So far, however, Trump and the media that follow his every word have been largely silent about what his reelection would mean for US foreign policy. Citing his recent promise of “a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods,” The New York Times did recently that a renewed trade war with China “would significantly disrupt the U.S. economy,” leading to a loss of 744,000 jobs and $1.6 trillion in GDP. Economic relations with China are, however, but one piece of a far larger puzzle when it comes to future American global power, a subject on which media reporting and commentary have been surprisingly reticent.

So let me take the plunge by starting with a I made in a December 2010 TomDispatch piece that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines.” I added then that a “realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could be all over except for the shouting.”

I also offered a scenario hinged on — yes! — next November’s elections. “Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair,” I wrote then, “a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Back then, of course, 2025 was so far off that any prediction should have been a safe bet. After all, 15 years ago, I was already in my mid-60s, which should have given me a “get-out-of-jail-free” card — that is, a reasonable chance of dying before I could be held accountable. But with 2025 now less than a year away, I’m still here (unlike all too many of my old friends) and still responsible for that prediction.

So, let’s imagine that “a far-right patriot,” one Donald Trump, does indeed “capture the presidency with thundering rhetoric” next November. Let me then don the seven-league boots of the historical imagination and, drawing on Trump’s previous presidential record, offer some thoughts about how his second shot at an America-first foreign policy — one based on “demanding respect for American authority” — might affect this country’s global power, already distinctly on the decline.

As our Lonely Planet Guide to a country called the future, let’s take along a classi former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in retirement in 1997. Drawing on his view that Eurasia remained the “central basis for global primacy,” he argued that Washington had to do just three things to maintain world leadership: first, preserve its position in Western Europe through the NATO alliance; second, maintain its military bases along the Pacific littoral to check China; and finally, prevent any “assertive single entity” like China or Russia from controlling the critical “middle space” of Central Asia and the Middle East. Given his past record and current statements, it seems all too likely that Trump will indeed badly damage, if not destroy, those very pillars of American global power.

Wrecking the NATO alliance

Trump’s hostility to alliances in general and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in particular is a matter of historical record. His hostility to NATO’s crucial mutual-defense clause () — requiring all signatories to respond if one were attacked — could prove fatal. Just days after his 2018 sycophantic summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Trump, “Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?”

Weighing his words with uncharacteristic care, Trump : “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve asked the same question.” He then offered what could, in a second term, prove a virtual death sentence for NATO. “Montenegro,” he said, “is a tiny country with very strong people … They’re very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War Three.”

Since then, of course, Putin has invaded Ukraine and Biden’s White House has rallied NATO to defend that frontline European state. Although Congress a massive $111 billion in aid (including $67 billion in military aid) for Ukraine in the war’s first 18 months, the Republican-led House has recently stalled President Biden’s request for an additional $67 billion critical to Kyiv’s continued resistance. As the campaign for his party’s nomination gathers momentum, Trump’s pro-Putin sentiments have helped persuade Republican legislators to break with our NATO allies on this critical issue.

Keep in mind that, right after Russia invaded in February 2022, Trump Putin’s move “genius,” adding, “I mean, he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.” Last September, after Putin thanked him for claiming that, were he still president, he could end the war in 24 hours, Trump Meet the Press: “I would get him into a room. I’d get Zelensky into a room. Then I’d bring them together. And I’d have a deal worked out.”

In reality, a reelected Trump would undoubtedly simply abandon Ukraine, at best forcing it into negotiations that would be tantamount to surrender. As formerly neutral nations Finland and Sweden have to NATO and alliance stalwarts like Britain and Germany make major to Ukraine, Europe has clearly labeled Russia’s invasion and war an existential threat. Under such circumstances, a future Trump tilt toward Putin could swing a wrecking ball through the NATO alliance, which, for the past 75 years, has served as a singular pillar in the architecture of US global power.

Alienating allies on the Pacific littoral

Just as NATO has long served as a strategic pillar at the western end of the vast Eurasian landmass, so four bilateral alliances along the Pacific littoral from Japan to the Philippines have proven a geopolitical fulcrum for dominance over the eastern end of Eurasia and the defense of North America. Here, the record of the first Trump administration was, at best, mixed. On the credit side of history’s ledger, he did “the Quad,” a loose alliance with Australia, India and Japan, which has gained greater coherence under President Biden.

But only time spared Trump’s overall Asian diplomacy from utter disaster. His obsessive personal of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, marked by two meaningless meetings and the exchange of 27 mash notes, failed to produce any sign of Pyongyang’s (nuclear) disarmament, while weakening �������������’s alliance with long-standing ally South Korea. Although Japan’s prime minister obsequiously paid court to Trump, he battered that classic bilateral alliance with constant about its cost, even slapping a punitive duty on Japanese steel imports.

Ignoring the pleas of close Asian allies, Trump also the Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving the door open for China to conclude its own Regional Comprehensive Economic with 15 Asia-Pacific countries that now account for nearly a third of Beijing’s foreign trade. Another four years of Trump’s “America first” diplomacy in the Pacific could do irreparable damage to those key strategic alliances.

Further south, by Taiwan to both confront and court Chinese President Xi Jinping, while letting the Philippines drift toward Beijing’s orbit and launching a misbegotten with China, Trump’s version of Asian “diplomacy” allowed Beijing to make some real diplomatic, economic, and military gains, while distinctly the American position in the region. Biden, by contrast, has at least partially it, a strengthening reflected in a surprisingly amicable San Francisco last November with President Xi.

In South Asia, where the bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan dominates all diplomacy, Trump trashed a 70-year military alliance with Pakistan with a single New Year’s Day message. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,” Trump , “and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools … No more!” Since then, Pakistan has shifted decisively into Beijing’s orbit, while India now plays Moscow and Washington off against each other to its economic advantage.

Just as Trump’s posture toward Europe could swing a wrecking ball through the NATO alliance in a second term, so his mix of economic nationalism and strategic myopia could destabilize the array of alliances along the Pacific littoral, toppling that second of Brzezinski’s three pillars for American global power.

That “assertive single entity” in Central Asia

And when it comes to that third pillar of US global power — preventing any “assertive single entity” from controlling the “middle space” of Eurasia — Trump failed woefully (as, in fact, had his predecessors). After announcing China’s trillion-dollar Belt & Road in 2013, President Xi has spent billions building a steel grid of roads, rails, and pipelines that crisscross the middle space of that vast Eurasian landmass, an enormous new infrastructure that has led to a chain of alliances stretching across central Asia.

The power of China’s position was manifested in 2021 when Beijing helped push the US military out of in a deft geopolitical squeeze-play. More recently, Beijing also brokered a breathtaking diplomatic entente between Shi’a Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, stunning Washington and many Western diplomats.

Trump’s Middle East policy during his first term in office was focused solely on backing right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a nuclear agreement with Iran, his marginalization of the Palestinians, and Arab recognition of Israel. Since the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7 and Netanyahu’s devastating assault on Gaza’s civilian population, President Biden’s was skewed in an almost Trumpian fashion toward Israel, with a consequent loss of influence in the wider region. And count on one thing: An incoming Trump administration would only compound the damage.

In short, Beijing is already toppling the third pillar of American global power in that critical “middle space” of Eurasia. In a second Trump term, an unchecked Chinese diplomatic and economic juggernaut could arguably grind that pillar into rubble.

Africa in the “World Island”

In fact, however, no matter what Brzezinski might have thought, there are other pillars of world power beyond Eurasia — above all, Africa. Indeed, British geostrategist Halford Mackinder, the author of the global geopolitical analysis that deeply influenced the former national security adviser, over a century ago that the locus of global power lay in a tri-continental combination of Europe, Asia, and Africa that he dubbed “the world island.”

In the age of high imperialism, Europe found Africa a fertile field for colonial exploitation and, during the Cold War, Washington added to that continent’s suffering by making it a superpower surrogate battleground. But Beijing grasped the human potential of Africa and, in the 1970s, began building lasting economic alliances with its emerging nations. By 2015, its trade with Africa had climbed to , three times the United States’. Its investments there were then projected to reach a trillion dollars by 2025.

Recognizing the strategic threat, President Barack Obama a 2014 summit with 51 African leaders at the White House. Trump, however, dismissed the entire continent, during a 2018 Oval Office meeting, as so many “.” The Trump administration tried to repair the damage by First Lady Melania off on a solo trip to Africa, but her bizarre colonial outfits and ill-timed administration cuts in foreign aid to the continent only added to the damage.

In addition to a storehouse of natural resources, Africa’s chief asset is its growing pool of human talent. Africa’s median age is (compared to 38 for both China and the US), meaning that, by 2050, that continent will be home to a full one-third of the world’s young. Given his fraught record with the region, Trump’s second term would likely do little more than hand the whole continent to China on a gold-plated platter.

South of the border

Even in Latin America, the situation has been changing in a complex fashion. As a region informally incorporated into the American imperium for more than a century and suffering all the slights of an asymmetric alliance, its increasingly nationalist leaders welcomed China’s interest in this century. By 2017, in fact, Chinese trade with Latin America had hit a substantial , making it — yes! — the region’s largest trading partner. Simultaneously, Beijing’s loans to Caribbean countries had reached a hefty by the end of the Trump administration.

Except for drug interdiction and economic against leftist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, the Trump White House generally ignored Latin America, doing nothing to slow China’s commercial juggernaut. Although the Biden administration made some diplomatic gestures toward the region, rose relentlessly to $450 billion by 2022.

Reflecting a bipartisan indifference in this century, a reelected Trump would likely do little to check China’s growing commercial hegemony over Latin America. And the region would undoubtedly welcome such indifference, since the alternative — along with draconian at the US–Mexican border — might involve to fire missiles at or send troops to knock out drug labs in Mexico. The backlash to such unilateral intervention amid panic over immigration could cripple US relations with the region for decades to come.

In the world that a second Trump term might face in 2025, American global power will probably be far less imposing than it was when he came into office in 2016. The problem won’t be that this time around he’s already appointing advisers determined to let Trump be Trump or, as the The New York Times recently, who are “forging plans for an even more extreme agenda than his first term.” By every significant metric — economic, diplomatic, and even military — US power has been on a downward slide for at least a decade. In the more unipolar world of 2016, Trump’s impulsive, individualized version of diplomacy was often deeply damaging, but on at least a small number of occasions modestly successful. In the more multipolar world he would have to manage nearly a decade later, his version of a unilateral approach could prove deeply disastrous.

After taking his second oath of office in January of 2025, Trump’s “thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal,” might indeed fulfill the I made some 15 years ago: “The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

[ first published this piece.]

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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“Chad, you surely remember that back in 2019 the Trump administration made the extraordinary decision that a man called Juan Guaidó, who had never been elected or even considered as a presidential candidate, should be recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Donald Trump justified this by claiming the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro was a dictator who had managed democracy in his favor. After his withdrawal from the Paris climate accords and the Iran deal, Trump had acquired a reputation for making peremptory foreign policy decisions. Astonishingly, the European Union despite having made known its discomfort with Trump’s policies and personality, followed suit, recognizing Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. Two years later, in January 2021, just before the end of Trump’s term, the EU quietly withdrew their recognition of Guaidó. How can we explain the Europeans’ willingness to do something so obviously arbitrary and undemocratic?”

Chad surprised me by immediately resorting to a familiar strategy designed to dismiss probing questions.

“It’s important to note that the issue of recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela is a complex and multi-faceted one, and opinions on this matter can vary.”

Usually Chad takes some time before reaching the conclusion that there are too many contradictory opinions to take any one of them seriously. This time I had to react.

“Stop, stop! Please, Chad. I understand. No need to continue. Once you’ve trotted out your patented ‘complex and multifaceted,’ there’s no reason to add any other arguments to it. Case closed.”

Chad paused, stared at me for a moment and then insisted on adding this reflection. “The decision by some European nations to recognize Juan Guaidó may have been influenced by pressure from the United States. Historically, the United States has had strong ties with Europe, and there may have been a desire to align with American policy, particularly under the Trump administration.”

The Trump factor

Now the alacrity of Europeans  to follow the Trump administration surprised me, so I followed up with this question. “Why would you think the Europeans are ‘particularly’ inclined to follow Trump’s lead? That sounds contradictory to me.”

Chad apologized for giving a wrong impression and clarified by asserting that “the United States has historically been an important ally and partner for many European nations, and there is often a desire to maintain a close relationship and align on key policy issues. Despite concerns and disagreements with certain aspects of the Trump administration’s policies, European nations generally value the transatlantic relationship and may have felt compelled to maintain some level of cooperation or alignment, including in matters related to Venezuela.”

Now we were making some progress. The real question concerns what kind of relationship is implied when one party fells “compelled” to fall in line with another party’s arbitrary policies. This evoked in my mind more recent events and shared my .thought with Chad.

“Would that justify French President Emmanuel Marcron’s recently expressed concern about European nations falling into the role of what he called vassals of the US on the Taiwan situation with China.”

“Yes,” Chad responded, “the concerns expressed by President Emmanuel Macron about European nations potentially becoming vassals of the United States are valid and reflect a broader discussion within Europe regarding strategic autonomy and the balance of power in international relations. Macron, along with other European leaders, has emphasized the need for Europe to assert its own interests and pursue a more independent foreign policy.

Chad then surprised me by another assertion. “European nations, including France, have expressed the view that they should maintain their own strategic interests and make decisions based on their own assessments of geopolitical risks and opportunities.”

“Wait a minute,” I exclaimed. “I admit that France has insisted on strategic autonomy at least since De Gaulle, and maybe Germany has at times shown tendencies in that direction. But I don’t see any other European countries taking that stance, especially now that they have aligned behind the US as the leader of NATO in confronting Russia, despite the damage not just to their sense of autonomy but also their economy. Germany in particular has abjectly accepted policieis and acts by the US that have had the effective of crippling its economy.”

NATO’s strategic ambiguity

Chad’s response was predictable.

“It is important to note that European countries also value the transatlantic relationship and recognize the benefits of cooperation with the United States, particularly within the NATO framework. NATO serves as a vital alliance for collective defense and has played a crucial role in deterring potential security threats, including from Russia.”

“As Trump himself pointed out,” I retorted, “Europeans have become complacent with a situation in which the US makes the essential investment in their defense. But that has impeded even the hope of autonomy. And now they are enduring the consequences of Washington’s aggressive policy aimed at weakening Russia. This has produced a profound feeling of malaise. Although, no one seems willing to rock the boat for the moment, the economic consequences will eventually take their toll on European solidarity. I know you don’t know the answer to this, but, given your understanding of past historical trends, at one point will either the governments change course or the people revolt? Or will they only change course if the people revolt?”

I knew Chad would both acknowledge my point and find a way of avoiding a direct answer.

“The economic consequences of certain policies or actions, as you mentioned, can certainly impact European solidarity and influence public sentiment. Economic factors have historically played a role in shaping political landscapes and driving changes in policies. However, it is important to remember that political decisions are multifaceted, and a range of factors, including geopolitical considerations and national interests, come into play.”

I should have known that this would lead to the inevitable “multifaceted” defense strategy. If there’s one thing Chad will always teach us, it’s that whenever are crucial decision needs to be made, those who see no interest in challenging the status quo will always have a sledge hammer response that is specifically intended to sound delicate and nuanced.

I couldn’t, however, disagree with Chad’s final conclusion.

“Ultimately, the future course of European governments and the responses of the people will depend on a complex interplay of political, economic, and social dynamics.”

It’s always about interplay, a concept far more interesting, dynamic and instructive than simply noticing that issues tend to be “complex and multifaceted.” The very idea of interplay contains the concept of play, which means that something will have to give and history will see an outcome. That outcome will produce another instance of interplay.

In other words, Francis Fukuyama was wrong. There is no end to history. The vassals can continue to hope they will one day be free.

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51�Թ� recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

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 a country where the criminal justice system is tasked with so much more than it is designed to do and funded to do, it can seem slow to act and too susceptible to manipulation by those with resources. Meanwhile, the poor, the disadvantaged, and Black and Brown miscreants get outsized law enforcement attention that generally results in negative outcomes. 

So, take it seriously when an elected criminal prosecutor confronts evasion, threats, and the rigors of a long road ahead with an uncertain outcome to indict the rich and powerful, not to mention a former president of the United States. 

Trump’s Troubles With the Law

Further, the fraud indictment of Trump in New York is not trivial. The charges are serious and represent the first commitment to seek to impose a measure of criminal accountability on a dangerous and powerful man who has seemingly had his way with the justice system since the cradle.

The New York alleges 34 felony counts of fraudulently falsifying business records to conceal criminal conduct. It is accompanied by a 13-page statement of facts. The case is about fraudulent concealment from the public of critical negative information concerning two of Trump’s alleged adulterous sexual adventures and, most importantly, fraudulent concealment of this information in the critical days before Trump’s unexpected 2016 presidential victory.

Further, there seems to be a growing consensus that there will be more criminal indictments to come and that these indictments will focus on Trump’s misconduct while in office or just after leaving office, not while seeking office. In this context, it is noteworthy that Trump was twice impeached for actions during his presidency without consequence, a backdrop that only adds to the clamor among progressives for a flood of indictments and associated perp walks.

To add to the excitement, Trump was just found for sexual abuse and defamation in a suit brought by a woman for sexually assaulting her years ago in a department store dressing room and then publicly lying about it. That sure sounds a bit like the underlying notion in the New York indictment – get caught in a messy sexual encounter, and then lie about it to avoid accountability. The New York indictment adds criminal fraud and allegations of hush money payments to the mix.

All of this comes amid the steadily increasing fervor of support from the 30% or more on the far right of the already right-wing Republican Party who are fully committed to a Trump rerun. This stunningly unprincipled patch of humanity seemingly will follow Trump anywhere, support his “vision” for America, and continually fail to get the message that their hero is incapable of sorting fact from fiction.

Republicans Still Love Trump

In today’s political climate, the Republican Party’s incapacity to set Trump adrift provides the best path to the best outcome for Democrats in the 2024 presidential election. Democrats can only hope that the true Trump believers will deliver to him the coveted 2024 Republican nomination for president or at the least remain so committed to a Republican Party implosion that Trump will make it almost impossible for the resulting nominee to win.

While this is hardly a sure path to victory, it may well be the best hope going forward as long as the Biden/Harris ticket remains the only presently viable option for the Democrats. So keep those indictments coming. While the New York indictment is an important and emphatic first attempt at imposing a measure of criminal liability and accountability on Trump, it is cautionary to note that for years Trump has gotten away with whatever criminal misconduct seemed to underpin so much of his successful lifelong grift. Maybe one day soon, in some jurisdiction, we will get a real mug shot and a set of cuffs.

To be sure, there is more to this than my antipathy and that of others toward Trump and his cronies. Rather, it is a deep conviction that if our institutions fail us now, America is headed into an abyss from which it will be very difficult to emerge. So, stopping Trump, his acolytes, his supporters, his donors, and the racist Christian right from realizing their ambitious plan for transforming the nation in their image has palpable immediacy now.

And it is not just Trump. The right-wing “aristocracy” has polluted all three of the branches of the US government with a crush of highly-educated, wealthy, interconnected, and morally bankrupt vermin seeking only the power to impose their will on the rest of us while playing by their own set of rules. Somehow Trump became and continues to be a convenient tool for undermining confidence in American institutions through unabashedly attacking historical facts and creating a threatening national tableau for those ignorant enough to buy into the notion of an existential threat to a way of life that never was.

It would be comforting to believe in cycles and in the someday emergence of new and enlightened interpretations of constitutional fundamentals that could help shape a safe, moral, diverse, and prosperous national future. Or, for the faithful, to believe that there is a god who has chosen this moment in time to screw around with America but who will eventually turn his playful attention back to Nigeria or Pakistan. For my part, however, I don’t believe in inevitable cycles, or in the fundamental wisdom of a document written two hundred years ago, or in god.

Instead, I am trying to believe that the young people of this nation may get off their cellphones long enough to reshape the electorate to reflect an understanding that our collective conscience demands so much more than the dark and shallow version of America in which those young people now live. It is also possible that elements within the aging generation of which I am a part will recognize the tainted legacy we are leaving behind and use some of our time and resources to try to rearrange that balance sheet.

While I await the revolution of the young and a renewed commitment of the aged, I will take a moment to enjoy every Trump indictment and hope that each one makes the right-wing aristocracy and its racist and White Christian collaborators just a bit less sure of themselves as they worry that I am coming for their guns.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

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 nation is so awash in grifting that most refuse to see it for what it is.  Simply put, to is “to obtain money or property illicitly.” While this notion can have a certain charm to it, as we envision a petty crook at work, it has at its core the intent to defraud.  And that fraud can sometimes be on a grand scale. By its very nature, grifting is insidious.  The grifter always puts his/her interests first and always at the expense of others. Today, it is often disguised as entitlement.

We recently watched a hurricane rip through parts of Florida with tragic consequences.  Even as the hurricane made landfall and before damage assessments could be started, Florida’s Governor DeSantis was begging the federal government for disaster relief.  This is the same governor who routinely rails against federal government interference in the affairs of the state of Florida and is a partisan hardliner for limited government and states’ rights.  However, as soon as their proverbial hands are out, DeSantis and others like him always fail to mention their dogma that their entitlement to federal funding is unencumbered by any responsibility.  That is the .

Alternate Reality Is All the Rage in Election Time America

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Florida has always had hurricanes and has never had a state or local income tax.  Floridians are always being flooded out, but the state does not require or provide affordable flood insurance options.  As soon as the hurricane is about to hit, the grifter governor and his brethren move in.  You can see their opening pitch: “we are as ready as we can be and Floridians have been here before and know how to weather the storm.”

The problem is that they know that both assertions are simply untrue. Florida was not ready for the hurricane and they did not know how to get through it.  Most importantly, the grifting governor knew that the federal government would bail him out. That is an example of unconscionable entitlement without responsibility.  And the rest of us fall for it every time.  In the blink of an eye, the grifter governor has moved the shells around and found his mark.  And the mark is us. Next up, be sure to watch that same grifter governor quickly pivot to bashing the federal government to political points in his present reelection bid.

Big Pharma’s master class in grift

Another fertile ground for the grand scale grift is the pharmaceutical industry’s advertising of prescription drugs. This one implies the potential for serious public harm.  Just in case you think that nobody has figured out that greed and deception are at the heart of this advertising, it is instructive to know that the US is one of only two countries in the world that even direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs (along with New Zealand).

But if this were just a generally bad idea for medical reasons, we would hardly know of it. What makes it so special is that this is such a good idea for the pharmaceutical companies that they don’t care if it is a really bad idea for desperate people seeking pharmaceutical remedies for serious conditions.  In America, the big pharma grifters are directly marketing their product to countless people desperate to overcome the ravages of cancer, schizophrenia and bipolar depression, debilitating skin conditions, autoimmune disease, and every variety of intestinal disorder, to name just a few.

Big pharma’s strategy is clear. Identify a serious medical condition, target desperate people with the condition, and then provide the chemical fix, replete with photos and staged footage of formerly desperate people now happily cured.  Oh, and don’t forget to tell them about all the things that can go wrong, not to take the fix if you are allergic to its ingredients (incredible),  and to check in with your doctor to get that prescription that will surely restore your health in spite of the risks.  Remember, as well, that the desperate consumers pay for the advertising aimed at getting them hooked and that none of this comes with a money back guarantee.  Is there a more insidious grift imaginable?

The Rise and Fall of US Democracy

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Grand-scale scams like the Florida grift and the big pharma grift are sustained by the steady drumbeat of grifts from advertisers, entertainment and sports “celebrities,” self-promoting “influencers,” and real and fake doctors, chefs, attorneys and the like pushing products and services for their profit.  And without regard for the illusions and deceptions needed to get there.

If you’re American you should be aware of the process. Turn on your television for five minutes or do a little online research about something you might want to buy.  Before you can tune it out, it’s there, the grift.  One telltale sign is a “celebrity” selling something for the common man, something they have almost surely never used, eaten, put on their feet, used to disguise body odor, or soothingly rubbed on themselves.  If not a celebrity, how about an actor playing a sincere smiling everyman ready to share the secrets to the success he only got once he started using some previously unknown product.

Grifters in the consumer’s paradise

Attorneys shilling court cases and supposed doctors and dentists shilling everything are ubiquitous.  Your teeth can be white and your skin can be wrinkle free, if only….  “But wait, order now and you will get a second tube absolutely free,” and they will throw in a toothbrush and free shipping.  All you have to do is order now because the special offer won’t last forever and oblige you and pay some extra and unspecified “handling” fee.

To pay for this and to get that absolutely incredible set of coveted non-stick pots and pans, you need only “call now” and pony up with your credit card.  Or if a lawsuit’s pot of gold is your weakness, just sign on the dotted line with some sincere or angry “attorney” who will surely get you your very own entitlement from the settlement fund that this particular “attorney” is uniquely positioned to secure for you and then share with him.  And don’t forget cryptocurrency, credit cards, apps that do everything for “free,” and dog food that will make you and your dog salivate.

One grift builds on the next.  American society is saturated with this stuff.  So much so that when the grand grifters come along, we are hard pressed to see the fraud within.  And this brings us to the grandest grift of all, the Trump grift.  With Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka, the My Pillow guy, Kanye West, and a band of sycophant Republicans by his side, the sky has been the limit.

To give Trump his due, he is really good at something.  Now it is way past time to make him pay a steep price for the damage done, the lives lost, and the gains fraudulently received.  Further, the steepest price should be reserved for his corrupt assault on the institutional framework of government that the nation requires to meet the needs of its communities and its people.

*[This article was first published on the author’s , Hard Left Turn.]

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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Why Now?

The raid comes after IS conducted an attack on al-Sinaa prison in the northeastern city of Hasakah in January in an attempt to break free its fighters. In the assault, several Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters were . According to SDF officials, IS was  for six months. Nevertheless, the US-backed SDF recaptured the prison about a week later. 

Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona suspects that the attack on the prison “was the catalyst that led to the decision to act on what was obviously already known location intelligence on … al-Qurayshi.” Francona, who served as the US military attaché in Syria from 1992 to 1995, notes that “Over the past few months, there has been an increase in ISIS activity — more widespread and bolder in nature. This also comes at a time when Iranian-backed militias have also stepped up attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq.”

Both Qurayshi and his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were eliminated in Idlib province, in areas under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Previously, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with al-Qaeda and initially  with IS. In 2013, however, it  from IS and has been with the group since 2014. In 2016, it also  relations with al-Qaeda and  itself as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS). The following year, JFS assumed its current iteration as it  with other groups. 

During much of the past decade, Idlib served as a  for extremists. In 2017, then-US envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, Brett McGurk,  that “Idlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” Following Baghdadi’s elimination in 2019, former US President Donald Trump suggested Baghdadi was in Idlib as part of a plan to rebuild IS. Indeed, it was  to see Qurayshi hiding in Idlib as well. 

According to David Lesch, professor of Middle East History at Trinity University in Texas and author of “Syria: A Modern History,” “it seems strange that al-Baghdadi and al-Qurayshi were killed in [a] province largely controlled by its rival HTS and overseen by Turkey, but on the other hand it is the only area not under the control of the Syrian government and its allies or the US-supported SDF, all of whom are opposed to ISIS.”

“Idlib is now home to thousands of IDPs, therefore it was easier for the two to blend in, live secretively, and not be identified as outsiders since most everyone in certain areas of the province are outsiders,” Lesch explains. “Yet they were still found because despite all this they lived in an area still teaming with enemies who were obviously directly or indirectly assets to US intelligence.”

The recent US operation in Idlib, which was  planned over several months, has been the largest of its kind in the country since the 2019 raid that eliminated Baghdadi. Although Qurayshi was  than Baghdadi, the fact that he was targeted in the US raid confirms his .

It is worth noting that Qurayshi was named as the leader of IS in 2019, following the death of Baghdadi. While IS called on all Muslims to pledge allegiance to Qurayshi as the new “caliph,” it did not provide much information about his . The use of the name “Qurayshi” seemed to be an attempt to  to the Prophet Muhammad. This is a tactic that was  vis-à-vis Baghdadi with the aim of  his leadership role. Qurayshi’s real name is Amir Muhammad Said Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla but he is also known as Hajji Abdullah and Abdullah Qaradash.  

As the US continues to create an impression that it is minimizing its presence in the region, especially following its withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the raid seems to have been used to demonstrate  to reassure Washington’s partners. It also  as a needed win for Biden at a time when the Ukraine crisis remains unsolved. 

However, while Qurayshi’s elimination is a positive development, it may simply be a “,” as Sean Carberry suggests in The Hill. While the operation against Qurayshi may create internal chaos within IS, ultimately, the terror group is likely to name a new leader and move on, which is what took place following Baghdadi’s assassination. Although IS was militarily defeated, the group has not been eliminated and remains a threat. In fact, there have been increased indications, such as the attack on al-Sinaa prison, suggesting that the group is in a state of resurgence. The militants might also seek to use the recent US raid to encourage revenge attacks. 

US Policy in Syria

The Biden administration’s policy vis-à-vis Syria seems to indicate that the official approach will be “,” as Abdulrahman al-Masri and Reem Salahi suggest. It should not be surprising to learn that Syria does not constitute a top diplomatic priority for President Biden. Yet while the US does not want to remain engaged in endless regional wars, it seems to  that a political settlement in war-torn Syria would only empower President Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington would never back. 

Moreover, the US and the Kurds are partners, and Washington would not want to portray an image that it has abandoned those who have shouldered the fight against the Islamic State. This was the overall perception when Trump announced the withdrawal of US forces from Syria in 2019, and Biden seems keen to remedy that controversial decision. 

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It is worth noting that during President Barack Obama’s tenure, Vice President Biden was one of the  when it came to what the US could achieve in Syria. Nevertheless, it  be taken as a given that as president, Biden may be in favor of removing all US forces from the country. For instance, he criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw forces from Syria,  it granted IS “a new lease on life.” In the same year, Biden also  he supports keeping some forces in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future. 

Middle East expert and former US State Department analyst, Gregory Aftandilian doesn’t see the US leaving Syria anytime soon. Aftandilian, who is also a non-resident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, thinks “It is doubtful [Biden] will do more than the anti-ISIS campaign and humanitarian aid. In light of the attempted prison break in northeastern Syria he may put pressure on some countries to take back ISIS ��������DzԱ����.”

For the US to play a role in stabilizing Syria, there needs to be a clear strategy. Unfortunately, at the moment, that strategy is largely . While the elimination of Qurayshi is a positive step, much more work needs to be done to stabilize the country.

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 Evolution of National Security in the UAE

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The killings, ordered by then US President Donald Trump, have served to exacerbate the severe security challenges the government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi already faces. The PMF, without al-Muhandis’ leadership, is becoming increasingly splintered, threatening even more insecurity for ordinary Iraqis who are trying to recover from nearly two decades of war and terrorism.

Growing Security Challenges

Security is a prerequisite for the prosperity, welfare and economic development of any society. However, as long as Iran continues its extensive influence over Iraq and uses Iraqi territory as a venue to play out its conflict with the United States, security cannot be achieved.

After the assassinations of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, the PMF appeared to be even more aggressively pursuing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s strategic goal, namely the  of all US troops from Iraq. The US Embassy, the Baghdad Green Zone and US military bases have been repeatedly targeted by PMF militias. The US responded in kind and  PMF positions in various parts of the country, further an already fragile security situation.

Meanwhile, al-Kadhimi, viewed by his critics as catering to Washington,  the US for violating Iraqi sovereignty by launching unilateral operations inside the country. At the same time, he faced strenuous demands from the Americans for his government to do more to stop PMF attacks on US targets.

The withdrawal of foreign military forces had been  by the Iraqi parliament just two days after the high-profile assassinations. Following the US–Iraqi strategic dialogue that launched in June 2020, the US evacuated some of its bases that have been in place since 2003, handing them over to the Iraqi army. But a final withdrawal agreed to be completed by the end of last year has , and the remaining 2,500 US troops have stayed on, no longer in a combat role but rather to “advise, assist and enable” the Iraqi military.

This quasi-exit was met with a stern reaction from the PMF, who threatened to treat the US forces as aggressors if they did not withdraw completely from Iraq. “Targeting the US occupation in Iraq is a great honor, and we support the factions that target it,” was how a for one of the PMF militias put it. Such threats underline the risk of further confrontations between the militias and the US and the potential for more insecurity for ordinary Iraqis.

The targeting of Baghdad’s airport on January 28, with at least six rockets landing on the runway and areas close to the non-military side, causing damage to parked passenger planes, underlines just how fragile the security situation remains.

The PM and the PMF

The conflicts over differences between the PMF and the government are another reason for growing insecurity in the post-assassination period. The PMF has a competitive relationship with the prime minister’s government, and this competition has only intensified over the past two years. PMF groups consider al-Kadhimi to be pro-US, seeking to reduce the influence of Shia militant groups in Iraq.

Initially, in March 2020, major Shia factions  his nomination, accusing him of being inordinately close to the US. The Fatah Coalition, composed of significant Shia groups close to Iran, later accepted his candidacy. Still, tensions remain as al-Kadhimi strives to strike a balance between Iran on the one hand and the US and its allies on the other.

The prime minister believes that the PMF should  the political stage. He also believes that the PMF should be freed from party affiliation and be fully controlled by the government. This would mean that their budget would come from the federal government and not from private sources or other states. In this regard, al-Kadhimi is seeking to strengthen government control over  to fight corruption and smuggling.

The crossings are used by militias, including those reportedly active at Diyala’s border crossing into Iran. If the government effectively controls these vital channels, financial inflows from smuggling, which strengthens the militias, will decrease in the long term while federal coffers will directly benefit.

The dispute between the PMF and the prime minister escalated in May of last year when police  Qasem Mosleh, the PMF commander in Anbar province, over the assassination of a prominent Iraqi activist. In response, the PMF stormed and took control of the Green Zone. Al-Kadhimi, not wanting to escalate the conflict, found no evidence against Mosleh and released him after 14 days.

In November 2021, al-Kadhimi himself was targeted in an  attempt following clashes between various Iraqi parties during protests against the results of the parliamentary elections. Despite its failure, an armed drone attack on the prime minister’s Baghdad residence presented a disturbing development for contemporary Iraq and was attributed to a PMF militia loyal to Iran.

Internal Struggles

The assassination of al-Muhandis had a huge impact on the PMF. He was a charismatic figure able to mediate more effectively than anyone else between various Iraqi groups, from Shia clerics in Najaf to Iraqi government politicians and Iranian officials. After his death, the militia groups in the PMF face internal division.

The PMF’s political leadership, including its chairman, Falih Al-Fayyadh, has  to present itself as committed to the law and accepting the authority of the prime minister. In contrast, two powerful PMF factions, Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq, have taken a hardline stance, emphasizing armed resistance against US forces. Tehran’s efforts to mediate between the leaders of the two factions and the Iraqi government have yielded few results.

Meanwhile, internal disagreements over the degree of Iranian control caused four PMF brigades to split off and form a new structure called , or Shrine Units. Their avowed intention is to repudiate Iranian influence while supporting the Iraqi state and the rule of law.

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Another divide in the PMF has  between groups such as Kataib Hezbollah on the one hand, and Badr, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Saraya al-Salam on the other, due to poor relationship management by Kataib Hezbollah in the PMF Commission after Muhandis’ death. While it is unsurprising that a number of critical PMF functions like internal affairs and intelligence are controlled by Kataib Hezbollah given that Muhandis founded the group before assuming the PMF’s leadership, he managed to exercise control in a manner that kept other factions onboard.

But Kataib Hezbollah’s imposition, in February 2020, of another one of its commanders, Abu Fadak al Mohammadawi, to succeed al-Muhandis on the PMF Commission alienated key groups such as Badr and Asaib. Clearly, a severely factionalized and heavily armed PMF continues to pose a significant security threat in the country.

the assassinations on January 3, 2020, Donald Trump said of Soleimani that “we take comfort knowing his reign of terror is over.” Two years on from the killing of the IRGC general and the PMF boss, ordinary Iraqis beset by violence and insecurity take no such comfort.

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

*[This article was originally published by , a partner of 51�Թ�.]

The post Iraq Still Feels the Consequences of US Assassinations appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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,&�Բ�����;“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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Last week ended with its own day of infamy when a British court overturned an earlier judgment banning the extradition to the US of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Following in the footsteps of the Trump administration, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department successfully appealed the ban in its relentless effort to judge Assange for violating the 1917 Espionage Act, itself a relic of the history of the First World War.

Guns and the Wrong Side of Rights

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Back then, President Woodrow Wilson’s government pulled no jingoistic punches when promoting �������������’s participation in Europe’s war. It actively incited the population to indulge in xenophobia. Public paranoia targeting Germany, the nation’s enemy, reached such a pitch that Beethoven was banned from the concert stage, sauerkraut was officially renamed “liberty cabbage” and hamburger “liberty steak.”

The manifestly paranoid sought to punish anyone who “communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate, deliver or transmit to any foreign government … any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, etc.” The law, specifically for a state of war, was so extreme it was rarely used until Barack Obama unearthed it as the elegant solution for the whistleblowers he had to defend in his first presidential campaign.

Despite overindulging his taste for punishing whistleblowers, Obama refrained from seeking to extradite Assange. He feared it might appear as an assault on freedom of the press and might even incriminate The New York Times, which had published the WikiLeaks documents in 2010. In the meantime, Democrats found a stronger reason to blame Assange. He had leaked the Democratic National Committee’s emails during the 2016 presidential primary campaign. Democrats blamed the Australian for electing Donald Trump.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly WikiLeaks for its willingness to expose the undemocratic practices of the Clinton campaign. But once in power, Trump’s administration vindictively demanded Assange’s extradition from the UK for having revealed war crimes that deserved being hidden for eternity from the prying eyes of journalists and historians. 

Many observers expected Biden to return to the prudent wisdom of Obama and break with Trump’s vindictive initiative. He could have quietly accepted the British judge’s decision pronounced in January. Instead, his Justice Department appealed. Unlike Trump, who sought to undermine everything Obama had achieved, Biden has surprisingly revealed a deep, largely passive respect for his predecessor’s most dangerous innovations — not challenging corporate tax cuts, the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and Trump’s aggressive support for Israel’s most oppressive policies with regard to Palestinians.

Biden’s eagerness to follow Trump’s gambit aimed at subjecting Assange to the US brand of military-style justice allowed New York Times journalists Megan Specia and Charlie Savage to Friday’s decision by the British court as a success for the administration. “The ruling was a victory,” they wrote, “at least for now, for the Biden administration, which has pursued an effort to prosecute Mr. Assange begun under the Trump administration.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Victory:

Triumph in combat, including, at two extremes, cases marked by heroic action and others prompted by malicious self-serving motives and driven by the perpetrator’s confusion of the idea of justice with sadistic, vindictive pleasure

Contextual Note

The Times journalists quote Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, who “said the government was ‘pleased by the ruling’ and would have no further comment.” At no point in the article do the authors evoke the hypothesis that Biden might have sought to overturn Trump’s policy. Nor do they analyze the reasons that could undermine the government’s case. They do quote several of Assange’s supporters, including one who called “on the Biden administration again to withdraw” the charge. Serious observers of the media might expect that a pillar of the press in a liberal democracy might be tempted to express its own concern with laws and policies that risk threatening its own freedom. Not The New York Times. This story didn’t even make its front page. None of its columnists deemed it deserving of comment.

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Journalist Kalinga Seneviratne, writing for The Manila Times, offered a radical . “If this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is about promoting ‘press freedom,’” he speculates, “the Norwegian Nobel Committee missed a golden opportunity to make a powerful statement at a time when such freedom is under threat in the very countries that have traditionally claimed a patent on it.” He quotes the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who claims that “what has been done to Julian Assange is not to punish or coerce him, but to silence him and to do so in broad daylight, making visible to the entire world that those who expose the misconduct of the powerful no longer enjoy the protection of the law.” 

Deutsche Welle’s Matthias von Hein the interesting coincidence that three converging events took place on the same day. “In a bitter twist of irony,” he writes, “a court in London has essentially paved the way for Assange’s prosecution on Human Rights Day — of all days. And how ironic that it happened on the day two journalists were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Last, but not least, it coincided with the second day of the Summit on Democracy organized by US President Joe Biden.”

Von Hein added this observation: “We’re constantly hearing how Western democracies are in competition with autocratic systems. If Biden is serious about that, he should strive to be better than the world’s dictators.” But, as the saying goes, you can’t teach a 79-year old dog new tricks.

Historical Note

The coincidences do not end there. On the same day the news of Julian Assange’s fate emerged, Yahoo’s investigative reporter Michael Isikoff the story of another man “brought to justice” by US authorities: Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The Mauritanian citizen had the privilege of spending 14 years in the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba without ever being charged with a crime, even after confessing to the crimes imagined by his torturers.

It turns out to be a touching moral tale. Even after years of imprisonment and gruesome torture, Slahi “holds no personal animus against his interrogators.” According to Isikoff, “he has even met and bonded with some of those interrogators,” years after the event. “I took it upon myself,” Slahi explained, “to be a nice person and took a vow of kindness no matter what. And you cannot have a vow of kindness without forgiving people.”

It wasn’t the Prophet Muhammad who said, “turn the other cheek” or “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Those words were spoken by the man George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld claimed to revere and whom Bush considered his “favorite philosopher.” The Quran did continue the original Christian insight, pronouncing that “retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it,” and that reconciliation and forgiveness will be rewarded by Allah.

There has clearly been no forgiveness in Washington for the “evil” committed by Assange: exposing war crimes conducted in secret with American taxpayers’ money. Slahi’s torture was conducted by the declared proponents of “Judeo-Christian” culture. Shahi’s forgiveness stands as an example of what that culture claims as a virtue but fails to embrace in its own actions.

Shahi is reconciled with his interrogators. But does he also feel reconciled with those who gave them their orders? In 2019, he , “I accept that the United States should follow and put to trial all the people who are harming their citizens. I agree with that. But I disagree with them that if they suspect you, they kidnap you, they torture you, and let you rot in prison for 15 or 16 years. And then they dump you in your country and they say you cannot have your passport because you have already seen so many things that we don’t want you to travel around the world to talk about.”

Despite appearances, Mohamedou Ould Shahi’s case is not all that different from Julian Assange’s.

*[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 Washington’s Tawdry Victory Over Julian Assange appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Not everyone is convinced. After all, why believe a bunch of scientists when the eminent universal genius of our time, Donald Trump, has vouched for the safety of the drug, normally used to treat parasites in animals, and its effectiveness against COVID-19. Effective it might be, safe less so.

In Switzerland, the COVID-19 Certificate Divides Opinions

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Over the past year, dozens of American ivermectin enthusiasts have paid for their trust in The Donald with their health and even their . Yet relatives of seriously ill COVID-19 patients have continued to demand that hospitals administer ivermectin to their loved ones, in some cases going so far as to involve the courts. The courts have invariably to force the medical staff to administer the drug, much to the doctors’ relief.

The Ivermectin Crowd

The Ivermectin crowd, on the other hand, has been irate, claiming that politics, not medical reasons, is behind the drug’s bad press. Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky who is “undecided” on the drug (“I don’t know if it works, but I keep an open mind”), earlier this year blamed the bad press on an : “The hatred for Trump,” Rand claimed, “deranged [medical researchers] so much, that they’re unwilling to objectively study it.” The same was true, he continued, for hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug the former president had promoted as a treatment for COVID. This is the very same senator who on YouTube that masks were not effective against the virus.

Ironically enough, this is exactly what Merck, the pharma giant that manufactures ivermectin, has said with regard to the drug. Earlier this year, the company that “there is no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against Covid-19 from pre-clinical studies.” Again, why believe what scientists say when the ultimate authority on everything assures us of the drug’s enormous benefits.

Europeans have a tendency to sneer at Americans and their naiveté, gullibility and simplemindedness. After all, quite a few Americans are convinced that , even more that the Earth was some 10,000 years ago, and even more still (at least among Republicans) that Donald Trump was a great president who was of a second mandate. The rapid diffusion of even the most absurd conspiracy theories has done nothing to correct these impressions. On the contrary, it seems no idea is silly or outright stupid enough that there won’t be people eagerly gobbling it up.

My personal favorite is the notion that dinosaurs alongside Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There they all — including the T-Rex — fed on leaves and vegetables. Only Adam’s fall from God’s grace turned them into carnivores. The silliness goes on and on. Those interested might want to explore the Creationist Museum in Rand Paul’s Kentucky. It is a true revelation.

Sadly enough, Americans don’t have a monopoly on credulity and viridity. The past year and a half have clearly shown that Europeans are hardly immune to the siren songs of conspiracy hucksters and “lateral thinkers” who claim for themselves that they think outside the box. In Germany, the lateral thinker movement has been behind a number of mass demonstrations against the government’s pandemic measures. In late August, lateral thinkers, together with various right-wing extremist groups, instigated the failed attempt to , the seat of the German parliament in Berlin.

Miracle Drug

Under the circumstances, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that ivermectin has gained growing popularity among Europe’s “corona skeptics” and anti-vax circles. In a number of countries, prominent personalities have established themselves as advocates and promoters of the drug. More often than not, the result has been suboptimal, to put it mildly. A case in point is Herbert Kickl, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), one of Western Europe’s most prominent radical right-wing populist parties.

Like some of its counterparts in other West European countries, the FPÖ has made great strides in establishing a reputation as a resolute, uncompromising opponent of the government’s anti-COVID-19 policies and as a defender of freedom and liberty of individual choice. A few weeks ago, in a major speech, Kickl that the Austrian government — a coalition between the center-right People’s Party and the Greens — had subjected its citizens to an “inhuman and contemptuous ����DZ貹�����Ի岹.” The time had come to liberate Austria’s citizens from this “system of oppression and coercion” and to stand up for the “protection of basic liberal values.”

