Weekly Picks – April 14, 2024

Credits (clockwise from bottom left): Jesse Darling; Toho Company Ltd./ Wikimedia; Adrià Fruitós; Mary Turner/ NY Times/ Panos Pictures; Paolo Gerbaudo/ Phenomenal World; Justin Maxon for The Atlantic; Ben Jennings; Matthieu Bourel/ Illustration for Foreign Policy

This week’s collection:

Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.

1. Many of us have the wrong idea about poverty and toughness

“Imagine this upsetting scenario: two women are both suffering physical abuse from their partners. One woman is relatively affluent, while the other struggles to make ends meet. In this kind of situation, where two people of different means are experiencing similar harm, who will receive help? Are the neighbours of both women, upon learning of the violence, equally likely to reach out or call the authorities? Or might they decide in one of these cases that getting help isn’t so urgent?

One might guess that people in poverty are generally seen as needing more help, given their more precarious circumstances, whereas more affluent people might be seen as less vulnerable due to their greater financial resources. But when I and other researchers conducted a study asking people about the appropriate bystander intervention for intimate partner abuse, we found that participants thought a higher level of intervention would be necessary for a higher-income woman, compared with a lower-income woman.

This finding is just one example of a well-documented pattern of neglect and mistreatment of lower-income individuals, especially people in poverty. Students from lower-income families receive less positive attention from their teachers. Lower-income customers receive worse treatment while shopping. Lower-income patients receive less care from their physical and mental healthcare providers. And lower-income defendants receive harsher punishments in the courtroom. More generally, people in poverty receive less help and less support interpersonally and institutionally across many domains of everyday life.

Why are people in poverty, who have fewer resources at their disposal and are, if anything, in need of greater support, so often ignored and sidelined, compared with their higher-income counterparts?”

2. There Is Only One Spaceship Earth

“What would it take for us humans to stop killing each other with such vigor and in such numbers?

Song lyrics tell me to be proud to be an American, yet war and profligate preparations for more of the same are omnipresent here. My government spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined (and most of them are allies). In this century, our leaders have twice warned of an “axis of evil” intent on harming us, whether the fantasy troika of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea cited by President George W. Bush early in 2002 or a new one — China, Russia, and North Korea — in the Indo-Pacific today. Predictably given that sort of threat inflation, this country is now closing in on a trillion dollars a year in “defense spending,” or close to two-thirds of federal discretionary spending, in the name of having a military machine capable of defeating “evil” troikas (as well as combatting global terrorism). A significant part of that huge sum is reserved for producing a new generation of nuclear weapons that will be quite capable of destroying this planet with missiles and warheads to spare.

My country, to be blunt, has long been addicted to war, killing, violence, and massive preparations for more of the same. We need an intervention. We need to confront our addiction. Yet when it comes to war and preparations for future conflicts, our leaders aren’t even close to hitting rock bottom. They remain in remarkable denial and see no reason to change their ways.

. . .

Dividing the world into armed camps based on fear seems basic to our foreign policy, a reality now echoed in domestic politics as well, as the Democratic blue team and the MAGA Republican red team attack each other as “fascistic” or worse. In this all-American world of ours, all is conflict, all is war.

When asked about such an addiction to war, your average government official will likely claim it’s not our fault. “Freedom isn’t free,” so the bumper sticker says, meaning in practice that this country stands prepared to kill others without mercy to ensure its “way of life,” which also in practice means unbridled consumption by an ever-shrinking portion of Americans and unapologetic profiteering by the richest and greediest of us. Call it the “moderate” bipartisan consensus within the Washington Beltway. Only an “extremist” would dare call for restraint, tolerance, diplomacy, and peace.

. . .

In fact, there is a common foe — or perhaps a common cause — that should unite us all as humans. That cause is Earth, the health of our planet and all the life forms on it. And that foe, to state the obvious (even if it regularly goes unsaid), is war, which is unhealthy in the extreme not just for us but for our planet, too.

. . .

We know from history that it’s far easier to destroy than to create, far easier to kill than to preserve. Yet when countries make genocide or ecocide (from nuclear winter) possible and defensible (as a sign of uncompromising “toughness” and perhaps the defense of “freedom”), you know that their leaders are, in some sense, morally obtuse monsters. And who or what are we if we choose to follow such monsters?”

