Jon Millington

Also available @jonmillington.bsky.social

[Jon Millington @jonmillington]

@AVWFCOfficial @ArsenalWFC She was excellent for Villa. Should have signed her

[Yuval Noah Harari @harari_yuval]

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending Marc Bloch's reburial ceremony at the Panthéon – Paris' monument to the most outstanding citizens of France. Bloch was honored not only as one of the greatest French historians, but also as a man who chose resistance over safety when his country fell into darkness.

Bloch fought in two World Wars, and received multiple awards for bravery. By the time the pro-Nazi Vichy regime came to power in 1940, Bloch was already recognized as perhaps the preeminent historian of medieval France. He continued to teach history, and during that time wrote 'Strange Defeat', a book explaining the French defeat in 1940, and 'The Historian’s Craft', a meditation on history and historiography. Bloch also joined the Résistance and became one of its leaders.

On March 8, 1944 Bloch was captured during a crackdown on the Résistance by the Nazis and their French collaborators. At the time, collaborationist French newspapers celebrated Bloch’s capture. They highlighted his Jewish identity, and referred to the historian as a traitor to France, describing the Résistance as a Jewish-Bolshevik terrorist organization. Bloch was imprisoned and tortured at the Gestapo headquarters in Lyon, and was executed on June 16, 1944, ten days after the Allied landing in Normandy.

I am a medievalist by training, and have been deeply influenced by Bloch. What moved me most about Bloch is his uncompromising commitment to truth. For him, history was never nostalgia or mythmaking, but a discipline of honesty – a way of resisting propaganda, prejudice, and the comfort of convenient fictions. For Bloch, truth was not just an intellectual position, but a spiritual practice. Anticipating his death at the hands of the Gestapo and the Vichy regime, the Jewish historian and freedom fighter left behind detailed instructions for his burial. He wrote:

“I have not asked to have read above my body those Jewish prayers to the cadence of which so many of my ancestors, including my father, were laid to rest. All my life I have striven to achieve complete sincerity in word and thought. I hold that any compromise with untruth, no matter what the pretext, is the mark of a human soul’s ultimate corruption. […] That is why I find it impossible, at this moment of my last farewell, when, if ever, a man should be true to himself, to authorize any use of those formulae of an orthodoxy to the beliefs of which I have ever refused to subscribe.
But I should hate to think that anyone might read into this statement of personal integrity even the remotest approximation to a coward’s denial. I am prepared, therefore, if necessary, to affirm here, in the face of death, that I was born a Jew: that I have never denied it, nor ever been tempted to do so. […] A stranger to all credal dogmas, as to all pretended community of life and spirit based on race, I have, through life, felt that I was above all, and quite simply, a Frenchman. A family tradition, already of long date, has bound me firmly to my country. I have found nourishment in her spiritual heritage and in her history. I can, indeed, think of no other land whose air I could have breathed with such a sense of ease and freedom. I have loved her greatly, and served her with all my strength. I have never found that the fact of being a Jew has at all hindered these sentiments. Though I have fought in two wars, it has not fallen to my lot to die for France. But I can, at least, in all sincerity, declare that I die now, as I have lived, a good Frenchman.”

By his request, a Latin epitaph was carved on Bloch’s grave: dilexi veritatem (“I have loved the truth”).

Watching Bloch's memory honored at the Panthéon yesterday did not feel like a tribute to the past as much as a challenge to the present. As dark clouds gather once again, how many of us today can demonstrate Bloch's level of integrity and fearlessness?

[Jon Millington @jonmillington]

@aristophaneet @nguyenhdi Wanderer above a sea of cool art concepts yay! 😃

[Sarrah Bellus @sarrah_bellus]

Donald Trump will go down in history as the only US President to be outwitted by a single-celled organism.

[. @LouiseRawAuthor]

Musk’s cheque cleared.

[Rabb Wilder @RabbWilder]

Not believing in science can really bite you in the ass.

[🇯🇲𝕋𝕒𝕟𝕪𝕒 𝔻𝕒 𝕌𝕟𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕒𝕓𝕝𝕖🫡 @ICtrlUFranLol]

So just to get my head straight and so I’m clear: the first pic is an act of terrorism and the second is an act of protest…… Have I got that correct??🤸🏾‍♀️🤸🏾‍♀️🤸🏾‍♀️

[Frank Cottrell-Boyce @frankcottrell_b]

Beautiful in itself, when you look up at the date you realise it was Sci-Fi when built.

[Jon Millington @jonmillington]

Cabaret football? @DanielYorkLoh

[Daniel York Loh @DanielYorkLoh]

The crowd are *eating at tables*

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

Anthony Head was an Ambassador for Battersea Dogs and Cats home for more than two decades. Thanks for everything Tony x

[Rangzen @revoltinghippie]

If this is a "hate march" I wonder what the media and politicians call what happened in Southampton last night?

[Nellypope67 @PennyMc24454206]

I have a ticket for the Arsenal vs PSG game on Saturday. I didn't realise that it was going to be on the same day as my wedding, so I can't go!! If you're interested and want to go, it's at St. Andrew's Church in Cambridge and his name is Andy…

[Jon Millington @jonmillington]

@TheStingisBack @Kensington_Gore It’s all true. De Gaulle was assassinated by David Bowie, as this footage reveals

[Jon Millington @jonmillington]

@trevorbaxendale @CameronYardeJnr “I think he’s attempting re-entry”

[Marc @BlackScarfMarc]

Absolutely mental.

[Guns and Yellow Ribbons - Fergus @gunsandribbons]

Outside the 12 Pins Finsbury Park

#Champions #Arsenal #CRYARS

[Jon Millington @jonmillington]

@BomboneraTears Is that El Cuartito?

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

You'll want to be sitting down for this bit.

Water companies are currently £82.7 billion in debt, have paid themselves £85 billion in dividends, leak over a trillion of litres of water per year, dump sewage for almost 4 million hours per year, have been convicted of over 1,200 criminal acts since 1989 and an average of 35% of your bill goes on nothing but paying more interest and yet more dividends.

And not a single company has ever lost their operating licence. 👇

[The Dark Side @FantasyGalaxies]

Me and my son have been sneaking out in the middle of the night in our Ewok and Chewbacca costumes just to mess with our neighbor's trail cams.