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      How Anti-Semitism Has Lost Any Connection With Reality

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      A Business Insider article by Oma Seddiq highlights the latest example of US President Donald Trump’s obsessive insistence on treating American Jews as citizens of Israel. Jewish voices have once again rebuked the president, though apparently to no avail. Seddiq’s article bears the title “’Textbook anti-Semitism’: American Jews condemn Trump for repeatedly telling them that Israel is ‘your country.’”

      No dictionary, not even a devil’s dictionary, can feel comfortable defining a term that describes a tradition with such horrific historical associations. But today’s post-Holocaust world of political marketing has so distorted all discourse relating to Israel that it is now impossible to disentangle three distinct concepts: ethnic identity, religion and national politics. Consequently, the meaning of anti-Semitic — now simply an all-purpose insult — changes according to the person using it.

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      Typically, the reason for proffering the insult has nothing to do with ethnicity or theology. It’s always about politics. The insult has become so potent in political arguments that its meaning is reduced to whatever the polemical objective of the speaker happens to be.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Anti-Semitism:

      A label that points to an undefined trait or attitude possessed by anyone with opposing political views who appears to make general assumptions about anything related either to the Jewish people or the state of Israel.

      Contextual Note

      During a call with American Jewish leaders last week, Donald Trump has uttered this sentiment: “We really appreciate you, we love your country also and thank you very much.” This is problematic for several reasons. Beyond the fact that Trump sees all American Jews as citizens of another country, the “we” and the “you” he mentions are both dangerously ambiguous. “We” can be restrictive, indicating Trump himself, or inclusive, as in “we the people,” embracing the entire nation. In whose name is he speaking? Moreover, by referring to American Jews collectively as “you,” he both sets them apart and imposes a solidarity of political identity that is manifestly false.

      The Jewish strategist Sophie Ellman-Golan complained: “It’s really important that we separate out American Jews and Israel — we are not one in the same. It’s anti-Semitic to suggest that we are.” There may be an anti-Semitic strain to Trump’s worldview, but not here. On other occasions, Trump has shown sympathy for virulently anti-Semitic activists. Everyone remembers those “very fine people” in Charlottesville.

      Instead, Trump, who never tires of praising Israel, strives to appear radically pro-Semitic. The absurdity of his remarks demonstrates little more than the well-established fact that the president is incapable of understanding anything about any category of people, whether the factor of identity is permanent or temporary. Because some protesters in the streets are violent, Trump judges that all protesters are violent. And because the violence is directed against the contestable practices of existing institutions Trump identifies with, he accuses all protesters of sedition — a legal term that means rebellion against the state.

      Similarly, because Israel is officially a Jewish state, Trump believes all American Jews consider themselves citizens of Israel. What applies to one applies to the entire group. And because Trump invariably aligns his foreign policy with Israel’s, he sees no problem with what his critics call the trope of “dual loyalty.” Instead, he encourages it because it puts them in opposition to Trump’s opposition in the US, especially those who criticize his unconditional alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

      The real problem with the way anti-Semitism is bandied about in the media today is that the term has become a toxic brand that can be used against anyone, including those who are called “self-hating Jews.” This often simply means those who dare to critique Israel. In the US, even the Jewish Bernie Sanders has been suspected of anti-Semitism because he has distanced himself from Israel.

      When Jeremy Corbyn dared to deviate from British geopolitical orthodoxy, defenders of the idea of an inviolable alliance with Israel — even inside his party — branded him an anti-Semite. Much of the respectable media followed suit. They did so not after taking into account the complex intersection of religious belief, ethnic belonging and political loyalty, but only because it appeared to be the easiest way to demolish the left wing of the Labour Party.

      Historical Note

      Anti-Semitism is an undeniably shameful feature of Western history. Its roots date back to the rupture that marked the birth of Christianity — a religion that emerged from Judaism after the Romans crucified Jesus. From the time of St. Paul’s writings that established the major themes of the new theology, Christianity had to justify its break with the Judaic tradition even while acknowledging a very real historical continuity. Initially, Christians saw themselves as religious separatists with no reason to cultivate hatred for the Jews, especially after the Romans dispersed the Jews from their homeland in the Middle East and effectively dismantled all Jewish political infrastructure.

