Burn Baby, Burn!

On the 20th we posted about monuments which can only be seen from above or from afar, including geoglyphs such as hill figures, effigy mounds and the Nazca lines.  What started it all were a few examples of monuments made of living trees.  One was a benign Celtic cross, a few were celebrations of Lenin's birthday centennial, and then there were the swastikas.  Three of them!  (See Forest for the Trees, Stones for the Mountain)

But we neglected to include another fascist monument.  In this case it's a monument to Hitler's pal Benito Mussolini, aka "Il Duce".  The tree memorial in questions spell out "DVX" ("leader"). But we'll get back to that in a moment.

Mussolini was officially the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 until he was formally dismissed by King Victor Emmanuel in July, 1943, then promptly arrested.  Ensuing events are too complex to summarize here, but as the Allies began to advance into Italy in April, Mussolini and his girlfriend Clara Petacci decided it was time to flee.  As they were heading to Switzerland to catch a plane to Fascist Spain, he and Petacci, along with some of his closest cohorts, were captured by Communist partisans on April, 27th.  A day later, the couple and most of their cohorts were shot in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra -- only two days before Hitler and his mistress killed themselves just outside their bunker as the Russians advanced upon Berlin.  The bodies were then brought to Milan.  The long-suffering Italians were none too happy with their former leader, to whit:

After being kicked and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down from the roof of an Esso gas station. The bodies were then stoned from below by civilians. This was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight, and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader was subject to ridicule and abuse. (Wikipedia)

His corpse had an active afterlife.  It was buried in an unmarked grave, then dug up a year later by Fascists.  It was found months later after being constantly moved around in order to avoid being discovered.  The body was then stuffed into a trunk and hidden in a town near Milan.  There it was kept for another decade before the authorities agreed to allow Mussolini's body to be re-interred in the town of his birth.  Here he was accorded the courtesy of a crypt, flanked by marble fasces and topped with a marble bust.  

Hitler's remains also had a curious afterlife, but the Russians weren't taking any chances and the exact fate of his remains, erm, remains unknown.  Like the US did when they hid the corpses of Che Guevara and Bin Laden, the Russians kept the location of their burial unknown from preventing it from becoming a pilgrimage site (See No Body Home)

Il Duce derives from the Latin word dux (leader), and gives us the word "duke" in English.  The title had been used outside the traditional noble usage to refer to Garibaldi in 1860, although he never used it himself.  King Victor Emmanuel III was called "Duce Supremo" during WWI, and Gabriele d'Annunzio used the title as dictator of the Italian Regency of Carnaro in 1920.  Incidentally, D'Annunzio was an untranationalist who, though he never self-identified as a fascist, is often "credited" with partially inventing Italian fascism and was an influence on the ideas and Fascist aesthetics (the Black Shirts, balcony speeches, etc.) of Mussolini.  D'Annunzio was critical of Mussolini, and the latter saw him as a rival and a threat to his leadership, especially his alliance with Hitler.  It is said Mussolini supported D'Annunzio financially as a kind of "bribe" to keep him out of politics.

Of course, Mussolini is who we usually think of when we hear the title Il Duce, just as we think of Hitler when we hear the title Der Führer, which, incidentally, also means "leader".  Indeed:

This position was the model which other fascist leaders adopted, such as the position of Führer by Adolf Hitler and Caudillo by Francisco Franco.

Mussolini actually was first called by the title as early as 1912, after he was appointed editor of Avanti!  This paper, founded in 1896 "as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party," still exists, although in 1976 its political alignment shifted to social democracy  (a socialist tradition, it promotes a gradual and democratic, as opposed to revolutionary, move towards socialism within a capitalist "mixed" economic system.  I'm sure that's a bit simplistic but you get the idea).

Enter the "fascist forest".  On Monte Giano, about 100k from Rome, cadets at the Scuola Allievi Guardie Forestali (a forestry academy) in the aptly-named town of Cittaducale ("ducal city") planted about 20,000 fir trees in 1938-39 to honor Il Duce by spelling out "DUX." 

 

A first attempt to eradicate the forest took place in the 1950's, and in 1998, after years of neglect, the center-left regional government allocated over 100,000 USD to both revitalize the forest and obscure the letters.  But in 2004, the neo-Fascist leader of a by then far-right regional government started to restore them.  Then in 2017, a motorist passing through the area was cooking tomato sauce (can't make this stuff up) accidentally (?) started a forest fire which did what earlier, human-led attempts failed to do.  

