Philippa Kaur

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    in World Politics

    What If America Doesn’t Recover From Trump?

    With two-thirds of Republicans still believing that President Joe Biden’s election was fraudulent, the Republican Party faces what could prove to be an existential fork in the road. Does it double down on Trump and Trumpism at this juncture or does it reject his divisive legacy root and branch much the same way that McCarthyism …
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    Mike Pompeo’s Dismal Legacy

    As the transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden takes place, pundits have begun offering political obituaries of prominent personalities associated with the outgoing administration. Mike Pompeo, for example. At 57, his career may not be over, but there is a sense in which, were it to be revived on the national stage, the nation …
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    in US Politics

    Post-inauguration, restoring the soul of Biden’s America must be truly inclusive

    Over the past few months, I’ve been editing a book about soulful beliefs, practices and feelings that overflow from their religious and spiritual origins into secular and profane spaces. I’ve also been wondering what Joe Biden means when he talks about restoring the soul of America.
    In a country fatigued by COVID-19, Zoom calls and a president who thought he was entitled to grab the bodies and attention of his fellow Americans, it appears that Biden wants to offer us some solace. A politics of kindness that permits intentional listening and introspection. Or at least a news cycle that is less taxing, chaotic and demanding.
    Such discussions of the American soul are often interpreted through the prism of Biden’s Catholicism and Irish ancestry. On occasion, they are also read as a sign that we will be returning to the tone and texture of the Barack Obama years and the calm authority of “no-drama Obama.” Yet they are rarely connected to what the African American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois called the “souls of Black folk.”
    It remains difficult for Americans who live in a racially segregated country to consider how African American social and political thought might have informed the thinking of an “average Irish guy” about soul.

    Communicating with a post-soul generation
    Even though Biden was a moderate Irish American who was psychically distant from the activist fervour of the 1960s, he participated in an American culture transfixed by Martin Luther King Jr.’s soulful call for people to be judged on the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.
    He also lived through a period in which Black artists in music, performance, dance, fashion, food, film, literature and visual culture advanced a thrilling vision of soul power.
    Obama and Kamala Harris are too young to have participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and are, in age or temperament, part of a “post-soul generation” . Yet, because of their skin colour and Biden’s ability to work with segregationist senators in the 1970s and ‘80s, the American media remains more likely to associate them with the soulful, redemptive humanism of the 1960s than Biden.
    Kamala Harris is sworn in as U.S. Vice President. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
    The outcry over one of Biden’s gaffes during the 2008 presidential campaign is one revealing example of what Obama might call the “chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.” After describing Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden was thought to have perpetuated antiquated stereotypes about African American intelligence and cleanliness. Or, at the very least, was portrayed as a political dinosaur surprised by the existence of an African-American candidate who appeared articulate, bright and clean to mainstream America.
    ‘People like us’
    While Biden was criticized for his ham-fisted attempts to make it clear that he did not think “all Blacks look alike,” a younger generation of post-soul politicians were praised for strategically using the phrase “people who look like me.”
    After George Zimmerman deemed Trayvon Martin a suspicious young man wearing a hoodie and fatally shot him in 2012, Obama didn’t point out that Martin was vulnerable to such violence because of racialized ways of seeing and stereotypes about young Black men wearing hoodies. Instead, he chose to acknowledge the power of family metaphors in American popular culture and noted that, if he had a son, he would “look like” Trayvon Martin.
    When Harris became Vice-President-elect, we were similarly bombarded with articles about how she sent a message of hope to young women of colour who “looked like” her. Harris is also featured on the front cover of Leadership Looks Like Me, a colouring book containing affirmations meant to inspire children and adults alike.
    A mural depicting Kamala Harris and Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C. Getting individual people of colour into powerful positions should be a means to tackle structural inequalities, not a goal in and of itself. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
    For my book about the history of soulful resistance, I interviewed African Americans who participated in a civil rights movement or produced work that was deeply inspired by a 1960s protest ethic. Many noted their discomfort with the contemporary discourse of “people who look like me.”
    Some associated it with an image-based and superficial culture. Others connected it to profiteers and schemers who appropriate collective struggles for personal or career advancement. All were convinced that getting individual people of colour into powerful positions was a means to tackle structural inequalities, not a goal in and of itself.
    They were concerned that a smattering of new faces in slick, official forms of multiculturalism may distract or co-opt campaigns to challenge racial hierarchy and neo-colonialism wherever it may be in the world.
    If we are to include the substantive contributions of African Americans in our discussion of an American soul, we cannot presume that this is limited to the mere inclusion of African Americans in a Biden cabinet that “looks like America.” After all, such visual diversity may divert people away from a Black political identity that is defined by mental attitude and consciousness rather than skin tone.
    We may feel too fatigued to question who benefits from the discourse of “people who look like us.” But if we are to deepen and develop our understanding of the American soul, we can’t ignore the seriously soulful campaigns in the 1960s that talked about building solidarity with “people who feel like us” and participate in the struggle for freedom and justice with us. More