      The virulent anti-Semitism that culminated with Germany’s Third Reich developed rapidly in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, accelerating with the First Crusade, launched in 1095. The feudal system required the population, from yeomen to serfs, to accept their allegiance to the local nobility. Kings and princes ruled over expanses of territory federating multiple domains belonging to nobles. Those feudal kingdoms later evolved into nation-states.

      Jews had no place in a Christian feudal system founded on an agricultural economy. Christians regarded the Jews as a people that had self-excluded themselves from the Christian community. Jews had little choice but to group in cities where they were confined to ghettos, from which they could nevertheless provide some vital services to Christians, including moneylending.

      In the 11th century, England’s Norman King William the Conqueror provided a model for “managing” the Jews, mainly for the purpose of the royal military economy. Jews had the right to lend money at interest, whereas for Christians it was a sin. With no ordinary feudal ties, all Jews were deemed direct subjects of the king. This royal privilege eventually led to moments when a king, having profited from the financial facility offered by the Jews, could use an invented pretext to punish the Jewish community, confiscate their property and cancel their debts. It was a form of political opportunism that used anti-Semitic sentiment as a pretext for plunder.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Given the somber history that would follow — exclusion and exile, blood libels, forced conversion, ghettoization, pogroms in the 19th and 20th centuries — all of it leading up to Hitler’s audacious “final solution,” the term “anti-Semitism” should always be taken seriously. It has played an active role in the evolution of modern nations in the Western world. But today, for purely political and sometimes basely electoral reasons, people have taken to using it as a facile insult to brand their opponents with an intention that everyone reflexively recognizes as shameful.

      Because the label has changed from a historically accurate description of horrendously calculated and brutally executed actions to what has become today a vague suspicion of a lack of suitable deference to Israel, the term anti-Semitism has literally lost any connection with reality. Calling Trump an anti-Semite illustrates the absurdity of the trend. The Donald’s delight in making unjustified pronouncements about American Jews doesn’t stem from anti-Semitism. It’s just that he’s a narcissist, utterly insensitive to the reality of others.

      In contrast, this past week offered an example of what has now become standard dog-whistle anti-Semitism coming from the American right. In a discussion on Fox News of violence in American cities, Newt Gingrich singled out the Democratic donor, George Soros, as the unique cause of the breakdown of law and order. Soros has long been a preferred target of anti-Semites because he finances liberal causes. Gingrich knows that and so does Fox News. Embarrassed and wishing to avoid the accusation of complicity, the Fox News hosts shut Gingrich down for such an obvious anti-Semitic trope.

      Anti-Semitism exists among the population, probably far more on the right than the left. Modern governments can no longer have recourse to it as official policy, but ordinary citizens and individual politicians can resonate to its xenophobic appeal. The term itself has thus become an abused and abusive rhetorical weapon used by all kinds of polemicists. And, for the moment, the media appears far too timid to attempt deconstructing that rhetoric.

      *[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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      What the Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Means for America’s Political Future

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      The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18 has shaken the judiciary at a moment that could test the foundations of American legislature. Justice Ginsburg was a leftist — or “liberal,” in American parlance — mainstay in her 27 years on the court and four decades on the federal bench.

      The ferocity of nomination battles has intensified in recent years. After Justice Antony Scalia’s death in 2016, President Barack Obama nominated moderate DC Circuit chief judge, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court on March 16, more than seven months before the next presidential election. Senate Republicans used their majority to block the nomination, denying a vote and letting the nomination expire on January 3, 2017, shortly before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell then argued that “The American people should have a say in the court’s direction. It is a president’s constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate’s constitutional right to act as a check on the president and withhold its consent.” 

      A primary argument McConnell and his colleagues made was for awaiting the election to renew the presidential mandate because Americans deserved a say this close to election day. Democrats responded that the Constitution and traditional practice grant that power and that America already voted in 2012 for a mandate of four, not three and a half years — to no avail. 

