Background Briefing. Dark Menace series Mark Dennis was a Sydney criminal barrister who was found dead ‘with no suspicious circumstances’ in his home in inner Sydney after he had been investigated for child sex offences. Online he had used the name ‘Dark Menace’ (a spoonerism on his name) and it seems that he has been involved in questionable activities, especially related to a Cambodian orphanage run by Australian Geraldine Cox. This is a 3 part series, but it is interminably drawn out as a conversation between an investigative journalist and the host of the show, complete with lots of professions of shock and horror. It would have been interesting as a single episode but drawn out over three weeks I felt like shaking them and telling them to get on with the damned story.
History Extra Did the Catholic Church Support Hitler? featuring Ambrogio Caiani. By 1914 the Catholic Church had lost much of its political and diplomatic power, starting in 1905 when it broke links with Spain. It still had links with Austria-Hungary and Germany, so it was seen as pro-German. The Vatican became an unofficial listening post for Germany, and when the liberal democrats replaced authority in Austria-Hungary, the conservatives were looking for friends. Pius X had demanded that priests reject modernism, and in 1922 Pius XI reaffirmed Christ as King, with top-down authority. Although Mussolini was an atheist, he adapted after an electoral defeat to slowly bring in pro-Catholic legislation. With the 1929 Laterine Accord the Vatican was recognized as a sovereign state. Catholicism was recognized as the religion of Italy, but not the only one, and the Church decided not to oppose Mussolini’s dictatorship. But when Italy annexed Ethiopia, the Catholic Church accepted it grudgingly in spite of the problem that the Ethiopians were the oldest Christians. In 1938 Germany introduced its racial laws and Pius XI announced that ‘we are all semites’. When Hitler took power in 1933 the Catholic Church negotiated the Reich Concordate, which guaranteed the position of the Catholic Church in Germany and placed limits on the Church’s political action. The Nazis ignored the Church’s stance on schools and the euthanasia of disabled people. The Church neither collaborated with, nor defied, the roundups of Jewish people. Some were saved by individual churches and convents, but there is little evidence that this was official Church policy. Many leaders in the Catholic Church did know what was happening but were largely indifferent. By the end of WW2 fear of communism led to a perception that democracy and Catholicism were not incompatible. The Church played an ambiguous role: it opposed unconditional surrender, urged leniency for Nazi prisoners at Nuremberg and facilitated the flight of ex-Nazis to Latin America. And then the podcast abruptly ended!
The Rest is History They saved the best until last! Episode 682 South Africa: Mandela and the Death of Apartheid tells the story of the South African national anthem and its connection with 20th century South African history. With the introduction of apartheid in South Africa, the white 20% of the population dominated economic, political and sporting life. In 1981 South Africa faced international opprobrium in the form of a boycott of the Springboks and economic boycotts. When Nelson Mandela was released from jail in 1990 after serving 27 years, he was elected president of the ANC. Once South Africa was accepted back into the sporting world, the Rugby World Cup was scheduled to be held in South Africa in 1995 and Mandela, by then President, wanted the blacks to support the mainly white Springboks, and for the whites to accept singing a multi-racial song as anthem. “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” was composed by a Methodist school teacher named Enoch Sontonga in 1897.It was adopted by the African National Congress as its official song, but when Mandela was inaugurated, he wanted both Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and the Afrikaans “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” performed at his inauguration as an act of reconciliation. It was decided in 1997 to merge the two anthems and have five different languages in the verses. What an incredible story, and an incredible anthem.
The Conversation The Making of An Autocrat: the step-by-step guide that Trump is following, tried and tested the world over by the strongmen Trump seeks to emulate. Step 1: Hijack a Party Erica Frantz, associate professor of political science at Michigan State University, explains that Trump’s first step was to take control of the Republican Party, in his case as an outsider, and then to begin to dismantle democracy. Step 2: Recruit an Architect features Emma Shortis from RMIT, who says that autocrats always need an architect behind them. They are men (usually) who join the party young and use the party as a career ladder. Trump’s architect is Steven Miller, but we have seen others like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Step 3: Manufacture a Crisis A strongman loves a crisis, and Trump used the so-called ‘invasion’ of gangs as his crisis. It allows the autocrat to scapegoat a particular group and foment existing tension in order to go after his enemies, and to portray himself as a ‘hero’.
