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    So Far, Biden’s Foreign Policy Is Proving Too Conventional

    On the domestic front, Joe Biden is flirting with transformational policies around energy, environment, and infrastructure. It’s not a revolution, but it’s considerably less timid than what Barack Obama offered in that pre-Trump, pre-pandemic era.

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

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

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

    Confronting China

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Sparring With Iran

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

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

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

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

    Getting Nowhere With Cuba and North Korea

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

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

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

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

    Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

    Military Exceptionalism

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

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

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

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

    *[This 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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    How China’s Growing Dominance Will Impact Sino-Gulf Relations

    The COVID-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves through energy markets. Since March 2020, lockdowns around the world have led adults to work remotely and children to learn virtually. Last year, according to estimates, global energy demand and investment fell by 5% and 18%, respectively.

    Yet as restrictions ease and economies pick up pace, the sense of normality that many hope for is one of the few luxuries energy producers cannot afford. In the race to comply with mounting political pressure to reduce carbon emissions while simultaneously securing their energy futures, the Sino-Gulf alliance may become the new center of gravity for global energy markets.

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    The pandemic has undoubtedly cast a dark shadow on energy. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently revealed that energy demand will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 in its most optimistic outlook or 2025 in the case of a delayed economic recovery. However, a return to pre-COVID demand does not necessitate a return to pre-crisis growth. Predicted growth in demand between 2019 and 2030 is estimated at 4% in the delayed recovery case, compared to 12% in a COVID-free world.

    Nevertheless, the pandemic has also highlighted the importance of a reliable and accessible electricity supply. The IEA predicts that the electricity sector, whose demand outpaces other fuels, will support economic recovery and account for 21% of global final energy consumption by 2030. This push for electricity is widely driven by the various global emission reduction targets, increased use of electric vehicles and heat sources in advanced economies, and greater consumption from emerging markets.

    Leader of the Pack

    Of the countries driving this growth, China is leading the pack and is predicted to be the main driver of energy demand over the next decade. Following his call for an “energy revolution,” President Xi Jinping has sought to reposition China as a key player in global energy markets. While the Chinese are currently the world’s biggest consumers and producers of coal-fired electricity, Xi’s pledge to make China carbon neutral by 2060 means that energy demands are increasingly being met via renewables.

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    China is predicted to account for 40% of global renewable expansion, leading in the realm of nuclear power, biofuel production and will account for almost half of globally distributed photovoltaic power. In addition to this, Chinese demand is also predicted to account for 40% of global electricity sector growth by 2030, up from 28%. It was as a consequence of East Asia’s growing appetite for clean energy that, in 2016, global electricity investment outpaced that of oil and gas for the first time in history.

    However, as with everything, there will be winners and losers. While electricity is on the up, sluggish global oil demand has led to falling oil prices. With demand predicted to plummet in the 2030s, there is a growing urgency for Gulf Arab states to diversify as oil becomes more of a burden than a blessing. Yet, in their hurry to claim their stake in the new energy world order, Gulf countries may begin to look east rather than west for a friend to rely on.

    China and the Gulf

    Sino-Gulf relations are not a new occurrence. As the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas, these two commodities dominate Chinese trade relations and have been the basis of the Saudi-led Gulf alliance. The Gulf Cooperation Council supplies over 30% of China’s oil imports, with Saudi Arabia topping the list, accounting for over 16% of the oil import total. Nevertheless, in a world that is increasingly turning its back on oil, GCC states and China may increasingly look to each other to secure their respective energy futures.

    From the establishment of the China–Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) in 2004 to the China–GCC Strategic Dialogue in 2010, Sino-Gulf relations have grown from strength to strength. As such, it was hardly supplying when China gave the GCC a starring role in its Belt and Road Initiative. Announced in 2013, this global infrastructure project that seeks to boost physical connectivity, financial integration, trade and economic growth has become the core pillar of China’s increasingly active foreign policy approach under Xi.

    During the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the CASCF in 2014, Xi spoke about the Gulf Arab states as “natural cooperative partners in jointly building” the BRI. This set the stage for a flood of multi-billion-dollar investments and agreements between China and the Gulf states, advancing the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arabian Peninsula and deepening economic ties.