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    in World Politics

    The British Far Right Has a New Voice of Unity

    In 45 years, by 2066, native white British people are set to become a minority in the UK. This is the claim, accompanied by census data dating back to 1801, made by the Patriotic Alternative, an organization launched in September 2019 that celebrates anti-Semitism and white nationalism in Britain. The Patriotic Alternative is run by …
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    in World Politics

    Welcome to The Economist’s Technological Idealism

    Every publication has a worldview. Each cultivates a style of thought, ideology or philosophy designed to comfort the expectations of its readers and to confirm a shared way of perceiving the world around them. Even Fair Observer has a worldview, in which, thanks to the diversity of its contributors, every topic deserves to be made visible from multiple angles. Rather than emphasizing ideology, such a worldview places a quintessential value on human perception and experience.

    Traditional media companies profile their readership and pitch their offering to their target market’s preferences. This often becomes its central activity. Reporting the news and informing the public becomes secondary to using news reporting to validate a worldview that may not be explicitly declared. Some media outlets reveal their bias, while others masquerade it and claim to be objective. The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has frequently highlighted the bias of newspapers like The New York Times that claim to be objective but consistently impose their worldview. In contrast, The Economist, founded in 1843, has, throughout its history, prominently put its liberal — and now neoliberal — worldview on public display. 

    Zambia Is The Economist’s Damsel in Distress

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    Many of The Economist’s articles are designed to influence both public opinion and public policy. One that appeared at the end of last week exemplifies the practice, advertising its worldview. It could be labeled “liberal technological optimism.” The title of the article sets the tone: “The new era of innovation — Why a dawn of technological optimism is breaking.” The byline indicates the author: Admin. In other words, this is a direct expression of the journal’s worldview.

    The article begins by citing what it assesses as the trend of pessimism that has dominated the economy over the past decade. The text quickly focuses on the optimism announced in the title. And this isn’t just any optimism, but an extreme form of joyous optimism that reflects a Whiggish neoliberal worldview. The “dawn” cliché makes it clear that it is all about the hope of emerging from a dark, ominous night into the cheer of a bright morning with the promise of technological bliss. Central to the rhetoric is the idea of a break with the past, which takes form in sentences such as this one: “Eventually, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics could upend how almost everything is done.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Upend:

    As used by most people: knock over, impede progress, halt a person’s or an object’s stability.

    As used by The Economist: to move forward, to embody progress.

    Contextual Note

    In recent decades, the notion of “disruptive innovation” has been elevated to the status of the highest ideal of modern capitalism. Formerly, disruption had a purely negative connotation as a factor of risk. Now it has become the obligatory goal of dynamic entrepreneurs. Upending was something to be avoided. Now it is actively pursued as the key to success. Let “synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics” do their worst as they disrupt the habits and lifestyles of human beings, The Economist seems to be saying the more upending they entrepreneurs manage to do, the more their profits will grow.

