Lula owes his triumph to the formation of a broad political front built during the election campaign to reverse the unpopular policies of Bolsonaro’s far-right government. The 60 million Brazilians that elected Lula hope that Brazil will be politically rejuvenated, marking the end of Bolsonaro’s effort to erode Brazilian democracy.

Lula’s comeback

Lula  began his long political career as a trade union leader in the early 1980s. In 2003 he was the first leftist leader to be elected president in Brazil. After two terms in power, his government ended in 2011 with the highest popularity rating of any democratic government in Brazil’s history.

Will Brazil See Justice for the Mismanagement of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

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Lula cannot however dissociate himself from the scandal known as Operation Car Wash, a corruption probe that uncovered a web of money laundering schemes involving the Brazilian state’s oil company. The unraveling of the judicial procedures that followed led to the jailing of the president in 2011. However, the Brazilian Supreme Court ultimately annulled all criminal convictions against Lula on the grounds of a series of judicial procedural errors by the prosecution.

In the  extremely polarized country that Brazil has become, Many Brazilians view Lula as the  leader who led Brazil to a brief period of prosperity. Lula’s administrations may boast of a number of achievements, in particular, a considerable reduction of poverty and hunger in Brazil, an increase of Brazilians’ real income, the expansion of social programs and policies, sustainable economic growth, creation of a domestic regime for environmental preservation, and the strengthening of Brazil’s multilateral vision in global debates.

Despite Lula’s many accomplishments as president, the corruption crisis involving Lula and his party provided the pretext for the rise of Bolsonaro to power as a far-right leader. In effect, Lula’s disapproval rating among the electorate still stands at approximately 46% (according to two opinion polls, Datafolha and Ipec). What saved him in the election is the fact that Bolsonaro’s disapproval rating was even higher.

Brazil Rejects Bolsonaro’s Anti-Politics

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For an important percentage of citizens Lula’s return to power has sparked great optimism for the future. 44% of Brazilians believe their lives will change for the better with Lula in the presidency, compared to 21% who believe their lives will improve if Bolsonaro were to continue as president (Datafolha).

Brazil and the Latin American “pink tide”

Lula’s government will be confronted with strong opposition in the national congress. He will have to govern with a National Congress dominated by a majority of far-right senators and deputies, who will do everything in their power to block his political agenda.

The parties forming the pro-Lula alliance in the senate and the lower house do not have the numbers that will permit them to pass laws. Lula will have to negotiate with the pragmatic parties representing the center of the ideological political spectrum who are in the habit of trading their congressional support in exchange for political benefits (for example, political appointments in ministries).

Unlike other Latin American countries that have turned to the left in what analysts have called a “pink tide” in the region, there are doubts whether Lula has enough political strength to implement progressive policies. Lula won the elections with a narrow margin of 2 million votes, revealing a deeply divided country. In his victory speech, Lula focused on the urgent need to reconcile the country: “There aren’t two “Brazils, he proclaimed. “It’s time to lay down our arms”.

Brazil’s deep social divisions

The majority of Lula’s votes +came from women, the poor, and Catholics. The poorest voters, those who earn up to two minimum wages (45% of the Brazilian electorate),  supported Lula, who received 61% of their vote intention, compared to 33% support for Bolsonaro. Also, Lula showed a great capacity for attracting female voters (53% of the electorate). In pre-election polls, around 52% of women declared they would vote for Lula. Only 41% expressed the intention to vote for Bolsonaro.

In recent years, there has been a marked politicization of Pentecostal churches in Brazil, the country that hosts the largest Catholic population in the world. Aligned behindBolsonaro, 62% of Evangelicals (27% of the electorate) declared their intention to vote for him, while only 32% intended to support Lula. In contrast, 55% of Catholics (52% of the electorate) showed a preference for Lula, whereas 39% declared their intention to vote for Bolsonaro.

Policy changes under Lula

The fight against hunger is urgent in a country that has experienced an increase in child malnutrition. 33 million Brazilians suffer from food insecurity. Lula’s popularity among poor Brazilians derives from his policies aimed at combating poverty and hunger, such as the creation of the cash-transfer program, Bolsa Família, which lifted over 40 million Brazilians out of poverty. Many Brazilians expect that Lula will once again innovate in his social policies, in contrast with Bolsonaro’s failure to promote policies aimed at alleviating hunger.

Lula has a strong commitment to environmental preservation. One of his campaign promises concerned the creation of a ministry to deal with the interests of indigenous peoples. Lula also guaranteed the reactivation of existing institutions and legislation to combat environmental destruction. Currently, Brazil has one of its highest deforestation rates in decades and a significant increase in land conflicts culminating in record killings of environmentalists and indigenous people.

Beyond Latin America’s Lost Decade

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Brazil’s foreign policy will undergo a radical change as Lula will vigorously participate in global debates. Furthermore, Lula will bring Brazil closer to its Latin American neighbors, increase the weight of Brazil in the reform of international organizations, actively participate in the BRICS’ initiatives, and create cooperation mechanisms between Brazil and developing countries.

Challenges ahead

Since becoming president in 2018, Bolsonaro immersed Brazil in a permanent democratic crisis. In this year’s elections, Bolsonaro used the tools of the state for political purposes to influence the electoral process. In recent months, the ministry of economy increased social benefits, granted special credit for the beneficiaries of social assistance, and decreased taxes to reduce the price of gasoline and electricity. In addition to electoral abuses, Bolsonaro attacked democratic institutions in an attempt to generate public mistrust in the election results in the case of his defeat. Bolsonaro until now has not explicitly conceded the election.

After four years of democratic setbacks, politics must now seek solutions to the real-life problems that afflict most Brazilians. Lula has committed to transforming Brazil’s harsh social reality while at the same time seeking a way of appeasing the followers of Bolsonaro’s ultra-right movement. This task seems particularly difficult so long as Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic extreme right movement remains present and active in the political landscape.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Brazil’s New President and Hope for a Democratic Revival appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Like many foreign scholars before me, I debated at the Oxford Union. I met fiendishly clever debaters such as Ewan Smith, Sarah Munby (then Monroe) and Tom Hay. I also ran into knaves who are best left unnamed. In conversations with both the clever and the cads, a name came up repeatedly in discussion: Boris Johnson.

As a foreigner, I failed to see the charm of Johnson. To me, he seemed a pathological liar. Johnson was so transparently dishonest that it was surprising, if not shocking, to find clever people dance to his tune. Even then, he was truly a Pied Piper, especially for young Tories. They swore by The Spectator, used his phrases in debates and waxed lyrical about Boris’s brilliance.

Over time, I began to understand Johnson’s appeal. As I wrote on July 24, 2019, “this Old Etonian is a lovable Falstaffian rogue.” He is Lord Flashheart of the comedy classic Blackadder, a modern Henry VIII and even a portly James Bond known for derring-do and top-level shagging. Johnson breezes through life as the ultimate smooth-talking amateur, cool as a cucumber under pressure. In brief, Johnson or BoJo, as he is often called, is a British cultural archetype. It is for this reason that, in the words of fellow Old Etonian Cameron, Johnson “ all forms of gravity.”

A Supremely English Cad

Ken Clarke was once known as the big beast in British politics. Today, the big beast is Boris. Persistent lies, numerous scandals and even illegitimate children have failed to sink BoJo. Like a phoenix, he has repeatedly risen from the ashes.

Yet it would be churlish to deny that BoJo has managed historic achievements. He made Brexit possible. Nigel Farage alone could not have led the Brexiteers to victory. As inflation, rising interest rates and mounting debt increase strains within the EU, Boris might emerge as the modern day Henry VIII who paved the way for the great escape from Europe.

Henry’s reasons for creating the Church of England were not quite honorable but, arguably, the breach with Rome led to the British Empire. Brexit might not lead to Empire II but it could save the UK from a disaster-headed EU. Many equanimous Brits see the current turbulence as a passing phase. After all, German cars, French cheeses and Italian wines are still sold in the UK. In Ukraine, Brits are playing a role second only to Americans in taking on Vladimir Putin. And they can thank BoJo for it. There is life in the canny old dog yet.

Arise King Boris, Father of Brexit and Foe of Brussels

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BoJo has proved to be a winner. In 2019, the Conservatives won 365 seats out of 650 in the House of Commons.  Under Boris, the Tories smashed the “red wall” of solid Labour seats in northern England. Not since Margaret Thatcher has anyone led the Tories to such a victory. Scandal and the loss of two key by-elections led to a palace coup. Conservative MPs ousted Johnson in much the same way as their predecessors defenestrated Thatcher. 

After a protracted leadership election, Truss won. Her government to have “the shelf-life of a lettuce.” Unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees spooked markets, put the pound in freefall and caused bond yields to rise. The Bank of England was forced to intervene . Truss resigned after 45 days, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister ever. Some would argue that, like Thatcher and Theresa May, Truss was a Roundhead. Cameron and Johnson are Cavaliers. The English Civil War of the 17^th century continues within the Conservative Party with full-on blue-on-blue conflict. Now that a doctrinaire low-tax, high-growth Roundhead is out, Big Boris might be dreaming of returning à la the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Dishy Rishi Stands in the Way

Even as Johnson is cutting short his holiday and flying back from the Dominican Republic, Sunak has already managed to get 93 MPs lined up behind him. Unlike Truss, Sunak is a Cavalier. He might be the son of immigrants but he went to Winchester College, a boarding school even older than Eton. Founded by William of Wykeham in 1382, the school’s former pupils are called Wykehamists or, as a wag remarked, the special ones. So special is Sunak that he confessed to not having any working class friends, causing some during his campaign.

Sunak is not only a Wykehamist but he is also a PPEist. He worked at Goldman Sachs, did an MBA at Stanford and became a partner at The Children’s Investment () Fund Management, a top-level hedge fund. At Stanford, Sunak met Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian software billionaire, and went on to marry her. Unlike Johnson, Sunak is a family man. There is not even any rumor of an affair. As a mutual friend remarked, Sunak is smart and can count. An affair would be far too expensive a proposition. He has a taste for fine things in life and his natty suits have won him the nickname Dishy Rishi.

In the leadership election debate, Sunak was on the money when he that the most pressing priority for the new government was inflation. He opposed any “unfunded spree of borrowing and more debt,” which he predicted would make things worse. When Truss said that inflation was because of loose monetary policy, Sunak declared, “borrowing your way out of inflation is a fairytale.” Sunak has been proved right. Many are convinced that this Goldman Sachs golden boy is the best man for the top job.

Big and beefy Boris faces slim and sexy Sunak on his return to 10 Downing Street. Some hold that BoJo will back out, let Dishy Rishi deal with the mess he has created, let Labour win the next election, screw it up and then ride back to power on a triumphal chariot as the savior of the Tories. Others argue that he will never let Sunak, the snake he picked out of obscurity, slither into 10 Downing Street. Dishy Rishi’s resignation led to Big Boris’s downfall. Now, BoJo is plotting revenge.

Like last time, most MPs will back Sunak. They want a safe pair of hands on the tiller. However, the 172,000 of the Conservative Party have the final say. They tend to be older and whiter in comparison to today’s multicultural and multiracial Britain. As a friend remarked, it is hard to get grannies in Dorset or Somerset to vote for a brownie fuzzy wuzzy even if he is rich and posh. The fact that Sunak’s wife had claimed non-domicile status, saving millions of pounds in tax, also makes many old school Tories suspicious. They have doubts about Dishy Rishi being entirely British.

Despite all his sins, the Tory rank and file adore Boris. They are likely to vote for him, not Sunak. If he can squeak through the parliamentary vote. Big Boris could well be back.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will Boris the Big Beast be Back? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

As soon as the battle is won, the reality of politics in today’s democracies returns to its default status, that of a game. Once elected, politicians deploy their carefully refined skills that allow them to dodge anything that might tend towards implementing long-term solutions. 

Electoral battles leave the dead and wounded on the battlefield to be mourned, cared for or revenged. But like the pieces on a chessboard, in most cases they can be replaced on their initial squares. The political games that follow the battles have the effect of simply changing the order of the teams in the standings. In the game, the only thing that counts is the score when the final whistle blows as well as the corresponding W or L. The score-keeping device of democracies is called an election.

This past Sunday saw two significant elections in two very different settings. France completed its presidential-cum-legislative election cycle that, since 2002, ritually takes place every five years. The second election took place on the American continent, the country whose surreal political metaphysics were summed up by Gabriel García Márquez in 1967 in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad). 

Both of those elections produced shocking results, signaling the kind of reversal of trends that Olaf Scholz recently evoked when speaking about Germany’s foreign policy. He used the German word,, a turning point in history. Scholz applied it specifically to the consequences of ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine: the newfound military resolve of Germany. Scholz thus evoked a top-down decision that foresees other top-down decisions to follow in the future. In contrast, Zeitenwende as reflected in the French and Colombian elections is likely to be more significant and with more long-term effects. They  both represent bottom-up examples of a historical “turning.”

The drama of France’s Cinquième République

The French legislative elections had the radical effect of breaking what until now was felt to be the fundamental logic of France’s Fifth Republic and a sacred tradition. The result of every presidential election in the Republic’s history was confirmed in the immediate aftermath by the same electors’ voting in a solid majority for the president’s party in the National Assembly. Within less than two months, the voters thus not only elect a supreme leader, but promptly empower the president to implement the announced battle plan. 

When, in May, 1981, François Mitterrand with a razor thin majority defeated the incumbent, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a month later the electorate provided him with a clear legislative majority. He immediately and boldly began implementing his announced plan to nationalize all the major French industries, including the banks. Mitterrand’s actions conformed perfectly to the model of presidential government foreseen by the constitution of the Fifth Republic a little more than two decades earlier.

Now, four decades later, the Fifth Republic has clearly run out of steam. On Sunday, for the first time a newly re-elected president, Emmanuel Macron, found himself deprived of the majority that will allow him to preside over a program of government. Macron will now be faced with the challenge of cobbling together some kind of coalition that will be given the label of a government. Most likely both Macron and his new government will be permanently occupied with managing a chaos of conflicting interests. That situation clearly contradicts the entire logic of the Fifth Republic.

Many are predicting that the Assembly will be dissolved within a year and new elections called to permit the definition of a stable majority. At that point, two things can happen. If the spirit of the Fifth Republic is still alive, the prospect of dissolution will provide Macron with the means of breaking the apparent deadlock by soliciting the population to endow him with a majority committed to his program and his leadership. Depending on how things play out, that will appear either as a clever or desperate gamble.

If, as the turning point seems to reveal, the spirit of the Cinquième République has effectively retired or died, it will mark a return to the most dramatic moment of the Fifth Republic’s history. That was the revolt of May 1968, an event President Charles De Gaulle had the temerity to malign with the word “chienlit” (shitting in bed). The Republic nevertheless managed to clean the sheets after May ‘68 and survive intact. This time feels very different.

The Colombian surprise

Even more astonishingly, the Colombian election marked an inflection if not a reversal of what appeared to be the eternal fate of Colombia: to be governed by a corrupt right-wing establishment permanently closely aligned with the foreign policy goals of the United States. The newly elected left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, alas does not have access to the luxury of newly elected French presidents who historically could count on an immediate legislative election to confirm the voters’ endorsement of the candidate’s program. 

The current bicameral Congress of Colombia is dominated by right-wing, centrist, and neoliberal parties. In other words, Petro will have a major challenge on his hands trying to get anything accomplished. Add to that the fact that the state security services and the armed forces are likely to resist Petro’s authority, and it appears likely that Colombia will be living through its own, but very different kind of chienlit.

Most observers see Colombia’s turnabout as simply part of the new “pink tide” in Latin America, a phenomenon in which more and more American nations are voting in leftwing leaders. It is expected to increase the chances later this year of a victory in Brazil for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – better known as “Lula” – over the current right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. More broadly, Petro’s triumph confirms the increasingly visible sentiment in Latin American countries that it is time to break free from the invisible shackles of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) that have bound them to a state of subservience to the US economy for almost exactly 200 years.

The ambiguous question of NATO

When Chancellor Olaf Scholz evoked his Zeitenwende, he gave no details about its meaning. He appeared to be saying that the Ukraine crisis was a wake-up call forcing Germany to break with its policy of cultivating a long-term friendship with Russia as well as its post-World War II stance of keeping a low military profile. 

The immediate impression this gave, eagerly welcomed in Washington, is that Germany would even more securely adhere to NATO. But in the background, there may be an even more significant turning point, which could have a deeper meaning. The current move may be more like a chess gambit designed to further a goal Germany already shares with France that consists of creating an autonomous European security framework no longer dependent on US leadership imposed through NATO. 

Reinforcing NATO would hardly justify the idea of Zeitenwende. In contrast, Europe breaking free from Anglo-American domination, especially after Brexit and the increasingly obvious revolt of many poorer nations and emerging powers, would truly mark a turning point in European and German history.

Was it all foretold by William Butler Yeats in 1921?

Speaking of Zeitenwende, this may be an appropriate moment to revisit a of anguished foreboding by Irish poet William Butler Yeats published just over a century ago. Here are the first ten lines of The Second Coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Yeats’s poem has remained one of the most memorable literary pieces of the 20^th century. These lines have been quoted by political commentators at various times over the past hundred years to sum up the state of Western civilization. Yeats’ message in the immediate aftermath of the First World War was dire. At its core, in the third line, was a somber double assertion: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

Oswald Spengler had already reflected a similar sentiment that had been growing for some time in Europe. In 1918, he published the first volume of his Decline of the West, a work he had begun composing much earlier. In 1922, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land appeared after being strenuously edited and ultimately “crafted” by Ezra Pound. It offered a panorama of the cultural and indeed civilizational confusion that had overcome Europe in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The Waste Land took over first place and never relinquished it in the race to establish “the 20^th century’s “greatest poem in the English language.” Nevertheless, thanks to a succession of political events that seemed to bear out Yeats’s description of a broken system, the Second Coming has probably earned more references in the media than Eliot’s masterpiece. As the history of the twentieth century advanced, at various critical moments, things really did seem to be falling apart.

Just as Zeitenwende itself can be interpreted in various ways, so can Yeats’s assertion that “the centre cannot hold.” Yeats believed that the core of Western civilization was beginning to unravel like the twine below the leather surface of a baseball that has been torn asunder. His prescience was justified by the events listed above. But the unraveling is still incomplete. Most people are now aware that it could come to absolute fruition with an impending climate crisis, already making its marks, or perhaps even more quickly thanks to a nuclear “accident” provoked in the context of the increasingly nerve-racking standoff in Ukraine.

Defining the center

Sunday’s elections in France and Colombia provide a hint that what people thought of as the stable “center” of their global and local political systems is losing its grip. The center has gone off kilter, leaving the impression that it can no longer hold. As a concept, the center can be defined as a normative idea of how governments, with decent enough efficiency, carry on managing forces that are so complex and powerful they defy the ordinary citizen’s understanding. The center can thus be defined essentially as the inertia at the core of any establishment that keeps things ticking over from day to day.

The idea people have of the center implies belief in notions such as fair competition, free markets, reasonable government regulation, rule of law, free and fair elections. These cultural ideas are trotted ouy to reassure populations that their leaders are doing a decent job. At the same time, the guardians of the center spend much of their energy warning voters to be wary of personalities who deviate from the center. If given a free hand, these deviant personalities might upset the precious applecart. That is why Barack Obama intervened two years ago to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Joe Biden was chosen, clearly an avatar of “the center,”. Jeremy Corbyn suffered a fate similar to Sanders’ in the UK. In France, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon were both labeled extremist. But these deviants have now returned to squeeze the life out of Macron’s vaunted center.

The political center in the West’s democratic countries has long assumed the task of defending and protecting the existing balance of economic and coercive power. It’s a system that has evolved, in an increasingly oligarchic fashion, around the productive forces of a neoliberal system designed specifically for the needs of the consumer economies promoted in the West. Additionally, over time, the question of security and the growing needs of the military-industrial complex have tended to set the tone and influence all the major decisions of the center.

Leaders such as David Cameron in the UK, Angela Merkel in Germany, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the US, and Emmanuel Macron in France, epitomized a center that had clearly become oligarchic and increasingly plutocratic at its core, but democratic in its formal constitution. 

And then something happened. Six years ago a series of events set in motion the feeling that the center might no longer hold or no longer deserve to hold. Various political personalities came to prominence whose style and bearing challenged the idea of “centerness.” Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and others, with contrasting levels of seriousness and surging popularity, dared to deviate from an ideology built around the idea of trusting the “tried and true” to keep things on a relatively even keel. Paradoxically, that turned out to be  the key to Macron’s success in 2017, when the former pillars of the hard center – that included the traditional parties of the left and right – had fallen into discredit. The young interloper, aided by a runoff with the extremist Marine Le Pen, appeared to be a safe alternative to the existing sclerotic system.

Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron, both ambiguously perceived by their own establishments, have adopted policies respectful of the oligarchic power base that defines the center. But in their own way, they have both undermined the credibility of the center, in part by being too close to its oligarchic interests, which people have come to suspect, and in part because they have deviated from the cultural norm associated with the center.

The long and the short of it is that, within the Western block of respectable democracies, the center is rapidly losing its grip. At the same time, the periphery around that Western core is beginning to drift away from the traditional grip of the West, a grip that began with colonial conquest half a millennia ago. 

In its reporting on the Colombian election, The New York Times a television director who lives “in a wealthy part of Bogotá.” “It’s been a long time,” he recounts, “since we had an opportunity like this for change. If things will get better, I don’t know. But if we stick with the same, we already know what we’re going to get.”

That may be the clearest sign that, even those who have benefitted from the status quo the center was designed to protect, are beginning to understand that “the center cannot hold.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post France and Colombia: The Center Keeps Trying (but Failing) to Hold appeared first on 51�Թ�.

As the ballots are counted and results are declared across the country, a clear picture emerges: these local elections are the most consequential local elections in decades.

If the results of the local elections were to be replicated in a general election, we will find ourselves in territory where several scenarios could emerge, primarily based on and dictated by the number of seats secured in the House of Commons by the Labour and Liberal Democrats.

Bumbling Boris

Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party has been a controversial one. The Conservatives and the country have not experienced a leader like Johnson before. His career as a journalist and politician is littered with transgressions and . 

Boris Johnson is the ultimate Teflon politician. In the words of his lifelong friend and rival David Cameron, “always been able to get away with things that mere mortals can’t”. Cameron certainly did not get away with the Brexit referendum that led to his downfall as prime minister. In contrast, Johnson has sailed through one scandal after another and won a thumping majority in the 2019 elections.

Before those elections, Johnson’s unconventional leadership of the Tories in its first few months involved unlawfully and removing the whip from 21 of his who voted to block a disastrous no-deal Brexit that the prime minister was pursuing at the time. Those MPs included party grandees and bigwigs such as former chancellors of the exchequer Ken Clarke and Phillip Hammond, and former ministers Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin, Rory Stewart, Ed Vaizey, and even Nicholas Soames, the grandson of the revered wartime Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Johnson’s leadership of the Conservatives involves an implicit pact between himself and his party. His history of transgressions and misdemeanors, and economic relationship with the truth and facts as well as his antiques are tolerated as long as he wins elections. In the 2019 elections, Johnson upheld his side of the bargain and delivered an 80-seat majority for the Conservatives.

In the wake of the 2019 election results, Tory strategists and spin doctors claimed that Boris’ antics and his scandalous personal life were always ‘priced in’ by large parts of the electorate. Last week’s local election results dispute this Tory claim. It turns out that voters repeatedly raised the scandal when campaigners and journalists turned up at their doorsteps.

The Conservative Party is extraordinary at winning . They are good at stealing the clothes of other parties and doing what is necessary to win. That involves ruthlessly knifing their leaders when they stop winning. No Tory leader has been exempt from this rule, including Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Yet Tory knifing is a clinical cold-blooded affair. MPs knife their leader when credible successors lie in wait to mount the saddle.

Boris Johnson: Bumbling Buffoon, Pied Piper or Churchillian Statesman?

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So far, Johnson has ensured that there is no successor lying in wait. Despite partygate and the , Johnson’s position is secure because he has ruthlessly eliminated all potential rivals. Rishi Sunak, the current chancellor of the exchequer, was once touted as a potential prime minister but, like Icarus, he has come down to earth. Johnson is a Balliol classicist who wanted to be “world king” when he was young. Cloak and dagger palace intrigues come naturally to him. Sunak and his wife have been thrown to the wolves by the so-called Bumbling Boris whose team have leaked juicy tales of the couple’s domicile, tax and financial affairs, causing outrage among voters. Sunak can now kiss goodbye to ambitions. A career managing his father-in-law’s billions from sunny California seems more probable.

The local elections have been nothing short of disastrous for the Tories. Nearly were in play. They were voted out in a quarter of the seats they were defending. Losing so many seats should put pressure on Johnson. His fast and loose reputation with the truth has finally come to haunt the Conservative Party. However, the Tories do not have any potential successors in sight and Johnson is secure for now.

Johnson is not like Cameron who resigned after losing the Brexit referendum. He has thick skin and no sense of shame. Johnson is not going to resign because he is found guilty of wrongdoing, misconduct or misjudgment. As one cabinet ally puts it, “He’s not going anywhere, his fingernails have been dug into the Downing Street window frames and he would be taken away kicking and .”

Johnson is certainly in the mood to fight back against any attempt by Conservative MPs to remove him from power. For now, he still has the support of the press. Tory-sympathizing journalists have gone into overdrive to spin the disastrous local elections as largely inconsequential and irrelevant for the Conservative Party. They take the view that these local elections were not a referendum on Johnson.

There is another key factor to note. The prime minister has a track record of resorting to unconstitutional methods, unlawful actions and top-level deceit to save his skin. At the moment, the only way Johnson will leave 10 Downing Street is through an election defeat.

Starmer Stakes All

Elections are complicated affairs. They are not as simple as one party or candidate beating the other. In general, power changes hands only when the ruling party loses energy, direction or cohesion or any combination of the three and the opposition party gets its act together to emerge as a ruling party in waiting. In the British system, any change in power takes two to tango. When John Major lost in 1997, the Tories were divided, discredited, exhausted and bereft of new ideas after 18 years in power. In contrast, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown offered fresh energy and projected competence. Like the 1997 elections, other changes in power were also such dual acts involving both ruling and opposition parties.

Currently, Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party. He is a distinguished barrister who headed the Crown Prosecution Service. He took over in April 2020 after two failed leaders. Jeremy Corbyn presided over five turbulent and disastrous years. Before him, the uninspiring Ed Miliband squandered another five years. Starmer seemed like a sane and surefooted choice for the Labour Party. Here was a safe pair of hands who would  return competence and order to the office of the of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

Unlike most of his predecessors, Starmer is not a political animal. His approach to politics is measured and forensic. His early performances during the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) caught Johnson off guard. Starmer’s lawyerly approach and mannerisms were in direct contrast to that of Johnson’s populist, colorful, and theatrical political style. This rattled some Tory nerves in the early days and cheered Labour backbenchers.

Starmer’s star has waned since. His back-handed political operations and communication blunders have not helped. Starmer is comfortable with big decisions but has a blind spot for the minutiae that drive modern politics. Some of these big decisions have long been necessary. Starmer has removed the from Corbyn and purged Corbynistas from key offices. Starmer has also worked hard to make Labour electable again.

On Monday, May 9 — three days after the local elections — Starmer rolled the dice to take the biggest of his political life. The Labour leader announced that he will step down if found guilty of breaking the stringent lockdown rules when he visited Durham, a historic city in Northeast England, in 2021 during the election campaign.

Starmer’s announcement is a very bold move. If he is cleared by the Durham Police, Starmer will stand tall next to a prime minister alleged to have parliament over partygate, a resigning matter under ‘normal’ circumstances. If Starmer’s move comes off, it will be the political equivalent of checkmating Boris Johnson. If Starmer is found guilty and resigns, his leadership will come to a premature end and it is unclear if the next Labour leader would benefit from such a move. The fate of British politics lies in balance on the Durham Police investigation.

Old Wine in New Bottle

Regardless of what transpires in Durham, the recent local elections provide a roadmap to toppling Tories from power. Starmer and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey are carefully treading a once charted by their charismatic predecessors in the 1990s. Then Blair and Paddy Ashdown forged a Labour-Liberal non-aggression pact to unseat the Tores from power. Starmer and Davey hope this may be a winning model for the next parliamentary elections.

While Starmer only became an MP in 2015, Davey first entered parliament in the historic elections of 1997. He benefits from the advice of Baroness Olly Grender, a veteran of the Ashdown years known for her political nous. Starmer lacks Davey’s long history and subconscious memory but the Labour leader is proving to be ruthless and flexible in his pursuit for power.

Starmer and Davey might find it hard to replicate the Blair and Ashdown deal. However, the current leaders are well aware of the dividends such an arrangement could bring. If both their parties can avoid bloodletting, they could mount a challenge to Tories discredited by Johnson’s repeated shenanigans.

If the results of the recent local elections were replicated in the next parliamentary elections, the UK would have a hung parliament with no party having a clear majority. If Labour and Liberal Democrats can build on what they have done, they could oust the Tories. Both opposition parties have a strong incentive to cooperate and their leaders seem to be sensible enough to do so.

Brexit Dividend

Even though Brexit is now fait accompli, it continues to haunt British politics. The Brexit business model championed by hardline Brexiteers is flawed, irrational, contorted and thus bound to malfunction. The so-called Brexit Dividend of their dreams has so far failed to materialize. In fact, the Boris-led Brexit is turning out to be an expensive deal for the country. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has estimated “the in trade volumes to bring about 4% reduction in the size of Britain’s economy over the long run, in line with its pre-Brexit forecast”. Elsewhere, experts have calculated that Brexit is currently costing the economy to the tune of a week — and counting.

So far, the Tories have managed to hide the economic self-harm caused by Brexit. They argue that the economic downturn is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the squeeze on household budgets and the cost-of-living crisis is chipping away at this Tory narrative. Voters might not yet be in the mood to punish the Conservative Party for Brexit, but they will certainly punish Tories for the pain they are suffering thanks to economic mismanagement.

Arise King Boris, Father of Brexit and Foe of Brussels

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For the foreseeable future, the Conservative brand will be intimately associated with Brexit and its economic consequences. The recent elections demonstrate that the national backdrop provides the mood music even for local voter choices. Westminster and Wandsworth Councils, two historically and symbolically significant Tory councils, were won by the Labour Party in the early hours of the morning of May 6. Safe Tory seats in affluent parts of Southwest England such as Richmond and St Albans fell to the Liberal Democrats. In the words of George W. Bush, the Conservatives have taken a “.”

The Disunited Kingdom

Bush never quite recovered from that 2006 midterm thumping. He left the US divided over Iraq and in the throes of a global financial crisis. Under Bumbling Boris, the Tories have embraced a disastrous Brexit business model and a toxic English ethnonationalism that threatens the integrity of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland itself.

On May 5, Sinn Féin achieved a historic victory in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections. This has sent shockwaves through the Unionist Movement that seeks to keep Northern Ireland in the UK. Sinn Féin’s victory has caused further embarrassments, anxiety, and alarm for the Conservative and Unionist Party — the full name of the Tory Party — in London.

The Irish Question dominated British politics a century ago. After World War I, Ireland won its long-cherished independence from the UK and disintegrated into civil war. Northern Ireland remained in the UK but the broke out in the late 1960s. A violent sectarian conflict between Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists caused much tragedy in this picturesque land till the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This period of peace might be coming to an end.

Britain’s Still Got It

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Never before have Catholic nationalists who aim for the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic wielded power in Belfast. The unionists are unlikely to accept the dominance of the republicans in Northern Ireland.

The election results in Northern Ireland have put into stark relief the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiated by Johnson with the EU. It was backed by his unionist allies, especially the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). In these elections, the unionists were divided and Sinn Féin trumped DUP to emerge as the top dog in Northern Irish politics. Together, the unionists have a greater vote share but the specter of a reunion with Ireland looms large.

Even as Northern Ireland threatens to slip out of the UK, so does Scotland. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has campaigned for independence from London before. The SNP is now the natural ruling party of Scotland and is chipping away at the foundations of the union. In the long run, the SNP wants a second referendum and to turn Scotland into an independent nation. In the Brexit referendum, Scots voted to stay in the EU. Leaving the UK and entering the EU is the SNP ambition. Bumbling Boris and political gravity are helping their cause.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Tories Get a Thumping in Local UK Elections appeared first on 51�Թ�.

One of the consequences that is already being felt concerns the status of democracy in many regions of the world. By status I mean not just the attribution of power to different categories of political force, but the idea people hold of what democracy is, whose interests it represents and how it should play out in terms of actual governance. France may be the latest and most interesting example of the challenge to that status.

The American model for democracy

In the West, and more particularly in the US, a nation that has been labeled the birthplace of modern democracy, most youngsters are taught in school that constitutional democracy, unlike other more arbitrary forms of government, aims at being both fair and reasoned. They assume that for the most part it achieves its fair and reasonable goals thanks to a carefully constructed system of checks and balances.

In theory, democratic institutions are designed to reflect a logical pattern by which the population of any political entity, from a township to a nation, elects leaders committed to securing the resources and defining policies that respond flexibly and appropriately to the physical, social and economic environment its citizens live in. Democratic decision-making follows from what people believe to be an open dialogue about actions required for the security and well-being of its citizens.

Democracy produces governments in which all citizens are involved to the extent that they choose leaders who reflect their needs, values and interests. Decision-making becomes complex at the level of a nation state, particularly in a world that has become increasingly diverse and mobile. Presumably the leaders elected in modern states nevertheless understand the complexity of the balancing act that representing a diverse population requires. Nobody ever believed that would be an easy task.

In a stable world, most capable leaders — and even quite a few incapable ones — manage to juggle with competing forces. On one hand, they respond to powerful private interests that sit often invisibly at the core of the economy. On the other hand, they try to remain sensitive to public pressure that expresses itself in a variety of forms, transmitted notably by the media and omnipresent polls in the periods between elections. This pressure from the undefined masses incites leaders to find ways of keeping most of their citizens reasonably happy, or at least minimally unhappy. In times of relative stability, this to-and-fro occurs within social and economic systems that evolve very slowly, usually by tiny incremental steps. 

Most leaders see their job as consisting of managing a slow evolution within a stable historical framework. They have no means of predicting the earthquakes that occasionally shake history itself, suddenly throwing it off kilter. In the typical two-party systems of modern democracies, politicians have learned to master the dynamics of alternating access to power. Essentially, they provide the same product, but with a different label and a different tagline. They are comfortable knowing there are periods when, having lost an election, they may forfeit the reins of power and literally relax as members of the opposition, whose actions will not be criticized. They spend their time in the opposition critiquing their opponents and investing their creativity in plotting their return to power.

Problems, however, arise when history itself becomes unstable, when the equilibrium of a certain habitual balance of power begins to falter. It was the case in Europe, for example, towards the end of the 18^th century (1789) and again in the early 20^th century (1914-17). At such times, instability takes the form of highly irrational and uncontrollably complicated wars and revolutions. Leaders accustomed to managing the routine of occasional domestic tension and generally anodyne international rivalries, begin to lose their foothold. They will typically seek to keep their populations in check and avoid revolution. But they lack the means to deal with the chthonic forces of history. We appear to be entering into such a period in 2022.

The psychology of leadership

Leaders see themselves as actors in the scripted play of history. But to act in politics, as opposed to theater or cinema, means not just to follow a script but to observe history and craft appropriate reactions to the unexpected. In democracies, as opposed to autocracies, leaders should think of themselves as “fair observers” and act accordingly. (A fair observer seeks to integrate the widest range not just of information but of sensitivity to the dynamic forces of history that defy the logic of pure information).

Faced with the challenge of a moment in history in which even the values assumed to be shared by people convinced that they represent an evolved form of civilization are called into question, we may legitimately wonder whether it is even possible for any leader to be simultaneously both an actor and an observer of history. In such moments, leaders typically fail to observe, but proceed to act. As soon as they act, they become observed by others. At the same time, the very awareness of being observed may distort their own ability to observe, precipitating actions based on faulty and disastrously incomplete observation. This is one way of accounting for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions that have now spawned a global crisis that extends far beyond the Russian-Ukrainian border.

But the same pattern of failure to observe accompanied by a compulsion to act holds true for other leaders, especially when the degree of instability makes the consequences of any action especially risky. US President Joe Biden appears to be as clueless about where the forces of history are moving as Putin himself. Both have responded to specific pressure points on the system of power they have been charged with maintaining. Both have misjudged some of the forces of history at play in the background.

Putin reacted to three decades of shifting policies in the West, which appeared to him aggressive with regard to his own power and the stability of his system. This ever-increasing pressure was accompanied by an observable decline of the effective power and prestige of the American hegemon following its catastrophic military initiatives in Afghanistan and the Middle East since 2001.

Biden reacted to the growing challenge felt across the globe to the supremacy the US established three quarters of a century ago following the Second World War. Not only has US prestige declined as a consequence of George Bush’s Middle Eastern wars and the financial collapse of 2008, but the perception that the official supremacy of the US dollar can now for the first time be effectively challenged has created a growing resolve in the rest of the world to overthrow what is perceived as the tyranny of the dollar over the global economy. That vague but increasingly well-defined perception of fragility is becoming as symbolically real as the French population’s perception of the significance of the Bastille prison in 1789.

Will France overthrow the 5^th Republic?

Though any fair observer of history should be aware of the providential power of symbols, it is perhaps only a coincidence that France is poised to use its democratic institutions not just to call into question the system Charles de Gaulle put in place more than six decades ago, the Fifth Republic, but also to send shock waves capable of producing significant cracks in the façade of Western complacency.

For the third time a candidate representing the right or the center-right defeated a far-right candidate with the surname, Le Pen. The first time Jacques Chirac, a direct descendent of the original Gaullist party, defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the xenophobic Front National. Emmanuel Macron has now defeated Jean-Marie’s daughter, Marine, twice. It has become a sport of establishment politicians in France to maneuver the electoral processes so as to find themselves opposed to a far-right candidate in the runoff election for president. Victory is practically certain. Legitimacy is claimed at a very low cost.

Macron played the game perfectly to ensure his re-election. The problem he perhaps hadn’t anticipated is that, not having the talent or even the inclination to create a well-defined party to back his presidential status, a resurgence of unity on the right or the left could imperil his chances to reign over a fragmented political landscape. He assumed that the egoistical rivalries and the thin skin of representatives of the traditional parties would guarantee the gap in the center that he managed to consolidate into a fragile simulacrum of a political party after his victory in 2017.

Alas, to Macron’s consternation, a strong showing in third place during the presidential election in April by the former socialist and resolutely progressive leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon created the conditions that would convince the previously warring parties on the left, including the Green party and the communists, to imagine a program of government they would all adhere to in their quest for a parliamentary majority coming out of June’s legislative election. This is bad news for Macron, who can only count on traditional political opportunists from the center-right and center-left to join forces with him in a movement he has rechristened the Renaissance (formerly, la République en Marche). Very few French voters feel inspired by Macron’s example. His hope is that just as they preferred electing him to a candidate on the extreme right, they  will react similarly to a threat from the left, which they will try to represent as extreme.

There may be a slight problem with the symbolism of the new moniker of his party. By claiming to represent a Renaissance, he may be implicitly suggesting his former term as president was the equivalent of the Dark Ages. And in some sense, it was, marked by the revolt of the Yellow Vests and the black plague of Covid. But the French remember the Renaissance as a period of history dominated by kings that was eventually overturned by the 1789 revolution.

Could the unified left seize effective power over the government? Legally, Macron is in place for five years. But the left has adopted a theme Mélenchon has insisted on for the past five years: replacing the Fifth Republic by a Sixth Republic, which would be less focused on presidential powers. If Macron is forced to nominate a left-wing prime minister — the most likely candidate being Mélenchon himself  —  pressure could mount towards establishing a new constitution. Though the kind of constitutional regime change a Sixth Republic would represent appears unlikely so long as Macron remains president, the worm is already in the apple. At some point there is likely to be a constitutional crisis with an uncertain outcome, capable of upsetting the supposed stability of what may be called “the European compromise,” a philosophy of governance built on the twin pillars of Anglo-Saxon liberalism and dependency on US leadership in European defense via NATO.