Vaccination was unnecessary, he agreed. There were enough ways to treat the infection, such as vitamins and zinc, aspirin and ibuprofen. And, of course, there was ivermectin, the miracle drug, which, as a recent scientific study had shown, was highly effective against the virus. Or so Kickl claimed.

Unfortunately, it soon turned out that the “study” was a fraud. This was too bad. Ivermectin might have protected Kickl from catching the virus a few days after his endorsement of the drug. Otherwise, however, Kickl’s promotion of proved to be a great success, at least for Merck and those peddling ivermectin without scruples.

Inspired by their leader, FPÖ supporters started to hoard the drug, much to the detriment of Austria’s cows and horses suffering from pesky parasites. In parts of Austria, pharmacies temporarily of ivermectin. In many of these cases, customers managed to get a hold on larger amounts with prescriptions that had been . In the meantime, hospitals had to admit patients suffering from major drug and vitamin-related . As it turned out, warnings that taking high doses of ivermectin could have severe, even fatal consequences were anything but fake.

Yet the populist right continues to promote ivermectin, and for good reasons. The drug is as though tailor made for populist mobilization. For one, initial studies did in fact show that it was effective against the virus, but under : in a lab (in vitro), at very high dosages, way above the tolerance level for humans. At a human-appropriate level, or so a recent of the findings of several international studies suggests, ivermectin failed to improve a patient’s condition or reduce the number of COVID-related deaths.

As a result, the authors that, given current available evidence, “the use of Ivermectin for the treatment or prevention of Covid-19 is not warranted.” This was also the reached by the European Medicines Agency in early 2021. As a result, it issued a warning against the use of ivermectin “for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 outside randomised clinical trials.”

Some American physicians disagree. Among them is the , which has called ivermectin a “miracle drug” and “the penicillin of COVID.” The alliance consists of a group of physicians and scientists “who champion ivermectin, along with other drugs and vitamins with dubious efficacy against COVID.” Promoting themselves as heterodox challengers of orthodoxy and the medical establishment, their informationals have swept across the vaccine skeptic community with apparent success.

According to a from late August, 45% of those who considered ivermectin to be very effective against the virus said they would never get vaccinated; 35% who believed in the drug’s effectiveness said they never wear a mask outside the home.

Toward Serfdom

In today’s world, refusing to get vaccinated or wear a mask counts as an act of resistance against authority, standing up for freedom and warding off tyranny. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Switzerland, where any attempt of the federal government to contain the pandemic is seen as a potential step toward serfdom. This comes from none other than , the influential former leader of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the country’s largest and a for Switzerland’s COVID skeptics and anti-vaxxers.  

Blocher expressed a sentiment shared by many opponents of the federal government’s pandemic measures. In the run-up to the recently held referendum on the Swiss COVID-19 certificate — a green pass for the vaccinated — these sentiments infused the of the “no” campaign. The opponents claimed that the certificate represented a fundamental encroachment on the freedom of the individual, a first step on the road to authoritarianism and worse.

With the certificate, the federal government put pressure on all those who did not want to or could not get vaccinated. This was nothing but the beginning of mandatory vaccination, similar to what the Austrian government had ordered. Despite all the hyperbole and hysteria generated by the “no” side, a large majority of the Swiss electorate came out in favor of the certificate, a painful defeat for the skeptics and their parliamentary arm, the SVP.

Like in Austria, those opposed to the federal government’s policies have put their hope on Ivermectin. At the same time, they that the federal government refused to approve the drug as a treatment for the virus in order not to jeopardize the vaccination campaign. Among the most prominent promoters of this theory — and of ivermectin — is a retired professor from the University of Zurich, Martin Janssen, who himself as a “liberal dissident.” A member of one of the committees that organized and financed the “no” campaign, he accused the government of doing everything to prevent those infected with the virus “to get well at home.”

This is why the rejection of the certificate by the Swiss electorate was of such great importance. Otherwise, would become a state like all the others, where “citizens were no longer in a position to defend themselves against their politicians.” As a result, like in , Swiss customs authorities a growing number of seizures of illegally imported medicine, among them, as the officials put it, drugs “against worms and other parasites that contain Ivermectin.”

In the meantime, even before the outcome of the referendum was known, the it would continue to fight against the COVID-19 measures, especially the so-called 2G rule (the Gs stand for the German words geimpft and genesen — vaccinated and recovered) that would limit the validity of the certificate to people in these two categories. In the eyes of the SVP, this amounted to nothing less than a disguised obligation to get vaccinated.

Unfortunately for a party that claims to listen to the concerns of ordinary people, a published in Blick am Sonntag, a popular tabloid, found a substantial majority of more than 60% of respondents favoring the 2G rule. More than 50% came out in favor of mandatory vaccination for all, and a bit less than half were in favor of a lockdown for the unvaccinated.

All of this suggests that things are going to heat up in the weeks and months to come and, with it, the question of ivermectin and other “alternatives” to the vaccine.

Russian Roulette

The case of ivermectin tells us a lot about the appeal of right-wing populism, its nature and the reasons why a substantial number of citizens have been drawn into its orbit. Why would anyone in their right mind subject themselves to a drug that has not only proven to be ineffective against the virus, but even harmful, if not worse? It boggles the mind that the very same people who are worried about the potential side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have absolutely no qualms playing Russian roulette with their health when it comes to ivermectin and other household remedies and cures.

A profound distrust of the “establishment” in all of its forms suspected of collusion against the interests of ordinary people is part of the explanation. In a universe populated by self-proclaimed mavericks, dissidents and lateral thinkers, anyone with an official degree is suspect. It is hardly a coincidence that a retired professor from the University of Zurich held a position in finance and banking. This makes him ideally positioned to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs — at least among the COVID skeptics crowd.

He is part the parallel universe of outsiders and what in German is known as Quereinsteiger — lateral career movers — who command trust for the simple reason that they don’t belong to the establishment. That’s their seal of approval. This allows them to peddle even the most bizarre ideas and narratives — and find eager takers. This is what got Trump elected in 2016 and what has propelled the likes of Eric Zemmour into the political limelight. Unfortunately, unlike drugs, they don’t come with a warning label. But then, today’s COVID-19 skeptics and anti-vaxxers would in all probability not read them anyway.

The reality is, COVID-19 denial in all its different forms is like a cult. Cults don’t tolerate dissenting opinions. This is the ultimate irony. Those who insist on liberty and freedom for themselves don’t accord them to those who disagree or deviate from the pure doctrine. When it became known that Christoph Blocher got vaccinated and publicly advised that everybody should do so, he received implying that he was a “murderer” and even . Although he denied it, it was more than likely that the authors were disappointed SVP supporters.

Scientists have had similar experiences. David Hill, a pharmacologist from the University of Liverpool, in the pages of The Guardian how he received death threats after he and his team published a meta analysis that found “several examples of medical fraud in the clinical trials of ivermectin.” Their study concluded that after filtering out “all the poor-quality trials, there was no longer any clinical benefit for ivermectin.”

A few weeks ago, Nature published the results of a based on a sample of scientists who in the past had commented on the pandemic. More often than not, their opinion provoked harassment and abuse, in some cases death threats. Apparently, ivermectin is not only harmful to those who use it to treat COVID-19 infections, but it is also dangerous to those who study its usefulness as a treatment against the virus.

One last thought. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that ivermectin is the wonder drug the cult pretends it is. Also, let’s assume Merck is fully aware of the fact. It stands to reason — I hesitate to say, in this context — that Merck has all the interest in the world to promote ivermectin as an effective and safe alternative to vaccines. After all, it would make a fortune, its stock would rise high, Wall Street would be happy, and Merck would gain the reputation of having saved the world.

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There is only one reason why Merck would withhold the information. It is in on “the plot,” whatever it is. Like other Big Pharma, it supports injecting everybody with microscopic chips that make us into submissive, remote-controlled automatons at the beck and call of a shadowy world government, pawns in a sinister ploy hatched out by the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum, the Queen of England and god knows who else. It knows that these injection contain agents that turn enough of us infertile to solve the problem of climate change. The permutations are endless for ingenious minds.

There is, of course, an alternative scenario. Let’s assume Merck knows that ivermectin is totally ineffective against the virus and that, on top of it, it is harmful if taken in high doses. Now let’s assume Merck could care less about the drug’s potential harm to human health and life. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t it make sense for Merck to hire agents well versed in the art of marketing and persuasion to get as many people as possible to buy the drug? It is rather amazing that those who believe in whatever conspiracy theory comes their way have not wised up to this possibility. Let’s hope they will soon.

*[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 Playing Russian Roulette With COVID-19 “Cures” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Intercept authors describe the complex game of cat-and-mouse played between the two leaders, one known for ordering the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the other more conventionally engaged throughout his career in a form of organized mass murder called war. Since the responsibility for killing in war is shared across an entire nation’s political structure, and since war is supposedly regulated not by personal command but by “rules of engagement,” Biden and his predecessors, whose policies have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, cannot be compared with the kind of bloodthirsty assassin Mohammed bin Salman has become.

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This contrast has created a problem for Biden, who — unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, the ultimate opportunist — has the obligation of consolidating his image as a man of solid moral fiber. Biden has repeatedly insisted that the US must lead by the power of its example rather than the example of its power. He has no choice — in contrast with the abject Trump — but to avoid being seen as the puppet of a Middle Eastern powermonger.

The long and the short of The Intercept’s story is that Biden has adamantly avoided accepting to have a private conversation with the Saudi crown prince. In retaliation, bin Salman has refused to listen to an American president’s predictable requests to expand oil production to ease the tension on global oil prices. There is of course more to the story than that, but the only thing Biden has attempted to explain to the American public is that oil prices have risen “because of the supply being withheld by OPEC.” The fact that Saudi Arabia has a predominant voice in OPEC spared Biden the trouble of mentioning Riyadh itself.

To clarify Biden’s dilemma, Grim and Klippenstein reached out to Ali Shihabi, a man who on Twitter as an author and “commentator on Middle Eastern politics and economics with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia.” Grim and Klippenstein offer a bit more precision, Shihabi “a voice for MBS in Washington.” This became evident when Shihabi : “Biden has the phone number of who he will have to call if he wants any favours.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Favors:

Something people who understand the effective role of obsequiousness and servility in international relations can seek and eventually obtain by simply sabotaging their own ideals to please the person capable of granting favors

Contextual Note

Shihabi turns out to be an excellent stylist when it comes to using irony disingenuously. Grim and Klippenstein quote a statement Shihabi made in response to The Intercept’s request for comment: “Saudi has put a lot of work into getting a cohesive OPEC+ to work over the past 15 months since the crisis that dropped oil futures below zero so will not break ranks with the consensus or Russia on this. Also, the kingdom resents being blamed for what is essentially a structural problem not of its own making in the US which has hampered its own energy production. Finally, I hear that the price of Thanksgiving Turkeys has doubled in the US so why can oil prices also not inflate?”

The capitalized “Turkeys” quip might be a sly (or possibly unintended) allusion to the 2018 murder of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Everything else in Shihabi’s explanation has some historical merit. But throwing the spotlight on consumer prices in the context of what is perhaps the most “sacred” American holiday is equivalent to giving Biden a quick karate kick in the family jewels.

What can Biden do, other than capitulate to bin Salman and improve the consumer index? Doing so would brand him as weak and cowardly. In the end, Americans and political analysts all over the world are left wondering what the US stands for or is capable of standing for. Because a democratic consumer society’s political system is dependent not on the ideals of good government reflected in its constitution and repeated endlessly by demagogic politicians, or even on the “national interest,” but instead on the reaction of consumers to the prices of the goods they buy, the question must be asked: Who controls US politics?

Is it the people? No, because their dual role is simply to show up to vote every couple of years and to consume on a daily basis. What about the president? No, because presidents are in a constant battle with Congress. So, is it Congress? Not really, because Congress is known for debating everything and accomplishing nothing. The entire superstructure of government functions as a machine to find excuses for maintaining the status quo.

With regard to today’s news cycle, if we are seeking the answer to the question by naming individuals, the best candidates would be Joe Manchin and Mohammed bin Salman, who have demonstrated the power to create situations from which there is no exit.

Historical Note

The key to understanding Biden’s problem with bin Salman is of course neither the crown prince nor the West Virginia senator. It’s Donald Trump. Grim and Klippenstein quote Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, one of the most astute observers of the Middle East in Washington. Parsi “said the move by MBS is aimed at boosting Republicans, whom the crown prince sees as a more reliable ally.”

More specifically, Parsi claims that it isn’t about oil revenues or even the arms sales to the kingdom that Biden had promised to halt on moral grounds but eventually accepted. According to Parsi, bin Salman has long-term geopolitical considerations in mind. “MBS calculates that a Republican president,” according to Parsi, “will reinvest in the idea of dominating the Middle East militarily, which makes the relationship with Saudi Arabia critical once more.”

Parsi further notes that under Trump a new coalition had grown up, bringing together the interests of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel, in lockstep with traditional US policy aimed at dominating the entire Middle East. Trump’s innovation was to delegate some of US power to its unconditionally supported allies Israel and Saudi: “MBS wants to return to the days when Saudi Arabia was fully immune from any criticism and had U.S. support with no questions asked.”

This situation that has resulted in Biden’s helplessness was created by Trump. It highlights the embarrassing decline of US prestige, if not also of US power in the world. Because of the way US democracy has evolved, the national interest — that of the people as a whole — will always be mediated if not dictated by local and corporate interests rather than any expression of the “will of the people.” In an officially decentralized and privatized social and economic structure, all decisions tend to be conditioned by “favors.”

For the politicians and political operators who hope to play their role in Congress or even intervene in the executive branch, getting elected or selected requires not just accepting, but soliciting favors from wealthy corporate donors and establishing what may be called “intimately interested” relations with them.

Trump succeeded at this game because of his talent for letting his personality eclipse the consequences of his politics. His voters and members of his party followed his lead because of his ability to play the role of a “winner.” That meant that Trump could let scoundrels like Mohammed bin Salman have their way while appearing to be the dominant personality in the couple. Biden had no chance. Not only did he not look like a winner, he gave the impression that the only thing he was interested in winning was the election.

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In short, when the Democrats forced Biden’s selection as their candidate in 2020, they did Biden the favor of allowing him to be elected by circumstance (thanks to COVID-19) but did themselves no favors if they really had the hope of using Biden’s presidency to govern the nation.

*[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 Biden’s Lost Battle With Mohammed bin Salman appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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As a prominent voice in last week’s three-day conference in San Antonio, Texas, which billed itself as part of a longer campaign called the “” tour, Flynn assumed the mantle of a political theologian. He preached in favor of in the United States. “So, if we are going to have one nation under God — which we must — we have to have one religion, one nation under God and one religion under God,” Flynn preached.

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Under God:

An expression designating any place or people claiming a unique and exclusive relationship with the deity, a transcendent being imagined as playing a role similar to that of a neighborhood patrol

Contextual Note

Flynn believes that by raucously dividing people into opposed categories, he is a uniter. “All of us together, working together,” he shouts. Despite his defective vocabulary — he misuses the term “ecumenical” — in one sentence he appears to urge inclusive tolerance and in the next preaches aggressive intolerance. “I don’t care what your ecumenical services, or what you are,” he says. “We have to believe that this is a moment in time where this is good versus evil.”

It isn’t often that a former military officer claims to be a theologian and prophet. Serious Christian theologians, especially those who understand the word “ecumenical,” might wonder whether the specifically American religion Flynn is calling for is not so much Christianity as , a third-century rival religion to Christianity condemned by the early church as inimical to Christian thought and practice.

Manichaeism holds the radically dualistic theological principle that the world is a battleground between good and evil. It posits that in better times, good and evil were safely separated from one another before they confusedly began to occupy the same space and vie for dominance. That a former senior military officer should think of the cosmos as a battleground between the forces of good and the forces of evil should surprise no one. But Flynn’s Manichaeism, like the original attributed to Mani, appears to envision the resolution of the conflict not by the triumph of good over evil — an idea that motivated the Cold War — but by the definitive separation of the two regimes. 

Flynn sees the United States as the realm of good. He is ready to leave the rest of the world to Satan to rule over as his evil empire. “You have to believe this,” Flynn intones, “that God Almighty is like involved in this country, because this is it … This is the shining city on the hill.” On one side of the world, squeezed between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the shining city; on the other, the empire of darkness. All that matters to Flynn is that the US becomes unified and pure, casting out those who identify with the empire of darkness. That way the pure and the good will be safe within their bastion of goodness.

When Cold War President Ronald Reagan evoked “the evil empire,” referring to the Soviet Union, he was employing the logic of the Hollywood westerns he had acted in. The bad guys had to appear unequivocally evil because without them, the good guys might not look so good. Reagan had no theological ambition when he employed the metaphor. He implicitly admitted that it was all a Hollywood-style fiction designed for political convenience. Flynn is different. He has transformed the same images Reagan used and endowed them with theological gravitas.

Flynn believes that the historical Jesus was thinking specifically of the United States when the Christian Bible quotes him as saying, “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). Instead of understanding this as a metaphor Jesus used simply to encourage his followers to demonstrate their faith through “good works,” Flynn believes that it referred to a specific society two millennia in the future, a society that has acquired the habit of demonstrating its faith not by shining a light, but through coercive military aggression.

In Flynn’s words, Jesus was “talking about the United States of America.” The apostle Matthew had him merely pointing out that a city built on a hill will always be visible to the rest of the world. The shine of Flynn’s imagined “shining city” is little more than the surface reflection of sunlight on the polished weapons it deploys to scare away (and sometimes annihilate) the proponents of evil.

Historical Note

Michael Flynn was a decorated soldier. President Barack Obama presumably deemed him capable of rational thought when he appointed him director of national intelligence in 2012. Two years later, Flynn was reportedly forced to because of his “chaotic management style.” That reputation may have endeared him to Donald Trump, also for his chaotic management style. Flynn assisted Trump on his 2016 presidential campaign and was rewarded, following Trump’s election, with the title of national security adviser.

Once again he was forced to resign, this time thanks to pressure applied by Democrats bent on establishing collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. They desperately needed to blame someone other than themselves for losing an election to a man generally , in the words of Paul Waldman, to be “officially the worst candidate in history.” “Never before,” Waldman explained, “has a major party nominee assembled such a spectacular combination of impromptu screw-ups and strategic lunacy in a single campaign.”

Three weeks later, the world discovered that screw-ups and strategic lunacy, in �������������’s evolved democracy, could be a recipe for success. But Hillary Clinton’s people, and Hillary herself, couldn’t bear the idea that they could lose without some powerful evil force interfering. (Democrats can also be Manichaeans.) They accused Flynn of communicating with the Russians while Obama was still in office and then lying about it. Thus began the never-ending Russiagate campaign that chose Flynn as its first strategic target. Mobilizing the FBI, the Democrats brought Flynn down in a flash.

The young George Washington knew that lying was a sin. But as Glenn Greenwald out in 2020, the charges against Flynn were not justified. “There is nothing,” Greenwald wrote, “remotely untoward or unusual — let alone criminal — about an incoming senior national security official, three weeks away from taking over, reaching out to a counterpart in a foreign government to try to tamp down tensions.”

Singling out someone as mentally fragile as Flynn and humiliating him with no serious justification inevitably produced catastrophic results. The humiliation may have addled his brain, inciting him to paranoia and the idea that he had a theological mission. But apart from the unintended consequence of having a semi-articulate former general calling for a theocratic revolution (and, on occasion, a military ), Greenwald makes a broader point about how the intelligence services, initially tasked with providing objective information to the President, are now deeply implicated in the conspiracy games of political parties, themselves increasingly governed by the corporate money required to win elections.

Greenwald condemns the growing collusion between partisan political strategists and the intelligence community, whose powers have been magnified on the pretext of reinforcing the security state. He makes his case in these terms: “The powers of the security state agencies — particularly the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the DOJ — were systematically abused as part of the 2016 election and then afterward for political rather than legal ends.”

When Dwight Eisenhower, the US president and former general, added “under God” to the of allegiance in 1954, he didn’t anticipate that it might incite another former general to see it as the basis for turning the US into a theocracy. Just another unintended consequence of a historical decision?

*[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 General Flynn: Under God or Under the Influence? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

There is a remedy, but it appears to be absent without explanation. By now, there should be a full-blown and multifaceted investigation led by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) that focuses all of the formidable law enforcement authority of that institution on Trump and his high-level merry band of criminal conspirators. It should have as its driving purpose ensuring some measure of accountability for any and all associated criminal misconduct, especially that of Trump himself.

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When President Joe Biden nominated Merrick Garland to be �������������’s attorney general, the head of the DOJ and the nation’s top prosecutor, Garland was quick to the importance of the rule of law as a cornerstone of �������������’s democracy with the imposition of impartial and equal justice as its guiding light. The nomination acceptance speech was a good one, but the application of its principles to Trump and his co-conspirators seems to be missing in action.

Without a doubt, Garland appears to be a man of integrity and considerable legal acumen. Although early in his career he was a prosecutor, he is best known for well over two decades of service as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the last seven years of which were as chief judge of that court.

What’s the Situation Now?

So, where is he in what should be one of the biggest and best moments an experienced and committed prosecutor can imagine? High-level government officials, including an ex-president and his acolytes, almost surely conspired to overthrow the federal electoral process that is so often touted as the critical element of the democratic and peaceful transfer of power. Just to sweeten the pot, they organized and bankrolled a criminal insurrection at the US Capitol as a fundamental part of their conspiratorial efforts. And this doesn’t even touch years of lying, cheating and stealing their way to corrupt ends.

Yet, as best I can tell, a relatively limited and flawed congressional committee is the only entity focusing investigative resources on the grifter-in-chief and his conspiratorial insurrectionists. I like what that committee is trying to do, but I know what that committee will never be able to do: indict the indictable and drag them into criminal court where they belong. I will happily await the conspirators’ defense in front of a judge and jury while their expensive suits cover up the ankle bracelets that they all should be wearing by that time.

To be clear, it is fully appropriate that those who rioted at and inside the Capitol on January 6 should be held accountable for their actions on that day, as well. To its credit, the Department of Justice seems intent on providing some measure of that accountability, albeit often less than the actions of the rioters seemingly warranted. But much of the fodder for these prosecutions are low-level misfits urged forward and financed by mid-level and high-level conspirators seeking to use them as tools to preserve power and privilege for those who sent them forward in the first place.

Steve Bannon

To begin to understand the impact of the attorney general’s absence from the fray, it is worth taking a look at the interplay between the select congressional committee and a high-level co-conspirator and confidant of the grifter-in-chief, Steve Bannon. There is enough in the public record to establish the relationship between Trump and Bannon and the direct link of Bannon’s actions to the January 6 insurrection. When Bannon refused to cooperate with the investigators, produce documents and ultimately testify before the committee, the committee authorized a to require that cooperation.

This all sounded good until Bannon, as expected, thumbed his nose at the committee subpoena. This is straight out of the playbook used by the grifter-in-chief for decades. In response, the select committee and the full House of Representatives authorized a referral to the DOJ for prosecution of criminal contempt charges. This action was taken on October 21. Finally, a full three weeks after the referral, the DOJ Bannon for criminal contempt of Congress.

While this may send a message to others in the cabal refusing to cooperate and testify, swifter DOJ action would have sent a much stronger message. And, perhaps most important, neither the indictment nor a conviction ensures that the select committee will get the documents and testimony they sought in the first place.

Viewed through a wider lens, it is now more than 10 months since the insurrection at the US Capitol. It is possible that Attorney General Garland and a prosecutorial team are hard at work on a major grand jury investigation of the events leading up to, during and following that violent assault on the building, on those protecting it and on the critical legislative process that was to take place on January 6. If there is such an investigation underway, there is seemingly no public record of it to this point, no leaks and no witness attorneys complaining about prosecutorial overreach. Meanwhile, it took over three weeks for the DOJ to act on a straightforward and simple criminal contempt referral from Congress that should have been anticipated from the day of the insurrection itself.

Called to Account

So, where is Attorney General Garland, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, with the nation’s institutional foundation still under daily attack from the very co-conspirators whose actions propelled the insurrection and its criminal aftermath? I do not know. However, I hope that I am wrong and that a federal grand jury is actively investigating the co-conspirators and working its way toward the moment when the grifter-in-chief will finally be called to account.

While there is much general talk about accountability in our society, there has been little serious talk about the consequences of a specific failure to assign accountability at the highest levels for those conspirators inside the government, aided by co-conspirators on the outside. The events of January 6 were not an aberration. While the big show was on television for all to see, that show was camouflage for an attempted coup, an attempted overthrown of the nation’s constitutional order.

How do we know this? We know this because the grifter-in-chief and his acolytes are trying so hard to make it so hard for the rest of us to find out what really happened. Only the US Department of Justice has the authority, the resources and the skill set necessary to extract the full story and hold the responsible parties accountable.

This is a lot to put on the shoulders of Merrick Garland. But there it is.

*[This article was co-published on the author’s , Hard Left Turn.]

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

The post The Wrong Attorney General at the Wrong Time appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Democrats face challenges of their own trying to figure out how to weave together moderate Biden Democrats with a new generation of democratic socialists. One way to become “the party of the future” is to articulate a clear plan for solving the problems of the future. Here is one clear opportunity.

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Both the Trump and the Biden administrations approved multibillion-dollar pandemic stimulus programs. Despite the gravity of the COVID-19 economic crisis, half of the did not get to the working Americans who desperately needed help. Much was stolen by fraudsters and criminal rings who exploited online claims. Made worse, 70% of the stolen funds went abroad to Russia, China and Nigeria.

California State Auditor Elaine Howle as much last August and announced in a January report that the Employment Development Department (EDD) had sent 555,000 claims to 26,000 suspect addresses — an of 21 per address — despite the evidence of fraudulent activity. One address had more than 80 claims, and yet EDD’s missed 12 as late as in December 2020. Howle also noted that a disturbing number of claims went to people currently incarcerated in California prisons.

This begs the question: How long will taxpayers support government programs only to learn that the money ended up in the hands of criminals? This is how we stop it.

Every FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration office has a special agent in charge (SAC) to coordinate efforts in combatting criminal threats. We need state-based SACs for cybersecurity to assist state and local governments, prevent fraud and direct funding for state task forces as we already do for counterterrorism.

Under the authority of the secretary of homeland security, chief security officers in each state would provide a full conduit of information to all levels of government to intercept criminals. Besides preventing fraud, they could play a valuable role in helping local governments encrypt both and as well as portect against .

Governments in general also need more cyber experts. Cyber gangs have upped the ante, going so far as to examine companies’ before activating ransomware as experts believe was done in the most recent Kaseya hack. We need to raise the bar to intercept these bad actors before they reach private citizens or entities. A Marshall Plan for cyber hiring across all government would put us on stronger footing to combat increasingly aggressive behavior by state-supported crime syndicates.

Lastly, we need to measure how we are doing. We need to require that states publicly account for the share of unemployment benefits that get into the right hands. Obviously, not every malicious individual can be caught. By spotlighting our efficacy, we can highlight the problem, heighten demand and recruit more people with the tech backgrounds we need to tackle fraud.

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As a lifelong Democrat, I believe in the power of a strong government that provides a social safety net to protect its citizens. The answer is not less government or pretending there will not be more tech-based attacks on our citizens and businesses. The answer is for government to demonstrate it can proactively provide solutions to stop the problem and provide accountability.

We need a government that is technologically capable enough to protect our people and smart enough to get the money to those who need it most. Whichever party shows it understands the future by solving new problems like cybersecurity will be in the pole position to win in 2022 and beyond.

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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Nature hates a vacuum and, when it comes to war, so does US media that has always viewed peace as a vacuum. Publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post must keep the public focused on the global military mission of the United States. Middle East terrorism is still hanging around, but the idea of deploying a massive military effort to oppose it has been definitively discredited.

Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are the kind of formless enemies that justify an infinitely prolonged hot war, keeping military activity going. But cold wars are all about an arms race, and terrorist groups simply can’t compete.

Algeria to France: No Thanks for the Memories 

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With the disengagement from the Middle East, some may have the impression that we have entered a period of peace. But Washington’s strategists would panic if they believed there was a real possibility of peace. Like the media, they know that the American public needs to believe in an ongoing noble military mission whose purpose is to vanquish the next formidable enemy of the American way of life.

In the past, it has depended on having a clearly defined ideological rival: first communism, then terrorism. What comes next isn’t yet clear, but the media and the security state know it needs to be put in place, if only to justify the massive and continually bloated military budget.

For the past five years, politicians and media fearful of Donald Trump have spent their energy playing on the Cold War reflex of suspecting Russia. They remember how effective it was in the 1950s and ‘60s. The marketers of the security state understood that the idea of an evil Russia was so deeply implanted in the American mindset that it can still inspire a reflex of both hatred and fear. The Soviet Union disappeared three decades ago, but Russia itself is associated with the idea of something existentially evil. 

Through clever management of the news, the intelligence community, echoed by the media, successfully instilled the idea that Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin’s best friend forever. Now, with Trump out of the picture, at least temporarily, Russia’s feeble and failing economy clearly poses no credible threat to the US. China has thus become the logical and far more credible adversary for anyone imagining an impending war scenario.

The New York Times is accordingly directing the public’s attention to the effort now being made in Washington with a focus on Taiwan: “At the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, officials are trying to figure out if the longtime American policy of “strategic ambiguity” — providing political and military support to Taiwan, while not explicitly promising to defend it from a Chinese attack — has run its course.”

This week, Daniel L. Davis, a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army, in The Guardian that war over the defense of Taiwan should be avoided at all costs. “Publicly, Washington should continue to embrace strategic ambiguity,” he recommends, “but privately convey to Taiwanese leaders that we will not fight a war with China.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Strategic Ambiguity:

The normal content of all diplomatic discourse

Contextual Note

President Joe Biden appears to be respecting at least half of Davis’s recommendation. He that he has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan, and that the two agree they will “abide by the Taiwan agreement.” It consists of having relations with Taiwan but not recognizing it as an independent nation. Strategic ambiguity will remain intact. But is Biden ready to explain to Taiwan that the US has no intention of going to war with China?

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is clearly aware of the ambiguity. She that the “Taiwanese people would ‘rise up’ should Taiwan‘s existence be threatened.” This is certainly true, but without US backup, rising up may not be an effective response to the world’s second most powerful army. At the same time, she “reiterated a call for talks with China” and admitted that Taiwan is “influenced by Chinese civilization and shaped by Asian traditions.”

Clearly, the US cannot go to war with China over Taiwan. At the same time, the US needs to maintain the idea that a war with China is possible. In the 1950s and 1960s, a militarized economy thrived thanks to the belief instilled in Americans that a nuclear war with Russia was possible, if not inevitable. It was just a question of what minor spark might set it off. This literally was the era of Dr. Strangelove.

In response to China’s Taiwan’s defense zone with 56 Chinese military aircraft, Taiwan’s Premier Su Tseng-chang last week accused China of being “more and more over the top.” Could this be an allusion to Washington’s vaunted policy of its “over the horizon” capacity to intervene in Afghanistan? Or does the expression simply mean “exaggerated” and “beyond the ordinary”? Dr. Strangelove was an over-the-top satire about military decisions that literally went over the brink.

As with everything concerning Taiwan’s situation in the coming months and years, the ambiguity will be more evident than the strategy.

Historical Note

The 1975, hearings in the US Senate forced American media to reveal the longstanding complicity between the CIA and the media concretized in . Congressional testimony a carefully structured propaganda campaign run through privately-owned commercial media. Its purpose was to instill the Cold War mentality required to justify an aggressive foreign policy and the unrelenting expansion of the all-powerful military-industrial complex.

It specifically sought to exaggerate the USSR’s destructive capacity while maintaining the public’s belief that the Soviet regime’s unique goal was to undermine, if not physically destroy, the American way of life. A cartoon Superman appeared on TV every day to convince children that the superhero was fighting for “truth, justice and the American �ɲ���.”

Fast forward to 2016. Following the rock-solid marketing logic of never calling into question a formula that has paid off in the past, much of the Democratic-leaning legacy media, more worried about Donald Trump than Russia itself, began promoting the multiple threads of what developed into the Russiagate narrative.

It appeared to be the easiest means of developing the propaganda required to protect and reinforce the military-industrial complex that some feared that Trump was threatening when he began challenging the “deep state.” Though Trump had no such intention, inciting Americans to think so could only work to the advantage of the Democrats.

This tactic nevertheless encountered a problem of credibility. Not enough people were convinced that Russia was still the evil Soviet Union. Once Trump was gone, the Russia threat definitively lost its sting. Post-Soviet Russia has only negligible influence on the world economy, unlike the Middle East with its historically established virtual monopoly on fossil fuel and its utility for the US as the vector of petrodollars. 

With Russia reduced to insignificance and the Middle East written off the agenda, China has become the only credible candidate to play the role of �������������’s fright-inducing enemy. China is conveniently run by the Communist Party, like the Soviet Union was. Its features and behavior identify it as an alien economy. It possesses a political system that is clearly autocratic and therefore the enemy of capitalist democracy.

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Everything is falling into place for a new Cold War that will take center stage following the shame-faced exit of the global war on terror. All eyes (including the ) are trained on China. In Act I, Taiwan will be the focus of attention, as it was 70 years ago when it was known as . But China is not the Soviet Union, and the US is no longer an empire sweeping up the spoils of European colonialism. What happens next will be difficult to forecast. We are truly entering an age of strategic ambiguity.

*[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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Nixon’s was, of course, a calculated craziness. “When the wind is southerly,” Tricky Dick certainly could distinguish “a hawk from a handsaw,” as Hamlet famously put it.

Half a century later, America has had to deal with a different kind of crazy in the White House. Although Donald Trump has insisted that he’s a “stable genius,” all the evidence suggests otherwise. After Trump lost the 2020 election, even those in his close circle of advisers began to question the president’s sanity. There was a distinct possibility that a real mad man now held the reins of power and that he was willing to do pretty much anything to stay in the Oval Office, up to and including a coup.

Competing Doctrines in a New Cold War

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Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was one of the most prominent members of this group of the concerned. In their new book, “I Alone Can Fix This,” Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker how Milley considered Trump’s declaration of fraud after the November elections a “Reichstag moment,” with the president potentially using false charges of electoral misconduct to subvert the democratic process and remain in charge. Milley began to strategize on how to prevent Trump from using the military toward that end.

According to another recent book, “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Milley went further. On two occasions, just before the elections and after the January 6 insurrection, he  his Chinese counterpart to provide reassurances that the United States wasn’t planning on starting a war. He also told advisers to keep him informed of any presidential decisions around the use of nuclear weapons.

Those specific dangers have passed. Trump is out of the White House. The right-wing coup didn’t take place. But now Milley, who has continued on in his position into the Biden administration, finds himself at the center of controversy because of these recent revelations. Trump, not surprisingly,  Milley’s actions “treasonous,” a charge repeated by  and the right-wing media as part of  that Milley be fired.

The Vindman Argument

Almost everyone else has been quietly relieved that someone like Milley was in place to put a policy straitjacket on the madman in the Oval Office. Interestingly, it’s not just right-wing lunatics who have voiced reservations about Milley.

Alexander Vindman came to public attention during the first impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. Here was military rectitude personified: a lieutenant colonel working at the National Security Council who went through all the proper channels to voice his concern about the pressure Trump was putting on Ukraine to launch an investigation into corruption charges involving Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Vindman gave testimony twice to Congress at great personal cost. When the Senate acquitted Trump, Vindman was booted off the National Security Council and forced out of the Army as well. Here, in other words, was someone who threw himself into the line of fire in order to call attention to presidential misconduct. You’d think he’d feel some affinity for Mark Milley. Not so.

In an  for The Washington Post, Vindman argues that Milley should have simply resigned. He should have “publicly expressed his concerns and joined other senior leaders, including Cabinet officials, who stepped down after Jan. 6, which would have been a proactive move against further abuse of power,” Vindman maintains. “Instead, the reporting suggests, Milley blustered to subordinates, raised grave concerns with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, sometime in the same period, sought to circumvent or subvert the chain of command.”

But wait, wouldn’t resignation have given Donald Trump exactly what he wanted, an opportunity to replace Milley with someone more pliable? Vindman disagrees: “I am befuddled by the notion that only Milley was standing between a madman and Armageddon. That is the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster. That is not the way the U.S. military operates. Any one of the other chiefs of staff or the vice chairman would have stepped up and continued to serve as a guardrail.”

This all sounds reasonable. But it doesn’t hold up to closer scrutiny. Let’s first address the China question. Military officials routinely contact their counterparts as part of efforts to avoid war and deescalate conflict. “I didn’t consider that abnormal at all,” former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen  about Milley’s communications with Chinese officials.

Now let’s add some information from The Post columnist Josh Rogin to the effect that Milley wasn’t acting alone. Pentagon chief Mark Esper, who was also  with reassurances, even went so far as to delay the deployment of US ships as part of a planned exercise to make sure that the Chinese got the message.

Exceptional Circumstance

OK, then what about Milley’s insistence that he be involved in any decision to use nuclear weapons? In The Washington Post, Carrie Lee  this action as a breach of the chain of command, because a mere adviser to the president like Milley does not have such authority. US presidents can unilaterally order a nuclear attack and the rockets will fly a few minutes later.

But Milley’s intervention wasn’t unprecedented. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger did something similar late in Nixon’s term when he was worried that the president had gone well beyond playing crazy and had descended into despondency and drunkenness. 

Garrett Graff in Politico: “Defense Secretary James Schlesinger recalled years later that in the final days of the Nixon presidency he had issued an unprecedented set of orders: If the president gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders should check with either him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them. Schlesinger feared that the president, who seemed depressed and was drinking heavily, might order Armageddon.”

As Fred Kaplan  in Slate, Milley didn’t go as far as Schlesinger. He only asked to be consulted, which he was fully entitled to do.

Let’s face it: This unilateral launch authority is insane. Just because such a mechanism was established during the Cold War doesn’t mean that it should endure. By all means, let’s have a reasonable discussion about how to constrain this power of the president. But in the meantime, let’s not insist on protocol in the exceptional circumstance that the president goes off the rails.

By Carrie Lee’s argument, Stanislav Petrov should have been fired for defying the requirements of the chain of command. In 1983, sitting in a bunker near Moscow, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov was  his superiors that nuclear missiles were on their way toward the Soviet Union. The computer system monitoring incoming attacks provided him with not one but five separate warnings. But Petrov hesitated to confirm the attacks because something felt wrong about the notifications.

As it turned out, the computer had made a mistake. Fortunately, Petrov did not blindly follow protocol.

The same argument concerning “exceptional circumstances” and “gut instincts” applies to Milley’s outreach to domestic politicians around his fears of a coup. It was on November 10 that Milley felt his presentiments of a possible putsch. The occasion was a security briefing on a “Million MAGA March,” which would draw thousands of Trump supporters to Washington five days later.

This mid-November march turned out to be a dud in terms of turnout. But on November 10, the situation was perilous. The president, refusing to concede the election, was making unsubstantiated claims of fraud. Earlier that summer, Trump  putting Milley in charge of a military crackdown on civil rights protests and bruited the possibility of shooting demonstrators, all of which Milley pushed back against.

A month after the elections, Trump himself would  of declaring martial law to overturn the results. And, of course, on January 6, a MAGA march turned into an authentic insurrection. So, yes, Trump was increasingly out of control and dictatorial. Milley was not imagining things.

Milley made the decision to talk to policymakers on both sides of the aisle. And what was his message? Did he rally the anti-Trump forces? Did he come up with his own plot to counter what Christopher Caldwell, in a frankly ridiculous piece in The New York Times,  as little more than “mayhem”?

No, Milley had a different message. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he  the policymakers. “We’re going to have a peaceful transfer of power. We’re going to land this plane safely. This is America. It’s strong. The institutions are bending, but it won’t break.” In other words, Milley was promising an anodyne adherence to the rule of law, not its subversion.

Institutional Craziness

A madman is, by definition, someone who is not playing by the rules. But what happens when the rules themselves are mad? The president’s unilateral authority to launch nuclear weapons is one such example of institutionalized insanity. The two-decade war in Afghanistan was another case of extended craziness. And what of the decision, year after year, to bestow upon the Pentagon another $700 billion when so many urgent needs are not being met at home and abroad?

Mark Milley’s record of standing up to that kind of crazy is not so good. He’d never previously questioned nuclear protocols (that I know of). He tried to persuade Biden to keep US troops in Afghanistan in an emotional but not terribly substantive  earlier this year. He has never shown any Eisenhower-like skepticism of the military-industrial complex.

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It took considerable courage to stand up to Trump and his coterie of yes-men in the waning days of that presidency. I’m glad that someone was available at the time who knew how to put on a straitjacket and tie it tight.

But right now, this country needs a different kind of courage to address a different kind of crazy. We dodged the bullet of a military coup. But we’re still dealing with the reality of a military that has way too much money and way too much power. The military stood up to Trump, but who will stand up to the military?

*[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 the speech, there was, of course, the now-customary blame spread between the Afghan government and former President Donald Trump, but Biden did say that he “takes responsibility for the decision” to evacuate 100,000 Afghans, thereby implicitly distancing himself from the messy withdrawal itself.

Apparently deciding to withdraw all US troops is one thing, the consequences of that decision, another. Americans were assured that ties with our international partners were strengthening. Biden even spoke of the United Nations Security Council passing a resolution carrying a “clear message” that laid out international expectations for the Taliban.

Biden’s Misjudgments in Afghanistan

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But by the time he did so, the president had already relinquished any leverage the US might employ to make those prospects real. No doubt the Taliban sat upright when they heard a threat as empty as those Washington had made to the in Yemen, who have paid them .

Appearing a little defensive, President Biden underlined: “Let me be clear: Leaving August the 31^st is not due to an arbitrary deadline; it was designed to save American lives.” This implies that the original withdrawal date of September 11 was decidedly non-arbitrary—  before the withdrawal descended into bedlam.

Biden, who campaigned on his foreign policy experience and the global relationships he had cultivated over his long career, now finds himself saddled with a fiasco that has been compared to the US withdrawal from Vietnam and will be remembered for bodies in , eerily reminiscent of 9/11.

While President Biden and his supporters say this was inevitable and the decision to withdraw forces was made out of necessity, the broader view suggests that misjudgment, mishandling and a lack of foresight were the culprits of the botched evacuation.

A Series of Missteps

When the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was announced by then-President Trump, NATO partners felt blindsided. At the time of Biden’s withdrawal announcement, 35 other NATO member states, led by Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, collectively had approximately 7,000 personnel in Afghanistan, according to . They were understandably angry at not being consulted.

After Biden became president, a review by his administration reaffirmed the withdrawal, also without consulting with allies. While assurances of regional US support force were proffered, few doubted assets outside Afghanistan would be substantially less effective than �������������’s in-country posture. Where could the naysayers have developed such an idea? Perhaps they were listening to what our own military was saying at the time.

On April 20, Marine Corps General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. addressed the difficulties of an “over-the-horizon” approach when he said at a before the House Armed Services Committee that “It’s difficult to [strike a target] at range — but it’s not impossible to do that at range.” General McKenzie also said of post-withdrawal peacekeeping and power-projection capabilities: “I don’t want to make light of it. I don’t want to put on rose-colored glasses and say it’s going to be easy to do.”

Leading up to the hearing, on April 9, the director of National Intelligence released a that contained “the collective insights of the Intelligence Community,” stating that “prospects for a peace deal will remain low during the next year” because “the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.” In bold lettering, the report made clear that “the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.”

Two months later, in mid-June, an assessment prepared at the request of General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Kabul could fall after the US military left.

Almost from the moment the withdrawal encountered problems, the president alluded to inaccurate intelligence estimates, but weaknesses in the withdrawal plans became evident early on. Indeed,  in classified assessments sent over the summer that things were not going well.

The most damning of these was a State Department , signed by 23 embassy officials and sent on July 13, that described the Taliban’s movement and the impending collapse of the Afghan government. Although the cable was immediately reviewed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it was largely ignored. 

In addressing the dissent cable, President Biden this assessment was outside the broader consensus, but even the rosiest estimates maintained the Afghan government would fall in 18 to 24 months — just long enough for a September 11 commemoration and the mid-term elections.

The most optimistic estimate tacitly acknowledged that the Taliban would capture remaining US weapons and supplies, and that forfeiture of materiel to the enemy was inevitable. In effect, the decision to pull out consciously contemplated the inadvertent arming of the Taliban within no more than two years.

Between Nation Building and Giving Up

Oft stated, though, it is that the speed of Taliban advance was unanticipated, that intelligence agencies were equally caught off guard by the on July 12 of the top US commander, General Scott Miller. Perhaps most shocking to the intelligence community and US allies was the withdrawal from the Bagram Air Base on July 2, in the and without notifying its new Afghan commander.

This had enormously destabilizing consequences, especially on Afghan military capabilities and morale. Intelligence agencies were put in the position of having to guess not only what the Taliban and the Afghan government would do, but also what decisions President Biden would make.

Abandoning Bagram, which had as opposed to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport’s one, was shocking to many. To reduce the number of US soldiers required to defend the embassy and the airlift, operations were limited to the HKIA. This consolidation was later seen as an error, but the military preference for keeping Bagram with its larger, more defensible perimeter became infeasible because of placed by Washington.

Blindly optimistic despite signs of looming problems, Biden on July 8 that “The Taliban is not … the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy … of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Biden’s statement was buttressed by a false choice: either walk away from Afghanistan or stay in a situation that would, as the president described it, add casualties and put “American men and women back in the middle of a civil war,” meaning that the US “would have run the risk of having to send more troops back into Afghanistan to defend our remaining troops.”

As Congressman  pointed out, “There are a lot of foreign policy options between nation building and giving up. We found the proper balance in recent years — maintaining a small force that propped up the Afghan government while also giving us the capability to strike at Taliban and other terrorist networks as needed.”

