history

The Loss of Democracy

1 March 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

I have used this blog almost exclusively for talking about literature and my novels. That’s what this site is for. But I have to share this with you because some things must never be silenced. I put the text below in a comment somewhere, but I don’t want to lose it in the chatter that is Facebook. It’s dark and grim, but so be it. Here goes…

We are at a watershed in history. Dangerous times. There is so much misinformation (now with an official name, alternate facts), hate speech, doublespeak, polarisation. I’m not an expert in anything, but I did something as part of a research for a current project. I read the headlines on the cover of a newspaper from 1929 to 1940. Every single day, one after another. I experienced history like they did at the time.

It was chilling. We all know what happened. Hindsight made it a sinister read. Going from a relatively safe (if turbulent) world towards world war. But you know what? They knew what was going on as early as 1935. Maybe earlier. War was all but certain as early as 1936 and any doubt was gone by 1937. It was the lack of action that allowed it to happen. The few voices that shouted were drowned. No one nation or man was to blame. Everyone that stood by and did nothing contributed to what would happen.

What we need now are strong voices of people that can see the dark version of the future and will do anything in their power to steer us in the other direction. It’s easier to go with the flow, even take part in the march towards the edge, but we really don’t want to go there.

I’m not predicting a war. I hope we’re not that dumb. I’m predicting the stripping of civil rights and some kind of dictatorship. Because the moment we stop believing in democracy, we lose it.

Blood and Rain is (almost) here

1 February 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

It’s taken a while. It always takes a while. Writing a novel is an exercise in carefully selecting the right words. 50-100.000 of them. I could probably do it faster if I didn’t have a family and a job, but no matter. This is a milestone. It is a huge deal to write a novel. They say everyone has a story in them and if you’re lucky enough to be able to write the words, you may possibly end up with a coherent story to tell.

Doing it again is another matter altogether. Your story has been told. Now, come up with another one.

Blood and Rain - paperback — Blood and Rain – paperback

Blood and Rain was born out of two things. I wanted to see if I could do it again and I was curious about the Spanish Civil War. Like most, I knew very little about it. I knew it had happened, but little more. So I started digging. I imagined the people stuck there, in that time and place. We are all prisoners of the times we live in, but what was it like to be there at that time?

The horrors revealed themselves. The massacres, atrocities, people’s endless thirst for a good life and just society. I saw how women were embraced, how they gained equal rights, how the oppression of the church was broken back, but also how the churches were burned and priests murdered, how internal squabbles destroyed the dream of an anarchist utopia. I learned to appreciate Federico García Lorca and other characters caught up in the war. I learned about Guernica and how Spain was used as a testing ground for weapons to be used during the Second World War.

I had to create a character and put him in there.

Research is a wonderful thing. I learned about Biblia del Oso, the Bible of the Bear. The first Bible printed in Spanish, by a man that had escaped the Spanish Inquisition.

Heck, this project has inspired me to start learning the language.

Blood and Rain was a labour of love. I fell in love with Spain, Barcelona and the people of Catalonia. I hope the novel will be read and I dream of it being translated into Spanish some day.

Blood and Rain will be published on 3 March 2017.

Berlin – 25 Years of Freedom

9 November 2014 by villia Leave a Comment

Growing up in the shadow of the atomic bomb was an odd experience. I remember sitting in a sand box, playing with a plastic shovel. Possibly eating the black volcanic sand. Another kid said the Russians had more bombs than the Americans. That was scary, because the Russians were the enemy. He said they could wipe out a whole city with one bomb and they had thousands. I probably took a mouthful of sand at that moment. It was the first time I realised that life was dangerous and that the world could actually come to an end.

Later, in my teens, I would read the back of the phone books. They had instructions on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. Paint the windows they said, then stay away from the windows, cover yourself. Afterwards, see if anyone needed help. They explained how to treat burn wounds and avoid radiation. I wondered if the best thing wouldn’t be to go outside and enjoy the fireworks. Better than survive and die of burns or radiation sickness.

I remember a story from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Someone apparently sat down on the sofa, TV turned on. Gun and a bottle of whisky. Prepared to drink the bottle in no time and use the gun if they announced that the bombs were on the way. Better be gone before the blast got you.

That was the paranoia. The fear. Thankfully, we have been spared this madness for 25 years now. When the Berlin Wall fell, the cold war fizzled out and we could become friends with the east. We could finally accept that Russians were people too. It has been a bumpy ride, ups and downs, crisis here and there, but the threat of nuclear war vanished shortly after 20.000 people crossed Bösebrücke, 25 years ago today.

But there are two things bothering me tonight, on this great anniversary. The first, and most obvious, is that we seem to be heading for another cold war. A pointless and unnecessary confrontation between east and west.

The other thing is that the wall probably wouldn’t have come down, had the east German politburo not made the mistake of telling people they were free to go west. People rose up after being told it was OK. The time had come, communism was crumbling, Poland was experiencing martial laws due to civil unrest, the borders between Hungary and Austria were already open, making the Berlin wall mostly obsolete, but people gathered and the border guards gave up on the day authorities said they could.

What if Günter Schabowski had not said the borders were open? How long would it have taken for the public to denounce their oppressors? How long would the GDR have survived?

The Berlin Wall fell, South-Africa denounced apartheid, but one major wall of shame remains. The one keeping Palestinians trapped. Will they ever be free?

And will we ever be free of the invisible walls we are trapped by? The fear of doing what we think is right? The fear of standing up to authorities that treat us like subjects in a George Orwell novel? Hopefully, some day, we will break down our own private walls of fear. Then the rest will follow.

Happy anniversary, Berlin! See you in three days.
(Photos in this post are taken from my film that will be shown at the Berlin interfilm festival next week)

History is Fiction?

14 September 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

The end of WW2 is fascinating. Much more twisted and less clean than most will imagine. A simple search into most historical events reveal details that completely change our perception.

History is indeed written by the victors.

So, here is a short example of clean cut events that turn out to be anything but straightforward.

– Patton was an American general and wiped out nazis in France after D-Day.
– Wanting to advance into Germany in 1944 and beat the Russians to Berlin, he is stopped by Eisenhower, the supreme commander. Denied fuel, so he was stuck. This allowed the Germans to regroup and the winter of 44-45 became the bloodiest of the war. Patton’s plan would have prevented eastern Europe falling under communism.
– In spring 1945, the German army was captured. Eisenhower ordered that they get no food, water or shelter. Thousands died of starvation, dehydration and exposure. It was concentration camps all over again, but nobody ever talked about it. Patton was furious, defied orders and freed POWs in his area. Eisenhower was not pleased.
– Patton was planning to report on mismanagement and atrocities on return to the USA.
He never got around to it as he was injured in a car accident in December 1945. Other passengers escaped unharmed, but Patton broke his neck. Years later, a man came forwards and said he’d driven an army truck into Patton’s car. He also shot him in the neck with some projectile. He was following orders.
As Patton seemed to be recovering, he died suddenly. Same man says the Russians poisoned him. A Cadillac expert from Detroit has said that the car in the Patton Museum in not the car he was in during the accident.
– Five documents regarding the accident are missing from the US archives.
– Eisenhower became president in 1953. That would never have happened, had Patton lived.
– One of his first acts was to have a democratically elected government in Iran removed, installing the shah, a dictator. It set the course for the next decades, destablising regions of the world.

When you connect enough dots, you start seeing a picture. What you see usually makes the official version of events look pretty cartoonish.