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Pax Romana, a Fascist Peace
by Philippa Kaur 9 July 2021, 16:59
During World War I, Benito Mussolini ultimately became a strong interventionist, which caused his split from Italy’s Socialist Party. He believed that only participating in a war would trigger a successful revolution at home and create the “new man.” War, however, should also establish a new realm reminiscent of the Roman Empire.
Expansionism would become a defining goal of the foreign policy of the Fascist regime. In his “Manifesto dei Fasci italiani di combattimento” (“Fascist Manifesto”), which was published in the Italian newspaper Popolo d’Italia on June 6, 1919, the future Duce briefly talked about his foreign policy plans. He argued that Italy would have to pursue a “peaceful expansion” in order to achieve its greatness — an idea that was shared by many nationalists and fascists before the March on Rome, including Paolo Pedani, the editor-in-chief of a fascist newspaper in Livorno.
Fascism and Peace: Incompatible or Inseparable?
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Later in 1921, however, Mussolini struck a more aggressive note and did not mention the word “peace” once: “The foreign policy program of fascism is in one word: expansionism. Whenever the interests of humankind are at stake, Italy has to be present. It’s also time to quit living off the glories of the past. Finally, we have to live, fight, and work for the great future.” However, when we examine subsequent speeches by fascist officials, including Mussolini, they continued to address military imperialism and a quest for peace simultaneously. In many texts, we can find a striking incongruence between militarism and a discourse on peace.
But what was this “peace” Mussolini and the fascists had in mind? To understand their concept of a “peaceful” world order, we must first analyze their understanding of empire.
Pax Romana
In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia and began its ruthless conquest of the East African country, prompting some historians to describe the use of poison gas and the aerial bombardment of civilians as genocidal warfare. Despite these war crimes, Mussolini stressed in his Proclamation of Empire in May 1936 the quintessence of peace: “This is an empire of peace, because Italy wants peace for itself and for all and decides to go to war only when forced by imperious, irrepressible necessities of life. Empire of civilization and humanity for all the people of Ethiopia. … In this supreme certainty, hold high, legionnaires, the signs, the steel and the hearts, to salute, after fifteen centuries, the reapportion of the Empire on Rome’s fatal hills.”
In addition, archivist and intellectual Armando Lodolini did not deny the expansionary character of Rome’s imperial drive, but he stressed that duty, energy and work were at its root. Roman soldiers, according to Lodolini, were armed engineers and farmers, who conquered Africa to present it with the gift of their civilizing influence. When the Italian army fought against the partisans in the Balkans, General Mario Robotti urged his soldiers to “be once again legionaries of civilization and of the high ideals of Rome.”
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This belief in a “civilizing mission,” also known as romanità, was rooted in the 19th-century imperialist discourse and a conviction that the Italians were the heirs of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. Therefore, violent imperialism was justified by constant references to ancient Rome, and the ultimate aim was to imitate its mission: the Pax Romana.
Jewish-Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano, who had to flee Fascist Italy in 1938, noted that the Pax Romana “is a simple formula for propaganda, but a difficult subject for research.” It was first proclaimed in 13 BC when Emperor Augustus and his deputy Agrippa returned from pacifying the provinces. In retrospect, the term referred to a nearly 200-year period of minimal Roman conquest and relative peacefulness. During this time, the Roman Empire reached its peak territorial expansion, and its population grew up to 70 million people. Thus, the Pax Romana perfectly fit into the Fascist rhetoric: “Peace” was not secured by some form of compromise or signed agreement (a “positive peace”) but was rather established through the sheer force and power of the Roman Empire and its army.
Peace through force was exactly what the fascists were looking for at a time when they began to place Italy against the Western democracies and prepared for an imminent conflict. In 1933, a time when the regime was already considering the invasion in Ethiopia, the journalist Michele Campana argued in his book “L’impero fascista” that “fascism is … an armed people. No illusions. We have to prepare for the contrary. War is in the air in Europe. It has never been looming like in our days, after treaties have created the absurdity of a peace, that is not peace, with the desperate necessity to defend and arm itself. Then it will be good to obtain Victory, to dictate fascist peace.”
Even more explicit was Benito Mussolini after he had met with Adolf Hitler in Venice in 1934. On June 26, 1934, he stated: “We have become a strong people. Our peace is thus virile, because peace avoids weak people and accompanies strong ones.”
A Fascist Peace?
The fascists would not only limit themselves to speeches and writings to propagate their mission to reestablish the ancient Pax Romana. Art, architecture and iconography played a key role in this propagandistic “revival.” After the successful end of the Abyssinian campaign, Mussolini ordered architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo to construct an enclosure for the restored Ara Pacis in February 1937. This altar, today a famous Roman tourist attraction, was originally built after Augustus’ announcement of the Pax Romana in 13 BC.
On September 28, 1938, the restored Ara Pacis was inaugurated. An official newsreel by Italian state broadcaster LUCE shows the arrival of Mussolini and other fascist officials for the rededication of the Ara Pacis in its new pavilion. The event was part of the closing ceremony of the Augustan Year, the 2000-year anniversary of the emperor’s birth. Mussolini used these celebrations to cultivate a close connection with the personage of Augustus and claimed his actions were aimed at furthering the continuity of the Roman Empire.
Next to the ruins of the mausoleum of Augustus near the river Tiber, the restored altar symbolized a key element of fascist propaganda. The concomitant effect was meant to encourage the viewer in Italy and abroad to associate Mussolini’s accomplishments with Augustus’ deeds in general and the Pax Romana in particular. After signing the Easter Agreement with Great Britain in April 1938, Il Duce inspected the construction site. The Times was quick to point out this visit as another sign of Mussolini’s peaceful intentions toward London: “Signor Mussolini, who has a strong sense of the value of a symbolic act, has had the wit to make use of the significance of the monument for the present occasion by associating its reconstruction with the latest act of his foreign policy.”
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Fascist Italy rejected all doctrines that postulated a form of a positive peace. Equally foreign to the spirit of fascism were all international organizations such as the League of Nations, which, according to fascists, must crumble whenever the heart of a nation is deeply stirred by idealistic or practical considerations. On the contrary, fascists celebrated a life dedicated to self-sacrifice, struggle, violence and war.
When World War II broke out and Italy did not immediately join, Mussolini was deeply troubled by this dilemma: “The Italians,” he lamented in October 1939, “after having heard my warlike propaganda for eighteen years, cannot understand how I can become the herald of peace, now that Europe is in flames.” However, it would be misleading to reduce fascism to a mere anti-peace or anti-pacifist movement. The fascists believed in a form of “negative peace,” where war is absent because of the strength of Fascist Italy. The peace order they wanted to establish, and which would allow them to carry out their social engineering and Italianization projects, mirrored the Pax Romana of old.
This concept allowed the fascists to address two seemingly contradictory but essential parts of their own propaganda. On the one hand was the formation of the fascist “new man” who was always prepared to fight should the need arise, always vigilant and on guard, and immune to the deceptions of treacherous bourgeois nations who preached peace only to remain in power. On the other hand, by constantly referring to the Pax Romana, the fascists invoked the Roman Empire as a justification of violent expansionism and the creation of Italian living space in the Mediterranean.
