Philippa Kaur

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    Will the Taliban End Up Under the Influence?

    Yahoo News Senior Editor Mike Bebernes asks the big question on everyone’s mind after the American debacle in Afghanistan: “Does the U.S. have any real leverage over the Taliban?” After summarizing the immediate political background of the topic, he compares the speculative answers of a variety of pundits.

    Bebernes distinguishes between what he calls optimists, who “say the U.S. has enormous leverage to hold the Taliban to their commitments,” and the pessimists, who apparently believe that the interests of the two countries have so little in common that it isn’t worth bothering about the concerns of such savage people. In other words, as Donnie Brasco would say, “Forget about it!”

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    The optimists typically cite the weakness of the Afghan economy and the problems the Taliban will face without US cooperation. Others think that a common concern with fanatical terrorist groups may create an opportunity for mutual understanding. Bebernes suggests that the Taliban government is likely to “seek support in combating its own terror threat from groups like [the Islamic State in Khorasan Province], which some experts believe will create another point of leverage for the U.S.”

    One of the pessimists appears to believe that, as in the Cold War, there may become what General Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove” would have called a “leverage gap” between the US and Russia or China. “Other world powers could undercut America’s leverage.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Leverage:

    The measure of the power of a state with imperial ambitions over the life and death of populations beyond its borders

    Contextual Note

    The trauma Americans experienced after Saigon, nearly half a century ago, and Kabul today has provoked what might be called the first “leverage crisis” in US history. For more than two centuries, the United States has carved out, largely unimpeded, its areas of influence in various parts of the world. Areas of influence eventually evolved into “spheres of influence.”

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    Following World War II, American strategists realized they could conquer, economically if not politically, the great sphere itself, the earthly globe. The globalization of what was originally the US version of Europe’s capitalist economy, along with a reinforced ideology thanks to thinkers from the University of Chicago, led every strategist within Washington’s Beltway to assume that the globe itself could become America’s hegemonic domain.

    Exercising geopolitical and economic hegemony required two things: physical presence — provided essentially by multinational firms and American military bases — and a toolbox of influence, which could take the form alternatively of overt and covert military action or economic sanctions. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US State Department has wielded those tools with a sense of ever-increasing impunity as it proceeded to intimidate both its allies and nations that refused to acknowledge their tributary status with regard to US influence. For the past four decades, the US has relied on either warfare — invasion, occupation and bombing campaigns, unlimited in time and scope — or increasingly severe economic sanctions to reaffirm what was officially formulated as influence, but exercised with a spirit of hegemonic control.

    The debacle in Afghanistan reveals a deeper trouble at the core of strategic decision-making in Washington. The new emphasis on the concept of leverage can be read as an admission that the toolbox to manage a sphere of influence has lost much of its efficacy. For decades, the idea of applying and reinforcing influence dominated Washington’s strategic thinking. It is now being replaced by the much more fragile idea of exercising leverage. Both the State Department and the media pundits appear puzzled about what that might mean.

    The concept of leverage comes from the field of mechanics. It describes the function of a lever. “Levers convert a small force applied over a long distance to a large force applied over a small distance.” Twenty years of yet another futile, expensive and demonstrably stupid war appears to have taught Washington that it no longer has the control over distance that it formerly believed it had. Its wasteful actions have also diminished its force.

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    Making leverage work in mechanics requires some careful analysis, preparation and effective execution. These are efforts the strategists, planners and decision-makers, convinced of the indomitable force of their influence, have consistently failed to carry out in a competent way. Could it be too late for them to learn the art of leverage? Or is the very fact that they are now obliged to think in terms of leverage rather than influence so humiliating an experience that they will fail to engage?

    This may be the occasion for US President Joe Biden to leverage the vaunted “power of our example” rather than the “example of our power” that he so regularly mentions in his speeches. That would require some real geopolitical creativity. And does he really believe that the US could live up to that standard? Few commentators have remarked that Biden, true to his own tradition, plagiarized that line from Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., who originally used it in 2005 to condemn the Iraq war that Biden had so forcefully promoted as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    Historical Note

    In 1823, President James Monroe promulgated the Monroe Doctrine that continues to this day to dominate US relations with the entire American continent. It became a permanent feature of the mindset of US strategists, who without a trace of tragic irony routinely consider Latin America in its entirety, right down to the Tierra del Fuego, as Washington’s “backyard.” Peter Hakim, a senior fellow of the Inter-American Dialogue, in a Foreign Affairs in 2007 article with the title, “Is Washington Losing Latin America?” dared to express the feelings not only of the US political class, but also those of the USA’s neighbors. “Perhaps what most troubles Latin Americans is the sense that Washington just does not take the region seriously and still considers it to be its own backyard,” he wrote.

