2022
April
19
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

April 19, 2022
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How did many of today’s most fraught culture wars start? 

In a new podcast series, “Things Fell Apart,” Jon Ronson unearths the origin stories behind today’s culture war battles. For example, Mr. Ronson reveals how a prank played on a bit-part Hollywood actor sparked a QAnon conspiracy theory. The journalist delves into a mid-1990s incident at a Michigan retreat for feminists that triggered an ongoing war with transgender activists. Another episode details the first attempt to cancel someone on the internet.

“One thing I discovered was just how we’re being manipulated by people with strange agendas,” says Mr. Ronson, author of the 2015 book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.” On abortion, a politically partisan culture war “began because a young [man] in Switzerland wanted to put showreel together to show Hollywood producers. And he just had a personal bugbear about abortion because he was a teenage father at 19. And from that, the ripples came.” 

In revealing relatable human foibles, Mr. Ronson resists smug judgment. One episode revisits how several day care centers were falsely accused of performing satanic rituals on children during the 1980s. The lesson? It’s easy, even now, for ordinary people to get caught up in a blind prosecutorial zeal. Though Mr. Ronson believes that many people have been enriched by embracing contemporary social justice issues, he adds, “Many social scientists have shown that we act more violently when we believe that we’re setting a moral cause.” 

Mr. Ronson’s favorite episode reveals how culture wars can end. He recounts how televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker invited Steve Pieters, a pastor who was diagnosed with AIDS, on her afternoon talk show.

“It’s a story about two people from warring factions connecting – which almost never happens, especially in these days of the algorithms – and listening to each other and giving each other love and compassion and curiosity and empathy,” says Mr. Ronson. “And it rippled out in both communities in an only positive way.”


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Today's stories

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A deeper look

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The Monitor's View

Silence is golden? That may be the case in an untimely turn in American diplomacy aimed at one of Africa’s worst civil wars and a humanitarian crisis that calls out for global assistance.

Just three months after being appointed as the United States special envoy to the Horn of Africa, David Satterfield abruptly announced his departure last week. His decision came just weeks into a cease-fire in Ethiopia’s prolonged, ethnic-driven conflict. In that sense Mr. Satterfield’s timing could not be worse. Yet in offering no explanation for his quiet withdrawal, he may have shone a light of conscience at a fragile moment in a conflict that seems intractable.

Sometimes the clearest messages are unspoken. Just before his departure, Mr. Satterfield told Reuters that U.S. efforts in Ethiopia are “focused squarely” on getting aid into Ethiopia’s embattled region of Tigray as well as other war-struck areas. “What we do, what we say – all is focused upon achieving and maintaining that goal,” he said.

The civil war that began in late 2020 has stalemated with a government blockade of Tigray that effectively bars humanitarian aid and outside communications. According to various estimates, half a million people have been killed and more than 2.4 million displaced from their homes.

The cease-fire agreement was supposed to allow emergency aid convoys into Tigray. An estimated 90% of the Tigrayan population faces acute food shortages, according to the United Nations, requiring at least 100 aid trucks daily. Since the cease-fire only 67 have made it through.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been soundly criticized for the war’s conduct. In a rare rebuke earlier this year, the Nobel Committee, which awarded Mr. Abiy its Peace Prize in 2019 for ending a long military stalemate with neighboring Eritrea, said he bore “special responsibility” to end the conflict. But open criticism has done little to alter the course of the civil war in Ethiopia.

Mr. Satterfield’s departure in silence may be a subtle signal of U.S. concern but one that does not openly shame Mr. Abiy. It keeps the focus on action, not assigned guilt.

A good example of similar constructive silence in foreign policy was the approach that António Guterres followed early in his term as U.N. secretary-general. A 2017 speech he was due to give in Cairo included a strongly worded passage criticizing the government of Egypt over human rights. Mr. Guterres decided at the lectern to pass over those remarks. Observers criticized him for going soft, but the omission was calculated. Mr. Guterres “firmly believes that actions that will contribute to yielding positive results are more important than headlines for himself,” Stéphane Dujarric, the U.N. chief’s spokesperson, told Foreign Policy after the incident.

Mr. Satterfield’s unexplained departure may yet bolster the resolve of Ethiopia’s warring parties to uphold their humanitarian commitments. In avoiding a parting shot of condemnation, he has demonstrated a stronger influence, one of eloquent silence that speaks truth into a troubled land.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

For a woman who injured her wrist while ice-skating, pride came before a fall – literally. But prayer brought a fresh take on humility and everyone’s true nature as the reflection of God, which opened the door to healing.


A message of love

Yves Herman/Reuters
A woman takes a picture of wild bluebells forming a carpet in the Hallerbos, also known as the Blue Forest, in Halle, near Brussels, April 19, 2022.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris and Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for reading our stories today. Do share them with others on social media by clicking on the handy links at the end of each story. Tomorrow, we’ll be reviewing a movie about the theft of a Goya masterpiece from the National Gallery in London.

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2022
April
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