On October 28, 1937, Pino Romualdi, a Fascist official in Parma who would later become one of the founding fathers of the Italian neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano after the war, expressed this desire for “true peace” as follows: “Even though he is always ready to fight, so is he in the same way longing for peace, but only the “true” peace in the Roman and human sense of the word.”
*[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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Can an Inflatable Economy Survive?
by Philippa Kaur 9 July 2021, 11:49
US President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have remained consistently positive since his inauguration in January, inspiring hope among his supporters and the liberal media that he can fulfill at least some of his campaign promises. With extremely thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Biden has to be sure that the “moderates” in his party follow his lead. The term “moderate Democrat” designates the type of elected official who wins office in a Democratic district but possesses a mindset in line with conservative Republican ideology. In particular, such people tend to reject anything that reeks of excessive spending or may create pressure to increase taxes.
But that is not all. One of Biden’s most intimate advisers during last year’s election campaign, economist and former director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, Larry Summers, has been leading a vociferous campaign opposing Biden’s policies on the grounds of a lurking danger of inflation. He fears that the combined effect of COVID-19 relief and an ambitious infrastructure project accompanied by diverse social reforms will stretch the economy to the point of triggering uncontrollable inflation, the bugbear of traditional politicians. Biden may want to be remembered as the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Summers appears to be inspired by the thinking of FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover.
Hoover was the president on whose watch the 1929 stock market crash occurred. Historians have identified excessive leveraging and the inflation of asset prices as the main contributing factor to the 1929 crash that marked the end of the Roaring ‘20s. That sobriquet for a decade that followed World War I and left in its wake the Great Depression reflects the wild optimism that reigned at the time. The US had survived a “war to end all wars” and now embraced what President Warren G. Harding called “the return to normalcy.”
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Proud of their role in ending Europe’s war, Americans — though deprived of alcohol that had been banned in 1919 by a constitutional amendment — interpreted normalcy as an open invitation to self-indulgence. Throughout that roaring decade, the stock market reached for the ceiling before crumbling to the floor in 1929.
To avoid the mistakes that led to depression, politicians have since crafted their preferred ways of fending off imminent disaster. They called the latest trick, perfected after 2008, quantitative easing (QE), a fancy name for the printing of money gifted to banks and corporations skilled at keeping it out of the reach of ordinary people. Quantitative easing magically inflated asset prices with little effect on the consumer index, a phenomenon all politicians gloried in for two reasons. First, it avoided consumer blowback against price-tag inflation. That always puts voters in a bad mood, threatening prospects of reelection. Second, QE meant that there would be unlimited cash available to corporate donors to finance their political campaigns.
The COVID-19 crisis arrived at a point where interest rates had fallen to close to 0% and in some cases had gone negative. The encouraging news concerning effective vaccines at the end of 2020 gave hope of a rapid return to Hardingesque normalcy. But today, things have become more complicated. The new Delta variant of the coronavirus threatens the optimists’ vision of a prosperous post-pandemic world. Add to that the raging debate about spending trillions to implement the long-delayed response to a crumbling infrastructure in the US and it becomes clear that many now doubt the likelihood of a smooth transition to a new normalcy, in which the market’s productive forces, guided by an invisible hand, will solve problems on their own while government spending is reined in.
The question arises: Is it reasonable to print money to solve otherwise unsolvable problems? Larry Summers says it will provoke inflation. Janet Yellen, Biden’s treasury secretary, disagrees: “Is there a risk of inflation? I think there’s a small risk. And I think it’s manageable.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Inflation:
1. The characteristic expansion of all types of bubbles during their formation and preceding the moment at which they burst
2. A general characteristic of any system that seeks to build an elaborate superstructure of hyperreality to replace traditional human activities, institutions, economic relations and social behavior, whose elements range from methods of governing and ideological frameworks to acceptable forms of public rhetoric
Contextual Note
Nobel Prize-winning economist, New York Times columnist and loyal Democrat Paul Krugman confessed this week that “while I’m in the camp that sees the current inflation as a transitory problem, we could be wrong.” He thus acknowledges that the threat of inflation is real while reiterating an optimism similar to Yellen’s. Consistent with The Times’ editorial line, he aligns with the president’s political agenda of Biden in his quest to be remembered as a second FDR.
Some have asserted that Summers’ bitterness about not having been handed the job of treasury secretary explains his loud complaining about the danger of inflation. But Summers may have missed the real threat facing the economy, just as he misjudged not only the situation in 2007 but even the Asian crisis in the 1990s. “In terms of judgment, in forecasting his record has been atrocious,” according to Joseph Stiglitz. But does that mean Yellen and Krugman are correct?
Who’s to Blame for a Tanking Economy?
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Theron Mohamed, writing for Business Insider, cites a number of experts who beg to differ, including Michael Burry, who famously predicted the 2008 crash and became the hero of the book and film, “The Big Short.” These market analysts see something far worse than inflation in the offing. According to Mohamed, “Michael Burry and Jeremy Grantham are bracing for a devastating crash across financial markets. They’re far from the only experts to warn that rampant speculation fueled by government stimulus programs can’t shore up asset prices forever.”
Whereas Summers and Krugman are debating possible effects on the consumer index, Burry and Grantham are talking about a market meltdown, possibly a new depression. And they dare to designate the true villain: the obsession with shoring up asset prices.
Historical Note
A recent study documented by Yale Insights points to a historical constant that exists despite radically changing market and regulatory conditions. “Downward leverage spirals are believed to be one of the main triggers of the 1929 U.S. stock market crash,” professor Kelly Shue points out. “Leverage-induced fire sales were also a contributing factor to the 2007-2008 financial crisis in the U.S.” She adds that the same phenomenon underlay the Chinese stock market crash in 2015.
Measures taken with the intent of avoiding a depression have paradoxically aggravated the conditions that may result in a monumentally devastating depression. The intention of the Treasury and the Fed to employ quantitative easing to “shore up asset prices forever” contains one significant error: the belief in “forever.” It parallels the belief of every administration since George W. Bush — now for the first time called into question by Biden — that American wars can also be carried on forever.
The link between the two may be more direct than most people recognize. Military investment and activity have become the core of the US economy. Bloated defense budgets are today’s “pump priming.” Wars keep a cycle of investment alive that nourishes not only industries that directly benefit from defense procurement but more broadly the entire technology sector, which has become the locomotive of the civil economy.
The problem may even sink deeper into the structure of the US economy. Robert Kuttner recently unveiled a “dirty little secret of the recent era of very low inflation.” He believes that “the prime source of well-behaved prices has been shabby wages.” Citing “outsourced manufacturing, gig work, weakened unions, and a low-wage service sector,” he notes that the economy’s very real gains from productivity growth have all “gone to the top.”
When nearly all incremental wealth is tied up in assets that may come tumbling down at any moment, nobody is secure. After the crash, the rich will lament their losses and their inability to rebuild. Millions will lose their gig work and below-survival wages in real jobs with no hope for a rebound. And with COVID-19 still creating havoc and climate change more and more visibly aggravating its effects, the problem of inflation we should be most worried about is the verbal inflation of experts who believe their discourse is capable of shoring up a failing system.
