Free Coloring Books from 101 World-Class Libraries & Museums: Download and Color Hundreds of Free Images

The free, down­load­able adult col­or­ing books that the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine solic­its from muse­ums and uni­ver­si­ty and state libraries for its #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions cel­e­bra­tion each Feb­ru­ary enliv­en our month far more than any Valen­tine or Pres­i­dents Day sale.

They’re not just a great way to while away winter’s last gasp. They’re also a won­der­ful por­tal for dis­cov­er­ing cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions that have thus­far flown beneath our radar, owing to size, geog­ra­phy, and/or field of study.

It’s up to each insti­tu­tion to deter­mine what — and how much — to include.

Some col­or inside the lines by stick­ing to the sub­ject for which they’re best known. Most take more of a mixed bag approach, fling­ing a vari­ety of fas­ci­nat­ing, unre­lat­ed images at the wall and see­ing what sticks.

Some offer­ings are but a sin­gle page. Oth­ers will have you wear­ing your crayons to nubs.

With 101 par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions, it can be dif­fi­cult to know where to start.

Maybe we can help…

Is med­i­cine your thing?

If so, you’re in luck. By our reck­on­ing, that’s the most pop­u­lar sub­ject, though it spans a broad range, from line draw­ings of flow­er­ing med­i­c­i­nal plants and a repro­duc­tion of a 1998 Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Anes­the­si­ol­o­gists col­or­ing book for pedi­atric patients, to flayed cadav­ers and har­row­ing sur­gi­cal vignettes from cen­turies gone by.

The pages below come com­pli­ments of Stan­ford Med­ical His­to­ry Center’s Lane Library, McGill University’s Osler Library of the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, and Truhlsen-Mar­mor Muse­um of the Eye, the only free, pub­lic muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to the fas­ci­nat­ing sci­ence of sight.

Is archi­tec­ture more your area of inter­est?

Gless­ner House, West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona have plans for you!

Does col­or­ing make your nos­tal­gic for child­hood?

The South Car­oli­na State Library, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Mil­wau­kee have you cov­ered with charm­ing illus­tra­tions from Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Won­der Sto­ries, Dr. Dolittle’s Cir­cus, and Heroes of the Kale­vala

Do you have only a few min­utes to spare…or a preschool­er in need of sim­pler graph­ics?

We get it, and so do the Uni­ver­sité Toulouse Jean Jau­rès, the Bib­lio­thèque munic­i­pale de Sois­sons, and the Har­vard Art Muse­ums.

It’s always a joy to see who’s behind the year’s freaki­est image.

This year, our vote goes to the Bib­lio­thèque Mazarine, France’s old­est pub­lic library, but feel free to put forth oth­er can­di­dates in the com­ments sec­tion

Begin your explo­rations of 2022’s col­or­ing books here. See how oth­ers have col­ored these pages by explor­ing the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions on social media.

 

2022’s Par­tic­i­pat­ing Insti­tu­tions

New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library

AIA Nashville Soci­ety & Nashville Parthenon

Amer­i­can Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety Library — UW Mil­wau­kee

Bib­liote­ca de la Uni­ver­si­dad de Zaragoza

Bib­lio­thèque interuni­ver­si­taire de San­té — Uni­ver­sité de Paris

Bib­lio­thèque Les Champs Libres

Bib­lio­thèque d’é­tude et de con­ser­va­tion de Besançon

La Bib­lio­thèque Mazarine

Bib­lio­thèque mul­ti­mé­dia inter­com­mu­nale d’Épinal

Bib­lio­thèque munic­i­pale de Sois­sons

Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France

The Burke Library at Union The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries)

The Burylin Ivano­vo Muse­um of Local His­to­ry

Cen­tral Children’s Library of Bel­go­rod Dis­trict

Cen­tral­na pravosod­na knjižni­ca — Supreme Court of the Repub­lic of Slove­nia Cen­tral Judi­cial Library

CEP San­ta Cruz de Tener­ife

CollEx études ibériques, Uni­ver­sité Toulouse Jean Jau­rès

Cap­tain Cook Memo­r­i­al Muse­um

CRAI Library at Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona

Den­ver Botan­ic Gar­dens

DiMen­na-Nyselius Library, Fair­field Uni­ver­si­ty

Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter Library & Archives

Eton Col­lege Library

Euro­peana

Fair­field Uni­ver­si­ty Art Muse­um

Free Library of Philadel­phia Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Divi­sion

Glad­stone’s Library

Gless­ner House

Harley-David­son Archives

Har­vard Art Muse­ums

Hawaii State Foun­da­tion on Cul­ture and the Arts

Jele­niogórskie Cen­trum Infor­ma­cji i Edukacji Region­al­nej Książni­ca Karkonos­ka

Ken­tucky His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety

Leonard H. Axe Library, Pitts­burg State Uni­ver­si­ty

Libraries and Cul­tur­al Resources, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary

Library of the Czech Acad­e­my of Sci­ences

Library of Vir­ginia

Lithuan­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Maine State Library

Mann Library, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty

Mass­a­chu­setts Eye and Ear, Abra­ham Pollen Archives

Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

McGill Library (Osler Library of the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine)

Médiathèque Jacques-Chirac, Troyes Cham­pagne Métro­pole

Médiathèque Pierre-Amal­ric

Med­ical Her­itage Library

Memo­ria Chile­na

Miejs­ka Bib­liote­ka Pub­licz­na w Sos­now­cu

Moody Med­ical Library

Muse­um of the Order of St. John

Muse­um Plan­tin-More­tus

Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine (NLM)