Vulnerabilities grew as withdrew, removing air support that had been the lifeblood of the Afghan military. With the Afghan army unable to resupply and pay forces, particularly those at the edge of the Taliban’s advances, morale imploded. On August 13, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, stated that the Afghan military still held against the Taliban, notably, “a capable air force.”

But by early July, reports had already come in that Taliban fighters were pilots, and the Pentagon still had not formulated a plan to keep Afghan aviators flying after US withdrawal. Recognizing the air-power advantage was all for naught once the planes stopped flying, a mere three weeks before he fled Kabul, then-President Ashraf Ghani pled with Biden for air support — to no avail.

Dwindling food and munitions, a lack of reserve support and tardy soldier pay all contributed to reduced capabilities and a weakened willingness to fight. In some cases, the Taliban would offer government fighters safe passage and the equivalent of a month’s salary to lay down their arms. Whatever plan was in place, it is now clear that the was not one of “a perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan … that things aren’t going well,” as Biden suggested to Ghani. Once the Afghan military lost air support, it was lights out.

Political Choices

Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed he had no choice but to comply with Trump’s deal signed with the Taliban in Doha last year, but it wasn’t at all obvious he was committed to that course of action when he ordered a of the withdrawal. His own secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, visited Afghanistan in mid-March, he was there “to listen and learn,” promising that “It’ll inform my participation in the review that we’re undergoing with the president.”

Biden has reversed Trump’s policies in many other areas, making changes that have led to a of immigration at the southern border, setting a two-decade . He has rejoined the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement, and is seeking to negotiate a deal with Iran similar to the discarded Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Leaving Afghan Allies Behind Is a Threat to US Security

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If, as this administration maintains, the US left Afghanistan because the Taliban have been weakened over decades of war and it was a time to seek an exit, why is Washington negotiating with Iranians who chant “death to America” at every turn and are more capable than ever?

Prior to the August 26 explosion at Kabul’s airport that killed over 170 civilians and 13 American service members, there had been no US combat fatalities in Afghanistan since February 2, 2020. That, alongside the choice of an emotionally significant withdrawal date of September 11, suggests that the decision was a largely symbolic political statement and the plans for how to execute this mission were engineered backward with devastating consequences.

A US force amounting to &�Բ�����;—&�Բ�����;�ǰ�&�Բ�����;, as per European and Afghan officials — was a small footprint, yet it held valuable assets such as the Bagram airfield, strategically located between eastern Iran and western Pakistan. Giving up those assets, in conjunction with the collapse of the Afghan government, led to a substantial in US intelligence capabilities by early July, a trend that has only to the point that the US has now lost 90% of its intelligence collection capabilities.

In a mountainous, disparate place like Afghanistan, where the tribal loyalties are fierce, the human component is everything. Over-the-horizon strikes seldom work, particularly if you don’t know who the target is — or should be.

The likelihood of creating a terrorist safe haven seems to grow by the day. Weighted against damage to US credibility and prestige, not to mention the threat to the homeland, it is hard to imagine how a nominal support force could not be justified, considering the much greater deployment of US troops in places like Germany and South Korea.

If the objective is to withdraw from “forever wars,” then why pull so few soldiers from an unstable part of the world where the Taliban and al-Qaeda (who the US Department of Defense say keep a cozy ) plot against the West only to leave tens of thousands of troops stationed residually from World War II and the Korean War? If the objective is to maintain stability, as it appears to be in South Korea, then why abandon the progress made in Afghanistan?

Inconsistent Principles

Some have praised President Biden for the consistency — others would say obstinacy — of his decision, but the principle of withdrawal and the manner in which it was conducted has been inconsistently applied. In the primary in October 2020, then-candidate Biden had this to say about the Trump administration’s decision to pull out troops from Syria that undermined the position of America’s Kurdish allies:

“I would not have withdrawn the troops and I would not have withdrawn the additional thousand troops who are in Iraq…

It has been the most shameful thing that any president has done in modern history — excuse me, in terms of foreign policy. And the fact of the matter is, I’ve never seen a time — and I’ve spent thousands of hours in the Situation Room, I’ve spent many hours on the ground in those very places, in Syria and in Iraq, and guess what? Our commanders across the board, former and present, are ashamed of what’s happening here.“

In a  in Iowa the same month, Biden blasted Trump for creating a humanitarian crisis and undermining national security. “The events of this past week … have had devastating clarity on just how dangerous he is to our national security, to our leadership around the world and to the lives of the brave women and men serving in uniform.” Trump, he said, “sold out” the Kurds and gave the Islamic State (IS) “a new lease on life.”

“Donald Trump, I believe — it’s not comfortable to say this about a president — but he is a complete failure as a commander in chief,” Biden said. “He’s the most reckless and incompetent commander in chief we’ve ever had.”

The White House appears to be reeling from the uniformly negative coverage, but more than a few must be thinking, “Et tu, Biden?” While the president rejects criticism of his Afghanistan departure and shows no signs of altering his position, �������������’s weakened posture in the world is being exploited by its enemies.

Already the Chinese, the Russians and the Iranians are asking countries to question US reliability. Moscow has to setting up US military bases outside Afghanistan that might have effected a less chaotic withdrawal. Meanwhile, China, no doubt giddy at seeing US forces vacate Bagram just across their border and likely eager to control it themselves, seized a propitious moment to  Taiwan, suggesting resistance to reunification is futile.

If the withdrawal from Afghanistan is to “focus on shoring up America’s core strengths to meet the strategic competition with China and other nations,” then the US should seize upon the opportunity to reassure Taiwan and reiterate our constancy. Thus far, we have only heard posturing as Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, seeks nods for his cause against China’s intractable “two lists and three bottom lines” that would have Washington abandon its allies in democratic Taiwan.

All We Left Behind

When met with concerns about partners questioning America’s credibility on the world stage, Biden deflected by : “The fact of the matter is I have not seen that. Matter of fact, the exact opposite … we’re acting with dispatch … committing to what we said we would do.” The president appears not to be watching much TV or reading the news. According to numerous reports, �������������’s NATO allies are furious, and  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson isn’t winning him any more  in the “mother of parliaments.”

Meanwhile, Europe, Pakistan, India and others are worried about terrorists entering the regional vacuum, not to mention fleeing Afghan refugees looking for a haven at a time when the absorption of Syrian refugees has strained government resources. Many of these countries are anticipating another massive influx of refugees. As for those the US has evacuated, conditions were reportedly  and, according to an email from supervisory special agent Colin Sullivan, “are of our own doing.”

Although conventional thought by the administration held a swift withdrawal would prevent greater destabilization to the government of Afghanistan, it was fanciful to maintain we could get everyone out in such haste. A now-common complaint by president Biden’s defenders is that the US didn’t start evacuating Afghan allies when Trump ordered the withdrawal. Yet that is wholly inconsistent with what Biden did.

While Biden announced the withdrawal on April 14, the did not begin until July 30, and the withdrawal deadline was moved from September 11 to a more politically palatable but hastier August 31. Since then, cable news and any number of articles have focused on those the US left behind, including an Afghan who served as an interpreter and Biden when his helicopter was stranded during a snowstorm in 2008.

The administration prefers to focus on the hundreds of US citizens who still remain in Afghanistan, but how many special immigrant visa (SIV) holders or those who “earned them” through their bravery and assistance have been left behind? By some estimates, a quarter of a million Afghans the US during the war, and rumors now circulate that the Russians are collecting the data of all calls going to the US that is being handed over to the Taliban.

The Taliban is not known for paying friendly courtesy calls. Secretary Blinken recently that we have “now learned from hard experience that the SIV process was not designed to be done in an evacuation emergency.” But how to square that with repeated complaints from the administration about the SIV backlog and the 14 steps required to gain one or the delay between announcing withdrawal and airlifting people out? All of this seems to make US departure appear at once precipitous and callous.

A Common Excuse

A common excuse made by the Biden administration is that many people do not want to leave. This was echoed time and again, but it conflicts with the thousands of people who have assisted with private efforts to extract �������������’s friends. Whatever the for the poorly executed withdrawal, for those who did make it out, thanks may be given not necessarily to the US government but to the informal band of wealthy donors, veterans and CIA analysts who groups such as the Commercial Task Force in the Peacock Lounge of the Willard Hotel.

In that one instance, about 5,000 people were evacuated. Other groups have sprung up to guide refugees to safety or give them to write on posters that would help them gain entry to the airport. Biden acknowledged the “network of volunteers,” and although many do not like hearing it, these groups have in many ways been more effective with fewer resources than the federal efforts.

Afghanistan: A Final Nail in the Coffin of American Foreign Policy

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For all of the president’s attempts to claim that “we planned for every contingency” and that “the buck stops with me,” the private efforts were no less necessary in the face of a self-reinforcing view that an ill-conceived, poorly-executed plan during the fighting season is proof of its necessity. When Biden on August 16 that “the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision,” it was a justification as inversely logical as the withdrawal.

While there were no helicopters on the roof of our embassy, officials there were nevertheless evacuated in situ. Originally, the Pentagon that the embassy evacuation was “a very narrowly focused, temporary mission to facilitate the safe and orderly departure of additional civilian personnel from the State Department. … Once this mission is over … we anticipate having less than 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground to support the diplomatic presence in Kabul, which we all agree we still want to be able to have.”

We now know the embassy, one of �������������’s largest, is , with Taliban scrawled on it, and policy is run out of Qatar. While Biden is unlikely to have any “mission accomplished” signs up, US efforts have been reduced to “” that will apparently work in concert with the Taliban.

As it stands now, the Taliban head the government in Kabul, Islamic State Khorasan is making moves, US “collaborators” are being hunted down and the Haqqani Network is ascendent. It is striking to hear the same people who cite the $2-trillion cost of the war in Afghanistan are also those who push for the abandonment of US labors, willfully or otherwise ignoring the promise of a renewed terrorist safe haven.

It does not take much imagination to picture the Biden administration in the same position that President Barack Obama found himself in when he pulled out of Iraq. As former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz : “Mr. Biden should have known to expect this because something similar happened 10 years ago when we withdrew our forces from Iraq. Lacking U.S. air support and advisory capabilities on which the Iraqi army had grown to depend, it collapsed under an assault by Islamic State. Three years after the withdrawal, President Obama had to rush 1,500 troops back to Iraq to assist in the fight to drive out ISIS. By 2016 that number had grown to 5,000.”

A Question of Competence

Criticism assails President Biden from all quarters, with a few observing that he had planned a 10-day vacation to Camp David as the withdrawal was reaching a crescendo. Top Obama adviser, David Axelrod, has : “you cannot defend the execution here. This has been a disaster. … It is heartbreaking, it is depressing, and it’s a failure. And he needs to own that failure.”

Nor is Biden finding many friends among former US ambassador to Afghanistan, , and Princeton’s , both of whom have some unflattering opinions that echo that of , who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Secretary Gates wrote that Biden is someone who has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Trust in America and in Joe Biden’s judgment is at a low ebb, and it is difficult to understand how the president developed a reputation for competence. On July 8, he that “The mission was accomplished in that we … got Osama bin Laden, and terrorism is not emanating from that part of the world.” This elides the fact that it was Biden who dissented in planning the operation that would kill bin Laden.

While Biden was not right about bin Laden, bin Laden might have been correct about Biden. When deciding not to target Biden when he was vice president, bin Laden him as “totally unprepared for that post [of president], which will lead the US into a crisis.” Contrary to the president’s belief, it also seems that terrorism may soon be “emanating from that part of the world” again.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of blame to go around. A commander in the Afghan army, , has kind words for neither Biden nor Trump, nor did former National Security Adviser  pull any punches when he said in mid-August that “This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”

Indeed, President Trump’s former defense secretary, Mark Esper, the Doha agreement with the Taliban “conditions-based” and said Trump “undermined” his own plan when the drawdown continued despite a lack of progress by the Taliban on the agreement’s provisions. The Biden administration would have been well within its right to renegotiate the drawdown in light of the Taliban’s unwillingness to its end of the bargain.

What Biden had hoped would be an orderly, triumphant return of the US military — a hope still by the Department of Defense as late as July 6 — turned into the posturing fecklessness of a nakedly political stunt.

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Biden has repeatedly telegraphed his punch with, however awkwardly denied, that were tethered to very little outside of political opportunism. This was never more obvious than when September 11 was set as the withdrawal deadline. In choosing that date, his hand was tipped, and a plan to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan was revealed as a political stunt, an unnecessary capitulation masquerading as destiny, vainglory turned tragedy.

An Ignominious Retreat

The Economist of the US withdrawal: “If the propagandists of the Taliban had scripted the collapse of �������������’s 20-year mission to reshape Afghanistan, they could not have come up with more harrowing images” — a withdrawal where “Mr. Biden failed to show even a modicum of care for the welfare of ordinary Afghans.” In the wake of this irresponsible and costly withdrawal, there is a now burning conviction by �������������’s enemies that if God wills it, their adversaries will be vanquished.

That is a devastatingly effective emotional tool and recruiting argument that all but assures we will see this enemy again in closer quarters. When President Biden paid his respects on September 11, it was against a backdrop of triumphant marches elsewhere for the jihadist cause.

While some may sigh with resignation at the “inevitable” calamity unfolding, they ignore a great number of facts and forget the indiscriminate brutality the US attempted to excise when it entered Afghanistan. They shrug at the lost lives of brave US and Afghan soldiers ( respectively) who fought for that cause. To claim all of this was preordained is to foreclose a possible, if uneasy, calm and greet with resignation — a decidedly un-American trait — the reversion to greater violence and the tribalism that all but precluded loyalty to a central government in Kabul.

To declare the withdrawal just with rhetorical genuflections toward those who died is to forget the sacrifices of the dead, which in many cases were made for causes beyond themselves or even their country. It invites feuding terrorist groups to reconstitute and gain strength.

Accusing the Afghan government of not defending the gains of the past 20 years is at once to blame the victim and to banish the memory of what was there before the US entered and what will surely reappear in its absence. It is to debase women’s lives by accepting as banal the butchery Bibi Aisha survived, whose June 2010 shocked the world and hung above my desk for years as a reminder of the inhumanity we were fighting.

It is to indict exiled President Ashraf Ghani in the face of impossible odds for remembering history and the fate of another ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah — the last Afghan leader to see the Taliban roll into Kabul in 1996. Najibullah was captured by the Taliban, castrated and, according to Robert Parry, had his severed genitals stuffed in his mouth before being strung up from a lamppost. 

Although it may be said by the current administration that withdrawal was necessary and an earlier, better coordinated drawdown would have destabilized the Afghan government and the country, we have to ask what is more destabilizing: rolling up the carpet or yanking the rug from underneath a mission that brought stability so costly in blood and treasure?

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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This is the latest in a string of attempts by Facebook and other technology companies to for the spread of misinformation, violent extremist content and incitements to terror on their platforms.

In response, last month, an was held in Bergen, Norway, to commemorate the 77 victims of the terror attacks in Oslo and Utøya on July 22, 2011. Since then, radical-right extremism has become an increasing transnational threat, with a in the number of global attacks in the last five years.

Can Alt-Tech Help the Far Right Build an Alternate Internet?

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At the summit, closed-door workshops, discussions and Q&A sessions facilitated open and robust dialogue among leading global stakeholders committed to fighting radical-right terrorism and extremism. These included representatives from Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, the British, US, New Zealand and Norwegian governments, the UK’s communication regulator OFCOM, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, the UN, the EU and more.

The “22 July at Ten” organizers published the , outlining five steps for a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach among governments, tech platforms and civil society organizations aimed at helping tackle the spread of violent extremist content and mitigating the rising rates of online radicalization.

Black Box

While many researchers no longer subscribe to the technologically deterministic view that social media is the sole cause of radical-right extremism, there is evidence that it does, in fact, the process. An from 2016 found that 64% of people who joined an extremist group on the platform did so because the company’s algorithm suggested it. This explains why many online communities, including white and male supremacist groups, can act as gateways to more extreme groups and ideologies.

By design, Facebook algorithms prioritize content that gets more clicks, which in turn amplifies inflammatory content and increases the . Apparently, it’s just not in Facebook’s interest to make judgments on the quality of the content shared on the platform, given that its business model is centered on maximizing revenue from adverts. After Facebook’s 2016 report, for example, alterations to the “recommender algorithm” were turned down as they were deemed “.”

The first step of the Bergen Plan of Action calls for a tougher and more comprehensive approach to countering violent extremism through an approach that involves the whole of society, including governments, the corporate sector and civil society organizations.

Sessions with the US Department of State raised valid concerns regarding how this would work in practice, not least given tech companies’ well-documented resistance to publicizing information about their algorithms and transparency in general. The seemingly impenetrable nature of their recommendation engines has been used to relinquish responsibility from their role in spreading extreme content.

While much is yet to be resolved, the Bergen Plan of Action has the potential to provide vital independent, peer-reviewed research, allowing internet users to make better decisions about the information they consume and share online. The fourth step of the Bergen Plan of Action recommends establishing a global network of civil society organizations in order to facilitate sharing methods for tackling all stages of online radicalization. Specialist tools such as Moonshot’s could be used to identify and safeguard vulnerable individuals, directing them toward safer content and trained counselors.

Another important aspect of the global network is to avoid the duplication of research across international counter-terrorism organizations.

Whole of Society

A further focus of the conference was on the role of content moderation. Historically, tech companies have repeatedly abdicated responsibility for removing radical-right content. Social media platforms received after their failure to remove the extremist messaging that helped incite the violence at the US Capitol on January 6.

During the Bergen conference, representatives from Google and Facebook discussed the challenges of creating a global definition of terrorism that does not impinge on the right to free speech, especially the First Amendment to the US Constitution. However, 10 years after the tragic events of July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik’s “2083” terrorist manifesto is still one of Norway’s top Google search results. This alone, argues Matthew Feldman, the director of the Centre for Analysis Radical Right, shows that Google’s approach is inadequate.

The Bergen Plan of Action proposes that an independent body of moderators should be used across all tech companies to better enable transparency and accountability surrounding moderation. Moderators would also be supported with counseling and mental-health resources since the nature of the content they’re exposed to can be immensely distressing.

Likewise, policy decisions would be backed up by transparent, externally verified data to show measurable impacts of each policy. The benefits of this approach are showcased by Twitter’s . Within a week of the former US president being banned, false claims of election rigging from 2.5 million to 688,000 — a 73% decline.

In this plan, moderators would also be trained to recognize terrorist and violent extremist content in a multitude of languages and cultural contexts. This would provide a humanistic approach to deciphering extreme rhetoric and discourse — an obvious improvement on the current, overly-automated process responsible for the majority of .

An independent group of experienced moderators could better navigate more nuanced issues of cancel culture and free speech in marginal or highly-charged cases while also retaining engagement from marginalized users and minimizing polarization.

As expressed by former Pinterest employee , tackling the spread of harmful content online comes down to conviction: “If you want to understand how non-accidental any of this is, think about pornography. How often do you randomly encounter porn on Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube, or wherever else? Not that often.”

Getting tech companies to endorse the Bergen Plan of Action may well be the biggest challenge to its success. It will require a recentering of Big Tech’s efforts around duty of care to users instead of growth and profit. Yet a whole-of-society approach necessitates their involvement.

Policies that offer social media companies financial incentives have shown promise, as have ones the mete out punishments, such as the Network Enforcement Act in Germany that social media companies up to €50 million ($58.7 million) for failing to quickly remove violent extremist content.

Ultimately, a multi-stakeholder solution — including governments, tech platforms and civil society — that can be meaningfully adopted by each sector is an ambitious but vital task to prevent future events like the Capitol Hill insurrection and radical-right terrorist attacks like the 2011 tragedy in Norway.

*[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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One day after Biden’s inauguration, QAnon sympathizer and representative for Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene,  to impeach the new president on the Trumped-up charge of bribery. As the US withdrawal from Afghanistan proceeded at its telescoped and chaotic pace, impeachment calls came with greater regularity from the Republican Party, with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham  the president’s ouster for the high crime and misdemeanor of “ignoring sound advice.”

It’s a curious turn of events when the Republicans lambaste the current president for implementing the policy of their own party’s standard-bearer and doing so in a dysfunctional manner that was a hallmark of Trump’s tenure. And why exactly are Republicans complaining? They’ve already effectively handcuffed the current president —without the bother of actually trying to send him to jail — by forcing him to deal with the consequences of the actions taken by Donald Trump during his four years in office.

Understanding and Misunderstanding the Biden Doctrine

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Sure, Biden has emphasized the few global issues on which he has boldly departed from Trump’s agenda. The new administration dramatically reentered the Paris agreement on climate change. It committed the United States to fight COVID-19 worldwide with a somewhat more generous policy on vaccine distribution. It rescinded the “global gag rule” prohibiting foreign aid for family planning overseas. It signaled the end to US support of the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

But in many other foreign policy areas, Biden has had to operate within the parameters established by his predecessor. On Afghanistan, Iran, immigration, trade and many other issues, Trump implemented radioactive policies that have long half-lives. The Biden administration has been stuck with the job of cleaning up the toxic waste. Worse, in some cases, the president has, for political reasons, decided to live with the mess.

Poisonous Gifts

Afghanistan has been perhaps the most significant foreign policy legacy of the Trump team. In February 2020, the administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban in Doha to end the two-decade war. At the time, about 13,000 US troops provided training, muscle and firepower to a seriously underperforming Afghan army. According to the deal, the last US soldiers would depart Afghanistan in May 2021. By the time Biden took office in January 2021, US forces were officially down to 2,500, although in reality there were about  American soldiers in the country.

Biden could have the Doha deal, just as Trump threw out so many of the agreements that the Obama administration signed. He could have once again expanded the US military footprint inside Afghanistan, as some of his advisers recommended. But there was virtually no popular support for another surge, and Biden had never been a fan of more boots on the ground. He’d promised during the presidential campaign to end the US war in Afghanistan, so the 2020 agreement served as a useful rationale.

What the new administration was not happy with, however, were some of the consequences of the peace deal, including the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners without a quid pro quo and the ultimate undermining of the authority of the government in Kabul. The radioactive gift from the Trump administration was to rob the Biden team of any real leverage in its implementation of the deal. The most Biden could do was to delay the withdrawal of troops by a couple of months and hope for some kind of power-sharing arrangement between the Taliban and the government in Kabul.

Instead, an emboldened Taliban clearly capitalized on the feelings of abandonment among provincial officials in the wake of the 2020 deal to negotiate the handover of one city after another. Sure, Biden could have begun withdrawing American personnel and Afghan colleagues before the Taliban reached Kabul. But the president would have been blamed for jumping the gun and contributing to the demoralization that hastened the Taliban’s ultimate victory.

Trump’s ill-planned deal — and his  to pull out all troops by January 15, 2021, regardless of the “sound advice” of his national security team — set up nothing but bad choices for Biden around what was ultimately a necessary military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Another poisonous gift from Trump has been his Iran policy. Trump backed out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and tried, with additional sanctions and pressures, to ensure that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would never be resuscitated.

The Biden administration has promised to find a way back to the nuclear agreement. But it has yet to come up with a formula in its negotiations with Iranian counterparts on eliminating Trump-era sanctions and providing compensation for their impact while at the same time walking back Iran’s moves to expand its nuclear program. In one good sign, Iran  an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency that preserves previously agreed-upon monitoring.

But there’s no guarantee that the JCPOA can be revived. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is hedging its bets. “We’re putting diplomacy first and see where that takes us. But if diplomacy fails, we’re ready to turn to other options,” Biden . If diplomacy fails, Biden will certainly deserve some of the blame, but Trump did what he could to make success as unlikely as possible.

Trade Policy

Iran is not the only country still suffering under the burden of Trump-era sanctions. China was hit with a variety of tariffs and economic sanctions during the Trump years, and it retaliated with trade penalties of its own against the United States.

To get the tariffs reduced, China signed the “phase one” trade agreement in which it promised to purchase $200 billion more US products in 2020-21. Last year, China of its targeted purchases by 40%. Of course, the global outbreak of COVID-19 didn’t help, as global trade in general plummeted. The numbers for 2021, on the other hand, have been better, with Chinese purchases of agricultural products in particular .

Significantly, that “phase one” agreement didn’t lift any of the tariffs on Chinese goods, just reduced some of the rates. Tariffs on 66% of Chinese products , amounting to about $350 billion. That cost the United States around , not to mention the $28 billion in subsidies Trump sent to farmers to offset the initial drop in Chinese purchases of soybeans and other foodstuffs.

The Biden administration shows no sign of reducing or eliminating those tariffs. Indeed, it has  more economic sanctions against China over its policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. It expanded a Trump-era prohibition on US investments into Chinese companies connected to defense or surveillance technology. Meetings between Chinese and American officials have failed to establish common ground on trade or any other issue for that matter.

The bottom line is that Trump helped move the needle in Washington against China, so that anti-Chinese policies now have strong bipartisan support. Biden would have difficulty lifting tariffs and sanctions even if that’s what he wanted to do.

But even where such animus doesn’t exist, like Europe, Biden hasn’t pushed hard to lift penalties. Although this summer the administration finally ended a 17-year trade war with Europe over subsidizing the aerospace sector, Biden has not lifted the tariffs Trump imposed on European steel and aluminum. When asked after the G7 summit in June about these measures, a clearly exasperated president : “A hundred and twenty days. Give me a break. Need time.”

His response is disingenuous. He could have lifted those sanctions on day one. In fact, protectionism strikes a chord in certain sectors of the Democratic Party, and Biden doesn’t want to lose blue-collar voters. Trump made protectionism great again. Biden is loath to push against this tide.

Immigration

Trump’s protectionism also extended to border policy. He spent much of his four years in office doing whatever he could to cut the numbers of people entering the country and, where possible, deporting people who were already here.

Biden pledged to  the ugliest of Trump’s policies. He stopped the construction of the infamous wall on the southern border. He ended travel bans for people coming from majority Muslim countries. He recommitted to protecting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which covers undocumented young people who came to the United States at a young age.

But Trumpism lives on throughout the US court system. In July, a federal judge in Texas  that the Biden administration must stop accepting new DACA applications. In August, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to  Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which forces asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while awaiting a decision on their status. In putting asylum-seekers at risk, the program  international law.

It gets worse. The Biden administration is not happy with the above rulings and is seeking to challenge them. Yet in other immigration matters, the Justice Department continues to prosecute Trump-era cases.

“Over the past six months, the U.S. government has backed the expiration of certain visas, pushed for tougher requirements for investors seeking green cards, and supported the denial of permanent residency for thousands of immigrants living legally in the U.S.,” Anita Kumar  in Politico.&�Բ�����;“Former administration officials and immigration lawyers say Biden’s hands may be tied in certain cases—that the government may not necessarily agree with the specific policy but that the Justice Department may have to defend Trump-era policy because of requirements in law and the time needed to review all the cases.”

Trump didn’t just tie his successor’s hands. He handcuffed them to the throttle of a runaway train.

Not a Rule-Breaker

Trump made some changes that Biden has accepted without reservation. The previous president created a new focus in Asian policy that he called “Indo-Pacific,” which brought together the United States with Japan, India and Australia to form the Quad (not to be confused with the Squad). Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell has  India in the new administration’s containment of China, which had been a major Trump focus (to the extent that he could focus on anything).

The Biden administration has also  Trump’s Abraham Accords that secured new diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel (but at the expense of Palestine). Meanwhile, Biden shows no sign of attempting to reverse such Trump innovations as establishing the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

Of course, Biden is in a policy space whose parameters were established long before Trump came along with his sledgehammer. Biden is not exactly a rule-breaker when it comes to international affairs. The new administration has increased Pentagon spending and reaffirmed military commitments to NATO and allies in the Pacific. Biden has resurrected the old approach of “strategic patience” with North Korea.

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Aside from some proposed increases in foreign aid, he has largely ignored the global south. It turns out that the new president is comfortable working within the constraints of the status quo ante.

Trump was a true rule-breaker who did manage to do quite a lot in the international arena, where he had far greater leeway to make changes beyond congressional control. Much of that activity was destructive because Trump proved quite adept at smashing things.

Indeed, Trump smashed things — the Iran nuclear deal, détente with Cuba — not just because of a peevish desire to destroy his predecessor’s legacy but as part of a  to FUBAR the federal government for generations to come. As a result, Biden will spend much of his term picking up the pieces — and that’s a whole lot harder when you’re in handcuffs.

*[This was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

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 attacks not only shocked the world, but the  of planes crashing into the World Trade Center came to define a generation. In a speech on October 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush spoke of “an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world” and declared “war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them.” This was the start of the global war on terror.

The Story of the 9/11 Attacks and Retaliation

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda, inspired the 9/11 attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamist terrorist and the nephew of the truck driver convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center , masterminded the operation. The described al-Qaeda as “sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.” It held that the enemy rallied “broad support in the Arab and Muslim world.” The report concluded that al-Qaeda’s hostility to the US and its values was limitless.

The report went on to say that the enemy aimed “to rid the world of religious and political pluralism, the plebiscite, and equal rights for women,” and observed that it made no distinction between military and civilian targets. The goal going forward was “to attack terrorists and prevent their ranks from swelling while at the same time protecting [the US] against future attacks.”

To prosecute the war on terror, the US built a worldwide coalition: 136 countries offered military assistance, and 46 multilateral organizations declared support. Washington began by launching a financial war on terror, freezing assets and disrupting fundraising pipelines. In the first 100 days, the Bush administration set aside $20 billion for homeland security.

On October 7, 2001, the US inaugurated the war on terror with Operation Enduring Freedom. An international coalition that included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the UK and other countries, with the help of the Northern Alliance comprising various mujahedeen militias, overthrew the Taliban, which was sheltering al-Qaeda fighters, and took over Afghanistan.

The war on terror that began in Afghanistan soon took on a global focus. In 2003, the Bush administration invaded Iraq despite the lack of a UN mandate. Washington made the argument that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, represented a threat to world peace, and harbored and succored al-Qaeda and other Islamic jihadists. None of this proved to be true. Hussein’s regime fell as speedily as Mullah Omar’s Taliban.

Victory, however, was short-lived. Soon, returned. In Afghanistan, suicide attacks quintupled from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006. Globally, the war on terror saw a “” rise in jihadist activity, with just over 32,000 fighters split among 13 Islamist groups in 2001 burgeoning to 100,000 across 44 outfits in 2015. Terrorist attacks went up from an estimated 1,880 in 2001 to 14,806 in 2015, claiming 38,422 lives that year alone — a 397% increase on 2001.

Boosted by the US invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda spawned affiliates across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a decentralized structure that remained intact even after the US assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011 dealt al-Qaeda a severe blow. One of its Iraqi offshoots morphed into what became the Islamic State (IS) group following the withdrawal of most US from Iraq under President Barack Obama in 2011.

After declaring a caliphate in 2014, IS launched a global terrorist campaign that, within a year, over 140 attacks in 29 countries beyond Syria and Iraq, according to one estimate. Islamic State acolytes went on to claim nearly lives across the Middle East, Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa, controlling vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria, before suffering defeat by local forces in 2019.

In Afghanistan, despite the war’s estimated price tag, on August 15 the Taliban have taken control of the capital Kabul amid a chaotic US withdrawal, raising fears of al-Qaeda’s comeback. Last year, the Global Terrorism Index that deaths from terrorism were still double the number recorded in 2001, with Afghanistan claiming a disproportionately large share of over 40% in 2019.

Why Do 9/11 and the War on Terror Matter?

While the failures and successes of the war on terror will remain subject to heated debate for years to come, what remains uncontested is the fact that the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have forged the world we live in today.

First, they have caused tremendous loss of blood and treasure. Brown University’s project places an $8-trillion price tag on the US war on terror. It estimates that about 900,000 people “were killed as a direct result of war, whether by bombs, bullets or fire,” a number that does not include indirect deaths “caused by way of disease, displacement and loss of access to food or clean drinking water.”

Second, numerous countries, including liberal democracies such as the US and the UK, have eroded their own civil liberties and democratic institutions with the avowed goal of improving security. Boarding airplanes or entering public buildings now invariably involves elaborate security checks. Mass surveillance has become par for the course. The US continues to keep alleged terror suspects in indefinite detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay.

Third, many analysts argue that the attacks and the response have coarsened the US. After World War II, Americans drew a line in the sand against torture. They put Germans and Japanese on trial for war crimes that included . In the post-9/11 world, torture became part of the . Airstrikes and drone strikes have caused high collateral , killing a disputed number of innocents and losing the battle for the hearts and minds of local populations.

These strikes raise significant issues of legality and the changing nature of warfare. There is a question as to the standing of “counterterrorism” operations in international and national law. However, such issues have garnered relatively little public attention. 

Fourth, the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have coincided with the spectacular rise of China. On December 11, 2001, the Middle Kingdom joined the World Trade Organization, which enabled the Chinese economy to grow at a speed and scale unprecedented in history. Analysts believe that distraction with the war on terror hindered the US response to the revolution occurring in global international relations and power dynamics. 

Under Barack Obama, the US initiated an explicit that sought to shift focus from the war on terror and manage the rise of China. Under Donald Trump, Washington unleashed a trade war on Beijing and concluded a with the Taliban. Joe Biden has believed that, since the early days of the war on terror, US priorities have been too skewed toward terrorism and that Afghanistan is a secondary strategic issue, leading to a decision to withdraw troops to mark the 20^th anniversary of 9/11.

Biden has that the US has degraded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and eliminated bin Laden. Despite worrying echoes of George W. Bush declaring the “mission accomplished” in Iraq in 2003, from now on, Biden wants the US to remain “narrowly focused on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency or nation building.”

While the terrorist threat still consumes US resources, Washington is now shifting its strategic attention and resources to China, Russia and Iran. The Biden administration has deemed these three authoritarian powers to be the biggest challenge for the postwar liberal and democratic order. The 20-year war on terror seems to be over — at least for now.

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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Despite warnings from ex-associates and journalists regarding his sociopathic behavior, he decries the media and political opponents as unpatriotic. Policy wonks and veterans in his party are sidelined to create a personality cult unmoored from any ideology. Social media is used daily for dog-whistle rhetoric to promote the cultural supremacy of his ilk.

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By blaming all the socio-economic ills on outsiders, previous administrations and “others,” he builds a narrative of victimhood. His devoted followers start living in an alternate universe. Once in power, he uses his bully’s pulpit to undermine all democratic institutions.

Riding Out the Storm

You would be forgiven for thinking that this was about Donald Trump. But this is the story of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. The similarities end there, however. While the United States managed to pull back from the brink after the Capitol Hill insurrection of January 6, Indian democracy is in a dangerous downward spiral.

To understand these divergent trajectories of the oldest and the largest democracies in the world, it is instructive to examine the key differences between Trump’s and Modi’s personalities, the maturity of democratic institutions in the United States and India, and the histories of these two republics.

In the US, Trump’s effort to subvert democratic institutions has been well documented, with commentators still writing about how close the country had come to a constitutional crisis in his final days in office. Trump tried his best to manipulate all the American institutions, but there was rarely any method to his madness. Unlike Modi, he was more interested in vanity than power.

On a given day, he could draw lines on a map for petty reasons and undermine the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association or brazenly call the officials in Georgia and ask them to “find” enough votes in Trump’s favor to the election result in the state. As much as Trump and his partner-in-crime, Attorney General William Barr, tried, they could not corrode the integrity of the system beyond a certain point.

Despite Trump’s vilification, the media stayed strong and kept hammering home the truth. While Trump tried to use the judiciary to run down the clock on several grave constitutional issues, scores of judges, including several appointed by the president, stood up to him when it mattered the most. The legislature impeached but failed to convict him twice. However, when push came to shove, it certified the votes and declared Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

Barring a few minor missteps, the FBI withstood a concerted pressure campaign from Trump and his allies. The Federal Reserve, the Federal Election Commission, the intelligence agencies, vast bureaucracies and diplomats around the world kept their heads down and rode out the storm. With more than two centuries of experience, most American institutions have learned the importance of guarding their turf.

Taming the Bureaucracy

In India, on the other hand, while running his home state of Gujarat before becoming prime minister, Modi had perfected the art of taming the bureaucracy to his will, manipulating or marginalizing the media and polarizing the electorate for his narrow purposes. While he did deliver on a few key infrastructure promises, he also carefully crafted a larger-than-life persona around himself. As soon as he became prime minister, he stopped interacting with the media.

Well before facing reelection in 2019, he enacted an anonymous political funding system and used it to build a formidable social media propaganda machine to fabricate an alternate universe for his voters. Behind the scenes, he methodically started dismantling the democratic checks and balances. While Trump’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell might not have been intent on destroying American institutions, Modi proved to be more like McConnell than Trump — someone playing the long power game.

While previous governments of opposing parties were often guilty of undermining democracy, the brazenness and the cold, calculating manner in which Modi has approached it are astonishing. By using obscure parliamentary maneuvers, the prime minister has repeatedly sidelined or manipulated the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, to pass laws that have long-term and far-reaching social consequences.

In addition to passing questionable constitutional amendments to enact his anonymous political funding scheme, the Right to Information Act (the equivalent of the American Freedom of Information Act) was amended so that those ensuring public access to non-classified government records lost their independence. As a consequence, it became increasingly difficult to shed light on the government’s opaque decision-making.

The enormous war chest built through anonymous political donations, the government’s sizable advertising budget and the threat of central investigative agencies were used to browbeat most of the media outlets into submission. A top Election Commission official who took a stand against Modi’s incendiary rhetoric in the run-up to his reelection was reassigned to the Asian Development Bank, headquartered in the Philippines.

The Reserve Bank of India, in charge of the country’s monetary policy, has been repeatedly coerced into taking unsound policy decisions and covering up for the government’s fiscal and economic policy failures. Policymaking powers of at least two states, and , have been curtailed through potentially unconstitutional means, disturbing India’s federal structure. The military has been repeatedly co-opted for Modi’s photo-ops to promote phony nationalism. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has been a mute spectator, keeping on hold the hearing of cases related to some of the most pressing constitutional issues.

As the unfolding global Pegasus spyware scandal indicates, Modi has probably the judiciary’s independence as well. By allegedly hacking the phones of everyone from political rivals, constitutional authorities, judges, their staffers to activists, journalists and even his own ministers and friends in the private sector, Modi seems to have established an Orwellian surveillance-coercion state in which it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to challenge the power of his executive branch.

Opposite Paths

Why have India and the US embarked on such opposite paths? One reason is the difference between the two leading men themselves. A devoted foot soldier of right-wing Hindu majoritarian ideology, Modi rose through the political ranks and served more than two terms at the helm of the state of Gujarat before running for the highest office in the land. He had carefully studied all levers of executive and bureaucratic power and, along with his deputy, Amit Shah, had already gained notoriety as one of the country’s most ruthless politicians.

While both ran their campaigns as outsiders, Trump’s understanding of the government machinery was limited. As former National Security Adviser John Bolton recently , Trump is incapable of staging a coup because he lacks the attention span required for it. With no discernible political acumen, Trump was incapable of looking beyond the next news cycle or his narrow self-interest.

The American system dodging the Trump bullet and the Indian system crumbling under Modi also reflect the wide gulf in their socio-cultural values. By insisting on universal adult suffrage from its inception, the founding fathers of the Republic of India expressed tremendous faith in the citizenry and future leaders despite a severe resource crunch, a moribund economy and near-total absence of infrastructure for health, education or even basic transportation.

While giving every adult the right to vote is hailed as a quintessentially Indian revolution, and rightly so, it has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, it has dismantled the centuries-old feudal social structures and slowly empowered historically oppressed castes. On the other, limited institutional capacity and lack of appreciation for their independence among voters have made the Indian system susceptible to demagoguery in the short run. This will change as India becomes more prosperous and internalizes the benefits of decentralizing power, but that brings into sharp relief Modi’s betrayal of his mandate.

Fledgling Democracy

At 75, India is still a fledgling democracy. It has already gone through one emergency under former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when all institutions, state and national elections, and fundamental rights were suspended amid near-total media censorship. While the Supreme Court took corrective action after the emergency, widespread poverty and, until recently, low levels of literacy have hampered rapid institutional capacity building in India. Corruption is endemic to all branches of government, making them easy targets for manipulation.

In its short history as a republic, the socialist economic model adopted by India’s pre-1990 governments has also created a new feudal system in the form of political patronage. With the government tightly controlling the economy, politicians became the new overlords picking winners and losers. As the initial euphoria and idealism following independence faded, criminals came to dominate politics. Corruption became the mainstay of political life.

While these might be birth pangs of any new republic — and might find parallels in the early decades of the existence of the United States — complacency and arrogance of the Indian National Congress (INC), India’s GOP, has fueled the rise of Modi.

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In the 1970s and 1980s, a 21-month-long national emergency, followed by legislative action favoring minorities to protect the INC’s own vote banks, had led to resentment among the Hindu majority. Instead of correcting some of these historic wrongs to move the discourse to a liberal center, Modi has swung it to the extreme right. He has not taken any overt steps that resemble the emergency that Indira Gandhi declared in 1975. Instead, he has chosen covert means to slowly and deliberately dismantle the Indian system of governance.

More importantly, while Gandhi’s methods were largely populist, Modi has added toxic majoritarianism to it, making this movement more dangerous, with potentially longer-lasting consequences. For someone who claims that he developed his political consciousness during the emergency, Modi’s assault on the liberal system that enabled his rise from humble beginnings is truly ironic.

A leader who promised to decentralize power and dismantle India’s new feudal system of political patronage now presides over one of the most centralized decision-making structures. When the framers of the Indian Constitution chose universal adult suffrage, they also expected elected leaders to nurture democratic institutions until they can stand on their own feet. Modi’s betrayal of that mandate, more so than Gandhi’s, will affect India for a generation, if not longer.

Dark Phase

Lastly, while the American system was built on an ethos of “don’t tread on me” and a desire to keep government out of people’s lives, historical factors like entrenched feudalism and extreme cultural diversity made India choose a cradle-to-the-grave approach to governance with a strong central executive.  

Americans instinctively question authority and are suspicious of the government, whereas Indians, by and large, have tremendous faith in the government as a source of good and are still coming out of the shadows of colonialism. American society values individual liberty, privacy and agency, while Indians gravitate toward collectivism and fatalism.

Perhaps the most telling indicator of this difference was the fact that Trump’s approval rating never crossed 45% while Modi commands favor among 60% to 70% of Indians despite his mismanagement of the pandemic, a series of foreign policy failures and the economic destruction under his watch.

Indian democracy is going through a dark phase, and all eyes are on the Indian Supreme Court to see if it will push back against Modi’s draconian executive branch. Even if the courts start asserting their independence again, India will pay a steeper price than the US did under Trump before it becomes a healthy democracy again. For the sake of their own democratic future, one can only hope that Indians start questioning their government more, hold it accountable and insist on securing privacy and liberty.

While fast, centralized decision-making might seem seductive in the short run, India will reap long-term benefits if it can turn its latent admiration of developed Western countries into a deeper appreciation for the checks and balances that enable their stability. Against all odds, India has stared down some of the toughest challenges so far. With some more patience, if it can focus on building institutional capacity and spreading awareness about their importance through rapid upgrades in the quality of education, it will live up to its potential of becoming a liberal, democratic counterweight to China.

Meanwhile, supporters of republican values in the United States will do well to learn from the goings on in India and count their blessings, or institutions, that helped the union survive Trump. In early August, as members of the House committee investigating the failed insurrection of January 6 heard gut-wrenching testimonies from Capitol Police, some of their Republican colleagues held press conferences blaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the tragic events.

As the January 6 commission has reconvened and subpoenaed scores of records from the government and private phone companies, Trump and his congressional supporters are back at it again, claiming executive privilege and private companies with consequences if they cooperate with the commission to prevent it from shedding light on the truth.

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The GOP leadership is keen on winning back both the houses of Congress in 2022 and knows the damage this fact-finding mission will do to electoral prospects. Some pushback or false equivalence is par for the course in this political game. However, the brazenness of the lies and fealty to Donald Trump more than six months after his ignominious While House exit is mind-boggling. Without condoning the messy last days of the US war in Afghanistan, they can take a leaf out of President Biden’s book to square with Americans about the systemic risk Trumpism poses to the system.

As national attention shifts from the Afghanistan war to other domestic and foreign policies, insisting on the truth by supporting the January 6 investigation, even at the cost of losing one election cycle, would be a small price to pay for the conservatives to preserve the republic.

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 radical right has, in the meantime, become with the lab leak idea. Those of us who have experienced — and survived — coordinated campaigns of abuse on social media recognize the signs: Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, people you have never heard of begin to spam your email or social media accounts. Someone has pointed the trolls in your direction, and you start to wonder, who and why?

Someone’s Errands

In the final days of May, “Mikael” emailed me: “So the most likely truth about Corona is a conspiracy idea that is a threat against democracy? What kind of nut are you that is so wrong? Who’s errands do you run?”

The background to his kind email, followed up by another a few days later, was an published a week earlier in the right-leaning Swedish journal Kvartal. Here, journalist Ola Wong suggested that a — I happen to be its author — published by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) aims to serve the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In a gross simplification of what the report actually stated, Wong alleged that it “cautions against blaming China” and “goes so far as to claim that searching for an answer to the origin of the virus and the responsibility for its spread basically amounts to a desire to find a ‘scapegoat’. MSB says that this is the hallmark of conspiracy theories and a threat to democracy.”

What I did in my report was provide an overview of how conspiracy theories around COVID-19 are part of what the WHO has branded the “infodemic” — an infected infoscape in which different actors spread disinformation for various purposes, such as to denigrate their political opponents and attack expert knowledge. I distinguish between six areas of conspiratorial imagination in relation to the pandemic: origins, dissemination, morbidity and mortality, countermeasures in politics and public health, vaccination and metatheories.