Among the planks of its platform, the left calls specifically for a radical revision of the strategy concerning Europe. While reaffirming France’s adhesion to the European Union, the left-wing government coalition has vowed to put pressure on Europe to move away from its traditional neoliberal ideology. This frame of reference has, in the eyes of many Europeans, not just in France, become more and more fragile as the source of shared values. This could eventually lead to fracturing what has become an increasingly fragile consensus between Europe and the United States. With the end of the Fifth Republic one of the main goals of Charles de Gaulle could then be paradoxically fulfilled: releasing France, and possibly Europe itself, from the iron grip of Washington.

What is happening in France is not an isolated event. Brazil will have a new presidential election later this year. Polling shows a profound dissatisfaction with its right-wing president Jair Bolsanaro, who won election five years ago thanks to highly suspect legal maneuvering. The likely winner of the new election is left-wing former president Lula da Silva. One of the da Silva has made this time around is to “create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar.” Voices in the Beltway are likely to announce, “Them’s fightin’ words.”This was, after all, the ambition of the late Muammar Gaddafi for the entire African continent. That is, in a brief moment of history before US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened to make sure that she would subsequently have the opportunity to , “we came, we saw, he died.”

The American sanctions against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have led to an acceleration of initiatives emanating from various quarters to free the global economy from the enforced dominance of the dollar. For five decades or more it has been a tool not so much of payment for international trade as of political control, allowing the US, either through its own efforts or those of the International Monetary Fund, to have its cake and eat it. The establishment of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency in 1944, followed by President Richard Nixon’s decoupling of this currency from the gold standard in 1971, forced other countries to hold their credit in dollars (US Treasury securities), meaning that the wealth thus created abroad was transferred implicitly back to the US economy. Every fluctuation in value — devaluation and revaluation – could be used by Washington to its own political and economic advantage. As economist  Michael Hudson, “This monetary privilege–dollar seigniorage–has enabled U.S. diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world.”

In other words, there are indications that a fracturing of the neoliberal economic and political world order initially established at Bretton Woods nearly 80 years ago and then transformed by Nixon in 1971, creating the first theoretical compromise in its integrity, is now taking place. The last three decades have seen two major evolutions. The first is the failure of Europe to achieve its collective hope of acquiring the kind of influence that might redress the balance of power in relation to the United States. The second is the rise of China to a level of economic and political clout that has forced a massive rethinking of global hegemony.

Speculation about the destabilizing impact of the rise of what has been called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) on geopolitical power has been rife the past two decades. China finally emerged as an economic powerhouse unto itself, capable of directly challenging US hegemony. Russia, with a weaker economy, has continued to play an increasingly abrasive political role, culminating with the current war in Ukraine. As the tectonic movement in various latitudes begins to increase, India, Brazil and South Africa will see emerging opportunities to exert their influence on events in a world that is clearly starting to have a very different look from the one people have been accustomed to in recent decades.

Though not quite in the same league, France itself may have a role to play, and as so often in the past, that role will be cultural and intellectual rather than a manifestation of its limited political and economic clout. If the move towards a Sixth Republic actually commences, its symbolic importance for the rest of the world should not be underestimated. Europe will be the first to take notice if an unanticipated French government under Macron begins rowing against the established European current. 

Mark it on your speculative calendars. The 21^st century’s Bastille Day may well be June 19, the date of the second round of next month’s legislative elections. Even if the left is successful, its moral victory will not be followed by “impure blood” in the furrows, nor a Reign of Terror, nor the rise of a new Napoleon. But its disruptive message will resonate throughout Europe and beyond mainly because the old order, which Macron still represents, is losing its footing across the globe.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The post Is France Ready to Storm a New Bastille? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Apart from Macron’s supporters, the commentators across the political chessboard saw the blowout more like a stalemate than a checkmate. The left had been divided during the first round. It now appears ready to at least consider uniting its disparate forces for June’s two rounds of legislative elections, which everyone on the left is now calling the “third round” of the presidential election. 

The defeated Marine Le Pen put forth a similar message, hinting that her relative “success,” which marked a significant improvement on 2017 (over 41%, up from 34%) opened the possibility of leading a populist movement that she hopes will attract voters from the left as well. Éric Zemmour, the other far-right candidate, a dyed-in-the-wool xenophobe, who at one point appeared to challenge Le Pen’s hold on the rightwing fringe, evoked his ambition for a purely nationalist and basically racist coalition that would avoid the indignity of reaching out to the left.

The buzzword of the evening was nevertheless the idea of a “third round,” in which an adversary might deliver Macron a knockout punch. The Macronists immediately mocked such talk as a denial of democracy, in the minutes following the president’s resounding majority. But as the various interested parties on all sides invited by the television channel France 2 developed their analysis, a consensus emerged that all was not well in the realm of Macronia.

The demise of France’s traditional parties

On the positive side for Macron’s faithful or at least for his political marketers, the traditional parties on the left and right had been humiliated once again. It was even more brutal this time around than in 2017, when Macron first swept through the miraculous gap in the political Red Sea to reach the promised land without even having to dawdle in the desert. The ��é��ܲ�������������s and Socialists, once the valiant wielders of the scepter of power, are clearly left with little to hope for other than possibly being invited, as individuals, into the new government Macron will be appointing this week to demonstrate his willingness to construct a new alliance. But looming beyond the now concluded five-year compromise Macron engineered and rather ineptly managed during his first term, is the vision of a France now divided into largely incoherent blocs defined less by political vision than by exasperation with all the traditional solutions, left, right and center.

A Fifth Act for the Fifth Republic

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Le Pen and Zemmour have demonstrated that there exists a substantial pool of voters not averse to xenophobic reasoning. But those same voters tend to hail from the working class or the rural lower middle classes. They voted for Le Pen less out of the conviction that she would be a good leader than to protest against the political and financial elite that Macron represents in their eyes. Half a century ago, most of Le Pen’s voters were faithful to the Communist Party.

If the former communist bloc of voters gradually drifted away from a Mitterand-led governing Socialist coalition to align behind the far-right Front National, embodied by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Socialists settled on their own rightward drift. They leaned increasingly towards the center, much as the Clinton Democrats had done in the US. That left a gaping hole on the left, which no political personality had the force or the name recognition to fill. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former minister, finally stepped into the role, seeking to counter the trend towards the technocratic center, a political position that appeared to suit the culture and mood of the post-Mitterand generation of Socialists.

Ever since declaring independence from the party in 2009, Mélenchon has been vilified by his Socialist brethren for the crime of contesting its visibly centrist and increasingly corporate elitist drift. This was the same party, led by then president François Hollande, that named the youthful former banker Macron minister of the economy. 

Mélenchon’s persistence during Hollande’s presidency as a provocative progressive, contesting his former party’s orthodoxy, already positioned him in 2017 as the most distinctive, if not necessarily most attractive personality on the left.  Thanks to his more than respectable third-place showing in the first round two weeks ago, he has emerged as the eventual “spiritual” leader of a newly unified left that could bring together the now marginal Communist Party (with just 2.5% of the vote), the Ecologists and even the Socialists, though they remain reticent to acknowledge Mélenchon’s ascent.

Can the left overcome its divisions?

Unlike the famous that formally allied the Socialists, Communists and the center-left Radicaux de Gauche and brought François Mitterand to power in the 1981 presidential election, Mélenchon has nothing concrete to build on other than exasperation of all the other parties with Macron. Preceding the second round, the head of La France Insoumise (“France unbowed”) cleverly honed his rhetoric to aim at being “elected” prime minister in June, even though he knows full well that the prime minister is appointed by the president, not elected by the people. It is his way of both highlighting the incoherence of the Fifth Republic’s electoral system, while at the same time offering Macron the opportunity to run an experiment in government that would mirror the history of the past five years. During Macron’s first term, an officially centrist president consistently appointed prime ministers from the traditional right, betraying the hopes of some on the left for more balance. Mélenchon is proposing a similar solution, but this time pointing left.

The timing of this strategy couldn’t be better. According to an IPSOS of French voters, “57% want to see the main left-wing parties form an alliance and present common candidates in the constituencies.” Importantly, 56% of those polled have stated they do not wish to see Macron obtain a majority, which means they hope to see another “cohabitation” in which the president shares power with an opposition party in parliament. Only 35% of French voters, 6% fewer than voted for Le Pen, would support a coalition of the two extreme rightwing parties, Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Zemmour’s ��𳦴DzԱ��ê�ٱ�. Voters who support the traditional right are split between seeking an alliance with the extreme right (22%) or with Macron’s République En Marche (25%). An overwhelming 53% of ��é��ܲ������������� voters eschew the idea of an alliance with either.

What this means is that the next few weeks will be very interesting to watch. Can the man accused of being “the president of the rich” lead a government focused on the policies of the left? Or does he have the wherewithal and the political talent to confront what may become a populist uprising that draws energy from both the left and the right?

Macron, the revolutionary?

Two years ago when the COVID-19 outbreak forced the French government to take action, I noted in these columns that “French President Emmanuel Macron, of all people, seems to detect the beginning of a calling into question of the entire consumerist free market system, without giving much of a sense of what might replace it.” Perhaps he is ready to take seriously his own two-year old epiphany by appealing to the insights of a coalition on the left led by a prime minister named Mélenchon. After all, this time around, Macron has nothing to lose, since he cannot seek a third term. He might see this as his last chance to recover from the massive unpopularity that threatened his reelection and was saved only by his deft maneuvering aimed at ensuring that Marine Le Pen would be his hapless rival in the second round.

The World This Week: Another French Revolution

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More likely, Macron will try in the coming weeks to assemble a range of individuals from different sides, with variable symbolic value. He presumably hopes that this will persuade people of his capacity to assemble his own coherent majority. Macron’s attempt is highly unlikely to succeed and is likely to suffer a worse fate than his previous right-leaning, improvised coalitions.

Macron’s real achievement is to have violated, not once but twice, the entire logic of the Fifth Republic that since its Gaullist beginnings always supposed the president would be the leader of a powerful governing party. In his first five-year stint he profited from the mental confusion in French electors’ heads, trying to understand the vacuum that had suddenly appeared, as he cobbled together what could only be seen as a temporary and to a large degree illusory solution. The confusion quickly provoked the Yellow Vest movement that called the entire montage into question. The unexpected arrival of a pandemic and a lockdown took the protesters off the street and put Macron back in the driver’s seat. A temporary situation was thus prolonged but its fragility has become even more evident than before.

So now the French nation confronts a moment of truth, when the nature of its institutions must be given a makeover. Not because it would improve their look, but because they are on the verge of a permanent crisis. It seems unlikely that some simple solution will appear or that Macron can convince the people to continue to trust him to make, Jupiter-like, all the right decisions that might guide the nation through the troubles that lie ahead. 

In his victory speech, Macron said absolutely nothing of substance. He congratulated and thanked his supporters for the victory and announced all the good things he is in favor of, promising, as expected, to respond to the needs and desires of “all” the people. On the same evening, violent broke out in Paris, Nantes, Lyon and Marseille, with spontaneous crowds contesting the election. The protesters from the right, upset by Le Pen’s failed bid, were joined by others from the left, who shouted slogans such as: “Macron, Le Pen, one solution: revolution.” Others shouted: “No fascists in our neighborhoods” and “Macron resign.”

Unlike the “Stop the steal” protests in the US following Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, the French do not complain that the election was rigged, nor do they wish to see its results overturned. They are unhappy with a system that fails to represent their interests or needs. Having already effectively rejected the traditional parties and practically erased them from the electoral map, they are now focused on calling into question the curious political anomaly that Emmanuel Macron embodies in their eyes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron Won But the Election Isn’t Over appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We have “changed, changed utterly”

Something has changed since the days of 2002 and 2017. This time around, many choose not to choose. Thousands are breaking ranks with past beliefs and practices. They are not outraged by Le Pen making it to the final round of the presidential election. They are neither demonstrating nor showing any intention to vote. Alarmingly, even progressive thinkers are shilly-shallying in the face of adversity.

From afar, I am taken by surprise, still dumbfounded by how many people — including family and friends — are willing to compromise on what we have held to be non-negotiable principles. Instead, many French seem to be inclined to dive into the unfathomable. I wonder why? What has happened in my absence for this ni-ni concept (neither Macron nor Le Pen) to replace revulsion for a fundamentally abhorrent populist position? Is it out of spite, frustration or anger vis-à-vis the current president? 

Emmanuel Macron might have failed on many fronts. Like many politicians over the ages, he might be guilty of false promises and dashing expectations. Yet Macron does not assail the values of our French Republic. He adheres to the constitution, the precedents and even the values of our Republic. Have the French lost all judgment and adopted a new nihilistic moral relativism?

The World This Week: Another French Revolution

READ MORE

Marine Le Pen appeals to the people. In recent years, she has cultivated a softer image, the image of a figure who cares about the common people. And we know that modern politics is less about ideas or positions and more about connection and caring for the voter. This is especially so during election campaigns. Over the last few weeks, it seems that Le Pen has done a better job at showing empathy for the poor, the voiceless, the marginalized and the desperate than Macron. The bottom half of the country who struggle to make ends meet seem to identify more with Le Pen than her rival. 

Le Pen’s strategy to tone down her racist rhetoric, promote a strong social agenda and focus on the most vulnerable seems to be paying off. At the same time, Macron is still regarded as “le Président des .”  More than ever, voters identify him with the well-off, the influential, the tech-savvy entrepreneurs and elites of all sorts. The disconnect between Macron and the ordinary voter is terrifying. Worryingly, even the middle class is splitting and stalling. If we do not remain vigilant, the thrill of the unknown conjured by many of the sorceress’ apprentices will inevitably turn into the chill of disenchantment on Monday morning.

What is the real choice this Sunday?

Simply put, this bloody Sunday is about choosing the rule of law over the law of the mob. It is about choosing impartiality over discrimination, multilateralism over nationalism, cooperation over strife, cohesion over division, inclusion over exclusion, and democracy over demagoguery. This election is about saving our Republic.

We French must remember that politics is a dangerous game. Yes, incarnation is a part of politics but some things cannot be reborn or recast. There are inalienable values for any civilization, any nation and any democracy. We must stand up for them. For all her tinkering and softening, Le Pen stands for extreme nationalism, irresponsible populism and dangerous xenophobia. To use an Americanism, she does not offer a decent value proposition for us French voters.

Democracy is at risk around the world. France is no exception. Today, many in France believe that they have nothing to lose and everything to risk. This belief characterizes fragile societies and failed states. I should know. I have been working on them.

In fact, the French have everything to lose and nothing to risk. The current system is already tottering. This election confirms the collapse (and perhaps even end) of traditional parties, the rise of identity politics from Jean-Luc Melenchon on the left to Eric Zemmour on the right, and the mainstreaming of ecology and its fragmentation across the political spectrum (voiding the Green Party of its substance and meaning). This election has also been marked by the absence of debate, which has been compounded by the mediocrity of the media and the consequent numbing of the voters. Having lived in Trump’s America, I have a sense of déjà vu.

The French presidential campaign is marked by the absence of a collective vision and action. There is an argument to be made that the fifth republic no longer works well and needs reform. Some may and do argue for a sixth republic. The French can make many such choices without voting for Le Pen. Even if they despise Macron, his failings are not a reason to abandon core French values. 

As citizens, we have work to do if we do not want to wake up to a daunting new reality on Monday, April 25. I strongly believe that France can reinvent itself. Our nation still has a role to play in Europe and on the world stage. And so do we. But first let’s vote.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Therefore, we spoke to eminent French journalist Florence Biedermann about the first round of the presidential elections. They have thrown up the same two candidates for the final round as last time around. One candidate is Emmanuel Macron, whom many call “le Président des .” The other candidate is Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader who risen in popularity in France. This is the first time in French political history that a far-right leader is so close to the winner of the first round.

Watch or read Biedermann make sense of it all.

Florence Biedermann on Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron and the French Elections

In this episode, we have the former chief editor of Agence France-Presse explain what is going on in France. You can read what she has to say below.

Why is Marine Le Pen so popular? 

Florence Biedermann: She really focused on a program for social matters, on social questions, on the cost of living and this is the main worry of the French people right now.

After the war in Ukraine, the price of energy has risen considerably. There is a stronger inflation and it is now one of the main topics for the French people. So she managed to put aside all the more extreme side of her program on immigration, of changing the institutions, and her resistance to the EU, and she really focused on the daily life of the people with small incomes, on their difficulties and has insisted that Emmanuel Macron was a kind of an elitist who was far away from those daily worries of the French people. 

Has Marine Le Pen detoxified the Le Pen name? 

Florence Biedermann: And that’s how she managed to somehow detoxify her brand, because for years she has been associated, of course, with extreme views and immigration. A few years ago, she was still against the EU, she wanted to withdraw from the EU. 

She is still very much a euroskeptic, but she gave up this project. She also gave up the fact that she wants to get out of the euro and she styled herself as a kind of innocuous housewife, a cat lover who raised her children on her own. She has presented herself as someone running an ordinary life and being close to ordinary people. And it really worked pretty well when you see the voting results now. 

After Trump and Brexit, could France be in for a surprise result? 

Florence Biedermann: So of course the big question now is whether she can win or not. I mean, all the polls still give Macron as the winner, but we know that polls failed before in predicting the victory of Trump, and the victory of Brexit. So everybody is pretty careful and obviously there is nervousness in the camp of Macron because he’s now campaigning really hard, which he didn’t do before the first round because he was busy with the war in Ukraine. 

So obviously there is a chance that she can win, especially because one of the measures proposed by Macron is very unpopular as it is to postpone the retirement age from 62 to 65 and if this election ends up finally being a kind of referendum on this question, then he may lose. 

What would a victory for Le Pen mean for France and Europe as a whole? 

Florence Biedermann: So for France on the international scene, a victory for Marine Le Pen would really be a disaster. France is one of the main countries trying to make the EU more dynamic, more efficient, which does not interest her. She wants to present France as a sovereign country where French laws would be more important than European laws. Let’s say you can really compare her to Viktor ������á��. She’s the same kind of leader.

And then of course in the EU with one of the main leaders being eurosceptic that would be a disaster. Also, she’s kind of very reluctant towards NATO. And let’s not forget she was an admirer of Vladimir Putin for years. She even needed to borrow from a Russian bank to finance her campaign. So definitely the image of France internationally would be completely downgraded. 

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The second surprise was the strong showing of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a non-establishment leftist, who, it now transpires, would have overtaken Le Pen had any of the other candidates dropped out to line up behind him. It’s a moral victory of sorts for voters on the left, who have now been excluded from the final round of the two most recent presidential elections. The compensation is that, with legislative elections looming in the immediate aftermath of the April 24^th presidential face-off, it will inevitably lead to some kind of intriguing regrouping or redefinition.

In its reporting on the election, The New York Times focused on the one issue that is of most interest to its American readers: the impact on what it calls the “Western unity” US President Joe Biden has so solidly engineered in his response to ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine. The Times foreign editor, Roger Cohen the fear that, “in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory” France will become “anti-NATO and more pro-Russia.” He adds that this “would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” In other words, make no mistake about it, The New York Times is rooting for Macron.

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Anti-NATO:

Opposed to the ideal the United States government imagines for Europe, defining it as a continent composed of free, enlightened democracies irremediably dependent — both economically and militarily — on the benevolent leadership of a powerful American Deep State and the sincere brotherly love offered by the American military-industrial complex.

Contextual note

The Times may have reason to worry. While the odds still favor Macron, Le Pen could possibly duplicate Donald Trump’s incredible overcoming of the odds in 2016 when he won the US presidency, and largely for the same reasons. Macron has been a contested leader, branded by opponents on the left and right as the “president of the rich.” Hillary Clinton similarly suffered from her image of being a tool of her Wall Street donors. There comes a point in every nation’s life when the people seem ready to take a chance with what appears to reasonable people as a bad bet.

Perhaps that time has come for France. Its electors exercised what they call “republican discipline” against far-right politicians when Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, in 2002. He harvested 82% of the vote to Le Pen’s 18%. In 2017, though Macron was still an unknown entity with no serious support from either of the major political groupings, the young man easily defeated the far-right candidate with 64% of the vote to Le Pen’s 36%.

Prognosticating statisticians might simply follow the curve and assume that the downward slope will lead this time to a 50-50 election. They may be right. But the reason lies less in an arithmetical trend than in the growth of a largely non-partisan populist revolt directed against what is perceived to be an occult power establishment comprised of powerful industrialists, bankers, unrepresentative parties, corrupt politicians and a political class marked by an attitude of subservience to the American empire. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, has himself tried to burnish his image as a neutral, pan-European visionary who seeks to break free from the chokehold held by the power brokers of Washington DC, Arlington, Virginia and Wall Street. His attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin before and after the Russian invasion were undoubtedly designed to bolster that image.

The explanation everyone likes to give for Marine Le Pen’s success in distancing her rivals – including fellow xenophobe, Eric Zemmour – is her focus on inflation. James Carville may be applauding from afar. It is, after all “the , stupid.” The issue has been there throughout Macron’s term. It was the COVID lockdown and not Macron’s policies that cut short the dramatic “yellow vest” movement that was still smoldering when the pandemic struck. The French have not forgotten their own need for economic survival while living in a society in which the rich keep getting richer. Voters remember Macron’s joyous elimination of the wealth tax and the alacrity with which he announced higher gas taxes would fill the gap.

A musician I work with regularly told me recently: “I’m not voting in the first round, but I’ll vote against Macron in the second round.” In other words, of the possible rivals in the second round – Le Pen (far right), Mélenchon (progressive left), some even predicted Valérie Pécresse (right) – he would have voted for any one of them, just to eliminate Macron. I don’t believe he’s a racist, but he is now ready to be voting for a woman who has put xenophobia at the core of her political program.

Historical note

If we tally up the scores of the candidates who are clearly anti-NATO — without including Macron who keeps his distance but adheres to the US alliance in the current campaign against Russia — the total climbs towards 60%. Historically, France is the only European country to have declared independence from NATO, when De Gaulle withdrew from NATO’s military structure and banished all NATO installations from the nation’s territory in 1966.

Roger Cohen’s and The Times’ concern may be justified, even if Macron wins the election. Even more so if the results are close. Very few commentators, even here in France, have begun trying to tease out what’s likely to emerge from June’s legislative elections. With the two traditional establishment parties on the ropes and utterly leaderless, is there any chance that a reassuringly “coherent order” dear to establishment politicians might reappear? Even if Macron wins, he never really managed to assemble a stable majority in his first term. The real questions now are these: among the defeated, who will talk to whom? And who will even grudgingly accept to defer to whose leadership? If Le Pen wins, it is unlikely she will be able to muster anything resembling a loyal majority. It is often said that “the French voters’ heart is on the left, but their vote is on the right.” With a president so far to the right, the voters won’t deliver a presidential majority in parliament, as they have so often done in the past.

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Like the US and the UK, France’s democratic institutions have become profoundly dysfunctional. In no way does the political class even attempt to implement the “will of the people.” The globalized economy, with its arcane networks of power, had already diminished the meaning of democracy. The US is now consciously splitting in two that same globalized economy through its campaign of sanctions against Russia, possibly as a broader strategic move designed to create a degree of chaos that will ultimately embarrass its real enemy, China.

That radical split points in one direction: militarizing even further an economy already dominated by military technology. And as we have seen, a militarized economy means an increasingly militarized society, in which surveillance, propaganda, control and enforced conformity in the name of security cancel any appeal not just to the will, but even to the needs of the people.

It is a real pity that Jean-Luc Mélenchon didn’t make it to the second round, if only to enrich a largely impoverished debate. Independently of any of his political orientations concerning the economy or foreign policy, the leader of his party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), was already insisting in the previous election five years ago that the nation needed to replace with a 6^th Republic an out-of-date 5^th Republic created in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Mélenchon’s idea of a 6^th Republic contained less presidential power and weaker parties, meaning better access for the people.

A lot of water has flowed under the Pont Neuf since 1958, and neither of the candidates appears interested in reducing presidential powers. But the result of this election demonstrates clearly that both presidential power and the ability of parties to give direction to the politics of the nation have become non-existent as tools of democratic government. The results show that they have reached a point of no return. No one should be surprised to see —  at some point in time after the legislative elections —  France being rocked by a constitutional crisis on the scale of the one Pakistan lived through this past week. At which point, a 6^th Republic may emerge from the ashes, Phoenix-like, but with more than a few burnt feathers.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 4: Tragic

Even though he hesitated until the last minute to make it official on Thursday, everyone in France knew that their president, Emmanuel Macron, would be up for reelection in a contest whose first round will take place on April 10, followed by the second-round runoff on April 24.

The strategic delay in his decision-making has been officially explained by the combination of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the much more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, a dossier for which Macron has been very active in recent months. The race is very difficult to call given the range of opponents, but Macron is favored to win the first round. Though it’s anyone’s guess how the second round may play out or even who the opposing candidate is likely to be.

How Coherent Is NATO Today and in the Future?

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With the Ukraine crisis dominating the headlines, Macron stepped up this week, almost at the same time as US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, to give a rousing speech with a similar theme, insisting on solidarity with the Ukrainians and the defense of democracy. But unlike his American counterpart, whose speech read like a celebration of his administration’s and his nation’s moral commitment to the Ukrainian cause, Macron went a bit further, invoking the “tragic” dimension of the current situation with these : “To this brutal return of tragedy in history, we owe it to ourselves to respond with historic decisions.” He added the idea that “Europe has entered a new era” and hinted that it would be an era defined in terms of “energy independence” and “European defense.”&�Բ�����; 

Macron’s vision of a different future may be interpreted more as a campaign promise than a realistic forecast of how European identity will evolve in the future. But it is a theme that Macron has heavily invested in, an idea he has been promoting for a long time. Despite past failure to move the needle, he may be onto something this time concerning the future of ���ܰ��DZ��’s security policies, which are as much under attack as Kyiv itself.

The crisis in Ukraine reveals not only the threat Russia potentially represents for some European nations, but also the risk associated with ���ܰ��DZ��’s dependence on ��ܲ�������’s natural gas. Even more significantly — though discussion of this topic must wait for some sort of resolution to the Ukrainian drama — the crisis has revealed the troubling degree to which European countries have become the hostages of the monster known as NATO.

The calling into question of NATO may sound paradoxical at the very moment when every country in the prosperous West has expressed its heartfelt solidarity with Ukraine and its bitter condemnation of ��ܲ�������’s invasion. Many commentators have waxed lyrical about the “unification” of Europe in opposition to Russia and see this as a prelude to the reinforcement of NATO. That is possible, but at this early stage in the conflict, it sounds like a hasty conclusion.

Macron is hinting at a world beyond NATO. He is certainly right to assume that he isn’t the only European leader who, without complaining too loudly, is privately assessing Washington’s responsibility in the conflict. After all, the US is the nation that, despite France and Germany’s resistance, drew the red line defending the iron-clad principle of Ukraine’s inalienable right to join NATO.  

Macron’s position should help his chances in the coming election. He cannot be accused of electoral opportunism as he has proved himself consistent and sincere in his mission to redefine ���ܰ��DZ��’s security in European rather than North Atlantic terms. It hasn’t worked yet despite his and, to some extent, Germany’s previous efforts, but that predictable disappointment occurred before the tragedy that is now engulfing Europe. When the dust settles on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, all Europeans (and maybe even the UK’s Boris Johnson) will begin parsing the complex lessons produced by a terribly mismanaged fiasco that is still ongoing and shows some signs of possibly leading to a nuclear conflagration.

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For the moment, the Americans have presented the Russian assault as a combat between good and evil. Europe and its media have, in their very real but to some extent staged outrage, followed suit. But at some point in the near future, Europeans will sit down and attempt to assess not just the winners and losers as the US tends to do, but the volume of evil that is attributable to both sides. European cultures tend to be far less binary and Manichean than US culture, which has demonstrated in this crisis its inimitable capacity to discard the kind of nuance that can, at least on some occasions, actually prevent or at least forestall tragedy.

The idea of tragedy, understood to be a noble art form, is taken seriously in France, a nation that produced two famous authors of tragedy, Corneille and Racine. Apart from a brief episode in the 18^th century (partly due to jealousy), France has always admired Shakespeare and Schiller. The French know that authentic tragedy is never about the battle between good and evil. The literary genre that exploits that kind of binary logic is called melodrama. Tragedy always contains something corresponding to Aristotle’s intuition of its being built around the notion of a tragic flaw.

In his analysis of Oedipus Rex, Aristotle attributed the flaw to the tragic hero, seen as admirable and good, but affected by something that undermines his good fortune. But the flaw may also exist in the system and its rules, in the government or the culture of the play, in the environment in which tragic heroes and heroines are permitted to act. As one famous tragic hero noted, there may be “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” something that to which the tragedy itself is drawing the audience’s attention.

When he characterizes the Ukraine conflict as a tragedy, Emmanuel Macron, like other Europeans familiar with the history of the past century, is thinking not so much of the literary tradition as the devastating wars that have taken place on the continent’s soil. This is a privilege not equally available to Americans, whose only lasting memory of war on their own soil is that of a civil war that happened over 150 years ago.

The idea of history Americans learn at school and through the media, even in the case of their own civil war, is always about a struggle between good and evil. Slavery defined the South as evil, despite the fact that Southerners were true Americans. Because all conflicts are framed as a combat between good and evil, Americans are encouraged to think of their nation as a “force for good.” America is exceptional and has been called the “indispensable nation.” Many attribute to the French leader Charles de Gaulle the reflection that “the graveyard is full of indispensable people.” History too is full of indispensable nations and even empires.

Today, everyone in Europe perceives the Ukraine situation as a worrying tragedy that is still building toward its most destructive climax. But for Macron, whose reelection is far from assured within the chaotic political environment that currently reigns in France, it may turn out to be a serendipitous tragedy. It may turn out to be the moment of enlightenment in which his dream of a Europe no longer tethered to the United States may define and implement its own security system. As he begins to hone his official reelection campaign, Macron can pursue that goal and, at the same time, hope that it will convince his electors that he’s the one who can carry it out. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Will the Pandemic Revitalize Ideas of the Global Common Good?

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In the same period, Great Britain moved to the right under Prime Minister Boris Johnson while autocratic regimes in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines and Brazil tightened their grip on governance structures.

What does the future hold for liberal democracies around the world in the next decade? Are current trends an aberration, or is Marc Plattner prophetic in in “Democracy in Decline?” that authoritarianism seems to have the “wind at its back even if it has not yet spread to many more countries”?

Inevitable Decline Scenario

Current trends produce compelling evidence that seems to suggest that the decline of democracies is an inevitability. In the United States, daily columns appear pronouncing that democracy is in peril and under siege, and asking whether another civil war is possible. The January 6 assault on the Capitol continues to be a flashpoint in what was already a very volatile political environment. Voting restrictions targeted at likely Democratic voters have been instituted in many pro-Republican states. Given the prominence of America as a symbol of liberal democracy, countries around the world are now thinking the unthinkable about the future of democratic governance.

Last year’s Freedom House , “Freedom in the World for 2021,” carries the subheading “Democracy under Siege.” It suggests that the aggregate decline in freedom has exceeded gains for the past 15 years. While much of the deterioration in 2020 was associated with regimes in Africa and the Middle East, European nations — Poland, Hungary and Turkey — recorded reductions in freedom. Moreover, the United States has seen a 10-year decline in freedom equivalent to that experienced in 25 other nations.

Meanwhile, as the left-wing populist party headed by Nicolas Maduro has captured the headlines because of his dismantling of democratic institutions in Venezuela, right-wing populist movements are increasing across Latin America — Brazil, Bolivia and Peru are examples. More recently, following Jair Bolsonaro’s playbook in Brazil, the leader of the right-wing populist Christian Social Front in Chile, José Antonio Kast, forced a run-off in a recent election after voicing a desire to return to the autocratic regime of Augusto Pinochet.  

Kast eventually lost in a landslide, which bodes well for the stability of democracy in Chile for the near future, but still raises the disconcerting issue of the popularity of authoritarianism among a sizeable minority of Chile’s polity. 

Predisposition to Authoritarianism

All of these recent events would seem to posit an argument that many citizens are susceptible to an authoritarian appeal. However, forecasting trends from recent events is always hazardous. Yet there is a more ominous source for predicting inevitability than the recent accounts and actions of political leaders and pundits. The writings of a number of social psychologists, historians and political scientists are extremely relevant to the question at hand.

Karen Skinner argues in her book “The Authoritarian Dynamic” that autocratic tendencies are baked into the psychic of citizens of liberal democracies. Fear of change and diversity is easily transformed into a call by a politician for a return to the status quo of the past, like “Make American Great Again.” Long before the ascent of Trump, Skinner estimated that as many as one-third of the population in liberal democracies have a predisposition to authoritarianism.

Given that democracies encourage diversity, alternative interpretations of history and open dialogue on difficult issues, these strengths may exceed people’s capacity to tolerate difficult issues. A growing lack of tolerance toward immigrants, people of color or bureaucrats provides a platform for opportunistic leaders to activate that “authoritarian ���Բ�������.”

Roger Griffin a similar argument when he attributes modernity as a force for fascism. With the unfolding of modernity, populist interpretations of an idealized national past arise in response to the anxiety that citizens feel about a future where the only certainty is that it will be different than the past. Leaders with autocratic ambitions use “restorative nostalgia” — Svetlana Boym’s concept in her book “The Future of Nostalgia” to describe a hereafter that replicates the past — to rally citizens to a populist political movement, a revolt against democratic institutions and their advocates, “the bureaucratic elites.”

The arguments offered by Skinner, Griffin and others provide an important understanding of how the internal vulnerabilities of liberal democracies can nurture their own demise. However, despite the presence of an authoritarian dynamic within liberal democracies, a political leadership factor is part of the calculus for predicting the future of democracies. The past decade has witnessed the emergence of Plutarchian leaders who have learned to navigate the pathway that enables populist sentiments to be integrated with autocratic predispositions.

While their hold on the masses is important, what is required to secure power is their ability to bewitch a small key group of capable and principled people in leadership roles and convince them to submit to the autocratic impulses of a prophetic leader as a means of achieving limited policy goals.  

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A cadre of — those who have no autocratic predisposition but are willing to align with anti-democratic politics as a means of achieving specific policy goals or to ensure their own power base in the governance structure — is required. The important and notorious role that Franz von Papen had in enabling the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s must not be duplicated if democracy is to be resilient in countries experiencing populist movements. The dangerous combination of a charismatic populist leader and a sizable component of politicians willing to compromise their political ideals for transitory political goals would make the downward spiral of democracy inevitable.

Yet in the United States, a contingent of politicians did defy the urges of the Trump administration to decertify the election results and preserve democratic rule. In Chile, citizens and political leaders rejected the call to return to the autocratic governance model of Pinochet’s dictatorship. In Europe, despite the political uncertainties created by the pandemic, right-wing populist movements have not established themselves as viable alternatives to current regimes. 

Democracy will be resilient and survive the current wave of right-wing authoritarianism if leaders and institutions demonstrate their ability to solve critical social and economic problems, reverse the erosion of trust between themselves and the public, and put the safeguarding of democracy at the forefront of their political agenda.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Germany and France Head Into Two Very Different Elections

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As it turns out, they can. Last week, a came out that had Eric Zemmour surpassing Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential election. As things stand now, Zemmour, not Le Pen, would advance to the second and decisive round of the election, facing the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron.

Machine à Polémiques

The results sent shockwaves across the French political landscape and put Zemmour onto the front pages of the country’s major news outlets. Zemmour ante portas, quelle horreur! The whole thing is quite remarkable. After all, as of yet, Zemmour has not declared his candidacy for the election. But it appears to be a foregone conclusion. The media certainly act as if it were, and Zemmour would be a fool to contradict them. Fool he is not — quite the contrary.

The whole thing is even more remarkable, and not devoid of irony, given the fact that Eric Zemmour happens to be Jewish (and practicing, at least until his father passed away in 2013) and originates from a French-Algerian family that left Algeria during the country’s struggle for independence. Zemmour himself defines his ethnic background as Berber. A curious case, indeed. A Jew, a “��é��è��ܱ�” (a pejorative term for alien residents) — the nightmare of every traditional extreme-right French nationalist, as the left-leaning magazine Marianne recently .

Eric Zemmour is France’s response to Donald Trump, if not his French avatar. Like Trump, he has no filters, but unlike Trump, he is highly intelligent, erudite, refined, articulate and sharp-witted. A prolific author of editorials, commentary and bestselling books, a prominent TV personality and celebrity, Zemmour figures among France’s most notorious provocateurs, a “machine à polémiques,” as Politico recently , who riles, aggravates, irritates and polarizes.

For years now, Zemmour has been content to play the role of the public intellectual on the right, a modern-day male Cassandra, indefatigably lamenting the seemingly inexorable decline of France and fustigating the whole of the French political establishment for failing to halt and reverse it. The title of his bestseller from 2014, “Le suicide français,” said it all. It was an analysis of how France’s elites — political, economic, administrative and particularly intellectual, the “heirs of May ’68” — have systematically “undone France.”

The result is a line of argumentation reminiscent of the Kulturpessimismus that pervaded late 19^th and early 20^th-century Germany, most notably Oswald Spengler’s “Decline of the West.” In the past, Zemmour noted, France had “imposed” its ideas, its vision of the world, “even its caprices” on “a universe carried away by all these wonders.” Today, by contrast, France was “forced to swallow values and mores that are the total opposite to what it had built up for centuries.”

At the same time, he charged, the French political and economic elite had to a large extent renounced and abandoned the country’s sovereignty and national independence in the name of the European project and of globalization, all under the approving eyes of the media that enthusiastically praised “this great renouncement.”

At first sight, it might appear that this is nothing more than the typical Euroskepticism so dear to the contemporary radical right. In reality, Zemmour’s diagnosis of the spiritual situation of the current age goes a bit deeper. It is informed by a strong sense — Kulturpessimismus oblige — that not just the French, but Western civilization in general has run its course, fallen victim to fatigue and exhaustion.

Dechristianization and widespread suspicion with respect to the notion of progress have hollowed out the foundations on which it has rested. In the process, it has lost its spiritual shield and made itself vulnerable to the influx of alien ideas and values.

Great Obsession

Like so many other right-wing populists in Europe these days, Zemmour is obsessed with Islam, and for more than a single reason. For one, there is the that Muslims have retained what the West has largely abandoned — a sense of spirituality and anti-materialism, an ethical and moral compass and, above all, a sense of honor.

At the same time, Zemmour regurgitates ad nauseam all the familiar anti-Islamic tropes that have made the political fortunes of radical right-wing entrepreneurs in recent memory, from the late Pim Fortuyn to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, from Pia Kjærsgard in Denmark to Paulin Hanson in Australia. These tropes posit that Islam is not only a religion, but also a political ideology, and as such totalitarian; that the basic principles of Western culture and civilization, such as democracy, freedom of religion and opinion, the equality of men and women, or the separation of church and state, are fundamentally at odds with Islam; and that Islam is all about submission and therefore incompatible with liberal democracy.

Zemmour’s other great obsession is closely tied in with his anti-Islamic position — the specter of the “grand replacement.” This is a conspiracy theory that has been around for quite some time. It gained new traction with Renaud Camus’ eponymous book from 2011 (now in its third edition). But it has been Zemmour who has popularized it in France, with great success.

In 2018, one out of four respondents in a representative survey to the “theory” of the great replacement. The idea here is, in a that the combination of mass immigration and high birth rates of non-Europeans is going to overwhelm the “original” European population and replace it as well as its culture, values and traditions, and all this with the full knowledge, complicity and support of ���ܰ��DZ��’s cosmopolitan elites who have nothing but contempt for national identity and their own culture.

Reluctant Savior

A few weeks ago, Zemmour’s new book came out. The title is meant as a warning, “La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot” — “France Hasn’t Yet Said Its Last Word.” As expected, it is a — in first and second place on amazon.fr at the time of writing — and, as expected, it is largely seen as a manifesto designed to launch his campaign. The message is clear. It is not yet too late to act. But act we must, and fast. For we are faced with a situation of life and death: either remain France or disappear.

To win, Zemmour insists, “we have to fight on all fronts.” To keep “the invaders” away from us and “to save our identity and regain our sovereignty.” That’s the only way to put a stop to the “migration waves” that “for decades overwhelm our territory and our people.” Otherwise, France is lost, fallen prey to reverse colonization and the great replacement. For, as Zemmour asserts, “demography is destiny.”

This is where Zemmour comes in, a reluctant savior, who steps in because, as he charges, there is no one, no political party — and that includes Marine Le Pen’s National Rally — capable of “expressing the just wrath and anxiety of the French people.” Zemmour sees himself as the heir to a long tradition of national-populism, and particularly to one of its most prominent exponents, Maurice Barres, famous for his definition of identity and belonging as “la terre et les morts” — the soil and the dead. At one point in the book, Zemmour characterizes himself as a “Français de la terre et des morts” who passed from Emile Zola to Barres.