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    In the neoliberal scheme of things, high profit margins resulting from the automatic monopoly of disruptive innovation will put more money in the hands of those who know how to use it — the entrepreneurs. Once they have settled the conditions for mooring their yachts in Monte Carlo, they may have time to think about creating new jobs, the one thing non-entrepreneurial humans continue to need and crave.

    For ordinary people, the new jobs may mean working alongside armies of artificially intelligent robots, though in what capacity nobody seems to know. In all likelihood, disruptive thinkers will eventually have to imagine a whole new set of “bullshit jobs” to replace the ones that have been upended. The language throughout the article radiates an astonishingly buoyant worldview at a moment of history in which humanity is struggling to survive the effects of an aggressive pandemic, to say nothing of the collapse of the planet’s biosphere, itself attributable to the unbridled assault of disruptive technology over the past 200 years.

    What The Economist wants us to believe is that the next round of disruption will be a positive one, mitigating the effects of the previous round that produced, alongside fabulous financial prosperity, a series of increasingly dire negative consequences.

    The article’s onslaught of rhetoric begins with the development of the cliché present in the title telling us that “a dawn of technological optimism is breaking.” The authors scatter an impressive series of positively resonating ideas through the body of the text: “speed,” “prominent breakthroughs,” “investment boom,” “new era of progress,” “optimists,” “giddily predict,” “advances,” “new era of innovation,” “lift living standards,” “new technologies to flourish,” “transformative potential,” “science continues to empower medicine,” “bend biology to their will,” “impressive progress,” “green investments,” “investors’ enthusiasm,” “easing the constraints,” “boost long-term growth,” “a fresh wave of innovation” and “economic dynamism.”

    The optimism sometimes takes a surprising twist. The authors forecast that in the race for technological disruption, “competition between America and China could spur further bold steps.” Political commentators in the US increasingly see conflict with China. Politicians are pressured to get tough on China. John Mearsheimer notably insists on the necessity of hegemonic domination by the US. Why? Because liberal capitalism must conquer, not cooperate. But in the rosy world foreseen by The Economist, friendship will take the day.

    Historical Note

    We at the Daily Devil’s Dictionary believe the world would be a better place if schools offered courses on how to decipher the media. That is unlikely to happen any time soon because today’s schools are institutions that function along the same lines as the media. They have been saddled with the task of disseminating an official worldview designed to support the political and economic system that supports them. 

    Official worldviews always begin with a particular reading of history. Some well-known examples show how nations design their history, the shared narrative of the past, to mold an attitude about the future. In the US, the narrative of the war that led to the founding of the nation established the cultural idea of the moral validity associated with declaring independence, establishing individual rights and justifying rebellion against unjust authority. Recent events in Washington, DC, demonstrate how that instilled belief, when assimilated uncritically, can lead to acts aiming at upending both society and government.

    In France, the ideas associated with the French Revolution, a traumatically upending event, spawned a different type of belief in individual rights. For the French, it must be expressed collectively through organized actions of protest on any issue. US individualism, founded on the frontier ideal of self-reliance, easily turns protestation into vigilante justice by the mob. In France, protests take the form of strikes and citizen movements.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The British retain the memory of multiple historical invasions of their island by Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans and more recent attempts by Napoleon and Hitler. The British people have always found ways of resisting. This habit led enough of them to see the European Union as an invader to vote for Brexit.

    The Italian Renaissance blossomed in the brilliant courts and local governments of its multiple city-states. Although Italy was unified in 1870, its citizens have never fully felt they belonged to a modern nation-state. The one serious but ultimately futile attempt was Mussolini’s fascism, which represented the opposite extreme of autonomous city-states.

    The article in The Economist contains some examples of its reading of economic history. At the core of its argument is this reminder: “In the history of capitalism rapid technological advance has been the norm.” While asserting neoliberal “truths,” like that “Governments need to make sure that regulation and lobbying do not slow down disruption,” it grudgingly acknowledges that government plays a role in technological innovation. Still, the focus remains on what private companies do, even though it is common knowledge that most consumer technology originated in taxpayer-funded military research. 