    Chinese investment activity in the Gulf has followed the “1+2+3” Sino-Arab cooperation framework. This features energy cooperation as its central axis, investment and infrastructure, and accelerating breakthroughs in three high-tech sectors, namely aviation satellite, nuclear energy and new energy. However, there is no doubt that the BRI aims primarily to strengthen this central pillar of energy cooperation. Aptly described as “oil roads,” the initiative will enable China to establish the necessary infrastructure, transport and refinery facilities needed to secure its energy future and keep GCC coffers full.

    These ambitious plans will be of greater significance in the years to come. Despite the economic and energy market turmoil triggered by the pandemic, Sino-Gulf relations show no signs of slowing. Rather, the pandemic may have made way for a greater mutual dependence between China and the Gulf states. This is particularly true for the GCC, whose economic wellbeing depends heavily on the revival of global oil markets. China may prove to be the answer to Gulf ministers’ prayers, stimulating growth by providing a guaranteed revenue stream for the region’s main export, no doubt stabilizing GCC economies.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Beyond the energy sector, however, the two regions offer a wealth of investment opportunities that will likely deepen relations, particularly as the GCC economies realize their various diversification plans. The synergies between the GCC’s various “vision” agendas and China’s BRI are extensive, thus acting as a major point of collaboration. The two are already in the final stages of concluding the long-awaited China–GCC free trade agreement, a move that would no doubt propel economic cooperation and open the doors to a vast array of trading opportunities. Saudi Arabia has already taken active steps to consolidate this BRI-vision cooperation by signing various agreements and memorandums of understanding with China. Riyadh has since considered the BRI to be “one of the main pillars of the Saudi Vision 2030,” consequently making China “among the Kingdom’s biggest economic partners.” 

    Closer Partners

    It is thus clear that, willingly or unwillingly, recent global events have further pushed China and GCC into each other’s arms. Sino-Gulf relations can be expected to gain serious traction in the next few years, especially in the realm of energy cooperation, which is likely to continue to spearhead this strategic alliance as a sector of great mutual importance. Meanwhile, as China seeks to entrench itself in the Gulf, it may find itself caught in the middle of the regional power struggles that threaten stability, namely the Iran-Saudi rivalry. President Xi, however, shows no intent of mixing business with politics, as seen in his recent regional tour, which saw him visit both Saudi Arabia and Iran among others.

    Nevertheless, if China wishes to grow its presence in the Gulf, ensuring regional peace will undoubtedly become a priority for Beijing. Chinese neutrality may be exactly what is needed to defuse regional tensions and maintain a level of accord that keeps the feud below boiling point. Yet despite Sino-Gulf relations taking center stage in the near future, China will not be replacing the United States as the dominant foreign power in the Middle East any time soon. Beijing’s focus on economic rather than political matters makes China, to use the words of Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, “not necessarily a better friend, but a less complicated friend.”

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

    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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    Christianism: The Elephant in the Extremism Room

    I contend that my subject matter is something of an elephant in our global room, but I should warn that it is equally a thoroughly unhappy one: religiously-inspired, revolutionary political violence. For nearly 20 years now, scarcely a day has gone by without reportage on Islamism. This type of extremism remains present in our global room, and no one can claim it is unseen.

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    That is of course with good reason: On 9/11, nearly 3,000 people were brutally murdered by violent jihadi Islamists in the worst sub-state terrorist attack in history. But there is something that has long vexed me, in keeping with the New Testament injunction to take the “log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” I have referred to this phenomenon for more than a dozen years but have never had the opportunity to properly delineate what I think is again becoming an urgent subject matter, namely Christianism.

    Perversion of Christianity

    As I have written earlier, “Whereas religious politics, in a banal sense at least, may be observed wherever clerics become directly involved in politics, the term ‘Christianism’ is intended to denote a more radical, revolutionary approach to secular politics.” Christianism may have Christian connotations and indeed draw upon Christian language but, like Islamism, it is essentially appropriative. It allows an entirely secular Anders Behring Breivik (now known as Fjotolf Hansen) who murdered 77 in Norway on July 22, 2011, to term himself a “cultural Christian” — not on account of any metaphysical belief, but because he believed it was a useful framework with which to attack Muslims and Europe and, using an anti-Semitic dog whistle, “cultural Marxists.”