      This recent political precedent will meet its first test over the next two months. Democrats remain the minority party in the upper house, leaving the path clear for Republicans, who unanimously supported President Trump’s nominations of Neil Gorsuch, with 51 Republicans and three Democrats voting to confirm, and Brett Kavanaugh, with 49 Republicans and one Democrat confirming. Whomever President Trump nominates will likely enjoy similar partisan support. The conservative majority of five on the court could now grow to a commanding six out of nine and will influence American society for decades to come. 

      The vote count leaves the words of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, tweeting just hours after the announcement of Justice Ginsburg’s passing, moot: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Schumer’s decision to invoke the Garland precedent is far from obvious. Both party leaders have switched their rhetoric as their positions are reversed. Democrats blame Republicans, and Republicans cry hypocrisy. 

      This runs against observations by political scientists showing that fighting fire with fire weakens democracy. Gone are the days when a president with a governing majority would nominate a justice from the other party, as Harry Truman did in 1945. Trust and bipartisanship have reached a low not seen in decades. 

      Presidential nominees have required a simple majority since 2013, when Democrats for the first time changed chamber rules to allow federal lower court nominations to pass with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority, over the protests of Republicans. In April 2018, Republicans, now in the majority, expanded the rule to include Supreme Court nominees, making 51 votes sufficient to overcome Democrats still furious over the Garland affair. As both parties raise the stakes, the high court grows more politicized — and voters and the politicians they elect grow more polarized — the future of the political branches of government hangs in the balance. 

      Regardless of who replaces Justice Ginsburg, SCOTUS seats will again inevitably open up the floor to opposing parties. Vociferous opposition to Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 suggests there may be appetite for a bitter battle, however quixotic. Whoever wins the November presidential contest will enter an embittered political environment where the comity and willingness to compromise that characterized Washington a generation ago has all but disappeared, replaced by weakened institutions and disunity in the halls of power. 

      While more active state and local governments, administrative agencies and even courts address questions unanswered by Congress and the White House, nothing can replace efficacy in DC. When paralysis reigns, policies and the people they serve suffer. 

      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 Drives Conspiracy Theories and Islamophobia

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      For the past decade, I have been researching the impact of Islamophobia on social media. After the outbreak of COVID-19, I was commissioned, alongside my colleague Roxana Khan Williams, by the chair and independent members of the Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group to produce an evidenced-based research report that looks at the impacts of conspiracy theories perpetuated by the radical right and how these norms have impacted Muslims.

      For me, it was very clear that COVID-19 could be acting as a trigger event that would galvanize hatred against Muslims, but I needed to find out whether this has already started amid the pandemic. After examining a range of social media posts, we found that Islamophobic tropes pushed the narrative that Muslims were solely responsible for spreading COVID-19. This narrative was perpetuated by, firstly, dehumanizing Muslims; secondly, through creating a “them and us” narrative; and, finally, by driving forward the message that Muslims are not to be trusted.

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      It was clear that some of these narratives being pushed by the radical right had created Islamophobic online cyber hubs that had linked Muslims to the spread of COVID-19. This was being shown through the visual anti-Muslim memes and fake news stories shared across social media.

      We also found a shift in online trends that started by arguing that Muslims were superspreaders of the virus and then quickly moving on to the notion that they were also to blame for the virus in the first place. For example, according to digital human rights group Equality Labs, the hashtag #CoronaJihad had appeared nearly 300,000 times in global conversations on mainstream social media sites (excluding Facebook) in just one week between March 31 and April 6.

      In Britain, one video, shared on the Tommy Robinson News channel on the messaging app Telegram, alleges to show a group of Muslim men leaving a secret mosque in Birmingham to pray. Despite the fact the video is fake and West Midlands Police have confirmed the mosque is closed, it has been watched over 14,000 times.