    Here is how The Economist defines the relationship: “Although the private sector will ultimately determine which innovations succeed or fail, governments also have an important role to play. They should shoulder the risks in more ‘moonshot’ projects.” The people assume the risks and the corporations skim off the profit. This is neoliberal ideology in a nutshell.

    *[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 Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    in US Politics

    America divided: never has the pursuit of happiness seemed so far off

    As Washington hosts a presidential inauguration under strict security lockdown, the US has rarely been more divided and unhappy. The shocking mob invasion of Capitol Hill is the most obvious manifestation of this – but in the background lurks the the COVID-19 pandemic. This has taken a horrific toll on human life and wellbeing – the US currently leads the world in confirmed cases and fatalities.
    According to the Johns Hopkins University database, by January 14 2021 more than 23 million Americans had contracted the disease and nearly 400,000 had died from it. The disease itself and government efforts to combat it have precipitated a major economic crash and huge social dislocations culminating in a riot in the nation’s capital. While this was sparked by Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the validity of the election, the pandemic has created an atmosphere of misery and discontent for many Americans.
    There have been serious negative psychological effects of the pandemic in the form of a significant erosion of feelings of life satisfaction. Our Cometrends pre-election survey of 2,500 people aged 18 and older across the US, which we conducted immediately before the November 3 presidential election, provides a grim snapshot of life in American as it chose new leadership.
    Using data gathered before the pandemic began, the 2020 World Happiness Report documented that the average level of life satisfaction in the US was 6.9 points on a scale of zero to ten, where zero means the respondent has the “worst life imaginable” and ten means the “best life imaginable”. But our new survey shows Americans’ average happiness score just before the election had dropped to 6.4 points.
    Life satisfaction before the election
    Average levels of life satisfaction among racial groups in the US before November 3 2020 election. 2019 Cometrends Pre-Election Survey., Author provided
    The new survey data also show levels of life satisfaction differ significantly in between ethnic and racial groups. While differences in life satisfaction between these groups in the US population are not new, our survey evidence testifies that the economic and psychological effects of the pandemic and efforts to mitigate it also vary significantly across ethnic and racial lines.
    As the graph below shows, significantly more people from ethnic minority groups said that they had encountered economic difficulties because of the pandemic. The story of psychological difficulties is similar. White people are much less likely to say they have experienced mental health problems than ethnic minorities.
    Economic and psychological problems due to COVID-19
    Percentages in racial/ethnic groups reporting economic and psychological problems caused by COVID-19. 2019 Cometrends Pre-Election Survey, Author provided
    When we looked at the effect of COVID on life satisfaction, taking into account other relevant factors such as income, age, confidence in political authorities, we found the virus has exerted significant negative effects on life satisfaction independently of these other factors.
    Political fallout
    Penned nearly 250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence identifies “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” as “inalienable rights” for all. COVID-19 put these rights at serious risk. Although the massively negative economic impact of the pandemic and government attempts to contain it became apparent almost immediately, deleterious psychological effects were recognised more slowly.
    New survey evidence shows that the latter effects are widespread and have precipitated large decreases in life satisfaction. In the same way that COVID cases and fatalities have been concentrated in vulnerable groups, the less-well educated, individuals on lower incomes, and ethnic minorities have borne the brunt of the psychological harm, too.
    Life satisfaction has many important consequences, some of which are political. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our Cometrends post-election survey, consisting of 1,959 participants from the pre-election study, showed supporters of Joe Biden judged the electoral process very favourably, while most Trump voters were highly critical. But we also found that people who reported low levels of life satisfaction were more likely to think the election was rigged.
    Partisan views of the election
    How Biden and Trump voters judge the presidential election. 2020 Cometrends Post-Election Survey, Author provided
    In part these contrasting judgements are products of the deep partisan and ideological animosities that have animated American voters throughout the Trump years. But statistical controls for these factors reveal that life satisfaction had a sizeable independent impact on judgements about the fairness of the election.
    Views of the election affected by people’s feelings of wellbeing
    Judgements about the 2020 presidential election (by levels of life satisfaction). 2020 Cometrends Post-Election Survey, Author provided
    The storming of Washington’s Capitol Building is only the latest in a series of violent protests and destructive riots that have occurred over the past year. The shocking event symbolises the profound political and psychological malaise that gripped America in the Trump era. One important consequence is that levels of life satisfaction have declined, especially in less privileged segments of the population.
    The incoming president faces many daunting tasks. Restoring political civility and helping to increase wellbeing in a fragmented and fractious electorate will be among the most important. More