Both separately or in various combinations, all these six categories have fueled conspiratorial meaning-making. In some cases, they have driven processes of radicalization toward violent extremism, such as attacks against 5G technology, mass demonstrations leading to political violence or disgusting displays of racist stereotypes.

Moreover, as a historian of ideas, I don’t study the root causes of or treatments for a contagious virus that has killed millions across the globe but rather the conceptions and discourses connected to it. In that sense, I am less interested in what really caused the pandemic and more invested in studying how different concepts — for instance about its origins — are used in (conspiratorial) rhetoric around the subject. It is also not my ambition or task to investigate the likeliness of a lab leak or the possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine contains a microchip. So, first of all, Wong — and, as we will see, others alongside him — has failed to capture the basic premises of the report. Just to make my case, the passage Wong reacted to (the MSB report will soon be available in an English translation), reads:

“The question about the origin of the virus and the disease is infected because there is an underlying accusation of guilt. Could anyone who might have known about the existence of the virus also have stopped its dissemination? Was the outbreak of the virus covered up? Was the virus created in a lab or by transmission from animal to human? Questions like these are of course reasonable to ask, but already early on they were connected to what is an attribute of conspiracy theories: to place blame on someone and point out scapegoats. … By calling COVID-19 ‘the China–virus’ a narrative was established in which China was made responsible for the pathogen, disease and in extension its dissemination. In the trail of imposing guilt, racist Sino/Asiaphobic stereotypes were expressed against people with Asian appearance across the globe.”

I then made a parallel to the famous claim made by former President Donald Trump and his followers that climate change is a “Chinese hoax to bring down the American economy” and that, in continuation of this line of thought, COVID-19 now is inserted into the narrative with the twist that it would benefit the Democrats in the 2020 election. I concluded that “in both conspiratorial narratives, scientific expertise is rejected.” Furthermore, I quoted an expert from Yale Medical School (Wong wrongly frames it as my opinion) stating that it is both incorrect and xenophobic to “attach locations or ethnicity to the disease.” I also mentioned that the spread of the virus was blamed on a cabal between the CCP and the Democrats.

Nowhere in the entire report is it ever claimed or even hinted at that it somehow would be wrong or illegitimate to investigate the origins of the virus as a lab leak. It is true that conspiracy theories typically use scapegoating as one of many rhetoric strategies, and that they are, by extension, threatening democracy for multiple reasons. But it is utterly wrong to suggest, as Wong does, that the report somehow alleges that it would be a threat to democracy to investigate the origins of the pandemic as a lab leak or that the report dismissed such claims as a conspiracy theory.

Wong writes: “But if you mention China, you risk being labeled as a racist or accused of spreading conspiracy theories. Why has the origin of the virus become such a contentious issue?” But anyway, “MSB’s message benefits the CCP” and its narrative “that the pandemic is a global problem” (well, isn’t it?) and “not a problem originating from China to which the world has the right to demand answers.”

Chinese Propaganda Machine

Wong identifies such deflection as an outcome of a cunning Chinese propaganda machine, quoting an article that remembers how the US was blamed for the origin of AIDS/HIV in the 1980s in a similar conspiracy mode. Well, had Wong turned a page of the MSB report, he would have found a passage with the heading “The US-virus,” which exactly explains that another conspiratorial narrative about the origin of the virus also exists. Consequently, it would have similarly been completely absurd to state that the report “serves the interests of the US” since it treats the narrative about the “US virus” as a typical conspiracy theory.

But such inconsistencies are of no interest to Wong. Instead, he now delves into the by now well-established “new evidence” (it was always suggested as a possibility) that he claims to have “disappeared from the global agenda” (did it really?) about the lab leak theory. The reason why the theory was suppressed, he argues, was because “The media’s aversion to Trump created a fear of association,” and “Because of the general derision for Trump, the established media chose to trust virologists such as [Dr. Peter] Daszak rather than investigating the laboratory hypothesis.”

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Wong then extensively quotes from science journalist Nicholas Wade pushing for the explanation that “gain-of-function” experiments were carried out in Wuhan and that zoonotic transmission seems unlikely: “What Wade describes is not a conspiracy, but rather an accident for which no one has wanted to assume responsibility.” Wong is obsessed with responsibility and “the day of reckoning” that yet is to come, when China’s guilt finally will be revealed to the global audience. As much as he seems to long for this day when justice will prevail, he implores at the very end of his article to not “let sweeping allegations of conspiracy theories and racism undermine the work to trace the origins of the virus.”

Wong’s article left me puzzled in many ways, almost unimpressed. I did not state anything in my report that Wong purports I did, so it is difficult to understand why a journalist would find it worthwhile challenging the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency with an argument that has no basis whatsoever.

Lab Leak Whispers

Just two days later, Swedish public service radio P1 invited both myself a Wong to come on its to address the question of “What are you allowed to say about the origin of COVID-19?” — stipulating that there is some sort of censorship around the subject. Wong was unable to produce any credible evidence that the CCP ever has called the lab leak theory a conspiracy. There might be, and I am interested to read more about this attribution and its rhetorical function; the in Washington later used such terminology. During the summer of 2021, however, the topic has repeatedly been treated by the Chinese TV channel .

At the time when my conversation with Wong was aired on prime-time radio, the fringes of the Swedish radical right had already sniffed out the potential of the story, propelled by the tabloid Expressen, which in bold letters ran the , “MSB dismisses the lab-leak entirely: follows the line of China.” The article reiterates Wong’s one, but manipulates the content of the MSB report further, alleging that accusations of racism and conspiracy theories stifle the investigation of the origins of COVID-19.

Radical-right agitator Christian Palme posted Wong’s article on one of Sweden’s Facebook pages for academics, , which kicked off a wave of conspiratorial debate. Per Gudmundsson, of the right-wing online news outlet Bulletin, stated in an that the MSB report made him suspicious. Hailing Hunter S. Thompson’s paranoid style of reporting, Gudmundsson alleges that the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency wants to pacify the people with calming messages. He ridiculed attempts to discuss what is reasonable to do when planning interventions and designing counternarratives to toxic disinformation that can act as drivers of radicalization while at the same time execrating Islamist extremism, without any interest in countering it.

Finally, the gross simplifications of Wong’s article had reached the outer orbits of the alternative radical-right media in Sweden, and . Fria Tider referenced the controversial Swedish virologist Fredrik Elgh, stating that it is “senseless” that MSB had dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory (it did not). Samnytt, in turn, amplified the Chinese whispers started in Kvartal to a completely new level. In its own version of reality, the MSB report was allegedly released in order to prevent any investigation of China (not true). Under the heading “Prohibited to ask questions,” Samnytt states: “the message of the report is that it is not allowed to ask questions about the origin of the virus” (also not true).

Moreover, referring to and quoting Gudmundsson’s article on Bulletin, it goes on to state that “instead of questioning the established truths, the report recommends ‘to be in the present and to plant a tree’” — right quote but wrong context — “or to use other methods to calm your thoughts.” The author of the article is Egor Putilov, a pseudonym of a prolific character in the Swedish radical-right alternative media.

And now back to Mikael. Curious to drag out trolls from under their stones (they might explode in daylight), I answered the first email he sent to me; he replied. Mikael characterized himself as a disabled pensioner (Asperger’s) living in a Swedish suburb among “ISIS-fans, clans, psychopath-criminals and addicts etc. which you most likely have taken part in to create/import.” He asserted to have insights about what is happening behind the scenes related to COVID-19 and that the recent reemergence of the lab leak theory only demonstrated his superiority in analyzing world matters: “If I think something controversial, the rest of Sweden frequently thinks the same twenty years later.”

He recommended I look for knowledge outside the small circle of disinformed and obedient yes-people within the “system.” I must admit that Mikael’s email was one of the friendlier online abuses I have experienced. On the same day, I also received a message from “Sten” titled “C*ck” and containing a short yet threatening line, “beware of conspiracy theories and viruses… .”

What If the Scientists Were Wrong?

As historian and political analyst Thomas Frank eloquently has , we should expect a political earthquake if a lab leak is indeed confirmed. Frank claims that what is under attack is science itself. Science, we were told, held the answers on how to combat the pandemic. Experts in public health provided scientific evidence for political countermeasures, despised by those who routinely reject science or feel that their liberties have been infringed upon.

If it is proven that “science has failed the global population,” either by accident, by gain-of-function research getting out of control or, worse, by deliberately creating a bioweapon, both scientists and those who rely on their expertise will come under attack and their authority will be seriously undermined, with unpredictable consequences. Why would people have reasons to believe that climate change is real, that 5G technology is harmless or that cancer might be cured with rDNA treatment? Frank posits that what is at stake is a liberal “sort of cult” of science that was developed against the “fool Trump.” Should it turn out that scientists and experts were wrong, “we may very well see the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism go up in a fireball of public anger.”

Frank and others, such as Wade and his Swedish apologist Wong, allege that it somehow was the media’s fault to cement the lab leak origin as a crazy conspiracy theory just because it was peddled by a president who made more than while in office. When the “common people of the world” find out that they might “have been forced into a real-life lab experiment,” a moral earthquake will be on its way since they will come to the ultimate realization “that here is no such thing as absolute expertise.”

In the end, this will imply that populism was right all along about the existence of an existential dualism between “the people” and the well-to-do, well-educated ruling “elite” minority that creates and manages an eternal cycle of disasters affecting the majority. I tend to agree: This dualism is in fact a strong driver of populist mobilization and one that reoccurs in most conspiracy theories: we, the suffering people, the victims, against them, the plotting elite, the perpetrators.

But I would like to add to Frank’s conclusions, that the (social) media outlets as much as the radical-right propagandists were immediately able to smell out the potential of the lab leak as a typical frame by which “the people” like Mikael, Sten, Martin and Per (more and more of them — all male — have started contacting me directly) could be pitched against “fake science,” government agencies and politicians.

I would say that this, in fact, is the real purpose. In reality, the radical right does not care one bit about the origins of the virus but has discovered a perfect trope with which public distrust in authority can be deepened further. This is the reason why Wong needed to unleash an unsubstantiated attack against the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. He, as much as Gudmundsson, despises any attempt to provide citizens with tools to decode disinformation and conspiracy theories as to allow informed members of society to judge the accuracy of various claims beyond populist apocalypticism. If media literacy and the ability to detect conspiratorial messages increase, sensationalist media outlets will lose their power.

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One of the three key elements of populism as defined by is a permanent invocation of crisis, breakdown or threat. If this perpetuum mobile is disrupted, the source of populist power is dismantled, which is why Wong and others have to target the firefighters, and why Gudmundsson doesn’t want to hear about how to counter radicalization. The eternal flame of catastrophe is the campfire of populist socialization. Right now, the lab leak theory is a giant burning log providing heat for all these gratifying marshmallows to be grilled and fed to “the people.”

But there might also be other reasons. By pushing the lab leak hypothesis, the radical right makes the case that “Trump was right” about the “China virus” and, if so, he might also be right about the “stolen” election and all other 29,998 lies uttered during his presidency. Moreover, it was the liberal mainstream media’s fault that the lab leak was “buried” (which it never was) because they are all agents of Chinese disinformation (and communism, as we all know, is the great evil of the 20^th century), classical guilt by association. So, in the bigger picture, the lab leak is needed as proof of the infallibility of the great leader in his quest to “drain the swamp.” QAnon will celebrate on the ruins of Capitol Hill.

However, what worries me most is that the lab leak theory is used by the radical right as an attempt to minimize the danger of anti-Asian racism or any other racist attribution and abuse in case of earlier or later crises and catastrophes. Somehow, not only will science be proven wrong and the great leader right, but racism will be defended as a rational and normal reaction to pandemics. Wait, didn’t the Jews poison our wells at one point?

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But the scientific community, relayed by the media, calmly explained that, like earlier examples of the coronavirus, it was transmitted to humans by animals and originated with bats. The essential message could be boiled down to: Trust the scientists, who know what they’re talking about.

A year later, with Trump no longer in the White House, suspicion arose even among many scientists that, well, accidents happen, even among all-knowing scientists. But this accident, if that’s what it was, turned out to be particularly embarrassing, with millions of people dying, the global economy thrown into a tailspin and all the rituals of daily life upended, including such things as children’s education and, more drastically (in terms of loss of income), professional sports.

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When the stakes are so high, suspicion about who and what is to blame takes on a new dimension. The dominant take of 2020 was that it was all about wild animals. The dominant take in the spring of 2021 was that, no, it was people, and specifically scientists, who were the unwitting culprits. Back in 2020, the logic of US politics meant that reasonable people could assume that any assertion by the incumbent president, Donald Trump, known for his addiction to “alternative facts,” was a self-interested lie. Moreover, if a scientist provided a version that contradicted Trump, it was likely to be the truth.

A year later, Trump was gone. The path was cleared for rational public discussions. It became possible to begin weighing evidence before asserting a possibly unfounded opinion. That is when some medically-informed journalists and an increasing number of scientists admitted that human error as the source of COVID-19 was not only possible, but highly credible. 

The confusion spawned by this reversal of public discourse led the presumably level-headed President Joe Biden to commission a report from the intelligence community on the true origin of the pandemic. Last week, The Washington Post on the initial result of that study. The article stated that “President Biden on Tuesday received a classified report from the intelligence community that was inconclusive about the origins of the novel coronavirus, including whether the pathogen jumped from an animal to a human as part of a natural process, or escaped from a lab in central China, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Inconclusive:

Not quite certain enough yet to be codified and promulgated as an official lie

Contextual Note

If Trump could be counted on to produce any version of the “facts” that suited his agenda, Biden came into office with a confirmed capacity for lying about the facts of his own life — including his educational honors and his stance on the Iraq War — but also with a reputation for largely respecting publicly acknowledged truth. He did, however, out of ordinary political opportunism, give credence to the easily debunked reports about Russians paying bounty to Afghans willing to kill Americans. That was because he knew his fellow Democrats were fond of blaming Russians for all the nation’s ills. 

One difference between the two presidents is that Trump was always ready to jump to a conclusion, rejecting the temptation to call anything inconclusive. He painted the world in black and white, from which nuance was excluded. There was, however, one exception. He opposed the CIA’s largely conclusive assessment that Trump’s buddy, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had commanded the bone-saw crew who dismembered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. On that issue, Trump claimed that the evidence was inconclusive.

Most theories that lead to blaming someone other than the initially designated culprit are routinely deemed inconclusive or labeled as conspiracies to the extent that no smoking gun has been found. Those who cling to the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of John F. Kennedy and the Sirhan Sirhan for the death of Robert Kennedy continue to claim that the mountain of countervailing evidence is inconclusive. In both Kennedy assassinations, the smoke eventually became visible, but the smell of the gunfire had faded. Any forensic traces of actual smoke were of course branded conspiracy theories.

Concerning the report on the origins of COVID-19, the inconclusive assessment appears justified. The case for a lab leak has grown stronger in recent months, but apart from suspicion generated by the fact that the Chinese government has been obstructive, there is no serious evidence to justify it. The Chinese government is by definition obstructive in everything it does, so this could hardly be confused with the kind of exceptional behavior that credibly points toward a coverup. 

The Post offers an interesting explanation of another apparent anomaly: “Proponents of that theory point to classified information, first disclosed in the waning days of the Trump administration, that three unidentified workers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — one of the world’s preeminent research institutions studying coronaviruses — went to the hospital in November 2019 with flu-like symptoms.”

Americans would of course find this suspect, since, given the crippling price of medical treatment in the US, people avoid going to the hospital except in an emergency. The Post helpfully adds: “In China, people visit the hospital for routine and mild illnesses.” Cultural assumptions can always intervene to skew the perception of the meaning of the evidence.

Historical Note

Since COVID-19 is still mutating and raging nearly two years after its outbreak, no one knows when the definitive history of the COVID-19 pandemic will be written. The current wisdom says that, unlike the Spanish flu of a century ago, it will end up not as a chapter of history, with a beginning, a middle and an end, but as an of humanity’s pathological landscape.

In contrast, the history of the deep psychological mutations taking place as a result of the pandemic, especially in Western society, is beginning to take shape. Democracy has always lent itself to contestation. Protest has traditionally served to help define the positive dynamics of democracy, where voices could be heard that might influence what Thomas Jefferson once called “the course of human events.” But the pandemic has accelerated a different, far less positive trend, not of constructive protest but of an utter loss of faith not only in civic authority, but also in every other form of authority. Science itself may be the victim. 

The secular order imposed by modern formally democratic governments depends to a large extent on the belief in the beneficent authority of science and the sincerity of its representatives, the scientists. In recent decades that authority has been shaken by the role powerful economic actors and complicit politicians have played in manipulating science to serve their purposes. The managers of the economy have become accustomed to using their clout to promote comforting lies about science itself, in the name of “national interest” and the “needs of the economy,” which means the health, not of the planet or its population, but of the mighty enterprises that create (and also destroy) jobs.

It is a well-known fact that in US culture, uncertainty and inconclusiveness are unpopular. That aversion was one of the keys to Trump’s electoral success. Not having a decided opinion on something is often seen as an excuse for not getting things done, which means committing the cardinal sin of wasting time. Americans tend to see having and expressing a strong opinion — the art of being assertive — even when poorly informed, as a fundamental right that should never be compromised by the rituals of dialogue and debate.

Nearly 60 years after the JFK assassination, an event that still contributes to undermining Americans’ faith in political authority, an accumulation of more crises has added powerfully to the confusion. The latest Afghan debacle, an unresolved pandemic and mounting evidence of the tragedy of climate change have combined to undermine every American’s hope for establishing the kind of certainty Americans believe to be their birthright.

*[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 New American Art of Inconclusive Conclusions 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.”

The Politics of Recognition vs. Redistribution

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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 American giant is stumbling. Today, Americans fear that the US is in decline. Its economy is progressively skewed to the ultra-rich. Its national government is almost paralyzed. China is challenging Washington’s international power and leadership. American society is more divided than at any time since the Civil War, with up to 40% of Americans believing that a “” leader — a fascist — is preferable to democracy.

Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

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Almost all Americans worry that for the first time in history, their children will be than they are. Many of �������������’s political moderates and progressives fear that �������������’s democracy will be replaced by and consider former president Donald Trump and the current Republican Party fascist. Yet on the other side of America’s political divide, an NPR/Ipsos poll in December 2020 found that 39% of Americans believe that the country is controlled by a sinister “,” and this enrages them.

Social Stresses

My family and I are literally what made America. Since my ancestors arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower off the shore of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, America was created by “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” popularly known as WASPs. The culture that shaped the United States for 350 years was overwhelmingly English, then Western European, with a dominant Puritanical, Protestant ethos.

For 15 generations, America was also culturally and legally a society for whites. Even for my generation growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, many Americans still changed their surnames to sound more “Anglo” — dropping the last vowel, say, from the Italian (and Catholic) “Lombardi” to “Lombard,” to appear more WASP-like and less “ethnic” or un-American. Fully 10% of the population was black, but they were excluded from power and lived on the cultural periphery. Half the nation still lived in an apartheid “” regime, the legacy of centuries of white domination and black slavery. In the media, one saw only white faces like mine, except in subordinate or, rarely, in “exotic” roles. And, of course, America, like the rest of the world since time immemorial, was only a man’s world.  

But with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, America began a stupendous social change, with blacks and women gaining unprecedented rights. Furthermore, non-WASP immigrants have arrived in the US by the tens of millions. When I was born, America was over . By the year 2045, under . The trend has already been clear for decades. In the past dozen years, the US has elected a black president twice, a black-Indian female vice president, and its second Catholic president.

Today, the US has a vibrant black middle class. Its Asian population is growing rapidly. Asian and Indian Americans hold many prominent positions in the country’s economic and scientific establishments. Women now hold countless key positions in all sectors of the US economy, including boardrooms. This demographic and social revolution has diversified America but also engendered a nativist, racist reaction and the rise of a fascist: Donald Trump.

Socially conservative whites — especially the least educated — have literally taken to the streets to “” their country from these changes. Donald Trump voices their anger and their demands. Having lost the presidential election of 2020 yet having refused to accept verified results, the Republican Party has taken dozens of measures to voting access for non-whites. There has been talk of civil war, and there has been an insurrection.

Economic Stresses 

Real incomes have largely for about 40 years. Globalization has destroyed entire sectors of �������������’s middle-class economy. Much of US manufacturing has moved abroad to lower-wage economies. In the 1960s, the single male income earner could provide a middle-class life for most families. Today, of families require two full-time incomes to maintain a middle-class life. According to a Brookings , women account for “91% of the total income gain for their families.”

In 2019, a Federal Reserve study that almost 40% of Americans “wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash, savings or a credit-card charge that they could quickly pay off.” With $41.52 trillion in assets, the top 1% of households more than 32% of the country’s wealth. With just $2.62 trillion in assets, the bottom 50% own a mere 2%. This concentration of wealth is creating social and political strains.

America Is No Longer One Nation

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The Republican Party has based its appeal on these grievances for decades, and Trump, the classic demagogue, exploited them all the way to the presidency. Blaming stagnation and increasing economic insecurity of ordinary Americans — and their loss of white social status — on globalization has been a ploy of Republicans since the mid-1960s. The party has progressively based its appeal on such tropes and fears since.

Today, Republicans systematically oppose any action by the federal government as a threat to “freedom.” They seek to reduce taxes, gut economic regulations, lower investments in infrastructure and slash expenditure on education, which they deem to be a means of dangerous social engineering. 

Political Stresses

As McKay Coppins has in The Atlantic, after emerging as the leader of the Republican Party in 1994, “Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise.” As speaker of the House of Representatives, Gingrich sought to demonize and destroy the Democratic Party. He refused to cooperate, let alone compromise with the Democrats at any level either in the White House or Congress.

When Barack Obama was elected president, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acted ruthlessly to everything the Obama administration proposed. Before the 2010 midterm elections, McConnell : “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Today, McConnell has that “100% of his focus is on blocking” President Biden’s agenda.

Since the mid-1990s, American politics has turned increasingly polarized, its federal government almost paralyzed. There are two principal reasons the US suffers from political rigor mortis. First, the Republican Party has become increasingly . The Democratic Party remains more moderate and open to compromise but has gotten little in return from the Republicans. Second, �������������’s electoral structures accord a disproportionate weight to rural districts, which is where the anxious, angry and reactionary WASPs and other whites live. The more ethnically diverse, urban and educated citizens tend to live in the major cities, heavily concentrated on the country’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. 

On July 1, 2019, population was 578,759 while numbered 39,512,223. In the presidential elections, Wyoming receives three electoral college votes; California receives 55. This means a vote for president in Wyoming is worth more than 3.72 times a vote in California. However, it is in voting for the US Senate where Wyoming really has an edge. Every state in the US elects two senators, regardless of its population. This makes a vote in Wyoming 68.27 times more valuable than a vote in California. 

This structural bias toward less populous rural states gives Republicans a tremendous political advantage. It has enabled them to triumph in two of the last six presidential elections despite winning a minority of the popular vote and to frequently hold a majority in Congress and Senate, despite receiving lower overall votes. America is so evenly divided politically that one party often controls the White House while the other dominates Congress, or at least one of its two chambers. Given the partisan gridlock in the US, this virtually brings legislation to a halt.

The consequences of this electoral and institutional schizophrenia are everywhere to see and experience: American roads, bridges, water mains, harbor facilities and education now lag far behind most developed countries and even many emerging economies. Some foreign visitors to the US have commented that American infrastructure reminds them of the 1950s — which is precisely when much of it was built. The Shinkansen, Japan’s bullet train network, awes Americans, including myself, and it is 50 years old. America has always been a “third-world country” for the ethnically excluded. Now, the strains and failures of �������������’s social, economic and political paralysis extend more broadly through society. Even the WASPs are not spared.

Global Stresses 

Two global issues in particular shape American public life and self-doubts. First, the US is no longer the only great power. China’s rise has been breathtaking. Beijing challenges American preeminence in trade, technology, diplomacy and military strength, posing the greatest challenge to the US since World War II. Many Americans fear that China’s rise is a sign of American decline.  

Second, global warming threatens the American way of life and shapes much of the political debate about the environment, the economy and the role of government. Signs of a literal cataclysm are already upon us. The West Coast has experienced the in recorded history and is living through the worst drought in . In 2012, the US Geological Survey estimated that sea levels would on the East Coast by nearly 50 centimeters by 2050. In 2021, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association projects the same level of sea rise in Boston and Massachusetts. By 2050, the spot where my Mayflower ancestors began the American experiment 400 years ago will be swallowed by the sea.

Yet even global warming divides America. Most of the Republican Party believes that global warming is a perpetrated by the “deep state” so that scientists can have jobs. Some even assert that the California wildfires are linked to “.” These Republican beliefs are an amalgam of lunacy and old fascist tropes. That one of the country’s two major political parties believes such dangerous lies and delusions bodes ill for �������������’s future. 

During his campaign and since becoming president, Joe Biden has that the next four years will be a “battle for the soul of the nation.” He and his party have to end the paralysis of �������������’s public institutions and democracy, heal social divisions, and reduce growing economic inequality. They must rebuild �������������’s crumbling infrastructure and rise to the challenge of China as a fast-emerging peer competitor in international and economic affairs.

The Republican Party and nearly 40% of the American population will every step Biden attempts. The rural bias in the country’s political structures consistently grants this 40% control of about half the House of Representatives and Senate. Biden must win majorities to implement his transformative economic, social, political and diplomatic policies with only the slimmest majority possible in the legislature.

Furthermore, this majority is fragile. Of the 100 seats in the , Republicans have 50, Democrats 48 and independents two, both of whom caucus with the Democrats. The vice president presides over the Senate and supports the president but may only vote in the event of a 50-50 split. Historically, most presidents have struggled to enact their agenda even with strong electoral majorities.

No president since Abraham Lincoln in 1861 has had to deal with such an array of grave social, political and economic crises. Throughout history, many states have proven unable to address structural, systemic problems with legislation and policies that do not profoundly alter these structures or systems. In most instances, however, this requires major social and political upheaval, sometimes even revolution. This has happened before in America — in 1776, when there was revolution, in 1861, when there was civil war, and in 1929, when there was economic collapse. 

Within the current framework of American democracy, Biden can probably only succeed in radically addressing �������������’s daunting democratic, diplomatic, social, political and economic challenges if his party wins a more solid majority in both chambers of Congress. Thus, all eyes, hopes and fears turn to �������������’s congressional elections of 2022, now only 16 months away. This historic vote may well decide who wins the “battle for the soul of the nation.”

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

The post America, the Stumbling Giant appeared first on 51�Թ�.

When it comes to foreign policy, however, the Biden administration has been nowhere near as transformational. The phrase Joe Biden has used so often is “America is back.” That sentiment certainly captures some aspects of Biden’s relationship with the international community, such as repairing relations with the World Health Organization and rejoining the Paris climate accords. In these ways, the administration has brought America back to the status quo that existed before Trump was unleashed on the world stage.

How Joe Biden Looks at the World

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But on some very important issues — China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea — President Biden hasn’t managed to restore even the previous status quo. His approach to military spending and the arms race is decidedly hawkish. His message on immigration, as expressed by Vice President Kamala Harris on a visit to Guatemala earlier this month, effectively erases the inscription on the Statue of Liberty by  potential border crossers in the region to stay home. Okay, foreign policy is not a winning issue at the ballot box, and Biden certainly has a lot on his agenda. But even the notoriously cautious Obama took some courageous steps with Tehran and Havana.

It’s possible that Biden is focusing on America first before turning to the world as a whole. It’s also possible that he’s simply not interested in altering US foreign policy in any significant way beyond removing US troops from Afghanistan. True, it was exhilarating to have a conventional president again after Trump. But conventional, when it comes to US foreign policy, is just not good enough.

Confronting China

If the Biden administration’s overriding domestic preoccupation is a sustainable economy, then its dominant foreign policy obsession is China. Biden and Xi have spoken only once, by telephone in February. Xi participated in Biden’s virtual climate confab in April. They are likely to meet face to face sometime this year, possibly around the G20 summit in Rome in October. There’s been talk of greater cooperation on addressing the climate crisis. And there haven’t been any overt military confrontations in the South China Sea or elsewhere.

But otherwise, Biden and Xi have not really gotten off on the right foot. It was a no-brainer for the new Biden administration to lift the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese products and de-escalate the trade war that unsettled manufacturers and consumers on both sides of the Pacific. The Biden team is ostensibly doing a review of US–China trade policy with a focus on whether Beijing has met its commitments under the “phase one trade deal” signed back in January 2020 (so far, it’s been  of China meeting some targets for US imports and missing others).

The review is more than just bean-counting. In a marked departure from the usual neoliberal trade talk coming out of Washington, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai , “I want to disconnect this idea that the only way we do affirmative trade engagement, trade enhancement is through a free trade agreement.” Tai prefers to operate according to a “” that evaluates China on issues of forced labor, workers’ rights and the environment. A more nuanced approach to trade is all to the good, of course, and Tai should be commended for breaking with the Washington consensus.

But taken in conjunction with other Biden administration policies, the reluctance to lift tariffs on Chinese goods is part of a full-court economic press on the country. The Biden administration has effectively continued the Trump approach of not only lining up allies in the region to contain China (the Quad, the Blue Dot Network) but enlisting European countries as well to join the bandwagon. In his recent trip to Europe, Biden  the G7 to create the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, a purported alternative to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure program, and twisted some arms to get NATO to prioritize China as part of its mission.

NATO’s new emphasis on China reflects the Pentagon’s shift in focus. Trump might have loudly proclaimed his anti-China animus, but the Biden administration is determined to close what it calls the “” by expanding capabilities beyond the Navy to challenge China in the air and above.

China’s moves in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the South China Sea are deeply troubling. Nor is Beijing doing nearly enough to green its Belt and Road Initiative. But the Biden administration needs to think creatively about how to leverage China’s own multilateral aspirations in order to address global problems. Trade tensions and disagreements about internal policies are to be expected. Yet the Biden administration has an urgent and historic opportunity to work with China (and everyone else) to remake the international community.

Sparring With Iran

Another no-brainer for the Biden administration was reviving the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump tried to destroy. Granted, it was tricky to unwind the sanctions against Tehran and address Iran’s demands for compensation. It wasn’t easy to reassure the Iranian leadership of the sincerity of US intentions given not only Trump’s past hostility but the current animosities of congressional Republicans. And there was also Israel, which was doing everything within its power to scuttle diplomacy up to and including  and .

These obstacles notwithstanding, the Biden team could have gotten the job done if it had started earlier and been more flexible. Not wanting to open itself up to criticism from hawks at home, however, the administration argued for a mutual, step-by-step return to the agreement. By contrast, Iran quite sensibly argued that the United States, since it attempted to blow up the agreement, should be the first to compromise by removing sanctions, a position that some US policymakers have also .

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Meanwhile, the Biden administration is continuing a tit-for-tat confrontation with militias aligned with Iran. This week, the administration launched airstrikes against facilities on the Iraq-Syria border from which these militias have allegedly attacked US.bases in Iraq. US forces in Syria subsequently came under .

Why are there still US soldiers in Iraq and Syria? Didn’t the Biden administration commit to ending �������������’s endless wars? Although US forces are scheduled to depart Afghanistan in September and Washington has pledged to remove troops from Iraq as well, negotiations around the latter have yet to produce a . Removing 2,500 US soldiers from Iraq would please the government in Baghdad, remove an irritant in US-Iranian relations and take US personnel out of harm’s way. What’s not to like, Joe?

Getting Nowhere With Cuba and North Korea

Late in his second term, Barack Obama orchestrated a bold rapprochement with Cuba. After lifting financial and travel restrictions, Obama  the island in March 2016 to meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro. It wasn’t a full opening. Washington maintained a trade embargo and refused to close its anomalous base in Guantanamo. But it was a start. Donald Trump brought a quick end to that fresh start by reimposing the restrictions that Obama had lifted.

Joe Biden promised to resurrect the Obama policy. Trump’s reversals, he  as a candidate, “have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.” And yet, as president, he has done nothing to reverse Trump’s reversals.

As Karen de Young  in The Washington Post, “Under Trump restrictions, non-Cuban Americans are still prohibited from sending money to the island. Cruise ships are banned from sailing from the United States to Cuba, and the dozens of scheduled U.S. commercial flights to Cuban cities have largely stopped. Tight limits remain in place on commercial transactions.”

The reason for the new administration’s lack of action, beyond its concerns about human rights in Cuba and its fear of Republican opposition in Congress, boils down to domestic politics. Robert Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey who never liked the Obama-era détente with Cuba in the first place, represents a key obstacle in Congress. Public opinion in Florida among Cuban-Americans, which had swung in favor of rapprochement during the Obama period, has now also  in the other direction, thanks to a steady diet of Trumpian demagoguery.

Here, the Biden administration could try something new by closing Guantanamo. The administration is already  to close the detention facility at the base by resolving the status of the several dozen inmates. He should go even further by rebooting Guantanamo as a center for US-Cuban environmental research, as scientists Joe Roman and James Kraska .

North Korea, meanwhile, is the one place in the world where Trump sought to overturn decades of US hostility. His attempts at one-on-one diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un didn’t achieve much of anything, but it still might have served as a foundation for future negotiations. Biden has instead followed the script of all the administrations prior to Trump: review policy, promise something new, fall back on conventional thinking.

The administration finished its  of the North Korea policy in April. Biden  his predecessor’s approaches as misguided and has relied on the usual big-stick-and-small-carrot policy that stretches back to the 1990s. On the one hand, Biden  against the country and has maintained a military encirclement. On the other, his emissaries have reached out to Pyongyang, with Special Representative for North Korea Sung Kim  this month that the United States would meet with Pyongyang “anywhere, anytime, without preconditions.” “Without preconditions” is fine. But what about “with incentives”?

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea is more shut off from the world than usual. It is preoccupied with the economic challenges associated with its increased isolation. In his annual address in January, Kim Jong-un made the unusual  that the government’s economic program fell short of its goals. More recently, he has  that his country is “prepared for both dialogue and confrontation, especially … confrontation.”

Biden should focus on the first half of Kim’s sentence. South Korea’s progressive president, Moon Jae-in, nearing the end of his own tenure, very much wants to advance reconciliation on the peninsula. Instead of beefing up its military containment of the isolated country, Washington could work with Seoul to break the current diplomatic impasse with a grand humanitarian gesture. Whether it’s vaccines, food or infrastructure development, North Korea needs help right now.

Military Exceptionalism

It’s still early in the Biden administration. Remember: Obama didn’t achieve his major foreign policy milestones in Iran and Cuba until later in his second term. Biden no doubt wants to accumulate some political capital first by repairing relations with allies and participating in multilateral fora on the global stage and achieving some economic success on the home front.

The administration’s position on military spending, however, suggests that Biden is wedded to the most conventional of thinking. The United States is poised to end its intervention in Afghanistan and reduce its commitments in the Middle East. It is not involved in any major military conflicts. Everyone is wondering how the administration is going to pay for its ambitious infrastructure plans.

So, why has Biden asked for a larger military budget? The administration’s 2022 request for the Pentagon is $715 billion, an of $10 billion, plus an additional $38 billion for military-related spending at the Energy Department and other agencies. True, the administration is hoping to boost non-military spending by a larger percentage. It is planning to remove the “overseas contingency operations” line item that funded the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But if there ever was a time to reduce US military spending, it’s now. The pandemic proved the utter worthlessness of tanks and destroyers in defending the homeland from the most urgent threats. Greater cooperation with China, a renewed nuclear pact with Iran and a détente with both Cuba and North Korea would all provide powerful reasons for the United States to reduce military spending. To use Joe Biden’s signature phrase, “C’mon, man!”

*[This was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

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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Though no spectacular shift in US–Russia relations will likely appear in the months ahead as a result of the encounter, some aspects of Biden’s performance concerning the posture and attitude of the US on the world stage may prove pivotal. Biden’s actions and rhetoric in Europe have contributed in significant ways both to defining his presidential legacy and clarifying the shifting vocation of the US in a world that has become far more complex than the one previous presidents had to deal with.

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Biden seems to realize it as he frequently refers to this moment of history as an “inflection point.” He’s right, though he seems to have seriously misjudged the nature of the tectonic shift the world is undergoing. Biden such inflection points as “moments in time when we’ve made hard decisions about who we are.” But the era in which presidential decisions in themselves constituted historical inflection points probably ended in March 2003, when the US, under George W. Bush, invaded Iraq. Forces were then unleashed that no longer await presidential decisions. Powerful undercurrents of history, the economy and of nature itself — all beyond any politician’s control — have been fueling the largely unmanageable force behind today’s inflection.

Jonathan Lemire and Aamer Madhani are the authors of an AP that focuses on Biden as �������������’s pitchman to the rest of the world. The title of the article is: “Biden Abroad: Pitching America to Welcoming If Wary Allies.” Reduced to its essence, Biden’s pitch consisted of reassuring his allies that he can be trusted simply because he is not Donald Trump, even though his policies have shown little indication of breaking with the former president’s innovations.

The world remembers Biden’s previous boss, Barack Obama, who before his election in 2008 claimed to represent a radical shift away from everything that Bush stood for. He even convinced the Nobel committee he was a prince of peace. Once in office, Obama prolonged most of Bush’s policies, including foreign wars, reinforcing the surveillance state and maintaining tax cuts for the wealthy, all of which imperiled the economy itself, leading to the 2008 financial crisis that he was tasked with solving.

Lemire and Madhani note that whilst the allies in the G7 appeared relieved by the feeling that there was now “a steady hand at the wheel,” they were far from convinced that the US was permanently back on an even keel. They did end up agreeing to the general drift of Biden’s campaign to highlight the opposition between democracy (the West) and autocracy (China and Russia). 

At the same time, the authors remarked that “Germany, Italy and the representatives for the European Union [were] reluctant to call out China, a valuable trading partner, too harshly.” More significantly, they noted that there was “a wariness in some European capitals that it was Biden, rather than Trump, who was the aberration to American foreign policy and that the United States could soon fall back into a transactional, largely inward-looking approach.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Transactional:

An adjective that describes not only the willingness to make deals with others, but also the refusal to recognize the existence of anything other than calculation of individual interest in the conduct of one’s affairs and relationships even with permanent partners and allies.

Contextual Note

After his meeting with Putin, Biden : “This is not about trust. This is about self-interest and verification of self-interest.” He needed to reassure the American electorate that, unlike Trump, he had nothing but mistrust for Putin. But he may have been signaling what most Americans always want to hear: that nobody should be trusted, because all relationships begin — and most end — with the assertion of self-interest. �������������’s European allies have understood that, despite protestations of solid alliances, special relationships and undying friendship, Trump’s approach of reducing everything to a transactional deal was a true description of the reality of US policy under every recent president.

The language used by the media demonstrates this reality with some clarity. The AP journalists already described Biden’s action as “pitching America.” In an article with the title, “Biden Struggles to Sell Democracy Abroad When It Faces Challenges at Home,” The Washington Post Biden’s behavior in Europe to that of a street barker. “But then, like any good pitchman, Biden quickly regained his footing,” the Post reports. Diplomacy always involves self-interest and always contains an agenda, but when it consistently appears as a pitch, potential customers begin to doubt the sincerity. The authors of the AP article make it clear that, however persuasive the pitch, Biden has not yet closed any deal. They even seem to doubt one is likely.

Historical Note

Writing for, historian Andrew Bacevich commented that Joe Biden’s premise concerning US leadership of democratically-inclined allies sounds like a desire to return to an imagined status quo that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, appeared to be heralding what George H.W. Bush called “a new world order.” But in this century, history has moved on in ways Biden and most American politicians appear either not to have noticed or persist in willingly ignoring. “The idea that a US-led bloc of Western nations will determine the future of the planet will become increasingly implausible,” Bacevich explains.

The historian puts in perspective Biden’s insistence on managing an inflection point: “While repeatedly insisting that history had reached ‘an inflection point’, he simultaneously reiterated the claim made by every US president since Harry Truman (Trump excepted) that ‘the partnership between Europe and the United States’ will determine the fate of humankind.”

The G7 is that partnership, which now includes Japan. But the fate of humankind will rely on the interplay of forces that no single nation or group of nations controls. If there were a way of getting humankind itself into the picture through, say, a global democratic revolution that respects the classic democratic dictum of one man, one vote, the combat to promote democracy over autocracy might make some sense. But that is on no one’s agenda. The degree of inequality between nations and within nations may now have reached a point of no return.

Trump’s presidency taught the Europeans about the dangers of getting on board with grand US-led projects. They are beyond risky. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), even more than the Paris climate accord, provides a perfect example. At a truly interesting historical moment marked by the election this weekend of a new president in Iran, the US actually has an opportunity to push toward a solution that would involve reconciling a number of competing interests stretching across a wide expanse of the globe.

The New York Times believes that the election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s new president may be the for Biden. Its reasoning makes sense. If Raisi makes the concessions necessary to remove US sanctions, Iranians will have the hope of returning to a prosperous economy. Still, the heritage of Donald Trump has seriously weakened US credibility. “The Iranians have demanded a written commitment that no future American government could scrap the deal as Mr. Trump did,” the Times reports. “They want something permanent — ‘a reasonable-sounding demand,’ in the words of one senior American official, ‘that no real democracy can make.’”

What the official means is that a real democracy could make that “reasonable-sounding demand,” but not the US version of democracy. The Times explains: “Mr. Biden, like President Barack Obama before him, could never have gotten the consent of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate. So it is termed an ‘executive agreement’ that any future president could reverse, just as Mr. Trump did.”

Bacevich is right. The US, even with Europe, cannot “determine the future of the planet.” It can’t even define a line of policy that will hold for more than four years. The most powerful nation in the world is also the most powerless.

*[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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Ordinarily, an event like that wouldn’t be worth noting, but these aren’t exactly ordinary times. In this twilight world of ours, half-in and half-out of a pandemic, hanging around without masks and within spitting distance of vaccinated friends should be considered just this side of miraculous — a combination of luck, privilege and a stunning series of events on a national scale that would strain credibility in a work of fiction.

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To get to that birthday party required, first of all, surviving the pandemic, which has so far  somewhere between 600,000 and  Americans, while infecting as as one-third of the population (including, months earlier, a couple of the guests at that very birthday party). No foreign enemy has ever inflicted such casualties on the US, and never in our lifetimes have American civilians faced such a catastrophic breakdown in homeland security.

Nor has the international scientific community ever responded with such dispatch and efficacy to a global crisis. Less than a year from the date of the initial outbreak, not one but several COVID-19 vaccines had been developed, tested and approved. Then came the anxious wait for eligibility and the constant refreshing of vaccination websites to try to schedule an appointment. Only when enough people like me had gone through the extended regimen of inoculation and after the infection rate had begun to fall rapidly did officials in my home state of Maryland begin to lift quarantine restrictions.

Even though everyone at that birthday party was fully vaccinated, I still felt uncomfortably vulnerable without my mask. I hesitated before hugging people. My hands itched for a squirt of sanitizer. It was, in other words, a celebration tempered by uncertainty. We were navigating new rules of social discourse. Handshake? Bear hug? Peck on the cheek? And no one dared jinx the celebration by saying, as we normally would have, “Next year, same time, same place.”

By temperament, I’m an optimist. By profession, however, I’m a pessimist. In my  as a foreign-policy analyst and in the speculative realm as the author of the dystopian&�Բ�����;“” trilogy of , I’m constantly considering worst-case scenarios.

So, yes, I’m well aware that COVID-19 infection rates have dropped to levels not seen in a year and that the United States may indeed be on  to reach a 70% vaccination rate among adults by July 4, which could, as the president has , offer us a new version of “Independence Day.” But this country is still experiencing the same number of infections (tens of thousands) and deaths (hundreds) as it did during the lull following the first outbreak last year. More infectious variants of the disease continue to emerge globally, most recently in India, where the numbers have been horrific, as well as in Vietnam. The current vaccines  stave off such variants, but what about the next ones?

T.2?

My professional dystopianism extends to the political sphere. I’m grateful on a daily basis that Donald Trump is no longer in the Oval Office or blathering on Twitter. I now take for granted a Democratic Congress (however marginally controlled), which seemed like a longshot last Election Day.

But let’s face it, politically, things could go south fast. Even though the Democrats are working overtime to inoculate this country’s economy with one stimulus shot after another, the Republicans could retake the Senate and even the House in 2022 and, three years from now, Trump could still prove to be a viable presidential candidate.

By then, for all we know, an even more infectious strain of Trumpism — call it T.2 — might have emerged in the form of far-right challengers like Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, or even (God save us all) Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Their followers who lurched from reopen rallies to stop-the-steal protests were struck dumb by the failure of their Duce to cling to power in January 2021. In the months since President Joe Biden’s inauguration, with a of Republicans still proclaiming his election stolen, they’ve again become restive.

Keep in mind as well that dystopia remains unevenly distributed around the globe. Trump is gone (for now), but other putatively democratic authoritarians remain in power. President Vladimir Putin is still effectively leader for life in Russia, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro cling to their offices, and rebel-turned-tyrant Daniel Ortega just the woman challenging him this year for the Nicaraguan presidency.

Meanwhile, not only has India been overwhelmed by COVID-19, but the numbers in Brazil remain terrifying and Taiwan has recently been  with a first wave of infections — and that’s just to begin down a grim list. Even the Seychelles off the coast of Africa, despite a world-leading vaccination rate of more than 60%, has recently  an unexpected uptick in cases.

In other words, as I left that party, it just didn’t feel like the right moment to exhale. Human beings are adaptable creatures. We have an unfortunate ability to normalize worst-case scenarios. Rising temperatures? Guess it’s time to sell the beach house and move inland. Raging pandemic? A good opportunity to chill for a few months with Netflix and Uber Eats.

But dystopias are not just about objectively terrible things. Dystopia is about losing control over your life. It’s about a faceless bureaucracy trying to evict you from your home. It’s about a virus evading all your carefully constructed defenses. It’s about right-wing crazies subverting democracy even as they claim to revere it. So, tell me the truth: In June 2021, do you really feel back in control yet? 