      These issues led to offline incidents because people have used fake narratives on social media to portray all Muslims as being part of the problem. For example, in another viral tweet posted on March 26, a user claimed to have spoken to his local mosque in Shrewsbury, UK, and was “horrified” to find that this Mosque was still open. He added that the people inside could be “super spreaders” of the virus and urged the police to act.

      After a fact-finding exercise, it was quickly revealed by the police that there was no mosque in Shrewsbury. This example, along with numerous others, reveals how individuals can create fake news stories which, if left unchecked, can spread quickly on social media. We also found that online narratives were rooted in anti-Muslim bigotry through the dehumanization of Muslims. These themes of dehumanization also link back to how Muslims are being described as “vermin” and “disease.”

      We also found the depiction of British Muslims on social media becoming synonymous with them being a “risky and problem-group.” A number of fake news stories featured claims that Muslims are flouting social distancing measures to attend mosque. One picture, for example, taken outside a Leeds mosque, appears to show Muslims breaking the rules of lockdown despite this having been taken two weeks before the official lockdown began.

      Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has created unity among groups and communities that have come together at this unprecedented moment. However, at the same time, it has caused wider divisions among smaller communities and groups, and has been used as a weapon by the radical right in promoting conspiracy theories, raising questions about how our society can come together to tackle the ills of social media.

      As lockdown measures ease, the worry is that we will start to see a rise in offline incidents. Unless we can get to grips with people’s attitudes online, we risk seeing more problems emerge. Social media companies can do much better and start the process of identifying perpetrators and working with the police and other agencies to combat the rise of Islamophobia online.

      *[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

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      Taking American Carnage to the Next Level

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      It is a recent tradition among occupants of the White House, as they head out of office, to play a few practical jokes on their successors. The Clinton administration jesters, for instance, removed all the Ws from White House keyboards before handing over the keys to George W. Bush’s transition team. The Obama administration left behind books authored by Barack Obama for Trump’s incoming press team.

      Donald Trump has no sense of humor. His “gift” to the next administration is dead serious. With his recent foreign policy moves, the president is trying to change the facts on the ground so that whoever follows in his footsteps will have a more difficult time restoring the previous status quo. Forget about pranks. This is a big middle-finger salute to the foreign policy establishment and the world at large.

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      Of course, Trump is not preparing to leave office, regardless of the results of the November election. But in his policies in the Middle East and East Asia, the president is attempting to change the very rules of the game just in case he’s not around next year to personally make more mischief. The man is not going to win a Nobel Prize for his efforts — despite the recent nominations coming from a pair of right-wing Scandinavians — but he’ll do whatever he can to achieve the next best thing: putting the Trump brand on geopolitics.

      It cost about $5,000 to replace all those W-less typewriters. The bill for all the damage Trump is doing to international affairs in his attempt to make his Israel, Iran and China policies irreversible will be much, much higher.

      Israel Up, Palestine Down

      For several years, the Trump administration promised a grand plan that would resolve the Israel-Palestine stand-off. According to this “deal of the century,” Palestinians would accept some economic development funds, mostly from Gulf states, in exchange for giving up their aspirations for an authentic state.

      The hoops Palestinians would have to jump through to get even such a shrunken and impotent state — effectively giving up Jerusalem, relinquishing the right to join international organizations without Israel’s permission — are such obvious deal-breakers that Jared Kushner and company must have known from the start that their grand plan was not politically viable.

      But finding a workable solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was not the purpose of the plan. It was all an elaborate shell game. While the administration dangled its proposal in front of world leaders and international media, it was working with Israel to create “new realities.” Trump withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council for its “chronic bias against Israel.” The administration closed the PLO’s office in Washington, DC, and eliminated US funding for the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees. And in perhaps the most consequent move, Trump broke a global convention by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Until recently, only one country, Guatemala, had followed suit.