On a certain level, this makes sense. After all, Barres was, at the end of the 19^th century, to obsess about France being inundated and submerged by migrant workers — first inklings of the great replacement. Ironically enough, Barres also happened to be a , who played a prominent role during the Dreyfus affair, a defining moment in modern French history that left a permanent mark on the republic.

Another prominent notorious heir to this tradition is, of course, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Recently, Le Pen ��è���� was asked his opinion on Eric Zemmour. Le Pen’s was as revealing as it was disconcerting: “The only difference between him and me is that he is Jewish.” Honi soit qui mal y pense — evil to him who evil thinks, as the saying goes. One thing is sure, the next months are going to be turbulent in France, and perhaps amusing — as long as you happen not to be French.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Macron’s Campaign to Reveal France’s Historical Sins

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Out of frustration with Algeria’s lack of cooperation in repatriating its citizens illegally residing in France, Macron’s government decided to reduce the number of authorized visas for Algeria and Morocco by 50% and Tunisia by 30%. To justify this move, Macron accused the Algerian government of mental games. As by Le Monde, “Macron considers that since its independence in 1962, Algeria has based its development on a ‘memorial rent’ fostered by its politico-military system.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Memorial rent:

The only possible English equivalent of an untranslatable term invented by the French historian Benjamin Stora and hijacked by Emmanuel Macron, who believes that his 2017 election as president of the republic made him the nation’s and the world’s historian-in-chief

Contextual Note

In July 2020, seeking to resolve the conundrum of tense French-Algerian relations, Emmanuel Macron commissioned historian Benjamin Stora to prepare a report on “the memories of colonization and the Algerian war.”

In January, Stora delivered his copy. Eschewing the interpretation of specific events and facts, which will always remain controversial and painful to consider, the historian chose to focus on the cultural and psychological effects left by the memory of those events on both sides of the Mediterranean. Those whose lives were affected by the long war of independence, according to Stora, have remained constrained within a permanent state of mutual misunderstanding. 

Stora proposed the metaphor of “memorial rent” to characterize how the different groups have mobilized a set of recriminations concerning the injustice done to them in the past. They cite this as the psychological “rent” due to them by their adversaries. 

On the French side, there are those who can be either nostalgic or ashamed of their colonial adventure and France’s self-proclaimed . This includes officials and soldiers, but also the Harkis — Algerian Muslims who fought alongside the French army — and the pieds-noirs or the Europeans settled in Algeria but repatriated after the war.

On the Algerian side, there are those who identified with the struggle for independence as a political cause and a less politically motivated majority, who appreciated independence without actively embracing the cause. Many Algerians were alienated by the political and ideological infighting that the revolution fatally produced.

After long decades of official hostility between France and Algeria, people in both countries welcomed Macron’s declared intention to resolve the inherited problems and define a new relationship. The task could never be easy since France, even when excluded in the most absolute terms from Algeria’s internal politics, has always been lurking in the background. Numerous economic, linguistic and cultural links have maintained a necessary but distant relationship between the nations and their peoples.

Anyone who lives and works in the business world in France realizes that generations of North Africans have found their permanent place within French culture, even if their presence in the social structure is subjected to a curiously ambiguous dynamic. North Africans have simultaneously been encouraged (and accepted) and discouraged (and rejected) from being fully integrated into the French social fabric.

Stora insisted on the notion of memorial rent as a way of accounting for the mentalities that still inhabit the two populations and their governments. The Algerians cannot forget the reality of colonization. Having definitively renounced its colonial mission, France seeks to live up to its ideals of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” in the name of modern Western liberalism.

Macron, the maverick, wished to distinguish himself from his predecessors by finding some common ground and opening a new horizon of cooperation. He hoped that by honestly acknowledging what was reprehensible in France’s past in Algeria, the two nations could begin a fraternal dialogue that had been shattered by the revolution.

Macron now feels his act of good faith has not been reciprocated. He nevertheless insists that he maintains excellent relations with the current Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Perhaps he sees a kinship to Donald Trump’s account of his relationship with Kim Jung-un. It contains the idea that a sentiment of personal friendship — even if totally imaginary in Trump’s case — accompanied by a willingness to dialogue on a person-to-person basis, could lead to long-term understanding.

Macron is not alone in noting that Algeria’s system of government appears seriously sclerotic. A majority of Algerians appear to share his analysis. Massive protests last year by the pro-democratic popular movement known as Hirak permitted the destitution of the doddering, despotic and now deceased President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Last week, Macron dared to express his sentiment that Tebboune, for all his good intentions, was the prisoner of a system that he described as “very hard.” Though diplomatically delicate, it was a point worth making.

But after insisting that resolving the question of historical memory as described by Stora was the key to progress, Macron made a major mistake. Playing the amateur historian, he questioned whether Algeria had ever existed “as a nation” before French colonization, a period in which the region of Algeria was a precinct of the Ottoman Empire.

In other words, Macron implicitly called into question the historical legitimacy of Algeria as a nation-state. For Algerians, and other observers as well, that stands as a clear example of European political hubris.

To be fair, Macron cited a valid historical fact. But it implied a message not dissimilar to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s contention in a 2007 in Dakar that “the African has not fully entered into history.” In Sarkozy’s passably racist mind, Europe alone defined the drift and logic of history. At the time, Senegalese writer Boris Diop, remarked: “Maybe he does not realise to what extent we felt insulted.”

Many ordinary Algerians today feel the same way about Macron’s reflection on the status of Algeria. It clearly signifies that Macron thinks of Algeria as a second-class nation at best, lacking the dignity of European nation-states.

Historical Note

Le Monde’s editorial board that “Emmanuel Macron was right to make reconciliation between the painful experiences on both sides the axis of his ‘memorial policy.’” An outside observer might note that the idea a “memorial policy” would be unimaginable in most other cultures and historical contexts. The only significant precedents concerning national policies intended to produce an official account of the collective memory may be Israel’s remembrance of the Holocaust and South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission.

But these three cases — Israel, South Africa and France — are all very different. In the Israeli case, there was no nation to reconcile with, Germany having been totally transformed after the war, followed by the subsequent creation of Israel. In South Africa, the formerly oppressed and their oppressors had to find a way of changing places by allowing a black majority to exercise its prerogatives.

Macron’s historicist approach, seeking to identify an entire people’s memorial content, may be seen, like so much else in French culture, as typically Cartesian. It transforms Descartes’ celebrated axiom, “I think, therefore I am” into “I remember, therefore I was.” This is as dangerous as it is potentially helpful because, while it seeks to reconcile, it creates false equations. Macron’s own discourse, when he invokes history to delegitimize Algeria as a nation, reveals the risk.

The president went even further when he of failing to recognize its own past as a colonial power. The mention of Turkey, whose president last year not only criticized Macron but called into question his “,” would seem to indicate that for all his supposed Cartesian rationality, Macron can at times become unhinged, especially in the months before a presidential election.

Apparently aware of his mistake, Macron now is seeking to lower the tensions. But as political scientist Hasni Abidi observes, in the , Macron’s “mea culpa would be denounced by the parties of the right.” At the same time, Abidi believes the French may see Macron as a serial troublemaker adept at “creating multiple conflicts with Turkey, Mali, Australia or the US.” The election takes place in April. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

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Third Rome: Will Russia Save Europe From Itself?

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Critics, however, claim the changes were aimed at facilitating a win for the ruling United Russia party. During this election cycle, the Kremlin has moved to further tighten its grip on the opposition. Despite the crackdown, United ��ܲ�������’s decreasing popularity represents a valuable opportunity for the opposition to strengthen its position as a political alternative to the status quo.  

Important Test

This election have been an important test for United Russia, whose goal was to keep its supermajority in the Duma. The party has progressively lost popularity since the controversial pension reforms of 2016, coupled with chronic problems such as widespread corruption and socioeconomic issues. Statistics published by the Levada Center in March showed that of those interviewed would vote for United Russia in the upcoming election, the lowest rating since the party’s consolidation in the early 2000s.

The 450 seats in the Duma are allocated via a — half through a party-list proportional vote with a 5% threshold and half via a majority in single-mandate constituencies. The electoral system was in 2014 when the first-past-the-post component was introduced, granting United Russia a comfortable in the 2016 elections.

It is crucial to notice that the electoral system is not the only element pointing at deficiencies in Russia’s democratic procedures. Opposition candidates are not admitted to run for elections. Those parties allowed to participate are labeled as because, even if formally independent, they remain subordinated to United Russia.

This year, has been low — around 52% according to official figures or just 38% as per — because of the general climate of distrust and dissatisfaction. Despite its increasing unpopularity, United Russia managed to obtain an absolute majority, 49.82% of the votes and securing 324 seats in the Duma. Yet United Russia lost public consensus compared to 2016, when it won 56% of the vote. Until this year, the party has steadily increased its control over parliament since 2003, when it only obtained a with 37%.

The fact that the party predictably won 88% of the single-seat constituencies allowed it to hold on to its supermajority, vital to furthering the government’s agenda. Among its challengers, the Communist Party (KPRF) obtained a satisfying result, getting almost 19% of the votes. Another element worth noticing is the access of a to the Duma for the first time in the country’s history.

Dirty Tactics

Unsurprisingly, candidates even loosely connected with Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which has been designated an in June, were from running. However, the group has invented an interesting method to challenge United Russia: so-called , already tested during the Moscow elections in 2019. At the time, the tactic was , with 23 of the 40 candidates it backed elected. According to Navalny, Smart Voting helped United Russia‘s majority in three cities in last year’s regional elections.

Before this year’s legislative elections, a dedicated website and app were developed by Navalny supporters to help voters pick the best option to maximize the chance of beating pro-Kremlin candidates, thus avoiding dispersing the votes toward several oppositional candidates.

Under pressure from the Kremlin, however, both Google and Apple from their respective stores after their Russian employees were with jail terms. When organizers turned to YouTube to explain Smart Voting, the video was removed. This is not the first time the Russian government has attempted to subordinate tech companies. The messenger Telegram was completely banned in Russia for two years because it refused to share with the security services.

The 2021 elections have been marred by a number of controversies and alleged fraud. During the campaign, smear tactics and other dirty tricks were employed against candidates not running with United Russia. For example, a of the notorious rapist Viktor Mokhov wearing a T-shirt and cap showing the KPRF logo and praising its leader, Gennady Zyuganov, was shown across several media outlets a few weeks before the election. In May, a group of women depicting themselves as part of the Ukrainian collective Femen a protest supporting the KPRF candidate Nina Ostanina.

In the months before the vote, articles describing scandals and petty crimes committed by KPRF candidates started to appear in tabloids and newspapers. A “” in support of the right-wing LDPR party on a boat on the river Neva in St. Petersburg was staged to divert potential voters; the party’s electoral base is staunchly conservative.

Another dirty tactic was the emergence of so-called spoiler candidates to break up the vote. A few days before the election, Boris Vishnevski, a candidate for the liberal-democratic Yabloko party, lamented that candidates with the same name and appearance were registered in an apparent attempt to disperse votes. According to an by the Russian newspaper Kommersant, spoiler candidates have also been deployed against KPRF.

Numerous surveillance videos from several polling stations around the country showed ballots being tampered with. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe was not able to because of the pandemic. The fact that United Russia reached almost 50% of the vote compared to the 40% anticipated by opinion polls is likewise suspicious, especially in Moscow, where the party’s support is among the lowest in the country.

Moreover, after a significant in reporting results, online votes suspiciously reversed predictions and past voting patterns, granting victory to United Russia candidates in 15 electoral districts across the capital. In the of Sergey Shpilkin, an independent election analyst, “Electronic voting is an absolute evil — a black box that no one controls.”&�Բ�����;

Least Free

The 2021 legislative elections represented only a partial victory for United Russia. Even though the party succeeded in securing control of parliament, controversies around the vote have further weakened its legitimacy. Conversely, the Communist Party has strengthened its presence in the Duma, possibly also thanks to Navalny’s Smart Voting.

KPFR is also possibly evolving from a systemic opposition party to a more of the Kremlin, especially after several of its politicians have denounced the many irregularities that occurred before and during the elections. Moreover, the party successfully led a demonstration against the alleged fraud last Saturday, that mass arrests have been performed just before the event.

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Several commentators have emphasized how these elections have been the in ��ܲ�������’s modern history. Indeed, the country seems to be further strengthening its authoritarian grip in face of its weakening electoral appeal. After the elections, two more independent organizations, the online magazine Mediazona and the police monitoring project OVD-Info, have been added to the rapidly growing list of , while have been pressed against Navalny, who is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for parole violation.

It remains to be seen if the opposition could find ways to elude the pervasive control of the Russian state and coordinate united action, especially since disunity was the main cause of failure in 2011-12. Moreover, KPFR will have to decide whether it wants to remain “systemic” or join the opposition. Such a prospective alliance looks very fragile because of the neo-Stalinist leaning of a significant part of the KPRF leadership as opposed to the liberal slant of Alexei Navalny and his movement.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The outcome, in turn, is completely open. The composition of the post-Merkel government depends on how many votes each of the major parties will manage to capture. Several coalitions are possible, center-right, but also center-left. Much hinges on the results of the Greens and the liberals. And there is the additional factor of the radical populist right, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which commands around 10% of the vote.

From Merkel to Baerbock: Female Politicians Still Face Sexism in Germany

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Shunned by all other parties, the AfD remains a nuisance factor, particularly in its strongholds in the eastern part of the country where it has established itself as the voice of all those who feel disregarded and disrespected, who consider themselves second-class citizens in unified Germany.

No Alternative

Next year, French voters are called upon to elect a new president of the republic. As it looks now, nothing will change. Macron is likely to get reelected, largely by default. As Margaret Thatcher once famously put it, albeit in an entirely different context, “There is no alternative.”

In French presidential elections, there is, of course, always an alternative. The alternative is Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National (National Rally), the rejuvenated, remodeled successor to her father’s National Front.

Marine Le Pen has gone a long way to refurbish and embellish the face of France’s “extreme” right, to the point where many on the hard right no longer wish to be associated with the party. Their charge: Marine Le Pen is far too much to the left.

The results of the recent regional elections have shown that Le Pen’s strategy to moderate her party’s image did not work. It had hoped to win at least one or two regions but came out of the election with empty hands. Surveys paint a similar picture. Although the party records some gains among a few groups like the youth, overall, its base of support has been stagnant. Nothing suggests that this is likely to change in the foreseeable future.

This in itself is quite remarkable. It is generally thought that the far right does particularly well in times of crisis. This was the case, most recently, in the of the 2008 global financial crisis that boosted the fortunes of a number of radical right-wing populist parties in Europe. Today, at least in France, the situation is even more propitious for the radical right, yet Marine Le Pen has largely failed to capitalize on it.

If in Germany the general mood is somber these days, in France it is outright morose — and alarmist, and panicky. The word is ��é��������. To be sure, the French have always had a certain for conjuring up the specter of decline, more often than not informed by the fear that the country was falling behind its neighbor to the east.

In 1953, as France was about to embark on what would come to be known as the Trente Glorieuses — the postwar “golden age,” a point of reference for contemporary French nostalgia — prominent politicians in all seriousness proclaimed that the time of decline had come. Some 30 years later, different times, same refrain. In the 1980s, leading publications were publishing national surveys exploring the decline of France.  

Today, history repeats itself once again, perhaps more dramatically and desperately. How else to make sense of a statement by Jérôme Fourquet, in charge of public opinion at Ifop, a premier French polling and market research firm, who the situation in France today to the defeat of its army in 1940: One thought France was strong, only to be swept away by Germany.

Wrong Direction

Today again, there is an acute sense that things are going in the wrong direction — that France is falling behind, that it is being relegated to the minor leagues, as Jacques Juillard has in the pages of Le Figaro. The phrase reflecting these sentiments is “le grand déclassement,” which made its way into the public debate in the spring of last year.

It was provoked by the experience of the beginning of the pandemic, particularly the lockdowns, which confined the French to their homes “like in the Middle Ages,” as an in Le Figaro put it in late April. And this because the country lacked the industrial capacities to produce the equipment necessary to protect the population or at least furnish protective masks. And of course, once again France was compared to Germany — the country “that managed the pandemic the best.”

In the meantime, that narrative of le grand déclassment has been significantly expanded. The most recent example is an expose on France’s decline in the field of research and development in the latest issue of , a decline seriously jeopardizing France’s competitive position in the world. Here, as in many other areas, France has been overtaken by Germany, as another editorial in Le Figaro recently. No wonder the country has fallen into a state of “,” with no end in sight.

The results of the most recent extensive inquiry into the state of French public opinion, Ipsos’ , largely confirm that much of the country has fallen into a deep psychological black hole. Some key findings: A large majority of the population (78%) shares the view that France is in decline; 60% think globalization poses a threat to the country; and almost two-thirds that France should protect itself more against today’s world.

In the meantime, little appears to have changed. In a from August 2020, 55% of respondents said they were pessimistic with regard to their future and that of their children.

If ever there was one, this is the perfect “.” Populist moments go to waste, however, if there is no populist entrepreneur to exploit them. Enter Eric Zemmour, the ubiquitous media personality, journalist, editorialist, polemicist, provocateur and the great new white hope for all those on the right who have written off Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

Like so many on the far right, Zemmour is obsessed with “le grand remplacement,” the notion that one day in the not-so-far future, immigrants are going to “replace” the native population. As he recently on French TV, by “2050, France will be half Islamic; by 2100 we will be in an Islamic republic.”

Zemmour might not (yet) have announced his candidacy, but he certainly has said all the right things to rally the troops, on immigration, Islam, the decline of the nation. His : Today France is divided between those who fear le grand rechauffement (global warming) and those who fear le grand déclassement (downward social mobility).   

This was the conflict that not so long ago provoked the eruption of associated with the yellow vests. The movement came to a screeching halt with the beginning of the pandemic, only to morph into a new one, this time against the government’s anti-COVID-19 measures, against vaccinations and the threat of a “health passport.” It reflects a growing polarization between the great metropolitan areas and the rest of the country, between cosmopolitanism and parochialism, between an open and a closed society.

These conflicts have been around for some time. With Zemmour, they might have found a new champion — provided he chooses to run for the presidency. With his due to appear in a few days, it might, of course, be no more than a clever ploy to boost sales. In any case, Zemmour promises to remain a nuisance factor on the right that, should he run, is likely to significantly diminish the chances of any center-right candidate progressing to the decisive second round of next year’s presidential election.

Island of Calm

Compared to France, preelection Germany looks like an island of calm. Yet appearances are deceptive, even in Germany. As has been the case elsewhere in Europe, Germany has been hit hard by the pandemic and, like elsewhere, was not prepared to face a crisis of these dimensions. For a country known for its efficiency, it took quite a long time to get organized.

At the same time, the pandemic laid open the shortfalls of the famed “German model,” particularly in the field of communication technology. As a commentary in Germany’s premier news magazine Der Spiegel put it in March of this year, with respect to the country’s handling of the pandemic, Germany received “” — zero points.

The pandemic has drastically shown that Germany needs a new beginning. And this was before the catastrophic floods that left entire towns and villages this summer devastated as if hit by a . The floods caused billions worth of damage. At the same time, the extent of the destruction served as a drastic reminder not only that climate change and global warming were real, but also that a continuation of Panglossian politics of neglect would likely end in disaster — and this much sooner than expected.  

The message appears to have arrived. A from late September found more than 70% of respondents agreeing with the statement that the catastrophe was a direct result of climate change. Some 80% agreed that the government had to do more for the environment. Only a majority of AfD supporters disagreed with both statements.

The combination of a pandemic and a climate catastrophe has seriously damaged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s image and, with it, the fortunes of her Christian Democratic Union. For weeks now, the party has been in a free fall in the polls. The has it hovering around 20%, some five points behind the Social Democrats, the culmination of a dramatic turnaround that opens the possibility that the next chancellor will come from the center left.

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Angela Merkel has recently that the upcoming election represents a Richtungswahl — an election that will determine which direction the country is going to take. In reality, however, there can only be one direction, toward accelerated decarbonization, toward more social justice, toward a rapid modernization of the country’s physical and digital infrastructure.

With the British exit from the European Union and France’s self-absorption, Germany is left alone as the uncontested leader in Western Europe. If in the past this was a nightmare scenario, today it is no longer, or at least less so. The new German government better be prepared to assume its responsibilities.

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Germany’s Greens Are Within Earshot of Power

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In May, showed that 43% of the German population perceived Baerbock as a suitable successor for Merkel, leading over her two main contenders; at the end of August, this figure was down to 22%. Targeted online campaigns have been busy exploiting Baerbock’s missteps and stoking fears of political change among voters. These attacks have laid bare how modern political campaigns in the age of social media flush sexist attitudes that persist in both politics and the wider society to the surface. 

Belittled and Patronized

Before Merkel rose to become one of the world’s most powerful female politicians, she was underestimated and belittled throughout the 1990s as a woman from East Germany by a male-dominated West German political class. Despite prevailing in intra-party struggles by often adapting to male behavior, she still had to face gender-based headwinds during her first general election campaign in 2005 as the front runner of her party.

The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) began the campaign polling at 48%, only to plummet to a sobering 35.2% on election day, securing a knife-edge victory over the incumbent, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Even back then, when social media was still a negligible factor, Merkel had to face partly overt, partly subliminal gender-discriminatory reporting. German media dissected Merkel’s outward appearance, starting with the corners of her mouth and her hairstyle and ending with her now-famous pantsuits.

According to , president of the German Bundestag from 1988 to 1998, at times, “there was more discussion about hairstyle, outer appearance, facial expression, hands, etc. than there was debate about the content. And how often did the question come up: Can the girl do it?”

Her competence was called into doubt, as stereotypical headlines from the time show: “Angela Merkel — an angel of understanding kindness,” “A power woman … corpses pave her way.” In 2004, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse came to the following conclusion to the question of why Merkel had to face such inappropriate media scrutiny: “Because she is a woman and comes from the East. And that is not the stuff of political fantasies that make West German men’s clubs ecstatic.”

Even Merkel’s nickname, “Mutti” (mommy), used affectionately by most Germans now, was originally a  epithet. The slow reinterpretation of this nickname is emblematic of how difficult it is for women in politics to break away from antiquated role models.

Since then, Merkel has emerged victorious in four consecutive elections, at the moment the country’s after Helmut Kohl. She is one of the countless global role models who have proven women to be apt leaders. In light of this overwhelming evidence of women’s political prowess, the levels of sexism and disinformation launched against Baerbock are astonishing. 

Targeted From Day One

When the Green Party chose Baerbock as its front runner in April, it did so with confidence that after 16 years of Angela Merkel, voters had shed their misgivings about aspiring female politicians. If anything, the Greens expected a young, energetic woman to embody political change and provide an appealing contrast to the stodgy, veteran, male candidates like Armin Laschet of the CDU and Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). But soon after the announcement of her candidacy, voices emerged online questioning whether a  would be suitable for the chancellorship. However, it’s not just her status as a mother that made Baerbock an ideal target, especially for conservatives and far-right populists on the internet: Unlike Merkel, she is young, politically more inexperienced, .

Adding to that, Baerbock exposed herself to criticism by making unforced mistakes. False statements in her CV, delayed declarations of supplementary income and alleged plagiarism in her published in June provided further ammunition to her adversaries. Her book’s title, “Now. How We Renew Our Country,” and the criticism she faces mirror the Greens’ current dilemma. Before Baerbock could even communicate a new, innovative policy approach with climate protection at its center to the voters, public attention had already diverted to her shortcomings.

While part of the blame rests with Baerbock herself, a lack of proportionality of criticisms toward her as opposed to other contestants in this election is apparent. For more than a year now, accusations loom around her contender for the post of chancellor, Olaf Scholz. As finance minister and chairman of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, he is accused of failing to prevent the  in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany surrounding Wirecard AG, a payment processor and financial services provider. Luckily for Scholz, still-unanswered questions concerning the scandal receive scarce media attention, partly due to the complexity of the issue at hand making it harder to distill into bite-size news. 

Armin Laschet, the CDU‘s candidate for chancellorship and minister president of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, had to navigate rough waters during the COVID-19 crisis. The state government used opaque procedures to award a contract for protective gowns worth €38.5 million ($45.6 million) to the luxury fashion manufacturer , a company linked to Laschet’s son. Laschet also received criticism for a good-humored appearance during a visit to areas affected by floods that killed at least 189 in July. In addition, he too was accused of plagiarism due to suspicious passages in a book published in 2009.

Even though Scholz’s, and especially Laschet’s missteps have not gone unnoticed by the media, the public and political opponents, Lothar Probst, a researcher at the University of Bremen, recognizes a systematic character in the criticism faced by Baerbock. In an with the German Press Agency, he surmised: “Her credibility, respectability, and authority are undermined, she is portrayed as sloppy. … A young, urban smart woman [is] once again tackled harder than her competitors.”

Even before Baerbock’s gaffes were in the spotlight, she found herself in the firing line. Conspiracy theories surfaced, suggesting that Baerbock was a puppet of  and an advocate of the “great reset” conspiracy. Disinformation about Baerbock was also gender-based. Collages of quickly circulated, including deepfake photographs disseminated via the messenger Telegram.

Such disinformation originated significantly from far-right circles. In 2019, according to the , 77% of registered hate posts were attributable to the center-right and far-right political spectrum. According to political scientist , from Trier University, female politicians from green parties are primary targets for right-wing attacks and disinformation because topics such as climate protection and emancipation inflame passions and mobilize the political right.

Worldwide Concern

Baerbock’s political opponents and critics deny disproportionate criticism, insisting that she should have known what she had signed up for; after all, election campaigns are not for the faint-hearted, especially when entering the race as the front-runner. Yet statistics prove that in Germany, hatred toward female politicians is an everyday occurrence. A survey by  showed that 87% of the female politicians interviewed encountered hate and threats on an almost daily basis; 57% of these were sexist attacks.

These results are in line with international studies. In a 2019 “#ShePersisted. Women, Politics & Power in the New Media World,” conducted by Lucina di Meco and Kristina Wilfore, 88 global female leaders were interviewed, were “concerned about the pervasiveness of gender-based abuse.” The study that “A new wave of authoritarian leaders and illiberal actors around the world use gendered disinformation and online abuse to push back against the progress made on women’s and minority rights.”

A recent from January, “Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex, and Lies are Weaponized Against Women Online,” by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, also shows that 12 of the 13 surveyed female politicians suffered gendered abuse online. Nine of them were at the receiving end of gendered disinformation, containing racist, transphobic and sexual narratives, with the latter being the most common.

Sixteen years have passed between Angela Merkel‘s and Annalena Baerbock’s first campaigns for the chancellorship. Today, women striving for power still have to deal with mistrust and gender-discriminatory prejudice. Merkel had to hold her own in a male-dominated environment where she was underestimated and often treated disparagingly. But compared to Merkel, the campaign against Baerbock has reached a new,  dimension. Merkel, who is childless, outwardly inconspicuous and politically more conservative, offered less of a target to conservative, male adversaries than the young, modern and progressive Baerbock.

Besides, Baerbock’s opponents in 2021 have more effective tools for spreading gendered disinformation on social media. While disinformation targets both male and female politicians, women are more affected. It aims to  women’s credibility and their chances of electoral success and discourage future generations of women from pursuing political careers. Germany’s female politicians must keep in mind that such disinformation is spread by distorted, unrepresentative groups that don’t reflect the social progress made over the years.

At this particular moment, it appears unlikely that Baerbock will move into the chancellor’s office as Merkel did in 2005 by the narrowest of margins. Yet the race is far from over, with nearly a month until election day. Baerbock’s recent performance in the first of three TV debates proves that she is not ready to abandon the field to (online) campaigners spreading gender-based prejudice and disinformation. Despite polls declaring Scholz as the debate’s winner, narrowly ahead of Baerbock, she presented herself as a modern and socioecological alternative to both her contenders and reverted attention to policy away from her persona and gender.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post From Merkel to Baerbock: Female Politicians Still Face Sexism in Germany appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Good Old Days: Nostalgia’s Political Appeal

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The fact is that we do live in an age of resentment, and populism has been among its main political beneficiaries. Resentment has been for propelling Donald Trump into the White House in 2016, contributing to the narrow, playing a in Jair Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, and fueling the most recent for radical right-wing populist parties in Europe. Those who vote for them are to be “fearful, angry and resentful of what their societies have done for them over the years.” Those of us who have been studying these developments for the past several decades could not agree more.

Unsocial Passion

Populism derives much of its impetus from the force of the emotions it evokes. The arguably most potent of these emotions is resentment. Unfortunately, more often than not, the link between resentment and populism is merely asserted, as if it were self-evident. As a result, resentment is either trivialized or comes to stand for about any emotion .

The reality is, however, that resentment is a highly complex, equivocal and ambiguous emotion.  Etymologically, resentment from the French verb ressentir, which carries the connotation of feeling something over and over again, of obsessively revisiting a past injury (from the outdated se ressentir). It is for this reason that Adam Smith, in his 1759 treatise on moral sentiments ranks resentment among the “unsocial passions.” This is not to say that resentment is an entirely odious and noxious passion. On the contrary, Smith makes a that resentment is “one of the glues that can hold society together.” For, as Michelle Schwarze and John Scott have , “we need the perturbing passion of resentment to motivate our concern for injustice.”

On this view, resentment represents what Sjoerd van Tuinen has “a mechanism of retributive justice” that “prevents and remedies injuries.” It is from this sense that Smith’s notion of resentment as the glue that holds society together derives its logic and justification. If resentment is an unsocial passion, it is, as , that resentment, if “unregulated … can be the most socially destructive of all passions.” Here, resentment is nothing but vindictiveness and rancor, the urge to find malicious pleasure in revenge. This is the dark side of resentment.

The other, positive side to resentment is what the “safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.” In this iteration, resentment serves as a mechanism that “prompts us to beat off the mischief which is attempted to be done to us, and to retaliate that which is already done; that the offender may be made to repent of his injustice, and that others, through fear of like punishment, may be terrified from being guilty of the like offence.” This type of resentment is, as , “vitally important to maintaining the proper regard for the status of persons as equal participants in a common moral world.”

As a moral emotion, , “resentment is not only an appropriate individual response to failures of justice, but it is also an indispensable attitude to cultivate if an overall degree of fairness is to be maintained in society.”

An excerpt from a speech by Frederick Douglass, the prominent 19^th-century African American abolitionist, orator and preacher illustrates the point. Speaking before the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1853, that it was “perhaps creditable to the American people” if European immigrants from Ireland, Italy or Hungary “all find in this goodly land a home.” For them, he continued, “the Americans have principles of justice, maxims of mercy, sentiments of religion and feelings of brotherhood in abundance.” When it came to “my poor people (alas, how poor!) enslaved, scourged, blasted, overwhelmed, and ruined,” however, “it would appear that America had neither justice, mercy, nor religion.” As a result, he charged, African Americans were aliens “in our native land.”

Strangers in Their Own Land

The irony should not be lost on anyone who has followed the course of American politics in recent years. In 2016, Donald Trump not only secured the Republican nomination, but he was also elected president of the United States. He did so on a platform that catered to the disenchantment of large swaths of the country’s white population with a political class that appeared to care little about their concerns. Trump scored particularly big among the millions of white Americans who thought of themselves as having become, in , strangers in their own land.

Similar sentiments have been reported from the eastern part of Germany. A from 2019 by one of Germany’s leading public opinion firms came to the conclusion that 30 years after unification, “many eastern Germans still feel like aliens in their own home.” The political fallout has been dramatic: The “feeling of alienness” has informed party preferences more than have differences between political agendas.

Other studies have shown that a significant number of eastern Germans see themselves as second-class citizens. Talia Marin, who teaches international economics at the technical university in Munich, these sentiments to the fact that after unification, many eastern Germans were being told in not particularly subtle ways that their skills and experience acquired during the communist period “had no value in a market economy.” Confronted with this “feeling of worthlessness,” they “lost their dignity.” A from 2019 provides evidence of the extent to which eastern Germans continue to feel slighted. In the survey, 80% of respondents agreed with the statement that their achievements in the decades following unification have not received the recognition they deserve.

Dignity, studies have shown, is central to contemporary politics of recognition. It is at this point that resentment and populism meet. For, as , resentment represents “an interpersonal dynamic which desires the restoration of respect.” Recognition, , constitutes a “vital human need.” Recognition entails, in , “acknowledging and honouring the status of others.”

The opposite is misrecognition. Misrecognition, in turn, is a major source of resentment. Pierre Rosanvallon, in a recent essay on populism, ranks resentment among what he calls the “emotions of position.” These are emotions that express “rage over not being recognized, of being abandoned, despised, counting for nothing in the eyes of the powerful.” In his view, what provokes these emotions is the huge gap that often exists between objective reality, such as the fact that, in terms of GDP, France is ranked fifth among industrialized economies. Subjectively, however, the daily lived experience of a substantial number of French people is quite different who face difficulties making ends meet.

France is hardly unique. As early as 2008, one of the BBC’s top executives, Richard Klein, that “the people most affected by the upheaval” that had characterized Britain during the past decade, both economic and cultural, “have been all but ignored.” Klein’s comments were made at the occasion of a BBC documentary series on Britain’s white working class. The documentary revealed a of “victimhood, rage, abandonment and resentment” among these strata. Not even the Labour Party, once the protector of working-class interests, seemed to consider them important. As a result, they felt completely abandoned, no longer worthy of dignity and recognition.

This is what also seems to have happened in post-unification eastern Germans, or at least not in the perceptions of eastern Germans. Otherwise, they would hardly consider themselves second-class citizens, not on an equal footing compared to westerners. The result has been widespread resentment, surfacing, for instance, during the refugee crisis of 2015-16. At the time, the priority was to integrate the hundreds of thousands of newcomers Angela Merkel’s government had allowed to enter the country. For good reasons, in the east, the mood was one of irritation, if not outright hostility.

The predominant notion was that the government should first integrate what was once communist East Germany. Eastern Germans that in the years following unification they had been asked to fend for themselves. Yet a few decades later, the state was lavishing benefits and support on refugees. For them, eastern Germans grumbled, the state did have money, for “us,” not.

Misrecognition

The eastern German case is a classic example of misrecognition, defined as the denial of equal worth, which its victims from interacting on par with the rest of society. It denies its victims mutual recognition and, in the most extreme case, excludes them from equitable and just (re)distribution. Objectively, this might sound like a thoroughly unfair assessment. After all, for decades, the German government transferred a massive amount of funds to former East Germany (GDR). German taxpayers were forced to pay a “solidarity surcharge” designed to finance Aufbau Ost, a program of reconstruction designed to allow the eastern part of the country to catch up with the west.

Yet none of these measures appear to have substantially reduced the lingering sense of resentment prevalent among large parts of the eastern German population. In 2019, around in the state of Brandenburg considered themselves second-class citizens, while some 70% resented the economic and political dominance of westerners. Two years later, a few days prior to the regional election in Sachsen-Anhalt in June 2021, there agreed with the statement that “in many areas eastern Germans continue to be second-class citizens.”

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Federico Tarragoni, a leading French expert on populism, provides another of misrecognition, this time not from Western Europe but Latin America or, more precisely, from Venezuela. Tarragoni is primarily interested in explaining the widespread support Hugo Chavez garnered among large parts of Venezuela’s population. On the basis of discussions with ordinary Venezuelans living in the outskirts of Caracas, he reports the profound sense of injury and injustice experienced on a daily basis by the inhabitants of these barrios, who have a strong sense that nobody has any interest in them. They are cut off from the rest of Caracas. As one resident puts it, these are places where taxis don’t go. For Venezuela’s high society, these barrio dwellers are nothing but “savages” for whom they have nothing but disdain and contempt.

It should come as no surprise that contempt on the part of one side breeds resentment on the part of the other. Resentment, in turn, evokes a panoply of related emotions, such as anger, rage, even hatred, and particularly a wish for vengeance. When unfulfilled, however, when justified grievances are met with smug indifference on the part of those in charge, the wish for vengeance is likely to turn into resignation. In the sphere of politics, resignation is reflected in a drop in electoral participation, at least as long as there is no credible alternative. This is where populism comes in.

Feeding on Resentment

Populism feeds on resentment. Populist “encode reactions to a sense of loss, powerlessness, and disenfranchisement; they consolidate feelings of fear, anger, bitterness, and shame.” The targets of populist discourses are, however, rarely the institutions and policies responsible for socio-economic problems, such as neoliberalism, international financial markets or transnational corporations. Rather, they are found in groups that appear to have gained in visibility and recognition, such as ethnic and sexual minorities, while others have been losing out. Populists channel the resulting wish for vengeance to the one place where everybody, independent of their social status, has a voice — at the polls.

Election time is . This is how two prominent Austrian political scientists commented on the fulminant upsurge of support for the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) under its new leader, Jörg Haider, in the late 1980s. In the years that followed, the Austrian experience was replicated in a number of Western European countries, most notably Italy, Switzerland and across Scandinavia. The arguably most egregious case in point, of course, was Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 — an act of vengeance, at least in part, against a political establishment that more often than not appeared to show little more than thinly veiled contempt for ordinary people and their increasingly dim life chances (viz Hilary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”).

The vote for Trump was an instance of what Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, from the London School of Economics, has as “the revenge of the places that don’t matter.” These are once-prosperous regions that have fallen on hard times, walloped by the decline of mining, by deindustrialization and offshoring: the Rust Belt in the United States, northern England in the UK, Wallonia in Belgium, the Haut-de-France region in the north of France. These areas have been left behind in the race to remain competitive — or regain lost competitiveness — in the brave new world informed by financialization and globalization.

To be sure, these developments have been going on for some time. More than a decade ago already, the French political geographer Christoph Guilluy drew attention to the emergence of what he called “” — peripheral France. These are areas increasingly cut off from the dynamic urban centers. These are the areas, Guilluy noted, where the large majority of the “new popular classes” live, far away from the “most active job markets.” Thus, Guilluy charged, “for the first time in history, the popular classes no longer reside ‘where the wealth is created’ but in a peripheral France, far from the areas that ‘matter.’”

The demographer and historian Hervé le Bras has extended the territorial analysis to include France’s educated middle class. He finds that “” increasingly also affects these social strata, segregation largely dictated by educational level. The higher the level of education, the closer a person lives to the urban center. The opposite is true for those disposing of lower levels of schooling who, as a result, see their upward mobility effectively blocked. The situation of qualified workers is hardly any better. Their qualifications progressively , they too find themselves relegated to the periphery, far away from the most advanced urban centers, more often than not forced to do work below their qualifications.

Brave New World

In this brave new world, it seems, a growing number of people are left with the impression that they have become structurally irrelevant, both as producers, given their lack of sought-after skills, and as consumers, given their limited purchasing power. Unfortunately for the established parties, as Rodriguez-Pose readily acknowledges, the structurally irrelevant don’t take their fate lying down. Telling people that where they live, where they have grown up and where they belong doesn’t matter, or that they should move to greener shores where opportunities abound more often than not has provoked a backlash, which has found its most striking expression in growing support for populist movements and parties, both on the left and on the right.

The eastern part of Germany is a paradigmatic case in point. British studies suggest that there is a link between geographical mobility — and the lack thereof — and support for populism. To be sure, there are plenty of people who insist on staying in their familiar surroundings for various perfectly sensible reasons, such as family, friends and proximity to nature. At the same time, however, there are also plenty of people who stay because they have no options, which, in turn, breeds resentment.

As , “the lack of capacity and/of opportunities for mobility implies that a considerable part of the local population is effectively stuck in areas considered to have no future. Hence, the seed for revenge is planted.” This is what has happened in parts of eastern Germany. One of the most striking demographic characteristics of eastern Germany is its skewed age distribution, disproportionately . And for good reason: After unification, many of those who could get away left in search of better life chances in the west.

The German ethnologist Wolfgang Kaschuba has characterized the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the east as “the revenge of the villages.” In fact, a number of studies have shown that the AfD did best in structurally weak areas, characterized by demographic decline and lack of perspectives for the future. The most prominent example is Lusatia, a region in eastern Brandenburg and Saxony, bordering on Poland. In the regional elections in 2019, the AfD reached some of its best results in Lusatian villages, in some cases almost .