    In 1823, Latin America’s population consisted of three broad socio-cultural and ethnic components: indigenous people who occupied most of the mountainous interior; descendants of Iberian Europeans (Spanish and Portuguese) who, following their 15th and 16th-century conquests, dominated the political and economic structures; and imported African slaves (primarily in Brazil). All three were as distant from the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture of the US as anyone could imagine. These were the populations President Monroe wanted to “protect” from hostile action by European powers. 

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    Through its own expansion justified in the name of “manifest destiny,” the US had demonstrated how it would deal with indigenous Americans. Primarily through genocidal warfare. It demonstrated its attitude toward Africans, deemed useful purely for economic exploitation as slaves. As for the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking populations who created the culture that prevailed across all the coastal regions of Latin America, they belonged at best to the category of second-class Europeans. The fact that the majority were mestizos (mixed-race) defined them irrevocably as third-class. At least they could thank their hybrid status for being spared the fate of the true indigenous, who could at any moment, even in recent times, be subjected to genocidal treatment.

    In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt refined the Monroe Doctrine by adding the Roosevelt Corollary. It “stated that in cases of flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American country, the United States could intervene in that country’s internal affairs.” If during the 19th the Monroe Doctrine functioned mainly as a barrier to European incursion, by the beginning of the 20th century, the US had come to understand the value for its burgeoning capitalist economy of controlling what came to become a continental sphere of influence. Controlling meant having the power to organize the economy of the countries under its influence.

    Following the Second World War and the collapse of nearly all the vestiges of European colonization, the US discovered that the entire globe could potentially become its sphere of influence. Some have called the period of the Cold War the Pax Americana, simply because the standoff with the Soviet Union never became a hot war between the two massively armed superpowers. But throughout the period there were proxy wars, clandestine operations and regime change campaigns galore that meant the heat was never really turned down.

    What a comedown it must be today to have to debate how to exercise leverage.

    *[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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    Can the Taliban Guarantee Security for Afghanistan’s Neighbors?

    The Taliban’s second takeover since 1996 is taking place in a regional context that poses challenges for the regime but also opens up new opportunities. Twenty-five years ago, the Taliban took over a country largely destroyed by civil war; today, they find a reasonably functioning state.

    At that time, the Taliban regime was recognized internationally by only three states: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. Iran, Russia and India, on the other hand, supported the armed resistance by the Northern Alliance.

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    Even after 2001, Afghanistan remained the scene of regional disputes. While Pakistan backed the Taliban, India became a strategic partner of the Afghan government. The common enmity against the US even made cooperation between Iran and the Taliban possible, despite their ideological differences.

    Security Guarantees

    The stability of the new Taliban regime will depend on the extent to which it succeeds in avoiding renewed international isolation and proxy wars in Afghanistan. Central to this, both in relation to the Western states and to Afghanistan’s neighbors, is the question of security guarantees from the Taliban in return for political recognition and economic support.

    Not only the US and other Western states but also Afghanistan’s regional neighbors have called on the Taliban to take action against terrorist groups that supported the Taliban’s conquest from their safe havens across the country in early summer. The Western community of states has its sights set on groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).

    Russia and the Central Asian republics fear a direct spillover of Islamist militancy onto their territory, whether by the ISKP or by extremist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or Jamaat Ansarullah, which recruits mainly from Tajiks or Chechen fighters.

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    China’s security interests in Afghanistan are also directed against the ISKP and against militant Uighur groups such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Pakistan, considered the Taliban’s closest ally, is demanding that the new leadership in Kabul take action against the Pakistani Taliban of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, which carries out attacks in Pakistan from Afghanistan. For its part, Shia-majority Iran has turned its attention to groups like the Sunni ISKP-affiliated Jundullah, which operates out of Afghanistan.

    In order to stabilize their rule, the Taliban must thus find ways to credibly limit the radius of action of foreign militant groups in Afghanistan, to the extent that they take into account the security concerns of the respective neighboring states. This appears easiest with regard to the ISKP, considered a threat by the neighbors as well as the Western states. However, since the Taliban and the ISKP are enemies, further fighting between the two groups is to be expected.

    It could be even more difficult for the Taliban to dissociate themselves from other militant groups such as the Haqqani Network, which is considered the military backbone of the Taliban and has close ties to al-Qaeda. Other Islamist groups are linked by different loyalties to individual factions within the Afghan Taliban.