The Insurrection Next Time

The last scene of a horror film often elicits a gasp. The eyelid of the supposedly dead serial killer snaps open. A mad scientist, reportedly cured, is released from the asylum clutching a briefcase full of plans for his next planet-destroying invention. A puppy scampers into the kitchen with the telltale orange rash of a disease that was allegedly extinguished. Such scenes are obviously setups for sequels, but they’re also reminders that horrors seldom simply disappear. Instead, they mutate, hibernate and burrow into our everyday world.

With that in mind, let’s revisit the final scene of this year’s most talked-about horror story: the storming of the US Capitol on January 6. Inflamed by the president’s lies and conspiracy theories, thousands of people overwhelmed the Capitol police, broke into what should have been one of the most protected buildings in the country, and launched a search-and-destroy mission against various politicians located inside. The noose  on the West Front of the Capitol was an unambiguous indication of the insurrectionists’ . Some of them had even .

The story of the insurrection ended with order restored, legislators returning to their chambers to confirm the 2020 election results and a modicum of bipartisan horror at what had just happened. But the very last scene elicited a gasp from the audience watching at home. Even as they condemned the violence that had just taken place in their midst, a handful of Republican legislators continued to claim election fraud. Early on the morning of January 7, seven Republican senators and 122 members of the House refused to certify the election results in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Those votes were the sick puppy with the orange rash, the sign that the infectious horror of Trumpism had not been stamped out. At best, this country would experience a respite of unknown length before another surge captured the headlines. After all, Trump and his followers have been in the process of fundraising, assembling a cast and crew, enlisting thousands of extras and beginning to film their sequel, while promising even bigger thrills and chills to come. Their fans can’t wait.

While most Americans go about their calmer post-Trumpian lives under the Biden administration, a significant number of their fellow citizens live in a different reality entirely. For them, a world of dystopian intensity has just begun. After all, those Trumpsters are now experiencing their worst-case scenario: a Biden victory in a “stolen” election and Congress in Democratic hands. They have no desire to normalize what they consider a  in Washington. Astonishingly, one-quarter of Republicans  to the church of QAnon with its imaginary global syndicate of Satan-worshipping child traffickers.

Although it was the Trump administration that helped spur the creation of the COVID-19 vaccines,  of Republicans still say they won’t get inoculated (compared to 4% of Democrats). Against all evidence, they believe the vaccines to be , ineffective or even downright undemocratic in the way they subject their “victims” to nonstop surveillance through a supposedly injected microchip. Fixated on such imaginary threats, the anti-vaxxers are dismissive of a pandemic that is still a clear and present danger.

In the good old days, people with such a tenuous connection to reality would retreat to their armchairs to listen to Rush Limbaugh. They’d live in their own private dystopias — stocking their bomb shelters, polishing their guns, muttering to themselves — with lots of fire and fury but little real-world impact.

Taking Over the Republican Party

Thanks to Trump, the Proud Boys and QAnon, however, the dystopians of today have turned their delusions into a political project even to the point of taking over the Republican Party. Mo Brooks, the Alabama Republican who  that the 2020 election featured the “worst voter fraud and election theft in history,”&�Բ�����; his followers to post-election violence. Gun nut Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican,  President Biden a “tyrant” for his tepid gun-control proposals after a spate of mass killings this spring. Led by Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the party is now  the events of January 6 to blame the violence on supposed left-wing agitators.

Equally troubling, true believers of this sort are still attempting to overturn the results of the election, beginning with the vote “recount” in Maricopa County, Arizona. The outfit in charge of that recount, Cyber Ninjas, has been set loose in a basketball arena in Phoenix like the Keystone Kops on a mad caper. In the process, they’re  all the rules of a proper audit, from tolerating a huge error rate in tally sheets to flagging ballots as “suspicious” for things like folds, Cheeto stains and suspected bamboo fibers (the result, supposedly, of having been sent from in Asia). According to Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Maricopa is “a grift disguised as an audit.”

It’s not the 2020 election that hangs in the balance, of course, since no amount of imaginary bamboo fibers — in Arizona or any of the states the Trumpsters are targeting — can overturn what Congress has already confirmed. What can potentially be overturned, however, is American democracy itself. After all, it’s now clear that the Trumpsters will treat every future election that doesn’t produce the results they desire as a globalist plot no different from a new vaccine or a new pronouncement by infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci. Each contested election has the possibility of generating another potential insurrection, with the rioters perhaps chanting, “Remember January 6th!”

The nonsense now being spouted by the loony right would be grist for satire if we hadn’t seen all this before. Karl Marx once proposed (and Groucho Marx proved) that “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Trump has turned this dictum on its head, since many of the laughable things he said on his road to the presidency in 2016 — his paeans to his future “big, fat, beautiful Wall,” his white nationalism, his love of Putin — were indeed turned into tragic policy by his minions.

We laughed when Barack Obama  Trump at the Gridiron dinner in 2011, but those jokes likely kindled Trump’s ambition to become president. We would be wise not to laugh at the antics of Greene, who has spouted QAnonsense and  mask mandates to the Nazi treatment of Jews, or else she could ride similar waves of derision to even greater political heights.

The Power of the Marginalized

I have a great deal of empathy for many people in the Trump camp. I’ve never liked Washington, DC, and its obsession with insider politics. I share the distaste that much of Trump country feels for the arrogance of the power elite and its incessant jockeying for influence.

After all, it wasn’t Trump who created our current mess. Sure, he turned up the heat under the pot and gave its contents a vigorous stir, but he didn’t assemble the ingredients or design the recipe. The climate crisis, the travesty of global military spending, the inequities of the global economy — these were created by the “adults in the room” backed by the mainstream political parties, Washington’s “Blob” and an ever-ascendant military-industrial-congressional complex.

The MAGA crowd was right to reject this version of the status quo. With his economic populism, Trump gave voice to those who felt shafted by Wall Street, transnational corporations and globalization in general. The wages of blue-collar workers, adjusted for inflation, had at best stagnated since the 1970s (while the incomes of �������������’s billionaires have done  but). Because the mainstream parties abandoned these voters, economically speaking, many of them naturally basked in the attention Trump showered on them. They felt that their dystopia of economic marginalization might finally be on the verge of lifting.

In challenging one pillar of the status quo, however, Trump consciously reinforced two others: the  of the wealthy elite and of white privilege. In the process, legitimate economic grievances became entangled with anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner and blatantly racist rhetoric. Trump’s electoral defeat has by no means silenced this white nationalism.

Fortunately, other voices have come to the fore as well, as millions of Americans rejected the status quo in more productive ways. One year ago, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin reignited the Black Lives Matter movement, triggering the largest protests in American history (as well as demonstrations in more than 60 other countries). In exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly, those protesters were also very deliberately trying to regain control of their lives by rolling back a dystopia of police terror that has  harmed black Americans.

Similarly, the #MeToo movement has been a reassertion of control by women over their own bodies and lives. Thanks to such efforts, the dystopia of rape culture and patriarchal authority has to recede, though not everywhere or quickly enough.

Environmentalists are likewise standing up to the fossil-fuel companies, while economic justice advocates continue to challenge multinational corporations. Peace activists are protesting wars and military spending, while human rights demonstrators are rallying against authoritarian leaders. These efforts all contribute, little by little, to the possibility that we can regain control over our own lives. They are part of a long-term process whereby the powerless become subjects in their own stories rather than the objects of someone else’s tales. Such challenges to the status quo would become more powerful still if joined by some of the economically marginalized previously drawn to Trump (as long as they check their white privilege at the door).

��ٱ�����Գٱ�������Ի��”

I’ve tried to describe such historic efforts in  and in fiction. In my ��ٱ�����Գٱ�������Ի��” series of novels, I’ve done my best to peer into our future and consider the worst-case scenarios of climate change, unrestrained corporate power and nationalism run amok. However, in the standalone finale,&�Բ�����;“,” I let a little sunlight break through the dystopian storm clouds to tell the story of an international community of activists coming together in the face of a planetary crisis. (George Orwell, meet Greta Thunberg.) As I said, by temperament, I’m an optimist. Sometimes, that optimism even leaks into my professional life.

Sure, I continue to worry about what the next wave of COVID-19 might look like. I fear both the continued lunacy of the Republican Party and the pallid incrementalism of the Democrats. But I’m heartened by the energy of people all over the world determined to beat back dystopia, take control of their lives and transform the optimists’ credo of “hope and change” into something a great deal more significant than a campaign slogan.

*[This article was originally published by . John Feffer is the author of the dystopian novel&�Բ�����;“.” “” is volume two of his ��ٱ�����Գٱ�������Ի��” series and the final novel in the trilogy,&�Բ�����;“,” has just been published. Feffer has also written&�Բ�����;“.”]

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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Authoritarianism, like war, makes headlines. It’s hard for democracy to compete against political crackdowns, military coups and unhinged pronouncements. Sure, democracies engage in periodic elections and produce landmark pieces of legislation. But what makes democracy, like peace, successful is not the unexpected rupture, such as the election of Barack Obama, but the boring quotidian. Citizens express their opinions in public meetings. Lawmakers receive constituents in their offices. Potholes get fixed. That’s not exactly clickbait.

Because the absence of war doesn’t make headlines, as Stephen Pinker has , the news media amplifies the impression that violence is omnipresent and constantly escalating when it splashes mass murder, genocide and war crimes on the front page. Peace may well be prevalent, but it isn’t newsworthy.

Russia Ramps Up Pressure Against Kremlin Critics

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The same can be said about democracy, which has been suffering for some time from bad press. Democracies have been dragged down by corruption, hijacked by authoritarian politicians, associated with unpopular economic reforms and proven incapable (so far) of addressing major global problems like the climate crisis. After a brief surge in popularity in the immediate post-Cold War period, democracy according to the general consensus has been in retreat.

Judging from recent quantitative assessments, the retreat has become a rout. The title of the latest Freedom House , for instance, is&�Բ�����;“Democracy Under Siege.” The report details how freedom around the world has eroded for the last 15 years, with 2020 featuring the greatest decline yet. The Economist Intelligence Unit, which produces a Democracy Index every year, promoted its 2020 report with the headline, “Global Democracy Has a Very Bad Year.” The authoritarian responses to the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the worst so far for the model, with the average global score plummeting from the previous year. Meanwhile, the Rule of Law Index for 2020 also  a drop for the third year in a row.

If we extrapolate from the current trend lines, democracy will be gone in a couple of decades, melted away like the polar ice. But it’s always dangerous to make such extrapolations given history’s tendency to move in cycles not straight lines. So, let’s look at some reasons why democracy might be in for a comeback.

The Pandemic Recedes in America

Much of the reason for democracy’s dismal record in 2020 was the expansion of executive power and state controls in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Some of those power grabs, such as Vladimir Putin’s  changes in Russia, are still in place. Some countries, like India and Brazil, are still struggling with both COVID-19 and powerful authoritarian leaders.

But even with the continued high rate of infection in a number of countries, the overall trajectory of the disease is downward. Since peaking in late April, the reported number of global cases has dropped nearly by half. So, two trend lines are now intersecting: the lifting of pandemic restrictions and the backlash against hapless authoritarians.

Americans, for instance, are coming to terms with both the retreat of COVID and the removal of Donald Trump from the White House, Facebook and Twitter. The Biden administration is undoing many of Trump’s undemocratic moves, including those imposed during the pandemic around immigration and refugees. The attempts by the Republican Party to tamp down voter turnout proved spectacularly unsuccessful in 2020, which despite the pandemic featured the largest-ever  in votes from one election to the next. In terms of the voting-age population, you have to go back to 1960 to find an election with a higher percentage turnout than the 62% rate in 2020.

This surge in voters helped put Joe Biden over the top. It has also motivated the Republican Party to redouble its efforts, this time at the state level, to suppress the vote. It is doing so under the false narrative that electoral fraud is widespread and that President Biden’s victory is somehow illegitimate. And it is setting the stage to orchestrate an authentic election  in 2024.

The backlash against these anti-democratic moves has been encouraging, however. When the state of Georgia passed its voting restrictions in April, pressure from voting rights advocates forced prominent Georgia corporations like Coca-Cola and Delta to reverse  and come out against the bill (though only after the bill had already passed). Major League Baseball  its all-star game from Atlanta, and Hollywood has also threatened a boycott.

These moves motivated Texas-based companies to  that state’s version of voting restrictions before the legislature scheduled a vote. None of that stopped Texas Republicans from pushing ahead with the bill. So, last weekend, Texas Democrats had to deploy the nuclear option of  out of the chamber to stop the vote suppression bill from passing. These courageous Texans, up against a powerful and determined state Republican Party, are now  to the federal government to safeguard voting rights.

At the federal level, the Democrats have put forward for the second time a comprehensive voting reform bill, the For the People Act, to expand access, reduce corruption and limit the impact of money on politics. The House approved a version of this bill in 2019, but it died in the Republican-controlled Senate. The House passed the  in March, but it again faces a difficult road to passage in the Senate because filibuster rules require at least 60 votes to pass and Democrats can muster only 50 (plus the vice-president’s).

A failure to find “10 good Republicans” for this bill, the cadre that Senator Joe Manchin naively expected to step forward to pass legislation creating a commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, may  the Democrats to scrap or at least significantly modify the filibuster rules, which were  to block further enfranchisement of African-Americans in the 20^th century.

High voter turnout and efforts to secure voting rights are not the only signs of a healthy US democracy. Last year, the largest civic protests in US history took place as tens of millions of Americans expressed their disgust with police violence in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Civic organizations stepped forward to fight the pandemic and ensure more equitable access to vaccines. Young people, in particular, are engaged in large numbers on the climate crisis, gun control and reproductive health. After a long winter of discontent under Trump, perhaps it’s time for an “American Spring.”

Mixed Record Elsewhere for Democracy

Europe, meanwhile, is coming out of the pandemic in slightly stronger shape politically. The budget compromise that took place at the end of 2020, which ended up providing considerable relief to the economically disadvantaged countries of the southern tier, effectively  the European Union from disintegrating out of a lack of solidarity. Alas, the compromise also watered down the EU’s criticism of its easternmost members, particularly Poland and Hungary, for their violations of the bloc’s commitments to human rights and rule of law.

But there’s hope on the horizon here as well. Eastern Europe appears to be on the verge of a political sea change. Voters brought down Bulgaria’s right-wing populist leader Boyko Borissov in elections in April, and the new caretaker government has  to dismantle his political system of cronyism. In Slovenia, tens of thousands of protesters have massed in the capital of Ljubljana, the largest demonstration in years, to demand the resignation of the Trump-like prime minister Janez Jansa. The near-total ban on abortion orchestrated by the right-wing government in Poland has motivated mass  by women throughout the country, and even “Polish grannies” have  in support of a free press and the rule of law. A finally united opposition in Hungary, meanwhile, is  in the polls to Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of elections next year.

The far right, with their contempt for human rights, free media, rule of law and political checks and balances, are the greatest threat to democracy within democracies. Fortunately, they are not doing very well in Western Europe either. The anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland has witnessed a significant  in support in Germany, while Lega in Italy has also  in popularity. Golden Dawn has  from the scene in Greece. Vox is still the third most popular party in Spain, but it hasn’t managed to rise much 15% in the polls, which is the same story for the Sweden Democrats (stuck at 19%). Only in France and Finland are the far-right parties continuing to prosper. Marine Le Pen  leads the polls against French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of next year’s election, while the Finns Party  by a couple of percentage points in the polls but with elections not likely before 2023.

Elsewhere in the world, the pandemic may result in more political casualties for far-right populists, as they get caught in the ebbing of the Trump wave. Brazilians are  throughout the country under the banner of impeaching Jair Bolsonaro, a president who, like Trump, has compiled a spectacularly poor record in dealing with COVID-19. Bolsonaro’s approval rating has to a new low under 25%. The still-popular former leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, recently cleared by the courts to run again for office,  to be assembling a broad political coalition to oust Bolsonaro in the elections set for next year.

Hard-right leader Ivan Duque has achieved the distinction of being the least popular  in Colombian history. Politically, it doesn’t matter so much, since he can’t run again for president in next year’s election. But the public’s disgust with the violence in Colombia and the economic inequality exacerbated by the pandemic will likely apply as well to any of his would-be hard-right successors.

The extraordinary mishandling of the pandemic in India has had a similar effect on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity, which has also recently fallen to a new low. However, after seven years in office, he remains quite popular, with a 63%  rating.

Modi’s Teflon reputation speaks to the fragility of democracy in many parts of the world. Many voters are attracted to right-wing nationalists like Modi —  in Turkey, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador — who promise to “get the job done” regardless of the political and economic costs. Such leaders can rapidly turn a democratic country into a putatively democratic one, which makes the step into authentic authoritarianism that much easier.

The coups in Mali and Myanmar, China’s crackdown in Hong Kong, the enduring miseries in North Korea, Venezuela and Eritrea — these are all reminders that, however fragile democracy might be in formally democratic states, politics can always get a lot worse.

Lukashenko: Strong or Weak?

Take the example of Belarus, where Alexander Lukashenko has ruled supreme since 1994. Thanks to his own ruthlessness and the patronage of neighboring Russia, Lukashenko has weathered mass protests that would have ousted leaders of weaker disposition.

His latest outrage was to order the grounding of a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania as it was flying over Belarus — just so that he could apprehend a young dissident, Roman Protasevich, and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Virtually everyone has decried this blatant violation of international laws and norms with the exception, of course, of Putin and others in the Russian president’s orbit. The editor of the Russian media conglomerate RT, Margarita Simonyan, , “Never did I think I would envy Belarus. But now I do. [Lukashenko] performed beautifully.”

Lukashenko indeed came across as all-powerful in this episode. But this is an illusion. Putin has not hesitated to assassinate his critics, even when they are living outside Russia. Lukashenko doesn’t have that kind of reach or audacity, so he has to wait until dissidents are within his own airspace to strike. I’d like to believe that the opposition in Belarus takes heart from this desperate move — is Lukashenko really so scared of a single dissident? —  and doubles down on its efforts to oust the tyrant.

Outside of Putin and his toadies, Lukashenko doesn’t have many defenders. This elaborate effort to capture a dissident only further isolates the Belarussian strongman. Even putatively democratic states, like  and , have unequivocally denounced Lukashenko.

Anti-democratic actions like the Ryanair stunt capture headlines in ways that pro-democratic efforts rarely do. Honestly, had you even heard of Roman Protasevich before this affair? Along with all the other depressing news of the day, from Texas to Mali, this brazen move suggests that democracy is teetering on the edge of an abyss.

But all the patient organizing against the strongmen that doesn’t make it into the news will ultimately prove the fragility of tyranny. When it comes to anti-democrats like Lukashenko, they will one day discover that the military, the police and the party have abandoned them. And it will be they who teeter at the abyss, their hands scrabbling for a secure hold, when along comes democracy to give them a firm pat on the back.

*[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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Is Israel’s Bite as Strong as Its Bark?

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Blinken praised Egypt’s role in brokering the truce. According to Blinken believes Egypt can play a “vital” role in making it possible for Palestinians and Israelis to “live in safety and security to enjoy equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity.” One wonders about Egypt’s own commitment to freedom, opportunity and dignity, but Blinken apparently sees those three words as having some sort of magical effect, masking the blemishes of both of his trusted partners, Israel and Egypt.

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Freedom, opportunity and dignity:

An example of the rhetorical ploy that aligns three incontestably noble ideals to create the belief that the only imaginable outcome of the policies or initiatives a politician is proposing will be resoundingly positive

Contextual Note

Adepts of the art of rhetoric have given the trope linking three ideas a technical name: . The association of three positive notions has the effect of persuading an audience of the gravitas of the speaker’s intentions. Tricolons also make for excellent motivational slogans. Julius Caesar left no doubt about his conquest of Gaul when he wrote “veni, vidi, vici.” The French revolutionaries made clear their noble intentions in the formulation “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” a historically enduring slogan, if ever there was one. 

Thomas Jefferson, inspired by John Locke’s celebration of “life, liberty and property,” left an indelible trace in Americans’ historical memory when he summarized the basic rights of a people as “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Curiously, Blinken’s trio of meritorious wishes can be traced back to the title of a book published in 1942 by Samuel Crowther. The full title of the book is “Time to Inquire: How Can We Restore the Freedom, Opportunity, and Dignity of the Average Man?” The only on Crowther’s book visible after a thorough web search appears in the catalog of the Library of Congress. It contains a single sentence: “Questions the general social, political, and economic values as they exist in the United States today, particularly the ‘internationalist complex,’ to which he attributes our being in the war.” 

In other words, Crowther appears to be one of the last of the generation of isolationists who dominated US thinking about foreign policy between the two world wars. Did Blinken read his book? Does the secretary of state’s thinking in any way reflect the isolationist ideology that shamefully retreated into the background after the rise of the US empire in the wake of World War II? More likely, his adoption of the three words in Crowther’s title is a coincidence. But that’s what great marketing minds do. When they see an inspiring idea for a slogan, whatever the source, they seize it and turn it into a slogan.

Does that mean we should think of Blinken as the secretary of international marketing rather than his official title of secretary of state? In some very real sense, a secretary of state can be defined as the head of international marketing for the US brand. And no one can doubt that the US has always been focused on selling its brand. 

In one version of his sales pitch, Blinken adds a fourth word to introduce — and, in a certain sense, encompass — his trinity of virtues. To President Abbas, Blinken cited the importance of “equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity.” He cites “security” as the condition sine qua non that must be put in place to permit the flowering of “freedom, opportunity and dignity.” Modern states, such as the US and Israel, insist on putting security first. It is, after all, thanks to the existence of a security state — largely regulated, monitored and even enforced by the intelligence community — that the wonders associated with the prosperous American and Israeli way of life emerge. Both countries have produced an enviable military-industrial complex.

Blinken’s trio of words defines the ideal toward which any modern society must aspire. Combining the three terms creates a compelling argument. Freedom, of course, points to the free market, the right of every individual to compete with everyone else in their quest to make it to the top. Opportunity means that there are no legal obstacles to the downtrodden in their quest to become equals of the wealthy and powerful. Everyone has a shot at winning the race. The only real obstacles are other peoples’ wealth and power. But that is precisely what makes the struggle so satisfying for the winners, knowing that they have overcome such formidable obstacles. 

And what about dignity? The French tricolon puts liberty and equality first, both of which serve to establish an abstract legal principle denying an official social status to privilege. This leaves fraternity as a random choice of sentiment for a liberated people. Fraternity has no status in the law and may never truly exist in a competitive society. 

Blinken’s first two terms — freedom and opportunity — describe the modern capitalist economy. It allows people to aspire to dignity while instituting a social and economic system that empowers the successful few to deny dignity to the many whose lives, thanks to their liberty, remains precarious. Without precarity, the noble ambition to achieve dignity would not exist. In other words, what the secretary of international marketing is selling is quite simply the American ideology.

Historical Note

Winston Churchill was a consummate rhetorician. In a wartime speech he famously intoned, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” He added a fourth term to what was already a proverbial tricolon. The gravity of a world war justified adding this extra item. Subsequent generations reduced Churchill’s four-term litany to the more classical tricolon in the idiom, “blood, sweat and tears.” That trio of words became not just a part of standard modern English vocabulary but also the name of a legendary rock group. 

It is worth pointing out that just as Antony Blinken may have consciously or unconsciously borrowed his tricolon from Samuel Crowther, Churchill’s inspiration can be traced to the 17^th-century poet, John Donne, who in his long poem, “,” wrote:

“Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is.

And learn’st thus much by our anatomy,

That ’tis in vain to dew, or mollify

It with thy tears, or sweat, or blood: nothing

Is worth our travail, grief, or perishing,

But those rich joys, which did possess her heart.”

Luke most literary men and women of his time, Donne understood the power of the tricolon. In two successive lines he offers a pair of tricolons. Donne’s contemporary, William Shakespeare, took it one step further when Ophelia, speaking admiringly of Hamlet, mentions “The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword.” Shakespeare aligns two tricolons in a single pentameter line.

It is refreshing to note that a modern politician like Blinken has a feel for classical rhetoric, mobilizing the traditional literary devices to conduct his sophisticated political marketing. It reassuringly contrasts with Donald Trump’s jarring populist rhetoric that relies not on balanced phrases, clever verbal alignments and persuasive touches, but instead on provocative innuendos and insults, hyperboles (“great,” “huge,” “amazing,” “tremendous,” “terrific,” “phenomenal”) and on an insistence that the audience “believe me” or “trust me,” even when what he says is clearly unbelievable and he himself comes across as totally untrustworthy.

Despite their stylistic differences, what Blinken and former President Donald Trump have in common is a commitment to “Make American Ideology Great Again” in the eyes of a world that has begun not only to doubt its legitimacy but to fear the consequences of the policies carried out in its name. Blinken’s (as well as President Joe Biden’s) tone is more soothing, or at least less upsetting, whereas Trump’s has more political impact. But the message they convey is similarly superficial and unrealistic. Both translate as a pretext for domination in a hypercompetitive world.

*[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 Antony Blinken’s Sales Pitch appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Can the US Really Rally Other Nations?

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Gregory Barber, writing for Wired, that through his tweeting, Musk has become a self-contained agent of volatility. He can send the value of different cryptocurrencies north or south, whenever he feels like it. As Barber frames it, “Musk is creating and destroying small fortunes, 280-characters at a time.” In his , Barber speculates: “Perhaps it’s strategic, or just whimsy, or maybe it’s a kind of performance art to inspire us all to wonder at the value of things. We might never know Musk’s true motives.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

True motives:

In the current society built on the principle of hyperreality, intentions that though detectable, will never be exposed in public, even by the media who understand that reporting on reality could only confuse their consumers who have become addicted to the manipulated representation of reality rather reality itself.

Contextual Note

Elon Musk is a true hyperreal hero, whose only serious rival on the world stage has been Donald Trump. Both are committed to finding ways to obscure the public’s ability to understand some serious public issues. But, contrary to Barber’s assertion, their true motives have never been in doubt. They can be summarized in two words — money and power — and two pathologies — greed and narcissism.

Because most people in the United States have been taught to revere money and power — money as the key to power, power as the means of obtaining wealth — for all their obvious faults, their admirers not only continue to admire them but also celebrate their consummate ability to epitomize hyperreality. In the Calvinist tradition, wealth and power in the community were signs of divine favor. With the fading of the Puritan ethic of sober achievement, in their excess, Musk and Trump have attained the status of secular gods.

American culture struggles helplessly with the idea of truth. Where the condition for basic survival is to be constantly selling something to other people (ideally by creating a marketplace), truth tends to disappear into a misty horizon, spawning a destabilizing doubt that it even exists. But rather than resigning themselves to the absence of truth, Americans now want to reduce it to the question of facts. Fact-checking is all the rage.

But serious philosophers and psychologists have always understood that the idea of truth means much more than establishing facts. Paradoxically, facts themselves can represent a convenient way of burying the truth. Journalists and public figures know this. A typical New York Times article on a potentially controversial issue typically contains a breathless series of short paragraphs citing facts, events and expert statements.

The authors avoid providing logical connections between the paragraphs in an effort to let the facts accumulate. After aligning litanies of factoids and well-chosen quotes, the authors can be certain that no reader will be capable of stitching together anything that leads them towards an underlying meaning. “True motives” will be lost in the onslaught. Here at The Daily Devil’s Dictionary, we have cited examples of these logicless developments, for instance here and here.

Both of our hyperreal heroes have been publicly disciplined for tweeting irresponsibly. Perceived as less dangerous, Musk still has a Twitter account whereas Trump had his taken away just before leaving the White House. Musk once that “Twitter is a war zone,” whereas Trump was accused of using it to foment civil war. His “true motive” appears to have been an attempt to create enough havoc to justify remaining in the White House. It didn’t work for Trump, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have been inspired by Trump’s example after failing to form a new majority earlier this year.

According to Barber, Musk’s tweets “drop from the sky without warning. He controls the narrative, and thus the market effect.” This is not just hyperreal posturing or playing an expected public role with melodramatic or comic effect, as both Trump and Musk are wont to do on practically any occasion. Musk’s tweets concerning cybercurrency give him a power to make money instantly, at the expense of millions of other people. It sounds dangerous and downright unethical, but as a lawyer quoted by Barber explains, “You can’t police based on what you think is somebody’s subjective heart-of-hearts intent.” Is “heart-of-hearts intent” a synonym of “true motive”? In US culture, people tend to think so.

Barber notes that only “a small number of people” possess something comparable to Musk’s hyperreal power. He cites Warren Buffett and the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell. Neither of them is addicted to tweeting. But what is the true source of irresponsibility in this story? Is it Musk himself? Or is it Twitter as an institution that facilitates manipulation? Could it be cryptocurrency, which, as a pure product of purchasers’ greed, with no direct link to anything of substance, might justifiably be called hypercurrency? All three combine to define the hyperreal landscape that surrounds us, along with our media who amplify the drama the others generate.

Historical Note

Throughout history, political leaders have managed to control events by influencing the behavior of tens of thousands, and sometimes millions, of people. Think of Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Hitler. Whatever extraordinary narrative their culture invented for them and whatever personal charisma on their part contributed to their success, what these figures from the past did was rooted in the reality of government, administration, coercive force and concrete economic relationships.

Hyperreality today sits atop all those features of power but thrives in an independent world of its own. It may be that without the example of Hollywood we never would have reached this stage. Musk and Trump alike are more like entertainment figures — both writing the script and playing the role — than to leaders of social, political or cultural movements.

Two centuries ago, P.T. Barnum provided the model for hyperreality that would fully blossom in the 20^th century thanks to the disruptive technology of movies, television and finally the internet. Barnum invented an entire sector of entertainment based on the misrepresentation of facts when, after purchasing an aging slave, Joice Heth, put her on display, claiming she was 161 years old and had been young George Washington’s nurse. Barnum understood how facts and symbolism combine to draw the public to his spectacles.

George Washington was already known as “the father of the nation.” Barnum provided an exotic, black mothering figure for the father of the country. At the same time, the supposed relationship served to justify slavery and racism by promoting the idea that blacks in a situation of service could nurture whites, and whites would protect and nurture blacks.

Barnum later became famous for organizing his three-ring circus, but before that he built his reputation around presenting facts or the appearance of facts. He created the American Museum in Manhattan. It featured both authentic historical artifacts and a freak show, prolonging the spirit of deception he developed around Joice Heth. With his partner James Bailey, he launched hyperreality’s ultimate theme with a circus they called “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Barnum himself never sought to be a hyperreal hero. He simply propagated the values of the culture of American hyperreality that would be refined by a later generation of architects of hyperreality.

William Randolph Hearst modeled the modern idea of the news. Sigmund Freud’s American nephew, Edward Bernays, invented the art of public relations built around the science of advertising designed as a form of mind control. Trump and Musk have come to represent the ultimate hyperreal heroes, but they have built their identities around the culture created by geniuses like Barnum and Bernays combined with the culture of Hollywood’s larger-than-life screen heroes. They are not alone. There are plenty of hyperreal supporting actors and extras who give depth to the representation. But they are the ones talented enough and sufficiently narcissistic to occupy center stage and ultimately influence the audience’s behavior.

*[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 �������������’s True Hyperreal Heroes appeared first on 51�Թ�.

By any reasonable measure, the Freedom Caucus and its members are not conservative. Because of their disruptive tactics and rhetoric, their contempt for bedrock conservative values like the rule of law and their embrace of the most radical populist in modern US history, they are more akin to European far-right politicians like those in the Alternative for Germany and Fidesz. Traditional Republicans recognize that the caucus and its members have nothing to do with the party they joined many years ago. Former House Speaker John Boehner, a more traditional Republican, gave an apt  of the caucus when he said in 2017, “They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is.”

Can the US Really Rally Other Nations?

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The misidentification of the Freedom Caucus as “conservative” is not the only example of the misuse of this term. At various points over the last four years, Donald Trump was  a “conservative” president. Certain policies, like the dismantling of environmental regulations or the promotion of laissez-faire economics, have also been erroneously called “conservative.” Various media outlets and personalities, from  to , have likewise been mislabeled “conservative.” When The Washington Post tries to rectify the problem by  far-right activist Ali Alexander an “ultraconservative,” it only makes matters worse. An ultraconservative should be even more determined to uphold the status quo rather than, like Alexander, trying to undermine it.

The recent ouster of Liz Cheney from her position as the third highest-ranking Republican in the House has only further muddied the waters of this definitional quagmire. True, Cheney has upheld law and order in defending the integrity of the 2020 election against the revolutionary fervor of the “Trump Firsters” in her party. Prior to her recent stand, however, Cheney herself flouted many of the principles of conservativism by embracing the more radical policies of the Trump-inflected Republican Party, voting with the former president  of the time on such issues as gutting the environment.

The misuse of the term “conservative” is the result not only of a structural quirk of American politics, but also the evolution of political ideology in the United States.

The Europeans

In Europe, multi-party systems allow for greater nuance in political labeling. Thus, conservatives in the various Christian Democratic parties compete for votes against far-right populist parties that embrace anti-democratic, racist and even fascist positions. �������������’s two-party system, on the other hand, collapses such distinctions into a binary opposition between a single “liberal” and a single “conservative” party. If a faction emerges within the Republican Party, therefore, it is by definition “conservative” even if it so obviously isn’t. It’s as if politics in America is digital — either one or zero — while European politics reflect all the messy gradations of the analog realm.

At the same time, ideologies have evolved considerably in the United States over the last half-century. “Conservative” once stood for preserving traditional arrangements in society such as family, faith, community and small business against the modernizing forces of the market. Conservatives have also adopted the British philosopher Edmund Burke’s distaste for the Enlightenment project of human rights and egalitarianism. Conservatives were also once conservationists (remember: it was Richard Nixon who, in 1970, created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act Extension).

The Reagan/Thatcher revolution changed all that. Conservatives suddenly became ultra-liberal in the economic sense. They wholeheartedly embraced the free market in their eagerness to deploy any powerful force against what they considered to be the primary evil in the world: big government. They supported laissez-faire economics — essentially, no government controls on the economy — even though unrestrained market forces tear apart communities, break apart families, undermine faith, destroy family farms and sweep away small businesses. But since such a market served as a counterforce to government authority, the neo-liberal conservatives prepared to throw out whatever babies were necessary in order to get rid of the bathwater.

A further revolution in conservative thought came with the neoconservatives. These foreign policy hawks discovered a fondness for human rights and a taste for revolutionary change, as long as it was in countries the United States opposed. Overthrowing the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, which required a revolutionary destruction of the status quo, became a new addition to the conservative agenda.

In some respects, Trump attempted to purge the conservative movement of these two newer tendencies through his rejection of both the cherished free trade of the neoliberals and the “forever wars” of the neoconservatives. In their place, the new president reverted to the older right-wing ideology of nationalism, populism and racism of the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s and the America First movement of the 1940s. At the same time, however, Trump retained the allegiance of these newfangled conservatives by slashing government involvement in the economy and championing higher Pentagon spending.

As a result, the current Republican Party features a dog’s breakfast of right-wing ideologies. You can still find ardent neoliberals like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio who espouse free-trade economics and a few neocons like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas who rail against neo-isolationism. A solid majority of the party, Cheney notwithstanding, backs Trump no matter how much he deviates from conservative values.

The Media

Given the inability of Republicans to define themselves with any degree of precision and their preference for hiding behind labels like “conservative,” it’s no wonder that the media has difficulty parsing right-wing terminology. If the Freedom Caucus calls itself “conservative,” and the American Conservative Union agrees, should it really be the job of The New York Times to correct the record?

And yet, that’s precisely what the mainstream media does for other ludicrously inapt designations. No major newspaper believes that North Korea is democratic simply because its official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. No mainstream journalists would mistake the far-right Sweden Democrats for the US political party of the same name. As for Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, it is nothing of the sort, since it’s only the personal political vehicle of the raving extremist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and pity the poor reporter who takes the party at face value.

It’s long past time for the mainstream media to apply these common-sense rules of nomenclature to American politics.

There are several efforts ongoing to wean the Republican Party of its addiction to Donald Trump. Perhaps a more important first step would be to reclaim the term “conservative” so that it applies in the United States to the same system of values that inspires conservative parties in Europe. Only then will the Republican Party have a chance of becoming once again a defender of the status quo rather than its chief wrecking ball.

*[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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Is Israel an Apartheid State?

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What has emerged from Blinken’s visit for Americans is a “mission accomplished” feeling. The US will now be able to write the entire event off as insignificant and return to their normal activities. These include arguing about how much not to spend on infrastructure, discovering the truth about UFOs or getting vaccinated so that people can start partying again as summer approaches. Hamas has been disarmed. The disaster in the Holy Land has been avoided.

The problem for any serious observer is that their comforting discourse is in total dissonance with the historical context. The media across the globe have noticed that for the Biden administration, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a low priority, an unwanted distraction from the real business of the hour: creating a positive image for the recently elected president, young in the office (a mere 125 days) but old in years and inevitably stale in his thinking.

What does all this tell us about President Joe Biden’s policy with regard to Israeli-Palestinian relations? Some have hinted that, under pressure from progressives and some centrist Democrats, the Biden administration might consider modifying its ever-forgiving relationship with Israel by, for the first time, imposing conditions on the generous military aid the US provides year after year. No trace of that pressure appeared in Blinken’s discourse. Instead, the policy he hints at sounds like an anemic version of the Trump-Kushner peace plan. Biden talks about achieving stability by encouraging trade and investment. This essentially means the US will release enough cash for the rebuilding required for the Palestinians to function minimally within the Israeli economy.

In his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Blinken a gift of $360 million, not quite half of the of $735 million in supplementary military aid to Israel the Biden administration requested earlier this month and which some Democrats in Congress are currently contesting. Despite meetings with leaders in Egypt and Jordan, there is no indication that Washington may seek to address the historical causes of a never-ending series of conflicts. That will be left to others. Blinken summed up his intention in these words: “The United States will work to rally international support.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Rally:

Incite a group of people and, in extreme cases, a mob to back or participate in a project that may or may not be in their interest but which reflects the goals and interests of the one who incites

Contextual Note

The style section of The New York Times features an about a high school student named Adrian in California who, on May 17, produced a flyer to invite kids from his school to an open beach party for his 17^th birthday. A friend spread the invitation to Snapchat and TikTok, whose “For You” algorithm turned it into a national event. Thousands of people responded and arranged to travel to Huntington Beach to be part of the event. The response ballooned uncontrollably, leading the two young friends to seek a willing commercial partner and turn it into an organized, paying event in Los Angeles, simply to avoid being accused of provoking a riot. It ended with a fracas on the beach, clashes with the police and hundreds of unhappy customers when no party materialized in Los Angeles. It did, however, instantly turn Adrian into an internet influencer.

Adrian now understands what it means to rally his contemporaries and indeed how easy it is to do it with the right plan. The Biden-Blinken plan to rally international support not only seems more modest and vague than Adrian’s, but it is far less likely to succeed. Blinken’s promise contains the principal themes of the discredited Trump-Kushner plan, without the ambition. The countries he appears to be rallying are either part of last year’s Abraham Accords initiated by Donald Trump or sympathetic to its goals. They essentially consist of Israel’s neighbors to the south: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt.

The Trump-Kushner plans rallied these nations around the idea of collaborating with Israel to create a prosperous business zone in the Middle East. It promised to turn the Occupied Palestinian Territories into a prosperous tourist attraction, allowing it to participate in the kind of glitzy commercial culture that has triumphed in Dubai and provided a model for Neom, Saudi Arabia’s futuristic city in the desert. Jared Kushner and friends imagined that Gaza could become one giant beach resort like Waikiki, Acapulco or Cancun.

Historical Note

This may be what was at the back of Antony Blinken’s mind when he proposed to “promote economic stability and progress in the West Bank and Gaza, more opportunity, to strengthen the private sector, expand trade and investment, all of which are essential to growing opportunity across the board.” The underlying logic is the same as the Trump-Kushner peace plan, once touted as the “deal of the century,” a game-changer destined to transform the economy of the Middle East, consolidate an objective alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia and isolate Iran. For historical and cultural reasons that should have been obvious to anyone familiar with the region, no one apart from the ruling class of those Middle Eastern countries took the plan seriously. Even they did so mainly out of diplomatic politeness toward Donald Trump and deference to the always redoubtable economic and military might of the US.

The difference between the Trump-Kushner plan and Blinken’s vague proposal is that in the first case, the cash would be counted in billions. Most of it would have been provided by the Saudis, allowing them to gain cultural control over the Palestinians. The Palestinians would inevitably be beholden to the Israeli-Saudi alliance’s money and technology on the simple condition that they humbly accept their supporting role in an economy designed to further the interests of the ruling class in the US, Israel and the Arabian Peninsula. The Palestinians, with or without an identifiable state, would have their role in the neo-liberal economy assured, ensuring peace on earth forever after.

Blinken appears to have accepted the collaborative vision that Jared Kushner imagined, but in stating it, he unwittingly reveals its fundamental flaw. “Asking the international community, asking all of us to help rebuild Gaza only makes sense if there is confidence that what is rebuilt is not lost again because Hamas decides to launch more rocket attacks in the future,” Blinken said. The US has never reconciled the contradiction that comes from the fact that Hamas, which it classifies as a terrorist organization, came to power in a legitimate democratic election in 2006. Some might judge that the US, with a history of sending its mighty military into different regions of the world on false pretexts and prolonging its assaults on other populations for decades, could also be classified as a terrorist organization despite its democratically elected government.

There is something chilling when Blinken evokes the idea “that what is rebuilt is not lost again because Hamas decides to launch more rocket attacks in the future.” He is telling the Palestinians that if they choose to react to any perceived injustice and repression with the limited weapons at their disposal, they should expect everything that is built or “rebuilt” to come toppling down on their heads once again. This is a threat, not a peace proposal. It is a cynical affirmation of might over right. It is also an explicit denial of democracy and respect for the outcome of democratic elections.

The test of Biden’s ability to influence events in the Middle East will come very soon with the result of the Vienna talks concerning the United States’ eventual return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal with Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is using the occasion to put pressure on the US to abandon the talks. Joe Biden promised during the 2020 election campaign to return to the JCPOA. If the US fails to do so, some will see it as a sign of Israel’s continued power to dictate US foreign policy.

*[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 Can the US Really Rally Other Nations? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Nostalgia has been around for ages. The first one to recognize its significance was a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hofer. In 1688, Hofer coined the word — a compound derived from the Greek nostro, meaning “home,” and algos, meaning “pain” — to describe what he considered to be a medical malaise he detected among Swiss mercenary soldiers, expressed as a profound yearning for their home (what in German is called Heimweh — homesickness).

Hofer might have drawn inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey. Its hero, after spending seven years in the company of the sea nymph Calypso, felt compelled to return home. The longing to see his home was so overwhelming that he rejected Calypso’s offer to make him immortal if he stayed.

The Meaning of Nostalgia

Since Hofer’s times, the meaning of nostalgia has both substantially changed and significantly broadened. It is no longer associated with homesickness. Instead, in today’s parlance, stands for “a sentimental longing for one’s past.” More specifically, nostalgia stands for a yearning for an idealized, lost past, a past more often than not seen through rose-tinted glasses. For a long time, nostalgia was seen as a pathology, reflecting the refusal to confront an unpleasant present and an even worse future.

In this , the yearning for “an irretrievable past becomes a narcissistic illusion,” a “deflection from current unpleasant circumstances.” More recently, however, nostalgia is predominantly seen as a positive emotion, an effective coping mechanism in times of turmoil and crisis. In this , nostalgia serves as “an important resource that helps people find meaning in life and regulate meaning-related distress.” In the face of tectonic demographic, technological and geopolitical changes, seeking comfort in a past where life was arguably simpler and easier to navigate is human, all too human. As Edoardo Campanella and Marta Dassu , nostalgia “offers relief from socio-economic angst. Yesterday is associated with progress; tomorrow with stasis or regression.”  

This type of nostalgia — because nostalgia comes in different guises — “an affective yearning for a community with a collective memory, a longing for continuity in a fragmented world.” In this context, as Matthias Stephan has recently , nostalgia represents “both a look back to an idealized past (whether real or imagined) and a hope that the romanticized past will become our future.”

The Politics of Recognition vs. Redistribution

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Here, nostalgia “inevitably reappears as a defense mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals.” The author of these lines, Svetlana Boym, characterized this iteration as “restorative nostalgia.” Against this, Boym sets what she called “reflective nostalgia.” Reflective nostalgia accepts the fact that the past is past, that it cannot be retrieved. As , “This acknowledgment of the irretrievability of our autobiographical past provides an aesthetic distance that allows us to enjoy a memory in the same way that we enjoy a movie or a good book.”

At the same time, it engenders a realistic, and perhaps even critical, view of the past. It is this constellation that makes nostalgia extremely political. In fact, because of its inherently binary nature, nostalgia is ideally suited to inform both progressive and reactionary politics.

Today, nostalgia is primarily evoked on the nationalist right. More often than not, this is a type of nostalgia that depends on the “disparagement of the present,” which once considered the “hallmark of the nostalgic attitude.” Feeling discombobulated by and disenchanted with the present, as well as uneasy about the future, a growing number of people feel tempted to go down the memory lane and retreat to the past where, as the German expression goes, the world was presumably still in order.

When the World Was in Order

On the nationalist right, it is particularly radical right-wing populist parties and actors that have drawn the greatest political benefit from the appeal to nostalgia. Donald’s Trump is a prominent case in point. His campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” implies that there was a time when the United States was still great, that today it no longer is, but that tomorrow it will be great again — as long as the people follow The Donald.