The region is known for lignite mining, which during the GDR period represented a major industrial sector, attracting a number of industries and providing employment for the whole region. After unification, however, most of these industries , resulting in mass unemployment and a large-scale exodus of anyone who could. The recent reversal of Germany’s energy policy, which entails a drastic reduction of coal in the energy mix, means that the days of lignite mining are counted — another blow to the region, rendering it even more economically marginal — if not entirely irrelevant. Under the circumstances, resentment is likely to remain relatively high in the region and with it continued support for the AfD.

Resentment, the Presbyterian bishop, theologian and moral philosopher Joseph Butler insisted in a sermon from 1726, is “one of the common bonds, by which society holds itself” — a notion later adopted by Adam Smith. Today, the opposite appears to be the case. Today, more often than not, resentment is the main driver behind the rise of identity-based particularism (also known as tribalism) and affective polarization, both in the United States and a growing number of other advanced liberal democracies.

Diversity in its different forms, with ever-more groups seeking recognition, breeds resentment among the hitherto privileged who perceive their status as being assaulted, lowered and diminished. The current stage of liberal democracy, or so it seems, generates myriad injuries and grievances and multiple perceptions of victimization, each one of them prone to fuel resentment, providing a basis for new waves of populist mobilization.

Populist mobilization, in order to have a chance to succeed at the polls, has to offer a positive motivation to those who experienced disrespect, contempt, slight or a general lack of recognition or appreciation. This is, to a certain extent at least, what is meant when we talk about the “” of the experiences of ordinary people. Valorization means in this context taking ordinary people, their concerns and grievances seriously. Populist valorization, however, falls far short of the norms of recognition, which are based on mutual respect and esteem.

It represents nothing more than what Onni Hirvonen and Joonas Pennanen as a “pathological form of politics of recognition” centered upon “the in-group recognition between the members of the populist camp” and the denigration of anyone outside. As such, it cannot but “contribute to the feelings of alienation and social marginalization” that were the source of resentment in the first place. It is unlikely to assuage the profound political disaffection permeating contemporary advanced liberal democracies. In the final analysis, the only ones who truly benefit from the politics of resentment are populist entrepreneurs.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post We Are Not Worthless: Resentment, Misrecognition and Populist Mobilization appeared first on 51�Թ�.

But the aftermath — marked by the “stop the steal” movement, a riotous occupation of the Capitol building and a continued spirit of revolt by a significant proportion of the citizenry as well as some prominent politicians — reveals that the spectacular numbers achieved by both candidates in the presidential election were a sign of high fever in the body politic rather than healthy democratic engagement. Many commentators noticed that voting against a particular candidate — Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump in 2020 — rather than voting for a preferred candidate may have been the determining factor in those two elections.

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Iran’s presidential election on June 18 was notable for its low turnout. But that is what everyone expected. Iran’s centrally controlled electoral system, emanating from a strictly hierarchical governmental structure in which the power of the president is extremely restricted, produces elections that are more accurately referred to as “selections.”

Though the two-party system in the US, sometimes referred to as a “,” leaves itself open to a similar critique, Western democracies still hold onto the idea that elections are expressions of vox populi, reflecting the will of the people. The general trend noted in recent years and in many democratic nations toward levels of abstention that often dip below 50% indicates that belief in democracy as a viable representative form of government may be far less solid than politicians and educators like to affirm.

France set a record on June 20 for its combined departmental and regional elections, two distinct opportunities to vote on the same day in the same place. With nearly 33.3% showing up to vote, two-thirds of the electorate simply didn’t bother. The only worse showing was in a referendum in 2000, where only 30% of the electorate bothered to vote on shortening the length of a presidential term. On Sunday, the abstention figure was dramatic enough, in any case, for President Emmanuel Macron’s press secretary to it “abyssale” (abysmal).

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Abyssale:

A French adjective, usually translated in English as “abysmal,” but with a more literal meaning that serves to compare what is being described to a literal abyss, something most French people also consider to be an appropriate characterization of the level of competence and efficacy of the current French government and more generally of the political class

Contextual Note

Macron’s government has every reason to deem the result of this first round abysmal. Occurring less than a year before the 2022 presidential election in which Macron hopes to break the recent trend of one-term presidents (Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande), the media and the pollsters regarded these local elections primarily as an indicator of what to expect in next May’s contest. The majority party — itself a “bricolage,” an assemblage cobbled together after Macron’s freak parting of the Red Sea in 2017 — performed particularly badly, not even attaining the 10% required to remain in the running for the second round in five of the 13 regions. 

For most of his term, Macron has had low approval ratings. He has never earned the admiration of the masses that presidents of the Fifth Republic once managed to achieve, though there have been moments when the French were willing to respect his apparent competence. This was especially true after his initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are other moments, far more frequent, in which his popularity has not only faded, but Macron himself has become an object of public scorn. The yellow vest movement that raged in 2018 and 2019 is the closest thing in modern times to the kind of popular revolt immortalized during the French Revolution that more than two centuries ago, at least provisionally, abolished the monarchy.

The commentators were even more surprised by the unexpectedly low score of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist party, the National Rally, formerly the National Front. The media have been building up the idea that the second round of next year’s presidential election will inevitably be a remake of 2017, with a rising Le Pen challenging a fading Macron, a recipe for anguished suspense among those less tempted by fascism. Over the next week, and immediately following the second-round results, the pundits will begin drawing conclusions about what this tells us about who will actually be present in the second round next year and how they may fare. 

The same pundits may even decide that it means nothing at all, given the rate of abstention. Prognostication has suddenly become a more difficult exercise. The manifest indifference of the electorate to everything that politicians believe is important does, however, tell us something about the state of democracy in France in what may be the waning years of the Fifth Republic. L’Obs, a left-center weekly, cites what it calls “,” a weariness with the very rituals of democracy.

Historical Note

The one dramatic indicator early commentators have highlighted is the apparent victory of the traditional right that had formerly been humiliated, finding itself in a no-man’s-land between Emmanuel Macron’s increasingly right-wing neoliberal center and Marine Le Pen’s xenophobic right-wing nationalism. Some see it as a sign of rejuvenation for the Gaullist tradition. The former ��é��ܲ�������������, Xavier Bertrand, who has a credible claim to representing the right in next year’s election, has been trying to resist Macron’s sedulous attempt to laminate the traditional right by adopting not only its policy themes, but also the demagogic Islamophobia of Le Pen’s party.

President Macron, the self-declared centrist, was counting on using his status as incumbent to position himself in a way that would make him attractive to a full range of voters on the right, while assuming that in his contest with Le Pen in the second round, he would also pick up most of the voters on the left who would be afraid to abstain. This could be compared on some points with Joe Biden’s successful strategy in the 2020 US presidential election.

Les ��é��ܲ�������������s appear as the real winners for the moment, if only because they have thrown a wrench into Macron’s 2022 strategy. There now may be a stronger likelihood that Bertrand will reach the second round opposite Macron, or possibly even opposite Le Pen. This is a cause of deep embarrassment, if not consternation. The combination of Le Pen’s low score and Bertrand’s success means that the traditional right — whose continuity dates back to Jacques Chirac and, ultimately, Charles De Gaulle, the founder of the Fifth Republic — may have recovered its mojo that so suddenly faded in 2017 following the scandals of its leading candidate, Francois Fillon, and its most recent president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter was recently convicted for electoral fraud and has been sentenced to six months in prison.

The media hasn’t begun asking the real historical question that underlies this curious drama. The parties are one thing, but what about the French people? What do they think, and what do they want at this historical “inflection point,” to quote Biden? The yellow vest spirit is still floating in the air, maybe even permeating the atmosphere.

The only candidate to have dared to talk about the eventuality of a Sixth Republic is Jean-Luc Melenchon, the left-wing populist candidate who fared honorably in the first round of the 2017 election at a moment when the once conquering Socialist Party imploded. The French media refuse to take Melenchon seriously, except as a foil to the legitimate pretenders. He has been cast in the role of the French Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, with a stronger intelligence, a more marked strain of rebelliousness against the establishment, but less charisma. Though he could never win a presidential election, he is still the strongest political personality on the left.

With other crises brewing — a pandemic still dragging on, hints of a possible new global financial crisis, a deepening climate crisis, exacerbated European instability, complemented by shaky leadership in the US — the French may simply be wondering how voting for anyone promises to accomplish anything worthwhile.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�. Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article referred to Xavier Bertrand as the current leader of Les ��é��ܲ�������������s. Updated on June 24, 2021.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post France’s Electoral Abyss appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Reporting on the still-glowing embers of the famous but now dormant gilets jeunes movement that rocked France two years ago, Le Monde’s Marie Pouzadoux political scientist and professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, Pascal Perrineau, who has been following the yellow vest phenomenon since it started. He sees it as a deeply-rooted protest movement capable of re-emerging at any moment. After an initial loss of momentum during Macron’s so-called “great debate,” the outbreak of COVID-19 and restrictions on public assembly put the movement into a state of suspended animation. 

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Surveying the current political climate at the approach of next year’s presidential election, Pouzadoux notes that “the executive has in fact drawn ‘no lesson’ from this protest movement or from the demands raised during the ‘great debate’ that followed it.” Perrineau offers this account of the state of play: “Today, the yawning gap between certain categories of the people and the elites continues to widen, while discontent and mistrust are maintained by the vertical management of power.”

Perrineau sees a growing “climate of heterogeneous anger” that will open “an immense space” for Marine Le Pen in next year’s election. This is simply because, like Donald Trump in 2016, Le Pen represents the kind of anti-establishment gamble the voters, faced with an unpalatable choice, may now be ready to make. But, unlike the US, France’s tradition of protest and revolution opens another option. Perrineau senses the possible emergence of an inclusive protest movement that he calls “eruptive and emotional,” capable of effectuating what he calls “giletjaunisation” — the “’yellowvesting’ of French society.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Eruptive and emotive:

The equivalent in the world of politics of the trendy term “disruptive innovation” in the economy, presaging a paradigm change that no one anticipated

Contextual Note

France’s political landscape has been in a state of utter disarray for at least the past decade. It was that disarray that allowed Macron to sneak through the cracks and humiliate the powerful political parties that had comfortably shared or alternated authority during the six decades of the Fifth Republic. But France was not alone. The US and the UK in particular have seen a similar disarray among the electorate. Yet despite the radical cultural and psychological upheaval, traditional parties have maintained their domination and managed to confirm, however uncomfortably, their authority.

Unlike Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party in the US, the yellow vest movement never really disappeared into the folds of history. Another commentator cited in the article, political science professor Frédéric Gonthier, believes a remobilization of the movement is plausible, though no one is ready to forecast what form it might take.

Most commentators agree that, while the gilets jaunes brand still has legs, it is unlikely that whatever revolt may emerge in 2022 will be a simple repetition of the 2018 scenario, unfolding under the same banner. Much depends on how the denouement of the COVID-19 crisis plays out. But that is exactly what the political elite fears today. On Monday, France ended its third phase of lockdown in a year and will continue its policy of curfew into June. What may happen when the population is once again free to assemble and protest without restriction no one can guess today. The election period itself will be rife with confusion as the different personalities in the still identifiable parties begin to vie for influence.

Pouzadoux concludes her article with a quote attributed to Macron’s administration: “You must wait till the sea recedes to discover the disaster left on the beach.” Some may remember, thanks to recent experience, that the sea never recedes faster or further than at the approach of a tsunami.

Historical Note

Most people are aware that France’s Fifth Republic has outlived its life cycle and its historical logic. Someday soon, a Sixth Republic will emerge. 2022 is a year to watch. In purely electoral terms, it is bound to be messy. If the second-round presidential contest turns out to be a repeat of 2017, no matter who wins, there will be an increase in possibly uncontrollable eruptive emotion.

Neither Macron nor Le Pen has a solid political base, an absolute necessity for any semblance of political stability given the institutions of the Fifth Republic. Macron has managed to hold on this long simply because the presidential system dictates that the electorate has no choice other than revolt. But he has failed to establish his authority in the eyes of the populace. The French are unlikely to support another five years of the clever outlier who sneaks past the confused peloton to win the race. It’s the rules of the race that will be challenged. Should Le Pen win, the confusion would be greater since she has no hope of gaining the parliamentary majority a president needs to even begin governing.  

Everyone will remember 2020 as the year a pandemic upset the world order. Future historians may call 2021 a year of transitional hesitation for the entire clueless planet, as leaders attempt to redefine “the new normal” without the slightest idea of what a revised version of normality might look like. Will the two-year reign of terror by COVID-19 end before the start of 2022? France’s reign of terror in 1793 lasted only a year but spawned Napoleon and the eventual reconfiguration of Europe. It ushered in the Industrial Revolution led by a hyperaggressive British Empire that would triumph before being undone by internal European rivalries a century later.

While US President Joe Biden attempts to reaffirm his as he that the US is “in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century,” the “other countries” of the world — starting with US’s ally in Asia, India — are wondering whether it makes sense to frame the challenge ahead as a competition between dominant powers seeking to control the global economy in their selfish interest. The Biden administration now appears poised to defend the sacrosanct intellectual property of pharmaceutical companies that has aggravated beyond description the COVID-19 crisis in India and the rest of the developing world.

The race to dominance among ���ܰ��DZ��’s rival nations two centuries ago triggered an as yet unfinished series of global disasters. These include the deployment of nuclear weapons against civilian populations in Japan and now dire, uncontrollable threats to human health and social stability as a consequence of climate change, all of which can be attributed to our civilization’s obsession with competition.

One event worth watching in Europe this year, ahead of the French presidential election of 2022, is the state of play in Germany, where federal elections to elect the 20^th Bundestag will take place in September. Recent polls show a potential lead for the Green party. If confirmed, this would overturn several decades of post-unification history. More significantly, as The Guardian’s Philip Oltermann in reference to the possibility of Annalena Baerbock’s party emerging as the leader of a new coalition, this eventual seismic event is attributable to the failure of imagination and vision of the traditional political elite.

“The underlying theme of her campaign so far,” Oltermann writes, “is that Germany is more innovative than its political class — a claim that got a boost last week when the country’s constitutional court ruled that the government’s climate targets do not go far enough.”

Addressing climate change requires a movement emerging from the people in a spirit of cooperation, not competition. Biden, Macron and Le Pen all represent the commitment to some form of aggressive nationalistic competition. Could eruptive emotion end up serving the cause of global harmony? The adepts of competition are not about to give up their battle.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will France’s 2022 Election Become a Political Volcano? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Fifth Republic had a few moments of glory marked by at least three somewhat illustrious personalities who became president. The actions of these three men left a mark on the memory of the French. Their names? Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac. The only recent president to make a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to achieve their stature, Nicolas Sarkozy, was just this week of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison.

Serious Politics Is Not About Recalibration

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Macron hoped to surpass them all but has clearly failed. Instead of playing by the consecrated rules of the Fifth Republic dominated by powerful parties, he profited from a sudden and unexpected vacuum within both the traditional right and the traditional left to sneak through the cracks and create the illusion that a system permanently dominated by the “alternance” of right and left could be run from the center. 

It was quite an achievement, but Macron failed to understand that modern French political thinking is not about vague ideas or even attractive personalities. It remains based on the notion of “engagement” (commitment) in favor of one or another strong position. The center Macron so proudly claimed to represent has always been seen as spineless and fundamentally unexciting. At best it reflects a commitment to bureaucracy, which the French have no respect for but cannot live without.

In 2017, it looked like a free ride for Macron that would last five years thanks to a guaranteed majority in parliament, no viable opposition and a public initially willing to entertain the centrist experiment. But it has become a living hell. Macron never managed to build his own party into something that could represent a political force, despite his massive majority elected to parliament on the coattails of his 2017 electoral victory.

Now, Macron finds himself embroiled in a controversy of his own creation. Its focus has been defining Islam as the enemy and intellectuals sympathizing with Muslims as the enemy within. In November 2020, The Atlantic that “Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has bemoaned the influence of American critical race theory on the French social sciences, blaming them for undermining France’s race- and ethnicity-blind universalism, and for giving comfort to ‘islamo-gauchisme,’ or ‘Islamo-leftism.’” Then, just two weeks ago, France’s higher education minister, Frederique Vidal, set off an uproar in the media and in academe itself when she an “investigation” be carried out into “Islamo-leftist” influence within the universities and research community.

This spectacular initiative has ended up having a closer resemblance to QAnon than to traditional French intellectual creativity and freedom. Vidal now wants the French to believe that universities and research institutes are harboring a cabal that englobes the French left (irresponsible intellectuals with ideas no sane Frenchmen would endorse) and Islamist extremists (murderous jihadist activists) in an unholy alliance that is threatening the security of the Republic.

Why? Because a number of serious thinkers have dared to detect a link between the history of European colonialism, including the extension of some its practices into the present, and the rise of violent revolt by Islamic extremists against a system they believe to be oppressive of their people and their people’s well-being. Detecting historical links — or at least certain specific links — has become a crime that can no longer be tolerated.

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Islamo-gauchiste:

A faux portmanteau word invented by Emmanuel Macron’s government to create the belief that two segments of French society, each with its own tradition of respectability — leftist thinkers and the Muslims who were part of the booty of the former French empire — are plotting to overthrow the modern mainstream, neoliberal, corporatist and implicitly racist consensus that Macron’s party believes to be the main voting bloc in French society today

Contextual Note

Macron’s desire to profit from the fear of Muslims that has attracted voters to his main rival, Marine Le Pen, is understandable, though risky since its anti-intellectual belligerence alienates many to the left of center. More surprising is one of its oddest features, that its promoters have coupled it with an appeal to a long-standing trend among the French of anti-Americanism. It claims to be anti-Islamic, anti-intellectual and anti-American, all at the same time.

It isn’t enough to attack French researchers who propose readings of history that make French colonial incursions into Muslim lands look inglorious. The Macronists are now affirming that this acknowledgment of France’s historical injustice toward its minorities is an example of slavish emulation of American “critical race theory” that has now infected the minds of a generation of French academics. It’s all the fault of American “wokism,” which has no place in French culture.

Le Monde has long been the serious newspaper of the intellectual rather than the activist left. Since the end of the Second World War, it has stood as the alternative to the other “serious” newspaper, Le Figaro, which reflected the positions of the establishment right and more specifically the Gaullists. De Gaulle, after all, was the founder of the Fifth Republic.

Macron claims to be neither right nor left, but his electoral strategy has clearly pushed him to commit to policies agreeable to the right. Responding to the proposal of an investigation into academic Islamo-gauchisme, Le Monde published the appeal launched by 600 academics condemning Vidal’s obscurantist effort. The signatories included the immensely successful Thomas Piketty, highly respected on the left. No one would think of branding Piketty as an Islamo-gauchiste.

Historical Note

For nearly a century, the French have complained about the attack on the noble purity of the language of Racine and Voltaire by the importation of English words. In the past, governments have legislated to prevent modern French vocabulary from being overwhelmed by trendy American coinages. That hasn’t prevented French people, and especially professionals, from using the very “anglicisms” they are expected to patriotically deplore. “Low-cost” could simply be called “pas cher” but not by people in business, who prefer the English term. Buzz, open space, leader, flop, play-list, best-of and the verb “booster” (to boost) are commonly spoken. Many deem these words illegal occupiers, on a par with the postcolonial invasion of North African immigrants. Neither of them has any business being here and sapping French culture.

Interviewed by the magazine L’Obs, political analyst Olivier Roy provides an of the French president’s absurd and futile attempt to strategize his reelection: “Emmanuel Macron believes he is playing a grand strategic game by aiming to reach the second round of the next presidential elections in a face-off against Marine Le Pen.” Macron’s ministers are no longer working for the French republic. They are working for Macron’s reelection in 2022. 

Recent polls show Le Pen within two points of Macron. For Jean-Michel Blanquer and Frederique Vidal, to steal votes from Le Pen’s white working-class constituency, intellectuals on the left must be branded as traitors to the white European republic. They may be unhappy, but just as US President Joe Biden did with progressive Democrats, the Macronists count on the vast majority on the left to vote against Le Pen.

What Macron fails to realize is that his quandary is closer to the Democratic Party’s failure in the 2016 US presidential election than its success in 2020. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, people now see him as a shabby, ineffective pillar of a discredited establishment. Nobody likes Macron enough to want to see him hanging around for another five years. As Roy points out, the strategy he has devised is absurd. He cannot win over Le Pen voters. His commitment to Europe has made him their enemy. And now polls show that many on the left will no longer be intimidated to vote for someone so committed to betraying them and their intellectual culture.

After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 promises to be the year of political pandemonium.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron Enriches French Vocabulary and Impoverishes Political Thought appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Beware! Populism Might be Bad for Your Health

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With 521 of the 991 , Laschet was named the new CDU leader on January 16. Although the exaggerated melodrama may invite some mockery and agonized groans from readers, the designation of the new CDU leader is the first key party event before the federal elections in September, which will be pivotal for Germany’s far right.

Angela Merkel‘s long tenure as German chancellor will draw to a close this year. After leading the country through the 2008 financial and the 2015 refugee , Merkel will likely leave office just as Germany vaccinates most of its adult population. Germany’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the popularity of Merkel. Similarly, polling suggests the CDU has benefited from the government’s efforts. Whereas the party as low as 19% (25% with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) in 2019, it now has upward of 30% (and as much as 37% with the CSU) of support.

Germany’s Far Right

At the same time, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is failing to keep up. Unlike countries such as the United States where COVID-19 skeptics and conspiracy theorists have coalesced on one side of the political spectrum, in Germany, these critics have into broad and unexpected coalitions over the course of the crisis. Yet crucially, these coalitions have not resulted in a dealignment or realignment of party loyalties. Rather, they are short term and held together only by grievances about coronavirus restrictions. Consequently, the AfD has not gained sufficient support from these mobilizations and has slipped a couple of percentage points — from its 2017 result of 12.6% to support hovering at around 11%.

Given developments within the AfD over the last two years, its political stagnation is not surprising. In late 2019, a court in the eastern state of Thuringia ruled that it is not to call the AfD politician Bjorn Hocke a “fascist” as that — as was argued before the court — seems an accurate description of his . Further self-inflicted damage followed when the party’s leader in Brandenburg, Andreas Kalbitz, was in May 2020 for previous membership in an extremist youth organization called the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend. The party’s somewhat formalized far-right wing (Der Flugel) was as extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BfV recently moved to its investigation, categorizing the entire AfD as a “suspected case” of anti-constitutional activity. This designation permits close observation and monitoring of party members’ activities.

AfD Would Lose Seats

All these developments, combined with an attempt by far-right to invade the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, have stunted the AfD‘s growth. The party entered the Bundestag in 2017 as the third-largest faction. Subsequent polling even reported its support to 18% in 2018. Yet if the election were held today, the party would likely lose at least a dozen seats.

The question of Angela Merkel‘s successor as chancellor is not yet decided. Laschet is in poll position, but the CDU must perform well in regional elections in Baden-Wurttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate in order to repel an internal challenge from Markus Soder, the minister-president of Bavaria and leader of the CSU.

Yet regardless of that outcome, the 2021 elections look set to knock the AfD and Germany’s far right back on its heels. There is no chance of banishing it from the Bundestag, but the federal election in September could deprive the AfD of its position as the largest party of the opposition, from where its representatives’ language has been intentionally and their behavior disruptive.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Alternative for Germany Is Failing to Keep Up appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In Germany, we don’t do that, at least not in a formal way. We do have, however, a sense of who was a good chancellor and who wasn’t, and there probably is something of a common understanding as to why. Chancellors stand out if they accomplished extraordinary feats. Konrad Adenauer will always be remembered for accomplishing Franco-German reconciliation and anchoring the Federal Republic firmly in the West; Willy Brandt for initiating a radical turn in West German foreign policy toward the East, culminating in the reconciliation with Poland; and Helmut Kohl for seizing the historic opportunity in 1989 and bringing about the peaceful reunification of the two Germanies.

The Downward Spiral of Angela Merkel’s CDU

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What about Angela Merkel, the first woman to hold Germany’s most powerful political office? Her tenure will end in a few months’ time, at the end, one hopes, of a horrific pandemic. On September 26, Germany will elect a new parliament, and Merkel will retire. By then she will have been in office for more than 15 years, second only to Helmut Kohl, who managed to hold on to the office a few months longer. When Merkel took over in November 2005, she was largely dismissed as “Kohl’s girl” who was likely to have a hard time asserting herself in a political party, the Christian Democrats (CDU) largely dominated by men.

The Anti-Trump

In fact, shortly after the election, then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder on national television that there was no way that his Social Democratic Party would ever accept an offer from Angela Merkel to form a coalition with the CDU under her leadership. As it so happened, the Social Democrats did, and Schröder was finished. In the years that followed, it became increasingly clear that Merkel was quite capable of asserting herself in the treacherous waters of Berlin’s political scene. In fact, in 2020, Forbes magazine Merkel as the most powerful woman in the world — for the 10^th consecutive year.  

Throughout her 15 years in office, the chancellor has, on average, received . As recently as December, more than 80% of respondents in a representative survey said that Merkel was doing a good job. Appreciation for Merkel, however, has hardly been limited to Germany. In an international from September 2020 covering 13 nations, Merkel was by far seen as the most trusted major world leader. More than three-quarters of respondents rated her positively; by contrast, more than 80% saw then-US President Donald Trump in a negative light.

Poll data also suggest that during Merkel’s tenure, Germany’s stature in the world has substantially increased. In a of 10 European nations from early 2019, almost 50% of respondents agreed that Germany played a more significant role in the world than a decade ago; fewer than half said the same thing about France and the UK. Germans are, for obvious historical reasons, understandably concerned about the country’s international image and reputation. Not for nothing, Canada’s The Globe and Mail referred to her in 2018 as the “,” only to add that “We need her kind more than ever.” This in itself will secure Merkel an eminent place in post-reunification German history.

Ironically enough, the article was written at a time when Merkel’s star appeared to be rapidly waning, the result of serious electoral setbacks on the national and regional level. In the election to the German Bundestag in September 2017, the Christian Democrats lost more than 8 percentage points compared to the previous election, which meant a loss of 65 seats in parliament. At the same time, the radical right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered parliament, garnering more than 12% of the vote. In subsequent regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse, the Christian Democrats lost more than 10% of the vote, setting off alarm bells in Munich and Berlin.

By the end of 2018, Merkel appeared to be up against the ropes, her days numbered. Particularly the upsurge in support for the radical populist right caused alarm, particularly in Bavaria. In response, the powerful Christian Social Union (CSU), Bavaria’s independent arm of the Christian Democrats, once again to reach beyond Bavaria and create a genuinely national-conservative party, competing with both the AfD and the CDU. The CSU had always maintained that there must never be a democratically legitimated party to the right of the CSU. With the AfD, there clearly was, and Merkel’s Christian Democrats appeared not in a position to stem the tide.

Corona Winner

Yet Merkel managed to survive the various challenges to her leadership, despite continued electoral setbacks, which largely benefited the AfD. But skepticism abounded. In late 2018, a majority of Germans that Merkel would not serve out her mandate, due to expire at the 2021 parliamentary election. At about the same time, however, 70% of respondents in a said they wished she would finish her mandate. Once the pandemic hit Germany in the spring of 2020, Merkel’s stock started to soar once again. International media celebrated Germany as a most likely pandemic that had proven to the virus.

What a joke. Only this time, nobody’s laughing. At the time of writing, Germany is a coronavirus disaster zone. The country has proved, once again, to be completely unprepared in the face of the second wave of infections that threatens to overwhelm the health care system. Starting in early December, Germany posted record new infections, and this before the arrival of the UK mutation. By now, the situation in some parts of Germany is nothing short of . At the same time, the situation on the vaccination front leaves .

In mid-January, Germany more than 22,000 new infections on a single day and more than 1,100 new COVID-19-related deaths. This is at least partly the result of the German government’s indecisive, hesitant and confusing response to the pandemic, made worse by Germany’s federal system, which provides for a plethora of veto points. This means that not only has it been difficult and quite tedious to arrive at a coordinated policy but also that every Land introduced its own measures, some more stringent than others. The result has been a certain degree of public exasperation. In a , more than half of respondents said they were annoyed at the measures that were “often contradictory.”

To be sure, Merkel cannot be held personally responsible for the dramatic deterioration of the situation once the second wave hit Germany with full force. A lot of time was lost in December in attempts to get the various political officials from Germany’s 16 ��ä�Ի��� to agree on a common strategy. And even in the face of a potential disaster in early January, Merkel had to do a lot of to get support for more restrictive measures.

Cultural Revolution

Under the circumstances, Angela Merkel’s other accomplishments as well as her failures are bound to fall by the wayside. They shouldn’t. On one hand, Merkel has dragged the Christian Democrats into the 21^st century. The CDU used to be the party of “Kinder, Kirche, Küche” (children, church, kitchen). Politics were a men’s world for, as my neighbor, a woman, used to tell me, politics is a “dirty business” — and dirty businesses should be left to men.

Merkel dared to appoint a woman to the most male of all ministerial portfolios, defense. The German armed forces did not like her, despite the fact — as even Germany’s conservative flagship publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has conceded — that she managed to substantially as well as and their image. Today, that former defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, heads the European Commission, another novum. She was replaced by another woman, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who in 2018 succeeded Merkel as the head of the CDU.

Probably nothing exemplifies the cultural revolution Merkel set in motion than the question of sexual and gender identity. Those of us who grew up in the postwar period probably recall that once in a while, our parents would hint that somebody was a “175er.” This was in reference to of the German criminal code according to which homosexuality was a punishable offense. The paragraph goes back all the way to 1871, establishing that any sexual activity between two males (there was no formal mention of lesbians) was subject to criminal persecution and punishment.

During the Nazi period, gays suffered from severe persecution, many of them ended up in concentration camps. After the war, the Federal Republic not only retained the paragraph; it also used the Nazis’ “” — in the camps, homosexuals were marked by a pink triangle on their prisoners’ shirts — to initiate some 100,000 proceedings against homosexuals. It was not until 1994 that the “gay paragraph” was finally abolished, not least because of East German insistence during the negotiations on reunification.

More than 20 years and many gay parades later, in 2017, the German Bundestag voted on legalizing same-sex marriage. On the occasion, Merkel allowed representatives to vote their conscience rather than following party discipline. Quite a few Christian Democrats came out in the support of the law, which was passed by a substantial majority, much to the chagrin of Germany’s conservatives. Some of them defected to the AfD given its vocal opposition to the law, which, as one of its leaders , threatens to undermine Germany’s traditional values and harm society. , however, that a substantial majority supported the law. In June 2017, 60% of men and more than 70% of women came out in favor of same-sex marriage across Germany.

We Can Handle This

Angela Merkel’s resolute position during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015-16 also comes out as a positive. In order to understand the enormity of the event, it might be useful to recall one of the great �������Ա�ü����� (delusions) of the Federal Republic, the notion that Germany was “not a country of immigration.” Given the fact that by the 1980s, Germany was home to millions of guest workers and their families, many of whom had permanently settled in Germany, the notion ignored the reality on the ground. Yet it was not until 2001 that an expert commission of the German Bundestag came to the that the notion was “no longer tenable.” By 2015, a significant majority of Germans with that statement, and in 2019, more than agreed that in the future, Germany should accept as many refugees as in the past.

This is quite remarkable, given the storm Merkel provoked when in 2015 she cleared the way for welcoming a million refugees, many of them from war-torn Syria. Her main argument was that Germany is a strong country: “Wir schaffen das,” Merkel announced — “We can handle this.” The German public was not entirely convinced. Perhaps they remembered Merkel’s predecessor, Helmut Kohl, who in 1990 had promised that unification would lead to “blossoming landscapes” in the eastern part of the country. The reality, of course, was the opposite. The West German taxpayers would have to pay the bills for decades to come while in the east, resentment continued to grow only to erupt in substantial support for the AfD.

Under the circumstances, German skepticism in 2015 was quite understandable. In early 2016, around 80% of the population concern that the government had lost control over the refugee situation; among AfD supporters, it was virtually 100%. As expected, the radical right made the refugee crisis the central focus of their mobilization — a winning strategy, as the party’s success in subsequent elections demonstrated. But in the end, Merkel prevailed; early that the refugee influx would lead to major social problems were largely , and, in late 2018, a of Germany’s public agreed that the chancellor had done a good job with respect to her refugee policy.

With Merkel, the CDU moved to the left — or so her critics have . Others have that the left-wing turn of the CDU is largely a myth. The reality is somewhere in between. Empirical studies that in the aftermath of reunification, all major German parties gradually moved to the center. With reunification, Germany added millions of citizens from a socialist regime whose value system and views on major social issues, such as abortion and homosexuality, were considerably to the left of the dominant value system that prevailed in the western part of the country. As a result, the conservative ideational elements in the CDU got progressively weakened, provoking from the party’s right wing. A from 2017  (but based on interviews held before the refugee crisis of 2015) found that CDU members largely agreed. They saw their own party “distinctly to the left” of their own position and that way before Merkel’s now-famous “Wir schaffen das.”

Grey Spots

Yet against all party-internal resistance and opposition, despite calls for her to hand in her resignation, Merkel once again prevailed — a remarkable feat in these turbulent times. Future historians are likely to consider Angela Merkel’s 15-year tenure in an overall positive light. To be sure, there are grey spots, such as Germany’s handling of the fallout of the financial crisis of 2007-08 and, more recently, Berlin’s intransigence with regard to Italian pleas for “Corona bonds” during the first wave of the pandemic.

Another grey spot regards the question of gender equality. Officially, the European Union has been committed to gender mainstreaming since the mid-1990s. More often than not, the results are wide off the mark, particularly in Germany. To be sure, even here critics would that Merkel has “contributed fundamentally to the recognition of women as leaders and decision-makers in Germany.”

In other essential areas of gender politics, her record is rather dismal. Her government did little to nothing to narrow the pay gap between men and women or to do away with Germany’s “anachronistic tax system” that privileges married couples “as long as one of the two (usually the husband) has a high income and the other one (usually the wife) earns little or nothing.” And actual reforms, for instance regarding child care and parental leave, were less intended to promote gender equality than to enhance the position of the family, in line with traditional Christian Democratic doctrine.

The record was equally dismal with regard to public life. As a from late 2018 put online by the Federal Center for Political Education noted, in the course of Merkel’s tenure, the number of women in her cabinets progressively declined, from 40% in her first cabinet to 30% in her fourth. At the same time, the CDU failed to attract new women members. In 2018, women made up around 25% of party ranks.

Things were not any better with respect to the composition of Germany’s Bundestag. At the end of the red-Green coalition in 2005, the share of women MPs had been more than 40%. After the election of 2017, it had fallen to a bit more than 30%. In the Christian Democratic parliamentary group, women made up barely 20%. And although Merkel appointed a woman as defense minister, the most important ministries — interior, foreign affairs and finance — in the hands of men.

This was to a large extent also true for Germany’s civil service. In 2020, 35% of top positions in the public sector were held by women. And, as the ministry for justice and consumer protection recently “the higher up in the hierarchy, the lower the share of women.” But at least here, change is underway. By 2025, all senior positions are supposed to have closed the gender gap.

Klimakanzlerin

If Germany is a laggard with regard to gender equality, it has prided itself to be a leader when it comes to the environment. The reality, however, is somewhat different. In fact, when it comes to arguably the greatest global challenge, the fight against global warming and climate change, Angela Merkel has been a major disappointment.

As a reminder: Merkel entered office as a strong advocate of decisive action against climate change. In fact, in the years that followed, German media nicknamed her the “Klimakanzlerin” — climate chancellor. Yet over time, she gradually abandoned her convictions, caving in first to the demands of German’s powerful and then to the coal industry. Germany continues to rely heavily on for the production of energy. To a significant extent, it is the environmentally most disastrous type of coal, .

Lignite power plants are among ���ܰ��DZ��’s worst polluters. Most of them in Germany and Poland. And while a number of EU countries, such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, have decided to stop coal-fired power production by or before 2030, Germany won’t phase out its coal plants until 2038. Mining lignite is an important sector in the southeastern part of former East Germany, in Lusatia, around the city of Cottbus. Electoral considerations, particularly given the AfD’s strength in that part of the country, of course have nothing to do with the Merkel government’s reluctance when it comes to coal. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Overall, Merkel’s climate policy has been suboptimal, to put it mildly. As a former environmental minister , for the government, political opportunism and convenience counted more than tackling an essential problem. That was before the pandemic hit. COVID-19 appears to have caused somewhat of a reconversion. By now, Merkel has once again as the Klimakanzlerin. And for good reasons. COVID-19 has largely been associated with environmental destruction, the dramatic loss of biodiversity and global warming. Polls show that Germans are quite sensitive when it comes to these issues. A found around 85% of the German population not only concerned about these issues, but also willing to make lifestyle changes to “protect the climate.” Under the circumstances, Merkel’s return to her environmentalist roots is hardly surprising. It makes a lot of sense, politically speaking.

Despite a vigorous 15-year resume as chancellor, it is now clear that COVID-19 will define how Merkel will be judged once she leaves office and by how well Germany will master this challenge over the months to come. This might be unfair. After all, Merkel is what Americans call a “lame duck.” But, as Donald Trump so eloquently put it, it is what it is. The German government’s recent frantic attempts to regain control of a situation that has largely spun out of control are an admission of unpreparedness paired with incompetence and mismanagement paired with wishful thinking. In March 2020, Merkel on national television that COVID-19 represented the “greatest challenge since the Second World War.” She was right.

As long as Merkel holds Germany’s most powerful political position, she is in charge and ultimately bears responsibility. At the moment, a large majority of Germans have full confidence that once again, she will be at the top of her game and handle the challenge. It is to be hoped that their confidence is justified.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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One democratic process affected by the COVID-19 pandemic around the world was elections. Indeed, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, elections have been in at least 67 nations around the globe. Central and Eastern Europe was no exception. Serbia’s parliamentary election, originally set for April 26, was postponed by two months even though it was boycotted by much of the opposition due to the steady decline of democracy and media freedom in the country, resulting in a turnout of less than 50%.

The controversial election secured for President Aleksandar Vucic with over 60% of the vote, granting his Serbian Progressive Party 190 seats in the country’s 250-seat parliament. As a result of the election and in-person voting, while the rest of Europe is now in its second wave of the pandemic, Serbia is now in its .

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Leading up to the elections in Poland, the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party to the constitution to postpone the election for two years due to the pandemic, automatically extending President Andrzej Duda’s term in office. In the end, elections were held in June and July, with Duda narrowly beating the opposition Civic Platform’s candidate.

Beyond elections, the pandemic has been used to mask legal and constitutional changes in the region. In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s government first passed the during the first wave of the pandemic, effectively giving the prime minister the power to rule by decree. The government’s first action was to pass a that transgender people only be recognized by their sex at birth. The government also announced that disseminating “fake news” about the pandemic or the government’s response to it was a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

As a result, although no one has yet been charged under the new laws, several people were after criticizing the government on social media, which some commentators likened to being picked up by the driven by the secret police during the communist era.

In November, as the country entered its second wave of the pandemic, the Orban government announced the Second Authorization Act for a period of 90 days. The following day, proposed were announced that would make it mandatory for children to be raised amid “Christian cultural values,” defining the mother as female and the father as male, as well as prohibiting changing gender after birth. These bar same-sex couples from adopting, but single parents can request an exemption through special ministerial permission.

Additionally, one minute before midnight on the day before new curfew measures went into effect, the government proposed a , making it impossible for coalitions to contest elections, effectively wiping out the opposition.

At the same time that Hungary adopted its first Authorization Act, Poland adopted the Act on Special Solutions Related to the Prevention, Counteracting and Combating of COVID-19, which was ultimately used by the Polish government and PiS to . A few weeks later, the “” bill was enacted by the Polish parliament. Already among the strictest abortion laws in Europe, the high court’s October ruling that it was unconstitutional to abort a fetus with congenital defects effectively , bar in the case of incest, rape or a danger to the mother’s health.

This new ruling was met with around the country, even spreading to church services in the devoutly Catholic Poland and seeing as many as 100,000 people on the streets of the capital Warsaw. This attack on women’s health was also met by a push to leave the European , known as the Istanbul Convention, citing that it is “harmful” for children to be taught about gender in schools. Hungary refused to ratify the treaty in May, “destructive gender ideologies” and “illegal migration.”

It is likely that what the world is seeing in these countries is what Ozan Varol calls “” that “serves as a way to protect and entrench power when direct repression is not a viable option,” with the ultimate goal of creating a one-party state. The pandemic seems to be helping authoritarian leaders to secure their grip on power. In Serbia, Vucic gained popularity during the first wave and, even after criticism from the opposition and supporters alike, Orban in Hungary, as shown in a recent poll.