"Accidentally?"  According to The Local, -- "Italy's News in English":

...forestry police....found paper balls and inflammable liquid on the mountain believed to have been used to spread the fire deliberately, according to Rome-based daily Il Messaggero.

That report was on August 29th.  I like the way Italian newspaper Il Messaggero put it on the 25th, a few days before police discovered the evidence of arson:

No revisionism, no carelessness, no chainsaw:  in the end tomato sauce was enough, a pummarola (tomato sauce) that was stronger than the delusions of grandeur of the Regime.

According to the same article by The Local:

In clear weather, the letters – which are 630 feet tall and 1,360 feet across – could even be seen from Rome, some 50 miles away, but due to fire damage, only the 'D' has been left intact.

It also states that:

....Alessandra Mussolini – the granddaughter of Benito and an MEP with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party – said she would visit the forest.

 She said that she would talk to local authorities about the possibility of repairing the homage.

The far-right group CasaPound has already launched a fundraising effort to restore the   forest as well as a call to farmers to help with the restoration, under the slogan 'You can't erase history'.

So, I'm not sure of the exact state of the letters today, but Italian Wikipedia, citing Corriere Della Sera, says:

In February 2018, a group of CasaPound volunteers planted 1000 pine trees on Mount Giano in order to restore the writing.  The operation was deemed unnecessary by members of the local community, due to incorrect timing.

The original article quotes the VP of CasaPound as writing that up to 200 people from CasaPound, the Salamandra civil protection group, and the ecological association La Foresta che Avanza planted "a thousand Austrian pines, similar to the old ones destroyed, purchased thanks to the fundraising in which many Italians participated."

Not quite sure why the Wikipedia article mentions "bad timing" because the original article doesn't mention this at all.  And anyway, what a weird objection.  When would any time be "good" timing? 

So, those final days of Mussolini, and Italy's turnaround vis-a-vis Germany, is fascinating stuff.  As is the story of D'Annunzio.  Makes me think I should do a bit on ultra-nationalist poets and artists with political pretensions.  One example being Japan's then-most famous novelist Yukio Mishima, a right-wing nationalist who wanted to restore Japan to its former imperial glory, even forming his own private militia reminiscent of the Black Shirts and Brown Shirts of the Fascists and the Nazis.

Mishima formed the Tatenokai for the avowed purpose of restoring sacredness and dignity to the Emperor of Japan [something Hitler and Mussolini evoked endlessly].  On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and tried to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to rise up and overthrow Japan's 1947 Constitution, which he called "a constitution of defeat".  After his speech and screaming of "Long live the Emperor!", he committed seppuku [ritual suicide].

I looked briefly at Mishima's Wiki page and was struck immediately by a photo of that speech, from a balcony; you may recall that speeches given from balconies was one of the influences D'Annunzio had on Mussolini's Fascist aesthetic.  (Follow links for images of the rival "Duci" doing just that.)

There's a great photo of Mishima's balcony speech here.

Anyway, here's a cool collection of (non-political) 8 Extraordinary Pieces of Architecture Grown From Living Trees.

Fiends, Omens, Countrymen, lend me your hands....

(I started this over a month ago and have been lollygagging about, so it's a bit of old news at this point.)

Some cadavers have a more active life than many people who assume they are alive.  Ever see Weekend at Bernie's?  S'nuff said.  Bernie had so many adventures they had to make a sequel to relate them all.

Take Abraham Lincoln....as at least one man has already tried!  The 16th President's corpse has traveled more than many people I know.  His coffin has been moved no less than 17 times and opened on at least five occasions.  That's five documented times.  Who knows who else has snuck a peek?  His tomb wasn't guarded for years.  Anything could have been going on in there.

When it was moved for what is said to have been for the last time, those present opened the coffin to ensure that yes, indeed, they were moving the President; they found his body to be in a remarkable state of preservation, incorrupt, like a saint's remains.  The witnesses half-expected him to sit up and begin telling one of those cryptic anecdotes he was famous for and for which people thought he might have been a total simpleton.  Given his (now) well-documented prowess as a vampire hunter, this would not have been beyond the realm of possibility.  His nocturnal habits and amazing constitution had many people "in the know" speculating about whether or not he'd been bitten and turned, but all that was settled when the fanatical John Wilkes Booth, Knight of the Golden Circle, cried out "Sic semper" and settled the question once and for all.

OK, the vampire thing is bullshit, but it's true his body was said to have been remarkably well-preserved, but perhaps no more than any other.  Lincoln had risen to such a status that by the 20th century he was almost a mythical being.  His memorial, completed in 1922, is almost like the shrine of a God Man.  It's an impressive and humbling statue, strangely intimate for something so grandiose.  Lincoln has a special place in the hearts of many Americans, often ranked as the best of our presidents.  This aura is what led to the attempt to steal his body in 1876.