      But then came a flurry of diplomatic activity this fall as both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain extended diplomatic recognition to Israel. The Trump administration also pushed Serbia and Kosovo, as part of a new economic deal, to include clauses about Israel: Serbia will move its embassy to Jerusalem and Kosovo will establish one there after establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

      Astonishingly, the Trump administration has promoted this diplomatic activity as restraining Israel. In May, Netanyahu announced that he was moving forward with absorbing sections of the West Bank that already featured large Israeli settlements. He subsequently stepped back from that announcement to conclude the new diplomatic deals with the Gulf states. But it was only reculer pour mieux sauter, as the French say — stepping back to better leap forward. Netanyahu had no intention of taking annexation off the table.

      “There is no change to my plan to extend sovereignty, our sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, in full coordination with the United States,” Netanyahu said in mid-August. Some further to the right of Netanyahu — alas, they do exist — want to annex the entire West Bank. But that’s de jure. As writer Peter Beinart points out, Israel has been annexing the West Bank settlement by settlement for some time.

      Where does this leave Palestinians? Up a creek without a state. The Trump administration has used its much-vaunted “deal of the century” to make any future deal well-nigh impossible. In collaboration with Netanyahu, Trump has strangled the two-state solution in favor of a single Israeli state with a permanent Palestinian underclass. The cost to Palestinians: incalculable.

      Permanent War With Iran

      Strengthening Israel was a major part of Trump’s maneuverings in the Middle East. A second goal was to boost arms sales to Gulf countries, which will only accelerate the arms race in the region. The third ambition has been to weaken Iran. Toward that end, Israel, Bahrain and the UAE now form — along with Saudi Arabia — a more unified anti-Iran bloc.

      But the Trump crowd has never been content to contain Iran. It wants nothing less than regime change. From the get-go, the Trump administration nixed the Iran nuclear deal, tightened sanctions against Tehran and put pressure on all other countries not to engage Iran economically. In January, it assassinated a leading Iranian figure, Major General Qassem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And this summer it tried, unsuccessfully, to trigger “snap-back” sanctions against Iran that would kill the nuclear deal once and for all.

      Even as the Trump administration was celebrating the diplomatic deal between the UAE and Israel, it was going after several UAE firms for brokering deals with Iran. Trump recently castigated the Iranian government for going through with the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari for allegedly killing a security guard during a 2018 demonstration.

      And US intelligence agencies have just leaked a rather outlandish suggestion that Iran has been thinking about assassinating the US ambassador to South Africa. According to Politico, “News of the plot comes as Iran continues to seek ways to retaliate for President Donald Trump’s decision to kill a powerful Iranian general earlier this year, the officials said. If carried out, it could dramatically ratchet up already serious tensions between the U.S. and Iran and create enormous pressure on Trump to strike back — possibly in the middle of a tense election season.”

      Hmm, sounds mighty suspicious. Sure, Iran might be itching for revenge. But why risk war with a president who might just be voted out of office in a couple of months and replaced with someone who favors returning to some level of cooperation? And why would the unnamed US government officials leak the information right now? Is it a way to discourage Iran from making such a move? Or perhaps it’s to provoke one side or the other to take the fight to the next level — and take off the table any future effort to repair the breach between the two countries?

      Cutting Ties With China

      At a press conference earlier this month, Trump laid out his vision of US relations with China. Gone were the confident predictions of beautiful new trade deals with Beijing. After all, Trump had canceled trade negotiations last month, largely because the Phase 1 agreement hasn’t produced the kind of results the president had predicted (in terms of Chinese purchases of US goods). Nor did Trump talk about what a good idea it was for China to build “reeducation camps” for Uighurs in Xinjiang (he reserves such frank conversation for tête-à-têtes with Xi Jinping, according to John Bolton).

      Rather, Trump talked about severing the economic relationship between the two countries. “Under my administration, we will make America into the manufacturing superpower of the world, and we’ll end our reliance on China once and for all,” he said. “Whether it’s decoupling or putting in massive tariffs like I’ve been doing already, we’re going to end our reliance on China because we can’t rely on China.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      As with virtually all things, Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about. China has been largely unaffected by all of Trump’s threats and posturing. As economist Nicholas Lardy explains, “for all the fireworks over tariffs and investment restrictions, China’s integration into global financial markets continues apace. Indeed, that integration appears on most metrics to have accelerated over the past year. And U.S.-based financial institutions are actively participating in this process, making financial decoupling between the United States and China increasingly unlikely.”