Findings from interviews carried out as part of a project, , funded by the Economic & Social Research Council suggest that while people were predominantly supportive of democracy in the months before the pandemic, some of those interviewed in Hungary, Poland and Serbia during the first wave in the spring seemed to have a change of heart, expressing more sympathies toward authoritarian forms of government. This trend is worrying, as it shows the potential effects that crisis can have on democratic values. These abuses of power in Central and Eastern Europe cannot be ignored. It is crucial to pay attention to how these times of crisis can further exacerbate the already existing illiberal tendencies across the region.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In an excellent article examining recent developments in France, Glenn Greenwald is far when he suggests that the proudly authoritarian Macron is acting either “out of political calculation, conviction or some combination of both.” For the past three years, most people in France have been wondering whether in fact their president has any convictions beyond electoral calculations. Just ask the gilets jaunes, whose legacy is far from over. The yellow vests have been seen reemerging to accompany the current protests against Macron’s new law on global security.

To defend his policies, Macron has frequently quoted Jean Baubérot, a historian of ����ï������é, the French ideology of secularism. In an with the journal L’Obs, Baubérot excoriates the president, notably calling into question Macron’s pompous invocation of the “values” of “la République.” But as Baubérot notes, Macron’s idea of values “could disguise less than honorable intentions.” At the same time, the historian reminds the president that values are communicated by “convincing rather than constraining.”

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Baudérot goes even further when he compares Macron to the revolutionaries of France’s Reign of Terror who worshipped the goddess of reason. He accuses Macron of attempting to turn ����ï������é itself into “a goddess of which France would be her chosen people.” No one has forgotten Macron’s ambition of becoming a Jupiterian leader. The supreme god must have his goddesses. 

Macron’s pagan religion is clearly incompatible with Islam, but, as and have pointed out, it is also incompatible with democratic rights and especially the freedom of expression. Roy points out that Macron’s latest initiatives brutally stifle the freedom of expression of schoolchildren as well as of an entire community bullied into conformity.

The Times editorial board thinks that the issues Macron is concerned about “should be open to debate, both within France and among mature democracies.” In an effort to sound conciliatory, The Times agrees that “the debate cannot cross into any notion that any victim of Islamist terror ‘had it coming.’ Mr. Macron is right to reject any such suggestion.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Had it coming:

An expression used by individuals and even political leaders — such as George W. Bush with regard to Saddam Hussein or Hillary Clinton with regard to Muammar Gaddafi — to justify not only acts of war but also their own gruesome terrorist methods.

Contextual Note

The Times editorial board politely makes its own significant point about President Macron’s simplistic approach to complex problems when it notes that “he goes too far in seeing malicious insult throughout the ‘Anglo-American media.’” Macron may not like this critique, but most lucid observers agree he “had it coming.” And it may be getting worse with the approach of the 2022 election.

As he always does, Emmanuel Macron insists on keeping his word — not to others, but to himself. This is his idea of remaining consistent with his convictions. He does so, especially when those who are directly concerned by his authoritarian measures express their disagreement. He then has no choice but to wait for the explosion and watch everything go up in flames.

That is what happened when he chose to repeal France’s wealth tax and compensate by raising the tax on gas. It led to the yellow vest revolt. He claimed that it was all about ecology when it was essentially a means of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor. It happened again with the stubborn promotion of retirement reform. The imminent explosion was only averted by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March that halted the legislative process.

Even when Macron proclaimed that Islam was in crisis to justify putting France on a war footing against 10% of its own citizens, he admitted that the nation had failed its Muslim population by permitting their effective ghettoization, marginalizing most young Muslims. And concerning the depredations of the police, he admitted, in an , a media popular among the young, that “today, when the color of someone’s skin isn’t white, they will be much more subject to police controls.”&�Բ�����;

In the Brut interview, Macron characterized his proposed law to counter Islamic separatism as an attempt to “rearm the Republic against the supporters of radical Islam.” Who could not hear in this remark an echo of “The Marseillaise,” “Aux armes, citoyens”? Like with regard to Muammar Gaddafi, Macron seems to be anticipating the day when he will be able to chortle and say, “We came, we saw, [they] died.” While he admits that “French style integration failed,” he appears only to imagine a military-style response to that failure.

Le Monde shows itself less indulgent than Greenwald on the possibility that Macron may be acting on principle. The newspaper comments that “during this free-flowing interview [with Brut], Mr Macron took the position of defending his record, with his eyes riveted on the 2022 election.” A French might be tempted to sum it up this way: “It’s the election, stupid.”

Macron even allowed himself to enter into a spat with the writer, cineaste and ecological activist Cyril Dion, who had the temerity to remind the president that, in the wake of the yellow vest consultations, Macron had promised but failed to take on board the propositions of a committee of 150 citizens representing the full diversity of France. The president has now summarily dismissed the issue with a remark intended to sound insulting to anyone not belonging to the church of the goddess ����ï������é: “Because 150 citizens wrote something, that doesn’t mean it’s the Bible or the Koran.”

Historical Note

The New York Times, as the voice of modern liberalism, has become hypersensitive to the question of diversity and racial justice. This may simply be a consequence of its alignment with the Democratic Party, which sees identity politics as the unique theme legitimizing its brand of “progressivism.” This focus on a single theme allows it to dispense with the need to show undue concern with distracting issues such as the militarism of the US empire, the trampling of civil liberties by the intelligence community or the need for economic justice in an increasingly indifferent capitalist plutocracy. 

Consistent with this logic, in its response to Macron, The Times offers the truism that “racism and Islamophobia are major problems in France, as they are in the United States, Britain and elsewhere in the Western world.” Though obvious to everyone, it subtly suggests that Macron’s claim to universalism sounds more like French exceptionalism than a commitment to universal human rights.

And The Times is absolutely right. The universalist “republican” values Macron embraces contain the idea that its institutions are color blind. On the instructions of the Ministry of the Interior, the police may or may not be color blind, but they are not blind. They have two eyes to see with, whenever they decide to stop someone in the street. Likewise, employers can discriminate when they see the name of a candidate on a resumé or at least discover the truth during the interview. In other words, France and the US both have a problem of white privilege, but they manage it — poorly, in both cases — in contrasting ways.

The Times concludes by celebrating its vocation as a truth-teller ready to take on the challenge of racial justice: “That’s what the news media does, at home and abroad. It is its function and duty to ask questions about the roots of racism, ethnic anger and the spread of Islamism among Western Muslims, and to critique the effectiveness and impact of government policies.” The Times’ performance at this task has, over time, produced variable results. It still hasn’t admitted its complicity in the ongoing humanitarian disaster provoked by Bush’s wars in the Middle East. But with regard to Emmanuel Macron, we can congratulate it for showing the courage to stick to its principles.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In Macron’s eyes, French Muslims have failed to prove the sincerity of their expected conversion to France’s national religion of ������������é, or secularism, that has now definitively supplanted the traditional role of the Catholic Church. To outdo Le Pen, he deviated the blame to the world’s entire Muslim population, claiming that Islam was in the thralls of a global crisis that offended French republican sensibilities. Its credo of “equality, liberty, fraternity” now excluded tolerance for any group of people who did not unanimously adopt all its trappings. Fraternity has its limits.

Even before the gruesome assaults on a schoolteacher and three citizens in a church in Nice that horrified the French nation, through his rhetoric about a global Islamic threat, Macron managed to convince a number of governments in Muslim countries that France was at war with their religion. Several nations responded by recommending a boycott of French products.

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Some went further. Since Macron felt himself in a position to signal their crisis, some Muslim authorities were tempted to focus on his own. Noticing that the French president was proposing increasingly authoritarian laws that had the effect of targeting Muslim children in schools, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari penned a tweet Macron’s proposed laws, which included attributing ID numbers to school children, to the Nazi policy of requiring Jews to wear yellow stars.

Mazari initially made the accusation on the basis of an article that was later amended to state that the IDs would be required for all children, not just Muslims. The reform aimed at obliging every child in France to receive civic instruction teaching them the “values of the Republic.” Those values include celebrating the publication of insulting cartoons that may even express bigotry and limiting the freedom to don clothing or symbols that may signify affiliation with a religion other than republicanism. Because France’s values are universal, they trump anyone else’s particular values. Conformity is a core republican value.

France’s Foreign Ministry wasted no time reacting to Mazari’s comparison of the new measures with Nazi practices. NBC News’s on the story read: “France ‘deeply shocked’ as Pakistan minister compares Macron to Nazis.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Deeply shocked:

1. Morally offended

2. Embarrassingly surprised that one has been found out

Contextual Note

In the film “,” Captain Renault, the French chief of the local police under German occupation gives the order to shut down Rick’s Café, a nightclub where he spends most of his evenings. When Rick, the American owner of the café played by Humphrey Bogart, asks why, Renault replies “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on here” just as the croupier arrives to give him his winnings.

The French Foreign Ministry didn’t quite frame the message in the same terms as Captain Renault. NBC reports that “the minister spoke in ‘deeply shocking and insulting terms’ of Macron and the whole of France.” The ministry added, “These hateful words are blatant lies, imbued with an ideology of hatred and violence.” Clearly, Mazari had fallen into the trap of (citing Nazis invalidates any argument) and the ministry jumped on it.

France’s proposed law clearly applies the French anti-discriminatory republican rule that procedures must apply equally and uniformly to everyone. Unlike the policies of the Nazi regime, it doesn’t seek to exclude or eliminate groups of people considered different. Marine Le Pen’s party might be tempted to envisage measures of exclusion, but not France’s traditional parties. Not even Macron’s non-traditional Republic on the Move, which was cobbled together in 2017 by attracting a variety of traditional personalities from the political establishment to provide the president with a majority in parliament.

The republican credo elevates universal civic values to the level of an alternative moral system, replacing all the traditional bases of morality, including the Christian principles of compassion, non-violence and concern for the oppressed. Universality implies uniformity. Individuals must show themselves not so much worthy of their neighbors and their community, but of the republic itself. In that sense, the spirit of the new policies put forward by Macron do vaguely resemble Hitler’s belief in a singular Aryan ideal.

Historical Note

Macron’s vision of la république takes Charles de Gaulle’s meme of to “a certain idea of France” beyond mere aspiration. Macron seeks to codify and monitor the behavior of individuals, who must now prove their conformity with the civic ideal.

Recently, China’s President Xi Jinping inveighed against a trend that when translated into English is rendered as “splitism.” China is an immense country with a dominant ethnic group, the Han, and the ambition to control territory that includes other ethnicities and cultures. China enjoys the security that comes from governing a population that not only believes in its overwhelming ethnic unity but also, largely as a reaction to its humiliation by Western powers in the 19^th century, embraces a fervent form of nationalism. This has permitted Xi in the 21^st century to consolidate and reinforce the authoritarianism that Mao Zedong had pushed to a chaotic extreme half a century ago.

Macron’s links his idea of Muslim separatism in France to the entire Muslim world. This curiously echoes Xi’s complaint about “splitism.” The two ideas are fundamentally different, of course, since Xi worries that the cultures and traditions of autonomous regions, such as Tibet or Xinjiang, might lead to movements of political independence. No risk exists in France of a Muslim nation splitting off, whereas in the past, there have been very real threats of Breton, Alsatian or Basque separatism.

Historically, France achieved a sense of national unity by imposing the French language on its linguistically diversified regions. Forcing children whose native language was Breton, Alsatian, Basque or Occitan to think in French and imagine themselves as descendants of the Gauls (who obviously didn’t speak French) led to the virtual disappearance of the regional languages. Macron probably sees this historical reality as a policy that paid off in the end. Why not apply it to another important component of contemporary French demography: Muslims?

Macron is now discovering that there are a number of problems with this approach. Unlike Basques or Bretons, French Muslims are geographically dispersed across the nation. The history of their relations with the French formerly colonialist nation is extremely complex. And the fact that it is their religion rather than their ethnicity or their geographical origin that defines them means that treating them as a coherent group is not just perilous, but impossible, especially if the reasoning is restricted to France itself. An important part of their identity derives from a global community that is also extremely diverse.

This may help to explain why Macron believes that Islam is in a crisis. Someone who has a “certain idea” of France itself expects other nations and groups of people to have a certain idea of themselves. For the universalist republican Macron, anything that isn’t uniform and unified must be in a state of crisis.

By taking on the entire Muslim world, Macron may end up disastrously achieving the goal of unifying Muslims by posing as their common enemy. His policies that now insist on shaping all young Muslims in France into the universalist republican mold is creating rather than resolving tension. For one thing, it inevitably provokes more irrational attacks by unhinged fanatics — and every community has its unhinged fanatics.

Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut writing in The New York Times call the system Macron is putting in place “,” a policing campaign that now focuses on Muslim children as young as 10. Teachers have been instructed to denounce children who show signs of thinking differently about the values of the republic. It has already left numerous children “traumatized” and fearful to speak freely in class for fear of being suspected of terrorist intentions. That is how, in the wake of drama surrounding the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, France promotes its republican version of “freedom of expression.”&�Բ�����;

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Rapid Growth of Emmanuel Macron’s Authoritarianism appeared first on 51�Թ�.

As one of the rare French leaders to be reasonably fluent in English, Macron was able to track what he sees as the half-assed, unfunny, gratuitously insulting reporting of the English-speaking press concerning his noble mission. After reading comments made in the Financial Times and Politico, his growing ire impelled him to pick up his phone and call Ben Smith, a highly regarded journalist at The New York Times, to make sure that his imperious voice would be heard on the other side of the Atlantic.

Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

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Ben Smith doesn’t hide his surprise at receiving an from a man who has no small opinion of the importance of his office. He dutifully reports the president’s concern: “So when I see, in that context, several newspapers which I believe are from countries that share our values — journalists who write in a country that is the heir to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — when I see them legitimizing this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic, then I say the founding principles have been lost.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Share our values:

Follow the dogmas of our secular religion.

Contextual Note

The complaint that the anglophone media has been unjust to him is not something that Macron discovered on his own. On October 29, Princeton professor Bernard Haykel published an in Le Monde taking to task the reporting of both The New York Times and The Washington Post for treating the recent beheading of Samuel Paty — a French teacher who showed his students the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Prophet Muhammad as part of a class on freedom of speech —  as a crime rather than as a significant political event reflecting the actions of a global conspiracy. Haykel some notoriety in the US in 2015 when he publicly complained, as did many Republicans, that “President Obama refused to use the word ‘Islamic’ to describe the brutal group calling itself the ‘Islamic State.’”

Oddly, Haykel himself, in a , called the Islamic State the result of “an expression of this humiliation, this rage, this sense of disenfranchisement that hundreds of millions of Muslims feel.” In other words, the problem is essentially political and not religious.

Why did Macron wait till now to vent his spleen by calling Ben Smith? Perhaps he believes that the defeat of President Donald Trump has removed the influence of The Donald’s evangelical voters from the corridors of power in Washington. With Joe Biden’s election, Macron can now assume that the college-educated Americans who elected the Democrat are ready to align behind Macron’s brand of Enlightenment-inspired aggressive Eurocentrism that privileges the idea of a clash of civilizations. Macron is not asking The Times for more accurate reporting of events. He wants English-speakers in the US and the UK to adhere to his personal worldview. The French journal Le Point offered this of the French president’s conversation with Ben Smith: “For the President of the Republic, the journalists of these media organizations do not understand the French context in which these events occurred.”

Is Macron ready to teach them the truth and help them understand? In his inimitable Jupiterian style, consistent with that of a 19^th-century “����ï��,” or schoolmaster, rather than with teaching, he prefers dictating. As Smith reports, “Mr. Macron argues that there are big questions at the heart of the matter.” It appears to be a clash of civilizations within Western civilization. “Our model is universalist, not multiculturalist.” This is Macron’s way of saying that we are right and you are wrong. “Universalist” means one culture possesses the rules that apply everywhere. “Multiculturalist” means anarchy, chaos, or what Charles de Gaulle once the “chienlit.”

As a journalist concerned with respecting the context, Smith insists on the importance of paying attention to the pragmatic as well as the abstract: “Such abstract ideological distinctions can seem distant from the everyday lives of France’s large ethnic minorities, who complain of police abuse, residential segregation and discrimination in the workplace.” Smith recounts how the conversation ended, with Macron’s concluding suggestion, “My message here is: If you have any question on France, call me.”

Monsieur Macron, after all, is “le president,” the man with all the answers. When back in 2018 Fox News journalist Chris Wallace the question, “So what is the best part of being the president of France?” Macron replied, “Deciding.”&�Բ�����;The universalist Macron especially likes to decide how others should live their lives and report their news. 

Historical Note

Throughout history, even the most powerful despots, skilled at stifling literary production at home, have rarely attempted to censor the foreign press. But when a 21^st-century monarch claiming to represent universal values senses danger abroad, no choice remains but to inform The New York Times, after which order may be restored.

Macron’s concern highlights a curious historical phenomenon that helps explain the persistence of institutional racism in both France and the United States. For a long time, Christian fundamentalism provided the core justification of racism in the US. Over time, it became secularized and merged with the political idea of Manifest Destiny, thanks to which a white Christian population was fated to conquer a continent and eventually lead the world.

The rationalist tradition inaugurated by the French Enlightenment provides a different brand of racism, one based on admiration of the achievements of white civilization. The ideas circulating in France in the 18^th century contributed to the founding of the US, a nation whose economy to a large extent depended on the maintenance of slavery. All men may have been created equal but only some acquire property, enabling them to become more equal than others. And since blacks cannot aspire to property, they are clearly not equal at all. When revolutionary France embraced “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” it abolished any religious rationale to justify slavery. At the same time, it began its a concept invented to justify a century and a half of brutal colonialism, especially in Africa. 

The chaotic revolutionary and Napoleonic eras ended with the restoration of monarchy. Christian missionaries now had their role to play, civilizing the dark populations of the world. But the colonizers focused primarily on Enlightenment values that supported the idea of efficient, profitable economic exploitation of other peoples and their resources.

The French were inviting others into the classroom of civilization, demonstrating their eagerness to dictate universalist values to peoples who, as Nicolas Sarkozy in his notorious address in Dakar, never “fully entered into history … never really launched themselves into the future.” Racism was already a vibrant feature of the Enlightenment. In a recent for Foreign Policy on Voltaire, generally revered as the paragon of tolerance, French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani pointed to the philosopher’s portrayal of Africans in his 1769 work “Les Lettres d’Amabed” as “‘animals’ with a ‘flat black nose with little or no intelligence!’” She cites other luminaries of the period, pointing out that such judgments were “typical of Enlightenment philosophers, who provided disturbing justifications for the hatred of racial and religious groups.”

Ben Smith notes that Macron’s “larger claim is that, after the attacks, English and American outlets immediately focused on failures in France’s policy toward Muslims rather than on the global terror threat.” How dare the foreign press choose its own approach to reporting the news? How dare it take into account the complete context of a dramatic event rather than focusing on what every politician knows the news media prefer to report on: gore, human suffering and the paranoia they inspire?

Perhaps Macron hopes The New York Times will do for him what it did for Joe Biden out of fear of Trump’s being reelected. Marine Le Pen is France’s Trump. Promoting paranoid theories, as The Times did with Russiagate, is the best way to ensure the centrist will defeat the enemy on the right.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron’s Problem With the News in English appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Muslims Will Not Kill God for Marianne

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Samuel Paty, a schoolteacher who showed his students the derogatory cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that inspired the 2015 attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, was killed by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, Abdoullakh Anzorov. When French President Emmanuel Macron  the display of the cartoons, which are considered by Muslims to be extremely offensive, as a matter of freedom of expression, the ongoing tension between the French state and its roughly 6 million-strong Muslim population (or 10%) is, in fact, a manifestation of a much deeper crisis, heralding what seems to be a growing trend across Western civilization.

French Islam

For France, the issue has its roots in the country’s domestic and international politics. The concept of radical assimilation has been a part of France’s governance tradition since its colonial reign. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, in Francophone Africa, the natives were considered “French” and “civilized” as long as they rejected their own cultures in favor of that of the colonial power.

The same mentality applies to the immigrants who have moved to France from former African colonies, particularly Algeria, Tunisia, and those countries across . This strict interpretation of the assimilation policy is further  at home by the rigorous redefinition of French secularism, or ����ï������é, whereby the visibility of religion, particularly Islam, is suppressed in the public sphere, and the responsibility of immigrants, and Muslims in particular, is to demonstrate their attachment to French values and culture.

The suppression of religion in the public sphere has created enormous friction between the secular state and Muslims, whose faith requires observance around the clock. For example, the  of Muslims who have had to pray in the streets due to lack of mosques has become commonplace. In a striking display of French secularism, a Muslim woman was  on a beach in Cannes in 2016 by police to remove her Islamic burkini and given a citation for “wearing an outfit that disrespects good morals and secularism.” France’s aggressive attempt to create nationwide equality has naturally  to repression of diversity, forcing Muslims to retreat to ghettoized suburbs. This in turn created discrimination and a fear of social rejection among France’s rapidly growing Muslim population.

This brings us to how Islam is viewed in France. Much as across Europe, Islam is the faith in France. French Muslims are much younger and have considerably more children than other French nationals. Correspondingly, Christianity in France is in free fall. According to the survey by St. Mary’s University, London, only 25% of the French between the ages of 16 and 29  as Christian. What is even more concerning for the French state is that the number of people converting to Islam is on the rise as well. Out of France’s 6 million Muslims, 200,000 are  to be converts, among whom are celebrity figures such as the rapper  and footballer Franck Ribery. Conversion to Islam is particularly prevalent among women, which has  a body of research examining this trend.

The increasing demographic disparity between Islam and Christianity, coupled with an increasing refugee influx from Muslim countries, has given rise to the  that within two generations, Muslims are going to be the majority in Europe. Naturally, this argument has been used by right-wing politicians across Europe. France is no exception. Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, has skillfully used this argument throughout her political career. In the first round of the 2017 French presidential elections, Le Pen garnered a sizable 21.3% of the vote against Emmanuel Macron’s 24%, only to lose in the run-off election. The 2017 election clearly showed that right-wing politics are on the rise in France and elsewhere in Europe.

Macron’s harsh stance toward French Muslims should also be seen from this angle. In the 2022 French presidential race, Macron is expected to seek a second term against Le Pen, his most likely contender. To the president’s dismay, the current  suggest that at 26%, Le Pen has an edge over his 25%. This being the case, the incumbent Macron is clearly courting the far-right constituency by adopting Islamophobic policies that would be expected from a Le Pen presidency.

More Problems

The current atmosphere is highly conducive for a further rise of the far right across Europe. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was facilitated by the Great Depression of 1929 and its devastating impact on Germany. Likewise, the 2008 global financial crisis jolted the West so much that we have been  the demise of the center-left and the gradual rise of the radical right in Poland, Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States.

Macron’s current effort to elevate Islam as France’s biggest problem should also be seen as an attempt to distract the public from his failures at home and abroad. The rapidly deteriorating economy, austerity measures, heavy taxation and the proposed pension reform have inspired the yellow vests movement that has been staging violent demonstrations against the government since 2018. Abroad, France appears to be  in its never-ending wars in former African colonies as French pile up. In , Macron has failed to secure warlord Khalifa Haftar’s rule. In the East Mediterranean, France has failed to secure the interests of Greece, an ally.

There is one country that France has had to unsuccessfully counter in the above-mentioned regions: Turkey. It is for this reason that Macron has consistently perceived Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his archrival and increased his . Furthermore, Erdogan, at the moment the most outspoken critic of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, is the only world leader who can influence Muslims in France, and Macron knows it. Erdogan’s call on Muslims for a worldwide boycott of French products prompted the French government’s  to the Muslim world to denounce the boycott. While the economic effect of the boycott is not known yet, Macron seems to be his tone on the cartoon issue.               

France’s unsuccessful assimilation policies, rapidly deteriorating economy, failed foreign policy alongside the ensuing rise of the far right have all contributed to the current demonization of Muslims in the country. As Western values such as democracy, human rights and equality are losing relevance, there is little hope that this trend will change any time soon.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What Is Behind the Rise of Islamophobia in France? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Is Peace Religious or Secular?

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The Muslim world’s reaction to Macron’s crusade has been one of stunned bewilderment. In an with Al Jazeera on Saturday, the president offered no apologies and instead sought to explain his motives: “I understand the sentiments being expressed and I respect them. But you must understand my role right now, it’s to do two things: to promote calm and also to protect these rights.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Promote calm:

Engage in any action — however ill-conceived, unjust or destructive — that affords peace of mind to a politician worried about his diminishing chances of winning the next election.

Contextual Note

Can President Macron be serious when he says that his actions and discourse have served to promote calm? Has the world or France itself become calmer since his speech at the beginning of October, when he declared that Islam was in crisis globally? Can he be unaware that when a Western leader announces what Al Jazeera describes as “his plan ‘to reform Islam’ in order to make it more compatible with his country’s republican values,” some may interpret that as a sign of aggression against their culture by a European who appears to have retained a neocolonial mindset?

Does Macron believe that by providing a supplementary motive to unhinged individuals driven by fanaticism and ready to engage in murderous violence against his own people he is promoting calm and protecting rights? President Donald Trump might claim the same thing when he encourages white supremacists and the police to attack protesters in the name of “.” The only logical perspective that could lead to calm in the struggle he describes would be total victory. In other words, crushing and humiliating the other side. But even that would be a failed plan. Humiliation brings short-term peace but sets the stage for major revolt as soon as the winner’s grip begins to loosen.

Macron proudly announces: “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw.” The only threat to that freedom can come from institutions with the power to repress it, not from individuals who react irrationally to what some people write, think and draw. Macron’s language is fundamentally dishonest. The controversy that has been going on for over a decade is not about the right to speak, think and draw. It concerns the possible social consequences of publishing, disseminating and amplifying messages that some may interpret as an expression of hateful and discriminatory intimidation. 

Jules Ferry, the virulently anticlerical father of ����ï������é, created France’s modern public education system. As minister of education in 1883, he to speak “with the greatest reserve, whenever you risk even brushing against a religious sentiment of which you are not the judge.” He insisted that if “a single honest man may take offense at what you are going to say … abstain from saying it.” Macron has a different reading of ����ï������é. In fact, the controversy turns around a bigger problem at the core of today’s civilization: the role of the media. In its quest to increase its audience, the media routinely amplifies every difference of opinion or quarrel that it presents as a cause to be defended, on one side or the other. In such circumstances, every word and gesture may be perceived as a provocation of the other side. 

By way of contrast, in a society that encourages healthy dialogue and debate, friction and tension will inevitably exist, but they contribute to building a culture of tolerance and open exchange. Social dialogue can have its ugly moments, as parties directly challenge each other. But respectful dialogue creates networks of understanding rather than pockets of conflict. As soon as debates are turned into defending “a cause,” dialogue disappears.

Causes kill debate by invoking a higher principle that often exists only in the purveyor’s mind. Emmanuel Macron’s formulation of the idea of freedom is far more absolute than its actual practice in France, where restrictions on freedom of speech, including libel and hate speech, incitement to violence and insulting public servants, exist and are enforced. Jules Ferry would have expected his teachers to reflect on whether the Charlie Hebdo cartoons fell into any of those categories.

French political culture has traditionally reserved a special status for satire. Its preservation ensures that the people may criticize the government and institutions of authority. The government is free to counter with its own arguments but runs the risk of being held to account if it goes too far in restricting citizens’ rights. The cartoons in question had nothing to do with the questioning of national authorities. They were much closer to nationalistic propaganda.

The controversy over the cartoons appears to cross an invisible borderline between satire and gratuitous and xenophobic insult. There is no readily identifiable borderline but a culture that pretends to be as rational as France’s vaunted Enlightenment culture claims to be should acknowledge the reality of the borderline. Even in his attempt at an apology in the Al Jazeera interview, Macron clearly refuses to do so.

It is a well-known fact that politicians distort everything to attain their ends. It is part of their job profile. Macron distorts even the idea of distorting. He complains about “distortions” that led people “to believe that the caricatures were a creation of the French state.” That is clearly a distortion on his part. No serious voice has made that claim. He then generously notes that “in the world there are people who distort Islam and in the name of this religion that they claim to defend, they kill, they slaughter.”&�Բ�����;That may be true, but the effect of his speeches has been to distort the nature what he calls the “global crisis” of Islam.

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, sagely and humbly expresses the wish that Macron “should begin to improve the atmosphere between France, Europe, and the Muslim world.” Bishara nevertheless implies that is unlikely. On this occasion, he doesn’t mention the reason why, which he is well aware of. There will be a new presidential election in 18 months.

Historical Note

Samuel Paty, the assassinated teacher at the heart of all this, undoubtedly believed that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, originally published in 2015, belonged to history and could be treated as artifacts of the past when he presented them in a civics class. After all, political cartoons published in newspapers are essentially ephemera. They quickly disappear from everyone’s cultural memory. The Greeks understand that since their word for newspaper is εφημε��ίδα — ephemerida. 

If Paty believed that the cartoons belonged only to the past, he was wrong. Because of the media’s and politicians’ obsession with causes and the fact that the Charlie Hebdo murder trial was currently underway, the issues around the cartoons were very much alive. 

In the late 20^th century, Ireland endured a prolonged conflict between Protestants and Catholics marked by terrorism. The IRA was better organized and better equipped than any of today’s loose Muslim extremist networks. We might wonder today whether it would have made any sense for Protestant cartoonists to publish cartoons of the pope as a terrorist? (They obviously could not have taken Jesus as their target because both of the warring religions were Christian). 

The answer is simple. It didn’t happen. Everyone understood the conflict had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with communities and conflicting loyalties. This is perfectly illustrated in a joke from that time: It’s night and a man is walking on the streets of Belfast. Suddenly a shadowy figure leaps out and thrusts him against a wall in a dark alley. He feels a gun pressed up against his skull. A voice shouts, “What religion are you?” He thinks: “If I say Catholic and he’s Protestant, he’ll kill me. If I say Protestant and he’s Catholic, I’m dead.” Thinking quickly, he said, “I’m Jewish.” He then heard the voice blurt out, “I must be the luckiest Palestinian in Ulster.”

Now that is meaningful and effective satire. Though troubling, it can elicit a laugh from people of any religion. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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President Lukashenko can rely on the state apparatus and the security forces, whose loyalty stems in part from fear of prosecution under a new leader. Lukashenko himself is determined to avoid the fate of leaders like Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan and Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, who were driven into exile following “color revolutions.”

Belarus Is Not a Unique Case

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This stalemate is replicated at the international level. While the European Union refuses to recognize the result of the presidential election, the Kremlin regards Lukashenko as the legitimately elected leader. Moscow refuses to talk with the Coordination Council founded by the opposition presidential candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. The EU, for its part, interacts mainly with representatives of the protest movement because Minsk flatly rejects mediation initiatives from the West.

Currently, only Russia regards Lukashenko’s announcement of constitutional reform and early elections as a path out of the political crisis. All other actors dismiss his constitutional initiative as merely an attempt to gain time.

Constitutional Reform as a Starting Point

In fact, a constitutional reform could offer a solution. But it would have to be flanked by confidence-building measures and guarantees. The following aspects should be considered:

• An end to all forms of violence and repression against peaceful demonstrators; no prosecutions for protest-related offenses
• Release of all political prisoners, give an option of return for all exiles and deportees; reinstatement of persons dismissed from state employment
• Convocation of a constitutional assembly integrating all relevant political and social groups
• Constitutional reform to be completed within a maximum of 12 months
• Parallel reform of the electoral code to ensure a transparent election process and appointment of a new Central Election Commission
• Free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections in accordance with criteria set by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

The specific details of such a roadmap would have to be clarified in dialogue between the current state leadership and the Coordination Council, with the possibility of both sides agreeing to involve additional societal actors. Mechanisms would be needed to ensure observance.

In this regard, granting all state actors an amnesty would be key. At the same time, acts of violence and repression occurring in the past weeks would need to be documented by an independent body. On the model of the truth and reconciliation commissions employed elsewhere, a reappraisal of recent history could lay the groundwork for a moderated process — also involving the churches — to overcome the divisions in society. It would also preserve the possibility of later prosecution if the roadmap was not followed.

What the EU Could Do

The European Union could support such a process by suspending the implementation of sanctions as long as the implementation of the roadmap is proceeding. It should also prepare a phased plan to support reforms, the economy and civil society; certain aspects would be implemented immediately, with full implementation following the conclusion of the constitutional reform and new elections.

But the Belarusian actors must be fully in charge of preparing and realizing such a roadmap. International institutions should restrict themselves to advising, upon request, on procedural matters. Such a function could for example be assumed by members of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.

Russia might potentially see benefits in such a scenario. The Kremlin’s backing for Lukashenko risks fostering anti-Russian sentiment in ����������ܲ�’ traditionally pro-Russian society. In the current situation, an extensive integration agreement would be a risky venture for Moscow. Massive Russian subsidies would be needed to cushion the deep economic crisis emerging in Belarus.

Moreover, parts of Russian society could respond negatively if Moscow were to intervene politically, economically and possibly even militarily in Belarus. Conversely, an orderly transformation would allow Moscow to minimize such costs. But that would presuppose the Kremlin factoring societies into its calculations.

This approach would demand substantial concessions from all sides. But the alternative — in the absence of dialogue and compromise — is long-term political instability with a growing risk of violent escalation.

The European Union should therefore use all available channels of communication to encourage a negotiated solution. It should refrain from supporting Baltic and Polish initiatives to treat Tsikhanouskaya as the legitimately elected president of Belarus. That would contradict its approach of not recognizing the election result. It would also exacerbate the risk of transforming a genuinely domestic crisis into a geopolitical conflict.

*[This article was originally  by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Belarus: Is There a Way Out of the Crisis? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Navalny is best-known for his anti-corruption initiatives, particularly the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which is commonly known under its Russian abbreviation FBK. Since its inception in 2011, FBK has evolved into an important independent investigative media outlet by over 15,000 recurring donations from Russian citizens. Although Navalny is not allowed on Russian state-run television, FBK’s video investigations have been watched hundreds of million times on .

In July, Navalny was forced to FBK after a libel lawsuit filed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a US-sanctioned Russian billionaire accused of interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. Prigozhin is seeking 88 million rubles ($1.4 million) from FBK, Navalny and Lyubov Sobol, FBK’s lawyer and a prominent opposition activist. Despite FBK’s liquidation, its team continued to work as usual, and on August 18-20 was filming a in Tomsk, where Navalny is believed to have been poisoned.

Breaking Through the Information Blockade

Navalny’s anti-corruption crusade began in 2008, when he purchased a small number of shares in Russian publicly-traded oil and gas companies, including the majority state-owned Gazprom and Rosneft, and became an activist shareholder. He started publishing into the opaque operations of these companies on LiveJournal, formerly a popular blogging platform in Russia.

Launched in 2011, FBK initially published its reports on Navalny’s LiveJournal page. In 2015, it published its first investigative documentary on Navalny’s YouTube channel, previously used for promoting his Moscow mayoral candidacy in 2013. In the ground-breaking documentary, FBK Russia’s then-Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and his two sons of large-scale corruption, money laundering and links to organized crime figures.

��ܲ�������’s Denials of Navalny’s Poisoning Fall on Deaf Ears

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Since then, FBK has regularly published its investigations on YouTube, pointing out the lavish lifestyles of Russian officials and visualizing complex ownership schemes of their businesses and properties. FBK’s videos were particularly appreciated for their humorous presentation, impressive drone footage of luxury properties and high-quality animations. By keeping the content entertaining and accessible while describing complex fraudulent schemes, Navalny managed to expand his follower base to include people from across the country and its social classes.

In 2017, FBK its best-known documentary, exposing the alleged corrupt activities of ��ܲ�������’s then prime minister and former president, Dmitry Medvedev. The video was viewed over 36 million times as of September 2020. Shortly after the release of this investigation, Navalny’s YouTube channel gained one million subscribers, and Navalny announced the launch of a second YouTube channel, Navalny Live, intended for live streaming.

In June 2017, TIME magazine Navalny in its list of the 25 most influential people on the internet for “breaking through the Kremlin’s information blockade.” Navalny’s two YouTube channels became an influential alternative to state-run television and a vital source of information for many Russians. By September 2020, the two channels accumulated 4 million and 2 million subscribers, respectively.

Transparency and Accountability

FBK is widely credited for its scrupulous work with public records, which is the main source of information for its investigative documentaries. FBK has been actively challenging the common misconception that Russia is an opaque jurisdiction with poor record-keeping. Indeed, Russian authorities collect and publish a wealth of regularly updated data that is readily available free of charge or for a relatively small fee.

FBK’s investigations are often based on information from ��ܲ�������’s official land registry and corporate records as well as wealth declarations published by government officials. Based on open source information, in April 2019, FBK that ��ܲ�������’s longstanding minister of finance, Anton Siluanov, owned a plot of land in the elite Rublevka district outside Moscow and that, taking into account his declared income over the past 10 years, he could not possibly afford it.

Similarly, FBK discovered that a neighboring plot of land is owned by an anonymous “natural person,” according to the official land registry. FBK claimed that the land is owned by the Russian Deputy Minister of Defence Ruslan Tsalikov; the size of the plot was exactly the same as the plot of land Tsalikov mentioned in his wealth declaration. Once again, FBK concluded that Tsalikov would not have been able to buy land in Rublevka considering his declared earnings. Both the finance and defense ministries confirmed ownership of the land but FBK’s allegations of illicit enrichment.

Despite the overall transparency of the official Russian registries, names of senior public officials from ��ܲ�������’s military and space sectors, and even their relatives, have been increasingly removed from the land registry filings on unclear legal grounds. For example, in November 2019, FBK that the 81-year-old father-in-law of Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos (��ܲ�������’s space agency), disappeared from the land registry. His name was substituted by the “natural person” entry. FBK claims that he owns expensive properties on behalf of Rogozin. Rogozin has not responded to FBK’s allegations.

Various global NGOs and think tanks, including Transparency International, have continuously Russia as a country with a high level of corruption. Russian government officials are often involved in illicit enrichment schemes, such as kickbacks, or conceal ownership of businesses and properties through their close associates or offshore shell companies. As demonstrated by FBK’s investigations into Tsalikov and Rogozin’s properties, officials tend to try to hide ownership by erasing their names from the official registries.

Even though FBK can identify individual cases of illicit enrichment, Russia currently lacks the necessary mechanisms to investigate such allegations. Article 20 of the UN Convention Against Corruption defines illicit enrichment as a “significant increase in the assets of a public official that he or she cannot reasonably explain in relation to his or her lawful income.” While Russia ratified the convention in 2006, it refused to include Article 20. Due to this omission, FBK’s anti-corruption investigations have little to no legal consequences within Russia. Against this backdrop, Navalny has repeatedly claimed that political changes are necessary to end endemic corruption in Russia.

Smart Voting Against United Russia

As ��ܲ�������’s leading opposition figure, Navalny has never concealed that FBK’s investigations are intended as a call for political action. His most recent investigations, including the one filmed in Tomsk, support his political campaign against candidates from the ruling United Russia party on the eve of the regional elections on September 13.

This campaign is part of the so-called smart voting initiative, which is Navalny’s wider strategy to challenge the protracted rule of President Vladimir Putin and United Russia. The central election commission has refused to register Navalny or any other FBK employee as a candidate in elections since 2013, when Navalny came second in Moscow’s mayoral election with 27% of the vote. To challenge the situation, Navalny’s team used its reach to coordinate opposition voters to strategically and effectively beat United Russia candidates in hundreds of local and regional elections. In practice, this means voting collectively for the strongest non-United Russia candidate in any given district, regardless of his or her political affiliation or personal qualities.

In September last year, smart voting generated impressive results: Nearly half of the elected members of the Moscow city council — 20 of 45 members — had been recommended by the platform. During the campaign, FBK’s investigations into the source of wealth of prominent United Russia members in Moscow proved to be a vital agitation tool, given that Navalny or FBK have no access to popular state-run media outlets. According to a published in March this year by Russian political analysts Ivan Bolshakov and Vladimir Perevalov, Navalny’s smart voting, on average, improved the results of opposition candidates by 5.6% in last September’s Moscow city council elections. For instance, FBK Andrey Metelsky, United ��ܲ�������’s branch head in Moscow, of concealing his multimillion-dollar business empire by controlling it through his 75-year-old mother. Following the 2019 campaign, Metelsky lost his district to a candidate suggested by Navalny’s smart voting. Prior to that, Metelsky had continuously held office since 2001.