    Security Benefits

    Consequently, the enforcement of security will probably not happen peacefully and is likely to become the starting point for renewed violence in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the Taliban could benefit in several ways if they do achieve it.

    First, they will gain political recognition from neighboring states, which will increase their international legitimacy. Second, this may contribute to the country’s economic development. Afghanistan is central to a number of large-scale economic projects that would facilitate trade and transfer of energy between Central and South Asia and could also benefit the Taliban. Pakistan is interested in implementing these projects, as are Uzbekistan and China. Beijing could also increase economic cooperation with Afghanistan in the medium term as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

    Third, the Taliban would benefit militarily from such cooperation as it would minimize the risk that an armed opposition like the Northern Alliance in the 1990s would again receive support from neighboring states.

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    At the same time, the different geopolitical environment and the Western states’ geostrategic rivalries with Russia and China now offer the Taliban more options for cooperation. The US and Europe will make their future relations with the new regime conditional on concessions on security issues, human rights and the participation of women.

    In contrast, neighbors such as China, Russia, the Central Asian states, Iran and Pakistan, while also emphasizing their security interests vis-à-vis the Taliban, will place less emphasis on human rights issues. This constellation is likely to significantly limit the West’s ability to influence Afghanistan’s future political and social development.

    *[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

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    When Truth No Longer Matters

    An effective communicator with a questionable past builds a successful campaign as an outsider disinterested in everyday, run-of-the-mill politics. He smartly taps into the fears and anxieties of voters and projects himself as the only person who can fix the supposedly broken system.

    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 reverse 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.

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    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.

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    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, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi, 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 compromised 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 pointed out, 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.

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    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.

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    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 threatening 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 Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    US abortion law: supreme court stacked with conservatives bodes ill for women's rights

    The US supreme court’s failure to block a new law entering into force in Texas means that abortions after six weeks are effectively banned in that state, even in cases of rape or incest. In the case – Whole Woman’s Health v. Austin Reeve Jackson – a five-four majority of the court denied the application to block legislation SB.8 in Texas.

    From September 1, SB.8 “makes it unlawful for physicians to perform abortions if they detect cardiac activity on an embryo or fail to perform a test to detect such activity”. This is around six weeks after a woman’s last period, much sooner than many women find out that they are pregnant.

    Fierce debate has taken place over women’s sexual reproductive rights since the US supreme court’s 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade. In this case, the court ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to abortion due to her “right to privacy”, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. This was hailed as a momentous step towards the protection of women’s rights.

    Yet anti-abortion campaigners have been fighting to restrict a woman’s right to choose, most notably through the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. In this case, the supreme court upheld Roe, but allowed states to place restrictions on first trimester abortions, such as government-mandated delays between consultation and abortion, so long as they do not impose an “undue burden” on the woman. Previously states had been banned from introducing restrictions on first-trimester abortions.

    Allowing the Texas abortion ban to take effect is an attack on women’s rights and will have a devastating impact on women in Texas. It will undoubtedly galvanise other states to further restrict abortions too, with the ultimate goal of these restrictions being a complete overruling of Roe v. Wade. This would effectively ban abortions across the US. The likelihood of this happening has increased due to the current politics of the US supreme court.

    The politics of the US supreme court

    A key role of the supreme court is to rule on points of constitutional and federal law. It hears around 100 cases per year on a range of constitutional issues from administrative law to criminal justice. Some decisions of the court, such as in Roe v. Wade, can bind the entirety of the US.

    The court is made up of nine justices who are appointed for life by the president of the United States, subject to confirmation by the US Senate. This politicisation of the court naturally creates a divide: conservatives versus liberals. This has led to fractious five-four decisions of the court being handed down when ruling on contentious issues.

    Prior to his retirement in 2018, conservative justice Anthony Kennedy acted as the “swing vote” in key cases. He joined the four sitting liberal justices in two pivotal death penalty cases in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), which ruled the death penalty to be unconstitutional where a person has an intellectual disability, and Roper v. Simmons (2004), which struck down capital punishment for persons under the age of 18.

    To complicate the politics of the court even further, the Trump administration had the opportunity to nominate three justices to the court in just four years. This is almost unheard of as justices have life tenure, usually choosing when to retire or sitting until their death. This means they often serve long terms on the court, into old age.