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    in World Politics

    Why Is Joe Biden’s Presidency Anathema to So Many US Catholics?

    When I was growing up in Germany in the 1960s, during the holiday seasons, both Christmas and Easter, one of the highlights on television was the reruns of “Don Camillo and Peppone.” These are movies that involve the adventures of a Catholic priest and a communist mayor, taking place in a small village in the Po valley in northern Italy. The protagonists are constantly at loggerheads, yet in the end they always find a compromise, based on mutual understanding and appreciation. The time is the immediate postwar period, when both the Italian Catholic Church and Italy’s Communist Party were at the height of their influence and power. For the Catholic Church, this meant substantial interference in Italian politics.

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    One of the most drastic attempts to wield such influence was the Vatican’s decision in mid-1949 to excommunicate all members of the Communist Party. Given the fact that communism was “materialist and anti-Christian,” anyone who came out in support of the ideology automatically expressed their hostility “to God, religion and the Church” and, therefore, had no place among the community of believers. In a country where faith in the Catholic Church and its teachings were deeply ingrained, this was a formidable weapon. It is to the credit of the creator of Don Camillo and Peppone, Giovannino Guareschi, that he showed in many of his stories that this had little to do with reality on the ground — that somebody could be a communist and a good Catholic.

    Bygone Era

    In contemporary Italy, these are stories of a bygone era, one where the Christian Democrats still were the predominant party and where Italians still flocked to the churches. By now, the Christian Democrats are politically dead, and Italian churches have become museums rather than places of worship. In my own country, Germany, the Catholic Church has long abandoned its anti-socialist rhetoric aimed at the Social Democrats, perhaps, but not only, because the SPD has largely abandoned any pretense to be a socialist party.

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    Even in Ireland and in Poland, the Catholic Church is increasingly in a defensive position. Take, for instance, recent shocking official revelations about decades of neglect and abuse in Ireland’s mother and baby homes. Most of them run by religious orders affiliated with the Catholic Church, they reflected a “brutally misogynistic culture” promoted by the church. This culture resulted not only in unmarried women and girls being held “virtual prisoners” in these “homes” but also in the death of thousands of babies, oftentimes buried anonymously in mass graves. Under the circumstances, the Catholic Church’s adamant pro-life stance rings somewhat hollow.

    The church’s taking the moral high ground has also started to undermine the position of the Polish Catholics. It was recent scandals about the sexual abuse of children involving, most infamously, an icon of Polish Catholicism, Henryk Jankowski, a legend of the Solidarność movement that was instrumental in putting an end to Poland’s communist regime. His statue was toppled by protesters in 2019 in the city of Gdansk, before being officially dismantled and removed. The fact that until today, the Polish Catholic Church has refused to accept responsibility has led to a dramatic loss of trust in its authority. The church, in turn, has sought to divert attention from the crimes committed in its name by targeting the country’s LGTBQ community as the new “plague that seeks to dominate our souls, hearts and our mind.”