3. The New Idea of India

“From the middle of April until early June, staggered over the course of several weeks, the world’s biggest election will take place. More than 960 million Indians—out of a population of 1.4 billion—are eligible to vote in parliamentary elections that polls strongly suggest will return Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power for a third consecutive term.

Modi is probably the world’s most popular leader. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 78 percent of Indians approve of his leadership. (The next three highest-ranked leaders, from Mexico, Argentina, and Switzerland, generate approval ratings of 63, 62, and 56 percent, respectively.) It is not hard to see why Modi is admired. He is a charismatic leader, a masterful orator in Hindi, and widely perceived as hard-working and committed to the country’s success. He is regarded as unlikely to turn to nepotism or corruption, often attributed to the fact that he is a 73-year-old man without a partner or children. Modi has few genuine competitors. His power within his party is absolute, and his opponents are fractured, weak, and dynastic—a quality usually equated with graft. Whether it is through maximizing his opportunity to host the G-20 or through his high-profile visits abroad, Modi has expanded India’s presence on the world stage and, with it, his own popularity. New Delhi is also becoming more assertive in its foreign policy, prioritizing self-interest over ideology and morality—another choice that is not without considerable domestic appeal.

Modi’s success can confuse his detractors. After all, he has increasingly authoritarian tendencies: Modi only rarely attends press conferences, has stopped sitting down for interviews with the few remaining journalists who would ask him difficult questions, and has largely sidestepped parliamentary debate. He has centralized power and built a cult of personality while weakening India’s system of federalism. Under his leadership, the country’s Hindu majority has become dominant. This salience of one religion can have ugly impacts, harming minority groups and calling into question the country’s commitment to secularism. Key pillars of democracy, such as a free press and an independent judiciary, have been eroded.

Yet Modi wins—democratically. The political scientist Sunil Khilnani argued in his 1997 book, The Idea of India, that it was democracy, rather than culture or religion, that shaped what was then a 50-year-old country. The primary embodiment of this idea, according to Khilnani, was India’s first prime minister, the anglicized, University of Cambridge-educated Jawaharlal Nehru, who went by the nickname “Joe” into his 20s. Nehru believed in a vision of a liberal, secular country that would serve as a contrast to Pakistan, which was formed explicitly as a Muslim homeland. Modi is, in many ways, Nehru’s opposite. Born into a lower-caste, lower-middle-class family, the current prime minister’s formative education came from years of traveling around the country as a Hindu community organizer, sleeping in ordinary people’s homes and building an understanding of their collective frustrations and aspirations. Modi’s idea of India, while premised on electoral democracy and welfarism, is substantially different from Nehru’s. It centers culture and religion in the state’s affairs; it defines nationhood through Hinduism; and it believes a powerful chief executive is preferable to a liberal one, even if that means the curtailment of individual rights and civil liberties. This alternative vision—a form of illiberal democracy—is an increasingly winning proposition for Modi and his BJP.”

4. Inventing the Crisis: The anti-trans panic and the crusade against teachers

“In May of last year, a local leader in the El Paso County, Colorado, chapter of Moms for Liberty named the actors she believes are behind a coordinated effort to make more children come out as trans or gay: “Teachers unions,” “our president,” and “the left.” She then named teachers unions twice more, painting them as the primary antagonists in a campaign to erode “parental rights.”

Moms for Liberty is a far-right front group explicitly opposed to teachers’ power to set learning conditions for young people and to control their own working conditions. (Leaders quoted on the Moms for Liberty website call teachers unions a “K–12 cartel.”) Formed in Florida in January 2021 by Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, it rapidly transformed into a right-wing media darling with attention from Tucker Carlson, Breitbart, and the Rush Limbaugh Show. It’s now an organization with chapters across the nation, raking in five-, six-, and seven-figure gifts from the right wing of the Republican donor base, including some of the same people and organizations who threw millions behind the failed Trumpist coup on January 6, 2021. As Maurice Cunningham reported in the Tampa Bay Times, the organization receives crucial support from prominent member organizations —like the Leadership Institute and the Heritage Foundation — of the Council for National Policy, a network that since the Reagan era has united ruling-class money with conservative Christian politics to influence policymaking on the political right.

