www.coldtype.net THE BIG COVID-19 THOUGHT EXPERIMENT | C.J. Hopkins SICK DAYS, MARKET CRASHES & CLOSED BORDERS | Linh Dinh WHEN ‘FAKE’ NEWS WAS BANNED | Adam Hochschild iSSue 202 ColdWriting Worth reading n Photos WorthType seeing Mid-March 2020 A STRANGE CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITYAnderson David Trevor Grundy thought his new girlfriend was taking him to a secret 1976 Johannesburg party in honour of jailed Anc leader nelson mandela. When they arrived, he discovered something was seriously wrong PLUS VIVA LAS VIRUS Joe Allen CORONAVIRUS CHAOS Andrew Fischer 2 n Writing Worth reading n Photos Worth seeing ColdType Issue 202 / Mid-March 2020 Issues www.coldtype.net K?<9@>:FM@;$(0K?FL>?K<OG<I@D<EK | C.J. Hopkins J @ : B ; 8 P J#D8IB<K:I8J?<J:CFJ<;9FI;<IJ | Linh Dinh N?<EÊ=8B<ËE<NJN8J98EE<; | Adam Hochschild 4 When ‘fake’ news was banned / Adam Hochschild ? I I K ; ( & ( 10 UK politics isn’t designed to defend the public :fc[MH?J?D=MEHJ>H;7:?D=■F>EJEIMEHJ>I;;?D=K p gC_Z#CWhY^ \ (&(& George Monbiot 7IJH7D=;97I;E< 12 A strange case of mistaken identity / Trevor Grundy C?IJ7A;D?:;DJ?JOAnderson David Ki\mfi>ile[pj^ek]^j^_id[m 16 The war that won’t go away / William Croke ]_hb\h_[dZmWijWa_d]^_cjeW i[Yh[j'/-,@e^Wdd[iXkh]fWhjo _d^edekhe\ `W_b[Z7D9b[WZ[h D[biedCWdZ[bW$M^[dj^[o 22 The man who skewers presidential numbskullery Whh_l[Z"^[Z_iYel[h[Ziec[j^_d] mWii[h_ekibomhed] FBKI Tony Sutton L?L7B7IL?HKI J o e A l l e n 9EHED7L?HKI9>7EI 24 The big Covid-19 thought experiment / C.J. Hopkins Andrew Fischer 27 Viva Las Virus / Joe Allen 30 Sick days, market crashes and closed borders ColdType 7 Lewis Street, Georgetown, Linh Dinh Ontario, Canada LG7 1E3 36 Coronavirus chaos / Andrew Fischer Contact ColdType: Write to Tony Sutton Insights at [email protected] 39 The public lab that could have helped Subscribe: For a FREE subscription the coronavirus fight / Linda McQuaig to Coldtype, e-mail 40 Radio Times gets with the programme [email protected] Trevor Hoyle Back Issues: www.coldtype.net/reader.html 42 Turkey’s gamble in Syria ends in failure or www.issuu.com/coldtype Conn Hallinan Cover image: David Anderson 44 Coronavirus and the Shock Doctrine www.dandersonillustration.com Sam Pizzigati & Sarah Anderson © ColdType 2020 46 Freedom finally arrives for Chelsea Manning Binoy Kampmark ColdType | Mid-March 2020 | www.coldtype.net 3 n AdAm HocHscHild When ‘fake news’ was banned The 1917 Espionage Act gave huge powers over the media to the postmaster general, former Texas congressman Albert sidney Burleson, an America donald Trump would have loved very month, it seems, brings CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press zestfully banned magazines and a new act in the Trump ad- pass. And the list goes on. newspapers of all sorts doesn’t ministration’s war on the me- Yet it remains deceptively easy even appear in either Morison’s dia. In January, Secretary of to watch all the furore over the history, that Britannica article, or State Mike Pompeo exploded media with the feeling that it’s still just about anywhere else either. Eat National Public Radio reporter intact and safely protected. After Mary Louise Kelly when he didn’t all, didn’t Richard Nixon and Ron- like questions she asked – and then ald Reagan rail against the press The story begins in the spring banned a colleague of hers from in their presidencies? And don’t of 1917, when the United States the plane on which he was leaving we have the First Amendment? In entered the First World War. De- for a trip to Europe and Asia. In my copy of Samuel Eliot Morison’s spite his reputation as a liberal February, the Trump staff booted 1,150-page Oxford History of the internationalist, the president at a Bloomberg News reporter out of American People, the word “cen- that moment, Woodrow Wilson, an Iowa election campaign event. sorship” doesn’t even appear in the cared little for civil liberties. Af- The president has repeatedly index; while, in an article on “The ter calling for war, he quickly called the press an “enemy of the History of Publishing,” the Ency- pushed Congress to pass what be- people” – the very phrase that, in clopedia Britannica reassures came known as the Espionage Act, Russian (vrag naroda), was ap- us that, “in the United States, no which, in amended form, is still in plied by Joseph Stalin’s prosecu- formal censorship has ever been effect. Nearly a century later, Na- tors to the millions of people they established.” tional Security Agency whistle- sent to the gulag or to execution blower Edward Snowden would chambers. In that context, Trump’s be charged under it and in these term for BuzzFeed, a “failing pile So, how bad could it get? The an- years he would hardly be alone. of