    Christianism, therefore, is a secular doctrine that is different from, alternatively, evangelicalism, political Christianity and fundamentalism. Joas Wagemakers makes a similar claim about the distinction of Islamism from types of religious fundamentalism such as Salafism. This is a political ideology appropriating religion, not the other way around. But I would go further than Wagemakers does in describing Islamism as “a political application of Islam.” Instead, I would suggest that both violent and non-violent forms of Islamism, in their very nature, reject pluralism and advance a doctrine of supremacy that is the hallmark of extremism — whether ethnic, national or religious.

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    Moreover, it is precisely the political violence exemplified by the horrors unleashed by Breivik that Christianism is intended to denote. In short, this is a distinct, ideological perversion of Christianity that is, at the same time, distinct from older and more familiar forms of Christian nationalism and even from the theologically-based exclusion or persecution that has marred Christianity no less than other monotheistic faiths. One need not be a Christian to be a Christianist, nor is Christianism driven by the same impulse as the regrettably all too familiar instances of tribalism in Christian history.

    It scarcely should need saying, but Islamism is an extremist perversion of one of our world’s leading faiths. As a revolutionary ideology born of the 20th century, it can be directly traced from the interwar Muslim Brotherhood under Hasan al-Banna, for example, and the doctrines of Sayyid Qutb in postwar Egypt to the quasi-state terrorism of the Islamist death cult, Daesh. For all of its supposed medievalism, then, Islamism is a product, and not merely a rejection, of modernity.

    A similar perspective can be taken on Christianism. So, first, a banal point: Believers have politics, just as do non-believers. For this reason, I am wary of constructions like “political Christianity” or “political Islam” for the same reason I’m only marginally less wary of constructions like “apolitical Christianity” or “apolitical Islam,” though I accept, of course, that different forms of hermeticism stretch across most faith traditions.

    Thus, Christianism doesn’t refer to a form of Christian nationalism that is evident in the contemporary US (although not only there). One might observe the heart-breaking scenes in early April of Protestant loyalists rioting in Belfast with the frightening implications for the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, or indeed the conflict acting as the midwife for the long struggle over the six counties, the Great War. Throughout that conflict, scholars have clearly shown that both Protestant and Catholic confessions anointed or, better, armed their nations with justifications of a holy war. Christian churches’ injunctions to fight for God and nation is but one example of Christian nationalism, and there are countless others like it in the Christian tradition as there are in other faith traditions. It is far from new.

    Sacrazlied Politics

    This particular sense of Christian nationalism, likewise, has been extensively studied in the American context, with particular focus on white evangelicalism. In the compelling empirical account, “Taking America Back for God,” Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry conclude that “those who embrace Christian nationalism insist that the Christian God formed, favors and sustains the United States over and above the other nations in the world.” It is in this sense that Rogers Brubaker refers to adherents of Christianism in a 2017 article, whereby “Christianity is increasingly seen as their civilizational matrix, and as the matrix of a whole series of more specific ideas, attitudes, and practices, including human rights, tolerance, gender equality, and support for gay rights.”

    Yet here too we may be seeing a case of old wine in new bottles, whereby reactionary and even tribal expressions of a faith — in this case Christianity — which seem to belong to a tradition that, in American terms, stretches from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” to the televangelists of our day. Even cast in such civilizational terms, these forms of Christian tribalism are of a different stamp than the tradition I’d like to indicate. It is first and foremost ideological and emerged between the two world wars to afflict all three principal confessions in Europe: Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

    To take but one example of from each of these confessions, consider first the Romanian Orthodox ideologue, Ion Moţa, a key leader of militant fascist mystics, the Legion of Archangel Michael. Just before he was killed by Republicans in what he understood as a holy war in Civil War Spain, Moţa declared: “No force, no love exists which is higher than that of the race (and can only be realized in the race), except for the force of Christ and love of him. We are defending Christianity in a foreign land, we are defending a force which wells up from the force of our people, and, spurred on by our love for the Cross, we are obeying here in Spain our love for the Romanian people.”

