Don't look back at the darkness
The quandary of G. W. Pabst, AI as a tool of resistance, clubbing in Berlin, and more
There’s a practical lesson in this week’s issue of Public Seminar: If you make it out of a dark dictatorship, and you even manage to get to Hollywood, don’t go back. As German novelist Daniel Kehlmann explains to Mitchell Abidor, his latest novel traces the the curious saga of Austrian filmmaker G. W. Pabst, who escaped the Nazi regime—only to return to a system he abhorred.
Alexandra Chaves’s review of Good Girl, the debut novel of poet Aria Aber, delves into a different darkness: that of the Berlin nightclub, and a scene “fueled by amphetamines, techno, and allusions to radical politics.”
Salvador Santino Regilme assesses the consolidation of an oligarchic world order, “a system in which democratic procedures remain, but their substance has been hollowed out.”
And in Turkey, Selin Bengi Gümrükçü reports, dissidents are using generative artificial intelligence tools to imagine alternative political realities.
The Fate of the Artist Under Totalitarianism
Mitchell Abidor and Daniel Kehlmann
Mitchell Abidor: Much as I love the Louise Brooks films, my favorite Pabst film is Westfront 1918, his first sound feature, and I also love Kameradschaft, films with progressive themes, about brotherhood and the folly of war. That the man who made these films, not to mention the “degenerate” Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, worked for the Nazis is pretty astounding.
Daniel Kehlmann: What there’s not the faintest doubt about is that he didn’t have any sympathy for the Nazis. He went back, and it’s hard, or maybe impossible, to figure out why, so it’s easier to write a novel about it. But the one thing that’s not in doubt is that it had nothing to do with his having any sympathy with them, which is the only reason why the story is interesting. Otherwise, it’s just a story of a Nazi joining the Nazis, which I wouldn’t want to write a book about.
Artificial Intelligence–Based Aesthetics of Dissent in Turkey
Selin Bengi Gümrükçü
The use of AI in Turkish politics—by both the government and the opposition—is not new. In 2023, before the dual elections, the documentary platform 140journos used AI tools to prepare post-election scenarios for Erdoğan. In the scenario where Erdoğan lost, he was depicted playing tennis and spending time with his grandchildren, struggling to adapt to retired life. In the second scenario where he won, Turkey turned into a “galactic empire,” with Erdoğan portrayed in uniform aboard a spacecraft.
Electronic Music’s Savior Complex
Alexandra Chaves
Those who set foot in Berlin’s famous nightclubs can sense desire coursing through the air, as palpable as the reverberations of the electronic music within. It’s an easy enough formula of seduction: a door policy that leaves you seeking approval from staff who never disclose their criteria for entry; dark, unmapped interiors plotted like mazes; all kinds of substances and substance mixing; the constant possibility of sex; and the thrumming of music so intense it could, if you let it, reconfigure your body and mind. And it is in this scene that Nila, the 19-year-old protagonist of poet Aria Aber’s debut novel, Good Girl (Hogarth, 2025), seeks to, as she puts it, “ruin” her life.
Naked Oligarchy
Salvador Santino Regilme
Despite local variations, oligarchs operate within a shared transnational architecture. Tax havens in the Caribbean and Luxembourg, “golden passport” schemes, shell companies in Delaware and Dubai—these mechanisms enable legal arbitrage and protect elite fortunes from democratic oversight. The 2021 Pandora Papers revealed how politicians, billionaires, and celebrities globally shield trillions from taxation and scrutiny. These are not isolated instances of evasion, but the infrastructure of a global oligarchy.