In Moms for Liberty, money meets people power: organized into local chapters, its ardent grassroots activists target public schools, school libraries, school boards, and K–12 curricula. They speak at school board meetings, denouncing the library books they believe introduce children to concepts like queer and trans identity. Under the rallying cry of “parental rights,” they protest school-based practices that make it easier for young people to transition — including, say, refusing to out trans students to their parents before they’re ready, providing books on gender identity in school libraries, and respecting students’ names and pronouns — and they uplift policies that restrict or eliminate these possibilities.

Why do right-wing activists believe — or, at any rate, why do they say — that “teachers unions” are a primary proponent behind introducing young people to the possibility of becoming trans? Trans rights don’t feature prominently in the negotiations that teachers unions have staked in recent years, which have instead and with good reason focused on winning living wages for teachers and nonteaching school staff, enforcing dignified working and learning conditions, and fighting racist school closures and austerity budgets imposed by conservative local administrations, whether Republican or Democrat. But if the conspiracism of the far right fails to align with fact, it nonetheless demonstrates some of the logic driving the current anti-trans moral panic, including both its movement warriors and its legislative wing.

In the minds of the panic’s primary architects and closest adherents, teachers and trans people represent a political coalition whose power they are aiming to truncate. This fact is key to understanding why the political right has alighted on trans people as a legislative target and media chew toy. It’s also key to understanding what effects, beyond a collective anti-trans animus, the moral panic is intended to produce.”

5. The trauma ward

“I am perhaps unusual in that I’ve always wanted children. Even as a child I knew I wanted to be a mum. We had done what many middle-class suburban couples did at that time and attended NCT classes. The underlying message of these was: try to avoid a Caesarean section at all costs. “Natural” births were best, and even better to just breathe through it. No need for pain relief. I remember in our penultimate class bringing up the subject of tearing during labour. I had seen a TV feature on it that week, and it struck me as important. “If most of us are going to tear, to some degree, it would be really helpful to talk about that,” I remember saying. “It would be good to know how best to care for ourselves afterwards, that kind of thing.” The answer was no, there was no need. Instead, we proceeded to get on all fours and “moo” like cows, and then practise putting nappies on a doll.

Up to nine in ten first-time mothers who have a vaginal birth will experience some sort of tear. The least invasive kind involves only the skin from the vagina and the perineum – the area between a woman’s vagina and anus. These tears usually heal quickly and without any treatment. Second-degree tears involve the muscle of the perineum and require stitches. Third- and fourth-degree tears are the most serious. These involve not just tearing of the skin and muscle of the perineum but the muscle of the anus. In fourth-degree tears, the injury can extend into the lining of the bowel. These deeper tears need proper surgical repair under anaesthetic.

I don’t really have any happy memories of the first few days or weeks after we left the hospital. I was completely in love with my baby, but I felt shell-shocked. I couldn’t process what had happened, and there was no one who offered to help me. A different midwife was sent to our house every couple of days to weigh our daughter. I had no milk the first few days and she had lost a fair bit of weight. Even when my milk came in, I found breastfeeding painful and difficult, in large part because it hurt so much to sit down.

I cried, quietly, every day for several months. Every single day. Often it would come completely out of nowhere. I’d be talking or watching television, and I would just start to cry. Several midwives wrote in my notes in those early weeks the same phrase: “Mum is anxious.” I don’t think I was. I was traumatised.

. . .

After several months I desperately needed to have some control over my life again. I had never felt so helpless, lost and infantilised. But my overarching feeling was anger. I wrote to the chief executive and chair of the hospital to complain and was invited in for a debrief. The head of midwifery was lovely, apologised and followed through on her promise to try to prevent other women facing the appalling lack of communication I had. The hospital now has a specialist perineal health clinic too.

But the attitude of the consultant obstetrician whom I met with my husband floored us both. It was about six months after the birth, but I was still under the care of a consultant urogynaecologist. (I subsequently had two further surgeries: the first 14 months after giving birth to remove an undissolved stitch that was causing pain but hadn’t been spotted, and another six months after that.) My urogynaecologist had told me not even to consider giving birth vaginally again. The risk was too great, he explained. If I tore again, there was a 30 per cent chance I couldn’t be repaired and I’d be incontinent. The obstetrician said the opposite – don’t rule it out! I saw red. “How dare you,” I growled. I remember saying that he would never be so cavalier about a man’s body. Even though I felt nothing but contempt for that doctor, something shifted after those meetings. It had been helpful to speak some of what I felt out loud. This was more than seven years ago. But the details of what happened are permanently etched in my mind.