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    Underscoring that his views were scarcely marginal, a mortuary train carried Moţa’s body from the Spanish battlefield across Europe in winter 1937 into Bucharest, where he was received by hundreds of thousands of devotees, helping to nearly triple the mystical fascist party — the Romanian Iron Guard — membership to 272,000 by the end of that year. No doubt many of these supporters later took part in the earliest massacres during the wartime Holocaust, murdering more than 100,000 Jews in pogroms across Romania in 1940.

    This form of sacralized politics was not limited either to the laity or to Orthodox fascists. In Nazi Germany, the regime initially supported the mistitled German Christians as an expression of what was termed “Positive Christianity” in the NSDAP program. Under Reichsbishop Heinrich Müller, the German Christians promoted the Führerprinzip in the country’s Protestant churches, aiming for complete coordination between a totalitarian state and a totalitarian church.

    A picture of what this looked like can be glimpsed from these selections of Muller’s 1934 rendering of Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount”. Thus, “Blessed are the meek” becomes “Benevolence to him who bears his suffering manfully,” while “Blessed are the peacemakers” is mongered into “Benevolence to those who maintain peace with the members of the Volk.” Most sacrilegiously, the categorical “turning the other cheek” is turned to the following:  “I say to you: it is better, so to live with other members of your Volk that you get along with each other. Volk community is a high and sacred trust for which you must make sacrifice. Therefore come out to meet your opponent as far as you can before you completely fall out with him. If in his excitement your comrade hits you in the face, it is not always correct to hit him back.”

    So far did this heresy go that the German Christians even sought the “liberation from the Old Testament with its cheap Jewish morality” by attempting to simply expunge it from the Bible. The genocidal analogue of this attempted erasure was the Holocaust, which was powered by what Saul Friedlander has aptly called “redemptive antisemitism.”

    Clerical Fascism

    Yet fighting a holy war against socialists in Spain or advocating genocide from the pulpit was not Christianist enough for the Independent State of Croatia, the Catholic wartime ally of Nazi Germany under the rule of the Ustasa, rightly described as “the most brutal and most sanguinary satellite regime in the Axis sphere of influence.” The Ustasa methods of killing were so sadistic that even the Nazi plenipotentiary based in Croatia recoiled. For instance, consider the words of Dionizije Juričev, the head of State Direction for Renewal, from October 22, 1941:

    “In this country only Croats may live from now on, because it is a Croatian country. We know precisely what we will do with the people who do not convert. I have purged the whole surrounding area, from babies to seniors. If it is necessary, I will do that here, too, because today it is not a sin to kill even a seven-year-old child, if it is standing in the way of our Ustaša movement … Do not believe that I could not take a machine gun in hand just because I wear priest’s vestments. If it is necessary, I will eradicate everyone who is against the Ustaša.”

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    These words were targeted not only at the demonized victims of Nazism such as Jews, Roma and Sinti Travelers, but also at the Orthodox Serbs who were the largest victims of the Ustasa “policy of thirds” — kill one-third, expel one-third and forcibly convert one-third of their enemies. This sacrilege culminated in the only extermination center not directly run by the Nazi SS — the Jasenvocac camp, less than 100 miles from the Croatian capital Zagreb.

    Jasenovac, where some 100,000 ethnic or religious victims were brutally murdered, was commanded by Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, a serving priest. Though he was later defrocked and ultimately hanged in 1946, both his wartime actions and the escape of so many of his allies on the Catholic “ratline” to South America, including the Ustasa leader, Ante Pavelic — who spent more than a dozen years hidden in Argentina after the war — suggests that, in much the same way that fascism could appeal to seduced conservatives, Christianism could also appeal to Christian tribalists.

    The case of such priests during the fascist era led to the useful term “clerical fascism,” characterized as a hybrid between the Christian faith and fascism. Yet in a manner inverse to Christian nationalism, which can be entirely secular, clerical fascism suggests a phenomenon from, and within, Christian churches. With respect to Christianism in our (arguably) secularizing world, this would exclude self-described “cultural Christians” like Anders Breivik, whose 775,000-word manifesto is clear on his secular appropriation of Christianity for the purposes of attacking cultural Marxism.