Nation­al Muse­um – Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithua­nia

New Jer­sey State House

Nor­folk Arts/a>

North Car­oli­na Muse­um of Art

North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty

Nume­lyo

Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Library

Prov­i­dence Col­lege Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, Phillips Memo­r­i­al Library

Richard­son-Sloane Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Cen­ter, Dav­en­port Pub­lic Library

Robert C. Williams Muse­um of Paper­mak­ing

Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians Lon­don

Roy­al Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Soci­ety Libraries

Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Uni­ver­si­ty Archives

Saint Fran­cis de Sales Parish His­to­ry Archives Col­or­ing Book 2022

Seton Hall Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries

SHSU Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, New­ton Gre­sham Library

Smith­son­ian Libraries and Archives

South Car­oli­na State Library

Stan­ford Med­ical His­to­ry Cen­ter, Lane Library

Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries

State Uni­ver­sal Sci­en­tif­ic Library of Kras­no­yarsk Ter­ri­to­ry

Strat­ford Hall

Sub­carpathi­an Dig­i­tal Library

Swe­den­borg Library of Bryn Athyn Col­lege

Toron­to Pub­lic Library

Trin­i­ty Hall, Cam­bridge

Truhlsen-Mar­mor Muse­um of the Eye

UCC Library, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Cork

Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia Library

Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Fran­cis­co Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton Libraries

Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Chica­go Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Uni­ver­si­ty Archives

Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas Libraries

Uni­ver­si­ty Library at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign

Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Amherst Libraries

Uni­ver­si­ty of Neva­da, Reno Depart­ment of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Uni­ver­si­ty Archives

Uni­ver­sité de Per­pig­nan Via Domi­tia

Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da Libraries

Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo Spe­cial Col­lec­tions & Archives

Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Mil­wau­kee Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

U.S. Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or Muse­um

Vil­la Bernasconi

Wash­ing­ton State Library

West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

West Vir­ginia & Region­al His­to­ry Cen­ter

William L. Clements Library

Women and Lead­er­ship Archives, Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go

Wood Library-Muse­um of Anes­the­si­ol­o­gy

Yaroslavl Region­al Uni­ver­sal Sci­en­tif­ic Library named after N. A. Nekrasov

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Hear the Uncensored Original Version of “Hurricane,” Bob Dylan’s Protest Song About Jailed Boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (1976)

Through­out his six-decade-long career, Bob Dylan has tak­en up quite a few caus­es in his songs. In the 1960s he was espe­cial­ly giv­en to musi­cal accu­sa­tions of mis­car­riages of jus­tice like “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which he record­ed less than two months after the assas­si­na­tion of Medgar Evers. But he kept it up even in the 70s, as demon­strat­ed by his 1976 album Desire. “Here comes the sto­ry of the Hur­ri­cane,” he sings on its open­ing track, “the man the author­i­ties came to blame for some­thing that he nev­er done: put in a prison cell, but one time he could have been the cham­pi­on of the world.”

This “Hur­ri­cane” is, of course, for­mer star box­er Rubin Carter, who’d been con­vict­ed for a triple mur­der at a Pater­son, New Jer­sey bar a decade ear­li­er. Today, many know the sto­ry of the Hur­ri­cane from the epony­mous Den­zel Wash­ing­ton-star­ring Hol­ly­wood biopic. By the time that film came out in 1999, Carter had long since been exon­er­at­ed and made a free man, but when Dylan sang of his hav­ing been “false­ly tried,” and “obvi­ous­ly framed,” the man was still serv­ing a dou­ble life sen­tence. It was Carter’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy The Six­teenth Round, writ­ten in prison, that inspired the lit­er­ar­i­ly-mind­ed Dylan to cham­pi­on his release.

Writ­ten with song­writer-psy­chol­o­gist Jacques Levy, Dylan’s col­lab­o­ra­tor through­out Desire, “Hur­ri­cane” still today sounds as if it pulls no punch­es, deliv­er­ing a host of can-he-say-that moments in its sev­en min­utes. But in truth, says Far Our Mag­a­zine, “Dylan’s ini­tial vision for the track had been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent before the lawyers at Colum­bia Records began paw­ing over the lyrics. While many of Dylan’s claims of racial injus­tice are there in plain sight, the men in suits were more con­cerned with the lyrics imply­ing that Alfred Bel­lo and Arthur Dex­ter Bradley (the two lead wit­ness­es of the orig­i­nal case) as hav­ing ‘robbed the bod­ies’ ” of Carter and acquain­tance John Artis’ alleged vic­tims. Giv­en that they had­n’t been accused of steal­ing from any corpses, Colum­bia feared that the impli­ca­tion would draw a law­suit.

Dylan had pre­vi­ous­ly exhib­it­ed a dev­il-may-care atti­tude about such mat­ters in his protest songs: “I should have sued him and put him in jail,” grum­bled an aged William Zantzinger, the real-life attack­er in Dylan’s “The Lone­some Death of Hat­tie Car­roll.” But this time Dylan acqui­esced to the lawyers. Return­ing to the stu­dio with mem­bers of his Rolling Thun­der Revue, he laid down a new ver­sion of “Hur­ri­cane,” cen­sored but musi­cal­ly even hard­er-hit­ting (below), that did make it onto Desire. In the video at the top of the post, you can hear the orig­i­nal, which is longer, slow­er, and more raw in every sense. In the event, the expur­gat­ed “Hur­ri­cane” still got Dylan sued, but by a dif­fer­ent wit­ness: Patri­cia Valen­tine, who lived above the bar where the killings occurred and insist­ed that she did not, in fact, see “the bar­tender in a pool of blood.” Even a future Nobel Prize win­ner, it seems, isn’t safe to take a bit of poet­ic license.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Bob Dylan Per­form “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” His Damn­ing Song About the Mur­der of Medgar Evers, at the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton

“Tan­gled Up in Blue”: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

Bob Dylan Releas­es a Cryp­tic 17-Minute Song about the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: Hear a “Mur­der Most Foul”

Bob Dylan Goes Punk on Late Night with David Let­ter­man, Play­ing “Jok­er­man” with the Lati­no Punk Band, the Plugz (1984)

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

Pop Songs with Nar­ra­tive: Pret­ty Much Pop (#69) Dis­cuss­es Tunes Rang­ing from Bob Dylan’s “Hur­ri­cane” to “The Pina Cola­da Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Why Russia Invaded Ukraine: A Useful Primer

Why did Rus­sia launch an unpro­voked war in Ukraine and risk cre­at­ing a wider glob­al con­flict? If you haven’t close­ly tracked the ambi­tions of Vladimir Putin, this primer offers some help­ful con­text. In 30 min­utes, the video cov­ers the geopo­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal back­sto­ry. As you watch the explain­er, it’s worth keep­ing one thing in mind: For years, Euro­pean nations have long resist­ed bring­ing Ukraine into the NATO fold, pre­cise­ly because they knew it would trig­ger a con­flict with Putin. And there had been no recent plan to revis­it the issue. All of this sug­gests that Putin has high­light­ed the NATO threat (amply dis­cussed in the video) because it would pro­vide him a use­ful pre­text for an inva­sion. There was hard­ly an immi­nent threat.

If you’re look­ing for oth­er ratio­nales not cov­ered by this video, you could focus on two rea­sons pro­vid­ed by Hein Goe­mans, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester: Putin “wants to reestab­lish direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, by annex­a­tion or by pup­pet-regimes, a Russ­ian empire—be it the for­mer USSR or Tsarist Rus­sia. A sec­ond pos­si­ble answer has to do with the role of domes­tic Russ­ian pol­i­tics, which the stan­dard lit­er­a­ture on con­flict takes very seri­ous­ly: Putin has seen what hap­pened in some for­mer Sovi­et suc­ces­sor republics and the for­mer Yugoslavia, sev­er­al of which expe­ri­enced ‘Col­or Rev­o­lu­tions’ and democ­ra­tized. Indeed, it was a Col­or Rev­o­lu­tion in Ukraine in 2014, which Putin mis­char­ac­ter­izes as a mil­i­tary coup. He wants to pre­vent more of these rev­o­lu­tions and pre­vent a demo­c­ra­t­ic encir­clement of coun­tries around him, which could pro­vide a safe haven for Russ­ian dis­si­dents who’d be dan­ger­ous to Putin’s polit­i­cal sur­vival. Both of these goals over­lap in the sense that he is seek­ing regime change, which is a dan­ger­ous game.”

For a deep­er dive into the impe­r­i­al ambi­tions of Putin–his attempt to recon­sti­tute the Russ­ian Empire–read this eye-open­ing inter­view with Fiona Hill.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

West Point Expert Gives Ukraini­ans Advice on Con­duct­ing Effec­tive Urban War­fare Against Russ­ian Troops

Why is Ukraine in Cri­sis?: A Quick Primer For Those Too Embar­rassed to Ask (2014)

Why Putin Wants Alex­ei Naval­ny Dead

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es 

West Point Expert Gives Ukrainians Advice on Conducting Effective Urban Warfare Against Russian Troops

John W. Spencer cur­rent­ly serves as the Chair of Urban War­fare Stud­ies at the Mod­ern War Insti­tute at West Point. He’s also Co-Direc­tor of the Urban War­fare Project, and host of the Urban War­fare Project pod­cast. Ergo, he knows some­thing about urban war­fare.

On Twit­ter, he gave advice to civil­ians resis­tors in Ukraine, espe­cial­ly Kyiv, on how to resist the Russ­ian inva­sions. His tweet thread reads as fol­lows:

  1. So I’ve been asked what my advice would be to civil­ian resis­tors in Ukri­ane, espe­cial­ly Kyiv. Some­one with no mil­i­tary train­ing but want­i­ng to resist. Here are a few things #Kyiv #Ukraine­Un­der­At­tack :
  2. You have the pow­er but you have to fight smart. The urban defense is hell for any sol­dier. It usu­al­ly take 5 attack­ers to 1 defend­er. Rus­sians do not have the num­bers. Turn Kyiv and any urban area lead­ing to Kyiv into a por­cu­pine.
  3. Go out and build obsta­cles in the streets! Start with any bridge you can find (they should have been destroyed). Block them with cars, trucks, con­crete, wood, trash, any­thing! Then block any spot in the city where there are tall build­ings on each side. Already tight areas.
  4. If it is a street you still need to use. Build a S pat­tern obsta­cle that still slows a vehi­cle down. Think police check point (which you could set up if you want­ed to catch sabo­teurs before mil­i­tary reach your loca­tion)
  5. Once you have obsta­cles (nev­er stop build­ing). I real­ly mean thou­sands of barriers/obstacles. You can decid­ed places to fight. Places to shoot from or ambush any sol­dier or vehi­cle that stops or slows down at your obsta­cles.
  6. Do NOT stand in the open and shoot or throw any­thing (to include molo­tov cock­tail) at a Russ­ian sol­dier or vehi­cles. Shoot from win­dows, behind cars, around alley­way cor­ners. Build posi­tions (con­crete best) to fire from.
  7. You must pre­pare for the Rus­sians to start using artillery to help their troops. Make sure the places you choose to shoot from are strong. If in a build­ing, make holes in the walls so you can shoot from and big­ger ones to move to oth­er rooms or build­ings. You must sur­vive.
  8. Yes, use your molo­tov cock­tails. Think about where you will stand to throw (then run). Drop­ping from win­dows above vehi­cles most ide­al. Vehi­cles with­out weapons on top the most vul­ner­a­ble, but if it is armor, choose where to hit.
  9. Form into groups. Ide­al­ly 3 to 5 and decid­ed where to shoot at Rus­sians from. You get to decide. Best if coor­di­nat­ed with anoth­er group and using your obsta­cles to slow some­thing and shoot at from con­cealed and pro­tect­ed posi­tions.
  10. Again, your sur­vival to fight is impor­tant so think hard about where you will shoot from. Ele­vat­ed posi­tions down long streets. Shoot and run. Ambush­es. Aim for the win­dows and doors of non-armor vehi­cles. Sol­diers in open. One of the great­est fears of a sol­dier is a sniper.
  11. You are not a sniper, but you can put fear in their hearts if they think there are snipers every­where. Again take care of your­selves to be able to resist. Drink water. 3 days with­out water and you won’t be able to fight. More lat­er.

Rough Ukrain­ian Trans­la­tion (Cour­tesy of Google Trans­late):

  1. Тож мене запитали, що б я порадив цивільним резисторам в Україні, особливо в Києві. Хтось без військової підготовки, але хоче чинити опір. Ось кілька речей #Kyiv #Ukraine­Un­der Attack :
  2. У вас є сила, але ви повинні боротися розумно. Міська оборона — це пекло для будь-якого солдата. Зазвичай потрібно 5 нападників на 1 захисника. У росіян немає цифр. Перетворіть Київ і будь-яку міську територію, що веде до Києва, на дикобраза.
  3. Виходьте і будуйте перешкоди на вулицях! Почніть з будь-якого мосту, який ви можете знайти (їх слід було знищити). Блокуйте їх автомобілями, вантажівками, бетоном, деревом, сміттям, чим завгодно! Потім заблокуйте будь-яке місце в місті, де з обох боків є високі будівлі. Вже тісні ділянки.
  4. Якщо це вулиця, вам все одно потрібно користуватися. Побудуйте перешкоду типу S, яка все ще уповільнює транспортний засіб. Уявіть поліцейський контрольно-пропускний пункт (який ви можете встановити, якщо хочете зловити диверсантів до того, як військові прибудуть до вашого місця)
  5. Як тільки у вас є перешкоди (ніколи не припиняйте будувати). Я дійсно маю на увазі тисячі бар’єрів/перешкод. Ви можете визначити місця для боротьби. Місця для стрілянини або засідки будь-якого солдата чи транспортного засобу, які зупиняються або сповільнюються на ваших перешкодах.
  6. Do NOT stand in the open and shoot or throw any­thing (to include molo­tov cock­tail) at a Russ­ian sol­dier or vehi­cles. Shoot from win­dows, behind cars, around alley­way cor­ners. Build posi­tions (con­crete best) to fire from.
  7. Ви повинні підготуватися до того, що росіяни почнуть використовувати артилерію для допомоги своїм військам. Переконайтеся, що місця, з яких ви обираєте стріляти, є міцними. Якщо в будівлі, зробіть отвори в стінах, щоб ви могли стріляти з більших, щоб переміститися в інші кімнати або будівлі. Ви повинні вижити.
  8. Так, використовуйте свої коктейлі Молотова. Подумайте, куди ви будете стояти, щоб кинути (тоді бігти). Найідеальнішим варіантом є падіння з вікон над транспортними засобами. Транспорт без зброї зверху найбільш вразливий, але якщо це броня, вибирайте, куди вдарити.
  9. Об’єднайтеся в групи. В ідеалі 3 до 5 і вирішив, звідки стріляти в росіян. Вам вирішувати. Найкраще, якщо координуватись з іншою групою та використовувати свої перешкоди, щоб уповільнити щось і стріляти з прихованих і захищених позицій.
  10. Знову ж таки, ваше виживання для боротьби важливе, тому добре подумайте, звідки ви будете стріляти. Піднесені позиції на довгих вулицях. Стріляй і бігай. Засідки. Націлюйтеся на вікна та двері неброньованих транспортних засобів. Солдати відкрито. Один з найбільших страхів солдата — снайпер.
  11. Ви не снайпер, але можете вселити в їхні серця страх, якщо вони думають, що снайпери всюди. Знову подбайте про себе, щоб мати можливість протистояти. Пити воду. 3 дні без води і ти не зможеш битися. Ще пізніше.

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Are You a Fascist?: Take Theodor Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality Test Created to Combat Fascism (1947)

A man of var­i­ous accom­plish­ments, Theodor Adorno is per­haps most wide­ly known as the very image of the mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al in exile. After his Jew­ish back­ground got him forced out of Nazi Ger­many, he spent fif­teen years in Eng­land and the Unit­ed States. Despite his geo­graph­i­cal dis­tance from the trou­bles of the Con­ti­nent — and even after the end of the Sec­ond World War — he under­stand­ably remained very much con­cerned with the nature of not just Hitler him­self but all those who sup­port­ed him. This led to such stud­ies as his 1947 essay “Wag­n­er, Niet­zsche and Hitler” as well as (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Berke­ley researchers Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levin­son, and Nevitt San­ford) the 1950 book The Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty.

The Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty’s best-known tool to diag­nose the tit­u­lar per­son­al and social con­di­tion is a quan­ti­ta­tive sys­tem called the “Cal­i­for­nia F‑scale” — the F stands for fas­cism — which pro­duces a score based on a sub­jec­t’s response to a set of propo­si­tions. “To cre­ate a per­son­al­i­ty test that actu­al­ly revealed latent author­i­tar­i­an­ism, the researchers had to give up on the idea that there’s a strong link between anti-Semi­tism and author­i­tar­i­an­ism,” writes Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Annalee Newitz. “Though their expe­ri­ences with the Holo­caust sug­gest­ed a causal con­nec­tion between hatred of Jews and the rise of fas­cism, it turned out that peo­ple with author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies were more accu­rate­ly described as eth­no­cen­tric.”

These would-be author­i­tar­i­ans also, as Adorno and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ research found, “tend­ed to dis­trust sci­ence and strong­ly dis­liked the idea of using imag­i­na­tion to solve prob­lems. They pre­ferred to stick to tried-and-true tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of orga­niz­ing soci­ety.” Oth­er ten­den­cies includ­ed “super­sti­tion, aggres­sion, cyn­i­cism, con­ser­vatism, and an inor­di­nate inter­est in the pri­vate sex lives of oth­ers.” All these find­ings informed an F‑scale test which con­sist­ed of the state­ments below. For each state­ment, par­tic­i­pants had to select one of the fol­low­ing options : “Dis­agree Strong­ly,” “Dis­agree Most­ly,” “Dis­agree Some­what,” “Agree Some­what,” “Agree,” or “MostlyA­gree.”

  1. Obe­di­ence and respect for author­i­ty are the most impor­tant virtues chil­dren should learn.
  2. A per­son who has bad man­ners, habits, and breed­ing can hard­ly expect to get along with decent peo­ple.
  3. If peo­ple would talk less and work more, every­body would be bet­ter off.
  4. The busi­ness man and the man­u­fac­tur­er are much more impor­tant to soci­ety than the artist and the pro­fes­sor.
  5. Sci­ence has its place, but there are many impor­tant things that can nev­er be under­stood by the human mind.
  6. Every per­son should have com­plete faith in some super­nat­ur­al pow­er whose deci­sions he obeys with­out ques­tion.
  7. Young peo­ple some­times get rebel­lious ideas, but as they grow up they ought to get over them and set­tle down.
  8. What this coun­try needs most, more than laws and polit­i­cal pro­grams, is a few coura­geous, tire­less, devot­ed lead­ers in whom the peo­ple can put their faith.
  9. No sane, nor­mal, decent per­son could ever think of hurt­ing a close friend or rel­a­tive.
  10. Nobody ever learned any­thing real­ly impor­tant except through suf­fer­ing.
  11. What the youth needs most is strict dis­ci­pline, rugged deter­mi­na­tion, and the will to work and fight for fam­i­ly and coun­try.
  12. An insult to our hon­or should always be pun­ished.
  13. Sex crimes, such as rape and attacks on chil­dren, deserve more than mere impris­on­ment; such crim­i­nals ought to be pub­licly whipped, or worse.
  14. There is hard­ly any­thing low­er than a per­son who does not feel a great love, grat­i­tude, and respect for his par­ents.
  15. Most of our social prob­lems would be solved if we could some­how get rid of the immoral, crooked, and fee­ble­mind­ed peo­ple.
  16. Homo­sex­u­als are hard­ly bet­ter than crim­i­nals and ought to be severe­ly pun­ished.
  17. When a per­son has a prob­lem or wor­ry, it is best for him not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheer­ful things.
  18. Nowa­days more and more peo­ple are pry­ing into mat­ters that should remain per­son­al and pri­vate.
  19. Some peo­ple are born with an urge to jump from high places.
  20. Peo­ple can be divid­ed into two dis­tinct class­es: the weak and the strong.
  21. Some day it will prob­a­bly be shown that astrol­o­gy can explain a lot of things.
  22. Wars and social trou­bles may some­day be end­ed by an earth­quake or flood that will destroy the whole world.
  23. No weak­ness or dif­fi­cul­ty can hold us back if we have enough will pow­er.
  24. It is best to use some pre­war author­i­ties in Ger­many to keep order and pre­vent chaos.
  25. Most peo­ple don’t real­ize how much our lives are con­trolled by plots hatched in secret places.
  26. Human nature being what it is, there will always be war and con­flict.
  27. Famil­iar­i­ty breeds con­tempt.
  28. Nowa­days when so many dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple move around and mix togeth­er so much, a per­son has to pro­tect him­self espe­cial­ly care­ful­ly against catch­ing an infec­tion or dis­ease from them.
  29. The wild sex life of the old Greeks and Romans was tame com­pared to some of the goings-on in this coun­try, even in places where peo­ple might least expect it.
  30. The true Amer­i­can way of life is dis­ap­pear­ing so fast that force may be nec­es­sary to pre­serve it.