The promoters of Brexit played a similar tune. Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), holding up his new and triumphantly exclaiming, “We got our passports back!,” evoked a time when Great Britain still maintained the pretense to be a great power rather than one among 28 EU member states where it was not even primus inter pares. Once freed from the shackles of the EU, a once again completely sovereign Great Britain would regain its lost glory. Or, as Britain’s Secretary of Defense Gavin Williamson in late 2018, once Britain was out of the European Union, it would become a “true global player,” establishing new military bases all over the world. As an in the Financial Times from early 2016 put it, “Brexiters are Nostalgics in Search of a Lost Empire.”

Public opinion polls conducted a few months prior to the referendum provided ample evidence of the extent to which the British public glorified the country’s past. In early 2016, a found more than 40% of British respondents expressing pride in Britain’s colonial history; about the same number thought the British Empire had been a good thing. Only a fifth of respondents had a negative view. In a similar survey, two years earlier, around 50% of respondents that Britain’s former colonies were better off today because they had been part of the British Empire, while a third thought that it would be a good thing if Britain still had an empire. At the same, there were strong sentiments that Britain was in decline. In fact, some 80% of “leavers” that view in 2016.

Hardly surprising that, in the wake of the referendum, one of Britain’s leading tabloids, The Daily Star, on its readers to “Make Britain Great Again!” Nostalgia, paired with mass delusion and a portion of righteous resentment, obviously paid handsome political dividends — at least for Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and their comrades in arms.

Similarly in the United States, Trump’s main slogan “Make America Great Again” appealed to widespread nostalgia, particularly among the country’s white majority. In September 2016, for instance, half of the respondents in the annual agreed with the statement that their country’s best days were “behind us.” A few months earlier, a found more than 45% of respondents agreeing with the statement that compared to 50 years earlier, life for people like them had gotten worse.

Among Trump supporters, three out of four agreed with that statement. In a similar vein, one year earlier, around half of US respondents in a thought that “�������������’s best days” were in the past. At the same time, in 2016, more than 60% of Americans their children would be worse off than they were. This is also reflected in surveys that seek to gauge what Americans think about, for instance, the American dream — the notion that hard work will allow them to get ahead.

Most notably, these sentiments were among �������������’s white population, far more than , Hispanics and other minorities. Donald Trump, ever so tuned in to the grievances of white America, stoked the fire of white resentment, , at a town hall meeting in the fall of 2015, that “the American dream is in trouble,” only to add the promise that with him in the White House, “we will get it back.” To be sure, this was hardly original. Four years earlier, the already committed to “Restoring the American Dream.”

The Good Old Days

Conjuring up idealized images of the good old days is a crucial tool in the ideational repertoire of nativist and national-populist parties and actors. And for good reasons. For one, the evocation of nostalgic fantasies creates a sense of collective identity, community and a common purpose, all of them of central concern on the radical populist right. At the same time, in the hands of radical right-wing populists, nostalgia serves as an indirect indictment of the present, linked to an appeal to the notion that the best of the past could somehow the current situation.

Here, nostalgia represents what S. D. Chrostowska has a “malaise of dissatisfaction with the present and the direction that present” has taken. The more profound and widespread collective disenchantment with the present happens to be, the more pronounced is the appeal of the past. An exemplary case in point is a from 2016 in Poland, whose authors explored the extent to which nostalgia for the communist period was prevalent among current-day Poles. The results were striking. They showed that people who felt they had been better off during that period than at present were much more nostalgic and had a significantly better opinion about the communist government than other respondents.

Poland is hardly unique. The arguably best-known case of post-communist nostalgia is what in German is known as Ostalgie. Ostalgie entails a revaluation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — former East Germany — on the part of a substantial part of its population following reunification. To a large extent, this was in to “the perceived threat of a West German depreciation of their life experiences.” Substantial numbers of citizens in the east had the feeling that they and their past were treated with condescension, if not outright disdain. Even 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sentiment that easterners are second-class citizens finds widespread resonance in what once was the GDR. Ostalgie is all about a demand for recognition, dignity and respect rather than crude material interests. As sociologist Cecilia Ridgeway has noted, we tend to forget “how much people care about public acknowledgement of their worth.”

Yet they tend to “care about status quite as intensely as they do [about] money and power.” They want “to be someone.” Ostalgie is also informed by the sentiment that in the GDR, ordinary workers were valued — they were someone. Not for nothing, the GDR prided itself on being an Arbeiter und Bauernstaat — the state of workers and farmers.

Nostalgia in post-communist societies might be somewhat puzzling to outside observers, yet politically it is of no consequences. There is no craving for a return of what in German was known as Realsozialismus — loosely translated as “actually existing socialism.” A regime that imprisoned its citizens behind walls, barbed wires and minefields in order to prevent them from fleeing the country has nothing in common with the radical humanist spirit of socialism, reflected, for instance, in Karl Marx’s “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” and the writings of leading exponents of the Frankfurt School.

Radical Reconstruction

Matters are entirely different when populist leaders use nostalgia for the dismantling and radical (from the roots) reconstitution of a society’s collective identity. This is what has happened with two of the most important contemporary populist regimes: Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey and Narendra Modi’s India. At first sight, the two cases could not be more different. Here, a representative of political Islam, there, of political Hinduism. Yet below the surface, the similarities are quite striking.

These similarities are seen, in particular, in the place nostalgia — and the appeal to nostalgia — has in the rhetoric of both leaders. In the Turkish case, nostalgia is reflected in what Turkish observers have called neo-Ottomanism. Erdogan, as , has been seeking “to remold Turkey in the form of an imagined, ahistorical conceptualization of the former Ottoman Empire.” The ultimate objective is “to resurrect a powerful Muslim state in the ancestral mold of the former Ottoman Empire.”

At the same time, Erdogan’s political project represents a frontal assault on and complete disavowal of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s foundation of the modern “Kemalist” Turkish state. This project was based on a progressive, secular vision of equality adopted from the French Revolution. Here, citizenship and identity derive from a common adherence to civic principles; in the case of Erdogan’s project, citizenship and identity derive from adherence to a common ethno-religious community, which bodes ill for Turkey’s minorities such as Kurds and Armenians.

In the Indian case, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, BJP), has never made a secret of the fact that it seeks to eradicate the legacy of Nehruvian secularism and replace it with Hindutva. Long before Modi became prime minister, the BJP mobilized against what it called Nehru’s “pseudo-secularism.” In reality, the BJP charged, secularism discriminated against Hindus while according concessions to India’s sizeable Muslim minority. In fact, in 2018, that the BJP had managed to convince a sizeable portion of the Indian public that the Indian National Congress was a pro-Muslim and, implicitly, anti-Hindu party.

Central to the BJP’s ideology is the , exemplified, in particular, by the reign of the mythical Ram, largely seen as the epitome of India’s golden age. This golden age came to an abrupt end with the Muslim invasion and conquest, which ushered in what as “1,200 years of slavery.” This is the central trope of Hindu nationalist historiography and victimology — the of “a glorious Hindu golden age followed by an era of Muslim oppression.”

In order to bolster their case of that golden age, Hindu nationalists have gone to great lengths, in some cases transcending into the ridiculous. A case in point is the that in ancient times, India already achieved stunning scientific and technological accomplishments, from advanced reproductive technologies to stem cell research, “spacecraft, the internet, and nuclear weapons — long before Western science come on the scene.” More often than not, these claims were advanced not by crackpots but by respected scientists fallen under the sway of Hindu nationalist nostalgia.

In both cases, the combination of nostalgia and populism serves to mobilize the “true” people against a Westernized elite, from — but not of — the people. At the same time, it serves as a means to eradicate national humiliations: in the case of India, centuries of being subjugated to Islamic rulers; in the Turkish case, the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, symbolized by the Treaty of Sèvres which, had it ever been implemented, would have left only a small area around Ankara under Turkish rule.  

Erdogan’s recent decision to reclassify the — once the “ultimate icon of Christian civilization” — as a mosque, constitutes a reversal of Kemalist “secularist suppression.” Similarly, laying the foundations of a Ram temple on the site of an ancient mosque, known as Babri Masjid, in the city of Ayodhya in northern India, serves as highly visible expressions of the will to reverse — and perhaps even avenge — the past.

Resurrecting Grievances

The arguably most successful populist resort to this combination of grievance-based nostalgia and the exploitation of national humiliation is epitomized by Hungary’s Victor Orban. To be sure, Hungarians have good reasons for historically-grounded grief — the bloody suppression of the Hungarian people’s 1956 uprising against the communist regime and the Soviets is a prominent case in point. The most important episode, however, which continues to haunt Hungarian collective national consciousness until today, dates back to 1920, when the victorious powers imposed on Hungary the Trianon Treaty. The treaty deprived Hungary of two-thirds of its prewar territory and three-fifths of its prewar population, which turned Hungary into what “the most nationally aggrieved state in all of Europe.”

Victor Orban has been particularly adroit not only in manipulating diffuse sentiments of humiliation and resentment but also in evoking nostalgia for Hungary’s golden age. This was the period spanning from the formation of the dual monarchy following Vienna’s defeat in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, which put the Hungarians on par with the Austrians until the end of the First World War — a period which saw all ethnic Hungarians united in the same state. Together, these two ideational elements constitute the core of Orban’s national-populist project, which over the past decade or so has progressively gained cultural hegemony in Hungary.

Orban, Modi and Erdogan are prominent examples of how nationalist-populist actors have weaponized nostalgia for political gain the same way they have weaponized other emotions such as anxiety, anger and empathy. As Yale professor Paul Bloom has recently in his indictment of emotional empathy, “unscrupulous politicians use our empathy for victims of certain crimes to motivate anger and hatred toward other, marginalized, groups.” Emblematic of this strategy is Donald Trump’s of “our empathic feelings toward victims of rape and assault to build hatred toward undocumented immigrants.”

Here, Trump instinctively exploited a central characteristic of this emotion, namely its intrinsic in-group bias. Neuropsychological studies that more often than not, empathy extends significantly more to those we feel close to rather than out-groups, “potentially making them likely targets for prejudice and discrimination.”

The same is true for nostalgia. Experiments in social psychology have shown that collective nostalgia — the type of nostalgia routinely evoked by national populist actors — tends to confer “sociability benefits,” such as support and loyalty, to the in-group while tending to evoke exclusionary sentiments toward out-groups. have argued that “Collective nostalgia’s sociality is amenable to exploitation and can have controversial ramifications.” A recent on the effect of national nostalgia on out-group perceptions in the context of the 2016 US presidential election shows that national nostalgia “significantly predicted racial prejudice and this relationship was mediated by perceived outgroup threat.”

This also holds true for Europe. A from 2018 found that more than three-quarters of European respondents classified as nostalgics (two-thirds of the sample) agreed with the statement that recent immigrants did not want to integrate into the host society; more than half thought they were taking jobs away from the natives. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that radical right-wing populist parties have found fertile ground for their nativist politics of exclusion.

A case in point is the adoption of the concept of the by the Sweden Democrats, the country’s radical populist right. The folkhemmet (people’s home) stands for the heydays of Sweden’s Social Democratic welfare state, a golden age that spanned four decades, from the 1930s to the 1970s. This was a time of ethnocultural homogeneity, civic egalitarianism and social solidarity. The Sweden Democrats’ adoption of the sentimental notion of the folkhemmet appeals to nostalgic sentiments while, at the same time, serving as a justification for the exclusion of non-ethnic minorities such as refugees from social benefits.

The Sweden Democrats’ manipulation of nostalgia in the service of their politics of welfare chauvinism is exemplary of the flexible and polyvalent possibilities of applying this emotion. It is for this reason that nostalgia lends itself ideally to national populist mobilization. One of the central ideational tropes informing populism is the notion of the united people, a unity derived from a shared past and a common destiny, confronting a common adversary, if not an enemy. The evocation of a glorious past is a great way to make people feel good about themselves at a time when there is little to be cheerful or optimistic about.

These days, the glorious past is not far away, not more than two years, the time before social distancing, lockdowns and vaccination jitters. Under the circumstances, nostalgia is likely to persist, ready to be exploited by populist entrepreneurs for political gain. Those who still think that the pandemic will substantially weaken support for the radical populist right might take a look at Spain. There, Vox, whose rhetoric is replete with nostalgia, is the that has substantially increased its support base over the past several months.

*[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 The Good Old Days: Nostalgia’s Political Appeal appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Image of Russia

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For all the contempt that many Europeans held for Donald Trump, his policies toward Russia were easier for some of them to live with. Hard-line NATO nations drew comfort from his continuation of sanctions against Moscow, sale of lethal arms to Ukraine and fierce opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Trump questioned Article 5 of the NATO charter, but Russian President Vladimir Putin never had the stomach to put Trump’s jumbled position on the issue to the test. Meanwhile, Europeans eager to accommodate Russia were encouraged by Trump’s attempts to forge a personal relationship with Putin and his enduring belief that the Kremlin could somehow become an ally.

Trump was also a convenient president for those in CEE nations with conservative social values and an unsteady commitment to the rule of law. Trump’s attitude toward their countries was simply transactional; his interest was in what America could gain from their relationship. How they were governed held little interest for him.

Bows and Wrist-Slaps

Biden has changed the equation dramatically. Some might have expected him to set aside everything that Moscow did during the Trump presidency and focus on the future. Instead, Biden did the opposite. On April 15, he expelled Russian diplomats and imposed significant new sanctions for Russia’s actions during Trump’s time in office, leaving space for a whole new set of in case of further provocations from Moscow. Some observers found the measures Biden announced to be .

But in many respects, the measures were and pointed clearly to future possibilities, ranging from new financial actions to the criminal prosecution of senior Russian regime figures. Officials also intimated that the US might already be retaliating on the cyber front.

Biden has made the appropriate bows to potential cooperation with Moscow and offered Putin a summit in the coming months in a third country. But overall, the tone of his message to Russia has been hostile, including calling Putin a “.” Putin’s claim to legitimacy, at home and abroad, is built on the idea that he is a respected statesman and even something of an intellectual rather than the boss of a dictatorship backed by organized crime. (While most Russian reports on Biden’s comments translated “killer” as&�Բ�����;“ubiytsa,” the usual word for “murderer,” some media chose the imported word&�Բ�����;“killer,” which in Russian means a mob hitman.) 

With Biden taking a more uncompromising attitude to the Kremlin, the question now is whether Western responses to Russian provocations will become much more unified and move well beyond diplomatic statements and scattered financial sanctions. Is a point approaching where US pressure — plus Russia’s threats to Ukraine, its of Alexei Navalny, its cyberattacks against the West and its murder of opponents abroad — might finally lead the allies to slash the scale of business deals with Moscow, choke off the flow of illicit Russian money and impose tighter restrictions on visas to the EU? Even if sanctions don’t work, they say something about the values that the country imposing them stands for.

In CEE countries, substantial numbers of citizens still Russia poses little threat to their nations. But the drumbeat of provocations from Moscow, including and even inside CEE countries, will have its effect. Even though Visegrad nations lack a united policy on Ukraine — mainly because of Hungary — they all Czechia’s expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff over the explosion of an arms depot in 2014. Will allied nations now respond to Czechia’s for them to expel Russian diplomats from their countries, too, to show solidarity?

Human Rights Challenge

Meanwhile, the new US administration has thrown down a human rights challenge not only to authoritarian regimes, but to some of its CEE allies. Biden’s team has made clear that America once again cares very much about democratic rights in other countries. When directed at Russia, this message has the dual advantage of reflecting American values while also pressuring Putin, who, judging by his repression of even tiny protests, seems to genuinely believe a “color revolution” is around the corner.

Yet the policy may well make some allies uncomfortable. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a on March 30, declared that in �������������’s view, there is no “hierarchy of rights” in a democracy. He not only vigorously and specifically defended abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, but essentially put them on the same level as freedom of speech and religion. In so doing, he lined up with forces in the EU that are pressing some CEE countries not only to strengthen basic democratic institutions, but to also adopt liberal social values. The US position creates a new opening for pro-Russian and populist politicians who have been claiming for years that the West is intent on undermining the “morals” of former members of the Soviet bloc.

Virtuous as the US position may be, it is unclear how far the administration will go with it. Blinken, an experienced diplomat, knows that idealism often must bow to political realities. As his predecessor Mike Pompeo , “Our commitment to inalienable rights doesn’t mean we have the capacity to tackle all human rights violations everywhere and at all times.” Even if the administration recognizes no hierarchy of rights, it certainly has a hierarchy of interests. At the top of that hierarchy may well be the geopolitical imperative of keeping CEE nations out of Russia’s orbit.

If the US runs into too-strong opposition over its human rights agenda, it could focus more on campaigning against corruption. That cause has wide public support. It is also effective against many anti-democratic forces, including pro-Russian actors who thrive on murky financial deals. This could de-escalate conflict over liberal social values while still encouraging activities that undermine Kremlin influence in the CEE region.

*[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.

The post Biden Changes the Russia Equation appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The quandary the Biden administration is dealing with may now have more to do with saving face than achieving an accord. In a New York Times article on the , reporters Steven Erlanger and David Sanger claim that American and Iranian leaders “share a common goal: They both want to re-enter the nuclear deal that President Donald J. Trump scrapped three years ago.” The easy path for a president who presumably represents everything Trump opposed would be simply to rescind the withdrawal. But Biden’s advisers appear to believe that returning to the old deal would make the president appear weak and unmanly after the virile performance by his predecessor who pleased his audience by taking a roundhouse punch at the hornet’s nest.

Can the US and Iran Compromise in Vienna?

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The Times reporters describe the situation in these terms. If Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken can’t come home with what he termed in January a “’longer and stronger accord’ — one that stops Iran from amassing nuclear material for generations, halts its missile tests and ends support of terrorist groups,” the US appears poised to accept Trump’s fait accompli. Republicans routinely accuse Democratic presidents of being weaklings. They believe that US presidents must perform with brio and show their muscles. Like George W. Bush in Iraq, to avoid appearing weak, Biden needs a pretext for a photo-op declaring the mission accomplished.

According to Erlanger and Sanger, Biden “knows he cannot simply replicate what the Obama administration negotiated six years ago, after marathon sessions in Vienna and elsewhere, while offering vague promises that something far bigger and better might follow.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Bigger and better:

The magic formula required to justify any proposed project in the consumer society

Contextual Note

The Times reporters insist that more than a month of “marathon sessions” must be justified by a cry of victory. In the US, time is money. Even if the public has paid little attention to the negotiations, the journalists clearly believe that the time invested must be accounted for. Erlanger and Sanger see a high political cost if the administration fails to show a return on investment. After all, Biden is already facing the shame — coming from both Republicans and Democrats (including ) — of canceling 20 years of blood and treasure in Afghanistan with nothing to show for it.

The journalists dismissively call the negotiations “five weeks of shadow boxing.” They deem the respective positions irreconcilable. The Iranians want to “be allowed to keep the advanced nuclear-fuel production equipment they installed after Mr. Trump abandoned the pact, and integration with the world financial system beyond what they achieved under the 2015 agreement.” The Biden administration, in contrast, insists on “an agreement on limiting missiles and support of terrorism.”

Colm Quinn, the author of Foreign Policy’s newsletter, offers a clearer picture, pointing out that both sides are playing coy for the moment, as is usual in serious negotiations, especially in this case, when Americans and Iranians are communicating exclusively through European intermediaries. Quinn leaves a strong hint that the two sides may be close to a to the original deal. This contradicts the impression given by The Times journalists. Is this their way of building suspense by treating it like a diplomatic Super Bowl?

If a deal is reached, The Times will be in a position to celebrate Biden’s “unexpected” accomplishment against such formidable odds. The Times, after all, has been to promote Biden as the new Roosevelt. To make their point, the authors cite American officials who “say it is not yet clear that Iran really wants to restore the old deal, which is derided by powerful hard-liners at home.” 

With a single verb, Erlanger and Sanger unwittingly reveal their incapacity or unwillingness to take some perspective and distance themselves from the US State Department’s point of view. “With Iran’s presidential elections six weeks away,” they write, “the relatively moderate, lame-duck team of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are spinning that an agreement is just around the corner.”

The verb is “spinning.” For The Times journalists, it goes without saying that Iranians spin, while Americans tell it like it is. After citing the Iranians’ optimistic contention that negotiations are “underway for some details,” the journalists don’t just assume the State Department’s position but blurt out their own emotive reaction: “Not so fast, Mr. Blinken has responded, adding that ‘Iran has yet to make an equally detailed description of what nuclear limits would be restored.’”

The rest of the article is remarkable for its uninformative incoherence, navigating around negotiating positions and areas of dispute that fail to differentiate between rhetoric and the description of the political reality on both sides. Lost in meaningless details, they make no attempt to clarify the underlying issues. They mix serious facts with anecdotal trivialities. To add to the confusion, they offer difficult-to-decipher statements in the passive voice, such as this one: “In two discussions in February, the Europeans urged American officials to start negotiating in earnest and lift some sanctions as a gesture of good faith toward Iran. Those suggestions were ignored.” Who ignored them and why?

At one point, the journalists mention “Iran’s pressure tactics.” But even when citing Trump’s 1,500 sanctions against Iran, they never suggest that sanctions may be seen as pressure tactics. The authors apparently seek to leave the impression not only that the negotiations are going nowhere but that the journalists themselves — like for example, the Israeli government — may be hoping they fail. Compare this lengthy Times article with a brief video , executive vice president of The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where the viewer comes away with a solid idea both of what the stakes are on the two sides and a feeling for the historical logic underlying the current situation.

Historical Note

The rhetoric journalists use often reveals more about their unstated worldview than the content of what they write. Seizing on Blinken’s wish for something “longer and stronger,” the journalists echo it with their own “bigger and better.” This underlines the fact that Americans tend to see everything, even a supposedly delicate negotiation, in competitive terms. They multiply the comparatives, following the logic of marketers in the consumer society who always promise their product will provide&�Բ�����;“more and more.”

The parties of any serious negotiation should have a principle on which they can agree, an overriding objective they both wish to achieve. In this case, it could be identified as a crucial historical goal: the denuclearization of the Middle East. It might even imply a broader goal, like the denuclearization of the world. Although they refused to make it explicit, the Obama administration’s JCPOA strategy did contain the idea of normalizing relations between the US and Iran in such a way as to remove the temptation of a Middle East nuclear arms race. By integrating Iran into the global economy, the competitive pressure to match Israel or dominate Saudi Arabia thanks to a nuclear arsenal would logically disappear.

Instead of emphasizing that goal, Blinken publicly asserts, with The Times’ approval, that it’s all about getting an advantage and achieving more. There is a reason for that. Israel wants to maintain its own nuclear monopoly in the region, despite denying its existence. Because the US prioritizes Israel’s concerns, it effectively refrains not only from pursuing its own objectives but even articulating them in public. Reporting on the and Gaza this week, The Times predictably notes that “neither side [is] prepared to make concessions the other would demand.” One more issue framed as a competition. Let the bigger and better man win.

*[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 What the State Department and the Media Get Wrong About the JCPOA appeared first on 51�Թ�.

By sheer coincidence, the day I interviewed for a position in the Department of Political Science, York had scheduled a public lecture by Nancy Fraser, a renowned feminist political theorist/philosopher from the New School for Social Research in New York City. The lecture was on the politics of recognition. Given her impeccable left-wing credentials, York was friendly terrain — or so it seemed. I still remember Fraser’s rather stunned expression when confronted with a barrage of attacks by York’s Marxists, who charged her with discounting if not dismissing the central importance of social class. 

White Trash, White Privilege

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That was some 20 years ago. Yet ironically, the tension between the politics of recognition and the class-based politics of redistribution is still as pertinent as it was when Fraser theorized it in the late 1990s. In recent years, it has become even more of an issue of vital importance for the future of progressive politics in liberal democracies, not least because of the challenge posed by contemporary radical, right-wing populism.

Social Justice

The questions of both redistribution and recognition are about justice. Above all, social justice concerns leveling the playing field. This is a point Fraser has never tired of . She has adamantly out that struggles for redistribution are anything but “antithetical to struggles for recognition.” The problem is that, more often than not, one tended to be disassociated from the other. In reality, however, social justice involved both questions of redistribution and of “representation, identity, and difference.” 

Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. In the 1980s, the left, by and large, started to abandon their commitment to what once was called the working class and its aspirations. In its wake, as Axel Honneth noted more than a decade ago, “‘equal distribution’ or ‘equality of good’ no longer form its central categories, but ‘dignity’ and ‘respect.’” To make matters worse, ordinary workers not only lost their privileged position in left-wing narratives. They were also increasingly denigrated, their needs and aspirations dismissed, and their values and views tagged as reactionary and retro, an expression of pervasive working-class authoritarianism. 

I remember a written by the German satirist Wolfgang Ebert that said it all in a few lines. The article appeared in 1985 in the prestigious German weekly Die Zeit. The text was meant to be taken as what it was: satire on Germany’s post-68 new left, their delusions and disillusionment, which finally ended in the complete disavowal of the proletariat as a revolutionary class. On this reading, if the revolution never happened, it was because “the masses — not to speak of the working class as the so-called subject of the revolution — failed.” 

In fact, Ebert continued, the masses “always fail.” Instead of following their “true interests” or at least listening to their “intellectual leaders,” they preferred to follow the siren calls of consumerism. Ebert’s conclusion: “Who would be stupid enough to risk their neck for these dumb masses?” The German Social Democrats (SPD) certainly didn’t. That’s why they are where they are today. Since the federal election of 1983, their share of the vote has plunged, from 38% to just over 20% in 2017. 

Fast forward to 2011 in France, a few months before socialist Francois Hollande narrowly defeated the sitting president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the second round of the 2012 election. The election was overshadowed by the downfall of socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who for some time had been seen as a serious candidate for the presidency until his aspirations were by sex scandals. 

Terra Nova

The reason Strauss-Kahn is mentioned here is because of his affiliation with Terra Nova, a progressive think tank modeled after the Center for American Progress and with “contributing to the intellectual renewal of the Left in France and in Europe.” In 2011, Terra Nova released a that essentially advised that the left should forget about French workers. These workers, the authors charged, were no longer concerned with economic and social questions; instead, they had bought into the “cultural issues” promoted by the right. At the same time, they had progressively been seduced by the far-right National Front, both on cultural and socioeconomic questions.

In short, as a highly critical commentary on the Terra Nova report in France’s premier left-wing daily, Liberation, put it, workers were “dirty and nasty” — at least that was the impression one got from reading the paper. If the socialists were serious about winning the 2012 presidential election, Terra Nova insisted, they had to come up with a new progressive subject. Terra Nova suggested a “future-oriented” coalition (“tomorrow’s France”), “younger, more diverse, more feminized.” This was to be a coalition of the culturally progressive and the economically marginalized — except, of course, traditional workers. 

The analysis was apparently heavily influenced by American strategists busily constructing the new or “emerging” Democratic majority — the title of an influential from 2004. Today, as a recent on this question demonstrates, this (hitherto still quite elusive) majority consists of the “ascendant” and “rising” American electorate — constituencies that, unlike the traditional white working class, are growing as a share of the overall electorate: people of color, the young and well-educated, socially liberal whites and single women. As Christopher Cimaglio, the author of the essay, pointed out, in this framework, “the white working class often serves as a receding reactionary backdrop to emerging, forward-looking groups: ‘a more highly educated and diverse constituency,’ ‘a coalition of transformation, comfortable with demographic and cultural change.’” 

Political Polarization

The result of this strategy is what we have today: widespread polarization, mutual recriminations, intense loathing on both sides of the aisle, and a politics of grievances and resentment that makes a mockery of one of �������������’s most sacred notions: e pluribus unum. Shortly before the 2020 presidential election, 80% of registered voters, both Democrats and Republicans, said “their differences with the other side were about core American values.” Around 90% in both camps “worried that a victory by the other would lead to ‘lasting harm’ to the United States.”

To be sure, the left’s embrace of identity politics and diversity, together with its somewhat callous dismissal of what in French is called the couches populaires (aka “ordinary people”) seeking to make a decent living, has not gone unchallenged. Just a few years ago in Spain, a polemic with the telling “La Trampa de la Diversidad” (the diversity trap) became a national bestseller — and provoked a vicious backlash. Among other things, the author, the polemicist Daniel Bernabe, was charged with the feminist, LGBTQ and ecological causes, primarily for suggesting that the oppression of women was fundamentally rooted in economics — i.e., the capitalist system — rather than purely in sexism, which he considered as just another face of capitalism.

For Bernabe, everything started with Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher managed to reframe economic inequality in terms of individual difference and diversity against a form of socialism that sought to impose “uniformity.” In the years that followed, socialists and social democrats, such as Tony Blair of the UK and Gerhard Schroder of Germany, bought into this narrative — with suboptimal success, to put it kindly.

Recently in Germany, Sahra Wagenknecht, a leading politician of The Left party (Die Linke), provoked controversy with a highly critical of the left’s adoption of identity politics. Identity, to Wagenknecht, has become the pet project of a self-indulgent, left-libertarian, individualistic, urban, cosmopolitan elite — a “lifestyle” politics reflecting the smug complacency of the morally superior, far removed from the mundane material concerns of ordinary workers. The charge implies that if today’s left embrace causes such as or Black Lives Matter, it is less out of genuine conviction than out of the need to constantly reaffirm their distinctive identity and habitus, as “the epitome of progressivism and responsibility.”

Other critics of identity politics have been even less kind. “” theorist Jonathan Rutherford, for instance, in an for New Statesman, argued that the decline of the British working class had turned Labour into a “party of the bourgeois left,” espousing what he called the cause of “cosmopolitan liberalism.” This, he charged, is the “culture of the elites,” one that is “deeply divisive,” grounded in identity politics. In turn, identity politics at least “in its libertarian pursuit of self-realisation and its judging and dividing into victim status hierarchies, is corrosive of society.”

Under the influence of cosmopolitan liberalism, Rutherford argued, “progressive and left politics in the 1990s turned away from class politics and solidarity in favour of group identities and self-realisation.” In the process, the politics of recognition turned into a politics of victimization. At the same time, society has moved on. While the postindustrial, postmodern plebs fight over the question of who has been most victimized, the “new revolutionary subject,” the “‘universal educated person’ of urban, higher-educated and networked youth,” is busy conceptualizing a brave new world of material abundance, social harmony and ecological wellbeing — or so I understand what Rutherford is trying to say.

Identity Politics

Others have gone even further, charging that identity politics to undermine liberal democracy. On this view, identity politics has led to a fragmentation of social cohesion, undermined a common sense of belonging, and been replaced by a new type of “tribalism” that has largely benefited the right and far right. As Francis Fukuyama , identity politics reflects “important grievances.” At the top of the list is the long history of denigration, discrimination and outright violence that various ethnic minorities have been subjected to by the white majority. 

In some cases, however, identity politics has taken on an “exclusive character where people’s ‘lived experiences’” determine who they are. This, Fukuyama said, has “created obstacles to empathy and communication.” One might add that it has done a disservice to the notion of a shared humanity. 

In other cases, the combination of identity politics and political correctness has reached absurd dimensions. Take, for instance, the case of Felipe Rose, the iconic member of the Village People. Rose is the guy dressed in Native American garb, which has exposed him to charges of cultural appropriation and playing to stereotypes. As a put it, “Rose’s Halloween-style Indian is the only character [among the Village People] to play on the identity of a living culture.” Dina Gilio-Whitaker, the critic, added: “Why on earth, after American Indians have for decades been successfully waging war against the use of Indian stereotypes in popular culture, is Felipe Rose still parading around on stage in an Indian costume” like a cartoon character come to life? 

The answer is simple. The singer defines himself as of Native American descent (Lakota Sioux) and has done more for �������������’s indigenous population than many a well-meaning left-wing culture warrior (pun intended). Skeptics might want to watch Rose’s “” — a tribute to the “eviction” of the Cherokee and other nations from their ancestral lands resulting in thousands of deaths on the way.

Does this mean the left should abandon recognition in favor of a return to an exclusive focus on redistribution? Quite the contrary: As Fukuyama has strongly insisted, the politics of recognition reflects a fundamental human desire for dignity, for being esteemed. Taking his cue from the eminent German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he that “history itself is driven by the struggle for recognition, by the desire of human beings to have their fundamental dignity recognised by other human beings and that modern democracy emerges when equal dignity, not the dignity of the master, but the mutual recognition of equal dignity, is achieved.” 

Michael Sandel, a leading political philosopher and celebrated author of “The Tyranny of Merit,” argues along similar lines. As he in The Atlantic, any “serious response to working-class frustrations must combat condescension and credentialist prejudice. It must also put the dignity of work at the center of the political agenda.” In the , Sandel cited data chronicling the decline of �������������’s white working class, many of whom have simply fallen out of the labor market, as if “defeated by the indignities of a labor market indifferent to their skills.” The data comes from Isabel Sawhill’s on what she calls “the forgotten Americans.”  They are the victims of the kind of “misrecognition” that Fraser has theorized. More often than not, they have given up, both with respect to the labor market and to life itself, succumbing to what Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have “deaths of despair.”

“White Trash”

These developments are not only highly unsettling. They also drastically demonstrate the central importance of recognition in the current period of hyperglobalization, accelerated innovation and automation, and run-away individualization. Under the circumstances, it is of paramount importance to bestow a modicum of visibility to the ignored and forgotten, to have their existence acknowledged.

Yet this is seldom the case. �������������’s “white trash” underclass is a case in point. Poor and, more often than not, addicted to opioids, structurally irrelevant as both producers and consumers, white trash epitomizes what is wrong with today’s politics of recognition and identity, laying bare its internal contradictions — if not its inherent hypocrisies. White trash might appear to be an American phenomenon but it is not. As Imogen Tyler has , the denigration of the white, socially marginalized underclass is also prevalent in Britain, reflected in the notion of the “chav,” a ubiquitous term of abuse for the white poor. In fact, over the past two decades, “chavs” increasingly became a prevalent comedy , exposing poor whites to ridicule and opprobrium by urban elites.

This suggests that the struggle for recognition, as Fraser has affirmed, is an all-encompassing, comprehensive struggle based on an inclusive notion of hurt and grievances. On this reading, the struggle for recognition and dignity cannot be divorced from the struggle for redistribution or, for that matter, the struggle for equal participation. This, of course, is hardly a new idea. As early as 1918, Max Weber distinguished between three distinct but interrelated foundations of social inequality: resources, power and status. The latter refers to “inequality based on differences in honor, esteem, and respect.” As Stanford sociologist Cecilia Ridgeway has , we tend to forget “how much people care about public acknowledgement of their worth.” Yet they tend to “care about status quite as intensely as they do [about] money and power.” They want “to be someone.”

Historically, this was one of the main selling points of populist leaders, including Juan Peron in Argentina. Peron, who served two terms as president before his death in 1974, workers and the poor and dispossessed “their own voice and a new sense of their relevance.” This was a particular concern of his wife, Evita, who “was instrumental in transforming the sense of identity of the workers and the poor, and in doing so she helped them gain a sense of their own ‘dignity’, as she frequently repeated.”

As Carlos de la Torre, a leading specialist on Latin American populism, has it, populism is “a politics of cultural and symbolic recognition of the despised underclasses. It transforms the humiliations that the rabble, the uncultured, the unseen, and those who have no voice have to endure in their daily life into sources of dignity and even redemption.” 

Unfortunately, in today’s world, many people are denied the right to be someone. As Senator Bernie Sanders with respect to rural Americans, “there is not an appreciation of rural America or the values of rural America, the sense of community that exists in rural America.” He added: [S]omehow or another, the intellectual elite does have, in some cases, a contempt for the people who live in rural America. I think we’ve got to change that attitude and start focusing on the needs of people in rural America, treat them with respect, and understand there are areas there are going to be disagreements, but we can’t treat people with contempt.” 

Unfortunately, this is has happened too often, not only in the United States but also in Europe. Social justice, however, can only be achieved if everyone is brought on board.

Equal Rights

There are myriad examples of how these dimensions of social justice are inextricably linked. Take, for instance, the struggle for women’s equal rights. In Germany, until 1958, women were not allowed — by law — to open their own bank account without the explicit permission of their husbands. In other words, it was the men who disposed of the money women brought into the marriage and the money they earned while married. In the United States, until the mid-1970s, banks could to issue unmarried women a credit card. If they were married, their husbands were required to cosign.  

Germany and the United States are not alone. In 1979, a British general practitioner refused to give former Labour MP a prescription for contraception on the grounds that she was unmarried. In Switzerland, it took until 1971 for women to be granted the right to vote. Swiss men were largely opposed, as were many Swiss women. The why Switzerland agreed to accord women the right to vote was that the country wanted to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. For this to happen, women’s suffrage was a sine qua non, much to the chagrin of Swiss men. In fact, it took for the last Swiss canton (Appenzell Innerrhoden) to allow its female citizens to vote. Each of these cases confirmed Simone de Beauvoir’s conclusion that women constituted the “second sex.” No wonder the Vatican added her treatise to the index of prohibited books. 

These examples illustrate the notion that the way in which humans are recognized — or not — has important consequences, material and otherwise. Take the case of gay rights. It took until 1987 for homosexuality to no longer be categorized as some kind of “” in the United States. It took three more years for the World Health Organization (WHO) to follow suit. It took another few decades for the WHO to stop gender incongruency as a behavioral and mental disorder. As noted, “the denigration of non-normative sexualities … helps to sustain the maldistribution of resources ranging from health care to police protection.”

In fact, take the more recent case of “welfare chauvinism,” which has led to attempts by Western European governments to limit access to social benefits for migrants and refugees while favoring the “native-born.” More often than not, the poor do not vote. Why should they? Nobody cares about them anyway.

“Deplorables” in America

Unfortunately but not unexpectedly — here, Fukuyama is right — the political right have, in recent years, hijacked identity politics in the service of division and polarization, driven by resentment and mutual recrimination. A paradigmatic example is the American tea party movement. One of its was that welfare programs went “to ‘undeserving’ immigrants, minorities, and youth” instead of “hardworking” Americans.

An even more outrageous example is a statement made by Idaho State Representative Priscilla Giddings, who recently for Idaho’s universities. She claimed that state lawmakers “don’t want funds expended for courses, programs, services, or trainings that confer support for extremist ideologies, such as those tied to social justice.” Giddings, a member of the Republican Party, also a bill in the Idaho legislature that would have released a federal grant designed to support the development of Idaho’s early childhood care and education system. She was particularly incensed that the program was aligned with a nonprofit organization that in its national catalog stated that “whiteness … confers privilege, as does being male” and that the organization “supports a ‘social justice curriculum.’” Giddings did not believe, she stated, “that you are privileged based on your gender or your race.” The bill failed, depriving Idaho’s children of much-needed funds.

Donald Trump, the former US president, built on this base during his first election campaign. To a large extent, he appealed to grievances not met by the dominant politics of recognition, which has tended to privilege minorities while dismissing the plight of the underprivileged, as long as they happen to be white. In 2016, he made restoring dignity to American workers a central trope of his speeches. When Hillary Clinton famously Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables,” he responded that, for him, they were “hard‐working American patriots who love your country and want a better future for all of our people.” But above all else, Trump said, they were Americans, “entitled to leadership that honors you, cherishes you, and defends you.” He added: “Every American is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect in our country.” In the election, around of white voters without a college degree voted for Trump.

There can be no doubt that in recent decades, the question of recognition and dignity has become central in the politics of advanced liberal democracies. A prime example is the notion of multiculturalism, which presumes that all cultures are equal but different. In the process, the question of economic justice has taken somewhat of a back seat, to the detriment of those who have been struggling to keep afloat in an atmosphere of rapidly increasing economic uncertainty.

One result has been an upsurge in support for political parties. Such parties have been astute in exploiting widespread popular resentment in the service of an exclusionary nativist notion of deservedness based on ethnicity or cultural compatibility. Unfortunately, too often the left have given up on their traditional electoral base, leaving the field wide open for the pied pipers of the radical, populist right. The radical right have promoted themselves as the advocates of ordinary people, claiming to give them a voice and a modicum of visibility and a sense of empowerment.

Pandora’s Box

The success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the regions that comprise the former East Germany is a case in point. As Jennifer Yoder, a professor at Colby College, , support for the AfD in Saxony and Thuringia — strongholds for the party — is to a large extent the expression of a “revenge of the East.” As she pointed out, it reflects a profound sense among easterners of “not being taken seriously,” of never being asked what they think.  At the same time, it illustrates the perception “that one’s own status now and in the future is at risk.” It is this combination of the subjective experience of a lack of recognition and materially-related anxieties with regard to the future that has proved a powerful motivation for supporting a political party that purports to speak for both the mental state and the interests of the eastern German population.

Germany is hardly a unique case. The claim to take ordinary people seriously, to give visibility to the forgotten and invisible has been a major selling point of radical, right-wing populists — from Marine Le Pen to Donald Trump. In its election program for the 1985 election, the National Front in France declared that the “dignity of the French people” was one of its priorities. This was at a time of profound disillusionment among French workers over President Francois Mitterrand’s radical reversal of economic policy — aka tournant de la rigueur — of 1983.  Above all, rigueur meant austerity and subservience to Germany’s stringent monetary policy, which left French workers in the cold. Hardly surprising, in the years and decades that followed, many of them found a new home in Le Pen’s National Front.

It might seem that the politics of recognition and diversity has opened Pandora’s box. To a certain extent, this is true. There is no good reason to recognize the suffering of ethnic, sexual and religious minorities at the hands of the majority, while dismissing the suffering of significant parts of the majority. White trash, as I have previously argued, might be white, but it is still dismissed and denigrated as “trash.” In this case, white privilege not only becomes meaningless, but it serves as an insult, adding to denigration and misrecognition, to use Fraser’s term.

Hardly surprising, the “deplorables,” to use Clinton’s term, overwhelmingly came out in support of Trump, who, as Clinton suggested, “lifted them up.” To be sure, Clinton meant that Trump reaffirmed their sexist, racist and homophobic views. Yet it could also mean that those who voted for Trump were — perhaps for the first time ever — given a sense that they existed, were “visible” and that they counted.  

Le Pen, after being elected as the leader of the French radical, populist right, made the politics of recognition central to her project. In 2011, a few months before the presidential election, she as the candidate of “la France des invisibles,” of all those citizens who never merit being mentioned, who are forgotten, who are — as she put it — “des triples riens.” The notion is an allusion to the triple-A ratings bestowed by international agencies on the creditworthiness of states — the main obsession, or so Le Pen maintained, of France’s political and economic elite.

Le Pen failed to advance to the second round of the presidential election, which ended in a duel between Sarkozy and Hollande. In 2017, she made it to the second round but lost to Emmanuel Macron. Yet Le Pen’s politics of recognition had clearly hit a nerve, as did her adoption of a socioeconomic project that promised to expand the French welfare state; though this was under the that the expansion would only be for the French.

Same Boat

The French case is neither unique nor limited to the radical, populist right. In Denmark, for instance, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, has similar propositions, many of them adopted from the country’s far right. In today’s world, it appears that both recognition and redistribution only work if they are associated with a large dose of exclusion. Unfortunately, “identity politics” has turned into a zero-sum game. More often than not, the result has been more resentment and even less willingness to listen to the other side. The remarks by State Representative Giddings is paradigmatic of these trends. This kind of politics can only exacerbate social tension and increase polarization, in the process diminishing chances for moving forward.

A progressive politics based on an honest assessment of the multiple crises we face today can only succeed if it includes all sectors of society, independent of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and material circumstances. It might sound a bit trite, but we are all sitting in the same boat. It would be a tragic mistake to throw some passengers overboard for the simple reason that they are deemed not to belong. 

*[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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Reading through the variety of testimony from all sides concerning this act of war, the one thing that appears to be missing in the various accounts is an inkling of the substance known as “facts.” There appear to be crimes, though even that isn’t clear, and there are suspects, which is even less clear. Suspicion reigns while facts remain hidden. Politico invokes “suspected directed-energy attacks on U.S. government personnel worldwide.” CNN begins one with this sentence: “A briefing on suspected energy attacks on US intelligence officers turned contentious last week.”

For the moment, there are no energy attacks, merely “suspected” attacks. This is a news story hoping that facts will emerge to substantiate it. In such cases, it may be wise for the reader to begin by suspecting those who are telling the story. Who doesn’t remember the Bush administration’s suspicion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction? The government, dutifully seconded by The New York Times and other respectable outlets, dared to present that suspicion as a fact. The Bush administration even put Colin Powell to stage at the United Nations General Assembly with a tawdry dog-and-pony show. Alas, the world soon learned there were no facts.

For a Few Billion Dollars More

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This time around, to its credit, The Times has ignored CNN’s scoop. That alone makes the story not only sound suspicious but suspect. The Times has, after all, been known to deliberately ignore real news items it doesn’t want the public to know or simply think about. Politico seems to believe that former Trump appointee Christopher Miller knows what he’s talking about. Their reporters, Lara Seligman and Andrew Desiderio, appear impressed by the fact that Miller only had to listen to one witness to penetrate the mystery: “As soon as the official described his symptoms, Miller knew right away that they had been caused by a directed-energy weapon.”

Before his appointment in the waning months of the Trump administration, Miller had occupied the post of director of the National Counterterrorism Center and was a longtime stalwart of the Defense Department as well as a defense contractor. He’s no softy. He began his career as a Green Beret. As a soldier, government official and private contractor, he understands the interest of playing the bureaucracy for strategic advantage. That knowledge helps to explain his goal with the media, which Politico describes as the wish “to create a bureaucratic momentum to get the interagency to take this more seriously.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Bureaucratic momentum:

The conserved force or energy of an otherwise inert body that, if it manages to move, its impetus will in most cases propel it in anything but the right direction

Contextual Note

It should be noted that in the lead-up to the notorious January 6 storming of the Capitol, Miller has been for “placing some extremely unusual limits on National Guard forces for that event.” Why would CNN, after spending the last four years vehemently denouncing everything to do with Donald Trump, suddenly take such an interest in a Trump loyalist who shows obvious signs of being a self-interested member of the military-industrial complex? Could it be simply the fact that he “suspects” Russia? Or could it be CNN’s own loyalty to the military-industrial complex?