    So too with the civilizational frame adopted by conspiracist proponents of the “great replacement,” which alleges a Muslim plot to destroy Christian civilizations from within. The convicted terrorist Brenton Tarrant, the murderer of 51 Muslim worshippers at Friday prayers in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, was aimed at countering this so-called “white genocide,” itself a neo-Nazi term coined by the convicted race murderer David Lane (also notorious for popularizing the “14 words”: “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”). Like Breivik, Tarrant’s 74-page manifesto, “The Great Replacement,” specifically addresses itself to Christians:

    “Let the fire of our repentance raise up the Holy War and the love of our brethren lead us into combat. Let our lives be stronger than

    death to fight against the enemies of the Christian people.

    ASK YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD POPE URBAN II DO?”

    Pope Urban declared the First Crusade in 1095, opening one of the darkest chapters in Christian history.

    Although modern and revolutionary, Christianism need not be defined as a theological stance. One can be agnostic on the issue of faith and still be a Christianist. More important is the Durkheimian religious behavior toward the sacred and the profane, which closely links clerical fascists with cultural Christians of Tarrant and Breivik’s stripe. This leads to the definition of Christianism as a modern, ideological appropriation of Christianity based upon a secular vision of redemption through political violence against perceived enemies.

    Relevant Again

    While it might be tempting to think that the era of fascism has left Christianism in our bloody past, this construction feels relevant again in the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection earlier this year in Washington, DC. True, Identity Christians, the Army of God and many similar groups emerged after 1945, but these were tiny and fringe extremist movements. By contrast, what makes Christianism today the elephant in the room is precisely how widespread it appears to be developing in a new guise — and radicalizing.

    In the US, for instance, according to recent polling reported by The New York Times, nearly “15 percent of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, a core belief of QAnon supporters.” That equates to some 50 million Americans. That this ideological crusade is “infecting” Christian churches, indeed conquering them, is borne out by a similar Axios report indicating that this virus stretches across confessions: “Hispanic Protestants (26%) and white evangelical Protestants (25%) were more likely to agree with the QAnon philosophies than other groups. (Black Protestants were 15%, white Catholics were 11% and white mainline Protestants were 10%.)”

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    We should not delude ourselves that this is, or will always be, a non-violent movement. Already, nearly 80 “conspiracy-motivated crimes” can be laid at the QAnon Christianists’ door — and that’s before ascribing to them a key role in the January 6 insurrection, also partly fomented by then-President Donald Trump. The fusion of QAnon with Christianity — an exemplary case of Christianism — is chillingly evidenced by a professionally shot video released this New Year’s Day, just days before the attempted coup in Washington. Even if this ideological call to battle ends with the canonical Lord’s Prayer familiar to Christians, salvation is emphatically this-worldly and focused on a “reborn” US in a manner quite familiar to scholars of fascism.

    It is for this reason that Christianism is very much the elephant in the room. As such, it needs to be confronted and rejected both politically and theologically — first and foremost by Christians themselves. This repudiation would not simply be for the sake of the self-preservation of the faith in the face of its heretic form and not just for the protection of life that will be an increasing concern in the months and years to come. It is necessary because this is a syndrome not unfamiliar to other faiths but has yet to be named as such among mainstream Christian confessions.

    We must not look away from this. Let us not go back to the genocidal years of clerical fascism in Europe, spawned by ideology and bloodlust, and let us stand tall against what is so obviously sacrilege. Both faith and civic duty command it. That is because, put in more familiar terms in William Faulkner’s “Requiem for a Nun,” “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

    *[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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    Squandered Resolve Puts Transformation at Risk in America

    Now that the internationalists and their kindred neoconservatives have had their moment in the sun and reestablished America’s “greatness” on the world stage, it is time to get back to the domestic challenge of trying to bring the reality of America into closer proximity to President Joe Biden’s international version of an imperfect nation always seeking to be better and always better than other alternatives. While democracy versus autocracy has a nice ring to it on the outside, dysfunctional democracy at home is still dysfunctional democracy, hardly the poster child for an ideological confrontation.

    So, it was a little disconcerting that during my recent road trip, the Democrats pissed away another month without the courage to act on their stated convictions in the face of the continuing Republican assault on the notion of shared governance for the common good. Talk of progress, incremental change, consensus and bipartisanship continues to be a calling card among those too timid to embrace the national transformation that America’s institutions require to meet today’s challenges at home and abroad.