    Justices of the US supreme court, April 2021: Donald Trump appointed three new justices during his four-year term.
    EPA-EFE/Erin Schaff

    Trump’s first nominee in 2017, Justice Neil Gorsuch, was a replacement for the equally staunch conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia. But, when Justice Kennedy announced his retirement in 2018, this meant that the court lost its swing-vote justice. Kennedy was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a right-leaning centrist who was appointed to the court under a cloud of controversy and allegations of sexual assault.

    Trump’s final nominee replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal and a lifelong advocate for women’s rights, with another solid conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. These additions to the court made by a Republican president has led to a six-three majority in favour of the conservatives.

    As predicted, while Chief Justice Roberts would usually side with his Republican-appointed counterparts on controversial issues, he is now seemingly attempting to save the legacy of the “Roberts court” by joining the Democrat-appointees on certain points. Yet this is not the Justice Kennedy-type swing vote that the chief justice may have hoped it would be, because even when Roberts sides with the liberals – as he did in this case – the conservatives still have a five-four majority.

    What this decision means

    In this instance, the supreme court technically “failed to act” by not striking down the Texas law. (The case was an application for “injunctive relief”, which asked the court to block the enactment of the legislation, rather than adjudicate on the issues.)

    But the court could still decide to hear a case on whether the Texas abortion ban is unconstitutional or not – and it is also likely that this decision will galvanise other states to further restrict abortions across the US. Especially because, prior to this case, the court had already agreed to hear a Mississippi case that represents a direct challenge to the decision in Roe v. Wade in its Autumn docket.

    There is already a case awaiting the supreme court that seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade in its entirety.
    Bob Daemmrich/ZUMA Press Wire

    After the court’s inaction regarding the Texas abortion ban, there is a very real prospect that Roe v. Wade could be overruled. This would lead to unthinkable consequences for women across the US.

    The outcome of this decision is even more far-reaching. There is also now the possibility that there will be challenges to the rights of other vulnerable populations, for example people within the criminal justice system and the LGBTQ+ community, as many recent decisions regarding their rights have been five-four decisions that relied upon Kennedy’s swing-vote. It should not be forgotten that the supreme court’s ruling on gay marriage in 2015 was a contentious five-four decision, with Justice Kennedy providing the swing-vote to achieve a liberal majority and Chief Justice Roberts siding with the conservatives.

    While the US president, Joe Biden, has stated that his administration “will protect and defend” a woman’s right to choose, the Biden administration cannot interfere with a supreme court decision, as that would breach the doctrine of separation of powers.

    Human rights organisations continue to fight for women’s rights, but ultimately, any future decisions on whether a woman has the right to choose an abortion in the US lies with nine justices in Washington DC. More

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    Right Think: Jane Austen Against Terrorism

    A creative British judge has demonstrated how judgments in criminal cases need not be about meting out humiliating, painful punishment to the guilty. In the case of 21-year-old Ben John, accused of acts identifying him as a “terror risk,” the punishment prescribed by Judge Timothy Spencer QC consists essentially of reading works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Anthony Trollope and Thomas Hardy. John will return to court three times a year “to be tested on his reading.”

    Ben John’s crime consisted of downloading exactly 67,788 documents that appeal to right-wing terrorists. Call it downloading with intent to read. According to the BBC, “He was arrested in January 2020 and later charged with offenses under the Terrorism Act, including possessing documents on combat, homemade weapons and explosives.” To be clear, he didn’t actually possess weapons and explosives, merely documents about them. According to John’s attorney, even the prosecution didn’t believe he was planning a terrorist attack. 

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    Understanding the diminished nature of the threat, alongside the fact that he technically did violate a modern law that some complain encourages abuse by law enforcement, the judge gave this account of John’s taste in downloading: “It is repellent, this content, to any right-thinking person. This material is largely relating to Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired ideology.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Right-thinking person:

    Someone who understands the importance of limiting their thinking not only to approved topics but also to approved takes on those topics while accepting to make a concerted effort not to let their thinking wander into unsavory areas

    Contextual Note

    Britain is a nation and a culture that lives and breathes through its awareness of its centuries-old traditions. The idea of “right-thinking” cannot be defined by any law, but instead of being discarded, as it would be in the US, thanks to the British perception of the weight of its inherited culture, the concept can be credibly invoked in a courtroom and even figure in a verdict. Judge Spencer apparently believes the key to becoming a right-thinking citizen is to practice being a right-reading citizen. A clear-headed judge in the US applying the same logic would impose reading the law, not works of fiction.

