We’re flattered that Zahra Aghajan thought we knew about Marc Antony and Octavius. She gives us too much credit. When we think of Marc Antony we see this gorgeous man and remember Elizabeth Taylor unrolling herself out of a rug.
In fact, Zahra’s reference is spot on. (We Googled.) Around 2000 years ago, the Roman republic was facing a civil war between Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, and Mark Anthony, one of Caesar’s most trusted commanders.
To win the war, Octavian knew he had to have the public on his side – winning important battles helped, but if the people didn’t like him, he couldn’t rule Rome.
To get public backing, Octavian launched a ‘fake news’ war against Mark Anthony. He claimed Anthony, who was having an affair with Cleopatra, the Egyptian Queen, didn’t respect traditional Roman values like faithfulness and respect. (He stopped short at charging him with pedophilia, thankfully, but perhaps that didn’t have as much of a sting in those days.)
Octavian also said Marc Anthony was unfit to hold office because he was always drunk. (Much as we loved Burton, well….true enough. Oh, right, he was just the movie version!)
You won’t want to hear what happened but here it is anyway. Octavian printed up short, snappy slogans on coins, appealing to the lowest common denominator and he won. In fact, he ruled for 40 years.
Groan.
Thankfully, life moves faster these days, so our own Disinformation-Purveyor-in-Chief may have a shorter run. Lucky for us, PhD. neuroscientist Zahra Aghajan agreed to be on the panel we recently held at the hospitable L.A. bookstore Village Well.
You can watch the video of our panel with Zahra Aghajan, journalists Marc Cooper (The Nation, Harpers, many others), Jean Guerrero (New York Times columnist and author of the Stephen Miller bio Hatemonger), Sammy Roth (Los Angeles Times environment reporter), and political organizer Jason Berlin (founder of the dynamic voter registration organization Field Team 6) this morning, and all week for that matter if you’re a paid subscriber to Journal of the Plague Years. A subscription is a mere $35!
Next weekend, the panel will be free to all subscribers. But we hope you'll support our efforts with a subscription. Organizing the panel was a hell of a lot of work and strangely enough, the videographer wanted to be paid! (Crazy, right?)
We attracted an audience of about 60 people and every panelist was brilliant. We want to keep organizing these galvanizing public event and get the word out with videos like this, so we hope you’ll support our work.
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