You can take the test your­self here. But don’t take it too seri­ous­ly: the F‑scale “has been heav­i­ly crit­i­cized by many psy­chol­o­gists because it is a bet­ter indi­ca­tor of con­ser­vatism, an old-fash­ioned out­look, and a ten­den­cy to say ‘yes’ to any­thing rather than as a mea­sure of author­i­tar­i­an­ism,” write Fer­di­nand A. Gul and John J. Ray in their 1989 paper “Pit­falls in Using the F Scale to Mea­sure Author­i­tar­i­an­ism in Account­ing Research.” That aside, any rea­son­ably intel­li­gent sub­ject can eas­i­ly fig­ure out the motives of the test itself. Nev­er­the­less, as Giz­mod­o’s Esther Inglis-Arkell writes, it offers an occa­sion to con­sid­er whether “you’re super­sti­tious, con­formist, or any oth­er awful thing that will cause you to go out one morn­ing and annex some­thing” — no less a con­cern now, it seems, than it was in Adorno’s day.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Theodor Adorno & His Cri­tique of Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions

Theodor Adorno’s Phi­los­o­phy of Punc­tu­a­tion

Toni Mor­ri­son Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Coun­tries to Fas­cism (1995)

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Starship Titanic: The Video Game Created by Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), with Help from John Cleese & Terry Jones

“The star­ship Titan­ic was a mon­strous­ly pret­ty sight as it lay beached like a sil­ver Arc­turan Megavoid­whale among the laser­lit trac­ery of its con­struc­tion gantries”–writes Dou­glas Adams in The Life, The Uni­verse and Every­thing, the third nov­el in the Hitchhiker’s Guide tril­o­gy–“a bril­liant cloud of pins and nee­dles of light against the deep inter­stel­lar black­ness; but when launched, it did not even man­age to com­plete its very first radio mes­sage —an SOS—before under­go­ing a sud­den and gra­tu­itous total exis­tence fail­ure.”

This para­graph is a tiny humor­ous flour­ish in a series of nov­els filled with hun­dreds of them, but for some reason—possibly its rela­tion­ship to the orig­i­nal doomed lux­u­ry liner–the Star­ship Titan­ic would go on to have an amaz­ing­ly detailed sec­ond life as a video game. And while a paper­back copy of any of Adams’ work is read­i­ly avail­able, it can take some hunt­ing to find a work­able ver­sion of the game.

Dou­glas Adams designed the game him­self, start­ing in 1996. A decade ear­li­er, he had helped design the text-based adven­ture game adap­ta­tion of Hitchhiker’s Guide, and had expressed a desire to do more work in the video game field, after play­ing Myst and its sequel Riv­en. How­ev­er, he said, “noth­ing real­ly hap­pens, and nobody is there. I thought, let’s do some­thing sim­i­lar but pop­u­late the envi­ron­ment with char­ac­ters you can inter­act with.”

Co-found­ing the mul­ti-media com­pa­ny Dig­i­tal Vil­lage, Adams wrote the game’s script, set aboard the fail­ing Titan­ic. The big dif­fer­ence, com­pared to Myst, is that the char­ac­ter can inter­act with char­ac­ters on board, many of them but­ler-like robots. And instead of typ­ing in com­mands, play­ers could speak to the char­ac­ters in real time using a nat­ur­al lan­guage pars­ing engine called Spook­italk, uti­liz­ing over 10,000 lines/16 hours of dia­log. Like its puz­zle-game influ­ences, it was mad­den­ing to play.

But also fun, as Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones and John Cleese both turn up among the voice actors, the for­mer as a par­rot, the lat­ter as a dooms­day bomb.

An arti­cle in Kotaku from 2015 men­tions a tie-in nov­el that Adams was to write him­self, after first assign­ing co-writ­ers Neil Richards, Deb­bie Barham, and Michael Bywa­ter to the task. But then:

Liv­ing up to his rep­u­ta­tion for seem­ing­ly infi­nite tar­di­ness, Adams admit­ted just three weeks before the book’s dead­line that he hadn’t writ­ten a thing, and in the end the nov­el Dou­glas Adams’s Star­ship Titan­ic was writ­ten in a furi­ous cas­cade of words by none oth­er than Ter­ry Jones (who claimed that he wrote the whole thing in the nude).

Even more inter­est­ing, Yoz Gra­hame, Dig­i­tal Village’s web devel­op­er had been put in charge of cre­at­ing the game’s pro­mo­tion­al web pres­ence. Buried deep down in a page was a mock forum sup­pos­ed­ly being writ­ten by the low­er-lev­el crew of the Titan­ic. Gra­hame kept the forum open for fans of the upcom­ing game, only to find lat­er that Adams fans had tak­en this com­ic east­er egg to heart. Six months lat­er there were ten-thou­sand posts in the mock forum. Users had con­tin­ued on the sto­ry in the spir­it of Adams.

“It was like ignor­ing the veg­etable draw­er of your fridge for a year, then open­ing it to find a bunch of very grate­ful sen­tient toma­toes busi­ly work­ing on their third opera,” Gra­hame told Kotaku. This forum went on for six years, with lay­ers and lay­ers of run­ning jokes.

At the time of the Kotaku piece, the game, orig­i­nal­ly released on CD-ROM was func­tion­al­ly unplayable on mod­ern video game sys­tems.

Not so now. Six bucks will buy you a mod­ern­ized copy of the game on Steam or GOG. If you’re curi­ous like me, but have no time to devote the many, many hours to fin­ish­ing the game, you can watch a 13-part walk­thru video. (Note: Adams him­self turns up at the very end in an unin­ten­tion­al­ly poignant cameo.)