Without soaking the story with all the details, the outline is this.  A Chicago mobster named James "Big Jim" Kennally ran a counterfeiting ring and his engraver, one Benjamin Boyd, had been arrested.  Kennally needed him back so he conceived of a plot to steal Lincoln's body from his unguarded tomb and ransom it for the release of his engraver; for good measure, he was also going to demand 200,000 dollars.

Kennally and his rather maladroit minions were caught and arrested after one of the guys he'd brought in for the caper turned out to be a Secret Service agent working undercover.  The SS was at that time dedicated to capturing counterfeiters and only later, partially due to this plot, did it evolve into the agency responsible for the permanent security of the President.  Oh, how far we've come from the days when a man or woman could walk up to the White House, knock on the door, and ask to see the President.  And most likely get an audience.  Simpler times that assassinations made more complicated.  Even then political violence was associated with a decrease in personal intercourse.  (Reviewing this post for publication, I have no idea why I wrote that last sentence or how it's relevant exactly, but I kind of like the phrase so, I'll leave it in; why not?)

Sometime last year, at least by December 11th, a plaster study of Lincoln's hand was stolen from the Kankakee County Museum, the work of Lincoln admirer G.G. Allin....woups, I mean G.G. Barnard.  According to the NYT, the police notice said the museum curator described the sesquicentenarian hand as being “the size of a 8-10 pound ham.”  Talk about your ham-handed press releases.

While the hand wasn't a real one, there is something of the grave robbery to this case.  Maybe it's because death masks produced during this period were also in plaster.  Maybe it's some kind of lingering Medieval notion about the power of the image -- statues that weep and heal -- or even a bit of the magical thinking that actually make Voodoo dolls work; they work because people think they do.  Basically, there's a strain of thought in the Western mind that makes the graven image something powerful, alive even.  Pygmalion, Constantine's head, Baphomet.  And then there's the negative power given them by iconoclasts, principal tenets of both Judaism and Islam, not to mention once-sporadic outbreaks of image smashing in the Orthodox world.  The Egyptians at times held that the obelisk was a petrified ray of light and thus contained the essence of Ra himself.  Their funerary practices placed a special emphasis on the objects the Pharaoh would need for the afterlife, the objects and sarcophagi were imbued with their power.  Lincoln, our martyred President, may have developed such an aura of sanctity that even a ham-sized plaster hand made from life could be considered as something akin to a holy relic.

It seems weird, but the holiness of Presidents was a  paleo-meme in the making during the mid-19th century.  Take Brumidi's The Apotheosis of Washington from 1865, which graces the Capitol's rotunda.  The painting references a sculpture from 1840 by Horatio Greenough which portrays Washington as a muscular godling, hand pointing up as opposed to down.  As above etc.  They both hold their swords in a non-threatening manner and have draped material over their knees.  Brumidi, however, took care to keep Washington clothed.  The weirdness of the Grrenough piece, and Washington's naked torso, did not go unmentioned at the time.  It too was designed for the rotunda, but was so scorned and derided that it was moved at least four times before ending up on the second floor of the National Museum of American History, where it has been tucked away since 1964.  Interesting that the essential pose of the sculpture was maintained in the rotunda fresco and specifically turned into an apotheosis; why did they need this Hermetic pose in the rotunda?  Also interesting that this dates from just after the assassination of Lincoln.  The nation's first martyred president.  By that act he'd become something of a god.

A lithograph roughly contemporary with Constantino Brumidi's painting shows Lincoln and Washington in an oddly intimate embrace, as if Washington is pulling Lincoln to his feet, resurrecting him perhaps, and holding a laurel wreath over his head; it is titled Washington and Lincoln. (Apotheosis).  Apotheosis represents the ultimate step on Lincoln's journey.  Where can he go now that he's become a god?  First a crowned martyr, then....deification.  Making good men better.