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    Even when not fulminating about rampant socialism, wounded white pride, voter fraud and defunding the police, congressional Republicans and those they seek to embrace continue to invent new fantasies to drive their message and excuse their obstruction. To make matters worse, a significant component of the messaging about a post-pandemic return to “normal” includes the continuing empty promise of positive change for a better future for all. Hello Juneteenth, goodbye the difficult challenge of doing something about the nation’s legacy that created Juneteenth in the first place.

    On the Road

    Out and about in part of the American heartland for a month, as the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to fade from view, I had the sense that many in America simply wanted to party, seeking some mystical freedom from thought, work and pain. Daily gun carnage, voter suppression, unemployment, pandemic worries, crumbling infrastructure and the like all seemed to blow away in the face of loading the bait, starting the engine and hitting the water. The only mention of climate change was the micro notion that the almost daily temperature fluctuations were mucking up the fishing.

    In the meantime, while the water beckoned, a federal judge in California was favorably comparing assault rifles to pocketknives, gun violence beat the coronavirus to the top of the death chart in many communities, the minimum wage was finishing second to not working at all, and heat, drought and wildfires began their annual march to increased human misery. Then just to show the country how best to ensure prosperity amid these evils, the great state of Texas added unregulated wandering wacko gunslingers to its list of model citizens, while doing everything possible to keep real model citizens from voting.

    Most disturbing of all, however, is the continued national resistance to public discourse that focuses on collective solutions to address the inadequacies of the present national response to even the most basic national needs. Think how much better off the nation would be if just about everyone got a COVID-19 vaccine. But no, not possible, because way too many people care way too little about the health and welfare of those around them. In its present incarnation as a cultural phenomenon, mindless adherence to non-critical thinking is America’s greatest barrier to collectively defining the common good and then acting to achieve it.

    Woke and Cancel Culture

    This same phenomenon finds its voice in every corner of the right-wing commentariat. In addition to the unexplained evils of some ill-defined socialism, “cancel culture” and whatever “woke” is supposed to mean are all the rage. As for “woke,” it is way past time for “woke” to be put to sleep. Its popular negative implication is aimed at those who rely to a great extent on an awareness of important facts and some capacity for critical thinking, often related to racial and social justice issues. Vilifying the “woke” surely suggests that those not “woke” are so proud of their ignorance that seeking knowledge is to be avoided at all cost.

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    As for all those terrorized by “cancel culture,” I have some breaking news. It is nothing new. It has been around for millennia. It is the foundation of virtually every organized religion in the world, as but one obvious example. Further, I imagine that each of us could come up with a list of people and concepts that we would like to see a lot less of, so I suggest we start by resolving never to buy a pillow made in America again and by pretending that TikTok is something special about clocks and nothing more.

    On the upside, it is good to see that Biden is still president of the United States, and Vice-President Kamala Harris can still laugh at the wrong time while continuing to work hard at the forefront of immigration reform and voting rights advocacy. But there is so much to do and so few of the institutional components in place to do much of anything.

    As if on cue, a condo building in government-resistant Florida “inexplicably” fell to the ground, killing dozens of people who had nothing to do with the decades of failed governance that permitted natural sand dunes to be turned into unnatural high-rise buildings. As hard as it to watch and as tragic as the final outcome is sure to be, the random human suffering that a pancaked condo building can bring to the fore is a vivid reminder that no one among us is immune if government consistently fails to act to ensure public safety.

    Vaccinations

    That continuing failure remains all around us. It was there before I went on my road trip, and it is there now that I have returned. Progress on COVID-19 vaccination rates has slowed because no one has the political courage to penalize those who fail to get vaccinated for the public good. The Republicans and their police allies still remain silent in the face of a gun culture in America that only grows, along with the stock of armaments in private hands and the unregulated access to those armaments. Bridges and tunnels are no safer today than yesterday. And, by the way, the right to vote continues to be endangered every day in America, just as it is in so many of those countries that we, in America, like to think of as “Third World countries.”

