![]() ![]() The same appalling misuse of politics can be seen all across the world. ![]() George Osborne is now the chair of the British Museum the BBC is now a Tory bastion illiberal Tory backers have been placed on boards of arts organisations and state funding has become an ideological instrument in the fight against liberalism. These are encouraging small victories, but no match for neoliberal forces which are capturing the fields of art and culture, stamping on the delicate flowers and grasses. Traditionalists tried to infiltrate and take over the organisation, make it properly ‘”British”. Here, the National Trust, previously thought to be as safely conventional as the Women’s Institute, is now consciously promoting anticolonial, antislavery and egalitarian narratives. Artists like China’s Ai Weiwei, who is also living in exile, carry on producing great art. In Kyiv, the symphony orchestra holds “concert for peace” and Ukrainian orchestras are touring the west. But their anger and passion is firing up the world. Pussy Riot, the edgy, incredibly valorous, dissident, punky Russian performers – many of whom have been cruelly punished – are on a European tour and have been staging shows in London. Were we too naive to have such faith in the arts and culture? I hope not, yet fear so.Īs a junior doctor I make life and death decisions, yet bill worries are forcing me to strike 23 February, 2023 Nurses are not turncoats for holding pay talks with ministers 22 February, 2023 Ministers won't ever admit it, but strikes actually work 22 February, 2023 Neoliberalism, savage economic Darwinism, is parching the earth and crushing the human spirit and creative capacities. It is impossible now to imagine a global future when governments serve their people, when strong love and trust builds up between diverse peoples, when creativity can blossom without repression, when the poorest child has life opportunities to be a great painter or writer. Russia is on a crusade to reconquer the eastern bloc China is economically unbeatable but miserably unfree India is turning into a Hindu-controlled hegemony the US is destabilised by civil strife over female and minority rights in the UK, right-wing ideologues have declared war on progressive people, ideals and institutions Hungary is a graveyard for liberal values, and so on and on. He reveres Picasso’s searing anti-war painting, “Guernica” he remembers George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, an account of the writer’s time fighting in the Spanish Civil War he rejoices in the artists’ velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia which saw off the Soviet occupation, the fall of the Berlin Wall and other late 20th century events that led to phenomenal human creativity. Schama, mercifully, is still a staunch liberal, still believes that art and culture can salvage the human soul through the most unspeakably dreadful periods of human history. ![]()
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