DUNE Cold War
DUNE Cold War
The Genocidal Politics of Frank Herbert's Dune and America's New Cold War vs. China's Efforts to Construct an Ecological Civilization for a Shared Future."
Featured contributor Prof. Josef Gregory Mahoney delivered a keynote speech today at the "Reviving the Commons. Cultural Practices and Community Engagement" conference at #shenzhen University titled: "The Genocidal Politics of Frank Herbert's Dune and America's New Cold War vs. China's Efforts to Construct an Ecological Civilization for a Shared Future."
Here's the abstract:
This talk begins with a critical assessment of Frank Herbert's Dune saga, given its incredible current popularity, revealing its darkly normative values of desertification and messianic, if not fascistic politics, and then place these in broader contemporary political contexts including the US playing a strategic endgame with climate change, targeting the Global South and #china, especially while supporting Israeli genocidal actions in #gaza, a conflict, which some experts contend also originates with desertification, competition over fresh water and other vital resources.
The talk will then transition to Chinese efforts to construct an ecological civilisation at home and abroad, with case brief studies from Hefei, Hunan and Shanghai noted, along with the promotion of green innovation and development in tandem with the Belt-Road Initiative.
Contrary to reports from the UN and leading think tanks, #bri projects are leading the way in global development, significantly increasing global GDP, and doing so in a period when black swan events associated with increased conflict, climate change, and pandemics, have reversed progress on UN sustainable development targets and placed an estimated two million people in immediate danger.
Nevertheless, recent reports indicate the US House of Representatives has approved US1.6 billion under the name "Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund" for the State Department and #usaid to subsidise media and civil society sources around the world to counter Chinese influence will argue that we should understand Dune and similar popular media in tandem with US Cold War propaganda, and reflect on the need to invigorate a new global politics or internationalism to effectively resist such values and associated practices, particularly as it relates to global existential concerns like #climatechange.
