Update: Here’s a link to a somewhat more concise review I did for Goodreads. 

One of the most common critiques of contemporary American society, and Western culture more broadly, is its purported enthrallment to the opiate of celebrity. The notion that ordinary Americans are so dumbfounded by popular entertainment that they can’t understand linear, logical thought, let alone come up with workable solutions to complex problems which require such understanding, is not new. The late Neil Postman wrote an entire book exploring the damage wrought by modern communication techniques-namely, television and advertising-to the process of information-gathering, and by extension, rational argument and inquiry. However, even Henry David Thoreau-who lived before radio had attenuated the attention spans of humans weaned on the printed word-lamented the prospect of instantaneous communication.

Even so, you can’t properly understand the term celebrity until you’ve looked at a totalitarian state which is dominated not so much by an ideological impulse or dogma as by a cult of personality. That’s why the book written by celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice-seen above in his dashing North Korean suit-about the late despot Kim Jong-il serves as an invaluable resource.  Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il-gives a western audience the rare opportunity to peer into the mind of someone who stood at the apex of a regime in which there was only one family and one person who was to be celebrated-upon pain of imprisonment, torture, and death. 

The unique nature of the North Korean state lies not so much in its depraved sadism-although it’s difficult to argue that it doesn’t equal or exceed even the most barbarous governments on the planet in this regard-but in the fact that it has managed to extirpate any public expression of individuality. Not only has the Kim dynasty suppressed any and all political dissent for the better part of seven decades, it has succeeded in effacing the personality of 24 million Koreans. In the tropical gulag that is Cuba you will find exuberantly defiant bloggers standing up to the Castro brothers tyranny. In the despotic theocracy that is the Islamic Republic of Iran, you will find courageous resistance to the Khomenist regime and first-hand accounts of what it’s like to be incarcerated in the notorious Evin Prison.

You won’t find internal dissidents in the DPRK, because to all intents and purposes, they do not exist. To dissent is to sign your own death warrant-not only for yourself, but for three generations of your family. You won’t hear the conditions inside of kwan-li-so described, because-with a few exceptions-no one leaves these concentration camps alive, and the only way outsiders are able to view them is through satellite photographs.

The brilliance of Dear Reader is its ability to convey these horrific truths in a way which compels the reader to look at North Korea in all its unvarnished brutality. At first glance, the concept of writing a book about an ongoing holocaust which relies upon humor to any extent is controversial, if not revolting. One of the reasons that a film like Goodbye Lenin can be enjoyed by ordinary people is because they recognize that it satirizes ugly crimes perpetrated by a regime which is safely immured in the past, and which will in all likelihood never be resurrected. The atrocities being committed in the DPRK, on the other hand, show no sign of abating.

The truth is that this book is suffused with humor, but not the type of humor that most people associate with Kim Jong-il or Kim Jong-un. It’s not designed to focus on the trivial manifestations of their well-cultivated international image of eccentricity, e.g. the goodwill tour by washed-up  NBA power forward/media spectacle Dennis Rodman. It’s used as a means of illustrating a lethally serious point. Namely, that this ruling clique has successfully employed an architecture of myth-based upon fear, ignorance, anger, and the desire for vengeance-in order to not only immiserate the Koreans under their rule materially, but to also impoverish their spirit and their souls.

One of the ways the author makes this viscerally disturbing narrative digestible is by contextualizing the Kim dynasty. People today can’t comprehend how a state created out of the spoils of World War II, a vestige of the Cold War conflict between the United States and USSR, became a singularly isolated and defiant  national socialist, i.e. fascist, regime predicated upon the worship of a single individual and intense, multigenerational racialism.

