bullets, too. But elections matter more than ever and Leftists of all stripes - yes, I'm including Dems in that - need to get it together on this front.

• Democratic Voters Rejected the Status Quo Last Night (Jacobin)
• Opinion | Why Dems Ought to Take a Cue from the GOP and Get Angry (Politico)
• Dem Voters Want Dem Pols Who Do Things (American Prospect)
  The corollary, of course, is that GOP Voters want GOP pols who do nothing
• Op-Ed: Democrats need to stop behaving as if there’s a prize for showing restraint (LA Times)
• The Battle for State Legislatures – Sabato's Crystal Ball (UVA Center for Politics)

Collected Ephemera

I wish there was more fun stuff to include here this week.

• Finland's Parliament approves NATO application in historic vote (YLE)
• The Era of Rebellious Web Design Is Here (AIGA Eye on Design)
• Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire” (Current Affairs)
• What Parents Did Before Baby Formula (The Atlantic)
• On the Ethics of Psychometric Instruments Used in Leadership Development Programmes (Journal of Business Ethics)
• A Messiah Won’t Save Us (Noēma)