*[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 Golden One,” a Metapolitical Influencer
by Philippa Kaur 8 July 2021, 19:38
Metapolitics in the discourse of “The Golden One” — or Marcus Follin, online fitness guru, entrepreneur and far-right YouTube personality — is dissimilar to the notion of metapolitics as expressed by Alain de Benoist. De Benoist’s metapolitics was grounded “in an ideological critique of the left and an methodological critique of the right.” It was a way to rethink the ideas and strategies of the true right — the conservative revolutionary right and to bring them into the 20th century.
For Benoist, any “metapolitical action attempts, beyond political divisions and through a new synthesis, to renew a transversal mode of thought and, ultimately, to study all areas of knowledge in order to propose a coherent worldview.” First and foremost, metapolitics was about the production of theory and distancing oneself from violent activist groups. Secondly, it was about normalizing those ideas in order to fuel political change.
Guillaume Faye, “The Golden One” and the Metapolitical Warrior
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The Golden One’s version of metapolitics is not about highbrow intellectual theory or a new theoretical synthesis discussed in books and journals. The Golden One is emblematic of a new type of metapolitics — a metapoltics 2.0 — that is clearly intertwined with the digital infrastructures and digital culture. The Golden One is, in essence, a metapolitical influencer. What is Important to understand is that he does not just reproduce the ideas of others. This would entail that he is a neutral intermediary. By using digital media for metapolitical goals, Follin is producing new ideas, assembling existing concepts and repackaging them while communicating them to a new niche audience.
Strategic Intimac
The key to understanding his impact is analyzing his communication in the tradition of social media influencers. Just like most influencers, The Golden One not only produces a clear-cut persona but also mobilizes strategic authenticity and strategic intimacy to bind his audience. The difference is that his personal life is used in the service of metapolitical goals. After his first video in which he discussed what becoming a father meant to him, a whole series followed that touched on subjects like the war on fatherhood or how to raise daughters. Through those seemingly personal videos, The Golden One is promoting the traditional values and pan-European worldview that can be found in the works of Guillaume Faye, albeit in a different form.
Like all influencers, The Golden One has crafted his own brand. He has created a very specific public persona — a sort of modern-day pastiche of a Nordic Viking-slash-bodybuilder — which he uses for metapolitical and economic goals. He combines fitness, nutrition and training videos with content dedicated to politics, far-right books and activists. He gets paid to give lectures, uses Patreon to get monthly funding (at the moment, he has over 750 patrons who donate each month). Follin also has his own clothing line, Legio Gloria, which he wears in his YouTube videos. He even has his own nutrition line. The Golden One’s success is not only metapolitical — it is also a small business venture.
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The Golden One’s brand finances his metapolitics and vice versa. Through his online presence and his influencer technics, he manages to inspire far-right activists and youth around the world. It is in this uptake that we can assess the meaning of his work. One of those viewers and fans is the “Son of Europe.” The Son of Europe is a member of the far-right Flemish identitarian movement Schild & Vrienden. In a YouTube video titled “How I got red pilled” (the Son of Europe published the video in 2018 but has deactivated his account after Schild & Vrienden was exposed in a documentary as an extreme right, racist and anti-Semitic movement), he explained that finding The Golden One was a “pivotal moment” in his red-pilling process. He not only “started watching, binge watching actually, the Golden One’s videos,” but also started to exercise more and “go the gym more,” “doing research and also started reading more.” It is thus through the self-help, fitness and, eventually, the purely political content offered by The Golden One that the Son of Europe crafted his identity, set up an Instagram account and became politically active in the Flemish identitarian movement.
Community Challenge
The Golden One’s “Wild Hunt Challenge” would prove to be very influential in shaping the Son of Europe. It was as a result of this challenge “aimed at reinforcing positive behaviors in young men” that the Son of Europe created his Instagram account. The Golden One challenged young men to train at least five days a week, stop watching porn or at least masturbating to porn because he wanted them to be “aggressive and disciplined.” This is non-negotiable if you want to be part of his “legionnaires.” He also urged his followers to read an article every day and to post “a glorious picture of yourself … in the most epic place you know” and “upload it to Instagram with the tag #legiogloria.”
It was through these posts, said the Son of Europe, that a community was born. This community not only created transnational ties among far-right activists. It also functioned as a learning environment. The Sone of Europe claims in his video that it was in this Legio Gloria that he learned everything about “the domination of cultural Marxism” and “the domination of certain groups in the banking world.” He even concludes by saying that this “formed my ideology as it is up to today.” Even more, he took up the role of a “metapolitical warrior” and started posting videos and pictures on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube in the genre of The Golden One.
The Golden One — as an influencer or micro-celebrity within the far-right niche — reentextualizes Faye’s discourse and brings it to a whole new audience. This new type of metapolitics in the digital age is not only about the circulation of ideas; it is also about digital literacy and digital culture. In order to stay integrated in this economy of virality and generate uptake, metapolitical influencers need to be media-literate. They need to develop specific strategies and make full use of the opportunities and algorithms offered by the different media to build an audience or a community. Not only is the knowledge of algorithmic imagination crucial to generating metapolitical impact in this digital ecology, but understanding and adjusting to the culture of the platform is at least as important.
Guillaume Faye, “The Golden One” and the Metapolitical Legion
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Metapolitics 2.0 is deeply weaved into the new media system. The impact and influence of The Golden One, and his role in the distribution of far-right ideology, cannot be reduced to his content alone. We have to understand it in relation to his online persona and also to the digital and algorithmic environments in which he uses his voice. Not only is the management of visibility but also avoiding non-visibility, as Taina Bucher stresses, a constant worry for all actors in this media system. Making yourself visible, drawing attention is of crucial importance for all ideological projects.
The Golden One, in his long social media career, has proven a master at this game. On top of that, he was able to stay fully integrated into all major digital platforms — YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook — for almost a decade. Follin used all that those platforms have to offer and adopted classic influencer techniques to grow an audience, keep that audience hooked and build a community around him.
The key to any contemporary metapolitical project is being and staying integrated with the culture of the platform and, more specifically, adjusting to its community rules. It is their integration in this new media ecology that allows actors to become so influential. Since the end of 2020, The Golden One has evidently struggled to stay integrated. His personal Instagram and Facebook accounts have been deleted. He is now using his existing mainstream accounts to make sure that his audience can move along to new platforms like GAB and Telegram.
In ab attempt to keep himself on YouTube, he has announced to stop posting political videos on the platform. This desperate attempt to reinstate his Instagram and to maintain his YouTube presence shows us just how important mainstream digital media are for this metapolitical project.
*[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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in World Politics
America, the Stumbling Giant
by Philippa Kaur 8 July 2021, 15:03
The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for 130 years and has actively led the international community for 75. With only 4.25% of the world’s population, the US still accounts for a little more than 24% of the world’s GNP. Its military is by far the world’s most powerful, with a budget larger than the next 12 biggest militaries combined. The US has the highest per capita income of any major country and the most diverse and creative economy the world has ever seen. It leads in virtually every technology critical for economic and military predominance, from artificial intelligence to materials science. Its democracy has set a standard the world has looked up to for 240 years.