    Judge Spencer understands that knowing the law isn’t enough. Thinking like a good Englishman requires familiarity with great English writers of the past. And it must be the past. In his list there is no Martin Amis, Ali Smith, Ian MacEwan or even 20th modernists such as Virginia Woolf, Joyce Cary or D.H. Lawrence. Right-thinking English society reached its pinnacle more than a century ago.

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    It stopped evolving at the beginning of the 20th century, by which time all British citizens were expected to understand at least that part of a dying empire’s heritage. This judgment reveals that the nostalgia for a society of the queen’s right-thinking subjects remains a powerful cultural force in British society.

    John’s lawyer described his client’s character as “a young man who struggled with emotions; however, he is plainly an intelligent young man and now has a greater insight.” Perhaps the judge expects that John’s reading of great works from the past will inspire him to become a writer himself, making him not only right-thinking but even an active contributor to the perpetuation of the literary tradition that defines the nation’s greatness. John may even be inspired to take up writing his own dramatic story. Instead of engaging in the crime of downloading with intent, he may start uploading with creative ambition. 

    This legal episode may leave the reader of the article with the impression that the judge regrets not having pursued a vocation in academia and is using the opportunity to hone his skills as a literature teacher. On that score, Judge Spencer may risk falling into the trap of the great British tradition of imitating a cast of despotic, if not sadistic headmasters and superintendents, on the model of Dickens’ Thomas Gradgrind in “Hard Times.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    There is a hint of Dickensian severity in Spencer’s formulation of the young man’s sentence: “On 4 January you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it. I will test you and if I think you are [lying to] me you will suffer.” But unlike Gradgrind — who condemned “fancy” (“You are never to fancy”) and promoted “fact, fact, fact” — by imposing fiction, Spencer may even be encouraging the development of John’s fancy, so long as it stays close to what right-thinking people fancy.

    John’s barrister, Harry Bentley, reassured the judge: “He is by no means a lost cause and is capable of living a normal, pro-social life.” The term “pro-social” should be taken as a synonym of “right-thinking,” which means not “Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired.”

    Historical Note

    The judge mentioned some specific titles of works that John will be expected to read, all of them works that belong to the prestigious history of English literature. Judge Spencer gave this specific instruction: “Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.” Apart from Shakespeare, these are all 19th-century writers. In their works, they describe the material, social and economic conflicts that concerned people living in a world that has little in common with today’s reality.

    These novels reflect in different ways the impact of the momentous change as a formerly rural society was overturned by industrialization. Is it reasonable to think a young extremist of the 21st century will be able to learn from such examples?

    Embed from Getty Images

    We are left wondering at what the chosen titles mean for the judge himself and what impact he expects them to have on the man accused of terrorist tendencies. Will the preoccupations of a destitute gentry in the early 19th century in “Pride and Prejudice” provoke some epiphany for the young man? Will the absurdly melodramatic pseudo-political events Dickens situates during the French Revolution in “The Tale of Two Cities” clarify his ideas about radical politics?

    Does the judge expect that the subtle confusion about a twin playing at reversing her gender role in Shakespeare’s sublime comedy will effectively educate John on the subtleties of sexual identity and help him to nuance his opinions on homosexuality?

    Depending on how he conducts the discussion sessions around the convicted man’s readings, the magistrate may be creating a precedent that is worth imitating in other cases of individuals with terrorist inclinations. Calling great writers of the past as witnesses of what right-thinking people believe will at least rob such individuals of the time they would dedicate to reading downloaded extremist literature. It’s a question not of fighting fire with fire, but with comforting warmth. 

    There is a problem, however. Understanding what Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and others had to say requires delving into the history of their times and the modes of thought that accompanied those times. We might even wonder how right-thinking these authors were. Shakespeare in particular left hints that he wasn’t very fond of the oppressive order he was living under. His form of protest was not to download instructions provided by Guy Fawkes (who did attempt to blow up Parliament), but the texts of his tragedies that indirectly express his doubts about the existing political order.

    Embed from Getty Images

    For Shakespeare, something was rotten in England as well as Denmark, and the time was clearly out of joint. He carefully avoided appearing too subversive from fear of the temporal power that would inevitably accuse him under the Elizabethan version of the Terror Act.

    Judge Spencer has nevertheless defined a noble course of action in this particular case. Let us hope that he is up to the task as a teacher. If he does succeed, we should recommend his example for handling future cases of intelligent individuals so disturbed by the reigning hypocrisy that they become ready to embrace ideas pointing in the direction of terrorism. Given the constant degradation of our political culture and of the trust people are willing to put in our political leaders and the justice system itself, such examples in the near future are likely to be legion. 