He does this in a number of ways, most interestingly perhaps by humanizing his subject, i.e. one of the most loathsome dictators of the past half-century. As off-putting as this might seem to the uninitiated, it’s a surprisingly effective means of explaining how and why the North Korean state exists, in spite of an increasingly porous web of information control. Taking traditional biographical tropes about family life and adolescent angst and transposing them into a story about Southeast Asia’s most iconic despot is an unconventional technique, but ultimately a successful one. A particularly affecting anecdote involves a young Kim Jong-il guarding the study of his father, Kim il-Sung, as he sleeps. Oddly moving, it serves as a metaphor for his guardianship of his dad’s legacy, even at the cost of the enforced starvation of over a million of his countrymen.

This highlights another aspect of North Korea’s unique regime, which is later revealed explicitly by Kim himself, when he admits that his advisors are not chosen because of any technical competence or foresight they may display, but because of their intense loyalty to Kim il-Sung, i.e. Kim Jong-il, thought. The consequent economic, social, and environmental disasters that resulted from this leadership method are, naturally, a necessary evil for preserving the sanctity of the true Korean state in the eyes of the Dear Leader.

Malice makes the sclerotic nature of this system comprehensible, which might come as a surprise to many of us who have been repeatedly told that there is no rhyme or reason to the actions taken by the DPRK’s leadership. In fact, there was a brutal internal logic and rationality to the actions of Kim Jong il, from extolling a juche philosophy that seemingly prized autarky-even while living parasitically off the extorted handouts from hostile neighbors and the United States-to an incomplete series of garish monuments exalting the only family to have ruled North Korea since its creation.

Therefore, the Agreed Framework between the United States and the DPRK was not a shameful capitulation, but a necessary expedient to preserve the Juche ideal, while also debasing both a former and current President of the United States. True to the promise on Dear Reader’s book jacket, this part is 100 percent “true,” as a perusal of Bill Clinton’s letter to Kim Jong-il at the time demonstrates. The bellicose rhetoric emanating from North Korea is not the rantings of a paranoid lunatic, but Songun diplomacy, which, regardless of its dubious morality, was extraordinarily efficacious. Kim’s explanation of an humanitarian aid package accepted five years later illustrates why:

After much grandstanding and hyperbole, the American and Korean negotiators reached a compromise. The Americans claimed that they were neither rewarding me nor condoning my violent rhetoric. That is absolutely true. They didn’t “reward” me or “condone” my rhetoric. On the other hand, they did financially compensate me because of my aggression. 

Accepting charity from the Yank devils was not a repudiation of the principles undergirding his very regime, but a brilliant strategic maneuver. And it wasn’t charity but reparations for the harm inflicted upon the DPRK for decades by the American imperialists.

This didn’t contradict the Juche principle of self-reliance one bit. I didn’t look at the package as aid so much as the repayment of a debt. The US imperialists had been threatening Korea for decades. It was entirely their fault that I’d had to expend such enormous sums on the military. 

Even actions that seem completely inscrutable to outside observers, e.g. the North Korean government’s evident pride in being lavished with praise by equally dysfunctional nation-states like the West African, Marxist backwater Burkina Faso or the South Asian dumpster fire that is Pakistan, become explicable once you understand them from the perspective of the man pulling the strings. As absurd as having Mali as one of your strategic partners might seem to us, it serves the interests of the Kim regime. Just like its arsenal of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, the International Friendship Museum is intended for domestic consumption, not for our benefit.

If there’s one thing to take away from Dear Reader, it’s that there is a calculated reason for every decision made at the upper echelons of power within North Korea. As Kim Jong-il avers himself, he was “no buffoon,” and his actions-however clownish they may have seemed to foreigners-had deadly consequences which were methodically plotted out beforehand. This is a book worth reading, if only because it illuminates the dark corners of a society whose people have suffered for too long in the shadows of their loving parents.