But the American giant is stumbling. Today, Americans fear that the US is in decline. Its economy is progressively skewed to the ultra-rich. Its national government is almost paralyzed. China is challenging Washington’s international power and leadership. American society is more divided than at any time since the Civil War, with up to 40% of Americans believing that a “strong man” leader — a fascist — is preferable to democracy.
Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?
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Almost all Americans worry that for the first time in history, their children will be poorer than they are. Many of America’s political moderates and progressives fear that America’s democracy will be replaced by fascistic autocracy and consider former president Donald Trump and the current Republican Party fascist. Yet on the other side of America’s political divide, an NPR/Ipsos poll in December 2020 found that 39% of Americans believe that the country is controlled by a sinister “deep state,” and this enrages them.
Social Stresses
My family and I are literally what made America. Since my ancestors arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower off the shore of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, America was created by “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” popularly known as WASPs. The culture that shaped the United States for 350 years was overwhelmingly English, then Western European, with a dominant Puritanical, Protestant ethos.
For 15 generations, America was also culturally and legally a society for whites. Even for my generation growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, many Americans still changed their surnames to sound more “Anglo” — dropping the last vowel, say, from the Italian (and Catholic) “Lombardi” to “Lombard,” to appear more WASP-like and less “ethnic” or un-American. Fully 10% of the population was black, but they were excluded from power and lived on the cultural periphery. Half the nation still lived in an apartheid “whites only” regime, the legacy of centuries of white domination and black slavery. In the media, one saw only white faces like mine, except in subordinate or, rarely, in “exotic” roles. And, of course, America, like the rest of the world since time immemorial, was only a man’s world.
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But with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, America began a stupendous social change, with blacks and women gaining unprecedented rights. Furthermore, non-WASP immigrants have arrived in the US by the tens of millions. When I was born, America was over 88% white. By the year 2045, under 50% will be white. The trend has already been clear for decades. In the past dozen years, the US has elected a black president twice, a black-Indian female vice president, and its second Catholic president.
Today, the US has a vibrant black middle class. Its Asian population is growing rapidly. Asian and Indian Americans hold many prominent positions in the country’s economic and scientific establishments. Women now hold countless key positions in all sectors of the US economy, including boardrooms. This demographic and social revolution has diversified America but also engendered a nativist, racist reaction and the rise of a fascist: Donald Trump.
Socially conservative whites — especially the least educated — have literally taken to the streets to “save” their country from these changes. Donald Trump voices their anger and their demands. Having lost the presidential election of 2020 yet having refused to accept verified results, the Republican Party has taken dozens of measures to restrict voting access for non-whites. There has been talk of civil war, and there has been an insurrection.
Economic Stresses
Real incomes have largely stagnated for about 40 years. Globalization has destroyed entire sectors of America’s middle-class economy. Much of US manufacturing has moved abroad to lower-wage economies. In the 1960s, the single male income earner could provide a middle-class life for most families. Today, 60% of families require two full-time incomes to maintain a middle-class life. According to a Brookings paper, women account for “91% of the total income gain for their families.”
In 2019, a Federal Reserve study found that almost 40% of Americans “wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash, savings or a credit-card charge that they could quickly pay off.” With $41.52 trillion in assets, the top 1% of households control more than 32% of the country’s wealth. With just $2.62 trillion in assets, the bottom 50% own a mere 2%. This concentration of wealth is creating social and political strains.
America Is No Longer One Nation
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The Republican Party has based its appeal on these grievances for decades, and Trump, the classic demagogue, exploited them all the way to the presidency. Blaming stagnation and increasing economic insecurity of ordinary Americans — and their loss of white social status — on globalization has been a ploy of Republicans since the mid-1960s. The party has progressively based its appeal on such tropes and fears since.
Today, Republicans systematically oppose any action by the federal government as a threat to “freedom.” They seek to reduce taxes, gut economic regulations, lower investments in infrastructure and slash expenditure on education, which they deem to be a means of dangerous social engineering.
Political Stresses
As McKay Coppins has pointed out in The Atlantic, after emerging as the leader of the Republican Party in 1994, “Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise.” As speaker of the House of Representatives, Gingrich sought to demonize and destroy the Democratic Party. He refused to cooperate, let alone compromise with the Democrats at any level either in the White House or Congress.
When Barack Obama was elected president, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acted ruthlessly to oppose everything the Obama administration proposed. Before the 2010 midterm elections, McConnell declared: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Today, McConnell has stated that “100% of his focus is on blocking” President Biden’s agenda.
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Since the mid-1990s, American politics has turned increasingly polarized, its federal government almost paralyzed. There are two principal reasons the US suffers from political rigor mortis. First, the Republican Party has become increasingly intransigent and partisan. The Democratic Party remains more moderate and open to compromise but has gotten little in return from the Republicans. Second, America’s electoral structures accord a disproportionate weight to rural districts, which is where the anxious, angry and reactionary WASPs and other whites live. The more ethnically diverse, urban and educated citizens tend to live in the major cities, heavily concentrated on the country’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
On July 1, 2019, Wyoming’s population was 578,759 while California’s numbered 39,512,223. In the presidential elections, Wyoming receives three electoral college votes; California receives 55. This means a vote for president in Wyoming is worth more than 3.72 times a vote in California. However, it is in voting for the US Senate where Wyoming really has an edge. Every state in the US elects two senators, regardless of its population. This makes a vote in Wyoming 68.27 times more valuable than a vote in California.
This structural bias toward less populous rural states gives Republicans a tremendous political advantage. It has enabled them to triumph in two of the last six presidential elections despite winning a minority of the popular vote and to frequently hold a majority in Congress and Senate, despite receiving lower overall votes. America is so evenly divided politically that one party often controls the White House while the other dominates Congress, or at least one of its two chambers. Given the partisan gridlock in the US, this virtually brings legislation to a halt.
The consequences of this electoral and institutional schizophrenia are everywhere to see and experience: American roads, bridges, water mains, harbor facilities and education now lag far behind most developed countries and even many emerging economies. Some foreign visitors to the US have commented that American infrastructure reminds them of the 1950s — which is precisely when much of it was built. The Shinkansen, Japan’s bullet train network, awes Americans, including myself, and it is 50 years old. America has always been a “third-world country” for the ethnically excluded. Now, the strains and failures of America’s social, economic and political paralysis extend more broadly through society. Even the WASPs are not spared.
Global Stresses
Two global issues in particular shape American public life and self-doubts. First, the US is no longer the only great power. China’s rise has been breathtaking. Beijing challenges American preeminence in trade, technology, diplomacy and military strength, posing the greatest challenge to the US since World War II. Many Americans fear that China’s rise is a sign of American decline.