    I doubt that the American Catholic Church is tuned in to developments in contemporary Poland or that it has any awareness of the far-reaching influence of the Italian Catholic Church in the immediate postwar period. Yet the parallels are striking, particularly in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. This time, President Donald Trump garnered roughly 50% of the Catholic vote and about 57% among white Catholics. To be sure, Catholics voted for Trump for a range of different reasons. “Pro-life” considerations probably rank very high, if not highest, particularly among white Catholics. So do anti-immigrant sentiments. Among Hispanics, economic considerations appear to have had a significant influence on electoral choice, plus the open hostility a number of Catholic spiritual leaders have expressed toward Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in general.

    Take, for instance, Jesse Romero, a former cop turned into a well-known Catholic evangelist, who appears to have personally “witnessed diabolical satanic activity,” recounted in his 2019 book, “The Devil in the City of Angels: My Encounters With the Diabolical.” A cop staring down the devil — what other qualifications does one need to be a major authority on spiritual guidance? In early 2020, Romero published a book that proclaimed that a vote for Trump was the only choice for Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike. Those interested in the rationale behind Romero’s plea should consult his response to a Never Trump Catholic, which provides a long list of Trump’s “accomplishments” starting with his “pro-life” measures. What about him being a liar and philanderer? Who cares?

    To be sure, Romero is nothing more than another one of these evangelical snake oil salesmen that clutter America’s airwaves. Usually, they are of the Protestant persuasion; but then, the US is an equal opportunity country, and Romero is certainly not the worst of the lot, at least on the Catholic side.

    Party of Death

    A recent post on the Jesuit America magazine website provides a sobering account of the extent to which Catholic officials have gone to incite hatred toward Joe Biden and the Democrats. The author quotes one priest who posted a clip to YouTube that charged that the Democratic platform was “against everything the Catholic Church teaches.” Therefore, American Catholics who voted for the Democrats should “just quit pretending” to be Catholics. Those contemplating voting for Biden should repent of “their support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell.” Christianity in action.

    And who cares that Biden is, in fact, a practicing Catholic, while Donald Trump, as his Presbyterian Protestant congregation puts it, is not an “active member.” As Rick Stika, the bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, put it in a tweet in August, Biden should not claim to be a good Catholic “as he denies so much of Church teaching especially on the absolute child abuse and human rights violations of the most innocent, the not yet born.” As a member of an institution infamous for widespread abuse of the most innocent, Stika should have known better than to use this kind of language. And yet, as an article in the National Catholic Reporter has documented, he was hardly the only top Catholic dignitary to question Biden’s Catholic faith and credentials.

    When God Hates America

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    Lower ranks followed suit. One priest posted a clip that called the Democrats the “party of death.” This is a trope that has been around for years, first introduced by the former St. Louise Archbishop Raymond Burke. Burke was appointed to the Vatican’s highest court in 2008 from where he attacked both Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who, he charged, “while presenting themselves as good Catholics, have presented Church doctrine on abortion in a false and tendentious way.”

    Given the relatively long tradition of labeling the Democratic Party as the party of death by the gotha of American Catholicism, it is hardly surprising that the recent video clip received enthusiastic support from Joseph Strickland, a bishop from Tyler, Texas. Strickland not only endorsed the message but exhorted his flock to listen to this “wise and faithful priest.” It might also come as no surprise that according to one witness in Pennsylvania, some priests were “openly suggesting that politicians who support abortion rights should be denied Communion.”

    This is akin to what the Italian Catholic Church told its flock in the postwar period. This is what the Polish Church has been telling its flock since the collapse of the communist regime. The result: In 2019, a mere 20% of the Polish population expressed trust in the country’s Catholic Church.

    Blood on Their Hands

    Things are likely to move in the same direction in the United States. The headline of a recent article in National Catholic Reporter minced no words: Catholics, the article charged, “need to confess their complicity in the failed coup.” The author claims that, given the five casualties caused by the assault on the Capitol, “Catholic apologists for Trump have blood on their hands.” The tacit or open support of parts of the American Catholic Church’s clergy and affiliated lay organizations, such as Catholics for Trump, CatholicVote.org and LifeSiteNews, for a president who represents the very antithesis of Gospel teaching is bound to have a significant fallout, given the assault on the nation’s cradle of democracy.  