My story is far from unique. And, compared to thousands of other women, I suppose I was indeed lucky. Every year, about 25,000 women who give birth – approximately 4 per cent – are so distressed that they meet the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. That makes birth one of the biggest causes of PTSD in the UK, according to the Birth Trauma Association charity – probably coming second only to sexual abuse and rape. Hundreds of thousands more women are traumatised. This is a major health crisis. And yet it is barely discussed.”

6. End of Innocence

“What is it about this international event that has such a powerful resonance in national class conjunctures? One answer is that the Western bourgeoisies consider Israel’s situation as intimately linked to their own. This is an imaginary, semi-conscious connection which – far more than simple sociological affinities – is driven by a subterranean affinity which cannot but be denied. Sympathy for domination, sympathy for racism, perhaps the purest form of domination, and therefore most exciting for the dominators. This affinity is heightened when domination enters a crisis: an organic crisis in capitalism, a colonial crisis in Palestine, as when those dominated revolt against all odds, and their antagonists are ready to crush them in order to reassert domination.

But there is also a deeper fascination for the Western bourgeoisie. It was Sandra Lucbert who saw this with penetrating insight, positing a word that I believe to be decisive: innocence. The fascination is with the image of Israel as a figure of domination in innocence. To dominate without bearing the stain of evil: this is perhaps the ultimate fantasy of the dominant. During his trial, the left militant Pierre Goldman yells at the judge: ‘I am innocent, I am ontologically innocent and there is nothing you can do about it’. As different as the circumstances are, his words resonate: after the Shoah, Israel established itself in ontological innocence. And indeed, the Jews were first victims, victims at the summit of the history of human violence. But victim, even on this scale, does not mean ‘innocent forever’. The only way to move from one to the other is by means of a fraudulent deduction.

. . .

To claim it all began on 7 October is a vicious and characteristic intellectual corruption of this kind, one that only an ontologically innocent nation could subscribe to, along with all those who envy them, and who love to believe with them in effects without cause. We shouldn’t even be surprised that some of them, as is the case in France, continue to use the word ‘terrorism’ against climate activists – labelling them ‘ecoterrorists’ – without batting an eyelid when they should be in hiding, consumed by shame. They do not even respect the dead, whose memory they pretend to honour and whose cause they support. But ‘terrorism’ is the shield of Western innocence.

The misuse of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ can be analysed in similar terms. In its present deviations (which obviously does not exhaust all cases, since there is plenty of genuine anti-Semitism) the accusation is intended to delegitimise all those who wish to recognise causality, and therefore call into question innocence.

. . .

The hallmark of colonisation when it is settlement-based is the wish to eliminate the presence of the occupied – in the case of the Palestinians either by expulsion-deportation or, as we now see, by genocide. Here, as on other such occasions recorded by history, dehumanisation is once again the justifying trope par excellence. There are now countless examples of it, both from official Israeli mouthpieces and in the muddy stream of social networks, staggering in their gleeful monstrosity and sadistic exultation. This is what happens when the veil of innocence is lifted, and as always, it’s not a pretty sight.”

7. The Truth About Organic Milk

“Most American consumers abhor animal cruelty and support laws preventing it. In a recent ASPCA survey, three-quarters or more of respondents said they were concerned about farm-animal welfare and supported a ban on new factory farms. Yet cruelty, even egregious cruelty, against farm animals is often legal, provided that the suffering is “necessary” and “justifiable” by the need for farms to produce food, David Rosengard of the Animal Legal Defense Fund told me.

To determine what is “necessary” and “justifiable,” lawyers and juries often look at what farms are already doing, what agricultural schools are teaching, and what Big Ag publications recommend. In effect, I gathered, animal-welfare law is slanted toward the needs of farms much more than the experience of animals.

Even gratuitously abusive treatment often goes unpunished. Local authorities have jurisdiction over most animal-cruelty complaints. But cows, pigs, and chickens are not great at picking up the telephone to call those authorities. Animal-rights activists are able to perform investigations only sporadically, and at significant legal risk to themselves. Farm workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, rarely report violations.

. . .