According to the , on September 8, Navalny has been taken out of an induced coma and is reported to be responding to speech. His recovery will probably take a long time, and long-term after-effects cannot be ruled out. But it is worth noting that Navalny’s projects seem to be working smoothly even in his absence: The , released on September 9, has already garnered nearly 3 million views. Acting under constant pressure from Russian authorities, Navalny and FBK focused on establishing autonomous operations that do not overly rely on any single person.

On the eve of the 2019 elections, Navalny spent a month in jail for violating ��ܲ�������’s strict protest laws, while his allies continued to shoot FBK documentaries and campaigned for smart voting. The smart voting platform has already provided its recommendations for the upcoming local and regional elections scheduled for September 13 and intends to do so for the 2021 state Duma elections.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Alexei Navalny Created ��ܲ�������’s Main Opposition Platform appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Over the past three decades, Belarusian domestic politics has been defined by its predictability. Despite the emergence of opposition candidates around election time, President Alexander Lukashenko’s grip on power was such that there was only one outcome. Yet, as with so much of 2020, life as Belarusians know it has been turned on its head.

Big Blow for a Stable Dictatorship: Major Protests Hit Belarus

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While the has been called into question, a mixture of political complacency and COVID-19-related turmoil has breathed new life into ����������ܲ�’ opposition movement. Beyond disputing Lukashenko’s winning margin in July’s poll, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Belarusians have taken to the streets calling for change. Mostly born after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this generation does not regard the stability offered by Lukashenko as an asset. As they see it, state control of ����������ܲ�’ economy and society is incompatible with their aspirations.

Lukashenko’s response to what has effectively become a matter of life and death for his regime has fluctuated between incoherency and heavy-handedness. The president’s disappearance from the public gaze at the start of the unrest, coupled with the disproportionate use of force against demonstrators, suggests that he did not seriously consider the possibility of mass protests. Continued police brutality and opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s make it difficult to use “external forces” as justification for the crackdown.

“Family” Comes First

Much like , the Gulf states have relatively young populations, particularly Saudi Arabia, where of citizens are under the age of 35. Many have benefited from to higher education systems that have grown exponentially since the early 2000s, both in terms of state and private universities. With this in mind, the region’s political elites can use the lack of meaningful opportunities for so many Belarusians to underscore the importance of their development plans and national visions.

Designed to meet the specific needs of Gulf countries, these strategies nevertheless have several objectives in common. In an effort to counter faltering prices and technological obsolescence, the region is attempting to diversify its dependence on oil and gas revenues by facilitating in different industrial sectors. Doing so also requires the greater incorporation of indigenous populations into national workforces at the expense of expatriate workers. In this respect, Kuwait’s plans to drastically offers a glimpse into the future shape of the Gulf’s workplaces. While never explicitly mentioned in strategic documents, the Gulf states anticipate that encouraging their own populations’ development will offset opportunities for the type of political dissent that’s currently gripping Belarus and which almost a decade ago.

The Gulf’s rulers have no appetite for an , a scenario that some warn is a distinct possibility thanks to COVID-19. Accordingly, local development opportunities will continue to be encouraged during these chastened times. When it comes to wider political participation, Kuwait will remain something of an outlier for the foreseeable future.

The Gulf states’ responses to COVID-19 also merit consideration. Once dismissed by Lukashenko as an ailment that can be treated with , Belarus was among the last in Europe to enact lockdown measures. While it remains to be seen what impact will have on infection rates, a spike in cases could be used by Gulf states to justify their no-nonsense approaches to tackling the virus. Qatar, for example, was one of the first to completely lock down all but the most essential public services. The country’s return to normal rests on the with a four-phase reopening plan.

Don’t Annoy Next Door

International reaction to the political crisis in Belarus has so far been muted, with presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and China’s Xi Jinping for Lukashenko’s re-election. For its part, the European Union’s response has been cautiously led by the likes of Lithuania and Poland. Their approach reflects two important points. First, the protests are highly internalized and not about pivoting Belarus further East or West. Second, direct support for the opposition risks a Ukraine-type scenario whereby Moscow directly intervenes to safeguard its interests.

Point two is of particular relevance to the Gulf states, whose economic ties with one of ��ܲ�������’s closest allies continue to grow. Cooperation between Belarus and the United Arab Emirates is a case in point. According to , the volume of trade between both countries amounted to $121 million in 2019, up from $89.6 million the previous year. Minsk has also made regarding joint manufacturing opportunities and the re-export of products to neighboring markets.

Saudi Arabia undoubtedly has the most to lose from antagonizing Russia in its own backyard. Last April, the kingdom 80,000 tons of crude oil to Belarus. This purchase, first of its kind, not only reflects Minsk’s determination to lessen its reliance on Russian supplies, but also happened against the backdrop of faltering demand and an oil price war between Moscow and Riyadh. Since then, both sides have brokered a designed in part to ensure that OPEC+ members respect industry-saving production cuts.

Accordingly, the “softly, softly” approach currently being employed by the EU’s eastern flank provides a blueprint for how the Gulf states should continue to manage their responses to the Belarus crisis. Not only does it offer the best chance of maintaining economic relations irrespective of the final outcome, but it also keeps regional oil supplies in still uncharted waters at a time of great uncertainty in global markets. Antagonizing Russia with even the most tacit support for Belarus is, put simply, too risky a proposition.

����������ܲ�’ unfolding crisis is ultimately about replacing an unmovable political leader and system that have dominated the country for decades. In a region defined by its own version of long-term political stability, a similar scenario among Gulf states is unpalatable. Fortunately, the region still has resources at its disposal to prevent this from happening and protect much-needed economic victories in new markets. While always important, the Gulf’s indigenous populations are increasingly being reconfigured as the most essential features of the region’s future prosperity and stability.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On 24 August, German doctors announced that they had detected the presence of a in Navalny’s blood. Cholinesterase is a component of nerve agents. The Russian doctors who treated Navalny after his plane made an emergency landing at Omsk have contested this conclusion, insisting that their tests for cholinesterase inhibitors were negative.

Yet Another Poisoning

Depressingly, yet another poisoning of an enemy of Vladimir Putin is no surprise. Navalny has been a vigorous anti-corruption campaigner and prominent critic of the Russian president and his circle, for the last decade. In return, Putin’s security services have harassed, arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, threatened and now poisoned Navalny —apparently a . He joins a list of dozens of opposition politicians, investigative journalists and critics of Putin’s regime who have been forcefully silenced.

These include Boris Nemtsov, a political high flyer who turned against Putin, assassinated in 2015 right outside the Kremlin. Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire former ally of Putin’s, was found dead in his home in the UK in 2013. Sergei Magnitsky, a tax-law investigator who exposed widespread government spanning some 23 companies and $230 million, who in police custody in 2009 after being brutally beaten and denied medical treatment. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist and politician who played an instrumental role in the passing of the Magnitsky Act by US Congress, was twice, in 2015 and 2017.

Anna Politkovskaya, a renowned investigative journalist, was shot to death in the elevator of her Moscow apartment block in 2006 following a failed two years earlier — also involving a cup of tea on a flight. Alexander Litvinenko, an FSB defector, was poisoned with polonium 210-laced tea in London in 2006. Sergei Skripal, a former military intelligence officer and double agent, was poisoned alongside his daughter with the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury in 2018. The list goes on and on. Russia has denied any involvement in any of these cases, despite mountains of forensic, surveillance and other evidence to the contrary.

Of course, no rational person believes the Russian denials, although the followers of the Putin cult seem willing to swallow it. But Vladimir Putin clearly does not care whether he is believed or not. The purpose of these assassinations or poisonings is to cow the opposition, bludgeon it into silence, to prevent the investigation of the government’s crimes and to establish Putin as the autocrat, accountable to nobody. Vladimir Putin wants to ensure that no one in Russia dares to oppose him.

A Good Moment

The West is in disarray about how to respond to Navalny’s poisoning and particularly desperately misses the leadership of the United States. President Donald Trump has yet to comment on the Navalny case. But Trump, the Russian president’s self-proclaimed “,” generally refuses to criticize Putin, so we should fully expect him either to say the Navalny case “never reached his desk” or that he was prepared to believe Putin’s sincere denials, as he did over the conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election. Russia is once again in the campaign to reelect Trump, so we should not expect him to take effective action. Putin thrives on Trump’s weakness.

President Putin is not as secure as he would like to believe. The economy is doing badly, oil prices are down, the number of COVID-19 infections is the in the world, and in Khabarovsk, in ��ܲ�������’s far east, tens of thousands of demonstrators have been taking to the streets since July, protesting the arrest of the popular governor on Moscow’s orders. In neighboring Belarus, where the dictator Alexander Lukashenko is fighting to hold on to power, the popular uprising against the rigged election may foreshadow ��ܲ�������’s future. 

Putin has regional elections of his own to rig in September, and a national election next year. Alexei Navalny, with his well-organized political movement, is the most prominent, effective and popular figure opposing Putin. Rather than take any chances of the Belarusian uprising being contagious, Putin may well have thought this would be a good moment to eliminate his chief opponent and to terrorize Navalny’s supporters. Now would also be a good time for the West to show some spine and oppose Putin’s murderous dictatorship.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In formal terms, the two countries form a “union state” and an economic and defense community. Belarus is Moscow’s closest ally and a linchpin for Russian neighborhood policy. For two decades, Russia has funded and subsidized ����������ܲ�’ state and economy. This has become a high price for a complicated relationship, as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko consistently — and successfully — spurns Russian attempts to deepen integration.

Belarus Election Unleashes Unprecedented Anti-Government Protests

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Heading a joint state in Moscow had been raised as an option for keeping Russian President Vladimir Putin in power after 2024. Lukashenko was less than enthusiastic and turned, as always in moments of tension with Moscow, to the European Union. That variant is off the table, now that the amended Russian Constitution permits Putin two more terms in the Kremlin.

A Lack of Distance

Despite growing political differences, Moscow continues to support Lukashenko through his latest domestic political travails. Official figures put his share of the presidential vote at 80%. The candidate of the united opposition, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, had just 10%, according to the Central Election Commission. Opposition exit polls paint a very different picture, with some showing the proportions exactly inverted.

Since the announcement of the results on August 9, the country has seen ongoing mass demonstrations, to which the security forces have responded with brutality. Nevertheless, President Putin congratulated Lukashenko on his “victory” as expected.

The Russian political discourse pays very close attention to developments in Belarus, reflecting a persistent post-imperial lack of distance to its sovereign neighbors. Looking at the Russian discussion, one might forget that there actually is a border between Russia and Belarus, much as was the case following the Ukrainian presidential election in 2019.

Another reason for this closeness lies in the similarity of the political systems. Both are aging autocracies that are out of touch with the societies they rule and suffer rapidly evaporating legitimacy. The economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is tangibly accelerating these processes in both states.

The Russian state media tend to play down the significance of the events and push a geopolitical interpretation in which the protesters are a minority controlled by hostile Western actors. They would not exist without Western support, it is asserted. The objective of Western policy is said to be reducing Russian influence in the region and, ultimately, “regime change” in Moscow. In other words, the issue is not liberty but geopolitical rivalry.

In this understanding, the trouble in Minsk is just the latest in a long series of Western plots against Russia — following the 2014 Euromaidan in Ukraine and the “color revolutions” of the early 2000s. The needs of Belarusian society are completely ignored.

��ܲ�������’s independent media, on the other hand, seek to present a realistic picture, concentrating on developments within Belarus and Lukashenko’s loss of public legitimacy. Belarus is also treated as a template for ��ܲ�������’s own political future. Comparisons are frequently drawn with the ongoing protests in Khabarovsk, with speculation whether Minsk 2020 might be Moscow 2024.

Russian Intervention?

Foreign policy analysts in Moscow do not believe that Tsikhanouskaya can expect Western support. The European Union is divided, they note, weakened by COVID-19 and preoccupied with internal matters, while the United States is generally incapable of coherent foreign policy action. The regime will weather the storm, they believe, but emerge from it weakened.

This, in turn, will increase Lukashenko’s dependency on Moscow. Regime-loyal and more critical foreign policy experts alike concur that Russia will ultimately profit from the situation in Minsk without itself having to intervene politically or militarily.

The coming days will tell whether that assumption is correct. The regime in Minsk may have lost touch with the realities of Belarusian society, but it has good prospects of survival as long as the state apparatus backs Lukashenko and Russia maintains its support.

But if the unrest grows to paralyze the country, a Russian intervention cannot be excluded. The costs would be enormous, in view of the pandemic and the economic crisis. And an intervention could also harm the Kremlin domestically, where it has its own legitimacy problems. On the other hand, it would not be the first time Moscow chose geopolitics and great power bravado over economic and political reason. And ��ܲ�������’s rulers are still happy to ride roughshod over society, both at home and in Belarus.

The EU cannot overlook the massive election fraud and the brutality of the security forces against unarmed demonstrators. It should back the demand for new elections, offer mediation and impose additional sanctions if the regime refuses to alter its current stance. But in the process, it should do everything it can to preserve contacts within Belarusian society. Clear communication with Moscow is vital, both to float possible solutions and to lay out the costs of intervention. There is no need to fear a quarrel — the EU has been in a conflict with Russia for a long time already.

*[This article was originally by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Russia Views the Election Aftermath in Belarus appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Invincible:

A quality that includes the idea of untouchable, invulnerable, immune and applied for long periods of time to despots, powerful oligarchs, blackmailers and more generally the very rich, who while theoretically accountable before the law can afford legal teams capable of parrying all threats

Contextual Note

The case of Belarus stands out in an international landscape at a moment of history in which the populations of many nations are now prone to protest every government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Times describes Lukashenko as “fighting for his political life, besieged by protests across his country and a tsunami of international criticism.”&�Բ�����;

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No leader is truly invincible. But no recognized means exist for wresting power from a leader who controls the military, especially in a nation such as Belarus whose population has never had any serious expectations of democratic elections being anything more than a public ritual to confirm the existing power structure.

Anna Romandash, writing for 51�Թ�, described the depth of a crisis that goes far deeper than protests over election results or the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. “However, the events leading up to the election demonstrated that some big changes were taking place in Belarus,” Romandash writes. The Ukrainian journalist adds that “the level of popular dissatisfaction has reached its all-time high, with people becoming increasingly disillusioned with the regime and its handling of the many crises facing Belarus.”&�Բ�����;

The author’s pessimistic conclusion that “with the resources at his disposal, Lukashenko can remain in power unless both domestic and external pressure are applied equally strongly and consistently” is sadly but undoubtedly true. In particular, it is difficult to imagine what kind of external pressure — from the West, Russia or both combined — might unseat Lukashenko.

In more ways than one, this illustrates the dilemma facing almost all nations across the globe, one brought into focus by the pandemic. The presence of an unprecedented, uncontrollable threat to public health has highlighted other often more local contradictions the populations of many nations are faced with. The frustration with increasing levels of economic and sanitary uncertainty has provoked multiple reactions among those who feel themselves the victims of forces that appear devoid of accountability. This inevitably leads to the discrediting and destabilizing of all forms of existing authority.

In some places — the US, France, the UK, for example — the deeper issue may be racial inequality and police brutality. In many nations across the globe, the growing inequality of wealth and income associated with the manifest arrogance of the ruling classes on every continent may be close to reaching a breaking point. In other places, it may be the visibly growing threat to the climate itself provoking ever-increasing numbers of natural disasters in many regions. 

This year has proved special. With all the other trends augmenting the tensions within national borders, the local mishandling of a global pandemic by so many different governments represents the straw that is breaking multiple camels’ backs.

The reasons not just for contesting authority but for professing a deep lack of belief in its pretension to govern have been present for some time. The yellow vest movement in France, whose effects have not been erased though circumstances have halted its dynamics, represents one obvious indicator. Four years of deep political uncertainty in the UK over Brexit is another. And Donald Trump’s imposed cultural chaos is yet another. 

The global crisis is real and profound because it entails a growing disaffection with the ideals associated with democracy and representation. Disorder will only grow, which means that the response to disorder will become more and more violent, as we are seeing today. Thanks to technology and massive investment in military equipment, governments have the means to repress practically any amount of uprising. But at some point, they run the risk of discovering the populations they supposedly govern are themselves ungovernable. What that tipping point will look like nobody knows.

In Belarus, the that “the level of brutality is shocking and new. Protesters and often passers-by have been targeted by people clad in black, wearing balaclavas and with no insignia or uniform.” These are the same tactics President Trump deployed in Portland to control peaceful demonstrations. Short of the utter collapse of the global economy, this may indicate what much of urban life will be like in the next few years.

Historical Note

The Guardian to the historical specificity of Belarus among the nations of Eastern Europe formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. The British journal describes ����������ܲ�’ system of government as an “idiosyncratic form of autocracy” and alludes to the very real “vulnerability of Lukashenko’s hold over a country seen by neighbouring Russia as a strategic buffer against Nato and the European Union.”&�Բ�����;

Predictably, Russia supported Alexander Lukashenko’s claim that the protests are due to foreign meddling. But Russia’s support of an ally in the resistance to European incursion may be far from absolute. According to The Moscow Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed his commitment to “retaining a stable domestic political situation in Belarus.” 

Russian readers will have to decide whether “stable” means defending the existing regime or seeking an original political solution to a problem that has become seriously unstable. Russian news outlets have reported on the clashes but mostly avoided showing sympathy for one side or the other.

This contrasts with the attitude expressed by Komsomolskaya Pravda. The pro-Kremlin tabloid recognized that the official election results probable fraud. It went further, accusing Lukashenko of insulting the people. And far from comforting the president’s right to hold onto power, it acknowledged his vulnerability. “The president of Belarus, guarding his ‘80%’ with bayonets, will face difficulties. He has to find a way to explain what happened on Aug. 9,” the Russian newspaper reports.

The Wall Street Journal wasted no time by directly Putin of seizing “an opportunity to reestablish [��ܲ�������’s] influence in Belarus by shoring up Mr. Lukashenko after an unprecedented wave of protests following Sunday’s vote.” This is undoubtedly true, but the historical context is far from simple. In the very recent past, as Mitch Prothero in an article for Business Insider, Lukashenko has demonstrated an attitude of defiance with regard to Russia. He accused Putin of interfering in the elections and even of sending 33 mercenaries to Minsk, who were arrested only days before the vote.

Prothero explains that “Lukashenko’s long-standing ability to play the European Union to its west and Russia to its east off one another to bring in international assistance has increasingly irritated Putin.” Contradicting The Wall Street Journal, which wants its readers to believe it has a hotline to Putin’s mind, Porthero quotes these thoughts of a NATO official: “It’s not a great situation in general but doubly dangerous because nobody can say for sure what Putin will do.” The official added this pertinent remark: “This is a normal crisis for a dictator like him. What’s unusual is Russia’s confused position.”

In many ways, this typifies the problem the West has with Eastern Europe, whether the bone of contention is Ukraine, Crimea, Belarus or even the nations such as Hungary and Slovakia that are now part of the European Union. Westerners simply lack the psychological insight required to understand the complex experience and worldview of the people who formerly lived under governments that were part of the Soviet bloc. 

Even in the absence of the political and ideological conditions that defined the Cold War, the West insists on maintaining what amounts to a cold war reading of history. It wants everything to be reduced to a simple choice between good and evil, freedom and authoritarian control, the supposed ideals of the capitalist West and the cynicism of the authoritarian (even if no longer communist) East. But even the authority of that hitherto comfortable and well-defended ideological position has now become destabilized.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Belarus Is Not a Unique Case appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Journalists were attacked. Not that they were not attacked before, but again, it was never on a scale this massive and brutal. The regime blocked some of the popular media platforms which published independent content. I learned about some of my colleagues being detained. They were missing for days — no one knew what happened to them. Then, suddenly, the law enforcers decided to reveal that the journalists were, in fact, detained and that charges were being pressed against them.

Belarus Election Unleashes Unprecedented Anti-Government Protests

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When asked about the protests, Alexander Lukashenko rather unoriginally responded that they were being directed and funded from abroad. He also claimed that it was the foreign interference that blocked the internet in the country. Despite a lack of information and increasing violence, people managed to communicate via VPN and some encrypted channels. They keep protesting.

Neither Free nor Fair

Belarusians took to the streets on the evening of August 9, as voting stations were shutting down. This was hours before Lukashenko, the incumbent president, was announced to have won 80% of the vote in an election widely claimed to be fraudulent that the EU “neither free nor fair.” Lukashenko’s victory means a sixth term — and at least five more years — in office. He has ruled the country for 26 years already and is the only president independent Belarus has ever had.

Throughout his rule, Lukashenko had a low track record on human rights and managed to extend a nearly total control over the media, the military and the courts. He nearly succeeded in crushing all dissent and opposition. Previous protests were either brutally dispersed or died down on their own. However, the events leading up to the election demonstrated that some big changes were taking place in Belarus.

First of all, the opposition has managed to unite around an unlikely leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, whose husband, a popular vlogger-turned-candidate Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested and blocked from standing in the election. Second of all, the level of popular dissatisfaction has reached its all-time high, with people becoming increasingly disillusioned with the regime and its handling of the many crises facing Belarus. The pre-election protests, combined with post-election rallies, in Minsk as well as other major cities, have attracted the biggest crowds in the country’s modern history.

On election day, people could not vote properly. There were long lines at voting stations, and many were unable to enter at all. The regime spoke about an unusually high rate of early voting. Some foreign journalists were detained and deported, and the internet worked only intermittently. Independent observers were detained across the country following reports of violations, and the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has withdrawn its mission, “no credible observers overseeing the election.”

No Surprises

Consequently, the announcement of Lukashenko’s sweeping victory surprised no one. It was also not surprising that people took to the streets to contest the result. What was surprising was the scale of the protests, their continuation despite a vicious crackdown and the level of fear that the regime has shown when attacking the demonstrators. Many people are missing, presumably detained, with widespread reports of inhumane treatment and beatings. The pictures of bloodied marchers on the streets of Minsk show the dangers of fighting for a right as basic as free elections.

Tikhanovskaya fled the country to neighboring Lithuania, following a brief disappearance after a visit to the election commission to file an appeal. She later recorded a where she asked people not to protest. Many speculate she’s being blackmailed by the regime.

The protests have continued for four days, with a little dialogue between the opposing sides. Women have come out , with people forming human , while and workers at a number of across the have in protest. On August 12, CEOs, investors and employees in the IT sector — the pride of Belarusian economy — have signed a letter calling for an end to violence and a new election, threatening to move their businesses elsewhere. There will potentially be an escalation or an attempt to quash the protest movement by the increasing use of force.

It is perhaps logical to be hopeful and to expect that change will come so that Belarus can transform into a more transparent country where human rights are respected and where citizens can vote, express themselves, enjoy peace and stability, and elect representatives who will follow democratic principles. However, even now, it’s hard to predict what happens next.

The protests have made a big crack in what is often referred to as ���ܰ��DZ��’s last dictatorship, but the regime remains strong. During his rule, Lukashenko had managed to maneuver Belarus between an assertive Russia while still maintaining limited contact with European leaders. So far, Germany has called for a reintroduction of sanctions that were lifted in 2016 to bolster cooperation, and Poland wants an emergency summit to discuss what the EU has as “disproportionate and unacceptable state violence against peaceful protesters.” But with the resources at his disposal, Lukashenko can remain in power unless both domestic and external pressure are applied equally strongly and consistently. The following days will show how the domestic situation evolves, and whether an will follow.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Big Blow for a Stable Dictatorship: Major Protests Hit Belarus appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Those in Belarus who were visibly ready for change took to the streets already in the run-up to the election. Complaints over economic stagnation have been perennial, but these are more apparent in this period of a global financial crisis. The people of Belarus look to neighboring Poland and its vast social services programs with some envy, even though the has just faced its own headline-grabbing election.

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Belarusians are also frustrated with Lukashenko’s approach to COVID-19. He did not mandate a national lockdown, allowed the continuation of with crowds in the stands, stating that vodka, banya (sauna) and tractor work in the acted as protection, and proactive measures “a frenzy and psychosis.” Still, the virus , with over 69,000 infections and 592 deaths to date. Lukashenko himself claimed he the virus.

Public Anger

The protest movement that brought onto the streets before the election is unique in many ways. Its leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a teacher and interpreter, is not a politician by trade. She registered as an independent candidate after her husband Sergey, a presidential candidate running against the incumbent, was arrested and jailed by the authorities. The mother of two said her decision to continue her husband’s campaign was done “” for him.

The rise of a female politician — in fact, all to Lukashenko’s presidency were women — exposed issues rooted in misogyny. While stating his overall respect for women, Lukashenko the opinion that a woman was not prepared to lead a country like Belarus because its “society is not mature enough to vote for a woman,” only to add that any theoretical female president would “collapse, poor thing.” These sentiments were echoed by reports that female political challengers typically face threats of sexual violence, assault and state intervention into their families.

Tikhanovskaya stated that she indeed was on the receiving end of such intimidations and sent her in fear they would be taken from her and placed in an orphanage. (In a released following her disappearance the night after the election, Tikhanovskaya, visibly distressed, mentions children again, saying she hopes no one ever faces the choice she had to make, suggesting pressure.) But even despite these threats, Maria Kolesnikova, a member of the campaign team for another detained opposition figure, Viktor Babariko, and Veronika Tsepkalo, the wife of former Belarusian ambassador to the United States, Valery Tsepkalo (another barred candidate), joined forces with Tikhanovskaya and led the rallies.

These eruptions of public anger were the largest and most prolonged since the demonstrations over the so-called , which mandated that those who work less than six months a year compensate the government $250 for lost taxes, forced a U-turn. took to the streets of Minsk at the end of July, with momentum spreading to other major cities like Brest, Gomel, Grodno and Vitebsk. In the capital, some attended a pro-Tikhanovskaya rally in what some could have been “the most massive political rally in Belarus history” not seen since the 1990s. However, Belarusian law enforcement and security services wasted no time in making .

A recent event demonstrated just how unprepared the Lukashenko administration is to counter such a vast protest moment. Days prior to the election, the government planned a in central Minsk to bolster support ahead of the election. Some 7,000 protesters organized on social media and showed up to the event with the intention to disrupt it. In a show of solidarity, sound engineers Kiryl Halanau and Uladzislau Sakalouski played the song “!” by the Soviet rock band Kino, one of the anthems of the final years of the USSR, followed by chants of “Long live Belarus!” from the crowd. Halanau and Sakalouski were consequently to 10 days in jail, but the incident showed that the police struggled to cover all protest locations at all times.

No Peaceful Exit

Once the electoral commission announced that Lukashenko had been reelected with 80.23% of the vote compared to 9.9% accrued by Tikhanovskaya, the streets of Belarus filled with voices of discontent yet again. No one accepted these results as legitimate, and Tikhanovskaya even points out there were in which she led by 70%-90% at certain polling stations. In fact, Tikhanovskaya considers , though she does not seek power. Rather, her ideal situation includes talks between a unified opposition and the government so that Lukashenko can have a peaceful exit from power.

Even before the polls closed, military and police vehicles were on display throughout Minsk, with law enforcement and security services cracking down as protests began to spark across the capital and beyond. While the use of rubber bullets and flash grenades is in line with Western policing measures, as seen in the protests that have rocked the United States recently, but the limits of acceptability in one jurisdiction do not necessarily apply in another.

Over 3,000 protesters were , with the reporting 39 police and over 50 civilian casualties, including one , which the Belarusian Ministry of Health slammed as “.” The Belarusian Association of Journalists over 50 instances of detention and beating of journalists since August 4, and an blackout has been imposed as the clashes began on Sunday night. In the meantime, Belarusian state TV streams footage of and other activities.

So, where does the Belarusian protest movement go from here? The organizers have stated that they are committed to long-term protests. It will be interesting to see how all these plans unfold, given the severity of the government response. Tikhanovskaya has already fled to Lithuania, issuing what appears to be a calling for an end to violence, following her detention at the central electoral commission office on Sunday. Lukashenko has any and all opposition protesters. As usual, the president claimed the protesters were “sheep” manipulated by foreign powers and entities who did not know what they are doing, many of them were high on drugs and drunk. The 65-year-old authoritarian went on to assert that “We will not allow them to tear the country apart.” This sentiment should be juxtaposed with a protester who a member of law enforcement in the midst of protest: “You are humans! You are also Belarusian!”

It is difficult to determine exactly who wants to tear the country apart when the opposition movement states its intended purpose is to produce a viable future for Belarus. Lukashenko shows no intention of resigning or even lending an ear to complaints espoused by the people. If the protest movement is to continue, one should expect more arrests and detentions. 

Belarus finds itself in a political crisis that must be managed with the utmost care. Neither side seems willing to budge on its demands, and so it comes down to who has the most endurance in terms of power and energy. Lukashenko has the power of government and its vast repressive apparatus at his disposal. The protest movement is energized and full of voices that have united in the sole goal of a change of leadership. Alexander Lukashenko cannot afford to make concessions as it would mean his hold on the presidential office is shaky. As it currently stands, even if this round of opposition is quashed, it will undoubtedly emerge again, perhaps at a time when the authorities may be ill-prepared.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Belarus Election Unleashes Unprecedented Anti-Government Protests appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The vote took place between June 25 and July 1, with the voters being asked to decide on a myriad of unrelated amendments to the Russian Constitution — 206 to be exact — in a single package. For example, the proposed amendments included a passage on “marriage as the union between a man and a woman,” a stipulation of the primacy of the Russian law over international treaties but, most importantly, a “zeroing” of Vladimir Putin’s presidential terms. The latter allows Putin to disregard his 20-years-long tenure and run for two more terms in 2024 and 2030.

The voting turned out to be an unapologetic attempt to pull the wool over the public eye. While achieving the figures he wanted, Putin may have sacrificed popular trust in the electoral system for good. From now on, any elections in Putin’s Russia will be treated with skepticism and can hardly remain a source of legitimacy for his protracted tenure.

Why a Nationwide Vote?

The nationwide vote was the most salient but the least decisive part of the constitutional reform procedure. It must be noted that, according to Russian law, the amendments to the constitution do not require a popular vote. Any amendments to Chapters 3 through 8 of the constitution come into force after being approved by legislative authorities of at least two-thirds of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In fact, the constitution had already been amended four times using this procedure before 2020: Two amendments came into force in December 2008, a third in February 2014, and a fourth in July 2014. To amend chapters 1, 2 and 9, which effectively determine ��ܲ�������’s political system, a new constitution must be adopted through a more rigorous process, which includes a nationwide referendum.

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Similar to the previous four cases, the 2020 amendments concerned Chapters 3 through 8 and did not require a referendum. However, when Putin first the new amendments during his annual address to the federal assembly on January 15, he stressed that the amendments should be subject to approval by Russian citizens. The Kremlin and state-owned media claimed that this showed Putin’s willingness to go the extra mile and to showcase his confidence in national support for the reforms.

By late February, the Russian parliament proposed the so-called nationwide vote, a special voting procedure, not subject to the Russian law on referendums. The head of the central election commission, Ella Pamfilova, that the vote should be an “exclusive, one-time, unique event” to avoid questions regarding the vote’s compliance with existing legislation. Instead of references to the existing laws, the procedure for the nationwide vote was described in the same draft bill as the constitutional amendments.

Wrong Timing

The amendment procedure was seemingly designed as a “special operation,” and its timing was carefully planned. It was initially scheduled to be completed before the May 9 military parade dedicated to the 75^th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. If passed quickly, culminating with the parade, the whole procedure might have played well in Putin’s favor and would have been perceived by the public as victorious and unifying reform. This was important, as a prolonged public discussion would inevitably attract attention to Putin’s attempt to reset his presidential terms in 2024.

The legally required procedure unfolded smoothly, as it was well planned and executed by all parties involved. Following Putin’s address to the federal assembly, the draft bill of new amendments was through three readings in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, and approved by the upper house, the federation council, on March 13. The next day, Putin signed the law, which was subsequently on the government’s official website. ��ܲ�������’s constitutional court the amendments on March 16.

The nationwide vote was initially scheduled for April 22, with the intention to finalize the procedure before May 9. While the amendments had passed all the legally required stages and entered into force by mid-March, the vote was intended to legitimize the process and create a perception of popular approval. However, the neat plan was disrupted by a factor outside of Kremlin’s control: the COVID-19 pandemic.

��ܲ�������’s health-care authorities first coronavirus cases on January 31, when work on the constitutional amendment in the Duma was already well underway. The number of cases in Russia was still relatively low in late February when Putin publicly announced the date of the vote. In March, infection rates both in Russia and around the world have become truly worrying, with the World Health Organization declaring a pandemic. The Kremlin had no option but to review its plans, and on March 25, Putin that the vote would be rescheduled for a later date.

As a consequence, the nationwide vote was transformed from an asset into a burden. It lost its symbolic flair as Putin’s personal victory on the eve of Victory Day and instead started generating a sober public discussion. A mid-June by reputable Russian sociologist Sergey Belanovsky indicated that zeroing of Putin’s presidential terms was the least popular amendment in the proposed set of reforms, and the more people learned about it, the less likely they were to vote in favor of the reforms.

Combined with the dampening effect of COVID-19 on ��ܲ�������’s economy and health-care system, a favorable result suddenly became rather unlikely. It would have been equally problematic to abandon the vote, as not only was it promised to the public, but also specifically stipulated in the law on the amendment in question. Two months into lockdown, Kremlin was facing a timing dilemma: If the vote was not announced by the end of May, it would overlap with the regional election campaigns starting in July and August. This would shift the focus of voters and diminish the legitimizing effect.

Pressured by the deadline, Putin the vote for July 1. Subsequently, the election commission unprecedently introduced one week of early voting, from June 25 to 30, citing the need to minimize social contact during the pandemic. On June 1, when the vote was announced, ��ܲ�������’s authorities reported over 9,000 new cases. The official numbers decreased to around 7,000 new cases per day during the voting week.

PR Exercise

The long preparation did not prevent the vote from turning out to be dubious both in form and in substance. From the very first day, social media was flooded with images of polling stations arranged on tree stumps, park benches and even in car trunks. After all, the central election commission encouraged outdoor balloting under the pretext of COVID-19 precautions. To mobilize voters, authorities organized lotteries, with prizes including apartments and cars. Every person turning out for the vote was also eligible to receive vouchers valid at supermarkets, museums and restaurants. Journalists have found that they were able to cast their , while the head of the election office in Omsk happened to an apartment in the lottery.

Independent monitoring became next to impossible due to the duration of voting, while ballot boxes were left unattended after closing hours. Monitoring was often obstructed by authorities in broad daylight. During one incident, a policeman broke the arm of David Frenkel, a journalist who was covering the vote at a St. Petersburg polling station.

When the result was announced, it came as little surprise. While the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, described it as a triumphant vote of confidence in Putin, opposition politicians, independent observers and electoral experts have been far more critical. ��ܲ�������’s largest and most reputable election watchdog Golos that the vote failed to meet both Russian and international standards due to the lack of legal framework, procedural violations, forced voting and mass falsification of votes. Golos described the vote as a PR exercise aiming to spin public perception. Sergey Shpilkin, a well-known Russian electoral statistics expert, evidence of widespread fraud. He identified over 22 million cases of irregular voting, which might indicate that around 45% of all votes were falsified.

The Big Picture

The constitutional reform is only the first step in a larger political process currently taking place in Russia. Putin is about to enter a transition period as his fourth presidential term is scheduled to end in 2024. He also desperately needs the United Russia party to secure a comfortable majority in the elections to the Duma in 2021. Without overwhelming control over the legislature (now the United Russia has over two-third seats in the Duma), he might face many unpleasant risks, including that of being impeached.

The referendum has demonstrated that the upcoming parliamentary and presidential campaigns will become increasingly stressful for Putin’s system. Surveys by all major Russian sociological research centers (, , ) indicate that both Putin and United ��ܲ�������’s approval ratings have been steadily decreasing since 2016 in the context of a stagnating economy and a series of unpopular decisions made by the government. There is little indication that the constitutional reforms will have a positive impact on this dynamic.

On the contrary, the nationwide vote has raised questions about Putin’s legitimacy and authority, not just among the general public but also the regional elites. Thus, the Nenets Autonomous District became the only region to openly rebel against the constitutional reforms: 55.25% of local voters opposed the amendments, according to official data. Most importantly, this figure demonstrates that local elites who were entrusted with delivering the results were not eager to achieve success by any means necessary. After the vote, the district’s governor, Yury Bezdudny, that the people used this opportunity to vote against the Kremlin’s policies in the region, especially the recently proposed merger with neighboring Arkhangelsk.

The nationwide vote leaves Putin with a delegitimized voting procedure as well as significant cracks in his image of a popular leader. Going forward, this will certainly create uncomfortable situations for the Kremlin around upcoming elections.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Has Putin Won the Vote on Constitutional Amendments? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Since the beginning of 2019, however, Wilders has been upstaged by a new star on the populist stage — Thierry Baudet. With his Forum for Democracy (FvD), Baudet won the provincial election of 2019, which determines the composition of the Dutch senate. Against that, Wilders’s PVV was among the of that election.

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Baudet belongs to a new type of Western European populist leaders (Tom van Grieken from Belgium’s Vlaams Belang is another), whose dapper and flamboyant demeanor is a far cry from the likes of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Umberto Bossi or Christoph Blocher. Baudet has a doctorate in law, taught for a while at the university and regularly wrote for one of the country’s major newspapers, the NRC Handelsblad. He is a self-promoting aficionado of the arts and classical music, prominently displaying a grand piano installed in his office, quotes poetry and is the .

Brussels or Kuala Lumpur?

At the same time, however, he is also the new highly photogenic face of white nationalism in Western Europe — or so a Dutch court recently ruled. Commencing the proceedings, Baudet sued a Dutch TV presenter for having suggested that he had said that “the EU has a preconceived plan to replace the white European race with African immigrants.” In reality, that in his view the European Union was setting up ferry services “to transfer immigrants from Africa to Europe, to weaken national identities so that there will be no more nation-states.”

The court rejected Baudet’s claim arguing that the television presenter had done nothing but paraphrase the essence of many of Baudet’s previous statements. In fact, in his speech on the eve of his victory in 2019, Baudet charged that the political establishment in Europe had nothing but contempt for its own culture. It was this “oikophobia” (the fear of own’s own or self-hatred) of ���ܰ��DZ��’s political, cultural and intellectual elite, which posed a fundamental threat to “our boreal world,” referring to the northern regions of the world — a for white or, worse, Aryan.

Baudet in a long interview that proclaimed him as the “dandy of the Right” in Europe, according to the conservative Swiss news magazine Weltwoche, a paper closely aligned with the Swiss radical-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP). Baudet’s answers were as frank as they were revealing. Among other things, Baudet acknowledged that he wanted to “turn back the clock.” In his view, the whole history of modernity, starting with the French Revolution, was a giant mistake that fundamentally undermined the importance of rootedness and “embeddedness,” most prominently reflected in the aesthetic.

As Baudet put it, this is why in late 19^th-century European architecture, “ornaments and facades, as well as the use of natural materials, were considered so important: they helped engender a proper sense of home for the spiritually homeless.” This is why today, buildings in Brussels are indistinguishable from “those in Kuala Lumpur and Pyongyang.”&�Բ�����;

In Baudet’s view, these are aberrations caused by the nefarious influence of cultural Marxism on the contemporary society’s elite, who are “bewitched” by the notion that “what stands in the way of utopia” is the “bourgeois way of life of ordinary people.” This is what informs the elite’s major projects of the day — the promotion of mass immigration, “climate mysticism” and, above all, the dissolution of national identities via the European Union — all of which are vigorously denounced by Baudet’s radical-right party.

All this combines with a certain air of fascist-type sense of superiority present in Baudet’s ruminations, particularly when he claims to be “the leading intellectual in the Netherlands,” agrees with the interviewer’s suggestion that he is “a crown jewel of the elite” or when he affirms that “society needs an elite that leads the way.”&�Բ�����;   

Little Gained

Unfortunately, in the face of the thousands of people dying from COVID-19 around the world, philosophical ruminations are of little use — unless one subscribes to a Nietzschean ethic of the survival of the fittest. This might have been Donald Trump’s , at least during the first weeks of the pandemic. In Western Europe, it is one that goes nowhere. As in other national contexts like and , the COVID-19 crisis has posed a fundamental challenge to ���ܰ��DZ��’s populist radical right, and the Netherlands is no exception.