    As if to help me sort all of this out, one evening in a forested state park in Minnesota, a porcupine wandered into my campsite. It was a clear evening, but quite windy. The porcupine looked at me and my red solo cup and the campfire and opted to avoid confrontation. All good, as it moved away without damage to my tent or me. Then it made a major miscalculation and headed rapidly to near the top of thin tree, only to get stuck there dangerously swaying in the wind. It eventually got dark and the wind died down. I imagine that the porcupine breathed a sigh of relief, timidly climbed down from its precarious perch and resolved to try to avoid making the same stupid mistake again.

    Like the porcupine, Americans have created their own perilous times, threatened mostly by their fears that have been hardened by willful ignorance. This leaves way too much of the path forward blocked by miscalculation and misinformation, followed by a breathed sigh of relief each time that the nation manages to escape disaster.

    The next time, however, the nation may not be so lucky unless more of us commit to making our world less reliant on good fortune and more reliant on the determined goodwill of those around us. Sadly, a nation so awash in willful ignorance is highly unlikely to nurture the requisite collective conscience.

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

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

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    Chile Has an Opportunity to Write a New Chapter

    Chile is going through political change. In May, Chileans voted to elect an assembly that will write a new constitution. Those elected to redraw the country’s magna carta feature a large contingent of independents. Left-wing parties are most favorably positioned among institutional actors, but right-wing parties did not reach the one-third threshold needed to enjoy veto power.

    At the end of 2019, months of social protest and days of violence across Chile gripped the country. At the time, mainstream political forces and President Sebastian Pinera’s government managed to appease the protesters and halt social upheaval. In return, he gave in to growing calls for a vote on whether or not Chile should get a new constitution.

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    Almost a year later, in October 2020, Chileans voted in a national referendum and chose to abandon their current constitution, which was inherited from the era of General Augusto Pinochet. Now, the people have elected an assembly that is in charge of writing and proposing a new charter.

    Tectonic Shift

    In a race that represented a political earthquake, 155 constituents were elected to form a Constitutional Convention. Chile’s traditional political elite lost significant ground to independent candidates, political influencers and social movements.

    Center-right and center-left parties, which led the transition to democracy in the 1990s, took the hardest hit. Chile Vamos, a center-right coalition led by the president, failed to reach the one-third of seats it expected. Pinera has led the country since 2018 and had previously governed between 2010 and 2014. The loss means Chile Vamos cannot veto reforms perceived as too left leaning.

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    Apruebo Dignidad, a new, more militant left-wing coalition, outperformed the traditional center left, known simply as Apruebo. Now, Apruebo Dignidad has senior-partner status and a more favorable position within the Constitutional Convention than the Apruebo coalition. A faction of the Apruebo Dignidad coalition, known as the Frente Amplio, first entered the political stage in 2017, emerging from student movements with a militant agenda.

    Independent candidates are the biggest winners. The convention is controlled by 64% of constituents who do not belong to a political party — only 36% of them are party militants, excluding the 17 seats reserved for indigenous peoples. However, it is fair to say that most of these independent constituents have left-leaning affinities.

    The next step in the country’s constitutional process includes the swearing-in of the convention, which will be on July 4. This will be followed by nine months of discussions and the drafting of the new magna carta. Once the new constitution is ready, a national plebiscite or referendum will be held in which Chileans will vote on whether to adopt it.

    Participation and Abstention

    During the referendum in 2020, 79% of voters favored drafting a new constitution. Despite this, electoral participation has been weak throughout the entire process. In 2012, Chile abandoned compulsory voting. Since then, the fact that many Chileans choose not to vote might become an issue in the mid-to-long term. This could have an impact on how representative the Constitutional Convention is of public sentiment. The highest rate of voter participation throughout the constitutional review process was achieved during the initial referendum in 2020, in which 50.8% of registered voters took part.

    Last month, just 43% of the 15 million registered voters cast their ballot, representing just over 6 million in a country of around 19 million people. Taking into account the number of null-and-void votes and blank ballot papers, only 38.3% of registered voters chose their preferred candidates for the composition of the Constitutional Convention. The numbers were even worse in the election of governors, which took place on June 13, in which only 19.6% of voters participated. This was the worst rate ever recorded in Chile.

    A survey conducted two days after the May elections found that people did not vote for four main reasons. Some Chileans cited transportation problems to reach a voting site, while others mentioned election fatigue due to the number of votes that have taken place lately. Some were not sure who to vote for. Others said they had a general lack of interest in politics or in these polls. Election fatigue was compounded by the fact that the vote for the convention was held at the same time as regional and local elections — the latter of which were part of the regular electoral schedule.