    This comes at a time when the Catholic Church is under tremendous pressure given the growing number of revelations of widespread sexual abuse, more often than not hushed up by the Church hierarchy. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the Catholic Church spent more than $5 million on lobbying to prevent victims of sexual abuse from getting meaningful compensation.

    Ever since the creation of the United States, Catholics have been under a cloud of suspicion. It took more than a century to alleviate these suspicions and allow Catholics to be accepted as equal members of the nation. By openly supporting a president who represents the very antithesis of Christ’s teaching, parts of the American Catholic Church have managed to erase much of the progress the American Catholic Church has managed to accomplish over the past several decades. Consumed by one issue, the question of abortion, they condoned Trump’s behavior by looking the other way on questions of racism, white supremacy, refugees and Black Lives Matter.  

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    On the contrary, radical right-wing influencers, such as Michelle Malkin (who once said that what was at the heart of her “outspokenness” was her Catholic faith), characterized Black Lives Matter protesters as “vigilante terrorists.” A few weeks before the assault on the Capitol, Malkin ridiculed the idea that Trump supporters might be “the real threat to civil order” or that the “populist movement to ‘stop the steal’ of election 2020 is rooted in hate.”   

    In the wake of the assault on the Capitol, it has become clear that the American Catholic Church’s narrow focus on the question of abortion is a dead end with serious consequences. It is time to shift the focus to pressing issues like social justice, affordable health care for all, human dignity independent of skin color, gender and sexual orientation, and, last but not least, a fundamental break with the Trump administration’s approach to the global climate crisis. In other words, following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ rather than kowtowing to the likes of Donald Trump and many within the Republican Party who care only about themselves. 

    A recent article in the Chicago Tribune suggests that this is going to be an uphill battle. When a Catholic priest in Chicago raised uncomfortable questions about the church’s complicity with the Trump administration and the assault on Congress, a significant number of his congregation walked out, clearly unprepared to confront reality. This suggests that the rift in American society extends deep into the country’s Catholic community. This is hardly surprising, giving the polarizing figure of Pope Francis.  What many of his detractors in the Catholic Church have objected to is that his “theology stems from reality: from the reality of injustice, poverty and the destruction of nature.”

    As it happens, the American Catholic Church is a hotspot of opposition to Pope Francis. This might, in part at least, explain the support of many American Catholics for Donald Trump and the vitriol parts of the Catholic community have directed at Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Hence the irony that the country’s second Catholic taking over the Oval Office since John F. Kennedy is anathema to so many American Catholics.  

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Is GCC-Qatar Rapprochement Good or Bad News for Turkey?

    Turkey deepened its cooperation with Qatar during the blockade imposed by the Arab quartet in 2017, when the tiny emirate was most vulnerable and highly reliant on outside assistance for food supplies and security against perceived threats from its neighbors as well as the threat of an internal coup. Given that restoring diplomatic ties announced earlier this month with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the opening of borders and airspace will make Qatar less dependent on Turkey, it might appear surprising that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the agreement and expects benefits for Turkey and the Gulf states.

    Navigating the Minefield of Arab Politics

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    The current “solidarity and stability” deal between Qatar and the GCC plus Egypt makes no mention of the 13 demands of 2017, which included closing the Turkish military base and halting military cooperation with Ankara. While full clarification of the deal’s terms and impact will have to wait, it clearly does not resolve all the problems between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors. There are challenges ahead, with three plausible consequences for Turkey.

    Three Scenarios

    First is the continuation of the status quo, where relations between Qatar and Turkey carry on largely unchanged. Although Doha’s relations with Riyadh improve, the rivalry between the United Arab Emirates and Egypt remains, and Qatar will not necessarily change its foreign policy. Saudi Arabia and its Arab quartet allies — the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt — cannot achieve with carrots what they failed to accomplish with sticks.