Second, global warming threatens the American way of life and shapes much of the political debate about the environment, the economy and the role of government. Signs of a literal cataclysm are already upon us. The West Coast has experienced the worst forest fires in recorded history and is living through the worst drought in 500 years. In 2012, the US Geological Survey estimated that sea levels would rise on the East Coast by nearly 50 centimeters by 2050. In 2021, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association projects the same level of sea rise in Boston and Massachusetts. By 2050, the spot where my Mayflower ancestors began the American experiment 400 years ago will be swallowed by the sea.
Yet even global warming divides America. Most of the Republican Party believes that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the “deep state” so that scientists can have jobs. Some even assert that the California wildfires are linked to “Jewish space lasers.” These Republican beliefs are an amalgam of lunacy and old fascist tropes. That one of the country’s two major political parties believes such dangerous lies and delusions bodes ill for America’s future.
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During his campaign and since becoming president, Joe Biden has declared that the next four years will be a “battle for the soul of the nation.” He and his party have to end the paralysis of America’s public institutions and democracy, heal social divisions, and reduce growing economic inequality. They must rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure and rise to the challenge of China as a fast-emerging peer competitor in international and economic affairs.
The Republican Party and nearly 40% of the American population will oppose every step Biden attempts. The rural bias in the country’s political structures consistently grants this 40% control of about half the House of Representatives and Senate. Biden must win majorities to implement his transformative economic, social, political and diplomatic policies with only the slimmest majority possible in the legislature.
Furthermore, this majority is fragile. Of the 100 seats in the Senate, Republicans have 50, Democrats 48 and independents two, both of whom caucus with the Democrats. The vice president presides over the Senate and supports the president but may only vote in the event of a 50-50 split. Historically, most presidents have struggled to enact their agenda even with strong electoral majorities.
No president since Abraham Lincoln in 1861 has had to deal with such an array of grave social, political and economic crises. Throughout history, many states have proven unable to address structural, systemic problems with legislation and policies that do not profoundly alter these structures or systems. In most instances, however, this requires major social and political upheaval, sometimes even revolution. This has happened before in America — in 1776, when there was revolution, in 1861, when there was civil war, and in 1929, when there was economic collapse.
Within the current framework of American democracy, Biden can probably only succeed in radically addressing America’s daunting democratic, diplomatic, social, political and economic challenges if his party wins a more solid majority in both chambers of Congress. Thus, all eyes, hopes and fears turn to America’s congressional elections of 2022, now only 16 months away. This historic vote may well decide who wins the “battle for the soul of the nation.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Guillaume Faye, “The Golden One” and the Metapolitical Warrior
by Philippa Kaur 6 July 2021, 18:27
Within the global new right, Guillaume Faye is considered a genius and an intellectual prophet. After his death, the former figurehead of la nouvelle droite was praised as a visionary on social media by the former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen; the co-founder of the Pro-Afrikaanse Aksiegroep Dan Roodt; Arktos publisher Daniel Friberg; Counter-Currents publisher Greg Johnson; the editor-in-chief of American Renaissance Jared Taylor; Martin Lichtmesz from Sezession; alt-right star Richard Spencer; the Dutch new-right movement Erkenbrand; several diverse Generation Identity accounts; and the de facto leader of the pan-European identitarian movement, Martin Sellner. They all commemorated his death, hailing him as a key intellectual of the “true right.”
Guillaume Faye, the “Golden One” and the Metapolitical Legion
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“The Golden One” was one of those key figures of the new right who had praised Faye. The Golden One, or Marcus Follin, is a bodybuilder, online fitness guru, entrepreneur and a far-right YouTube personality. He started his YouTube channel in 2012 and has now amassed over 110K subscribers and over 12 million views. He has become one of the far-right influencers operating on a global scale. He has been invited to give lectures in the Netherlands for Erkenbrand, for Reconquista in Ukraine, Sweden’s the Scandza Forum, and has given collabs with many key figures and online shows in the far-right alternative influence networks like Millennial Woes or Red Ice TV.
Why We Fight
The condolence tweet was not the first time the blond Swedish YouTuber praised Faye. In 2015, Follin made a (now blocked) YouTube video praising Faye’s “Why we fight. Manifesto for a European Renaissance” as “one of the best books I have read.” The Golden One was certainly not the first or the only far-right figure who was inspired by and had praised the work. In 2017, Sellner published five videos on YouTube dedicated to this very book. (All videos were set on private after Sellner’s channel was reinstated after his ban in 2018).
In those videos, he stressed the ideological and metapolitical importance of Faye. Metapolitics, Sellner argued, is a key concept for identitarians as they define themselves as a metapolitical movement. No wonder that Faye’s far-right publishing house Arktos pitches “Why We Fight” as “destined to become the key work for Twenty-first century identitarians.”
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The Golden One recommends “Why We Fight” especially if you “are a beginner in the political or philosophical world or need ammunition to fight off or debate the leftists.” Note how he adopts metaphors of war in relation to the idea of political debate or philosophy. That is not a coincidence — “debate,” “philosophy” or “metapolitics” are not only used as synonyms, but his whole message argues that metapolitics is crucial in the fight for the future of Europe and the European people.
These fighting metaphors also reflect the central motif in Faye’s book. Faye starts “Why We Fight” with the idea that “Europe today faces the greatest danger in her history, a danger threatening the very existence of her civilization. For she is at war and doesn’t know it.” Europe, and especially European culture, its people and identity are in danger of becoming extinct. This danger is brought upon us because our elites do not fight for their people and allow us to be colonized by migrants and, in particular, Muslims. The idea of the “great replacement” was already very much present in Faye’s earlier works.
Even more, according to Faye, we should fight “for the cause of our own people’s destiny.” Faye describes the world in Schmittian terms as a struggle between ethnic peoples and civilizations for survival and domination. “The base of everything is biocultural identity and demographic renewal,” says Faye. The Golden One completely agrees: “Culture stems out of blood,” he says in the video.
Biocultural Survival
This fight for the survival of the biocultural identity of Europe or, in less metapolitical discourse, the European race, is, according to Faye, not only metapolitical. It is very much about the will to power, the will to become culturally, morally, economically and politically superior as a people. Faye’s stress on this struggle for dominance and superiority between Europeans and the Islamic colonizers is exactly the message that The Golden One puts forward on his channel. This idea, he says “resonates very well with the kind of aesthetics that I’m trying to portray with this channel, about strength and such virtues.”
Just like Faye, Follin stresses the importance of the warrior virtues and halting what Faye calls “deviralization.” The Golden One sees himself as helping to construct a new legion of metapolitical warriors. In a lecture for the Ukrainian Azov movement and the ND-National Militia, The Golden One stressed the importance of combining real fighting and violence with the philosophical or the metapolitical. In essence, he calls for a fusion of metapolitics and the willingness to use violence in the idea of the “metapolitical soldier” or “metapolitical crusader.” In this lecture, he stressed that soldiers need to have a solid ideological worldview, while activists or politicians also need to be able to physically fight.
This notion of the metapolitical crusader is central in the social media communication of The Golden One. All his online activity has been dedicated to the creation and education of that legion of far-right metapolitical crusaders.