    *[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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    The US Tries to Make a Fine Distinction in Afghanistan

    The US special representative, Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as the Bush administration’s ambassador to Afghanistan and later to the United Nations, has delivered his post-mortem on America’s two-decade-long war in Afghanistan. On August 30, he tweeted: “Our war in Afghanistan is over. Our brave Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen served with distinction and sacrifice to the very end. They have our enduring gratitude and respect.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Distinction:

    Blind obedience, which, according to the place and time, may turn out to be obedience to strategically blind politicians

    Contextual Note

    The idea of “distinction” derives from the notion that some people achieve a status that distinguishes them from their peers, placing them on a superior level. The expression “serve with distinction” in the armed forces is a time-honored cliché, whose meaning no one questions. Any individual who accepts the conditions of military service that imply the risk of losing one’s life at any given point in time automatically earns the right to be “distinguished” from the rest of humanity. Ordinary people do everything in their daily lives to reduce or eliminate risk, especially direct risks to their survival or well-being. The instinct for survival makes all humans indistinguishable. Those who engage in actions that may compromise their survival are clearly distinguished from the rest of humanity.

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    Not all service personnel are exposed to battleground conditions. Some, exercising specialized tasks, never encounter them. But all members of the military implicitly accept to participate in operations commanded by their superiors with the knowledge that their survival may be in play.

    Khalilzad predictably trots out the cliché but then extends it by adding “sacrifice” to “distinction.” Some may see this as unintentionally ironic. This could include Lieutenant Colonel Stu Scheller, who has vociferously clamored for accountability by military and political leaders. Over a span of 20 years, urged on by the Pentagon, three US presidents have sent their citizens abroad as sacrificial victims to the god of war they honored, if not worshipped. The belief that Ares, Mars or Týr — or indeed a god of war by any name — might require the ritual of animal sacrifice, let alone human sacrifice, would be universally mocked today. But Khalilzad reminds us that the tradition has survived in our patriotic values.

    NBC’s distinguished Middle East correspondent, Richard Engel, thinks the sacrifice should be continued. “Who is going to go in now?” he asks. What power is going to go in and undo them?” Like many Americans, Engel criticizes President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan. That country now finds itself under the control of what Engel persists in calling “the enemy.” If the war is over, the notion of enemy should disappear, even if a renewal of the state of war remains possible.

    The Taliban seem to have understood that. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid appealed to the US to develop peaceful relations. “We have communication channels with them,” he explained, “and we expect them to reopen their embassy in Kabul and we also want to have trade relations with them.”

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    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the safety that cooperation has provided, but he appeared uncommitted to exploring the development of peaceful relations between the two nations. He saw no need for an embassy in Kabul. “For the time being,” he explained, “we will use this post in Doha to manage our diplomacy with Afghanistan, including consular affairs, administering humanitarian assistance, and working with allies, partners, and regional and international stakeholders to coordinate our engagement and messaging to the Taliban.” 

    According to Blinken, the US will politely discuss with the Taliban from afar the time it takes to evacuate those still stranded in the country whom the US believes deserve evacuation. Once that is accomplished, the US will most likely apply the opposite of the Taliban’s wish to see a US embassy in Kabul and new trade relations. The more predictable course of action, similar to the one applied to Cuba for the past 60 years, would be an aggravated economic war consisting of sanctions and blockades.

    In fact, the campaign to starve Afghanistan has already begun. The United Nations warns that emergency food reserves are likely to run out within a month and that “starvation could soon compound the humanitarian crisis convulsing Afghanistan.” At the same time, The New York Times reports that “Washington has frozen Afghan government reserves, and the International Monetary Fund has blocked its access to emergency reserves.“

    Historical Note

    In a different tweet, Zalmay Khalilzad affirmed that the Taliban were now facing what he called “a test” and then asked two rhetorical questions. “Can they lead their country to a safe & prosperous future where all their citizens, men & women, have the chance to reach their potential?” was his first question. This seems reasonable enough, given the promises the Taliban have made to be more open than in the past to normalized international relations and human rights. Reasonable leaders in a reasonable world should encourage them to prove their capacity to honor their own promises. But Khalilzad’s second question reveals how hollowly rhetorical the first one was. “Can Afghanistan,” he asks, “present the beauty & power of its diverse cultures, histories, & traditions to the world?”