For example, unlike in the Flemish part of Belgium, where the Vlaams Belang party has soared in the polls, in the Netherlands, both radical right-wing populist parties have found it difficult to gain political traction. Indeed, recent polls had both parties losing considerable support, particularly Boudet’s Forum for Freedom. Had there been an in late March, for instance, the latter would have lost five seats; Wilders’s Party for Freedom, three. Together, the two parties would have garnered around 17% of the vote. This was a significant loss of around 5% compared to the period before the pandemic: In late February, the two parties together stood at around 22%. 

This might appear somewhat surprising. Both parties are well known for their hostility toward the EU, and in this crisis, the European Union has certainly done little to improve its image. In fact, the profound animosity that erupted during the debate over how best to deal with the economic fallout of the crisis — particularly over the question of the so-called corona bonds — further raised doubts about the EU’s future, particularly in countries such as Italy and Spain, both traditionally EU friendly. In theory, the EU’s poor response to the crisis should have boosted the fortunes of the Dutch radical populist right since it appeared to confirm their vehement anti-EU position. In reality, they profited little to nothing from it. 

Geert Wilders did try to monopolize on the crisis, raising the question of the transfer of funds from the EU budget to Morocco. In late March, Wilders noted that Morocco (“not a EU member, with a bit more than 500 COVID-19 cases”) had received €450 million ($496 million); the Netherlands, with more than 17,000 coronavirus infections, got a mere €25 million to deal with the crisis. The fact was, however, as by Belgian members of the European Parliament, that the two funds had little to nothing to do with each other. Nevertheless, for Wilders there could be only one consequence — “.”

Dented Image

The Dutch populist radical right might not have profited from the crisis in terms of its potential electoral fortunes. This does not mean, however, that they have become irrelevant. Quite on the contrary. For instance, during the recent bitter row over the question of how to deal with the economic consequences of the pandemic, the Dutch were particularly hard-nosed and intransigent, if not outright insulting, toward the EU’s southern members. 

In the end, the Netherlands was the only member state to hold out and insist on stringent conditions attached to any kind of funding mechanism benefiting the hardest-hit members of the community. As Germany’s leading newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, pointed out, this was to a significant degree informed by the that if it failed to vigorously defend Dutch interests, it would boost support for the country’s radical populist right.

In German, there is an expression, vor sich hertreiben. It conjures up the image of a herd of cattle being pushed along by a couple of cowboys. The image appears quite appropriate in this context. The Dutch radical populists might not have benefited from the COVID-19 crisis. It has, however, managed to push the Dutch government and its representatives in a direction which they might otherwise not have chosen. The result has been quite disastrous for the Dutch image in Europe. But then again, protecting ���ܰ��DZ��’s image is scarcely at the top of the agenda for the Dutch populist radical right.

*[The  is a partner institution of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The new legislation allows Orban to rule by decree, converting the spread of false information — now punishable by up to five years in prison — and the failure to abide by mandatory lockdown restrictions into criminal offenses. Many fear these new measures will be used beyond the struggle against the COVID-19 crisis to silence Hungary’s opposition. Even more worrying is the absence of any reference to an end date or a requirement for renewal of the emergency legislation, which may de facto allow Orban to maintain his exceptional powers indefinitely.

Enabling Acts

For those familiar with the history of Nazi Germany, the decree evokes a nefarious parallel with Hitler’s . In 1933, Hitler exploited the to pass an emergency law that allowed him to enact legislation without consulting parliament, a step decisive to the consolidation of his rule over Germany. Indeed enabled by the act, Hitler removed the autonomy of German states and outlawed non-Nazi political parties. Hitler’s new powers were supposed to expire in 1937, however, by that time, the Führer had already taken control of German institutions and saw no obstacles to renewing his dictatorial powers.

Although the Hungarian emergency law preserves some parliamentary authority, there is little to inspire certainty that the country would not follow a path similar interwar Germany. Orban has a notorious track record as an opponent of liberal democracy, and throughout his years in office has worked to erode democratic institutions, lifting legal and political constraints to curb press freedom and the activities of civil society organizations.

In 2012, the coalition formed by Fidesz and the Christian Democrats replaced the existing constitution, introducing reformed and systems which, among other measures, limited the power of Hungarian courts, reduced the number of seats in parliament and reshaped constituency boundaries, leading to criticism from the opposition and international observers.

Later amendments, passed in 2013, also regulated to role of the press and granted public media outlets monopoly over political advertising during national and European elections. In 2018, Orban strengthened his control over the media through the consolidation of more than 400 media outlets under the (KESMA), a government-friendly entity chaired by individuals with connections to the prime minister.

In addition to the undermining of constitutional checks and balances, nativist discourse was also instrumentalized in the gradual process of erosion of democratic institutions in Hungary. As the refugee crisis intensified, Orban adopted an explicitly anti-immigration stance antagonizing other European leaders who called for a joint effort to tackle one of the greatest migration crises since World War II. Orban described migrants as a “,” stating that “every single migrant poses a security and terror risk” to Hungary. This form of nativist rhetoric was recently employed to legitimize the persecution of NGOs operating in the country.

In 2018, Orban accused these organizations of promoting and introduced a legislative package that became known as “Stop Soros” — a reference to the Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist George Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundations and Orban’s nemesis. In addition to criminalizing NGOs that offered support to migrants, a special tax law was introduced to penalize NGOs that “promote illegal immigration.”

Little Room for Optimism

This brief overview of Hungary’s descent into authoritarianism offers some perspective on the role of the coronavirus emergency law being just another piece in a complex chain of events that have cumulatively contributed to the demise of Hungarian democracy. Although one would like to take comfort in the assurance by the Hungarian prime minister and his party that parliament retains the authority to restore democratic normalcy, Orban’s track record since being elected in 2010 leaves little room for optimism.

The passing of the emergency law comes at a moment when Hungarian democracy was finally beginning to show signs of resilience. In the held in 2019, coalitions of opposition parties defeated Orban’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party in 10 of the 23 major cities across the country, including the capital Budapest, scoring their best result in a decade. Under the new law, however, mayors have little power to challenge as any measure adopted by them can now be easily overruled.

For now, one can only hope that, once the COVID-19 crisis is over, the Hungarian opposition will react as it did in 2019, and that the European Union will uphold its values to prevent a dictatorship from taking root in one of its member states.

*[The  is a partner institution of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The SPD lost many voters to the Greens, who doubled their result from 2005 and ended up in second place. The big losers of the election were Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), even if their losses (almost 5%) were smaller than those of the SPD. Yet their result, just over 11%, marked a for the party, which only a decade or so earlier had garnered more than 40% of the vote.

Hamburg is the state with the highest household per capita income. It ranks among the top four major German cities in terms of per capita disposable income, albeit at quite a distance from the leader, Munich. A commercial center with an illustrious history — Hamburg was a prominent member of the Hanseatic League — traditionally oriented more toward London than Berlin, Hamburg is known for its “hanseatische Weltoffenheit” (Hanseatic openness to the world), its �����������������ä�� and tolerance of diversity.

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A few years ago, only said they did not want foreigners as neighbors, the lowest response rate of all Germany. Hardly surprising, the AfD, the radical right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party, has hardly gained traction in the city. On Sunday, it barely made it into the Hamburg parliament: Germany has a 5% hurdle; the AfD gained 5.3% of the vote.

The New CDU

Given this profile, Hamburg should be a fertile ground for the new CDU as it sought to position itself under Merkel: A modern centrist Volkspartei (people’s party), open to new developments, progressive, going with the times. These are hardly empty words. Under Merkel, the CDU put women in prominent, even unconventional positions. The most recent two ministers of defense were and are women — Ursula von der Leyen, now president of the European Commission, and the hapless Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was positioned to succeed Angela Merkel only to see her ambitions earlier this month.

With Merkel, the CDU accepted over 700,000 Syrian refugees, more than any other country in the European Union. With Merkel, the CDU opened itself up to potential coalitions with the Greens — a potential recently turned reality in Baden-Württemberg, where the CDU is the (unexpectedly) junior partner of the Greens.

Baden-Württemberg is symptomatic of the dramatic decline of the CDU. Unlike Hamburg, Baden-Württemberg used to be a CDU stronghold. As recently as 2001, the CDU garnered 45% of the vote in that year’s state election, the Greens just 7.7%. Fifteen years later, the CDU was at 27%, the Greens at 30%. That year, the CDU won not one seat in the state’s major cities, including Stuttgart, the state’s capital and largest city. For all practical purposes, the CDU had been reduced to a “.”  

Baden-Württemberg is emblematic of the CDU’s downward spiral in the polls, reflected in the dismal result of the Hamburg election. Some commentators have blamed the party’s disastrous showing on the fallout from the farce of the , which shook the German political establishment to its core.

A brief reminder: In order to prevent the reelection of the state’s ex-prime minister, who happens to come from The Left party — the result of a fusion of the Party of Democratic Socialism (the successor of the Socialist Unity Party, the communist party of the former GDR) and disgruntled western German Social Democrats — the CDU voted together with the AfD for the candidate of the tiny liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP). This resulted in a political storm that forced the FDP prime minister to resign after only one day in office — hardly German democracy’s finest moment.

The Thuringia vote was unfortunate, particularly for the CDU, given the upcoming Hamburg state election. But the causes of the party’s decline are more profound. They are primarily structural in nature and therefore difficult to tackle.

German Conservatism

Political parties are hardly monolithic constructs. In reality, they are composed of a number of ideational currents that, more often than not, are difficult to reconcile. The CDU has traditionally consisted of at least three major currents: Catholics, conservatives and economic liberals. This explains the catch-all appeal of Christian Democracy and its traditionally transversal constituency. For instance, although the CDU was never a working-class party, it did appeal to workers — if they happened to be Catholics.

And here lies one of the major problems for the CDU: Like other Western societies, Germany has witnessed an accelerated pace of secularization, particularly among younger cohorts. And those who attend mass on a regular basis are, as one nonchalantly put it, slowly dying out.

The problems are equally serious with respect to conservatives. Traditionally, meaning until 1945, German conservatism was largely associated with Prussian Protestantism. During the Weimar Republic, its most important political representative was the German National People’s Party of Alfred Hugenberg. Hugenberg was instrumental in paving the way for Hitler’s seizing power in 1933. And although the resistance to Hitler during the Second World War was to a significant extent organized by conservatives — such as Henning von Treskow, one of the leading minds behind the failed attempt to kill the führer in 1944 — Hugenberg’s support for Hitler thoroughly discredited conservatism in postwar Germany.

Under Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, conservatism meant, above all, the preservation of a “natural order” that assigns each individual a role in a larger community. Central to this concept was the family and its protection as the central nucleus of society. This had significant implications, particularly for women, whose role was supposed to be limited to the three Ks: Kinder, Küche, Kirche — children, kitchen, church.

For instance, until 1958, Germany’s women were not allowed to work without explicit permission by their husbands. They were not allowed to open their own bank accounts until 1962. And it was not until 1969 that women gained complete legal competency. A woman’s right to abortion was not granted until 1974, and this with strict conditions, generally limited to the first 12 weeks of gestation.

All of these developments are anathema to the conservative view of the world. Yet in recent years, things have gotten even worse with the success of the LGBTQ community in gaining official, and particularly legal, recognition for their unions. In 2017, a majority of representatives in the German Bundestag, including a significant number of members of the CDU — who were allowed to vote their conscience by Merkel — voted to legalize same-sex marriage.

For the conservatives, this was a disaster. In their view, same-sex marriage represents a direct assault on the traditional conception of marriage, based on the “natural” union between a man and a woman, designed for assuring the continuity of the community via procreation — in a “natural way.”

Downward Spiral

Undoubtedly, Germany has been confronted with enormous changes, as has been the case for the rest of advanced liberal democracies. The CDU under Merkel has made great efforts to adjust to these changes. In the process, however, it has managed to disenchant not only a substantial segment of its traditional constituency – primarily Catholics and conservatives when it comes to “lifestyle” questions, but also potential new voters.

Two examples might make the point. A few years ago, the CDU-led government proclaimed its commitment to a significant Energiewende, a radical reversal of Germany’s energy policy. Yet in the meantime, little has changed. Germany still depends to a large extent on coal and, for that matter, the environmentally worst kind of coal, lignite. While other European countries, such as the UK, have managed to , Germany continues to be addicted to it.

Or take tobacco. By now it is well established that smoking causes all kinds of health problems, from emphysema to cancer. In response, virtually all members of the European Union have banned public tobacco advertising — except for Germany. There, leading representatives of the CDU blocked attempts to outlaw public advertising for tobacco products — even near schools — despite the fact that in Germany, more than 100,000 people die as a result of smoking-related complications every year. Over the past few months, things have changed. The CDU has agreed to a “” of public tobacco advertising — clearly an instance of too little, too late.

Under the circumstances, the CDU downward spiral in recent years is hardly surprising. On the one hand, its turn to the left on cultural issues such as same-sex marriage and immigration antagonized some of its traditional constituencies, a portion of which defected to the AfD. On the other hand, its constant caving-in to the demands of powerful lobbies, such as the coal industry, alienated potential new voters, particularly among the young who would rather vote for the Greens.

In the process, the latter have established themselves as a progressive, yet moderate catch-all party, in tune with western German sensitivities (the party has great difficulties in the eastern part of the country). Against that, the AfD has established itself as the repository of the disgruntled, disenchanted and nostalgic, primarily in the east. Caught in the middle, Merkel’s CDU has been put between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The result has been a mixture of cluelessness and consternation, which has done little to regain confidence in Merkel’s ability to lead the CDU out of the morass of its own making.

For the past two decades, the German public has incredulously watched the agony of the Social Democrats, a once proud party that has seen its support base evaporate in a growing number of German states. The SPD’s travails obscured the fact that the CDU was following suit. The dramatic losses of its two major Volksparteien, both of which guaranteed political stability and predictability for much of the postwar period, are a cause of grave concern not only for Germany, but for all of Europe.

*[Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to Baden-Württemberg as a former SPD stronghold. Updated at 14:10 GMT, 2/26/2020.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The crises Macron has presided over since his election have come in the middle of Brexit and the imminent departure of Angela Merkel from the German leadership, raising deep concerns for the French welfare state and the so-called .

A former investment banker and economy minister, Emmanuel Macron took over from François Hollande, who had become deeply unpopular in the last few months of his presidency. Though Hollande had battled the extreme right to same-sex marriage and cautiously pursued labor and pension reforms, the neoliberal order didn’t find him bold enough for its taste. Pushed to the wall by a conservative press that painted him as , Hollande suffered a precipitous decline in approval ratings. The subsequent terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and a year later in Nice meant his days in the Élysée Palace were numbered.

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Macron’s victory over the leader of the extreme-right National Rally (then the National Front), Marine Le Pen, in 2017, was seen by many voters as picking the between fascism and neoliberalism. Fashioning himself as a centrist, to reform France and — true to his words — launched the first wave of reforms soon after taking power.

As a result, hundreds of mayors were forced to in an administrative shake-up. But it were the proposed changes in French labor code which aimed to liberalize the standard employment relationships that provoked the first controversy of Macron’s presidency. The 2017 reforms introduced French-style flexicurity and increased the competitiveness of businesses by giving them greater flexibility to hire and fire their staff.

The Reform Champion?

As Macron and his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, took successive steps to dismantle the French welfare state, they both underestimated and the resistance facing them. Macron’s tax reforms have been said to under-tax the rich elites. In its exhaustive , a Paris-based think tank, OFCE, found that the biggest losers of these tax exemptions are the poorest 15% of French households who will see their standard of living reduced.

In September 2017, France notoriously reformed the impôt de solidarité sur la fortune — the solidarity tax on wealth — to exclude investments benefiting its wealthy class. The 2018 budget introduced a 30% flat-rate levy on capital revenues that benefit the very rich. But it was the fuel tax that triggered a nationwide people’s movement in November 2018, capturing the economic and social anxiety among the lower middle class. The movement, which came to be known as the “yellow vests,” after the fluorescent jackets motorists carry in their vehicles, became the epitome of frustration and resentment among the French working class forced to live on the margins of working poverty. French geographer Christophe Guilluy has termed this growing divide and downgrading of the middle classes as “” — peripheral France.

Today, the gilets jaunes movement continues its resistance after more than a year of waving the French flag and singing “La Marseillaise.” The gilets jaunes protests have also faced an extreme use of force as the police resorted to targeting citizens with . Macron’s own former bodyguard was dismissed after facing for assault and impersonating a police officer following an attack at a May Day demonstration. Subsequently, Macron launched a “Grand Debate” in town halls across the country, culminating with a pledge to lower income tax in .

And yet, just as gilets jaunes began to lose steam, Macron wasted no time in relaunching the second wave of reforms with the pension bill. The pension system is a major component of the French social contract. Macron’s reform is an extension of . The reflects Macron’s neoliberal disdain for social protections and limits the role of social dialogue in economic governance.

The pension reforms replace France’s 42 pension schemes into a single “universal” points-based system. The government aims to roll out the new system by the end of this year. The French expenditure on old-age pensions was equivalent to 12.2% of GDP in 2017. Though the number is higher than the EU average, it has ensured that only 8.4% of those 65 years or over are at risk of poverty in France compared to almost 16% across the EU and over 18% in Germany. The proposed reforms not only cut benefits for millions but will also bring down the standard of living for French pensioners.

The resistance to pension reforms has brought together the entire working population. It has seen students, lawyers, , airline pilots, doctors and self-employed professionals join hands together as France witnessed its longest transport strike since 1986. Despite the shutdown and massive protests, Macron has declared . His arrogance has full support from the global neoliberal media network that has ensured , at best, of the protests.

Surviving Macron

Many in the media have the ongoing protests to the UK’s of 1984–85, drawing parallels between Macron’s strategy and that of Margaret Thatcher. However, such a comparison is embedded in a limited understanding. Macron’s approach is more akin to that of Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who launched the during 2003–05. While Germany was able to drastically reduce its unemployment rate, the reforms created one of the , an achievement that France would do well to avoid.

The Hartz reforms were based on the recommendations by former Volkswagen personnel boss Peter Hartz. It has been alleged that US asset manager Blackrock is influencing the French government over the ongoing retirement system reform to impose privately-funded pension schemes in France. Blackrock, with close to $7 trillion in funds, has substantially its presence in Paris under Macron. The recent awarding of France’s to a Blackrock boss further underscores the intimate relationship between Macron and the financial leviathan. Macron’s hasty reform, based on “,” creates a class-based pension system that will push working-class pensioners toward the risk of poverty.

Halfway through his five-year tenure, Macron has been successful in his endeavor to dismantle the French model as we know it. In terms of social protections, France is bracketed as a conservative welfare state. The neoliberal cure for the “statist” French model and underlying social protections is justified as the only recourse out of degrading public finance and a high unemployment rate. This reaffirms the French fascination with the “successful” German-style reforms to sync social progress with competitiveness.

In days to come, Macron is expected to take steps targeting the upper middle classes as a priority. These include (to benefit around 80% of households) and reduction in income tax that Macron announced in response to the feeling of “fiscal injustice.”

Macron seems to be stuck in a bubble and is using the camouflage of reform to disrupt the French welfare state. The retrenchment of the welfare state and the introduction of “” is crucial to his scheme. Crushing transport trade unions and humiliating social movements remain his prime agenda. The already trade unions may never recover from this latest blow. Macron’s final aim is to convert the French unemployed into the working poor who can feed the growing demand for cheap labor in the services sector dominated by part-time work. The agenda of liberalization has been justified under the garb of “.”

This push toward economic uncertainty and economic decline is good news for the French extreme right led by Marine Le Pen. We have witnessed how the American Rust Belt emerged as Donald Trump’s cheerleader. We have seen how fear of fueled Brexit in the UK. Le Pen has already announced her plans to challenge Macron in 2022 as France continues to experience a and slower growth. The share of wealth held by the richest 1% has been continuously since the mid-1980s. French citizens with migrant backgrounds remain at the of their country’s labor market.

As of now, President Macron seems confident of reelection as long as the far right remains his main opposition. But Macron’s own policies will have a long-term negative impact on both French society and economy.

No Alternative Yet

France and its unique economic model that achieved innovation and well-being of its public alongside an excellent health-care system and economic egalitarianism must be safeguarded. France needs reform, but not the kind that breeds economic precarity. France will do better by cutting government wastefulness and the abuse of state resources by its elite. The issue of widespread is a major barrier that needs to be fixed.

Macron is today a disconnected leader of a divided and discontented republic. His economic governance is aggravating social injustice. It is unlikely that he will slow down his war on core elements of French welfare. A president living in a and preaching welfare system as “wasteful” while sitting behind a golden desk is something that calls for reform. What France needs is real action to change the lives of its worst off. Over 600 homeless people officially in France in 2018. The main casualty of Macron’s war on welfare will be social justice.

France needs a credible alternative to Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 elections. Euroskeptics like Marine Le Pen can’t play that role. The upcoming municipal elections in March will serve as an opportunity for the French Left, including the French Communist Party and the Socialists, to reclaim their lost political significance and bring the focus back to social democracy. They must project themselves as guardians of the French model and the republic for which it stands.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The issue that broke the pact was the FRP’s refusal to agree to the return of an “” and her children, one of them said to be gravely ill. The situation has left the FRP looking punitive and lacking .

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The crisis was a convenient way out of government for the FRP. The party has long struggled to get any of its policy suggestions through in the last version of the coalition government led by Erna Solberg, of the Conservative Party. Local FRP leaders have long complained that the parliamentary wing had compromised too much and had moved away from the party program’s radical-right agenda.

Grassroots Gap

The gap between the FRP’s grassroots and parliamentary factions has been widening for a while, with local activists and politicians being significantly more radical than their parliamentary colleagues. For example, many local activists and leaders have been involved with Stop the Islamization of Norway (SIAN) — a radical anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant movement often operating in conflict with the law.

SIAN’s leader Lars Thorsen has long insinuated that the movement was in conversation with local FRP politicians who, SIAN suggests, were getting increasingly disillusioned with their parliamentary party. In October 2019, it was revealed that more than 20 FRP candidates standing in local elections were active on despite Jensen declaring in 2019 that membership of SIAN was not acceptable for FRP members and candidates.

Tactically, leaving government might work in FRP’s favor in the period leading up to the national elections in 2021. Erna Solberg is now in charge of a minority government with two other parties that are both closer to the center left than the right. In opposition, the FRP will gain more power and influence than it had in government. It is also likely that the governing coalition will depend on it for votes in Norway’s parliament, the Storting, on a case-by-case basis.

The party, therefore, has quite a lot of influence in its hands, which will not make it easy for Solberg, who has already announced that she intends to continue to work closely with FRP. For example, the radical-populist, evangelist FRP MP Sylvi Listhaug spells trouble. Listhaug, labeled in some circles as the “,” once that “in Norway we eat pork and drink alcohol.” Listhaug is uncompromising on immigration and integration, and will revel in the attention she will get in opposition. Since the party left the government, support for it in the has jumped from around 10% to 15.7%.

The FRP’s is a classic dilemma of a minor party in a government coalition: It had to compromise in more policy areas than its supporters were prepared to accept, and its leader, Siv Jensen, appears to have lost touch with the more radical grassroots while clinging to power for as long as possible.

The Solberg government project has been deemed a fiasco for both Solberg and Jensen. Going from crisis to crisis, Solberg was no longer willing to put up with threats and counterdemands from Jensen, standing her ground this time. Solberg had put a lot of prestige and pride into leading a successful government, but the FRP didn’t make it easy. According to senior political commentator, , as long as the government coalition consisted of two parties, it worked, but “The expansion of a four-party government, which was Erna Solberg’s work, is a disaster.”

Receding Tide?

The racist, punitive tide in Norway’s government might have turned with the end of the radical-right coalition. But radical populist politicians like the former minister of justice and immigration, the FRP’s Joran Kallmyr, and Sylvi Listhaug will not go away. They will be making their voices heard in parliament, and the party will be able to block any initiative by the minority government.

Kallmyr takes great pride in Norway being one of the strictest countries in Europe when it comes to immigration, taking credit for the fact that hardly anyone seeks asylum here. He argues against rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean, as he thinks it will encourage . These politicians will not disappear from social media or the mainstream press, who will continue to give them a disproportionate amount of attention, especially on issues of security and identity politics.

The FRP’s exit from government is a big defeat for Jensen, who took the party into coalition for the first time in 2013. Power and a role in government have eluded the FRP’s previous leader, Carl I. Hagen, who led the party from 1978 to 2000. Jensen, who took over in 2000, managed to transform the FRP, which has been in opposition since 1973, into a governing party, keeping it in government for six years — which is no small feat.

Interesting times lie ahead for the FRP, which has become increasingly populist and is moving toward a more radical platform. In theory, this should not gain it more support, but recent polls indicate otherwise. Unfortunately, the party might follow in a pan-European trend, where the electorate seems to have an unlimited appetite for blatantly racist and extremist politics.

*[The  is a partner institution of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Today, the far right faces a watershed year. After the 2019 European Parliament elections, the European far-right bloc has doubled in size, and Boris Johnson has finally extricated the UK from the European Union — a dream of the far right for some time. On the other hand, Trump heads into an election year amid his own impeachment trial.

The success of the Brexit referendum and Trump’s long-shot presidential bid in 2016 signaled a global turn to the right. Will 2020 deliver a different verdict?

Responding to Impeachment

The news of Donald Trump’s impeachment spread across the world in the hours after the historic House vote in mid-December in favor of impeachment. However, world leaders and high-profile politicians generally reserved judgment on the event. “World reaction muted to nonexistent” was the in USA Today. Some responses were general, as when China’s The Global Times took the opportunity of the impeachment to point out the growing “flaws of Western-style democracy.”

Two major exceptions to the lack of reaction from politicians worldwide were Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italy’s leader of the far-right League party, Matteo Salvini. Both expressed strong support for Trump, predicting that he would not only survive the proceedings, but even benefit from the impeachment in terms of electoral support. Both Putin and Salvini condemned the Democratic Party for trying to reverse the will of the people outside the ballot box. The Russian president, during his annual press conference, stated that the Democrats were simply trying to reverse their 2016 loss by “.”

Salvini’s League is leading the polls with 31% support. He not only expressed support for Trump, but Indeed, Salvini may also face legal proceedings in 2020 for having blocked a refugee transport from docking at an Italian harbor last year. As with Trump’s impeachment, the Italian senate will decide whether the proceedings will take place or not.

Other Trump allies around the world have been notably quiet. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, overwhelmed by his own corruption scandal, was careful to put distance between Israel and the United States over Trump’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, hit by the threat of US trade sanctions, has also not come out strongly in support of Trump in this hour of need. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined Trump at the White House in November and appeared before journalists just as the impeachment hearings were getting started in the House. It was a sign of support for Trump, certainly, but otherwise Erdogan has been quiet about the political challenges the US president faces.

With the exception of Israel and the Philippines, where he remains popular, Trump has very low favorability ratings around the world. Based on conducted in 32 countries last year, only 29% of people have confidence in the US president. Even in countries with right-wing leadership, like the UK and Hungary, Trump’s numbers are in the low 30s. No doubt that helps explain why Boris Johnson took pains to ask Trump not to “interfere” in the UK elections at the end of last year.

Trump’s erratic policies, his tendency to slap trade sanctions even on close allies, and his mercurial temperament also help explain why the coterie of right-wing and populist leaders around the world are adopting a wait-and-see approach to Trump’s political future.

Brexit and the European Far Right

In Europe, the reactions of far-right parties to Brexit were similarly low-key and revolved around two messages: respect the popular vote and avoid painful negotiations. In particular, , and Vox’s all agreed on the necessity to respect the “will of the people” and also warned the European Union not to use painful Brexit negotiations to punish the UK and deter other member states from contemplating withdrawal.

Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel, leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), expressed similar sentiments. However, the AfD has called for a , the first major German party to adopt such a policy. Indeed, the major far-right parties in Europe, with the exception of AfD and a few others, are very cautious about threatening a possible withdrawal from the European Union. Even Spain’s Vox, which captured around 15% of the vote in last year’s election, is not enthusiastic about a “Spaxit,” even though an EU court ruling in favor of parliamentary immunity for jailed Catalan separatist leaders has to support EU withdrawal in response.

The euroskepticism of the 2010s that produced calls for a withdrawal from the EU has largely given way to a different far-right strategy: to gain influence within European structures and use them to advance its agenda.

Partly this about-face reflects the interests of the electorate. The National Rally has stepped back from the idea of “Frexit” and leaving the euro bloc because “The French people have shown that they remain attached to the single currency,” . Or, as Salvini has said, “We don’t want to leave anything; we want to change the rules of the EU from the inside.” The country where sentiment to leave the EU is highest is the Czech Republic, and it only hits 34%.

The other part of the story is the growing far-right representation in the European Parliament, the coordination of far-right parties in the European space, and the influence of far-right NGOs like CitizenGo. The UK has always been something of an outlier in the European Union — joining late and negotiating multiple exceptions to EU rules. It looks as if Brexit will be an outlier as well.

What’s Next?

In 2017, given the victories of Trump and Brexit the year before, Geert Wilder was justified in his optimism about the future of the far right. In the next few years, he could point to other reasons to be cheerful: the win for Bolsonaro in Brazil, the reelection of Narendra Modi in India, the success of the far right in the Hungarian and Polish parliamentary elections, the electoral surges of Vox in Spain and AfD in Germany.

The situation in 2020 is not so clear. Scandals have overwhelmed key leaders like Netanyahu, Bolsonaro and Trump himself. The far right’s participation in the Austrian coalition government came to an end as a result of another corruption scandal. Despite much media exposure, the efforts of Steve Bannon, Trump’s ideological adviser, to build a “Nationalist International” have not borne fruit.

Much depends on two factors: the results of the Brexit negotiations and the outcome of the 2020 US election. If Britain suffers economically as a result of withdrawal from the EU, the backlash against Johnson and his populist politics will be significant. And if Donald Trump loses in November — in the Electoral College as well as in the popular vote — it will send a strong message that his brand of illiberal, xenophobic populism lacks enduring appeal.

The triumphalism of the far right and its claims of an inevitable march away from liberalism will suffer a major blow. However, the cautious approach by far-right parties worldwide to Trump’s impeachment and Brexit may well signal that those political actors are now adopting long-term strategies to gain power. Their long-term strategy is shifting to a slower infiltration of democratic institutions both at the national that supranational level.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In his attempt to win Emilia Romagna, Salvini played all his cards, leaving the simultaneous regional elections in Calabria aside. For instance, the “” episode is an excellent piece of populist propaganda that sparked controversy in Italy, attracting wide criticism. A few days before the regional election, Salvini buzzed an alleged drug dealer from Tunisia in the Bologna suburbs and asked over the intercom “Hi, do you push drugs?” The League leader also tried to perform a spectacular move by deciding to suspend his campaigning in Bibbiano to openly challenge the rising “” movement, which gathered 7,000 citizens to rally against radical-right and nationalist propaganda.

Salvini had also mocked, on more than one occasion, as shameful the resignation of his former political “ally,” , from the leadership of M5S. According to Salvini, Di Maio, currently serving as Italy’s minister of foreign affairs, fully deserved the resignation as leader of the party for having supported a government with the PD, which is seen as the party of the elites and the financial establishment.

In Emilia Romagna, Bonaccini may have won an outright majority, but the League candidate and the center-right coalition took 43,6% of the vote. The Five Star Movement was the real loser of the regional elections, with a paltry 3,48%, down from the 12,9% at the and two-thirds of its electorate abandoning it in favor of the center-left coalition. Notwithstanding the evident defeat, Salvini’s League rose from the 19,2% in 2018 to 31,9% — a gain of 450,000 votes in two years. In an interview following the Emilia Romagna elections, that change is only postponed, that his party had played a “good match” and is on the right path.

Two main factors can explain the defeat of the League in Emilia Romagna: the rise of the sardines movement and the debacle of M5S. The sardines, born in late 2019, were able to gather more than 100,000 people last December in Rome, and their capacity to mobilize people seems to be increasing exponentially. This has greatly contributed in limiting the electoral performance of the League in Emilia Romagna. However, if their political firepower is strong, it remains to be seen if it can be channeled effectively.

As explained by Italian writer , “the Sardines insist their chief goal is not even political; it’s a moral struggle. Their aim is to restore politeness and truthfulness to counter nasty populist leaders whom they frame not merely as political adversaries, but as morally abject hatemongers and promoters of fake news. In short, the Sardines say they stand for good against evil.” In March, the sardines plan to convene a national gathering in , in Naples — one of Italy’s poorest suburbs and a Camorra stronghold — to come up with a national strategy. For the time being, they are avoiding media exposure.

The second factor is the slow but inexorable crisis of the M5S. The movement, founded by Beppe Grillo 10 years ago, reached its electoral acme during the 2018 general election, when it won almost 36% of the vote. Since then, with the formation of two Giuseppe Conte governments, respectively with Salvini’s League and later with the PD, the Five Star Movement started losing popularity in electoral terms. The pact with Salvini, at the time the minister of the internal affairs, exposed M5S’s inability to govern effectively, giving the leader of the League the chance to present himself as the “protector” of the rights of the Italians in Europe.

The second coalition, this time with the PD, appeared from the very beginning as a political chimera in light of the conflicting political positions of the M5S and PD, producing dissensus within the leadership of the movement itself.   

Salvini’s defeat in Emilia Romagna was not a fiasco, as the center-right coalition did well in electoral terms. In particular, the League’s vote gain in a region considered, until few years ago, the most left-leaning in Italy, is an excellent result. The inventory of the populist propaganda was enriched by Salvini with new items — the intercom stunt, the muscular face-to-face with the sardines. Moreover, if in Emilia Romagna two out of three of M5S voters abandoned the movement to support the PD, in other Italian regions they may vote for Salvini in the future. As for the sardines movement, its capacity to effectively influence Italian politics remains to still be determined. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Putin will remain president until 2024 and, with this latest move, is possibly preparing the ground for an extension. Trump wants to be reelected for another term that would keep him in the Oval Office until 2024, but he has “” six times about becoming president for life. The fates of the United States and Russia are inextricably linked to the authoritarian narcissism of these two figures.

But these men are also part of a much longer historical development. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia have experienced an unexpected reversal in fortune.

Putin Is Leaving, But Not Saying Goodbye

Imagine sitting down in front of your computer in 1999 to try to predict the future of the United States and Russia. The trajectories seemed clear enough. The Soviet Union was dead already for eight years, the Berlin Wall was a decade gone, and the United States was the undisputed winner of the Cold War. If the 20th century was the American century, surely the 21st would be so as well.

Looking Ahead to the New Millennium 

Certainly, the largest Soviet successor state, Russia, no longer seemed to be in the running. Its GDP was only a little more than half of what it had been in 1989. Inflation was raging at 36%. Billions of dollars had been  of the country during its putative “transition” to capitalism. Although life expectancy in 1988 was nearly 70 years, it  to below 65 years by 1994 — an unprecedented decline for a modern industrialized country not experiencing a major war.

��ܲ�������’s nascent democracy, too, was in peril. President Boris Yeltsin — frequently drunk, consistently incompetent and battling several impeachment threats — resigned on the last day of the millennium and handed power to his prime minister, Vladimir Putin. This little-known apparatchik, an alumnus of the Soviet security system, didn’t face much of a challenge.

A generation of pro-democracy advocates had been compromised by their support for the economic changes that had so clearly impoverished the vast majority of Russians. The country was edging in the direction of a failed state. With secessionist turmoil again roiling Chechnya, the very integrity of the Russian Federation hung in the balance.

Contrast conditions in Russia in 1999 with those in the United States. At that time, America was the world’s sole superpower enjoying its extended unipolar moment. The US economy was, in the 1990s, in the longest extended economic boom in its history to that point. This expansion, plus a tax increase for the wealthy and a  in military spending, allowed the administration of Bill Clinton to eliminate the budget deficit by 1998. In 1999, the unemployment rate  to 4.1%, the lowest in 30 years.

It wasn’t exactly a progressive economic agenda, not with Clinton’s punitive welfare reform and corporate-friendly NAFTA. But it was an economic paradise compared to Russia.

The Clinton administration was also edging in the direction of greater multilateralism. It signed the Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court, though it didn’t submit the treaty to the Senate for approval; the George W. Bush administration withdrew the US signature in 2002. Similarly, Clinton signed the Law of the Seas agreement, which the Senate refused to ratify. He also pushed for the United States to pay its unpaid dues to the United Nations. It was a compromised multilateralism — what Clinton called “à la carte” — but it was a step up from the unilateralism of the Reagan era.

On the political front, Clinton too faced impeachment and a trial. Since the Senate couldn’t muster a two-thirds majority for either count — lying under oath, obstruction of justice — Clinton remained in office. The “” — the Koch brothers, the neocons, the progenitors of the alt-right — howled from the margins, but without much effect.

In 1999, at least, American democracy seemed to be in reasonably good shape, at least in comparison to what happened later: the scandalous Supreme Court judgment in the 2000 election, the transformations wrought by the Bush administration after 9/11 and the Citizens United decision on money in politics, to mention just three.

So, if you were sitting at your computer in 1999, you probably weren’t thinking much about Russia, its prospects of returning to superpower status, or any ruinous clash between Moscow and Washington. If you were worried about anything, it was Y2K followed by, maybe, China, which was finishing a decade of dramatic economic growth. Russia was becoming more insular, more illiberal, more nationalist. The United States was flexing its power, economically and militarily, but also moving toward greater diplomatic engagement with the world.

History, it seemed, had made its decision. The United States had benefited enormously from the end of the Cold War. Russia had not. Case closed.

Twenty Years Later

By 2019, the United States had traded places with Russia in many respects. Consider, for instance, US leadership. Donald Trump isn’t a drunk like Yeltsin, but you might think he was, considering the incoherence of his unscripted remarks. The American president is manifestly incompetent, which even the Pentagon acknowledges, as the  by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker details. And now he is facing impeachment as well.

Were he to resign, as Yeltsin did, Trump would be replaced by someone very much like Vladimir Putin. Mike Pence is a quiet, ruthless, illiberal company man who would continue the Trumpian agenda more competently and thus more effectively. (First prize in the impeachment sweepstakes: Trump stays in office. Second prize: Trump resigns and Pence takes over. Booby prize: Trump is impeached and Pence uses his incumbent status to win the 2020 election).

Trump’s political rise has coincided with a deepening of divisions in the United States. To achieve power and push his agenda, the president has exploited those divisions on practically every issue.

Trump is not a Russian puppet. He’s not even an errand boy, as Yeltsin was for the United States. Trump likes Putin because he is drawn to strong, illiberal leaders who carefully construct their public images. Though he isn’t taking his orders from the Kremlin, Trump is nevertheless doing precisely what Putin would want from an American leader: paralyze America politically, remove any role for human rights in US foreign policy, sow discord in NATO, and get out of ��ܲ�������’s way along its borders and in the Middle East.

At the level of economic indicators, the American economy couldn’t be more different from Russia circa 1999. Unemployment and inflation are both low; Wall Street is booming. But in other respects, the US economy resembles the go-go days of Russia in the 1990s. The rich are making huge profits and  to tax havens overseas. Wealthy oligarchs await the latest government handout — a lease to dig in public lands, an enormous military contract. The government is piling up enormous amounts of debt, as are consumers. A reckoning is on the horizon.

Russia, meanwhile, has recovered from the ravages of the 1990s. Between 1999 and 2008, , and its per capita GDP doubled. More recently, economic growth in 2018 . The official unemployment rate  (though it’s likely higher). While US life expectancy has  for three straight years, ��ܲ�������’s has recovered to 72 years. In nominal terms, the Russian economy is , behind Canada and Brazil. In terms of purchasing power, however, Russia ranks sixth.

Of course, this is a far cry from the heyday of Soviet power. Moreover, economic growth has been rather anemic over the last year, the  has been increasing, and the country remains dangerously dependent on its energy exports. Still, in a country where 70% of the population believes that in Russian history, Vladimir Putin’s iron-fist policies have guaranteed him that also hover around 70%.

It’s not just a stabilized economy. It’s also Putin’s naked militarism. Over his 20-year reign, the Russian leader has brutally suppressed the Chechens, waged war in Georgia and Ukraine, deployed huge armies on the border of the Baltic nations, rebuilt the Russian military, supplied all comers with weaponry and indiscriminately bombed large swathes of Syria. In the eyes of many Russians, Putin has indeed made his country great again.