*[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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Has the Pandemic Boosted the Idea of Universal Basic Income?
by Philippa Kaur 6 July 2021, 16:10
The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns have brought economic activity to a standstill. As a result, the livelihoods of people around the world have been threatened. To respond to the crisis, some governments have considered how to expand their social safety net. This is particularly because many people who work in the informal economy or those without jobs have been left with no financial support. In this context, the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) has resurfaced.
Until recently, UBI was a utopian proposal relegated to academic discussions. But the pandemic has led to a debate about UBI as a potential tool of public policy. Now, several basic income programs are running around the world. Advocates see in UBI an instrument to build more resilient societies in the face of economic crises, income inequality and automation. Critics argue that governments should strengthen existing social programs instead.
Can a Presidential Candidate Convince America on Universal Basic Income?
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In June 2020, Spain offered monthly payments of up to €1,015 ($1,200) to the poorest families. Germany has implemented a small-scale pilot study to take place over three years. As part of the program, 120 Germans will receive monthly payments of €1,200. In the United Kingdom, a motion to introduce UBI was signed last year by more than 100 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum. At the start of the pandemic, the US government paid up to $1,200 to adults earning below $99,000 a year; a second stimulus package meant Americans received even more money. Thus, it seems that the crisis has shifted the UBI debate, at least in some European countries and in the US.
However, in South and Central America, the debate on the desirability of UBI could “not take off, given the very severe fiscal constraints in most countries,” says Oscar Ugarteche, a Peruvian professor of economics. This is despite the Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance) experiment of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president. This indicates that the debate is partly country-specific and that the implementation of UBI may require “several national experiments, which are likely to influence corresponding variations in policy design,” according to counselor Andrew Cornford.
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Indeed, UBI is not a one-size-fits-all program. Many questions need to be considered. For example, should payments be issued per household or adult? Should everyone be eligible for UBI or only those receiving low salaries? Should a universal basic income be temporary or permanent? How will it affect the willingness of people to find a job or to continue working? How would UBI be financed?
The first step is to assess the feasibility and implications of UBI. To do so will require building on the experiences of small-scale studies, comparing their results and collecting further evidence. Thus, it could be a long time before governments and the wider population see such a program. That is unless the current health crisis can serve as a catalyst for socioeconomic change, contributing to make UBI part of the legacy of the pandemic.
By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski
Author’s note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: Where does the debate over a universal basic income stand in your region? Has the pandemic had an impact on discussions about UBI?
“…ensure that everyone has a floor on which to build [their] life…”
“World GDP in 2020 reached $90 trillion. To bring this number down to earth, it means that what we presently produce is equivalent to $3,800 a month per four-member family, amply sufficient for everyone on earth to live a dignified and comfortable life. A modest reduction in inequality and a flat redistribution to adults is sufficient to ensure that everyone has a floor on which to build [their] life. Huge financial resources lay idle in the world, growing not through productive investment, but financial rent. Taxing them might make these resources useful, stimulating demand and production at the bottom while drastically reducing poverty. Those who do not need the support might just be taxed back for the amount.”
Ladislau Dowbor — economist, professor at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo, consultant many international agencies
“…a certain confusion reigns here around the notion…”
“In France, the debate concerning a universal basic income remains confined to academic spheres and to a few militant groups. The issue was, however, put in the political agenda by the socialist candidate in the last presidential elections (spring 2017), that is to say before the outbreak of COVID-19. This candidate achieved a very poor score. The crisis itself does not seem to have brought the problem to the fore. It is true that a certain confusion reigns here around the notion: Is it a real universal basic income, a negative tax, aid to citizens without resources or a subsidy to all residents? The imagination is lost, which does not help the political inscription of this notion, nor the serene economic discussion.”
Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)
“…with the COVID crisis, the idea is resurfacing…”
“In June 2016, a proposal to introduce a universal basic income was rejected by three-quarters of Swiss voters and all Cantons. With the COVID crisis, the idea is resurfacing, but to gain traction, it will need to address two issues. The first is how to finance it, especially if UBI should be enough to live on, without having adverse incentives for work and the tax base. The second is why provide support to everyone instead of those in need? Even with the pandemic, the vast majority of the population have kept their income and thus do not need support.”
Cedric Tille — professor of macroeconomics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva
“…dissatisfaction with existing social-security systems…”
“Dissatisfaction with existing social-security systems has recently led to greater attention to the universal basic income. Perhaps the best-known experiment is that carried out on a limited sample of recipients in Finland. In the recent municipal elections in the UK, almost 300 candidates of the Green Party were declared supporters of the UBI. Supporters stress the automaticity and universality of the UBI, which are believed to contribute to wellbeing and the ease with which beneficiaries are able to handle other problems of their lives. Critics stress the undesirability of the delinking of financial benefits from particular welfare services owing to its likely impact on popular support for these services. This is a debate that requires several national experiments, which are likely to influence corresponding variations in policy design, including other solutions such as negative income taxes or simply strengthened social security.”
Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services
“…the proposal could draw away people from the labor force…”
“During the pandemic, the Spanish left coalition government accelerated a plan called Ingreso Minimo Vital, expected to hand out between €462 and €1,015 per month according to the conditions of each household unit. This in part replaces or adds up to existing regional schemes. Until March 2021, 210,000 beneficiaries had their submission approved, of a total of 1.3 million requests. The unions and a few NGOs — some of them very efficient in relieving newly emergent poverty — denounced the slowness and administrative maze in the process. The Spanish unemployed still number 3.6 million (15.99%), plus about 750,000 in furlough schemes. The proposal, if successful, could draw away people from the labor force, whereas we need public-private policies aiming to the contrary.”
Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group
“…these measures would provide tangible help that women need right now…”
“For myriad women in economies of every size, along with trailing income, unpaid care and internal work burden have exploded. While all are facing unprecedented challenges, women continue bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout of COVID-19. Pandemic-induced poverty flow will also widen the gender poverty gap, which means more women will be pushed into extreme poverty than men, thereby revealing women’s precarious economic security. Introducing direct income support to women would mean giving cash directly to women who are poor or lack income that can be a lifeline for those struggling to afford day-to-day necessities during the pandemic. Further, these measures would provide tangible help that women need right now.”
Archana Sinha — head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, India
“In Central America, it has not even been considered…”
“In Mexico, the discussion went to Congress as a proposal in June 2020 and is unapproved with a cost of 1% of GDP. In Central America, it has not even been considered as it is too onerous for the limited public finances of those countries. In Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Argentina, among other countries in the region, there is public discussion on the desirability of UBI promoted by ECLAC and UNDP and has not taken off, given the very severe fiscal constraints in most countries. UBI would not reduce inequalities as people who do not need it would get it and families with many adults in one household would get a bigger share than those with children.”
Oscar Ugarteche — visiting professor of economics in various universities
“…at the center of the most dynamic debates…”
“The pandemic triggered a socioeconomic downturn — already sharpened by the 2008 debt crisis — that raised economic uncertainty and widened inequalities. Fundamental rights and basic life parameters are at risk, especially for the poorest of the poor. Scholars, experts and citizens feel that it’s surely the time to voice their support for a series of socioeconomic initiatives — the universal basic income being at the center of the most dynamic debates. The southern Mediterranean countries and Greece prioritized the pandemic effects and kept aside for a short period of time the austerity measures. However, Greece is expected to turn back to the economic stability narrative, as described during the debt crisis, a fact that disempowers a possible engagement to the UBI debate. If this becomes — as it should — an international matter, weaker economies will follow.”