The “Havana syndrome” has been making headlines since 2016, even though it was scientifically debunked once in early 2019. Whether that debunking truly accounts for the various reported cases remains an open question. There is enough ambiguity stemming from the various reports to incite a discerning reporter to remain attentive to developments. But developments generally require facts.

A closer look at the language they use reveals just how vapid and baseless CNN’s and Politico’s narrative appear to be. CNN begins its April 29 by evoking “mysterious, invisible attacks that have led to debilitating symptoms.” Fear is clearly in the air, but not much else. Beyond the fact that suspicions abound, we learn from CNN’s May 4 that “senators demanded more information about the mysterious incidents from the CIA and accountability for how the agency has handled them.” 

In other words, nobody knows much, and whatever knowledge exists has probably been mishandled or manipulated. This might appear to be the perfect occasion for the journalists to dig deeper into the bureaucratic processes. It could helpfully reveal how dysfunctional the system is. Instead, they have chosen to skim the surface and paint the story as an intriguing mystery. 

What Shakespeare’s Prospero once called “the baseless fabric of this vision” continues as we learn that “the Pentagon and other agencies probing the matter have reached no clear conclusions.” We are immediately invited to believe that an attack that “might have taken place so close to the White House is particularly alarming.” What “might have taken place” is far more interesting than facts, as borne out in the following sentence: “Rumors have long swirled around Washington about similar incidents within the United States.” What would CNN do without rumors? CNN then reminds us that we know nothing since “investigators have not determined whether the puzzling incidents at home are connected to those that have occurred abroad or who may be behind them.”

The logic continues with the enlightening piece of information that “it was possible Russia was behind the attacks, but they did not have enough information to say for sure.” As Sherlock Holmes once said, “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Russia’s agency is not impossible, so it must be the truth.

The article continues with more non-knowledge, such as this: “Intelligence and defense officials have been reluctant to speak publicly about the strange incidents.” In the May 4 article, this vital uncertainty is revealed: “The briefers — who were members of the CIA task force looking into the attacks — did not provide a clear timeline of when certain information had been discovered and why it was only being shared with the senators then.”

At least Politico believes that certainty will inevitably emerge. It notes Miller’s concern for the fate of American personnel overseas: “If this plays out and somebody is attacking Americans [even] with a nonlethal weapon … we owe it to our folks that are out there. We owe it to them to get to the bottom of this.” As far as journalism goes, we have hit rock bottom.

Historical Note

This reporting tells us much more about the recent evolution of the news media in the US than it does about the events it purports to describe. Why in the space of a week did CNN’s Kylie Atwood and Jeremy Herb dedicate two extensive stories to a tale of paranoia that even The New York Times — certainly as committed to Russiagate as CNN — chose to ignore?

Many commentators have held forth recently on the slow but apparently accelerating degradation of the news business in the US in recent decades. Matt Taibbi, who worked for over a decade as an investigative journalist has been among the on the still-unfolding disaster at the core of US journalism. He points to the obvious root of the evil, stating that “the financial incentives encourage it.”

CNN’s and Politico’s coverage of this pseudo-event demonstrates one of the corollaries of Taibbi’s axiom concerning financial incentive. Fear and mystery — whether focused on direct-energy weapons or UFOs — are far more compelling for readers and viewers than facts and lucid analysis. Such stories also encourage serial reporting, recycling the same content over and over again. At least there’s less and less mystery concerning that basic truth about how the media operates.

*[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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Charismatic Leadership and the Far Right

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There is no persuasive argument to suggest that this model will not apply to 21^st-century superpowers. On the one hand, the MAGA bluster and noisy and intimidating rhetoric and associated violence that have typified the US radical right in recent years — especially since Donald Trump’s election in 2016 — could be regarded simply as the radical right being themselves (conforming to stereotypes). On the other hand, it also suggests fear-based defensive posturing at the dawning realization that US exceptionalism is not guaranteed amidst the inexorable rise of China.

As US global power declines, will radical-right assertions and objectives based on assumptions of US exceptionalism look increasingly absurd and unachievable? Will a wounded and inherently paranoid radical right become even more reactionary and dangerous? Is an ineffectual Republican Party, the “sick man” of American politics, a prime target for a radical-right coup?

The US Exceptionalism Belief

According to researcher Hilde Eliassen Restad — and discussed by this in “The New Authoritarianism: A Risk Analysis of the Alt-Right Phenomenon” — the of US exceptionalism that has existed since WWII encompasses three essential elements. First, the United States is both different to and better than the rest of the world, not just Europe and the “Old World.” Second, the US enjoys a unique role in world history as the prime leader of nations. Third, it is the only nation in history that has thwarted, and will continue to thwart, the laws of history in its rise to power, which will never decline.

These elements underscore a belief that US superiority and superpower status are warranted and inevitable in every respect. This supremacist belief is embedded in US radical-right ideology. The US exceptionalism thesis does not allow the US to accept a primus inter pares role in relation to Russia and China, for example. Trump’s radical-right of US exceptionalism slogans such as “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” the rejection of diverse and allegedly un-American ideas such as multilateralism and universal health care, the repudiation of ethnoreligious equality in favor of white Christian nationalism, and unilateral actions against other countries. Such action included military strikes against Iranian and Syrian targets, sanctions on Iran, Syria, Russia and China, and ethnoreligious discrimination against citizens of Muslim-majority countries.

Perhaps the most salient element of the US exceptionalism doctrine, as projected by the Trump administration, was that of infinite, undiminished, dominant US power literally forever. However, such a doctrine defies the laws of history, which assume a population ecology of nation-states in which nations grow, mature and eventually decline. As this author has previously out, implicit in this model is the life-cycle concept and the inevitability of eventual decline. In 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe the concept in their study of US history and its likely future in the 21^st century.

Nevertheless, Trump and the US radical right believe that the US will always be the dominant global power and that no other nation will ever overtake and replace it. Increasingly, this faith-based belief is being challenged by China on all main parameters — economic, military, political, science and technology — and by Trump’s abject mismanagement and absent leadership during the COVID-19 crisis.

In particular, Trump’s anti-Chinese rhetoric and various attempts to challenge an expansionist China clearly demonstrate US anxiety that its perceived exceptional mantle is not guaranteed. Under the Trump administration, the US banned Huawei 5G technology over what it perceived as a national security threat. Washington has also sent naval to the Far East to challenge Beijing’s claim to large tracts of the South China Sea, including islands under the sovereignty of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam

Exceptionalism vs. Military and Diplomatic Failures

Both the veracity and validity of US exceptionalism have also been challenged by military and diplomatic failures. For example, the inevitable collapse of the Iranian regime and/or its compliance with US demands never materialized. This is despite the aggressive bombast of Trump and his courtiers, the imposition of additional US sanctions on Iran, the from the nuclear deal in 2018, the of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020 by a US drone strike and bellicose statements implying an war.

US failures in foreign policy toward the Middle East are encapsulated in a 2020 for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The report argues that US assumptions about its exceptional status and entitlement to dictate a “new world order,” which includes its domination of the region, are both misguided and not fit for purpose. “Preventing hostile hegemony in the Middle East does not mean the United States must play the role of hegemon itself,” the report states.

The report advocates a new holistic paradigm based on regional security and multilateral relations, in which US bilateral relations with countries in the Middle East are determined by regional security, rather than the latter being a constant casualty of individual bilateral interests. US foreign policy in the Middle East has failed to achieve its purpose. Diplomatically and militarily, the US was pushed out of Syria and marginalized by Russian and Iranian alliances with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. Under Trump, Washington could not force Iran to capitulate to its nuclear and other demands. In Yemen, the US-backed Saudi military offensive against the Houthis rebels was unsuccessful. Finally, a US attempt to introduce an imposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would have negated UN resolutions on Palestinian nationhood went nowhere.

The formal opening of diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel in August 2020 is a positive development and one likely to benefit US foreign policy assumptions to some extent. Yet it also underscores the likelihood that the UAE sees mutual defense advantages against Iran as more important than its support for the Palestinians. However, popular support for such a position among Arab nations is not guaranteed, and such negativity may prove troublesome for Arab governments. In addition, the apparent enthusiasm for better relations with Israel may mask an overriding fear in the UAE and Saudi Arabia that without Israeli involvement, the US may embark on a strategic military from the region, which would make them vulnerable to any Iranian machinations.

A Prognosis

These collective failures also indicate that US supremacy and purported exceptionalism are in decline. Those countries that have relied heavily on American supremacy for support and protection — whether diplomatic, military, economic or psychological — against enemies or predatory regimes may have to consider new security-and-defense policies and arrangements in the medium to long term. This applies not just in relation to the Middle East, but also to Southeast Asia that faces Chinese expansionism and European members of NATO that endured repeated threats by Trump about reduced funding for the alliance and even American withdrawal. However, the Biden administration is likely to herald a return to traditional US support for NATO, at least in the short term. Yet the prospect of some future radical-right presidency may see a return to a review of American support for NATO.

Nevertheless, the US decline will be a long-drawn-out process throughout the 21^st century, rather than a rapid collapse. The capacity of the US to try to maintain its superpower status should not be underestimated. There will be moments of temporary rally and some periods of hardly noticeable decline, but overall, the downward trend will be inescapable. No nation can defy the laws of history and their underlying life-cycle and population ecology models. While “forever” is a long, long time, in historical terms, nations have a more limited term. Whether, as other declining imperial and quasi-imperial nations have done over the millennia, the US will learn to adapt and find a new role in an evolving world order remains to be seen.

Over the rest of this century, the US radical right are likely to continue with their egregious ideology and activities. On the one hand, they are likely to be in denial about the US decline. Yet on the other, they will probably take advantage where they can by offering themselves as the nation’s only viable savior from, or antidote to, such decline. Ominously, like a terrified dangerous animal trying to avoid being caged and subdued, the radical right are also increasingly likely to engage inside the US in ever more audacious and violent behavior designed to scare and cow moderates or challengers and even to subjugate mainstream political parties and representative democracy.

Expect to see, for example, the GOP turned from a mainstream, one-nation, conservative party into a nakedly authoritarian radical-right party akin to the AfD in Germany, Fidesz in Hungary and other populist far-right parties — all courtesy of Trump and his Republican fifth columnists in Congress. Expect to also see an increase in online and social media attacks as well as physical violence against radical-right targets, whether political, institutional, ethnoreligious minorities or other vulnerable groups. The violent insurrection on Capitol Hill in January, and other radical-right plots to abduct or even murder prominent politicians and officials, is part of the “new normal.”

*[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 Winners and Losers of Israel’s Normalization Deal With Morocco

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This is just the beginning. Blinken’s predecessor, Mike Pompeo, left what many consider to be an on the world stage, and Secretary Blinken could hardly have inherited his department at a more crucial moment. However, between his on the US relationship with China and Russia, Blinken must also give top priority to a lesser-known foreign policy debacle simmering in North Africa: the Western Sahara conflict. Thanks to the Trump administration’s shortsighted acts, this conflict now directly threatens US regional diplomacy and has turned more dangerous than ever.

Trouble in the Sahara

The trouble first began in Western Sahara in the 1970s, when Spain decolonized the territory following pressure from the United States. Neighboring Morocco held secret negotiations with Madrid to take over half of Western Sahara, with the other half going to Mauritania. These plans leaked, to the ire of the Polisario Front, a nationalist rebel group in Western Sahara, and its military wing began a 16-year guerrilla war that ensnared Morocco, Mauritania, Spain, Algeria, France, Libya and the US. Tens of thousands of people died.

Officially, the fighting concluded in 1991 with a UN-brokered ceasefire agreement, which created the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) to facilitate a solution. Three decades later, that solution has yet to appear, and opportunistic decisions by the Trump administration have now thrown even the ceasefire into doubt.

In fact, hostilities resumed on Trump’s watch. In November 2020, the Polisario Front began in the border zone of Guerguerat. In response, Moroccan troops launched a military operation to secure local roads, resulting in sporadic shooting matches and casualties along the berm — a 1,700-mile-long sand barrier Morocco built to contain opposing forces. Polisario top brass immediately condemned the move, the end of the UN ceasefire. The situation appeared incredibly fragile.

Then in swooped President Trump with the Abraham Accords. Capping off a spate of victories that diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, Trump focused his energies on securing the support of Morocco. Rabat agreed to the terms on December 10, in exchange for the United States to Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which became the only country in the world ever to do so.

Diplomatically, Morocco’s participation in the accords won Trump another round of praise from supporters of the state of Israel, to say nothing of Trump’s longtime ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But strategically, the Abraham Accords sent a far sharper message in North Africa: Stop the violence. The move to back Moroccan claims of sovereignty signaled �������������’s commitment to invest greater security resources in Morocco, including in regional peacekeeping to tamp down the Western Sahara conflict. It restyles American support as a high-stakes tripwire in the Maghreb, not to be crossed by either the Polisario Front or Rabat.

Tripwire

The US International Development Finance Corporation’s $5 billion in Morocco, as well as former US Ambassador to Morocco David Fischer’s of a consulate in Dakhla, Western Sahara, began enforcing this tripwire. Nevertheless, this did not stop Polisario fighters from causing in Guerguerat on January 24, launching four rockets at Moroccan targets overnight. Moroccan and American forces dramatically outnumber the rebels in both numbers and weapons, making the January flare-up stunning. However, by disregarding the US conditions and striking Morocco, the Polisario Front has made good on its threats to resume its armed struggle, imperiling both American activities and regional stability in the process.

First, the Polisario Front will likely launch a campaign of low-level tactical aggression in key southern zones, which will force a Moroccan response through either political pressure or military channels. This could lead Morocco to threaten military action. Such a provocation would almost certainly inflame nationalist zeal in Morocco — to which is key — and immediately complicate the US role in Dakhla. Finally, Washington will be faced with an awful choice. It will be forced to either support a hawkish, emboldened Morocco or talk Rabat into a position of non-action that will be extremely unpopular domestically and may give a green light to the Polisario Front to wage even broader campaigns.

In other words, the rocket launches in Guerguerat were not wanton decisions by a flailing guerrilla force. They were calculated, deliberate acts by the Polisario Front to test the US tripwire in Dakhla. They drive Washington to the extreme options of reining in its historical ally, sanctioning a new, Morocco-led war in Western Sahara or committing US forces to preserve peace and deal with the problem itself. Put simply, the tripwire failed, and the Polisario Front deftly called �������������’s bluff. With Trump-era actions laying the groundwork for present developments, the Polisario’s actions effectively begin a broader strategy to weaken the collective defense elements of the US-Morocco alliance.

By injecting himself into the Western Sahara fiasco, with no hindsight or understanding of its history, Trump planted diplomatic and strategic landmines that the Biden administration will need to work tirelessly to defuse. Worse, the former president’s actions have sucked Washington into the unenviable position of enforcing an accidental red line in North Africa, one that the Polisario Front has already, gleefully, crossed. And if Joe Biden sends in troops, it will serve only to raise the ghosts of Vietnam: another drawn-out, faraway engagement in which the United States holds no legitimate best interest.

Secretary Blinken must do more than take “a hard look” at the Abraham Accords. He must rescind the State Department’s recognition of Moroccan control over Western Sahara and allow MINURSO to continue its work. He must renegotiate the Western Sahara provisions of the accords — which former Secretary of State , former National Security Adviser , Senator and Western Sahara expert have all denounced as mistaken — and join President Biden in rescinding Trump’s proclamation on the topic. He must scrap plans to build a US consulate in Dakhla, and, unless he wants to entangle our troops in an unnecessary foreign incursion, he must do it at once. The stability of North Africa depends upon it.

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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“What was most impressive, on first contact with Codreanu, was his physical appearance. Nobody could pass him by without noticing him, without being attracted by his look, without asking who he was. His public appearance provoked curiosity. This young man seemed a god descended among mortals … Looking at him, you felt dazed. His face exercised an irresistible fascination. He was a ‘living manifesto’, as the Legionaries used to call him.”

Such a description, highlighting an emotive, passionate and even irrational bond between a fascist and his leader, is a typical expression of the charismatic leader dynamic. Though this is an important phenomenon to consider, it can also sometimes be rather lazily used as an essential component of the far right and needs to be used with care.

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When surveying the emergence of terms such as charisma, charismatic leadership and so forth, it is impossible not to start with the founding sociologist Max Weber. He argued that political legitimacy came in three varieties: traditional, legal bureaucratic and charismatic. Traditional authority operates through customs providing validity to a leader’s decisions, such as with a monarchy; legal bureaucratic works through an impersonal system of rules providing authority, such as within a liberal democracy; and charisma, meaning “gift of grace,” sees authority emanating from the extraordinary nature of a leader, as understood by followers. For Sima, Codreanu clearly evoked the latter.

Weber added some further nuances to his concept as well. In particular, he wrote of the sense of mission that a charismatic leader evokes, a cause shared by his or her followers, giving their charisma a sense of purpose. For those who do not share this mission, such leaders are unlikely to hold much charismatic appeal. The leader generates their sense of having special qualities by, effectively, becoming a living embodiment of a passionately held cause. They do this as they, somehow or other, go beyond that of others who share the same sense of mission.

Charismatic bonds between leader and follower are not created by a leader alone but are a phenomenon that emerges from the shared, affective dimension between leaders and followers. As Ann Ruth Willner : “[C]harisma is defined in terms of people’s perceptions of and responses to a leader. It is not what the leader is but what people see the leader as that counts in generating the charismatic relationship.”

The Duce

Charisma has been a term applied to many fascist leaders. Emilio Gentile, in Modern Italy in 1998, uses Weber’s approach to examine Benito Mussolini’s charisma as emanating from his political mission. He concludes that the Duce experienced periods of greater and lesser charismatic appeal: Firstly as a socialist leader before the First World War, then as a leader of a new radical nationalist movement urging Italy to enter the war, and then once again his charisma grew during the rise of the fascist movement in Italy. Charisma was not a constant, but something that could grow and wane.

Of course, Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich has been a particular focus for charismatic leadership. John Breuilly, in Nations and Nationalism in 2011, states that charismatic leadership was not typical of all nationalist movements, but was common in fascists such as Codreanu, Mussolini and particularly Hitler. The interwar German conditions were unique. As he explains, in modern-day contexts, “it is the product of massive breakdowns of impersonal forms of modern authority that opens up a particular space, although there has to be someone capable of filling that space and, in Hitler’s case, a unique sequence of events leading to charismatic power.”

Aristotle Kallis, in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions in 2006, also critically engages with Weber’s model and explains the need to differentiate between the leadership cults of movements and regimes, and their ability to foster of a genuine charismatic community. The former did not guarantee the latter, and an authentic charismatic community was only partially developed even in the Third Reich. Even here, Kallis stresses that Weber’s other forms of authority — traditional and legal — continued to hold some influence.

Roger Eatwell developed another influential analysis of fascist charismatic leadership, building critically on Weber’s model. Writing in The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right in 2018, he that as well as mission and personal presence, charismatic leaders promote a Manichean division of the world to help legitimize their emotive bonds with followers. Moreover, he stresses the need to consider the role of charismatic leadership at the level of the coterie, focusing on how the phenomenon helps bind together radical political groups.

The question regarding the continued importance of charismatic leadership in more recent populist parties has also been much discussed. Duncan McDonnell an essay in Political Studies that explores charisma at the level of the coterie, focusing on perceptions of charisma amongst populist party members, both elected officials as well as grassroots activists. His approach urges care in applying the term, while by examining interviews with party coteries, he helpfully exemplifies how charisma needs to be studied through assessing the interactions between leaders and followers. As well as concluding that Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Switzerland’s Christoph Blocher were partial charismatic leaders, he concludes that Umberto Bossi was an archetypal charismatic leader of the Northern League — yet this meant his downfall caused the Italian party much damage as a consequence.

Whether charismatic leadership is an essential component of populism has also been debated. Takis S. Pappas, in the Routledge International Handbook of Charisma, states that “populism and charismatic leadership are inescapably interrelated and should always be studied conjoinedly.” Contrastingly, in The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, Cas Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasse that populism is a complex, variegated phenomenon with many forms of leadership; charismatic leaders are one among various styles among populists, which can even include no leader at all. The latter point seems to echo the cautionary use of the term among historians of fascism. Notably, Roger Griffin resisted using charisma as a defining aspect of fascism in his influential model of the ideology.

The Short Shelf Life of Charisma

Nevertheless, some of the most striking figures in recent years in the far right have been charismatic in their style. Donald Trump, the former US president, powerfully unleashed a form of charismatic leadership as he generated an affective bond between himself as a leader and a wider following through a shared sense of mission. However, even this mission does have a shelf life and will not last forever, as his election defeat in 2020 suggests.

I wrote a short for The Guardian in 2019 reflecting on Trump as a charismatic leader and predicted a decline in his charismatic appeal over time. Some waning of his charisma has clearly occurred since then, although the study of charisma shows us the phenomenon can ebb and flow. Trump, after all, retains great influence within the Republican Party and continues to enjoy a widespread aura of infallibility among a largescale movement that supports his mission and sees him in emotive, superlative ways.

As a historian, I leave it to others to predict where this may go in the next few years, but more widely, the relationship between the populist and fascist right and charismatic leaders is both complex and ongoing. For those studying this in the coming years, it is important to focus on the limits of the charisma model as well as its strengths, and it is unhelpful if used to try to explain everything. It is also crucial to consider how people project onto leaders a perception of them as charismatic. After all, charisma does not come from a leader alone — it is projected onto him or her by others. Without this atmosphere, such leaders often have little else to offer. 

*[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 Charismatic Leadership and the Far Right appeared first on 51�Թ�.

For four years, Americans had to deal with a similar sonic blast, namely the “music” of President Donald Trump. His voice was everywhere: on TV and radio, screaming from the headlines of newspapers, pumped out nonstop on social media. MAGAmen and women danced to the repetitive beat of his lies and distortions. Everyone else experienced the nonstop assault of Trump’s instantly recognizable accent and intonations as nails on a blackboard. After the 2016 presidential election, psychologists observed a  uptick in the fears Americans had about the future. One clinician even dubbed the &�Բ�����;“Trump anxiety disorder.”

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The volume of Trump’s assault on the senses has decreased considerably since January. Obviously, he no longer has the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to broadcast his views. The mainstream media no longer covers his every utterance. Most importantly, the major social media platforms have banned him. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Twitter  Trump permanently under its glorification of violence policy. Facebook made the same decision, though its oversight board is now  the former president’s deplatforming.

It’s not only Trump. The Proud Boys, QAnon, the militia movements: The social media footprint of the far right has decreased a great deal in 2021, with a  decline in the amount of misinformation available on the Web.

And it’s not just a problem of misinformation and hate speech. According to a new by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on domestic terrorism, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots and 91 fatalities since 2015, with the number of incidents rising in 2020 to a height unseen in a quarter of a century. A large number of the perpetrators are loners who have formed their beliefs from social media. As one counterterrorism official put it, “Social media has afforded absolutely everything that’s bad out there in the world the ability to come inside your home.”

So, why did the tech giants provide Trump, his extremist followers and their global counterparts unlimited access to a growing audience over those four long years?

Facebook Helps Trump

In a new report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), Heidi Beirich and Wendy Via : “For years, Trump violated the community standards of several platforms with relative impunity. Tech leaders had made the affirmative decision to allow exceptions for the politically powerful, usually with the excuse of ‘newsworthiness’ or under the guise of ‘political commentary’ that the public supposedly needed to see.”

Even before Trump became president, Facebook was cutting him a break. In 2015, he was using the social media platform to promote a Muslim travel ban, which generated considerable controversy, particularly within Facebook itself. The Washington Post :

“Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said.”

But the company’s most prominent Republican, Vice-President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, persuaded Zuckerberg to change his position. In spring 2016, when Zuckerberg wanted to condemn Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, he was again persuaded to step back for fear of seeming too partisan.

Facebook went on to play a critical role in getting Trump elected. It wasn’t simply the Russian campaign to create fake accounts, fake messaging and even fake events using Facebook, or the theft of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica. More important was the role played by Facebook staff in helping Trump’s digital outreach team maximize its use of social media. The Trump campaign  $70 million on Facebook ads and raised much of its $250 million in online fundraising through Facebook as well.

Trump established a new paradigm through brute force and money. As he turned himself into clickbait, the social media giants applied the same “exceptionalism” to other rancid politicians. More ominously, the protection accorded politicians extended to extremists. According to an of a discussion at a Twitter staff meeting, one employee explained that “on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist ����DZ貹�����Ի岹.”

Of course, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, social media organizations decided that society could indeed accept the banning of politicians, at least when it came to some politicians in the United States.

The Real Fake News

In the Philippines, an extraordinary 97% of users had accounts with Facebookas of 2019, up from 40% in 2018 (by comparison, about  of Americans have Facebook accounts). Increasingly, Filipinos get their news from social media. That’s bad news for the mainstream media in the Philippines. And that’s particularly bad news for journalists like Maria Ressa, who runs an online news site called Rappler.

At a press conference for the GPAHE report, Ressa described how the government of Rodrigo Duterte, with an assist from Facebook, has made her life a living hell. Like Trump, President Duterte came to power on a populist platform spread through Facebook. Because of her critical reporting on government affairs, Ressa felt the ire of the Duterte fan club, which generated half a million hate posts that, according to one , consisted of 60% attacks on her credibility and 40% sexist and misogynist slurs. This onslaught created a bandwagon effect that equated journalists like her with criminals.

This noxious equation on social media turned into a real case when the Philippine authorities arrested Ressa in 2019 and convicted her of the dubious charge of “cyberlibel.” She  a sentence of as much as 100 years in prison.

“Our dystopian present is your dystopian future,” she observed. What happened in the Philippines in that first year of Duterte became the reality in the United States under Trump. It was the same life cycle of hate in which misinformation is introduced in social media, then imported into the mainstream media and supported from the top down by opportunistic politicians.

The Philippines faces another presidential election next year, and Duterte is barred from running again by term limits. Duterte’s daughter, who is currently the mayor of Davao City just like her father had been, tops the early polls, though she hasn’t thrown her hat in the ring and her father has  that women shouldn’t run for president. This time around, however, Facebook  the misinformation campaign tied to the Dutertes when it took down fake accounts coming from China that supported the daughter’s potential bid for the presidency.

President Duterte was furious. “Facebook, listen to me,” he . “We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us. Now, if government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country? What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you can’t help us?”

Duterte had been led to believe, based on his previous experience, that Facebook was his lapdog. Other authoritarian regimes had come to expect the same treatment. In India, according to the GPAHE , Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party:

“… was Facebook India’s biggest advertising spender in 2020. Ties between the company and the Indian government run even deeper, as the company has multiple commercial ties, including partnerships with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Women and the Board of Education. Both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have met personally with Modi, who is the most popular world leader on Facebook. Before Modi became prime minister, Zuckerberg even introduced his parents to him.”

Facebook has also cozied up to the right-wing government in Poland, helped get Jair Bolsonaro elected in Brazil, and the platform served as a vehicle for the Islamophobic content that contributed to the rise of the far right in the Netherlands. But the decision to ban Trump has set in motion a backlash. In Poland, for instance, the Law and Justice Party has  a law to fine Facebook and others for removing content if it doesn’t break Polish law, and a journalist has  to establish a pro-government alternative to Facebook called Albicla.

Back in the USA

Similarly, in the United States, the far right have suddenly become a big booster of free speech now that social media platforms have begun to deplatform high-profile users like Trump and take down posts for their questionable veracity and hate content. In the second quarter of 2020 alone, Facebook  22.5 million posts.

Facebook has tried to get ahead of this story by establishing an oversight board that includes members like Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia University; Julie Owono, executive director at Internet Sans Frontiere; and Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation. Now, Facebook  the board to remove content.

With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others now removing a lot of extremist content, the far right have migrated to other , such as Gab, Telegram, and MeWe. They continue to spread conspiracy theories, anti-COVID vaccine misinformation and pro-Trump propaganda on these alternative platforms. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd awaits the second coming of Trump in the form of a new social media platform that he plans to launch in a couple of  to remobilize his followers.

Even without such an alternative alt-right platform — Trumpbook? TrumpSpace? Trumper? — the life cycle of hate is still alive and well in the United States. Consider the “great replacement theory,” according to which immigrants and denizens of the non-white world are determined to “replace” white populations in Europe, America and elsewhere. Since its inception in France in 2010, this extremist conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media. It has been picked up by white nationalists and mass shooters. Now, in the second stage of the life cycle, it has landed in the mainstream media thanks to right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson, who recently , “The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

Pressure is  on Fox to fire Carlson, though the network is . Carlson and his supporters decry the campaign as yet another example of “cancel culture.” They insist on their First Amendment right to express unpopular opinions. But a privately-owned media company is under no obligation to air all views, and the definition of acceptability is constantly evolving.

Also, a deplatformed Carlson would still be able to air his crank views on the street corner or in emails to his followers. No doubt when Trumpbook debuts at some point in the future, Carlson’s biggest fan will also give him a digital megaphone to spread lies and hate all around the world. These talking heads will continue talking no matter what. The challenge is to progressively shrink the size of their global platform.

*[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.

The post The Spread of Global Hate appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The ICC Has Stepped on a Political Minefield in Palestine

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These supposed defenders of everyone’s right to voice opinions attempted to cancel an entire presidential election because it failed to produce their preferred result. They’ve spent decades trying to cancel voting rights (not to mention a wide variety of other rights). They’ve directed huge amounts of time and money to canceling social benefits for the least fortunate Americans. Throughout history, they’ve mounted campaigns to cancel specific individuals from Colin Kaepernick and Representative Ilhan Omar to the black lists of the McCarthy era. They’re also not above canceling entire groups of people, from the transgender community all the way back to the original sin of this country, namely the mass cancelation of Native Americans.

Then there’s foreign policy. The Trump administration never met an international agreement or institution — the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the World Health Organization — that it didn’t want to cover with “cancel” stamps.

One institution that has elicited particular ire from the far right has been the International Criminal Court (ICC). On April 2, the Biden administration took a step toward mending the rift between the United States and the ICC. It didn’t go far enough.

Blocking the International Criminal Court

In 2000, the Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court, which has focused on bringing to international justice the perpetrators of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and (beginning in 2017) crimes of aggression. In 2002, the Bush administration effectively unsigned the agreement and Congress pushed to shield all US military personnel from ICC prosecution. Although the Obama administration cooperated with the court, it was still about possible investigations into the US “war on terrorism.”

Ambivalence turned to outright hostility during the Trump years. National Security Adviser John Bolton made it his mission to attack the ICC as “ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous.” Among Bolton’s many spurious arguments about the court, he claimed that the body constitutes an assault on US sovereignty and the Constitution in particular, a favorite hobbyhorse of the loony right. But the “supremacy clause” of the US Constitution (, clause 2) already  the primacy of federal law over treaty obligations. So, can someone please get those supposed legal scholars to actually read the pocket constitutions they carry around so reverently?

Bolton’s off-base analysis came with a threat. “We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by U.S. law,” he . “We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.”

In 2020, the Trump administration began to implement Bolton’s attack plan by  sanctions against ICC officials. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior prosecution official Phakiso Mochochoko were placed under travel restrictions and an asset freeze because they were investigating possible US war crimes in Afghanistan. This blacklisting of ICC investigators sent a chilling signal that the United States would attempt, much like a rogue authoritarian country, to obstruct justice at an international level.

An equally vexing issue involves a war crimes investigation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Although the ICC investigators looked at atrocities committed by Israelis and Palestinians, both Israel and the US condemned the investigation, arguing that Israel isn’t an ICC member and so the international body lacks jurisdiction. The United States has made the same argument about the investigation into the conduct of American soldiers in Afghanistan, since the US is not a party to the ICC.

But the ICC’s jurisdiction is quite : it extends to crimes “committed by a State Party national, or in the territory of a State Party, or in a State that has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court.” Palestine, an ICC member since 2015, requested the investigation. And Afghanistan is also an ICC member.

Biden’s Response

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden  the Trump administration’s sanctions. European allies, in particular, were enthusiastic about this additional sign that the United States is rejoining the international community. “This important step underlines the US’s commitment to the international rules-based system,”&�Բ�����; EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

But the Biden administration’s move comes with an important caveat. In his statement on the lifting of the sanctions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken  that “we continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghan and Palestinian situations. We maintain our longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel.”

When it comes to the ICC, then, a disturbing bipartisan consensus has emerged on its supposed encroachment upon US sovereignty. It’s OK for the ICC to prosecute the actions of countries in the Global South, but hand’s off the big boys, a status the United States generously extends to Israel. In the Senate, Ben Cardin and Rob Portman put out a  last month criticizing the ICC’s investigation in Palestine, which attracted the support of 55 of their colleagues (down from 67 for a similar letter last year).

Together with Israel, the US continues to abide by an exceptionalism when it comes to international law that it shares with several dozen states, including quite a few that the United States generally doesn’t like to be associated with, such as North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, China, Egypt, Belarus and Nicaragua.

Of course, it hasn’t just been Bolton and a few outlaw states that have criticized the ICC. African countries in particular have accused the institution of bias. The Court has indeed opened investigations in a disproportionate number of African states: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Kenya, Libya and Uganda. Preliminary investigations also took place in Gabon, Guinea and Nigeria and were slated to start in Burundi. All of the  facing charges before the court are African.

In response to this perceived bias, the African Union, in 2017,  for a mass withdrawal of its members from the ICC. Burundi  the court that year, the first country in the world to do so (other countries, like the US and Russia, “withdrew” but hadn’t actually ratified the treaty in the first place). Two other countries that seemed on the verge of withdrawal, South Africa and Gambia, ultimately their minds.

Bias or Backbone?

The ICC was supposed to put an end to the era of imperial justice by which the winners determine who is guilty of war crimes, a bias that pervaded the Nuremberg trials. It has appointed judges and investigators from the Global South: Fatou Bensouda is Gambian, for instance, while Phakiso Mochochoko is from Lesotho. Still, the preponderance of investigations in Africa should give pause. The ICC has obviously had some difficulty making a transition to this new era. But let’s point out some obvious counter-arguments.

First, the ICC doesn’t have an anti-African bias. It discriminates against African dictators and warlords. If anything, the court has a pro-African bias by  up for the victims of violence in Africa. Other continents should be so lucky to have the ICC looking out for them. Second, the ICC has more recently begun to major powers, including Russia for its actions in Georgia and Ukraine. It has also investigated the actions of Israel and the United States. These moves come with considerable risks, as the Trump sanctions painfully revealed. Third, the ICC has considerable jurisdictional restrictions. It can’t investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea since the latter isn’t a member. The same applies to China and its actions in Xinjiang.

Instead of complaining about the ICC’s blind spots and shortcomings, the United States should get on board and put pressure on other countries to do likewise. Americans can’t pretend to support the rule of law, to loudly promote it around the world, and then turn around and say: Oh, well, it doesn’t apply to us. If the American justice system can prosecute perpetrators in blue like Derek Chauvin, the US can permit an international justice system to prosecute perpetrators in khaki who have killed civilians on a larger scale.

So, Biden deserves praise for reversing the Trump administration’s brazen and embarrassing attack on the ICC. But that doesn’t constitute actual support for international law. It’s time for the United States to uncancel the International Criminal Court.

*[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.

The post The US Needs to Uncancel the ICC appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Prior to the Unite the Right rally, however, the phrase was commonly used by groups protesting oppression. The “Whose streets? Our streets!” chant has, the 1990s, been used by “LGBTQ activists, immigration activists, and most pertinently, Black activists at intense junctions of racial tension.” While their collective belief system was built upon a deeply flawed foundation of disinformation and conspiracy, the rioters on Capitol Hill were also combating a sense of perceived oppression. As a result, they felt justified in weaponizing their victimhood.

The Complex Role of Racism Within the Radical Right

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The mob that stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, was a smorgasbord of white supremacists, militia members and conspiratorial adherents, mobilized by former US President Donald Trump to attempt a coup on his behalf. Kathleen Belew’s of the ideological composition of the Capitol insurrectionists is apt. The mob featured “ardent partisans of President Trump. … people recently radicalized by fantastic QAnon conspiracy theories” and “participants in the organized white power movement.” The mob’s spectrum of beliefs was also seen in the variety of present. As in videos from the Capitol Hill riot, a noteworthy staple of this far-right iconography is the infamous Guy Fawkes mask — in this case, worn by a man with a Trump/Pence 2020 campaign flag draped over his shoulders.

Stop the Steal… of Other Movements’ Symbols

In addition to adopting iconography and slogans from movements ideologically oftentimes at odds with their own, the far right have also co-opted historical, cultural and even religious symbols and trends. For example, Britain First, an Islamophobic anti-immigrant , has Christian symbolism and rhetoric, including carrying white crosses and handing out Bibles at public demonstrations. In that same vein, Stormfront posters drew ties between “The Lord of the Rings” and white nationalism to bolster . More recently, the Betsy Ross flag, various Norse imagery and Pepe the Frog were during the Capitol attack.

Such figures and images are now incongruously tied together by a shared adoption by the far right as part of their iconographical repertoire. These symbols have thereby lost their previously benign respective meanings as they have become aligned with armed groups, militias and other hateful and potentially violent belief systems.

A Staple of Anti-Authoritarian Protest

Despite its use at the Capitol riot, the Guy Fawkes mask has historically been an element of anti-authoritarian activist iconography, representing the struggle against those in power perceived to be treading on civil liberties. It the mainstream in the 1980s upon the creation of the comic “V for Vendetta,” set in a fascist, dystopian version of future England. In it, the protagonist V is an anti-fascist battling an authoritarian police state, donning the mask to obscure his identity.

Since then, the evocation of Guy Fawkes at contemporary political events has become a tradition. First used by the Anonymous group circa 2008 in protests against the Church of Scientology, it has since been worn in the organization’s protests the CIA, the Ku Klux Klan, Visa and PayPal. The disguise-turned-symbol was subsequently used by Occupy and other anti-establishment, generally left-leaning movements.  

The Fawkes mask has since been donned by protesters around the world. In 2011, it was seen at Arab Spring protests, eventually assuming such a high profile that both the Saudi and Bahraini governments its import and sale. The Saudi government explained the ban by stating that the mask “instills a culture of violence and extremism.” Later that year, Thai protesters it as they demonstrated against their government, which at the time was widely believed to be secretly controlled by the exiled former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.

As Sarah Barrett of The New York Times of the Fawkes mask, “it is now the face of protest, largely anti-government but not exclusively. It’s a face that demands attention, an unsettling visage floating in the sea of yellow vests, umbrellas and black hoods.” Indeed, the illustrator of “V for Vendetta,” David Lloyd, said in a 2011 with The Times that the Fawkes-inspired masquerade has become “a great symbol of protest for anyone who sees tyranny.”

Guy Fawkes’ Adoption by the Right

Enter the Capitol insurrectionists, whose members cried tyranny over the certification of electoral votes to secure now-President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Like the Capitol rioters, Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators had a vision of how their respective government should be run — and who should be running it. Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder plot envisaged three goals: blow up the House of Lords in London, assassinate King James I and install a Catholic sovereign. The plot was planned to unfold on November 5, 1605, and, similar to the Capitol siege, was meant to occur during a ceremonial government event; Fawkes’ barrels of gunpowder were supposed to explode during the state opening of Parliament.

Fawkes and several of his co-conspirators were found guilty of treason, and some have that the Capitol attackers are guilty of the same. An additional similarity between the two sets of plotters is the planned use of explosives; both Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs were near Capitol Hill.

Prior to the Capitol insurrection, the American far right had embraced the Fawkes mask and its interpreted meaning at other demonstrations, notably seen on of Proud Boys, among others, at anti-lockdown protests throughout 2020. Moreover, in far-right Telegram channels, Guy Fawkes’ name and associated message have been sources of inspiration. The repeated use of the mask by those who identify with or support the far right may fulfill two objectives.

First, and perhaps most obviously, it hides the identity of the protester in question. Second, it enables the wearer to construct their own identity as a patriotic hero standing up to perceived tyrannical government action. The mask is used to convey a specific image, depending on the observing audience. For some far-right individuals and groups, the mask acts as a dog whistle. For those outside of the movement, it provides the wearer with plausible deniability. According to of Virginia Tech: “They’re hoping that either other observers will get it and they’ll agree. Or if they don’t agree and if there’s consequences, they can just shrug it off like, ‘Oh, I’m just referencing history’ or something like that.”

Many facets of the American far right will likely remain steadfast in their belief that a Trump-esque figurehead (or Trump himself) should assume his rightful place in the Oval Office. Online chatter and offline manifestations of violence indicate that some individuals view this as a cause worth fighting, dying and killing for — after all, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The use of the Guy Fawkes mask at the Capitol siege indicates how the insurrectionists saw themselves: as the latter.

*[51�Թ� is a media 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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As Biden explained, US engagement is based, first and foremost, on US global power, “our inexhaustible source of strength” and “abiding advantage.” That power has historically consisted of military force, economic pressure and diplomatic engagement. Rhetorically at least, Biden has favored a recalibration away from a reliance on the military,  that force will be a “tool of last resort.”

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In practice, however, Biden has adopted a more ambiguous position toward military power. Reflecting both budgetary concerns and public skepticism of �������������’s recent record of military interventions, the new president has promised a global posture review of the US military footprint overseas, which would likely lead to a redeployment rather than a radical reduction of American military power.

Biden’s early actions have reflected this cautious approach, ending US support for offensive military operations in the Saudi-led war in Yemen but freezing some of the troop withdrawals his predecessor had instituted at the end of his term. Looking to the future, the president has promised to phase out �������������’s “forever wars” but has also pledged to focus more on pushing back against other great powers, namely Russia and China.

Because the February 4 speech took place in front of an audience of diplomats, Biden unsurprisingly focused most of his remarks not on the hard power wielded by the Pentagon, but the “smart power” of diplomacy. The president pledged to renew alliance relationships that “atrophied over the past few years of neglect and, I would argue, abuse.” At the same time, he stressed the importance of diplomacy even when “engaging our adversaries and our competitors.”

MAGA Lite?

In what marked perhaps the most significant break with the foreign policy of his immediate predecessor, Biden promised to restore the United States as a full participant, if not a leader, in working multilaterally to solve global problems. He identified those problems as global warming, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, cybersecurity, the refugee crisis, attacks on vulnerable minorities, racial inequality and the persistence of authoritarianism. Although the president mentioned a few global institutions and agreements, notably the World Health Organization (WHO) and the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the emphasis was clearly on the US reclaiming global leadership rather than leading “from behind,” as the Obama administration famously said about its involvement in efforts against former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

In establishing the tone of his administration’s foreign policy, Biden didn’t enunciate a new doctrine. Rather, in what might be called an approach of “multilateral restoration,” he sought to repudiate the inconsistent, unilateral and anti-global positions of former President Donald Trump, while placing his own administration in the comfortable, pre-Trump foreign policy mainstream that European and Asian allies have come to expect and that is embodied, for instance, in the Franco-German-led Alliance for Multilateralism.

Given Biden’s role as vice-president in the Obama administration and his appointment to high-level positions of many policymakers from that period — Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, climate czar John Kerry, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell — many observers believe that his presidency will  Obama 2.0, a resumption of the globally aware, generally predictable, but periodically unorthodox foreign policy of the earlier administration.

The world of 2021, however, is very different from the one that Barack Obama and Joe Biden navigated across their two terms in office. New global problems have emerged such as COVID-19, while others have become more urgent, such as the climate crisis. The four years of Trump’s presidency weakened certain traditional elements of statecraft, such as arms control.

Given the persistence of American exceptionalism under Biden, it’s difficult not to view his foreign policy approach as MAGA Lite: making America great again with the assistance of foreign partners rather than over their objections. As Steven Blockmans of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels  it, “In all but name, the rallying cry of America First is here to stay,” reflected in the Biden administration’s prioritization of domestic investments over new trade deals and his expansion of Buy American provisions in federal procurement. Whether represented as America First, MAGA Lite or even liberal internationalism, the conventional US approach to multilateralism has been instrumental, as a means to the end of preserving US global power.

Executive Orders

At the same time, the  of US foreign policy over the years — seesawing back and forth from Bill Clinton’s modified multilateralism to George W. Bush’s aggressive unilateralism to Obama’s cautious multilateralism to Trump’s anti-globalist posturing — has led both allies and adversaries alike to hedge their bets by investing their political capital either in other alliances or in more self-reliant economic and security strategies. The most dramatic examples of this hedging have been China’s establishment of rival multilateral economic institutions and the European Union’s investment into autonomous military structures.

The Biden administration’s rapid use of executive orders to reverse Trump’s positions — for instance,  the United States back into the WHO and the Paris climate agreement — has been welcomed in many of the world’s capitals. But it also confirms what many in the international policymaking community have long viewed as �������������’s overly volatile foreign policy. The new administration’s reversals of Trump policies extend to immigration, as Biden has canceled the “Muslim travel ban” and ended funding for the largely unbuilt wall on the border with Mexico. He quickly hit rewind on the environmental deregulations of the Trump administration and the previous president’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition, the Biden team has taken steps to reenter the 2016 Iran nuclear deal, has revived arms control negotiations with Russia and plans at least to mitigate the impact of the trade sanctions against China.

But if Trump could reverse Obama’s positions on all these matters, and Biden with a stroke of the pen could do the same to Trump’s reversals, who’s to say that the next president in 2024 will not perform the same U-turns?

Indeed, as it looks to engage more deeply on these issues, the Biden administration faces a number of obstacles to realizing even its modest multilateral restoration: congressional opposition, corporate lobbying, public indifference or hostility, the mistrust of allies and bureaucratic inertia. It also must deal with a set of interlocking crises on the home front, from the pandemic and the resulting contraction of the US economy to crumbling infrastructure, endemic racial inequality, political polarization and rising poverty rates.