Putin didn’t start out as a nationalist. But particularly after the Russian military campaign on behalf of secessionists in eastern Ukraine, Putin’s appeals began to take on a nationalist tone. A subtle shift in vocabulary tells it all. There are two words in Russian that can be used to describe Russians: russkiy and rossiysky. The first denotes ethnic Russians; the second encompasses all people who live in Russia, regardless of ethnicity. In his speeches, Putin has begun to use the former over the latter.

In perhaps the most dramatic change in Russian foreign policy, Putin has largely abandoned engagement with the United States. He has emphasized the importance of Russian sovereignty above all and has pushed back against NATO encroachment on his borders. For the most part, he has backed a containment policy that permits negotiations, for instance, on arms control. But he has not hesitated to pursue a policy of rollback as well.

This rollback approach has three prongs. The first involves widening the gulf between Europe and the United States, and within Europe between illiberal and liberal governments (for example, Hungary and Germany). This strategy involves funding and supporting the European far right and any other euroskeptic forces. The second prong is to push the United States out of nearby regions — Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq — through key alliances and strategic military campaigns.

Finally, Putin is bringing the battle to the United States itself. By updating Soviet-era disinformation campaigns in an era of social media, Putin has done more to weaken the United States than anything the Communist Party ever dared to consider.

The Russian campaigns might not have gotten Trump elected in 2016 — it’s hard to know what combination of factors pushed a total of 80,000 voters in three swing states to support the Republican candidate — but they certainly contributed to undermining US faith in democratic institutions. All indications  that Russia is gearing up for an encore performance in 2020.

Victory of Illiberalism

The liberal age, with the United States presiding over it, is over. Illiberal leaders are now in charge of the United States, Brazil, India, China, Russia. The far right is upending electoral calculations in Europe. The expansion of liberal democracy that was presented as an inevitable trajectory in the 1990s now seems as laughable as a world of Betamax and dial-up internet.

Russia represents the new political norm: guided democracy with authoritarian tendencies. China, in the wake of the Tiananmen crisis of 1989, deliberately eschewed the Gorbachev model of modest democratization. Going forward, however, Beijing may well decide that Putin’s model, with its illusion of democracy, is the future. According to a , China’s market Leninism would gradually approach ��ܲ�������’s illiberal democracy to create the worst kind of hybrid political economy.

Putin, despite his Soviet background and friendships with putative socialist leaders in Cuba and Venezuela, is a thoroughly right-wing leader. He is pro-religion and anti-LGBT. He embraces a corporate (and corporatist) agenda. He is a militarist. He cares nothing about human rights or democracy. With respect to his foreign policy, perhaps it’s more accurate to describe Putin simply as illiberal. It explains why he supports both right-wing extremists in Europe and left-wingers in Latin America.

One thing Putin is not, however, is a populist. He does not inveigh against a domestic elite, as Trump does. After all, Putin has carefully cultivated a domestic elite from the corporate sector (the oligarchs) and the security sector (the siloviki). Nor does he criticize globalists, as Trump does. Putin desperately wants a seat at the global table, for instance to rejoin the G7.

After 20 years of rule, Putin shows few signs of walking away from power. His current term of office runs until 2024. According to the current constitution, he won’t be able to run again. But recently Putin announced plans for a . On the face of it, ��ܲ�������’s new constitution would prevent the president from serving more than two terms, period. Putin has also touted the new powers the constitution will accord the parliament, such as naming the prime minister.

But the president would retain the authority to dismiss ministers and judges. And the new constitution would institutionalize the state council, an advisory body chaired by the president. One scenario would be for Putin to step down as president but take up residence at the newly empowered state council to continue to preside over the Russian government. Or Putin might just call another referendum in 2024 to change the constitution again so that he could run once more.

No wonder Donald Trump loves this guy. Putin can restructure government seemingly at will, all in service of his own power. Trump has tried to make the same argument in the US context by  that he can’t be impeached. Senate Republicans, alas, will probably zombie-walk behind the president, their brains having been eaten at some point in the past.

Post-impeachment, Trump will likely act in an even more unshackled (and unhinged) manner. He will do everything he can to stay in office until 2024. Perhaps, like his pal in Moscow, Trump might call a referendum to change the US Constitution so that he can run a third time.

By that time, at the end of Trump’s second term, America’s economic bubble will have burst. Poverty and corruption will be endemic, and the democratic guardrails will have been carted off for scrap. That’s when the reversal of fortunes will be complete, Americans will have a true taste of post-imperial decline, and Russia will emerge the victor of the post-Cold War era.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In 2008, at the end of Putin’s first presidential cycle, he passed his post to then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev for four years. At the time, Putin took over as prime minister but continued to lead the country from the sidelines, in a set-up that became known as the “tandem.” However, at the end of the 2012 election everything had already returned to its place: Putin had been reelected president, and Medvedev was made the head of government as prime minister. In Russian politics, this maneuver is known as “castling” — an analogy with chess.

After the second coming of Putin, the presidential term in Russia was increased from four to six years, granting the head of state 12 years in power. During this time, the annexation of Crimea, the war with Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions, as well as ��ܲ�������’s increased involvement in the Syrian Civil War, took place. The only thing that remained unchanged was Putin’s power. He quietly won all the country’s elections, leaving all rivals far, far behind. Technically speaking, there is some political opposition in the country, but none of the real opponents of the regime are allowed to engage in politics.

However, time is running out, and Putin will soon have to step down again formally as president. So, the time has come for the Kremlin to decide what power structures in Russia will remain after 2024. Journalists and political experts predicted various scenarios of the power transfer, such as the unification of Russia and Belarus to create a “Union State,” as well as some sort of new castling. However, everyone was sure of one thing:  Putin can’t simply retire. Too much power is concentrated in his hands to just leave it all behind.

Message to the Federal Assembly

The transfer of power began . The President’s annual address to the federal assembly was scheduled for January 15. The country expected that Putin would talk about the economic situation and social issues. Russians have been growing increasingly weary of hearing about war and geopolitics. The president, aware of the popular mood, began his speech by announcing an increase in child allowances, and support to teachers, doctors and young families. He even promised free lunches to schoolchildren.

However, the second part of his speech was entirely devoted to the redistribution of roles among the branches of power in the country. In fact, Putin proclaimed the beginning of constitutional reform.

The president’s statements provided a rough idea of how . The main idea is that Russia will remain a presidential system, but the role of the prime minister and government will be strengthened. The head of the government will be proposed by parliament — no longer by the president, as it is now, but the president will still be able to dismiss the appointee. The federation council will have the right to remove judges from office, and officials and judges will be forbidden to hold a second citizenship or residence permits in other countries. Only those who have lived in Russia for the last 25 years will be eligible for the presidency.

In addition, they must  never have held a residence permit of another country or a second citizenship. Putin also announced that Russia would no longer grant precedence to international conventions or court rulings over its own laws.

President Putin also spoke in favor of strengthening the role of governors and the federation council, which currently have rather nominal functions. He also suggested removing the term “consecutive” from the two-term limit on holding office. Putin recommended that all his ideas be enshrined in the constitution. In Russian political terms, a “recommendation” by Putin means direct orders.

The president concluded his speech on a dramatic note, saying that renewal and the change of power are an essential condition for progressive evolution of society and stable development. He preferred not to talk about his role in his imagined Russia of the future. However, one thing is clear: He has taken the necessary steps to secure his own political future in the country. Since he can no longer remain president, he needs another powerful position that will allow him to exercise the full extent of his power.

Government Resignation

No one can say whether Dmitry Medvedev knew that January 15 would be his last day as head of government. He and the entire Russian cabinet resigned only a few hours after Putin’s address.

The president proposed the candidacy of a new prime minister that same evening:  Mikhail Mishustin, the country’s chief tax collector. His name says nothing to the average man, as he only appeared on English Wikipedia after the new appointment. However, Mishustin is no novice in Russian politics. He is seen as a reformer, an expert in modern technology and a keeper of secrets for many Russian officials. The post of chief tax officer is a police post, with all its consequences.

Mishustin doesn’t have much popularity, but does he really need it in his new position of power? Prime ministers in Russia are usually the fall guys. They are responsible for all failures of the government in order to shift responsibility from the president, who is busy with geopolitics and global issues. Nevertheless, ��ܲ�������’s parliament approved Mishstin’s appointment without much hesitation.

As for Medvedev, he will now become deputy head of the security council. This new position was invented just for him. For the former prime minister — the second most powerful person in the country — such a transfer doesn’t exactly mark a sign of success. However, this impression might be premature. The head of the security council is Vladimir Putin himself. It was the security council, not the Ministry of Defense, that was responsible for the Crimea operation.

For Medvedev, who has mainly been involved in matters of Russia’s economy and industry in recent years, this is an atypical position. Therefore, it is hard to say for sure whether it is a demotion or another strategic maneuver. For Putin, Medvedev is still a special person. He once entrusted him with the power over the country, and Medvedev gave it back without question. Putin values such people, as loyalty is the most important quality in his eyes.

What Happens Next?

A referendum on changing the constitution could potentially take place in September. Journalists and analysts are desperate to predict ��ܲ�������’s future. Only one person knows for sure  what awaits the country in 2024 — Vladimir Putin, and he is in no hurry to reveal his cards. A referendum on the constitution, parliamentary elections in 2021 and a full four years before the end of his current presidential term are still ahead of him. 

For example, by that time the next US president will have already been elected to replace the one who came into power in 2020. The only thing we can state with certainty is that Putin is not going anywhere. Perhaps he will no longer be addressed as president, but he won’t stop ruling Russia. Now he is setting the scene for a new role. More precisely, you could even say he is forming a parallel government, a system within a system.

Perhaps he’ll take over as prime minister? It’s doubtful. Officially Putin doesn’t even have a political party. In the last election, he ran as an independent, unwilling to be associated with any political bloc.

Maybe he rewrites the constitution and stays for a new term? Theoretically speaking, it’s possible. Recent events have shown that the Russian Constitution is subject to amendment and can rewritten to suit the political ambitions of the ruling class. If a new constitution brings in a new order and new rules allowing Putin to run again, this would potentially means two more new terms and another 12 years of Putin. However, in this case, he will never get rid of the reputation of a dictator — even formally.

Maybe Putin will concentrate all the powers in the state council? This is the more likely scenario. For good reason, he seeks to enshrine this office, which will allow him to oversee the various sectors of government and the direction of the country’s foreign and domestic policy, in the constitution. Putin has four years to give the council the power it needs. It looks like the president will learn from neighboring Kazakhstan, where Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled his country for almost 30 years, voluntarily moved to the position of chair of the security council. In fact, Nazarbayev had become a local Ayatollah Khameini — Iran’s supreme leader — without whom no meaningful decision can be made. Putin may indeed embrace the role of the father of the nation.

Most likely, Putin is looking for a position where he could influence key decisions in the country, but not be in the foreground. In this case, it is no longer so important who becomes the new president of Russia. Maybe Dmitry Medvedev again, or someone else. Whoever it is, the country will continue to be ruled by Putin and his entourage. The same people will remain in power and will only swap their official titles. In this sense, Russia is beginning to increasingly mirror China, where it is impossible to engage in politics if you are not a member of the Communist Party. The only difference is that in Russia, it’s Putin’s party, and the country’s opinion has no meaning.

*[Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to the state council as federation council in the last reference. This piece was updated on January 24, 2020.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Putin Is Leaving, But Not Saying Goodbye appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Recent times have seen the contemporary far right growing in popularity across Europe. The narrative of the international media has often focused on the that these far- right parties have caused in Europe by shaking up the mainstream political establishment. A number of European countries have seen a general in electoral support for-far right parties in national parliamentary elections recently, most notably in countries such as Germany, Austria, France and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands. Three key — immigration concerns, dissatisfaction with the EU project and a lack of trust in mainstream parties and politicians — are often said to have caused this increase in support.

The Populist Radical Right Is an Electoral Threat That Is Here to Stay

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At the same time, it is often assumed that the far right has monopolized and laid claim to “owning” the immigration issue from mainstream parties on both the left and right. Recent research by has demonstrated that the far right’s ownership of the immigration issue is not uniform or as clear cut as the international media often portrays it to be. In some cases, center-right parties may shift their stances on immigration, adopting more anti-immigrant stances that may serve as a strategy to counteract the electoral threat that insurgent far-right parties offer on this issue.

Party Competition

Building on , we can argue that mainstream center-right parties are better able to frame and position themselves on the immigration issue compared to party families like the center left. There are two primary reasons for this. Firstly, center-right parties are to populist radical-right parties on immigration positions. Center-right parties have also been known to adopt dynamic stances on immigration, and there are numerous cases — such as in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France — where center-right parties have been closer to radical-right spaces and have also made the issue salient in their party manifestos.

At the same time, while some center-left parties have engaged with the immigration issue, they have generally seen electoral fortunes. Some have also argued that center-left parties are more constrained on the immigration issue than center-right parties due to their internationalist outlook and have thus been less willing to emphasize the issue.

Secondly, immigration is centrally linked to the core ideology of the right and to key such as keeping taxation low, maintaining law and order, alongside national security, which are likely to appeal to a core base of the center-right electorate. Recent research has demonstrated that center-right parties such as the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy in the (VVD) has historical precedence on the immigration issue, having adopted a cooptation strategy on immigration in reaction to the far-right List Pim Fortuyn’s electoral success in the early 2000s.

Issue Salience

Center-right parties recognized the 2008 economic crisis as a time of greater voter volatility during which the populist radical right seeks to secure more support through appeals over immigration. Examining parties’ electoral performances (the percentage change in vote share from the last two national parliamentary elections) during the economic crisis in 24 European Union countries, we find that specific center-right parties sought to respond with a “strategic emphasis” on the immigration issue to .

Whilst this effect is statistically significant, a closer inspection of the dataset showed that a specific type of center-right party performed electorally better, namely non-incumbent/challenger parties that were not in government at the time of the economic crisis. These results are also surprising as they depart from recent studies that demonstrate the importance of issue positions such as adopting tougher stances on immigration. Instead, these findings correspond to the issue salience model of voting and the importance of center-right parties making the immigration issue a salient one in their party strategies as opposed to adopting anti-immigrant stances. Thus, challenger center-right parties emphasized the immigration issue and performed electorally better or matched the electoral success of the respective far-right party. Examples include center-right parties such as the New Flemish Alliance Party (N-VA) in Belgium, alongside the Dutch VVD.

There are also center-right parties that did not perform electorally better during the economic crisis period, particularly when they are incumbents and are punished in line with theories of economic voting, like the Union for a Popular Movement in France, or when they do not emphasize the immigration issue, like the National Coalition Party and the Finnish Center Party in Finland. Thus, these cases show that there are electoral restrictions to emphasizing immigration in bad economic times, with potential electoral gains for populist radical-right parties.

A New Electoral Winning Formula?

The political scientist coined the phrase “electoral winning formula” to describe the dominance that specific radical right achieved in the 1990s by adopting neo-liberal economic positions alongside hardline positions on issues such as crime, law and order, and immigration. Since Kitschelt’s study, a number of scholars have shown how the immigration issue has come to the ideology of the populist radical right and the attitudes of the voters that this party family attracts.

There is preliminary evidence for a new electoral winning formula in this economic context, whereby center-right parties, particularly challenger parties, can profit electorally from this issue when they emphasized the immigration issue in times of economic crisis. In certain cases, the center right can even perform better electorally than the populist radical right on this issue. Center-right parties that were in opposition, like the N-VA in Belgium and VVD in the Netherlands, during economic downturns were not tainted by anti-incumbency effects and therefore had more freedom to compete on the immigration issue with populist radical-right parties.

The here has implications for the contemporary party competition literature in suggesting that specific types of center-right parties have the potential to benefit electorally from emphasizing the immigration issue in times of economic crisis. Whilst these findings do point to the electoral success of certain center-right parties in being able to challenge — and in some cases outperform — the populist radical right on its core issue of immigration during periods of economic crisis, there are a number of situations where the center right perform electorally worse. This is particularly true when they are incumbents, or when they do not emphasize the immigration issue.

Thus, these cases show that there are electoral restrictions to emphasizing immigration in economic bad times, with potential electoral gains for populist radical-right parties. Future research should seek to understand further the electoral success of the center right across Europe in different economic contexts through investigating how center-right and radical-right parties emphasized the issue of immigration outside periods of economic crisis, specifically in the context of the ongoing refugee crisis.

*[The  is a partner institution of 51�Թ�. This piece is based on a paper recently published in by the authors.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Throughout the election campaign, even pessimists had clung to the hope of an opposition coalition emerging from a hung Parliament. But the likely coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, were decimated, and Labour lost strongholds in northern England it had held for decades. The “red wall” in working-class constituency after constituency crumbled like chalk dust. The vaunted socialist and blue-collar consciousness of middle-class North London found itself dramatically out of touch with a national working class with no sense of historical romanticism.

The Questions to Ask

So, the first question is: What will happen to an abjectly defeated Labour Party? This is particularly pertinent in the event of a two-term Johnson administration looming ahead. Which Labour Party will emerge after another decade in opposition? That will mean 19 years outside of government. Whoever replaces Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn may well no longer be in charge 10 years from now, so all the recriminations and power plays in the party today may be meaningless.

The second question is: What kind of relationship will Britain have with a European Union it has formally left? Not that leaving will be as abrupt as Brexit cheerleaders might imagine. There is still an 11-month transition period in which a trade deal has to be finalized — and it may well take, bravado notwithstanding, much longer. But from the end of January 2020, the UK will no longer have a seat at the high European table, and the EU will be weakened as a bloc in the face of the American and Chinese superpowers.

But if the EU is weakened, how will Britain alone face up to the US and China? If it marries itself to the US, will there be a bride price that will seriously weaken the independence of British institutions? There is much concern about the US “buying into” the National Health Service (NHS) and the rising cost of drugs. But if the future is a Sino-American trade war and power struggle, will Britain — with much Chinese penetration already in its economy — be a pawn in US hands?

The third question is precisely to do with Britain versus any other identity. As the United Kingdom, Great Britain is part of a union with Northern Ireland. As Great Britain, England is in a union with Scotland. Throughout the Brexit negotiations to leave the EU, there were serious Irish and Northern Irish concerns. Yet the first major schismatic fault-line would seem to lie with the Scots — the Scottish National Party swept the polls north of the border on December 12 — seeking another referendum for independence.

A legal vote on Scottish independence can only be sanctioned in Westminster, not in Edinburgh. The Scots will be mulling, nevertheless, a Catalonian-style unilateral referendum and using it as moral leverage in difficult and likely protracted discussions and confrontations with Westminster. The one thing Prime Minister Johnson is unlikely to have is any guaranteed unity in the British project.

So, those are the questions no pundit can immediately answer. All of them point to difficult choices and perilous negotiations. Only if all three areas prove disastrous for Johnson would the Labour Party have much chance to stake a real claim to power after his first term. But what are the Labour Party’s postures and policies on all three issues?

The Future of Labour

The first is to do with a power struggle within Labour, with any outcome not guaranteed to indicate the shape and direction of the party 10 years from now. But a Corbynista party under new leadership would have to distance itself, if not in terms of policy, then in terms of style from the defeated grand old man of the left.

The policy itself, however, bears thought. Not everything can be solved by public ownership and intervention. The move away from one-dimensionality is unavoidable for any more youthful leadership. And it can’t be North London appearing to speak for (and “educate”) the “unwashed” northern masses. The move to the left under Corbyn appeared far too much like a Leninist vanguard party project, in which the working class would be led to its apotheosis as satisfied producers under wise leadership. It was elitist and condescending, but it represented a trenchant vocabulary and conception.

If Labour turns back to the center, however, in what way can this avoid identification with former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s New Labour years? This essentially means there can be no traditional left in a Labour future, and there can be no modern centrism that smacks of Blair. So, what is there left for Labour?

Post-Brexit Relations

As for the UK’s relationship with the EU, that requires punditry amidst terrains of unknowns. The world is in the middle of trade wars that might yet see the UK cling closer to the EU in ways unforeseen in the election campaign.

As food prices rise, European common agricultural policy subsidies are withdrawn, and new food suppliers cannot be found — or found only with great transport costs — the UK agricultural sector looks set to be decimated. New tariff barriers, unless successfully negotiated downward over the next 11 months, would raise the prices on almost all imported commodities in a land with declining manufacturing capacities, alongside agriculture that cannot survive without subsidies.

But to have a “Brexit in name only” would mean a repudiation of a sentiment that was stirred into existence. This did not exist before then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s referendum on EU membership in 2016. Brexit became the bogeyman for all real and imagined dissatisfactions. It was chiefly attractive because it said someone else was to blame, and that someone else was the European Union. That all parties in Westminster were out of touch with the masses and that the referendum result was a slap in the face of elite rule is belied by the huge majority that Johnson has now received.

The European bogeyman label has stuck. But the prime minister must now contrive a relationship that seems distant while struggling to stay close enough to minimize economic shocks.

As for the Labour Party, the time to have fought Brexit hard was during the 2016 referendum. Corbyn was so lukewarm and lackluster at the time that it seemed only a personal conviction toward leaving the EU could explain his continuation of such equivocal lukewarmness toward the European project throughout the administrations of Theresa May and Boris Johnson. If Corbyn betrayed an essential little Englander sense of being on the left — without any outreach to a pan-European working class at all — then he must take the blame at least for being a poor leader of the opposition. He scarcely opposed the government at all in its flagship policy.

The (Dis)United Kingdom

The third issue is whether there will still be a United Kingdom in the years to come. That is perhaps the great historical question. But the union has never been so imperiled. Scottish rhetoric is one thing, but it seems a genuine Scottish nationalism has been stirred from the Cameron years till this day.

In 2014, Prime Minister Cameron only won his referendum on Scottish independence with the help of Labour Party dignitaries like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. There is no one left in Corbyn’s Labour Party who can reach out to the Scots. Labour and the Conservative Party were thrashed in the general election results for Scotland.

This third question is an open one, with perhaps a longer timeframe for a final outcome than even the difficult resolutions required for the first two. But it is not a question that will fade away — or even fade very much.

So, this is a historic moment for what is now the UK. There is a sense that the country deserves a reduced sense of self. That sense of self still advertises the outcome of World War II as dependent almost entirely on British heroism — never mind the US, the Commonwealth and the Soviets sacrificing huge armies for the defeat of Nazi Germany, together with the heroism of several European underground and partisan organizations.

Yet the likelihood is that a British reduction in real terms would instead reinforce the myth of the plucky and tiny England against all foes. Such a plucky and tiny England might be the exact apotheosis of all the currents of thought, opportunism and grandstanding that have marked the country in the last decade — with perhaps some decades of rue to come, crouched behind the porous barricade of needless mythology.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Both the United States and the United Kingdom came down with chills and high fever in 2016. In the most optimistic scenario, the passage of the Brexit referendum to leave the European Union and then Donald Trump’s electoral victory some months later would inoculate the general population against an even more serious illness. Surely, once Britons got a foretaste of exiting the EU, they would come to their senses and run back into the embrace of Brussels. Likewise, Americans would experience the horror of a Trump presidency and kick him out of office after his first term (or even before).

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So far, so bad. In the UK general election on December 12, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a decisive victory over both the wavering Labour Party and the more EU-friendly Liberal Democrats. With his commanding parliamentary majority, Prime Minister Johnson will be able to usher the UK out of the EU, and there’s little that anyone can do to stop him.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Congress is impeaching an American president for only the third time in history. That, on the face of it, would seem to be a resolute response to the disease that is Donald Trump. But President Trump isn’t going anywhere. According to a number of indications this week, his chances of reelection in 20202 have even been improved by impeachment — or, at the very least, not adversely affected by it.

Democracy is supposed to be the political system that allows citizens to learn from their mistakes. But what happens when those mistakes are so momentous that they threaten to overwhelm the system and its vaunted self-correction mechanisms? We’ve been suffering from flu symptoms only to learn that just around the corner is the political equivalent of Ebola.

Johnson’s Folly

In the run-up to the recent UK election, Johnson couldn’t seem to stop making mistakes. He threatened to pull the UK out of the EU even without a withdrawal deal, a move so disruptive that members of his own party bolted into opposition. He invoked emergency powers over Parliament to force a vote on his Brexit proposal. He lost vote after vote in the House of Commons.

Through it all, Johnson was his usual buffoonish self, a true English eccentric who has lied and cheated his way to the top. He should have been tossed out of office simply for being an insufferable poser.

But Johnson survived because he knew three things. The Labour Party was a house divided between those who favored staying in the EU and those who wanted out. The leader of the party, Jeremy Corbyn, was deeply unpopular, even in some Labour strongholds. And the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, was eager for new elections, over the objections of her senior associates,  she could climb over two unpopular parties to reach the top of the political heap.

Johnson was thus able to fall back on his only option: call an early election and hope to repopulate Parliament with his own people. True to form, he has pulled off yet another improbable win.

Labour, meanwhile, suffered an epic fail, losing some seats it had continuously occupied . Corbyn, having presided over this disaster, will be out on his ear. The Liberal Democrats lost ground in Parliament, and Swinson herself couldn’t even hold onto her seat.

Up north, the pro-EU Scottish National Party (SNP) has consolidated its control in Scotland and will be pushing as hard as possible for another referendum on independence from the UK. Johnson has a large enough parliamentary majority to prevent that from happening for the time being. But the United Kingdom may well be the first casualty of Brexit.

The EU leadership, meanwhile, is  that Britain will finally follow through on its plan. The UK has always been a pain in the EU’s butt — demanding innumerable exemptions from EU rules, refusing to join the common currency and serving as a European foothold for American-style laissez-faire capitalism. Finally, there’s an end in sight for the seemingly endless Brexit negotiations, which represented yet another example of British intransigence.

Even though the British population didn’t experience a Brexit backlash in this election, there has been a cautionary backlash within the EU itself. No other country is seriously considering to leave the union at this point. But that’s not necessarily good news. The euroskeptics who were so excited by Brexit have begun to embrace a different strategy: take over the EU. If you were lukewarm about European integration before — because of its neoliberalism, its retreat on immigration, its bureaucratic excesses — you’re going to be even less enthusiastic if the likes of Brexiteer Nigel Farage takes over.

The Brits might have second thoughts about Brexit when their economy tanks, the Conservative Party eviscerates what’s left of the British welfare state, and the removal of EU benefits (like retiring on a British pension to a sunny Mediterranean country) hits home. A future backlash is certainly possible. But crawling back into the EU will not be so easy — and that’s if the EU will have them.

Nevertheless, He Persisted

Jeff Van Drew was a Democratic congressman from New Jersey. He entered the US Congress in 2018 by flipping a district that Trump won two years earlier by five points. The New Jersey legislator positioned himself as a moderate Democrat. He was one of only two congressional Democrats to vote against moving forward with the impeachment hearings.

He hasn’t switched his position on impeachment. But he is switching parties. Despite  that he was a lifelong Democrat, Van Drew decided to become a Republican this month. It wasn’t so much the pull factor from Trump’s party as much as the push factor from the Democrats. The New York Times reported on a poll of Democratic primary voters in his New Jersey district that showed 71% of them less likely to vote for Van Drew if he continued to oppose impeachment.

Van Drew is not leading a rush to the exits. The Democrats, with enough votes to impeach in the House, are not cracking down on dissenters. And public opinion continues to favor impeachment, at least among Democratic voters ().

The problem is that a lot of politicians are calculating that impeachment is not a winning issue in heavily-Republican areas or potential swing districts. If you’re a Republican, you face a revolt among your constituents if you consider voting for impeachment. Fewer than 10% of Republican voters support impeaching the president. Plus, you risk a fatwa from Trump.

Consider the  of Elise Stefanik, a moderate congresswoman who was never gung ho about Trump’s presidential aspirations. When the impeachment hearings began, she became Trump’s attack dog on the House Intelligence Committee. In so doing, she has solidified her Republican Party voter base and gotten a big lift from the president himself. Is it disgusting? Yes, absolutely. Is it politically astute? Yes, unfortunately.

Or what about Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for president in 2016 whose looks Trump insulted on his way to the nomination? She  that Trump should be impeached. But she still might vote for him in 2020.

She’s not alone. A majority of Americans , but recent polling puts Trump ahead of all Democratic rivals on a head-to-head basis. According to a , Trump leads Joe Biden by 3%, Bernie Sanders by 5%, Elizabeth Warren by 8% and Pete Buttigieg by 10%. In September, in a , the top five Democratic hopefuls were beating Trump, with Biden up by an astounding 16%, Sanders 12%, Warren 11%, Kamala Harris 10% and Buttigieg 6%. That was only a few months ago. So, yes, there’s a backlash. But it seems to be against the Democrats, not Trump. As I wrote back in September:

“Impeachment of Trump, at this point, is both a legal and moral necessity. It’s also very likely a political trap. 

Trump relishes the role of an underdog, persecuted by the powerful. It’s what enables him to connect to a political base that, aside from his deep-pocket funders, feels disempowered by a rigged economy and a sclerotic political system. Impeachment, for this constituency, vindicates the narrative of the ‘deep state.’ 

Indeed, it suggests that the entire state is out to get Trump — which it is and should. But impeachment is the only thing that can turn the most powerful man in the world into a cornered victim and thus, for a significant number of American voters, a sympathetic character.”

It helps, of course, that the president can point to soaring economic indicators, recently announced trade deals with China and our North American neighbors, and a  included in the recent budget bill.

It’s galling that a scofflaw can remain sufficiently popular to win elections. No doubt Trump is eyeing the example of Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of people and yet maintains nearly .

Trump invited Duterte to the White House and praised his deadly war on drugs. Duterte, after all, is the living proof that you can shoot people indiscriminately and still maintain your popularity. Trump, unleashed in a second term, might just try to test the applicability of that model to the US.

A Dangerous Acclimatization

There’s been more than one mass shooting a day in the United States this year: 396 as of December 16, according to the . Despite all the political handwringing and the  shift in public opinion over the last few years in favor of stricter gun control laws, federal policy has barely shifted. No assault rifle ban. No “red flag” law. No universal background check.

What has happened instead? After the mass shootings this summer, companies with names TuffyPacks reported a  in sales of bullet-proof backpacks. Parents are taking prophylactic measures that are pathetically insufficient. Mass shootings are the new normal. Suck it up and move on.

Americans have similarly adjusted to the criminal actions of the president, his violent policies at the border, his verbal abuse of virtually everyone. We haven’t bought TuffyPacks to protect ourselves from the White House. Our skins have just grown tougher.

And that’s the saddest part of all. It’s just a lot harder to generate a backlash when our backs have become accustomed to the lash.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On December 10, this author took the view that the Tories would be back in power because they seemed to have the most loyal flock. That view has been vindicated resoundingly.

The Labour Party is in complete disarray. Corbyn has been weighed, measured and found wanting. While he has promised to step down, he has failed to resign unlike his predecessors. In defeat, a full-scale civil war has broken out in the Labour Party. In the words of , the only Labour MP from Scotland, “This party must listen and this party must respond or this party will die.”

From New Labour to the Left

To be fair, Labour has problems that go beyond Corbyn. The New Labour that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown created lost its sheen with the Iraq War of 2003 and the global financial crisis of 2007-08. Both Blair and Brown were Margaret Thatcher’s political children. One of them emulated her Falklands adventure by taking the UK into intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Iraq. The other followed the Iron Lady’s “Big Bang” reforms with “” regulation of the City of London. Both Iraq and light touch ended up in disasters.

Many in the Labour Party were deeply uncomfortable with Blair’s imperial militarism and Brown’s financial capitalism. They saw both these leaders making a Faustian pact with Mephistopheles for the proverbial kiss with Helen. They were both seduced by power and reneged on principles that Labour once held dear. Once Brown lost in 2010, the old guard mounted a comeback. First, Ed Miliband beat his Blairite brother, David, to become the party leader. Then, Corbyn won the Labour leadership election in 2015, marking a major lurch to the left.

Corbyn was an unlikely leader of the Labour Party. In the Blair and Brown years, Labour had turned staunchly European. Yet it is important to remember that Labour campaigned against joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1975 referendum. Thanks to the Maastricht Treaty, the EEC became the European Union in 1993. Corbyn was a part of that Labour campaign even as Thatcher and the Tories argued to join the EEC. It took to modernize Labour and turn it into a pro-European party.

Yet euroskeptic elements remained. Corbyn was one of them. Suspicions abound that he remains opposed to the EU and is a closet Brexiteer. Corbyn certainly did not campaign to “remain” in the European Union with much energy or enthusiasm in 2016. In the general election on December 12, 2019, his position on Brexit was a fudge that tried to reconcile the tension between Blairites who have sworn an oath of fealty to the EU and working-class supporters who voted for Brexit. Faced with the crystal clarity of Johnson’s message “get Brexit done,” Corbyn’s fudge melted spectacularly.

Corbyn’s authoritarian leadership style, lack of nimbleness and terrible public speaking ensured that he was not seen as prime ministerial material. Accusations of anti-Semitism dogged the Labour Party under his tenure. Corbyn’s front bench lacked both experience and talent. Even traditional Labour voters lost faith in their party’s leadership and switched sides to the once-hated Tories. Unless the Labour Party elects a charismatic leader who unifies warring factions and crafts a modern message, it will spend a decade or more in opposition.

The Rest of the Opposition

The Liberal Democrats cast off with great hopes during the election. Unfortunately, their ship has rammed into the rocks. Young leader Jo Swinson lost her own seat and promptly resigned. She lacked the intellectual ballast or silver tongue to be a match for Johnson, and her claim to be a prime ministerial candidate smacked of hubris. Swinson’s bet on opposing Brexit and reversing the result of the 2016 referendum did not cut ice with voters. The Liberal Democrats did split the vote and helped the Tories achieve victory. This led columnist to argue that the party is “ an anachronistic political spoiler” that “should disband.” On current trends, the Liberal Democrats are destined to stay in the doldrums for the next few years.

This election was also notable for the reduced relevance of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. The Conservatives no longer need the former in the House of Commons and have sucked oxygen from Farage’s mob. The DUP’s loss to unionists and republicans has long-term implications. A majority in Northern Ireland has voted for parties that favor union with Ireland, putting the unity of the UK at risk.

In fact, and numerous pundits are pontificating about the break-up of the UK. The Scottish National Party (SNP) won 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland. If Johnson has the mandate in England, Nicola Sturgeon has the backing of Scotland. During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the UK was part of the EU. During the Brexit referendum, Scots voted to remain in the EU. Sturgeon is making a credible argument that Scotland “” in the UK “against its will.” She has sounded the clarion call for another independence referendum by declaring that “the will of the Scottish people cannot be ignored.” The union of England and Scotland of 1707 vintage is certainly at risk.

And the Tories?

What is not at risk is the future of the Conservative Party. The natural party of power has reinvented itself yet again. Some members of Johnson’s team are bullish about life outside the EU. They are already plotting to attract the insurance market from Hong Kong to London as the Asian metropolis suffers from incessant protests that are making business onerous if not impossible. They want London to be a Singapore-style safe haven for capital from around the world unconstrained by EU rules.

Like Singapore, they want the UK to invest in public infrastructure, state schools and the National Health Service (NHS). Apart from a supply-side boost, there is a demand-side policy too. Brexit will enable Tories to ease pressure on public services and scarce resources by curbing immigration. Dominic Cummings, the Svengali figure in Johnson’s team, is now the dominant intellectual force in British politics. After shifting politics to the right, he plans to shift economic policy to the left and steal Labour’s clothes, leaving the opposition naked for the next election or two.

Andrew Sullivan, a former president of the Oxford Union who knew Johnson in those days, recently wrote an article on the prime minister’s . The Pied Piper has managed to “engage and co-opt rather than dismiss and demonize” the Brexit discontent. In a little-watched , Cummings spoke about the strategy the Tories followed to do so. As per Johnson’s strategist, the EU-project was “driving the growth of extremism” and Brexit will “drain the poison of a lot of political debates.” All four of Cummings’s grandparents served in World War II. For all his faults, this shadowy figure genuinely cares about schools, hospitals and the working class.

Johnson might be a cavalier but, as Sullivan observes, he can connect with people from other backgrounds. He was successful as mayor of London and won a second term in a city with a natural Labour majority. Unlike David Cameron and George Osborne, Johnson never believed in austerity and opposed “” of the poor in London. As prime minister, he is promising higher public spending and lower taxes while acting tough on crime, terrorism and immigration. In fact, Cummings and Johnson might be about to move the Tories and the UK away from its Thatcherite roots. If they do so successfully, the UK might have a good shot at staying united.

What Happens to the EU?

Make no mistake, Johnson’s emphatic victory is terrible news for the European Union. The eurozone is in trouble. It is experiencing anemic growth and high unemployment. Productivity is stubbornly refusing to rise. In fact, the contradictions of a single currency are threatening to derail the entire European project. There is a strong argument to be made that Greece and Germany should not have the same currency. They are far too different from one another. The same monetary policy for the two countries does both of them a disservice, exacerbating existing imbalances.

Even as the euro currency creates new tensions, the sovereign debt crisis is straining common bonds. The Europeans and the International Monetary Fund might have bailed out Greece with its economy a little over $300 billion. Italy with its economy of about $2 trillion and a debt-GDP ratio of is too big for anyone to bail out. German taxpayers are going to balk at the bill.

Instead of honestly tackling its financial crisis, Europe has elected to take the “” approach of prolonging payment timetables and believing in the fiction that countries like Greece or Italy will pay back their debts. Instead, Europe has been practicing “socialism for the financial sector and austerity for everyone else.” Naturally, this is causing resentment. In Italy, Matteo Salvini rose to power on the basis of public anger against Brussels.

Countries such as Poland and Hungary are also rocking the EU boat. Even in France and Germany, euroskeptic parties are on the rise. The democratic deficit in Brussels does not help. Neither does the red tape. While some European officials are outstanding, many are utterly inefficient if not corrupt. Brussels is simply too removed from Marseille or Munich and Europeans still do not feel an emotional connection with it.

If Johnson and Cummings pull off a successful Brexit, centrifugal tendencies in Europe will increase. Italy might join the UK in opting to leave the EU and so might other countries. If that happens, Johnson would be a modern-day Henry VIII. He would have taken back control from Brussels just as the portly 16-century king threw off the yoke of Rome. Brexit might seem like yet another case of British pluck, foresight and cunning.

Of course, Europeans could come together to form a closer union. A fiscal union might emerge to complement its monetary union. Structural reforms might resolve its contradictions. Yet that seems unlikely. In the short run at least, the EU will suffer.

What Happens to the US?

In the US, commentators often compare Johnson to President Donald Trump. Johnson’s victory has sent shivers down liberals and enthused conservatives. Both are drawing their own lessons.

Roger Cohen sounded the bugle in and warned that Trump could win in 2020. In a rambling piece, he called Brexit “a national tragedy” and asserted that the triumph of emotion over reason in the age of Facebook queers the pitch for the likes of Johnson and Trump. Cohen’s comparison is superficial and does Johnson a disservice. Johnson may be a lying scoundrel, but he is no Trump.

Jon Sopel of the also got in on the act. He warned Democrats against choosing Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren who might be American counterparts of Corbyn. He pointed out that Blair won a third term despite voters seeing him as “smarmy, George W. Bush’s poodle, in the pocket of big business – and a war criminal.”

Corbyn lost despite promising more money for NHS, nationalization of key industries and free broadband for everyone. The fact that working-class workers turned their backs on Labour in a class-divided society is a key lesson for Democrats. The Green New Deal and the Medicare for All plan might smack of socialism. Bigger government and higher taxes are not easy sells in Anglo-Saxon lands. In the US, socialism is a dirty word and Democrats could gift the election to Trump by flirting with it.

On , Cal Thomas argued that Johnson’s victory is similar to Thatcher’s triumph in 1979. It presages a second term for Trump just as the “Iron Lady” paved the path for Ronald Reagan. The news headlines, social media chatter and liberal outrage will be trumped by a booming economy, soaring stock markets and healthy job numbers. In 2016, the vote for Brexit was followed by a mandate for Trump.

The 2020 presidential election is some way off and these commentators might be premature in their predictions. The immediate item on the agenda for both countries is a US-UK trade deal. Johnson and Cummings plan to wrap up trade deals around the world and strengthen their hand against the EU. They will be bending their backs to get a trade deal done by next year.

They might have an ally in the White House. Trump is embroiled in impeachment proceedings. He has been a vocal supporter of Brexit and an opponent of the European project. A trade deal with the UK will take away attention from the proceedings and spite EU bigwigs. In an election year, it would make for good political theater. Waving a “great trade deal” around might bolster Trump’s image in the eyes of his supporters. Anglo-Saxon democracies have much in common and Johnson’s victory will inevitably affect politics across the pond.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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