On LoS we've posted a few times about the political uses of the corpse.  In No body home, we compare the postmortem treatment of Osama Bin Laden and Che Guevara.  Both were rather hurriedly disposed of so as to avoid any prolonged controversy about their ultimate destination.  Bin Laden was dumped into the sea and Guevara dismembered and sent to many secret locations.  No grave in order to prevent their final resting places from becoming shrines, rallying points for disaffected young radicals.  The Soviets were hip to this risk as well, which is why they never really buried Hitler's body.  They wanted to prevent any place from becoming a pilgrimage destination for a new generation of Nazis; they were afraid of the corpse's power.  They burned it, ground it up and burned it again, eventually scattering the ashes in the Dneiper.  But always in almost tentative baby half-steps.  They apparently kept some charred skull fragments hanging around until god knows when, for all we know they could still be an a shoe-box somewhere in a vast Russian warehouse like the Ark in Indiana Jones.  The Soviets were into the power of corpses as shrine-fodder.  They did, after all, put Lenin on display at Red Square, as if his corpse were the golden milestone of the U.S.S.R.

Many believe Hitler may have not died at all.  He may have been ferreted off to Argentina....  That's the danger of not producing a body.  People will say Hitler's death was a fabrication, or that Osama had been long dead and only used as a bogeyman to scare the American people like children afraid of being carried off in a rotten sack by a smelly old man.

A disappearing body is a powerful religious symbol; one could reasonably argue that the empty tomb is the critical circumstance which saved Romano-Hellenized Judaism from obscurity; just another failed Messiah.  But this Nazarene was something different; and even he spoke of the severed hand.

And if your right hand subverts you, cut it off, cast it from you, for it is profitable for you that one of your members be lost, and not that your whole body fall into Gehenna.

-- Christ, Jesus H. (Matthew 5:30 | Aramaic Bible in Plain English).

Argentina has produced one of the strangest cases of postmortem dismemberment I've read about.  This is the case of the surgical removal of Juan Peron's hands long after his body his was laid to rest in his mausoleum; the "theft" was a hornet's nest of conspiracy theories, said to involve the P2 Lodge, the Mafia, and elements of the Military junta who brutalized the country at the time of the grave robbery.  There are many theories behind the theft.  Some say it's related to occult practices like those which result in the creation of a Hand of Glory.  In addition to the occult value of the Hand, which allows its bearer to unlock any door, it might have actually worked -- some speak of Swiss bank accounts accessed with his thumbprint.  Others cite alleged Masonic punishments for breaking one's oath.  Still others point to a kind of symbolic and even more potent kind of castration; the hands -- being very visible in his televised speeches -- became associated with his gift of oratory, which was one his most effective tools in swaying the people.  Incidentally, in an older post (The hand is the whole, 29 January, 2011) we made the connection between the Hand of God and the Voice of God in medieval iconography.  Scientists measuring brain activity have noted that the language centers of the brain are stimulated to the same degree and in the same location whether the language be spoken, or communicated via sign language.

In The hand is the whole I wrote quite a bit about the relationship between the hand and images of power and authority, citing several popular expressions.  These metaphors are often about force, dominance and the effective exercise thereof. 

• His response was a bit heavy-handed.  
• She rules the office with an iron fist.  
• The man was strong-armed into signing the contract.  
• He can't escape the long arm of the law.

In Star Wars the changing balance of power between Vader and Luke is always preceded by a de-handing.  In another quasi-Oedipal conflict, Hook chases Peter Pan, to exact revenge for having been de-handed by him.  ("Peter" being slang for penis is surely a coincidence).  He is also driven into paroxysms of fear at the sound of an approaching clock.  The Lost Symbol is kicked off, if we can mix up our body parts, by the discovery of a Hand of Glory in the Capitol rotunda, which sits at one end of the National Mall, that Tree of Life directly across from the Lincoln memorial.  It occurs to me that in Game of Thrones, Ned Stark, the King's "Hand" (who is beheaded!) is a perfect illustration of this point.  The Hand represents the King, can speak on his behalf -- recall that the hand and the tongue activate language centers in the listener is the same manner -- and generally enforces his Will; the instrument in short, of Power.

The de-handing of Perón was more than a simple castration; it was a killing of the father, as in the Star Wars films.  A hand-less man is diminished in ways a legless man is not.  The hands are part of effective communication and without hands we are rendered partially mute.  I'll paste back in a fragment I wrote earlier:  "it was a cutting out of the tongue, for these hands held vast powers of communication."  Perón, from beyond the grave, could not exercise power over the popular imagination as he might have been able had he been whole.  In Buenos Aires, an enormous pair of portraits of Evita face the Obelisk, symbol of the Republic.  Graffiti to Evita is everywhere.  She is worshiped like one of the legendary folk saints that flourish in Argentina:  San La Muerte, Gauchito Gil, La Difunta Correa.  But Juan is strangely mute.