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Video Game Free Online, Designed by Dou­glas Adams in 1984

Hyper­land: The “Fan­ta­sy Doc­u­men­tary” in Which Dou­glas Adams and Doc­tor Who‘s Tom Bak­er Imag­ine the World Wide Web (1990)

Ital­ian Astro­naut Reads The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Has Been Digitized and Put Online

If you know noth­ing else about medieval Euro­pean illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, you sure­ly know the Book of Kells. “One of Ireland’s great­est cul­tur­al trea­sures” com­ments Medievalists.net, “it is set apart from oth­er man­u­scripts of the same peri­od by the qual­i­ty of its art­work and the sheer num­ber of illus­tra­tions that run through­out the 680 pages of the book.” The work not only attracts schol­ars, but almost a mil­lion vis­i­tors to Dublin every year. “You sim­ply can’t trav­el to the cap­i­tal of Ire­land,” writes Book Riot’s Eri­ka Har­litz-Kern, “with­out the Book of Kells being men­tioned. And right­ful­ly so.”

The ancient mas­ter­piece is a stun­ning exam­ple of Hiber­no-Sax­on style, thought to have been com­posed on the Scot­tish island of Iona in 806, then trans­ferred to the monastery of Kells in Coun­ty Meath after a Viking raid (a sto­ry told in the mar­velous ani­mat­ed film The Secret of Kells). Con­sist­ing main­ly of copies of the four gospels, as well as index­es called “canon tables,” the man­u­script is believed to have been made pri­mar­i­ly for dis­play, not read­ing aloud, which is why “the images are elab­o­rate and detailed while the text is care­less­ly copied with entire words miss­ing or long pas­sages being repeat­ed.”

Its exquis­ite illu­mi­na­tions mark it as a cer­e­mo­ni­al object, and its “intri­ca­cies,” argue Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin pro­fes­sors Rachel Moss and Fáinche Ryan, “lead the mind along path­ways of the imag­i­na­tion…. You haven’t been to Ire­land unless you’ve seen the Book of Kells.” This may be so, but thank­ful­ly, in our dig­i­tal age, you need not go to Dublin to see this fab­u­lous his­tor­i­cal arti­fact, or a dig­i­ti­za­tion of it at least, entire­ly view­able at the online col­lec­tions of the Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library. The pages, orig­i­nal­ly cap­tured in 1990, “have recent­ly been res­canned,” Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library writes, using state of the art imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy. These new dig­i­tal images offer the most accu­rate high res­o­lu­tion images to date, pro­vid­ing an expe­ri­ence sec­ond only to view­ing the book in per­son.”

What makes the Book of Kells so spe­cial, repro­duced “in such var­ied places as Irish nation­al coinage and tat­toos?” ask Pro­fes­sors Moss and Ryan. “There is no one answer to these ques­tions.” In their free online course on the man­u­script, these two schol­ars of art his­to­ry and the­ol­o­gy, respec­tive­ly, do not attempt to “pro­vide defin­i­tive answers to the many ques­tions that sur­round it.” Instead, they illu­mi­nate its his­to­ry and many mean­ings to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple, includ­ing, of course, the peo­ple of Ire­land. “For Irish peo­ple,” they explain in the course trail­er above, “it rep­re­sents a sense of pride, a tan­gi­ble link to a pos­i­tive time in Ireland’s past, reflect­ed through its unique art.”

But while the Book of Kells is still a mod­ern “sym­bol of Irish­ness,” it was made with mate­ri­als and tech­niques that fell out of use sev­er­al hun­dred years ago, and that were once spread far and wide across Europe, the Mid­dle East, and North Africa. In the video above, Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library con­ser­va­tor John Gillis shows us how the man­u­script was made using meth­ods that date back to the “devel­op­ment of the codex, or the book form.” This includes the use of parch­ment, in this case calf skin, a mate­r­i­al that remem­bers the anatom­i­cal fea­tures of the ani­mals from which it came, with mark­ings where tails, spines, and legs used to be.

The Book of Kells has weath­ered the cen­turies fair­ly well, thanks to care­ful preser­va­tion, but it’s also had per­haps five rebind­ings in its life­time. “In its orig­i­nal form,” notes Har­litz-Kern, the man­u­script “was both thick­er and larg­er. Thir­ty folios of the orig­i­nal man­u­script have been lost through the cen­turies and the edges of the exist­ing man­u­script were severe­ly trimmed dur­ing a rebind­ing in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.” It remains, nonethe­less, one of the most impres­sive arti­facts to come from the age of the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script, “described by some,” says Moss and Ryan, “as the most famous man­u­script in the world.” Find out why by see­ing it (vir­tu­al­ly) for your­self and learn­ing about it from the experts above.

For any­one inter­est­ed in get­ting a copy of The Book of Kells in a nice print for­mat, see The Book of Kells: Repro­duc­tions from the man­u­script in Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Dublin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hannah Arendt Explains How Propaganda Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Morality: Insights from The Origins of Totalitarianism

Image by Bernd Schwabe, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

At least when I was in grade school, we learned the very basics of how the Third Reich came to pow­er in the ear­ly 1930s. Para­mil­i­tary gangs ter­ror­iz­ing the oppo­si­tion, the incom­pe­tence and oppor­tunism of Ger­man con­ser­v­a­tives, the Reich­stag Fire. And we learned about the crit­i­cal impor­tance of pro­pa­gan­da, the delib­er­ate mis­in­form­ing of the pub­lic in order to sway opin­ions en masse and achieve pop­u­lar sup­port (or at least the appear­ance of it). While Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da Joseph Goebbels purged Jew­ish and left­ist artists and writ­ers, he built a mas­sive media infra­struc­ture that played, writes PBS, “prob­a­bly the most impor­tant role in cre­at­ing an atmos­phere in Ger­many that made it pos­si­ble for the Nazis to com­mit ter­ri­ble atroc­i­ties against Jews, homo­sex­u­als, and oth­er minori­ties.”