Christos Tsironis — associate professor of social theory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece
“…popularizing the idea of universal basic income in the US…”
“Thanks, Andrew Yang, for popularizing the idea of universal basic income in the US. Yang ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, offering the “Freedom Dividend,” a UBI of $1,000 a month to every American adult, as a solution to the eventual replacement of (nearly all) humans with automation. He scarcely answered how his UBI was to be funded, a significant, but not insurmountable, problem for UBI’s proponents. UBI skeptics were somewhat silenced when the former and current administrations sent out modest checks to those who lost jobs in the pandemic, in a series of massive economic rescue packages. Maybe the rescue plans are a nascent solution to UBI funding: higher taxes, deficit spending and pump priming.”
Kara Tan Bhala — president and founder of the Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics
“Italy introduced two years ago the Reddito di cittadinanza…”
“Italy introduced two years ago the Reddito di cittadinanza, with 1.2 million Italians receiving this first attempt of universal basic income (€560 on average), at the condition of refusing no more than two job offers. In two years, only a small number of citizens actually signed a contract, as most offers were short-term. On the other hand, Italy just presented its Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza )PNRR), consisting in €235.1 billion. Roughly 27% of the resources of the plan will be devoted to the digital agenda, 40% to investments to counteract climate change and 10% to social cohesion. Particular attention was paid to the historically disadvantaged Mezzogiorno of southern Italy (€82 billion, of which 36 in infrastructures), with projects involving young people and women, groups hit hard by the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic.
Valerio Bruno — researcher in politics and senior research fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR).
*[A version of this article was originally published by From Virus to Vitamin and Agefi.]
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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Britain Must Protect Afghanistan’s Chevening Scholars
by Philippa Kaur 5 July 2021, 16:10
On June 1, the UK defense and home secretaries announced that the local staff who worked for the British government in Afghanistan, including many interpreters for the British military, would be eligible for expedited relocation to the UK under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
The new policy states that “any current or former locally employed staff who are assessed to be under serious threat to life are offered priority relocation to the UK regardless of their employment status, rank or role, or length of time served.” To date, more than 1,300 Afghans and their families have been relocated to the United Kingdom. Another 3,000 more are expected to relocate.
Scholars Under Threat
The ARAP rightly assesses that the local Afghan staff who have worked for the British over the past 20 years are at risk. However, it fails to recognize that Afghan graduates of British universities face a similar threat. These graduates have been one of the main drivers of development in Afghanistan. They have worked for the United Nations, the World Bank and various government entities around the country. They have also promoted British cultural values in Afghanistan. Naturally, the Taliban does not view them favorably.
In particular, the Chevening scholars attract the ire of the Taliban. Over the years, the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has given out scholarships to some of the most promising Afghan students. Their identification with Britain has attracted special attention from the Taliban, who have called them the “spies of the Englishmen” and “children of the devil ” among other things. Such sayings have not been reported in Western media, but Afghans know this only too well.
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International forces have just withdrawn from the Bagram airbase. The Taliban are gaining ground and have even captured the main border crossing to Tajikistan. The Afghan government forces are crumbling. Kabul is already a dystopian city. The progress Afghanistan made around human rights, women’s empowerment, education, economic development and in other areas is already being rolled back. The Taliban view of the world is almost medieval. Harsh Islamic law that bans modern banking, women’s rights and fundamentals such as freedom of expression will soon hold sway again. Chevening scholars are likely to be hunted down and slaughtered, often publicly, because they are tarred by their association with Britain.
The Taliban have a terrible track record. In the past, they have killed thousands of people, closed down schools for girls and imposed draconian punishments, often as a public spectacle. It is an open secret that al-Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base during the reign of the Taliban. Those dark days are about to return, and anyone associated with the West will be targeted. Those associated with the US and the UK are already paying with their lives.
Three Good Reasons
The British government has a moral obligation not only to the local staff but also to the Chevening scholars. The ARAP should cover the latter too. The very scholarship the FCDO granted to promising Afghan students has now become a noose around their necks. The Chevening scholarship has opened new doors for Afghan graduates, but it has also marked them down as Western collaborators in the eyes of the Taliban. Women scholars in particular face a risk. They are often seen as corrupted by Western values and a threat to the traditional Islamic order. Abandoning these scholars to their fate would be the wrong decision for any fair-minded British government.
There is also an economic argument for admitting Afghanistan’s Chevening scholars. In the post-Brexit era, the UK wants to be a global hub for talent. It is in the self-interest of the British government to attract highly skilled and driven professionals from around the world. The Chevening scholars have been trained in the finest British universities. Many of them have also worked abroad or have professional experience with international organizations. They have the skills, the resilience and the initiative to contribute greatly to the British economy.
There is a social argument for Chevening scholars too. They are some of the most cosmopolitan and cultured people in Afghanistan. While studying in the UK, many were active in student life, organizing discussions, volunteering with charities and hosting cultural events. They have an ability to assimilate into the British culture while adding a distinctive flavor to an increasingly multicultural nation. The Afghan scholars are likely to contribute to the arts, civic engagement and the communities they join. They will be an asset to the UK just as the Huguenots, the Jews, the Pakistanis, the Indians and countless others have been in the past.
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 Libyan Government Faces Numerous Challenges
by Philippa Kaur 5 July 2021, 15:27
On February 5, the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), a 75-member body, supervised by the United Nations, approved Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s list of officials to temporarily run national affairs. Their mandate will last until presidential and parliamentary elections take place on December 24. The list includes Mohammed al-Manfi as chairman and Musa al-Koni and Abdullah Hussein al-Lafi as members of the Presidential Council. Dbeibeh became the prime minister of Libya.
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On March 10, Dbeibeh presented his cabinet to members of parliament and won the confidence of 132 deputies out of the 133 who attended the session in Sirte. The internationally recognized national unity government based in Tobruk was subsequently sworn in, but it faces many challenges. These include political, military, economic, and social and human rights issues.
Political Challenges
Dbeibeh is a businessman-turned-politician from Misrata, a port city that is around 200 kilometers to the east of Tripoli, the Libyan capital. During his time in business, he was involved in political circles as a trusted person of the ruling Arab Socialist Union. In 2007, Muammar Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya at the time, charged Dbeibeh with the task of running the state-owned Libyan Investment and Development Company (LIDCO). The firm was responsible for some of the country’s biggest public works projects. After the Libyan revolution of 2011, which led to the overthrow and subsequent death of Gaddafi, the Libya al-Mustakbal (Libya Future) movement was founded by Dbeibeh.