      In fact, decoupling is just another way of saying “self-inflicted wound.” On the non-financial side of the ledger, the United States has already paid a steep price for its trade war with China, which is only a small part of what decoupling would ultimately cost. Before the pandemic hit, the United States was already losing 300,000 jobs and $40 billion in lost exports annually. That’s like a Category 3 hurricane. A full decoupling would tear through the US economy like a Category 6 storm.

      Geopolitical Carnage

      American presidents want to leave behind a geopolitical legacy. Bill Clinton was proud of both the Dayton agreement and the Oslo Accords. George W. Bush touted his response to the September 11 attacks. Barack Obama could point to the Iran nuclear deal and the détente with Cuba. Donald Trump, like the aforementioned twisters, has left destruction in his path. He tore up agreements, initiated trade wars, pulled out of international organizations and escalated America’s air wars.

      But perhaps his most pernicious legacy is his scorched-earth policy. Like armies in retreat that destroy the fields and the livestock to rob their advancing adversaries of food sources, Trump is doing whatever he can to make it impossible for his successor to resolve some of the world’s most intractable problems.

      His diplomatic “achievements” in the Middle East are designed to disempower and further disenfranchise Palestinians. His aggressive policy toward China is designed to disrupt an economic relationship that sustains millions of US farmers and manufacturers. His bellicose approach to Iran is designed not only to destroy the current nuclear accord but make future ones impossible as well.

      If he wins a second term, Trump will bring his scorched-earth doctrine to every corner of the globe. What he is doing to Iran, China and the Palestinians, he will do to the whole planet. The nearly 200,000 pandemic deaths and the wildfires destroying the West Coast are just the beginning. Donald Trump can’t wait to take his brand of American carnage to the next level.

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

      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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      Kushner’s Triumph: The Writing Is on the Wall for Palestine

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      In a recent phone interview with reporters, Jared Kushner made the claim that his Peace to Prosperity deal represents salvation for the two-state solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict. He couched the claim in the transactional language that is the mark of the Manhattan real estate wheeler and dealer that he ultimately is: “What we did with our plan …
      Continue Reading “Kushner’s Triumph: The Writing Is on the Wall for Palestine”
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      Finding a Cure for Lebanon’s Imperialist Hangover

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      Lebanon, as a nation, was destined for conflict since its creation in November 1943 by the French colonial power. To this day, it remains a client state with several competing foreign powers trying to exploit the country’s social, political and economic systems for their benefit. The current socio-economic crisis has clearly exposed the inadequacies of …
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      Why Is India’s Opposition Congress Party in Crisis?

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      Allan Octavian Hume, a sidelined official of the British Raj, founded the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885. Born in Kent, UK, Hume was the quintessential gora sahib (white master) who had gone native. He took the initiative to create a modern political platform in a newly colonized and deeply divided land. The INC went …
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      Boris Johnson Pushes Unreason to an Extreme

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      The Guardian offered its readers what is certainly the most comic and hyperreal sentence of the week when it reported that “Boris Johnson accused the EU of preparing to go to ‘extreme and unreasonable lengths’ in Brexit talks as he defended breaching international law amid a mounting rebellion from Tory backbenchers.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Go to extreme and unreasonable lengths:

      An expression that those who habitually go to extreme and unreasonable lengths in everything they do like to apply to those who oppose any of their extremely unreasonable acts

      Contextual Note

      We live in an era in which extreme and unreasonable discourse and action have become the most reliable tool for those seeking political, economic or social success. It explains how purveyors of extreme and unreasonable discourse have won recent elections in nations as diverse as the US, the UK, India, the Philippines and Brazil, to mention only those countries. 