How did the minor­i­ty par­ty of Hitler and Goebbels take over and break the will of the Ger­man peo­ple so thor­ough­ly that they would allow and par­tic­i­pate in mass mur­der? Post-war schol­ars of total­i­tar­i­an­ism like Theodor Adorno and Han­nah Arendt asked that ques­tion over and over, for sev­er­al decades after­ward. Their ear­li­est stud­ies on the sub­ject looked at two sides of the equa­tion. Adorno con­tributed to a mas­sive vol­ume of social psy­chol­o­gy called The Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty, which stud­ied indi­vid­u­als pre­dis­posed to the appeals of total­i­tar­i­an­ism. He invent­ed what he called the F‑Scale (“F” for “fas­cism”), one of sev­er­al mea­sures he used to the­o­rize the Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty Type.

Arendt, on the oth­er hand, looked close­ly at the regimes of Hitler and Stal­in and their func­tionar­ies, at the ide­ol­o­gy of sci­en­tif­ic racism, and at the mech­a­nism of pro­pa­gan­da in fos­ter­ing “a curi­ous­ly vary­ing mix­ture of gulli­bil­i­ty and cyn­i­cism with which each mem­ber… is expect­ed to react to the chang­ing lying state­ments of the lead­ers.” So she wrote in her 1951 Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, going on to elab­o­rate that this “mix­ture of gulli­bil­i­ty and cyn­i­cism… is preva­lent in all ranks of total­i­tar­i­an move­ments”:

In an ever-chang­ing, incom­pre­hen­si­ble world the mass­es had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe every­thing and noth­ing, think that every­thing was pos­si­ble and noth­ing was true… The total­i­tar­i­an mass lead­ers based their pro­pa­gan­da on the cor­rect psy­cho­log­i­cal assump­tion that, under such con­di­tions, one could make peo­ple believe the most fan­tas­tic state­ments one day, and trust that if the next day they were giv­en irrefutable proof of their false­hood, they would take refuge in cyn­i­cism; instead of desert­ing the lead­ers who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the state­ment was a lie and would admire the lead­ers for their supe­ri­or tac­ti­cal clev­er­ness.

Why the con­stant, often bla­tant lying? For one thing, it func­tioned as a means of ful­ly dom­i­nat­ing sub­or­di­nates, who would have to cast aside all their integri­ty to repeat out­ra­geous false­hoods and would then be bound to the leader by shame and com­plic­i­ty. “The great ana­lysts of truth and lan­guage in pol­i­tics”—writes McGill Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Jacob T. Levy—includ­ing “George Orwell, Han­nah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us rec­og­nize this kind of lie for what it is.… Say­ing some­thing obvi­ous­ly untrue, and mak­ing your sub­or­di­nates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a par­tic­u­lar­ly star­tling dis­play of pow­er over them. It’s some­thing that was endem­ic to total­i­tar­i­an­ism.”

Arendt and oth­ers rec­og­nized, writes Levy, that “being made to repeat an obvi­ous lie makes it clear that you’re pow­er­less.” She also rec­og­nized the func­tion of an avalanche of lies to ren­der a pop­u­lace pow­er­less to resist, the phe­nom­e­non we now refer to as “gaslight­ing”:

The result of a con­sis­tent and total sub­sti­tu­tion of lies for fac­tu­al truth is not that the lie will now be accept­ed as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bear­ings in the real world—and the cat­e­go­ry of truth ver­sus false­hood is among the men­tal means to this end—is being destroyed.

The epis­te­mo­log­i­cal ground thus pulled out from under them, most would depend on what­ev­er the leader said, no mat­ter its rela­tion to truth. “The essen­tial con­vic­tion shared by all ranks,” Arendt con­clud­ed, “from fel­low trav­el­er to leader, is that pol­i­tics is a game of cheat­ing and that the ‘first com­mand­ment’ of the move­ment: ‘The Fuehrer is always right,’ is as nec­es­sary for the pur­pos­es of world pol­i­tics, i.e., world-wide cheat­ing, as the rules of mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline are for the pur­pos­es of war.”

“We too,” writes Jef­frey Isaacs at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “live in dark times”—an allu­sion to anoth­er of Arendt’s sober­ing analy­ses—“even if they are dif­fer­ent and per­haps less dark.” Arendt wrote Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism from research and obser­va­tions gath­ered dur­ing the 1940s, a very spe­cif­ic his­tor­i­cal peri­od. Nonethe­less the book, Isaacs remarks, “rais­es a set of fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about how tyran­ny can arise and the dan­ger­ous forms of inhu­man­i­ty to which it can lead.” Arendt’s analy­sis of pro­pa­gan­da and the func­tion of lies seems par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant at this moment. The kinds of bla­tant lies she wrote of might become so com­mon­place as to become banal. We might begin to think they are an irrel­e­vant sideshow. This, she sug­gests, would be a mis­take.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ori­gins of the Word “Gaslight­ing”: Scenes from the 1944 Film Gaslight

Han­nah Arendt Explains Why Democ­ra­cies Need to Safe­guard the Free Press & Truth … to Defend Them­selves Against Dic­ta­tors and Their Lies

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

Enter the Han­nah Arendt Archives & Dis­cov­er Rare Audio Lec­tures, Man­u­scripts, Mar­gin­a­lia, Let­ters, Post­cards & More

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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