The Alexandre farm I toured with the family occupies a damp flat between the Pacific Ocean and an old-growth redwood forest. Hundreds of fat, calm cows chewed emerald grass and slept in the mist alongside a herd of wild elk. Heavily pregnant cows idled in a spacious barn, overseen 24 hours a day by a herdsman. Younger cows rushed up to meet me.

The farm appeared to provide as close to perfect conditions as possible, I thought. Yet dairy is hard—that was something I heard again and again while reporting this piece. On ranches, beef cattle live outdoors, mostly undisturbed, before being moved to feedlots; mothers and calves spend months together. In contrast, dairy cows are repeatedly inseminated or bred, calved, and separated from their babies. They are milked twice a day. And when their bodies begin to give out, they keep getting milked until they are euthanized or slaughtered.

Jorie Chadbourne, a retired brand inspector (a government official who verifies an animal’s ownership at the point of sale or slaughter), told me the Alexandre cows she had encountered over the years were no better or worse than those from other organic farms in the region. But, she added, at auction, organic cows were usually in worse shape than conventional cows, because of the program’s medication restrictions: “It is like an older person, at the end of their life, not having medicine to comfort them or make them well.” (She told me the antibiotic rules are why she raises her own animals conventionally.)

The best certifiers, like Certified Humane, are great at validating farms’ general conditions. But, as Mimi Stein noted, the program certifies the farm—not the animal. Cows get sold off. Cruel incidents happen. And many other certifiers are less rigorous.

What is a consumer who wants to support a gentle, green system of agriculture to do? DeCoriolis of Farm Forward had a blunt answer: Give up dairy. “As a consumer, you’re just playing roulette,” he told me. Yet the overwhelming majority of American consumers are unwilling to give up milk or cheese for ethical reasons. What they are willing to do is support stricter rules for agricultural producers and pay more for milk and cheese from farms that treat their animals well. The country is failing to provide those consumers with a reliable and navigable system. That’s a policy problem, and a solvable one.”

8. The Electric Vehicle Developmental State

“How Western governments will respond to competition in an industry long considered the test of economic prowess is a question of central concern to the twenty-first century. In both the US and EU, the rise of Chinese EVs has been condemned as the result of unfair practices. Announcing a probe into Chinese EVs and state aid in September, Ursula Von der Leyen asserted that their competitiveness was a result of “market manipulation.” Joe Biden has similarly pledged to prevent Chinese EVS from “flood[ing] our market,” and Donald Trump described the impact of Chinese electric cars as an economic “bloodbath.”

Underlying these incendiary remarks, however, is an industrial transformation no less significant than that of Japanese automakers in the 1980s. The rise of the Chinese EV industry has been enabled not only by generous government subsidies but also by profound changes in strategy and organization, and in particular by a distinctive revival of vertical integration—at both individual firm and national levels. The approach is perfectly exemplified by BYD, which has sought to bring virtually all aspects of the value chain under its control: from battery technology—which was its initial core business—to microchips and even expanding to ownership of lithium mines and car carrier ships. Further, exploiting significantly lower labor costs in China compared to countries like Japan, Germany and the US, the firm has availed itself of a massive army of factory workers with a significantly more labor-intensive production process than its competitors. This neo-Fordist approach has allowed BYD to drive down costs while coordinating and accelerating the innovation of different key components during a pivotal phase in the industry’s evolution. Additionally, it has enabled the company to mitigate operational uncertainties and address shortages of various input factors and services, like the ongoing chip shortage since 2020.

In parallel, the Chinese government has been pushing for vertical integration at the national level, ensuring that 80 percent of the EV value chain is contained within the country through the “Made in China 2025” plan, which has the aim of minimizing the effects of disruptions and setting the conditions to reinforce and maintain technological supremacy. While the model is likely to shift as labor relations evolve, this turn towards “re-integration” and “re-internalization” carries important lessons about the future of economic organization and industrial policy.”

9. The Toxic Culture at Tesla

“Tesla, by far the country’s top maker of electric vehicles, is riding the wave of EV adoption. Its vehicles and technology offer a way to tackle climate change. Such a cutting-edge company is attractive to plenty of people looking for meaningful work. Not to mention that a position as a production associate, an entry-level factory floor job, currently pays around $25 per hour—less than what unionized autoworkers can expect, though much more than what most service-sector workers make. But a review by The Nation of more than 50 legal documents, government records at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Labor Relations Board, along with interviews with workers and their lawyers, paints a picture of a company whose factory floors are stuck in another century.