The prime minister has succeeded in forming a broad-based coalition government that has brought together representatives of most stakeholders from the political, regional and tribal scenes in Libya. Dbeibeh crystallized a state of relative consensus between the different parties that have lived during a state of dissonance and a raging power struggle. This culminated in Major General Khalifa Haftar’s declaration of war on Tripoli in April 2019. Haftar’s heavy losses, his failed coup against civilian rule, the suffering of Libyans from war and their forced displacement pushed the bickering parties to negotiate and reach a political agreement. This deal was endorsed by the United Nations mission, under the pressure of countries such as the United States, Germany, Britain and Italy. The formation of the new Libyan government is based on a fragile consensus dictated by necessity. The sustainability of this is a challenge in itself, requiring a high degree of governmental harmony and solidarity.
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Dbeibeh’s team now faces the challenge of bridging the gap between the various actors on Libya’s political scene and bringing them together under a single banner. This national project entails the extension of state sovereignty over the whole of Libyan territory and the consolidation of civil peace, taking into account public interest. The new government is also required to implement the roadmap drawn up by the LPDF. Most importantly, this includes the unification of sovereign institutions to elect new leaders to manage the transitional phase. It also involves creating conditions for organizing legislative and presidential elections at the end of the year.
The formation of the national unity government represented a historic moment that was the result of talks between the most prominent political actors in Libya. It served as a political solution to the Libyan crisis and a transition from a situation of war to one of peace.
Despite the peaceful transition of power from Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister under the Government of National Accord (GNA), to Dbeibeh, some political figures have not fully grasped the scope of change taking place in Libya. Instead, they have resisted the shifts in government to preserve their influence and personal and factional interests.
An example of this is the case of Aguila Saleh Issa, the speaker of parliament and president of the House of Representatives (HOR). Issa was expected to vacate his role, as decided by the forum, to allow a new figure from the south to be head of the legislative body. The aim is to create a balance between the different regions of Libya. Yet the speaker has clung on to his position.
Issa has a long history of obstructing the path for a peaceful settlement to the Libyan crisis. In 2016, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) adopted sanctions against him. He was accused of being “complicit in, actions or policies that obstruct, undermine, delay, or impede, or pose a significant risk of obstructing, undermining, delaying, or impeding, the adoption of or political transition to the GNA.” In addition to this, parliament remained divided and suspended during his term and only met on rare occasions.
Military Challenges
On the military front, the UN Security Council has called on all parties to abide by the ceasefire agreed in Geneva under the UN in October 2020. Yet in March this year, a UN report stated that the arms embargo in Libya is “totally ineffective.” The Geneva agreement issued a 90-day deadline for foreign mercenaries to leave the country. The stated period has since passed, but Libya is still teeming with local and international armed groups.
This complex situation poses a major challenge to the national unity government. Officials are primarily concerned with forcing all parties to respect the ceasefire and stop the imports of weapons by land, sea and air. In addition to this, millions of weapons — smuggled or stolen — are handled illegally in Libya.
The state needs to regain its authority and have a monopoly on the use of weapons. This requires forcing the armed brigades in the east and west to hand over their equipment to the Ministries of Defense and Interior. This approach calls for dissolving Libyan militias, draining their sources of funding, rehabilitating their members and reintegrating them into official security and defense structures. This includes institutions such as the police, army, civil protection or border control, which have specific laws and codes of conduct and a clear hierarchy subject to civilian leadership.
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The government will likely face resistance from armed groups. The brigades loyal to General Haftar, who considers himself above the state and does not accept the command of civilian leadership, will present a particular challenge.
Mercenaries also pose a risk. There are an estimated 20,000 foreign fighters in Libya, according to former UN Envoy Stephanie Williams. Most of them are stationed in the east of Libya and in the oil crescent, a coastal area that hosts most of the country’s oil export terminals. The fighters include Sudanese, Chadian, Syrian and Russian nationals earning high salaries.
Their deportation presents a further challenge because the groups are part of a network of power relations involving other countries. Russia, Turkey, Egypt and France have used fighters and technical experts as bargaining chips to ensure their share of reconstruction projects and natural resources in Libya. The Libyan government needs to create a situation where locals reject the presence of mercenaries and put pressure on them to leave.
The support of the European Union, the United States and Britain is also important. Such global powers must intensify diplomatic and field efforts on these armed groups to surrender their positions and weapons to the Libyan government. If this can be achieved in a manner that guarantees the sustainability of peace and stability, foreign investors might view Libya as a safe country for commercial and economic activity.
Economic, Social and Human Rights Challenges
The Dbeibeh government has inherited an economy that has been weakened by war and financial and administrative corruption. The economy has been severely affected by the deliberate halting of oil production and export by tribes and militias loyal to Haftar. It has also been impacted by depleted parallel institutions and informal trade as well as the smuggling of fuel and other basic materials. “Due to the closure of oil wells and restrictions put by pro-Haftar armed groups, the Libyan economy suffered a loss of $5 billion in January 2020,” Mucahit Aydemir reports. “From 2016-2019, the country has already lost more than $100 billion, as Ibrahim Cadran, an Haftar ally interrupted the oil excavation in the east of the country.”
It is assumed that the national unity government will set an audited public budget and liberate oil fields from foreign, tribal or militia domination. The interim leaders should also seek to restore the export of oil, the country’s primary source of income. Undertaking these urgent, necessary reforms will allow the provision of cash liquidity, secure salaries and help the Libyan dinar (LD) recover, if only relatively. According to the World Bank, the dinar “continues to suffer in the parallel market because of political uncertainties and macroeconomic instability. In the first two quarters of 2020, the LD in the parallel market lost 54 percent of its value.”
On the social and human rights front, it is imperative for the new government to provide citizens with essential services, such as clean water, electricity, gas, medicine and basic foodstuffs, and to fight the wastage of public money and increasing prices. In March, UN Special Envoy Jan Kubis said the “country is facing an acute electricity crisis this summer and there are risks to its water security as well.” He added that “UN agencies estimate that over 4 million people, including 1.5 million children, may face being denied access to clean water and sanitation if immediate solutions are not found and implemented.”
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In addition, the coronavirus was confirmed to have spread to Libya on March 24, 2020, when the first case was reported in Tripoli. Libya is vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic due to the impact of the last civil war, which led to a dire humanitarian situation and the destruction of the country’s health infrastructure. In April, Libya launched its vaccination program against COVID-19, but, as with most countries in Africa, the supplies of doses remain low. At the time of publishing, the country had recorded more than 195,000 infections and over 3,200 deaths.
In light of risks to the country’s health care, an effective strategy must be implemented to combat COVID-19. This must take into account sufficient steps to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, import the necessary number of vaccine doses and guarantee access to health services for those suffering from the COVID-19 disease.
It is also important for authorities to release political prisoners, deal with cases of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and end impunity for those committing crimes. Those forcibly displaced during the civil war must also be allowed to return to their homes and resume their professional lives in a safe environment. The building blocks for a project of transitional justice as a prelude to a practical, inclusive and fair system of reconciliation must also be pursued.
The time available to the Dbeibeh government is limited and the challenges it faces are plenty. But this should not prevent the interim administration from being able to introduce changes and pave the way for political, economic and human rights reform. However, this will be possible only if officials are united and cooperate to serve the public and if international support continues for the national unity government. Most importantly, to succeed, the government will need the support of Libyans themselves.
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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