    That is so obviously distant from even an enlightened Taliban policy that asking it can only be seen as hypocrisy. Khalilzad clearly anticipates blaming them for their failure to live up to Western ideals. This is designed to serve as a pretext for a future campaign to punish the impudent Taliban for winning a war not just against Americans — the Vietnamese had already done that — but against NATO and the entire “rules-based” coalition of nations that followed the US into the quagmire of Afghanistan.

    The campaign by corporate US media to humiliate and eventually add to the suffering of a Taliban-run Afghanistan has already begun. In the same interview cited above, Richard Engel follows up his implicit appeal to a brave nation other than the US to take over the task abandoned by the Americans (“to go in and undo them”) with an observation that sits oddly with his acknowledgment of the definitive American retreat.

    “It will be a challenge,” Engel tells his American audience, “to bring the Taliban into the international community. But that is the challenge that is facing us for the sake of the Afghan people.” He doesn’t explain who the “us” is who are now faced with the challenge. Is it the US, its traditional allies (Europe, Israel and the Gulf countries), or perhaps the entire human race, who he assumes adheres to the values promulgated by the US?

    Embed from Getty Images

    His question is nevertheless intriguing. To the extent that Engel supposes that the US should be the one “to bring the Taliban into the international community,” two opposing policies are worth considering. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call them the carrot and the stick. The carrot would be to let 20 years of bygones be bygones and respond to the Taliban’s overture by saying: Yes, let’s push cooperation to the hilt and make something out of our past mistakes.

    The stick would be to stoke a rapid deterioration of economic and social conditions while offering clandestine support to any and all forces of opposition within Afghanistan — the policy the US pursued under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, aimed at overthrowing an independent, socialist-leaning government that they feared would be magnetically attracted to the Soviet Union. The allies the US cultivated in the 1980s were the mujahadeen, whom the US trained in the fine art of what is deemed “good” terrorism, designed to destabilize unfriendly governments.

    Engel ends his analysis by comparing the Taliban-run Afghanistan to a “hole in the map” of the region. He expresses his belief that the sudden absence of US troops will “suck in other countries around it” into what he calls a “vortex” of instability. The consequences of the US retreat for Pakistan and India are difficult to measure, to say nothing of the virtual alliance between Israel and the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf, who counted on an abiding US military presence to continue their aggressive opposition to Iran. In any case, it is likely that the future will see less distinction but continued sacrifice.

    *[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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    Remembering What to Remember in America

    As America approaches the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster, there are still terrorists hanging out in many of the world’s shadowy recesses, some of whom are probably hoping for another opportunity to bring down another shrine to capitalism somewhere in the American homeland. Even with this continuing threat still looming over the nation and after years of a “war on terror” fought in far-off lands, it now seems that the greatest terrorist threat to the US comes from its homegrown “patriots,” who no longer have to hang out in America’s shadowy recesses.

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    Now that the American political and military exit from Afghanistan has stumbled to completion, a key component of America’s egregious and deadly response to 9/11 is finally ended after 20 years of failed policy. But failed policies should have consequences, and this one surely did, both here and abroad. The loss of life in Kabul during the withdrawal is just the latest reminder of yet another “gallant” American adventure gone bad in some foreign land. For 20 years, throughout the Muslim world, we made enemies we didn’t have to make, and we created a whole new cadre of wounded warriors in our midst ready to vanquish the incoming hoards at all cost to save the homeland from itself.

    Imposing Its Will by Force

    To make matters worse, there is a shocking ignorance about even relatively recent history and its relevance to the present and the future. Few Americans seem to fathom that in response to the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, the national government set out to extract a bloody bounty to avenge each of those lost lives. While the US mourned its losses, there was hardly a thought or a moment of introspection before the nation’s leaders charted their deadly and destructive course around the world.

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    In every far-off land where the US government seeks to impose its will by force, no matter the reason for doing so in the first place, the people in those invaded lands pay a terrible price. And it always ends the same way. It is important to know that America has not won a war since 1945 and has not fought a war on its own soil since the Civil War. Yet in Afghanistan alone, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been killed, maimed and wounded, with millions more displaced, by an invasion that those men, women and children neither sought nor provoked.

    As in Vietnam, US government operatives found elements of the local populace in Afghanistan that they assured themselves were welcoming. Then the killing started. And as always, the people we paid in those lands loved us, and the people we killed maimed and devastated hated us. And here is the lesson to be learned: There are always more of the latter than the former. When the payments stop coming, love is quickly lost, but the hatred of the devastated never dies.