Finally, the administration must reckon with challenges within the multilateral project itself, including a democratic deficit and the problem of non-compliance. But on certain key issues, such as global health and environmentalism, progressives will have an opportunity to push US policy in the direction of greater equitable international engagement during the Biden years. On a case-by-case basis rather than through a transformative agenda, then, the Biden administration might alter — or be pushed to alter — the way the United States engages the world.

*[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.

The post How Joe Biden Looks at the World appeared first on 51�Թ�.

CNBC into the private thoughts of a president who now apparently feels empowered to judge the moral status of other leaders: “President Joe Biden says he believes Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a killer with no soul.” Biden intends to make the Russian president “pay a price” for interfering in the 2020 US election.

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Biden’s remarks followed a issued by US intelligence that included the following observation: “A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of people linked to Russian intelligence to launder influence narratives including — misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden — through US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration.”

One may forgive the incoherence of the author’s punctuation, but no reasonable reader can fail to deplore the confusion of the charges, highlighted by the use of phrases such as “people linked to” and “some of whom.” And then there is the semantic enormity of the phrase, “launder influence narratives.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Influence narrative:

Anything any politician or diplomat of any nation happens to utter in speech or writing. The basis of all political discourse.

Contextual Note

In his , “The Ultimate Goal,” former Indian spy chief Vikram Sood explores the way governments and their intelligence arms build and promote their self-interested narratives. Like a modern Machiavelli, Sood offers today’s princes the basic recipe: “Manage narratives to manage your destiny … tell your story first, any other story thereafter will only be a reaction.” That sums up the business of the CIA. The fact that US intelligence operatives want people to feel shocked that Russia might be using “influence narratives” reveals more about the CIA and its belief in the naivety of the US public than it does about Russia. The report itself is a perfect example of an “influence narrative.”

Covering the same topic for The Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima confusingly the CIA’s metaphor of laundering when she cites the report’s claim that Russians used “Ukrainians linked to Russian intelligence to ‘launder’ unsubstantiated allegations against Biden through U.S. media, lawmakers and prominent individuals.” “Launder,” in this context, is clearly a metaphor in spy language borrowed from the idea of “money laundering,” the act of pushing dirty money through indirect channels to return to the economy with a clean appearance. 

It may seem odd to apply a metaphor borrowed from the banking world and apply it to the hyperreal field of political narrative. But given the intelligence community’s well-documented predilection for dirty information — otherwise known as lies — it should hardly surprise us that the masters of plots and subplots see the public narrative as something that needs to be laundered. Sood, after all, tells us that the political language in any official narrative “is designed to make lies sound truthful and to give an appearance of solidity to the pure wind.”

Since the idea of “laundered narrative” belongs specifically to spy vocabulary, it may seem disconcerting that Washington Post journalists have uncritically adopted the term and feel no need to explain what it means. Could it be that they are corrupted by their incestuous relations with the spymasters in Langley, Virginia, who feed them much of their most valuable content and which they reprint uncritically? In contrast with The Post, Al Jazeera took the liberty of a different verb, writing: “Moscow sought to ‘push influence narratives’ that included misleading or unsubstantiated claims.” 

“Launder” has become part of The Post’s standard vocabulary. In September 2020, during the presidential election campaign, Post columnist Josh Rogin had the term concerning the same claims about Moscow’s interference. According to Rogin, Democratic leaders demanded “a briefing based on concerns that members of Congress were being used to launder information as part of a foreign interference operation.”

This pushes the accusation a little further by supposing that the members of Congress referred to were actively involved in making the dirty information look clean. But that’s exactly how the fabricated Russiagate narrative is designed to play out: Putin’s accomplices and useful idiots can be found under every table. Just like in the good ol’ days of Joe McCarthy. After all, if the narrative tells us there’s a threat, we really do need to feel threatened. That’s the CIA and the media doing their job. Who doesn’t remember all the al-Qaeda cells that populated every American city following 9/11?

Historical Note

The website Strategic Culture a succinct explanation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird that permitted it to infiltrate domestic media in the US. The journalist, Wayne Madsen, writes: “A major focus of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency from its very inception was the penetration of the news media, including the assignment of CIA agents to the newsrooms and editorial offices of �������������’s largest media operations, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Hearst Newspaper, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and other major newspapers and broadcast networks.” That has been ever since one of the harder components of US soft power.

This week, Matt Taibbi the famous whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who, in 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, exposing the embarrassing truth about the war in Vietnam that had been carefully hidden from the media. Taibbi recounts how “Ellsberg described a vicious cycle, in which leaders lie pervasively, then learn to have so much contempt for the public that swallows those lies, that they feel justified in lying more.”

In its own dissemination of the content of the intel report released this week, The New York Times that the “report did not explain how the intelligence community had reached its conclusions about Russian operations during the 2020 election.” The report itself explains: “The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the specific information on which it bases its analytic conclusions, as doing so could endanger sensitive sources and methods.” In other words, don’t ask for evidence, you won’t get it. Glenn Greenwald his readers that when, last October, the story broke concerning Hunter Biden’s laptop that intel attributed to Moscow’s meddling, the FBI had already “acknowledged that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”

When the same discredited story reappeared months later with no significant changes and still with zero evidence, instead of casting doubt on the entire story, the obedient media interpreted it as confirmation of the original narrative. What better illustration of Vikram Sood’s principle, “tell your story first, any other story thereafter will only be a reaction”?

Perhaps the most neglected dimension of this debate concerns the official role of intelligence. A month after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, former President Harry Truman complained in an for The Washington Post that the CIA — an agency he had created — had betrayed its straightforward mission of gathering information to clarify the president in his decision-making. Truman insisted that “the most important thing was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” When Operation Mockingbird under the direction of Cord Meyer was launched during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, the CIA had not only begun focusing on influencing the president, it realized that the best way of influencing executive decisions was to control the narrative that the media would share with the public.

The result is visible today, though no public figure will admit it. Democracy itself is engulfed within an elaborate system coordinated between the intelligence community, vested interests and the commercial media that generates and disseminates an endless stream of influence narratives.

*[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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Naturally, the unified Republican caucus complained that President Joe Biden was not displaying his promised bipartisanship. It didn’t seem to occur to them that bipartisanship is a two-way street. How soon they’ve forgotten that nearly every Democrat in both houses voted for the Trump administration’s initial bailout package in March 2020.

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Nevertheless, the Biden administration remains eager to find common ground with Republican legislators. The president has  that he can attract Republican support for an infrastructure bill this summer, given that rebuilding American bridges, highways and the like was a priority for the previous administration.

But here’s a truly troubling scenario. Casting around for another unifying topic, the Biden team has seized upon China. Democrats and Republicans alike are concerned about what China is doing these days. There is bipartisan disgust over what’s happening in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Hawks in both parties have long warned about Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea. Despite wildly different economic ideologies, Democrats and Republicans have joined hands in their opposition to Chinese trade and currency policies, cavalier approach to intellectual property rights and efforts to dominate markets in the Global South.

On the face of it, however, the bill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is starting to pull together is just another infrastructure initiative. It is meant “to shore up U.S. supply chains, expand American production of semiconductors, create 5G networks nationwide and pour billions into investments into U.S. manufacturing companies and hubs, among other proposals,”&�Բ�����; to The Washington Post.

But it’s not just infrastructure. The measure is specifically designed to bolster the full-spectrum US fight against China. “Hating China is a big bipartisan thing, and Schumer has the opportunity to take ownership of being against China,”&�Բ�����; out Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-wing American Action Forum.

According to the most benign reading of this bipartisanship, the Biden administration will be manufacturing an anti-Chinese version of the Sputnik moment when, in 1957, the Soviet launch of the first artificial satellite prompted a frenzy of US government spending on science and technology to catch up to the Russians. “The danger China poses could fundamentally reorder U.S. attitudes toward government’s role in domestic economic growth, research and development in ways that leave the United States stronger,”&�Բ�����; liberal columnist E.J. Dionne.

A robust industrial policy is indeed preferable to, say, the tariffs that the Trump administration levied against Chinese products. If fear of China overcomes the conservative distaste for government interventions in the economy, should progressives really be looking this particular gift horse in the mouth?

Full Court Press

The Quad is the latest multilateral mechanism through which the United States is putting pressure on China. The four countries — the United States, India, Japan and Australia — all have their separate beefs with Beijing. But last week was the first time that the heads of these four states met as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which was set up in 2007.

The statement the four leaders recently  in The Washington Post makes no mention of China. It’s all about cooperating on climate, the pandemic and strengthening democracy. But that’s just being diplomatic. As Alex Ward  in Vox, China has “gotten into a deadly fight over a disputed border with India, started a trade war with Australia, hacked the US government, and for years used its might to push Japan around on economic and military matters.” Trump tried to rally the four countries behind his own anti-China agenda. But his efforts were compromised by a suspicion in many quarters that he’d just as soon negotiate a deal with China behind the Quad’s back as coordinate a united front.

The current president, by contrast, has moved steadily away from a preference to engage China. “Biden had to be reprogrammed on China” during the presidential campaign, one of his advisers . This reprogramming explains Biden’s harsher tone during the election, such as calling Chinese leader Xi Jinping “a thug.”

As president, Biden has been careful to sound notes of both amicability and threat. Cooperation to deal with the climate crisis is certainly a possibility. But promoting deals with China is not going to win the new president support in Congress or, for that matter, with the American public. China’s unfavorability rating rose to 79% in a Gallup poll, its worst showing in more than four decades. A shift has taken place in just the last couple of years. According to a Pew Research Center , 67% of Americans now have “cold” feelings toward China, compared to only 46% in 2018.

The appointment of Kurt Campbell as the Indo-Pacific coordinator at the National Security Council (NSC) indicates the direction of the administration’s new take on Asia. Campbell was a key architect of the “Pacific pivot” under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration. He’s not going to play quite the anti-China role that Matt Pottinger did on Trump’s NSC, but he’s a firm believer in strengthening bilateral alliances and multilateral coordination to contain China.

In a January 2021 piece in Foreign Affairs, Campbell channeled Henry Kissinger in asserting the need for the US to restore a “balance of power” in the region. What that really means is that the US, with the help of its friends, must push back against China to reassert its own Pacific authority, both militarily and economically. Practically, Campbell , this means that:

“Although Washington should maintain its forward presence, it also needs to work with other states to disperse U.S. forces across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. This would reduce American reliance on a small number of vulnerable facilities in East Asia. Finally, the United States should encourage new military and intelligence partnerships between regional states, while still deepening those relationships in which the United States plays a major role—placing a ‘tire’ on the familiar regional alliance system with a U.S. hub and allied spokes.”

Over the years, China has steadily eroded US power not only in Asia but internationally. It used the anti-globalism of the Trump years to expand its influence in international institutions such as the United Nations and its associated bodies like the World Health Organization. Where It has encountered difficulties in expanding its influence, such as with international financial institutions, it has simply created its own. Shortly after Biden’s election, China joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes the countries of Southeast Asia, plus Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan). This move, plus Beijing’s recent investment agreement with the European Union and President Xi’s announcement that China would also consider joining a modified Trans-Pacific Partnership, suggests an economic counteroffensive to the US ramping up of multilateral security arrangements.

These moves have not gone unnoticed. On the eve of their first visit to Asia this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin III  in The Washington Post, “If we don’t act decisively and lead, Beijing �ɾ�����.”

The Biden administration’s decision to focus on beefing up US economic competitiveness, particularly in the tech sector, is in some ways an admission of defeat. China has outmaneuvered the United States in the global economy. The only way Washington can compete at the moment is by throwing its weight around militarily and trying to play catch-up on the home front.

Is China a Useful Threat?

It’s hard to argue with the importance of investing in critical US industries. Republicans and laissez-faire economists generally oppose such a policy of picking winners and losers in the marketplace, except when it comes to the military-industrial complex. Only a large external threat can move such ideologues to accept the obvious: governments can and should shape markets.

But here are some problems with hitching this industrial policy to the “China threat.” The global economy needs an overhaul to address the climate crisis, rampant economic inequality, automation and other developments. This is no time for the US to turn its economic relationship with China into a Cold War competition. Sure, let the two countries compete over who makes the best laptop computer, but cooperation is essential for developing new rules for the global economy. A robust industrial policy doesn’t preclude cooperation, unless it feeds into a rancor and a parochialism that makes cooperation near to impossible.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of global supply chains, with the collapse of international trade and countries initially competing for scarce medical equipment. This is not a new problem, however. Shelley Rigger writes in her 2013 on Taiwan about a moment “in 1999 when a power transmission tower on a remote mountain in central Taiwan toppled, blacking out the island’s high-tech industry for a day. The interruption nearly doubled the world price of memory chips and the supply of TFT-LCD flat screens took six months to return to normal.” Natural (and unnatural) disasters can wreak havoc on the supply of essential components.

Ensuring an indigenous supply of computer chips may well protect the US in the short term, but it does little to address the underlying problem of supply chains. A return to a time when every country produced all of its essentials or went without is not really an option, considering the importance of global trade routes going back to the Silk Road and even before. Reshoring and relocalization are both essential in this age of climate crisis. But a reordering of the global economy that accommodates such changes should be a matter for coordination, not Cold War competition.

In addition, an industrial policy that prioritizes gaining a competitive edge over China could overshadow the other major focus of the Biden administration, namely reducing the national and global carbon footprints. High-tech products often rely on key outputs of the extraction industry, like cobalt and lithium. An industrial policy built on minimizing carbon emissions and the use of rare minerals, rather than besting China, would pick very different economic winners and losers.

When it comes to foreign policy, bipartisanship is not necessarily a virtue. The two major US parties came together around waging the Vietnam War, confronting the Soviet Union during the Cold War and fighting “terrorism” in the wake of September 11. The first failed, the second was outrageously expensive and nearly ended in nuclear apocalypse, and the third led the country into the infamous “forever wars.”

Selectively challenging China over its human rights record, its overreach in the South China Sea or the conduct of its businesses around the world (like this fish meal in Gambia) is appropriate. Going all out in a military, economic and cultural competition with the Asian superpower — and forging a wafer-thin bipartisan consensus to do so — is the height of folly.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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The Problem of Food Security in �������������’s Consumer Society

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In our little town, the Rs were the epitome of what across the Atlantic is referred to as “white trash.” At the time in Germany, there was hardly anyone who looked “different,” so “white trash” would have made no sense whatsoever. They were German trash, and everybody knew it. In my immediate neighborhood, there was a woman who had three “illegitimate” children, all of them girls, all of them with a reputation of being tomboys. My parents, of course, told me I better keep my distance. I did, if only to avoid being bombarded with stones — the weapon, at the time, of the weaker sex — and, of course, out of fear of being associated with German trash.

�������������’s Outcasts

These are some of the reminiscences, images and thoughts that recently crossed my mind while parts of Nancy Isenberg’s “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.” Released in 2016, a few months before the presidential election, the book is as pertinent — if not more so — today as it was at the time it was published. This is the story of the , the vagrants and “crackers,” the rednecks and the “deplorables” who “have remained vilified, shunned, targeted and kept apart, both physically — in poorhouses and trailer parks, through eugenic science and discriminatory public policy — and in the nation’s cultural imagination, where they have inspired mockery, kitsch and unceasing grimaces.”  

For anyone who has ever watched an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show” knows what I’m talking about. With 28 seasons and around 4,000 episodes, it was not only one of �������������’s most successful TV series but also an export hit that exposed the rest of the world to the other side of America in the crudest way. The show was so successful because it systematically brought out some of the worst in human nature while at the same time the “audience’s need to feel superior.” It reinforced age-old stereotypes that dismissed a part of �������������’s white population as “incestuous and sexually promiscuous, violent, alcoholic, lazy and stupid” — stereotypes, as , that “remain with us until today.”

A case in point is the methamphetamine epidemic that the American Drug Enforcement Administration in 2003 as “the most dangerous drug problem of small-town America.” In fact, what distinguished meth was that the drug was most prevalent in rural areas in the country’s heartland, where it was “burning a hole,” as magazine put it, “through rural America.” What also distinguished it was that, unlike, for instance, crack cocaine, which is predominantly associated with inner cities and people of color, meth was largely characterized as a white-trash addiction. As Frank Keating, the former governor of Oklahoma, , meth was “a white trash drug — methamphetamines largely are consumed by the lower socio-economic element of white people. And I think we need to shame it, just like crack cocaine was a black-trash drug and is a black trash drug.”

The same applies to a certain extent to what Joshua Wilkey, in his blog , has called the “white-trashification of the opioid crisis.” Wilkey’s charges the political establishment in Washington with not giving “two shits” about the crisis, at least as long as it affects primarily the rural poor in depressed areas such as the Appalachians. At least two reasons account for this: first, the notion that addiction “is simply the result of stupid people making poor choices” and, second, that since the crisis “largely targets poor and rural areas, there’s less urgency on the part of urban elites to advocate for solutions.” To put it more brutally, white trash just doesn’t matter, if only because it does not conform to the dominant narrative — in which whiteness represents the “” — that serves as the justification for white socioeconomic dominance.

White Privilege

At the same time, the trope poses a challenge to the notion of white privilege, for white trash is a term that racializes whiteness by denigrating those as such “in race specific terms.” One way to get out of this quandary is to relabel a clearly derogatory racialized as “pseudo-racialization.” For the guardians of this type of wokeness — largely derived from critical race theory prevalent today in American academia and the chattering classes — this might sound reassuring. It shouldn’t, at least if wokeness is taken seriously. It should not be forgotten that wokeness is as “a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.”

The derogation, denigration and disparagement of, if not outright contempt for, �������������’s white underclass, mocked and dismissed as white trash, certainly counts for an egregious example of inequality alongside a range of dimensions — economic, social and cultural. White trash is the Lumpenproletariat of our globalized world, structurally irrelevant and, therefore, largely ignored — at least as long as it doesn’t become a threat to society as it did during the meth epidemic.

Worse still, as the notion of pseudo-racialization implies, the distress and despair of the white underclass are easily dismissed since its problems fall through the dominant grievances grid that today is almost exclusively informed by and defined in racial terms. What Ernesto Laclau has once called the “internal antagonistic frontier” that informs today’s hegemonic wokeness discourse runs between whites and everybody else. In this discourse, whiteness is automatically associated with privilege and entitlement. The white maligned underclass might be underprivileged or worse, but, being white, it is automatically subsumed under notions of privilege and entitlement for no other reason than that one so happens to be white.

The case of Oumou Kanoute, a black student at Smith College, which was in The New York Times, illustrates the point. Here even , in her recent defense of critical race theory, had to acknowledge that something went horribly wrong, that this was a case of “woke overreach.” Smith College is one of the most prestigious — and expensive — liberal arts colleges in the US. Students attending the college are the epitome of entitlement, given the prohibitive cost of tuition and board that easily amounts to nearly $80,000 a year. An in The Guardian from 2016 hit the nail on the head when it pointed out that “at the best colleges there are very few low-income students, except for a few lucky enough to grow up in New York City, Los Angeles or Boston.”

As The New York Times account rightly put it, the Smith College incident is a story of the clash between race and class. Once again, class came out at the short end of the stick, resulting in the destruction of the reputations of a number of employees, all of them white, all of them part of today’s easily dispensable service class — janitors, security guards — who were labeled as racists and as carriers of white privilege. Yet, as a in The New York Times put it, “the narrative of racist harassment of a minority student at an elitist white institution turned out to be comprehensively false.” Does it matter? Apparently not, for as the initial report by The Times put it, the whole story “highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.” In short, something must be true because you think it is true. This might explain why even after an investigation exonerated the employees of racial bias, they received, unlike the student, from the administration. The white underclass apparently is not worthy of recognition.

Dispensable Service Class

The incident happened in 2018. In the meantime, Oumou Kanoute has on to Columbia University, another elite university. The fate of the targets of her accusations is largely unknown. But then, who cares about janitors and security guards? This is hardly a rhetorical question. According to from the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2019, the white poverty rate was 9%. This amounts to more than 17 million Americans. Poverty rates were disproportionately high (around 15%) in West Virginia and Kentucky, two Appalachian states, which were also among the top states when it comes to .

The impact was devastating. In 2017, the opioid-related in Appalachian counties was more than 70% higher than in the rest of the country: 24 versus 14 deaths per 100,000 residents. At the same time, the rate of Kentucky’s neonatal abstinence syndrome was more than than the national rate, West Virginia’s more than eight times.

The , recently published in a medical journal, of a physician who grew up in eastern Kentucky provides a first-hand account of the misery and despair the epidemic has wrought. Eastern Kentucky, a coal-mining area at the foot of the Appalachian hills, is among the poorest in the United States. Isolated and on the margins “both geographically and culturally,” the region and its opioid crisis were long ignored by the national media.

It was not until “it had spread to more affluent and valued parts of the country, almost 15 years later” that it would gain national attention. This is despite the fact that the region is overwhelmingly white. Magoffin County, for instance, which is the focus of the physician’s account, in 2000 was roughly 99% white. But then, who gives two shits about poor white trash — except, perhaps, to make money. Otherwise, why would Amazon a “Funny Kentucky White Trash Tee Shirt”?

In late 2016, an on �������������’s poor white underclass noted the “barely suppressed contempt” that “has characterized much of the commentary about white woe, on both the left and the right.” In support of their observation, the authors cite a that appeared in the National Review, the flagship of the traditional conservative right, heaping scorn on low-income white voters for supporting Donald Trump in the primaries. Among other things, the author sneered:

“If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. … The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.”

In 2016, Trump won an overwhelming majority in eastern Kentucky. In Magoffin County, for instance, he won roughly 75% of the vote. Four years later, Trump once again carried Kentucky by a wide margin; the same was true for Magoffin County. And yet, in his four years in office, he had done little to nothing to improve the lives of �������������’s poor white underclass. To be sure, at one point, Trump had claimed he would revive the coal industry so dear to states like West Virginia and Kentucky. He didn’t, and, like any good populist, once in power, he largely ignored the plight of those whose pain he had earlier purported to hear. As , �������������’s poor, independent of race, by and large don’t vote and, therefore, can be dismissed. They don’t count, in more than one sense of the word.

Farewell to the Proletariat

Unfortunately, the left on both sides of the Atlantic has, to a large extent, bought into this trope. Instead of fighting for every vote, the left has written off significant segments of a potential electorate which, at one point, was part of its natural constituency. Yet in the late 1970s, at least in Western Europe, the left abandoned the concerns of blue-collar workers in favor of new “postmaterialist” priorities, promoted by the “new middle classes.” A paradigmatic text was André Gorz’s manifesto from 1980, “Adieux au proletariat” (“Farewell to the Proletariat”). In the decades that followed, the left increasingly adopted what has come to be known as identity politics, centering upon questions of gender, ethnicity and race.

There is nothing wrong with identity politics — as long as it is inclusive. Following , the potential of progressive politics crucially depends on the establishment of an alternative “powerbloc” that not only unifies different claims and struggles, such as the #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and Fridays for Future movements, but is also able to effectively challenge the dominant power structure and the hegemonic narratives, such as neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. Identity politics on the left these days focuses on minorities, such as LGBTQ and particularly race, in the process sidelining, excluding, if not outright dismissing questions of class. As one who identified himself as a “white man living paycheck to paycheck” put it in The Atlantic, “I think that most of us would acknowledge that minorities have it rough, but at least someone seems to care about them.”

In the end, a strategy that focuses almost exclusively on an anything-but-white identity politics — if it is at all a strategy — is only going to weaken any genuine hope for a more equitable politics. At the same time, it is likely to provide fertile ground for the exploitation of resentment and anger by cynical populists such as Donald Trump well versed in the deceptive appeal of symbolic politics, like feeding into delusions of white superiority, while doing nothing concrete, like raising marginal tax rates on the rich to pay for universal health care, for the “ordinary people” they purport to represent.  

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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 US-brokered agreement goes beyond a simple quid pro quo for Trump’s Arab peace deals. It represents a US investment in a North African security partner that is key to Washington’s conception of great power competition. Trump’s decision pulls Morocco closer to the US and the European Union. It also brings Rabat closer to the United Arab Emirates’ spheres of geopolitical influence in Africa and the wider Arab world. At the same time, the decision gives the EU cover to further align with Morocco.

Yet Trump’s gift to Morocco could have unintended consequences. Algeria might deepen its relationship with Russia and China, increasing their presence in the Maghreb region. The Biden administration is scrutinizing past deals signed by the previous president, and the decision pertaining to Morocco might come up for reconsideration. 

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The Moroccan kingdom conceives of its neighborhood’s stability in terms of a strong grip on Western Sahara, the continued development of the southern territory’s resources, and limited terrorist threats in and around its porous Saharan borders. In late November 2020, the US committed to $3 billion in Morocco — through the Development Finance Corporation — and designated the country as a regional hub for its Prosper Africa trade and investment program. A month later, the US committed to four sky guardian drones to Morocco, which expands its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capacity. By acknowledging Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, allotting Morocco more development funding and providing increased ISR, the US bolsters neighborhood stability as seen by King Mohammed VI.

In turn, increased stability for Morocco may reverberate across its littoral Sahara — a vacuum for terrorists and a potential target of Russian . New US development initiatives could amplify previous Moroccan actions in the region, such as the delivery of COVID-19 aid packages to Mauritania and Burkina Faso in . New ISR capacity will also see the increased interdiction of traffickers and terrorists, whose roles progressively overlap. These actions will not decisively change the nature of conflict plaguing the Sahel region, located just south of the Sahara Desert. But even marginal gains for Moroccan stability would decrease power vacuums for Russia to exploit with the , a private military company Moscow uses to surreptitiously advance its foreign policy.

Europe and the Gulf

Trump’s decision also provides political cover for the EU to overcome obstacles in its relationship with Morocco, which retains advanced status under the union’s . The Brussels-Rabat relationship is fraught with disputes over whether goods from Western Sahara should come under the jurisdiction of the EU-Morocco free trade agreement. Rulings in  by the European Court of Justice decreed that EU-Morocco trade and fishing agreements would only remain valid if they excluded goods originating from Western Sahara, contradicting the Moroccan autonomy plan for the territory.

Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty gives political cover to European states, including France, that lean toward the autonomy plan. European judicial decisions do not derive from US decrees, but if key EU member states were to change their stance on Western Sahara, the legal basis of the earlier court rulings could also differ. If so, like the US, the European Union would find itself pulled closer to Morocco, portending new initiatives that align with the European interest of Morocco as a stability exporter.

In the Gulf, Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty pushes Rabat and Abu Dhabi closer into alignment. This would continue their rapprochement after previous tensions, which stemmed from Morocco’s refusal to back the Saudi-Emirati-led blockade of Qatar between 2017 and 2021. To punish Morocco for its neutrality, in 2018, the UAE and Saudi Arabia voted against Morocco’s bid to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The states also recalled each other’s .

In October 2020, however, the UAE opened a consulate in Western Sahara’s , which at that time was not recognized as Moroccan territory by the US. This was an important symbolic gesture, given that the UAE was the first Arab state to do so. UAE actions that favor Morocco come amidst deteriorating Emirati-Algerian relations, as Abu Dhabi is unhappy with Algeria’s alleged support of Turkey or, to the UAE, “anti-Emirati lobbies in the region.” That the UAE is strengthening ties with Morocco while Saudi Arabia makes no such overtures could foreshadow Emirati attempts at constructing a new, intra-Sunni coalition.

Russia and China

US rivals have adopted less amenable stances. Russia has already Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The US decision, consequently, gives Russia and China an excuse to increase security and economic cooperation with the Algerians. As the most strident supporter of the Polisario Front — an armed group demanding independence for Western Sahara — Algeria is upset about the diplomatic win Morocco secured in the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty.

To balance Rabat’s victory, Algiers could invite in Russian troops under the guise of counterterrorism operations to the Sahel. Algeria is one of Russia’s largest and China has already committed billions to in the east of the country. In light of the US move, both of these relationships could further develop.

Increased Russian and Chinese activity in Algeria would also diminish advances made in terms of Moroccan stability in the Sahel. Russia expanding its North African power projection and China increasing its investments in natural resources would balance Moroccan actions that close power vacuums to the Wagner Group. Unforeseen by Trump, Russia can also cite the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara as justification for its annexation in 2014 of Crimea, which is officially part of Ukraine. The US may have improved ties with Morocco but, in doing so, pushed Algeria, another North African behemoth, firmly into a sphere of Russian and Chinese influence and provided Russia justification for its illegal invasions.

The New US Administration

The Biden administration has already stated its support of the Abraham Accords, a term used for the peace deals Israel signed with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020. In response to a question concerning US recognition of Western Sahara, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken , “We’re also trying to make sure that we have a full understanding of any commitments that may have been made in securing those agreements.”

On January 27, 2021, US President Joe Biden the Trump-era F-35 sale to the UAE, pending review. Many considered the F-35 sale as a carrot Trump offered to the UAE. The freeze does not necessitate the reversal of the sale, but it indicates Biden’s resolve to scrutinize the quid pro quos that accompany the Abraham Accords. Once the US reaches “a full understanding of any commitments,” it will either continue or withdraw recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

If the Biden administration continues recognition of Western Sahara, Blinken would most likely work through an international framework at the United Nations to achieve increased support for Washington’s unilateral decision, as the US is the only state to recognize full Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. If EU states lean toward the Moroccan autonomy plan, the Biden administration will find some find needed political cover.

At the same time, Russia and China would continue their support for Algeria, and Morocco would export its version of stability across North Africa. Rabat would also continue its recognition of Israel. Malignant non-state actors, however, could use the endurance of the US decision to galvanize violent actions from some Polisario fighters, creating another opening for terrorist groups. Maintenance of the decision also comes at the expense of true self-determination for the Saharawi people in Western Sahara.

The US can also withdraw recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. This action would see the White House realign with the UN-sponsored peace process and international law. Potentially, a US return to non-recognition would invigorate efforts toward a true autonomy plan. In this case, Morocco would withdraw its recognition of Israel and US relations with Morocco would cool. Although the US and Morocco would remain important partners, the Moroccans would feel betrayed by this decision and potentially align closer with Russia and China to castigate the Americans. The Polisario, moreover, would also find a renewed chance at some form of self-determination.

Regardless of the Biden administration’s actions, Trump blatantly circumvented a UN-sponsored peace process and gave Morocco a carte blanche to implement its autonomy plan. New US-Moroccan collaboration could see Morocco push Sahelian stability that benefits the US position in great power competition by closing power vacuums to Russian interests. Trump’s thirst for diplomatic wins, however, caused his administration to view Western Sahara through a transactional lens, obfuscating a legitimate international solution and potentially inviting new Russian and Chinese activity in North Africa.

*[51�Թ� is a media 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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Yes, I know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now in charge of the US and waving their own little limbs wildly, trying  some of what needs to be done for this sad land of the disturbed, over-armed, sick and dying. But anyone who watched the scenes of Floridians  a Super Bowl victory, largely unmasked and cheering, shoulder to shoulder in the streets of Tampa, can’t help but realize that we are now indeed a roach nation, the still-wealthiest, most pandemically unmasked one on planet Earth.

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But don’t just blame Donald Trump. Admittedly, we’ve just passed through the Senate trial and acquittal of the largest political cockroach around. I’m talking about the president who,  that his  was in danger of being “” (“”) and was being rushed out of the Senate as a mob bore down on him, promptly tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

Just imagine. The veep who had — if you don’t mind my mixing my creature metaphors here — toadied up to the president for four endless years was then given a functional death sentence by that same man. You can’t fall much deeper into personal roachdom than that. My point here, though, is that our all-American version of roacherie was a long time in coming.

Or put another way: unimaginable as The Donald might have seemed when he  that Trump Tower escalator in June 2015 to  his future “great, great wall,” denounce Mexican “rapists” and bid to make a whole country into his apprentices, he didn’t end up in the Oval Office for no reason. He was the , not the disease, though what a symptom he would prove to be — and when it came to diseases, what a nightmare beyond all imagining.

Let’s face it, whether we fully grasp the fact or not, we now live in a system, as well as a country, that’s visibly in an early stage of disintegration. And there lies a remarkable tale of history happening at warp speed, of how, in not quite three decades, the USS Enterprise of imperial powers was transformed into the USS Roach.

Once Upon a Time on Earth…

Return for a moment to 1991, almost two years after the Berlin Wall fell, when the Soviet Union finally imploded and the Cold War officially ended. Imagine that you had been able to show Americans then — especially the political class in Washington — that  of Trump statements and tweets interlarded with mob actions in the Capitol that the Democratic House impeachment managers used in their opening salvo against the former president. Americans — just about any of us — would have thought we were watching the most absurd science fiction or perhaps the single least reality-based bit of black comedy imaginable.

In the thoroughly self-satisfied (if somewhat surprised) Washington of 1991, the triumphalist capital of “the last superpower,” that video would have portrayed a president, an insurrectionary mob and an endangered Congress no one could have imagined possible — not in another nearly 30 years, not in a century, not in any American future. Then again, if in 1991 you had tried to convince anyone in this country that a walking Ponzi scheme(r) like Donald Trump could become president, no less be impeached twice, you would have been laughed out of the room.

After all, the US had just become the ultimate superpower in history, the last one ever. Left alone on this planet, it had a military beyond compare and an economy that was the heartland of a globalized system and the envy of the world. The Earth was — or at least to the political class of that moment seemed to be — ours for the taking, but certainly not for the losing, not in any imaginable future. The question then wasn’t keeping them out but keeping us in. No “” were needed. After all, Russia was a wreck. China was still emerging economically from the hell of the Maoist years. Europe was dependent on the US and, when it came to the rest of world, what else need be said? This was an American planet, pure and simple.

In retrospect, consider the irony. There had been talk then about a post-Cold War “peace dividend.” Who would have guessed, though, that dividends of any sort would increasingly go to the top 1% and that almost 30 years later, the US would functionally be a plutocracy overseen until a month ago by a self-professed ? Who would have imagined that the American version of a peace dividend would have been siphoned off by  than anyplace else on Earth and that, in those same years, inequality would reach , while poverty and  only grew? Who woulda guessed that whatever peace dividend didn’t go to the ultra-wealthy would  an ever-larger national security state and the industrial complex of weapons makers that surrounded it? Who woulda guessed that, in official post-Cold War Washington, peace would turn out to be the last thing on anyone’s mind, even though this country seemed almost disarmingly enemy-less? (Remember when the worst imaginable combination of enemies, a dreaded “,” would prove to be Iraq, Iran and North Korea, all embattled, distinctly tertiary powers?)

Who woulda guessed that a military considered beyond compare (and  to this day like ) would proceed to fight war after war, literally decades of conflict, and yet — except for the quasi-triumph of the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — achieve victory in none of them? Staggering  of taxpayer dollars would be spent on them, while those billionaires were given . Honestly, who would have guessed then that, on a planet lacking significant enemies, Washington, even six presidents later, would prove incapable of stopping fighting?

Who woulda guessed that, in September 2001, not Russia or communist China, but a tiny group of Islamic militants led by a rich Saudi extremist the US had  would send 19 (mostly Saudi) hijackers to directly attack the United States? They would, of course, cause death and mayhem, allowing President George W. Bush to launch an almost 20-year “global war on terror,” which still shows no sign of ending. Who woulda guessed that, in the wake of those 9/11 terror attacks, the son of the man who had presided over the first Gulf War (but stopped short of felling Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein) and the top officials of his administration would come to believe that the world was his oyster and that the US should dominate the greater Middle East and possibly the planet in a way previously unimaginable? Who would have imagined that he would invade Iraq (having done the same in Afghanistan a year and a half earlier), effectively helping to spread Islamic extremism far and wide, while creating a never-ending disaster for this country?

Who woulda guessed that, in 2009, in the wake of a Great Recession at home, the next president, Barack Obama, would order a massive “” of forces into Afghanistan, a war already eight years old? Tens of thousands of new troops, not to speak of contractors, CIA operatives and others would be sent there without faintly settling things.

By November 2016, when an antiquated electoral system gave the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but put Donald Trump, a man who promised to end this country’s “endless wars” () in the Oval Office, it should have been obvious that something was awry on the yellow brick road to imperial glory. By then, in fact, for a surprising number of Americans, this had become a land of grotesque inequality and lack of opportunity. And many of them would prove ready indeed to use their votes to send  to the country about their desire to Trump that very reality.

From there, of course, with no Wizard of Oz in sight, it would be anything but a yellow brick road to January 6, 2021, when, the president having  the results of the 2020 election, a mob would storm the Capitol. All of it and the impeachment fiasco to follow would reveal the functional definition of a failing democracy, one in which the old rules no longer held.

Exiting the Superpower Stage of History

And, of course, I have yet to even mention the obvious — the still-unending nightmare that engulfed the country early in 2020 and that, I suspect, will someday be seen as the true ending point for a strikingly foreshortened American century. I’m thinking, of course, of COVID-19, the pandemic disease that swept the country, infecting tens of millions of Americans and killing hundreds of thousands in a fashion unmatched anywhere else on the planet. It would even for a time  a president, while creating mayhem and ever more fierce division in unmasked parts of the country filled with civilians armed to the teeth, swept up in conspiracy theories and at the edge of who knew what.

Call it a sign from the gods or anything you want, but call it startling. Imagine a disease that the last superpower handled so much more poorly than countries with remarkably fewer resources. Think of it as a kind of judgment, if not epitaph, on that very superpower.

Or put another way: Not quite 30 years after the Soviet Union exited the stage of history, we’re living in a land that was itself strangely intent on heading for that same exit — a crippled country led by a 78-year-old president, its system under startling pressure and evidently beginning to come apart at the seams. One of its political parties is unrecognizable; its presidency has been stripped of a fully functioning Congress and is increasingly  in nature; its economic system plutocratic; its military still  across significant parts of the planet, while a possible  with a rising China is evidently on the horizon; and all of this on a planet that itself, even putting aside that global pandemic, is visibly in the .

At the end of Franz Kafka’s classic tale, Gregor Samsa, now a giant insect with a rotting apple embedded in its back, dies in roach hell, even if also in his very own room with his parents and sisters nearby. Is the same fate in store, after a fashion, for the American superpower?

In some sense, in the Trump and COVID-19 years, the United States has indeed been unmasked as a roach superpower on a planet going to — again, excuse the mixed animal metaphors — the dogs. The expected all-American age of power and glory hasn’t been faintly what was imagined in 1991, not in a country that has shown remarkably few signs of coming to grips with what these years have truly meant.

Centuries after the modern imperial age began, it’s evidently coming to an end in a hell that Joe Biden and crew won’t be able to stop, even if, unlike the previous president, they’re anything but intent on thoroughly despoiling this land. Still, Trump or Biden, at this point it couldn’t be clearer that we need some new way of thinking about and being on this increasingly roach-infested planet of ours.

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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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He was also inordinately fond of killing people, sometimes only to seize their assets. Or because he was bored, like the time at a gladiatorial contest when there were no criminals to execute during the intermission. Thinking fast, the despot  his guards to throw an entire section of the audience into the arena to be devoured by wild animals.

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The world’s most powerful empire suffered four years of unbounded narcissism from a man with a reputation for sexual assaults and a fondness for cruelty who disparaged everyone in sight. Sound familiar?

The one member of his close circle whose life Caligula spared was his uncle Claudius, primarily to make fun of the older man, who was lame and stammered. But “Sleepy Claudius,” particularly as depicted in the two historical  of Robert Graves and portrayed by Derek Jacobi in the hit BBC series, was a crafty fellow who knew how to survive the deadly game of Roman imperial politics. When the Praetorian Guard finally had enough of Caligula and assassinated him — with the support of the political elite — Claudius was found hiding behind the curtains in the palace and proclaimed the new emperor.

Claudius went on to rule for 13 years. Despite being absent-minded and scatter-brained, he proved to be far more capable than most Romans anticipated. The new emperor restored the rule of law throughout the empire. He stabilized the economy, embarked on an ambitious plan to improve the infrastructure of the realm, and even expanded its reach in the Balkans, North Africa and far-off Britain.

Joe Biden, similarly underestimated because of his stammer and meandering speeches, has channeled Claudius in his first month in office. With a flurry of executive orders, the new US president has quickly reversed some of the most damaging policies of his deranged predecessor. Facing both a pandemic and an economic crisis, he is restoring confidence in government with a rapid vaccination rollout and a large-scale stimulus package. He has plans for big policy initiatives around infrastructure, energy and immigration.

But, of course, not everyone was thrilled with Emperor Claudius, particularly those on the Roman periphery. The British, for instance, chafed under imperial rule. Their escalating anger culminated in the bloody but ultimately unsuccessful revolt of Queen Boudica in 60 CE. Not surprisingly, Biden too has faced his share of criticism, particularly among those on the receiving end of American power or those who’ve bristled at the fickleness of American leadership.

�������������’s Caligula is still around, perhaps even harboring hopes of a return to power in 2024. In the meantime, what are we to make of �������������’s Claudius and his effort to bring stability to the American empire?

Biden Makes Nice with the World

The Biden administration has gone into overdrive in its efforts to rejoin the international community as a member in good standing. On February 19, the United States officially reentered the 2015 Paris climate agreement, while Special Envoy John Kerry has pledged to restore the $2 billion for the Green Climate Fund that the US promised under Barack Obama but never delivered. The administration has rejoined the World Health Organization, signed up for the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program and promised to disburse the $4 billion that Congress appropriated for COVAX at the end of 2020. Biden reversed some of former President Donald Trump’s most noxious immigration policies, shutting down construction of the wall on the southern border, ending the “Muslim travel ban” and beginning to bring the country back into compliance with international norms around refugees and asylum-seekers.

The Biden administration has also pledged more cooperative relations with NATO allies, Pacific partners and democratic countries more generally. It rejoined the UN Human Rights Council as an observer and restored funding for the UN Population Fund. It began the process of reviving the Iran nuclear deal, restarted relations with Palestinian organizations, embarked tentatively on restoring better relations with Cuba, extended New START with Russia and stopped funding the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Not bad for one month’s work.

President Biden’s moves have encountered inevitable challenges, both domestic and foreign. The Senate, as I explained in my last column, has been perhaps the major check in American politics on an authentic internationalism. Not surprisingly, some Republicans in the Senate are already  to undermine US involvement in the Paris climate agreement, and they’re sharpening their knives to attack renewed engagement with  and with .

Some allies, too, are not fully on board with Biden’s great reset. France would  to invest more in an independent European security system and rely less on NATO. Germany is not interested in a full-court press on Russia and hopes to strike a  with the Biden administration that would allow it to stay on schedule with its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline deal with the Kremlin. Japan and South Korea are  about the trilateral coordination that the United States is (again) promoting, relations with Turkey are  and Israel is unhappy with Biden’s  US ties with Palestine.

But the real problem with the president’s new approach to the world lies not in the resistance it has engendered at home or the ambivalence it has fostered abroad. It lies with the very nature of Biden’s foreign policy.

The Stick

The amount of damage that Trump did to the world was limited to a certain extent by his incompetence. He could have blundered into another war if his advisers had let the presidential id run wild. If he’d had a Stephen Miller to do to foreign policy what this savvy operator did to immigration, Trump might well have permanently damaged the global system.

Biden, meanwhile, has assembled a thoroughly competent team of professionals — from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to climate czar John Kerry and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. That competence is a godsend when it comes to navigating the intricacies of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate negotiations.

But when it comes to the less pleasant aspects of US foreign policy, that competence might prove deadly. Claudius, it turned out, was not a feeble dotard. He knew exactly how to deploy Rome’s imperial might to finish the job Caligula had started in conquering Mauritania and to extend the empire’s dominion to the westernmost reaches of Europe. If the Biden administration decides to ramp up confrontation with China in the South China Sea, for instance, his team might very competently — and disastrously — marshal US allies in the region to implement the plan.

Pax Romana was largely an enforced peace rather than a negotiated one, and Pax Americana has always relied on the overwhelming predominance of US military power. Already, the Biden team has stated its desire to focus on great power rivalry with China and Russia rather than losing propositions like the war in Afghanistan. That preference will translate into a continuation of bloated military budgets, large arms deals with allies and sort-of allies on the periphery of China and Russia, and the deployment of various economic strategies like sanctions to influence the behavior of these perennial competitors.

In his early days in office, Biden has been quick to emphasize the role of diplomacy,  that force will be the “tool of last resort.” A dramatic example of that approach has been the absence of any drone  during the first month of the administration. This is in marked contrast to the strikes that Obama and Trump ordered almost immediately upon taking office as well as the escalation in attacks that took place in Trump’s final months. Only one airstrike has been reported, in Iraq on February 9 against the Islamic State. (Editor’s note: This article was written prior to the US in eastern Syria on February 25.) In addition to initiating a review of drone , the administration has launched a probe into Special Forces  to ascertain whether they have adhered to the Pentagon’s “law of war” requirements. This is all very promising. But will it last?

Claudius was content to be successful within the Roman imperial framework. Guilty of his own excesses of violence, he never tried to turn the empire back into a republic or negotiate a new set of relations with Rome’s far-flung possessions. He knew only to expand. Biden, too, operates within the existing system of American dominance. It remains to be seen whether he will dramatically reduce the US military footprint and work with other major powers to redefine international relations at a time of multiple global crises.

If he doesn’t, America will risk the same fate that befell Rome after the death of Claudius. In 54 CE, a new emperor took power who made Caligula look like a cub scout. This latest Caesar made sure that the good that Claudius did during his 13-year reign was indeed interred with his bones. “Nero practiced every kind of obscenity,” writes the gossipy chronicler Suetonius, adding that the new emperor “annulled many of Claudius’ decrees and edicts, on the grounds that he’d been a doddering old idiot.”

The trick, then, is not just to reverse the evils of one’s predecessor but to make those reversals stick. That, in turn, will require not just quick fixes but turning the United States into a truly cooperative world power.

*[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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