The conviction of and two year prison sentence leveled against anti-clerical, anti-authoritarian riot grrl punk-rock band Pussy Riot should not have come as a surprise to those who have been following the periodic show trials initiated by the Putin regime in order to quell swelling domestic discontent and internal protests. In spite of the inevitability of this verdict, dozens of sympathizers and rock enthusiasts-such as the person seen above-decided to show up in Times Square for yesterday’s Global Day Of Action, which was intended to demonstrate solidarity with the three women prosecuted for standing up to Vladimir Putin and his friends in the etiolated, yet politically connected, Russian Orthodox Church.

Although most were there to show their support for Russia’s most famous political dissidents at the moment, the fact that the rally took place in the center of one of the globe’s chief tourist destinations-and a hub for national and global media-meant that there were many others who came to either enjoy or participate in the spectacle that is New York City in the middle of the dog days of Summer. As you can see from the picture below, one of the hangers-on was this city’s most epic troll, a man with whom readers are very familiar.

In addition to denouncing American opposition to Bashar al-Assad and praising Vladimir Putin, he also accused those gathered in Times Square of taking part in a CIA-sponsored disinformation campaign. Surprisingly, he wasn’t the only communist in attendance, as the pamphlets promoting Revolutionary Communist/cult leader Bob Avakian demonstrated. Unaffiliated with either man, yet also participating in this impromptu speaker’s corner, was a pro-abortion, anti-pornography activist festooned in neon stickers.

And since it was the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, we were treated to an Elvis Presley impersonator. As Cindy Adams is wont to say, only in New York…

Notwithstanding the ubiquitous tourists and perennial trolls, most of those in attendance were there to protest the persecution of Russian artists and political dissidents. As in demonstrations throughout the world, the balaclavas which have become the hallmark of this newly famous punk rock band were sported by many protesters.

As was the less common business attire.

Even children got into the act.

Of course, some people shunned anonymity.

One demonstrator played upon the musicians’ trademark apparel by alluding to the opaque nature of the Putin regime.

One of the chief criticisms voiced at the rally was aimed at the symbiotic-bordering on incestuous-relationship between the ruling party in Russia-particularly President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev-and the Russian Orthodox Church, led by autocratic patriarch Kirill I. This is perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the pro-Pussy Riot actions-at least, from the perspective of a believing Christian who disdains organized religion as it stands today-because it illustrates the corruption of contemporary religious institutions such as the ROC, which, at least since its rapprochement with Joseph Stalin, has served as an unofficial auxiliary of the Russian state.

It was a bit harder to discern a coherent political narrative behind yesterday’s event, beyond generic support for freedom of expression.

And the ineluctable observation that Putin sucks:

The politics expressed during the rally ran the gamut from anarcho-syndicalism-as seen below:

To support for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, which might or might not have something to do with his persistent critiques of the Russian government on the campaign trail.

There were also, if the t-shirt seen below is any indication, many feminists among the crowd.

Malleus Maleficarum is, for those unaware, a document created by German priests-who served as inquisitors for the Roman Catholic Church in the 15th century-which attempted to demonstrate that witchcraft does in fact exist and described, in precise detail, how it should be combated. The witches, in this case, are Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. Presumably, the resources invested in flattening a seemingly inconsequential protest against Putin’s authority signify the willingness of his regime to drown witches who pose a more direct threat to his rule.

The rally concluded with a throng of demonstrators crossing into Father Duffy Square and climbing atop the TKTS bleacher in order to convey their message to a slightly larger audience.

And deliver an acoustic set in Russian.

Although I enjoyed the brief, yet impassioned, speech given by the Russian émigré extolling the benefits of living in a country where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, the herp derp call and response fashion in which it was delivered, via Occupy Wall Street’s patented mic check, was not the smoothest way to convey what would otherwise be an emotionally powerful message.

That said, I thought the pro-Pussy Riot Times Square rally was newsworthy, and-to the extent that those heretofore ignorant of the current persecution of dissident artists and journalists within Russia were aware of it-effective in spreading information about an important instance of individuals defying the state. As the makeshift banner above states, we are all hooligans, especially when speech is criminalized.

You can read the closing statements of the defendants here.