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    Continuation of the status quo would not, however, make Qatar Turkey’s unconditional ally; Ankara never had absolute influence over Doha. While Qatar did refuse to endorse an Arab League condemnation of Turkish military operations in Syria and Iraq in 2016, it chose not to block a later communique reflecting the same sentiment. Qatar Petroleum also joined ExxonMobil in signing exploration and production-sharing contracts with Cyprus in 2017, which contradicts Turkey’s Eastern Mediterranean policy. In this scenario, Turkey’s proactive, militaristic foreign policy will continue unchanged, from Syria to Libya. But Ankara will need to spend more effort on maintaining its relationship with a more independent Qatar.

    The second scenario is regional isolation. If Turkey loses its influence over Qatar as the latter’s relations with its neighbors revive, this will leave Ankara further isolated in the region. The Arab quartet had hoped that blockading Qatar would draw Doha away from Turkish and Iranian influence and squash its independent foreign policy. The plan failed and brought about the opposite effect: Qatar increased its cooperation with Turkey and deepened its ties with Iran.

    Following reconciliation, Saudi Arabia and its allies might pursue a more realistic, limited set of goals such as curbing rather than eradicating Turkish presence and influence in Qatar. This approach has a better chance of achieving results and would be a challenge to Turkey. Following the GCC summit, UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said that some issues would take longer to fix than others: “One of the big things will be the geostrategic dimensions, how do we see regional threats, how do we see the Turkish presence? Is Turkey’s presence in the Gulf going to be permanent?”

    Finally, there is the option of reconciliation with the Gulf region. Turkey’s disputes with Saudi Arabia and the UAE did not start with the Qatar blockade and will not end with its lifting. However, by agreeing to end the blockade without asking Qatar to concede any of their original main demands, Saudi Arabia and its allies have acknowledged a new power balance in the Gulf. That might give Qatar the leverage to mediate between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Turkey would then benefit from the thaw.

    Separate reconciliation processes are already underway between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt. According to Mithat Rende, former Turkish ambassador to Qatar, at the same time as communication was reestablished between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, another channel was opened between Istanbul and Riyadh. Ankara has also engaged in backdoor diplomacy and intelligence cooperation with Israel and Egypt.

    A Truce

    There can be no reconciliation without an agreement to seek common ground regarding geostrategic approaches in the region. The price for Ankara could be to moderate its approaches across the Arab world and exercising restraint in Libya, Syria and Iraq. The fact that the Saudis are currently more focused on potential threats from Iran rather than on Turkish intervention in the Middle East provides a promising context for negotiations. Reconciliation between Turkey and Saudi Arabia would also constrain the Emiratis and the Egyptians, for whom stopping Turkey’s activities is more urgent than Qatar downgrading its ties with Iran.

    Turkish-Saudi efforts to find a compromise may receive a boost from Qatar. In Doha, Turkey now has a well-connected ally in the Gulf that could serve Ankara’s ends, which are also in its own interests. Although it is unlikely that Ankara will change its geostrategic direction in order to gain friendlier relations with the Gulf states, it will still benefit from Doha restoring relations with Riyadh and its allies.

    To use an analogy from war, the GCC deal is a truce rather than a peace agreement. And it is still work in progress. If rapprochement within the GCC facilitates reconciliation with Turkey, this could lead to a broader process potentially including Israel, which is itself in a parallel process of normalizing relations with Arab countries such as Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan and Morocco. If, on the other hand, the GCC and Egypt manage to gradually detach Qatar from Turkey, this will have negative repercussions for Turkey’s militaristic policies in Syria and Libya, at least financially — as Qatar funds Turkey’s partners and proxies — and politically.

    Greater regional isolation and reconciliation with the Gulf would both constrain Turkey’s activities in conflicts such as Syria and Libya. European engagement, in the form of pressure on all sides to achieve resolution, would be useful. By contributing to stability in the region such efforts could ameliorate the associated security and migration challenges.

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

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More