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      Whether their names are Johnson, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Silvio Berlusconi, Rodrigo Duterte, Elon Musk or Kanye West, each in his own patented way has perfected the art of outrageous hyperreality that thrives on projecting a personality that is extreme and unreasonable. The phenomenon goes beyond politics. In fact, it originates in the world of entertainment. West, an American rapper, did as much to inspire President Trump’s approach to politics as Trump did to convince West he could have a future in politics.

      The Guardian’s readers may be left wondering what kind of exceptionally outrageous behavior could merit Johnson, the British prime minister, calling European negotiators’ behavior “extreme and unreasonable.” Even during his career as a journalist before moving into politics, Johnson specialized in extreme and unreasonable exaggeration in his reporting of the news.

      In 2016, Johnson also went from the extreme of preparing an article for publication in The Telegraph in which he argued in favor of Britain remaining in Europe and warned that leaving the EU would provoke an “economic shock,” to leading the wing of the Conservative Party in the “leave” campaign for Brexit. That permitted him to identify himself with the cause of Brexit and assume the leadership of that faction of a party officially committed to remaining as a member of the European Union. He sensed that it would be the shortest route to Downing Street as he witnessed the wavering fortunes of David Cameron, the prime minister at the time.

      Embed from Getty Images

      So, what terribly extreme and unreasonable actions are the Europeans guilty of in Johnson’s eyes? Very simply, they disapprove of his proposed “internal market bill,” which calls for unilaterally overturning the withdrawal agreement Johnson signed last year to presumably settle the initial political conditions of the UK leaving the European Union. On Johnson’s own initiative, that agreement drew a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which together make up the United Kingdom. 

      The law he is now proposing would permit him to effectively erase that border, leading to the necessity of creating a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Keeping that border open as provided by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement — a deal that ended the violence between Catholics and Protestants — was the required condition for reaching any kind of permanent solution to the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.

      Now, key members of Johnson’s cabinet have begun to revolt, as this is a clear violation of the terms of the withdrawal agreement that took so long to hammer out. Britain’s former ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, now points out that the bill will be “hugely damaging to our international reputation.” He warned that “it could deter other countries from entering into agreements with the UK in the future.” He wasn’t alone. Five former British prime ministers have also expressed concern over the move. Darroch speculated on what might happen “if people think the Brits are just going to say: we didn’t like this on reflection, and we would like to rewrite this part unilaterally.”

      Historical Note

      During the centuries when the British dominated the world and owned an empire on which the sun never set, as a people they acquired the reputation of being committed to “fair play.” The French, who never had an entente with the British that was deeper than merely cordial, to this day identify the British as a people who want to be respected for maintaining the cultural value of fair play, at least as it applies to sports.

      The French have never been naive. They have always recognized that their British neighbors were perfectly capable of perfidy. To this day, the French will ironically trot out the expression “perfide Albion” to explain Britain’s positions concerning other nations. But Albion’s traditional perfidy was always subtle, carrying an air of reasonableness and delivered with what appeared to be a complicit smile. Boris Johnson’s is both extreme and unreasonable.

      Empires will always be suspected of perfidy, if only because everyone understands that they can, on a whim, betray treaties and agreements — and even their own stated principles and values — as they rely on their military prowess and financial clout to carry them through. To some extent, this becomes the law of empires, their way of indicating that the countries they deal with have a greater interest in being nice to them than they do in being nice to the others. 

      The irony this time — and some see it as a tragedy — lies in the fact that Britain hasn’t been an empire for at least 70 years. Johnson has become little more than Shakespeare’s “poor player who struts and frets his hour upon a stage” and someday soon will be heard no more. The burning question, when it comes to Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump — whose exit may be announced in November — is this: What will the damaged landscape look like when those leaders specialized in upending their own cultures are gone?

      As the world breathlessly awaits the major events that affect every nation in the world — starting with the US presidential election in November and including the unabating drama of the waxing and waning of hopes to see the end of the COVID-19 pandemic — the British have the added angst of speculating about just how irreparably damaging what appears to be an inevitable “hard Brexit” on January 1, 2021, is likely to be. One thing seems to be sure: it will be both extreme and unreasonable. 

      *[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