garbage,” sounds comparatively swer to that question, given the Despite its name, the act was benign. Last year, Axios revealed actual history of this country, is: not really motivated by fears of that some of the president’s sup- much worse. wartime espionage. By 1917, there porters were trying to raise a fund Though few remember it today, were few German spies left in the of more than $2-million to gather exactly 100 years ago, this coun- United States. Most of them had damaging information on jour- try’s media was labouring under been caught two yea rs ea rlier when nalists at the New York Times, the the kind of official censorship that their paymaster got off a New York Washington Post, and other media would undoubtedly thrill both City elevated train leaving behind outfits. In 2018, it took a court order Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo. a briefcase quickly seized by the to force the White House to restore And yet the name of the man who American agent tailing him. 4 ColdType | Mid-March 2020 | www.coldtype.net Photo: Karel Miragaya / 123RF.com his efforts to put an enforced news- paper censorship section into the espionage bill”. The Act was then being debated in Congress. “I have every confidence”, he wrote to the chair of the House Judiciary Com- mittee, “that the great majority of the newspapers of the country will observe a patriotic reticence about everything whose publica- tion could be of injury, but in every country there are some persons in a position to do mischief in this field.” Subject to punishment under the Espionage Act of 1917, among others, would be anyone who “shall willfully utter, print, write or pub- lish any disloyal, profane, scurril- ous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.” Who was it who would deter- mine what was “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive”? When it came to anything in print, the Act gave that power to the postmaster general, former Texas Congress- man Albert Sidney Burleson. “He has been called the worst postmas- ter general in American history”, writes the historian G.J. Meyer, “but that is unfair; he introduced parcel post and airmail and im- proved rural service. It is fair to Rather, the new law allowed the to criminalise much of the Left. say, however, that he may have government to define any opposi- (My new book, Rebel Cinderella, been the worst human being ever tion to the war as criminal. And follows the career of Rose Pastor to serve as postmaster general.” since many of those who spoke out Stokes, a famed radical orator who Burleson was the son and most strongly against entry into was prosecuted under the Espio- grandson of Confederate veterans. the conflict came from the ranks of nage Act.) When he was born, his family still the Socialist Party, the Industrial owned more than 20 slaves. The Workers of the World (famously first Texan to serve in a cabinet, known as the “Wobblies”), or Censorship was central to that he remained a staunch segre- the followers of the charismatic repressive era. As the Washington gationist. In the Railway Mail anarchist Emma Goldman, this Evening Star reported in May 1917, Service (where clerks sorted mail in effect allowed the government “President Wilson today renewed on board trains), for instance, he ColdType | Mid-March 2020 | www.coldtype.net 5 considered it “intolerable” that Burleson instructed nent targets would be the New York whites and blacks not only had to City monthly The Masses. Named work together but use the same postmasters to after the workers that radicals toilets and towels. He pushed to were then convinced would deter- segregate Post Office lavatories immediately send mine the revolutionary course of and lunchrooms. him newspapers or history, the magazine was never ac- He saw to it that screens were tually read by them. It did, however, erected so blacks and whites work- magazines that looked become one of the liveliest publica- ing in the same space would not in any way suspicious tions this country has ever known have to see each other. “Nearly and something of a precursor to the all Negro clerks of long-standing New Yorker. It published a mix of service have been dropped”, the political commentary, fiction, poet- anguished son of a black postal pression of dissenting publications ry, and reportage, while pioneering worker wrote to the New Republic, of any sort. Within a day of its pas- the style of cartoons captioned by a adding, “Every Negro clerk elimi- sage, he instructed postmasters single line of dialogue for which the nated means a white clerk appoint- throughout the country to imme- New Yorker would later become so ed.” Targeted for dismissal from diately send him newspapers or well known.