    Repeating the Vietnam Playbook

    If there is anything to be gained from the crushing defeat and exit from Afghanistan, it is that after 20 years of repeating the same essential Vietnam playbook, while dealing death and destruction at every turn, many in America may finally understand how Vietnam ended as it did. When one nation invades another, it never ends well. When the invading nation has some messianic notion that it alone can succeed in supplanting existing cultural, social and political norms, and does so at the point of a gun, the invaded nation will eventually rebel, unite and drive out the invaders.

    So, as another 9/11 anniversary looms, Americans must again try to comprehend that our national loss on September 11, 2001, was not sufficient cause to scream at the world like some out-of-control toddler. It was a horrible day because so many innocent people lost their lives and so many more were left injured and broken. But when the US government set out to exact revenge, the worst that we could be was unleashed on others, many of whom were just as innocent as those who lost their lives in America on 9/11.

    In doing so, the US not only failed to wipe out terrorism, but it failed to create even a semblance of a new era of American heroism driven by an army of new American heroes. Rather it succeeded in creating an international force devoid of morality that it then had to sell at home as some group of avenging angels. Selling that narrative became even harder when our own soldiers, as always, started to come home in body bags.

    The US Failed

    There is a tragic symmetry to all of this. President Joe Biden seems to be a truly decent man, and when faced with a difficult choice that paralyzed his predecessors, he made the right choice and stuck to it. But as he did so, he was unable to seize that critical moment to tell the nation that we had failed, as before.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Once again, it seemed impossible to say that we as a nation must be better and do better. When the end in Afghanistan became most tragic at a cost of American lives, Biden echoed George W. Bush after 9/11 in leading the nation to believe in a new sacred mission to root out and kill the cockroaches who did us harm. This is the worst of who we are, and it never leads to anything good. Biden could have and should have done better at that moment. Instead, he felt compelled to affirm that if you kill us, we will kill you, and it will always be disproportionately tilted toward the others, anyone in the way be damned.

    It can only be hoped that no more young men and women, ours or theirs, will be sacrificed on the long-blackened stones of the alters constructed by their elders. There remain many people in the world who do not revere America the way so many here seem to think they should, and some of those will threaten the nation. Yet, after 20 years of fighting terrorism on the soil of others, the threat from afar seems minimally diminished.

    Rather, a whole new generation of wounded warriors walks among us. Some are surely heroes and some are surely villains, but way too many of them are integrated into the squads of self-styled patriots in every community, mostly out in the open, dangerously armed and supported by a significant cohort of those who will be most vocal about the ravages of 9/11. I have never quite understood why you get a patriotism merit badge for killing people in far-off lands or for simply wearing a uniform that to many in the world is synonymous with death, not dignity.

    The Heroes

    But this isn’t about merit or merit badges. Together, as a nation, Americans have to begin to walk away from violence and its always tragic end, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Chicago. One image stands out to me from the chaos of the Afghanistan exit. It is the photo of two US soldiers in full battle gear lifting a baby over a razor-wired wall to a place of safety. Those soldiers are my heroes. I hope they come home and remember that moment above all else and find their voice to urge others to lift other babies over barriers to safety wherever they may be.

    I give my thanks to Joe Biden for having the courage to end this futile war in Afghanistan. I hope he finds those two soldiers and tells them and the nation that they were the most heroic of all.

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

    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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    COVID-19: The Lab Leak Theory Makes a Comeback

    The sudden reemergence of the lab leak theory earlier this year — that COVID-19 was made in and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — has hit international media and occasioned nervous reactions from the Biden administration, which demanded a conclusive report on the origins of the pandemic within 90 days. That deadline has just expired, with little result. As the head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergencies program, Michael Ryan, stated last week, “The current situation is that all of the hypotheses regarding to the origins of the virus are still on the table.”

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    The radical right has, in the meantime, become obsessed 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 article published a week earlier in the right-leaning Swedish journal Kvartal. Here, journalist Ola Wong suggested that a report — 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.

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    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.

    Embed from Getty Images

    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 morning program 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 Chinese embassy in Washington later used such terminology.

    By then, 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 story, “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, Universitetsläckan, which kicked off a wave of conspiratorial debate. Per Gudmundsson, of the right-wing online news outlet Bulletin, stated in an op-ed 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 exercating Islamist extremism, without any interest in countering it.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Finally, the gross simplifications of Wong’s article had reached the outer orbits of the alternative radical-right media in Sweden, Fria Tider and Samnytt. 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 pointed out, 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.”

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    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 30,000 false or misleading claims 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 Benjamin Moffit 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 20th 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?

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

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