Dozens of Black workers have alleged that racism is not only rampant but tolerated at the company’s factories, from menacing white-power graffiti to Black workers being shunted to the most grueling jobs with no chance of getting a promotion. At least a dozen women have described a work environment thick with sexual innuendo and complain of inappropriate touching and catcalls hurled at them daily. Cars zip down the line at dangerous speeds, workers say, forcing them to piece the cars together at a breakneck pace, made all the more difficult by the insufficient training they are given. Many workers, like Turley, have had to endure all these violations at the same time.

Discrimination and harassment can happen on any factory floor. How a company reacts to it dictates how pervasive and severe the behavior gets and whether employees feel safe. Tesla employees who have complained about these problems say they were either ignored or retaliated against. Many didn’t think it was worth speaking up. It was, after all, many of their supervisors who were casually using the N-word and blatantly ogling women’s butts.

“There’s an atmosphere on the line that allows for mistreatment,” said J. Bernard Alexander III, an attorney at Alexander Morrison + Fehr, who has represented some of the workers at the Fremont plant. When workers feel desperate enough to complain, he continued, “there’s no responsiveness. As long as the line is moving, progress is being made, they can’t care less.”

. . .

White-collar workers at Tesla have also complained of mistreatment. In 2016, AJ Vandermeyden, a former engineer at Tesla, sued the company for ignoring her complaints of sexual harassment and then passing her over for promotions and paying her less than male coworkers. Seven former employees have accused SpaceX, another Musk-run company, of failing to promote women and of permitting sexual harassment. Another employee, Michelle Dopak, recently sued the company for paying her less than male coworkers, refusing to promote her, and retaliating after she reported that her manager forced her into a quid pro quo sexual relationship.

But racial and sexual harassment seems to be particularly common on Tesla’s factory floor, and Musk has taken an especially hands-on approach there, claiming to have frequently slept overnight at the Fremont factory. In 2018, a former safety expert at Tesla told Reveal that leaders at the factory avoided demarcating dangerous areas with yellow, because Musk doesn’t like the color. “Musk’s name often was invoked to justify shortcuts and shoot down concerns,” Reveal reported. A chief executive who is that deeply involved in the workplace not only must be fully aware of what is happening on the factory floor but also likely sets the tone for what behavior is and isn’t going to be considered acceptable.”

10. Reality, as Seen by Godzilla

“The first Godzilla film, entitled Gojira in Japan, is a sober and serious meditation on the dangers of unbridled scientific development, filmed less than a decade after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, in the novellas written by the scriptwriter after the films’ success, Kayama spends precious little time actually describing Godzilla’s appearance. Instead, he focuses, repeatedly, on the “white hot” glow radiated by the monster’s body and his terrible destructive power. In Kayama’s film and in his novellas, then, the power of Godzilla as a speculative figure was precisely as a warning against the violence of nuclear science, a literalization of a metaphor.

Neither Godzilla nor humans, according to Kayama, can really succeed. The monster is repulsed, but it is never truly eliminated. Humans, meanwhile, can never stop him, only stall his destructive path through tragic sacrifices after periods of mass death and destruction.

A natural creature awakened and given terribly destructive powers by the atomic bomb, Godzilla was, for Kayama, a direct representation of science out of harmony with the earth. This makes Godzilla, in the characterization of Kayama’s recent translator, Jeffrey Angles, a “reminder that nature will fight back in ways humanity cannot possibly predict.” Kayama’s original conception of Godzilla, as speculative fiction, argues that the only path forward for harmony between humans and the world of nature is through a reevaluation of the power and purpose of science in the aftermath of destruction.

. . .

The contemporary fluorescence of Godzilla media is so compelling in part because it has remembered the sharp edges and complex ideas with which Godzilla films began, without losing what was gained in the meantime: the colorful spectacle and kitsch undertones of the Godzilla movies that fans like me grew up with.

In this essay, three examples from the modern Godzilla mediascape are explored. This is to show how each, in its own way, offers Godzilla as a literal metaphor for the toxic world in which we live: food for thought that is always already irradiated.”