From Alpha-Zeta 16 October, 2012:

Eva Perón's body also suffered indignity in death; her corpse was ignobly shuffled about before returning to Buenos Aires.  After the military coup of 1955 her body disappeared.  It was secretly put into a crypt in Milan under the name María Maggi (Mary Magdalen?).  "Evita" was exhumed and repatriated in 1971, placed in an elaborate and highly secure tomb, which has become a popular shrine, and she, revered like a saint.   What is important is that her body has remained intact.  In his essay on "Latin America" in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, John McManners "claims that Eva Perón consciously incorporated aspects of the mythology of the Virgin and of Mary Magdalene into her public persona."

Anyway, Lincoln's hand -- a few weeks later -- remains lost.  The nation hasn't crumbled.  Whoever took them probably just wanted a nifty and easy-to-score souvenir.  But given the recent spate of attacks on Confederate flags and memorials, it could be a kind of revenge by a lone "Lost Causer" of the sort who put a bullet into Lincoln's head in the first place...

And I just noticed that the museum director in is named Connie Licon.  Missing two letters.  Like two missing hands!!!!                 

Bwa-ha-ha-haaah!!

The Apotheosis of Michael Jackson

Note: The following was written a few weeks ago but due to vacations hasn't been posted until now.

The King is Dead !

So read the banner headline of the Drudge Report on June 26. How fitting this comes so soon after the summer solstice.

Long Live the King!

The phrase was first employed when Charles VII inherited the crown from Charles VI in 1422 and embodies the principle of le mort saisit le vif-death takes the living-which signifies the instant transfer of sovereignty upon the death of a reigning monarch.

Ebony and Ivory, living together in perfect harmony. This would be more than the piano keyboard as metaphor for racial harmony, but the code for the tessellated chessboard of the magickal universe. Jachin and Boaz, Tonto (fool) and the Lone Ranger (dipshit).

Michael was Whacko Jacko in life, but in death becomes the celebrated icon who burst through racial barriers and made it possible for black entertainers to become bona fide superstars. But then again he is white, no? Ebony and Ivory indeed. Strange to see him celebrated as a black icon when he strove in life to remove all traces of his African heritage.

And the Mormons used to tell the Indians that if they sold their land to the church and became Mormons, they would become white....er, pure.

In July 1831 after the arrival of Joseph Smith, Jr., and others in Jackson County, Missouri, plans were made to preach to the Native Americans. Smith received a directive on intermarriage with the Indians....

He was an androgynous creature, not quite male or female, not quite adult or child. Not quite black or white. Like some mythical beast representing the reconciliation of opposites: Long Live the King! The King is Dead. The circle of life goes on. The sun dies and is reborn.

He was the King of Pop, which spelled backwards still makes him the King of Pop. And he took himself for a king. Even named his sons Prince Michael I and Prince Michael II. And his daughter is Paris. Which isn’t Versailles but close enough. Did someone say Sun King? Here’s looking at the man in the hall of mirrors.

The sun has just begun its dying process: The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

Oh and lest you forget, there’s a great alchemical secret to get in on: Nature can be perfected....

"There is also, of course, the old adage that celebrities die in threes, with the deaths of Gianni Versace, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in 1997 frequently held up as an example of this."

We cite (Carradine, Farrah Fawcett aka Darby Crash) and Michael Jackson. All icons of the Dead Seventies.

And in South Carolina, another king, Governor Sanford, as in Sanford and Sun, disappeared, leaving the state in a tizzy, but his return didn’t really smooth things over. Seems he was visiting his Argentine mistress: Maria (mother of Jesus) Belen (Bethlehem) Chapur. Chapur is a Persian surname. And in Persia the media has perfect leverage to wag the dog. Which backwards spells God. As if waving in front of your face. Heroic youth on the front-lines. With the death of an old regime a new one can be born. Martyred beautiful young woman, liberty leading the people, dead on the barricades, her last breath captured on a cell phone.

The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

It’s Easter and Christmas all rolled up into one. It’s the solstice.

"In the end, sometimes our reactions were divorced from reason and rationale, and had nothing to do with how we felt about him. They were reactions born of the raw emotion that comes when a seam in the fabric of our culture unravels, when someone as undeniably monumental as Michael Jackson dies."

How now, brown cow?

[added July 15]

So get ready for the resurrection and the visions. Just like Jesus we've had a (now located) missing body, miraculous sightings and both Kings have appeared in a lowly Cheeto....

The Fish is in the Mail

"Employees of a Philadelphia pet store expecting to get a shipment of tropical fish and salt water by air cargo ended up getting a human body instead ... US Airways released a statement saying the problem was caused by a 'verbal miscommunication between a delivery driver and the cargo representative' ... Arabia said he believes the fish died as a result."