    Short-Term Fallout

    Only after the May election did important developments take place. On May 19, three days after polls closed, parties had to register their candidates for the presidential primaries, which will be held in July. The primaries will determine who runs in the general election in November. Whoever wins that contest would be in charge of implementing Chile‘s constitutional transition.

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    Thus, the last few weeks have represented a political earthquake for traditional coalitions. In particular, the historically dominant center left dropped several presidential candidates for November’s contest. It also broke historical alliances and failed to reach broad agreements to nominate a single coalition candidate for the general election. Only the center-right Chile Vamos and the left-wing Apruebo Dignidadregistered their candidates for the primaries on July 18. To the surprise and concern of many, communist candidate Daniel Jadue will, according to the latest polling, make it to the presidential election’s runoff.

    Meanwhile, the June election for the 16 governors of Chile’s regions, which is an early indicator for the presidential race, shifted territorial power to the moderate left.

    The outcome of the presidential and parliamentary elections will be significant in the short term as it will determine the checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government. This, in turn, will affect the practical workings of the Constitutional Convention. It will also have an impact on whether Chile’s political shift to the left is structural or temporary.

    The End of the Chicago Boys

    With this in mind, it is currently difficult to predict the makeup of Chile’s next government. The question is whether it will be dominated by left-wing forces or if the Chile Vamos coalition manages to distance itself from the unpopular Pinera and secure another term in office. Nevertheless, as the work of the Constitutional Convention gets underway, it is evident that the resulting charter will represent a much more socioeconomically progressive framework than what Chile has had since its transition to democracy in 1990.

    Chile’s new constitution will undoubtedly turn the page on the country’s laissez-faire orthodoxy inherited from the “Chicago Boys,” who shaped the country’s economy under Pinochet. The constitution will likely also have an impact on other issues, including gender equality, the recognition of indigenous peoples, the social safety net and environmental concerns.

    It remains to be seen whether Chile’s constitutional revisions will set it on a path of more equitable growth or one of uncontrolled state spending. But one thing is clear: Chile’s post-Pinochet model has become unsustainable. It is now up to the statespersons of South America’s most prosperous and advanced economy to ensure that this chapter does not go down in history as a missed opportunity.

    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 Strategy of Tension: Bringing Down German Democracy

    Despite its government’s best efforts, Germany is suffering through a wave of right-wing violence. Triggered in part by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to admit thousands of refugees from the Syrian Civil War, networks of clandestine neo-Nazi groups whose ambitions encompass the overthrow of the Federal Republic have appeared. Particularly troubling was the discovery that elements within a special commando unit of the country’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have been stockpiling weapons with the aim to ignite a civil war and bring about the collapse of German democracy.

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    Fortunately, the authorities were able to uncover this scheme and purge the Bundeswehr of these anti-democratic elements. In April this year, 12 men accused of planning a series of attacks on asylum seekers, Muslims, Jews and politicians went on trial in Stuttgart.

    False Flag Tactics

    Part of this plan was a false flag operation. A former Bundeswehr officer, identified only as “Franco A.” in the court proceedings, went on trial in Frankfurt in May for planning attacks on German politicians and various prominent individuals. Beginning in 2015, Franco A. sought to create a new identity for himself as a Syrian asylum-seeker. He succeeded in persuading the authorities of his false Muslim identity, at least for a while.

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    Among other individuals, Franco A. singled out Claudia Roth, a vice president of the German parliament; Heiko Maas, the foreign minister; and Anetta Kahane, a Jewish woman, frequently identified as an outspoken defender of asylum seekers, as likely targets. Fortunately, the authorities were able to uncover the scheme and arrest its principal perpetrator before it could be put into operation.

    By impersonating a Muslim and carrying out attacks on prominent and individuals largely sympathetic to the cause of integration, Franco A. hoped to exacerbate the backlash against the Muslim community already underway throughout the country. In this way, he hoped to spark a conflict that would shake the foundations of German democracy.

    The false flag tactic has a familiar ring to it. It was employed, for example, in the bombing campaign launched by right-wing provocateurs in the lead-up to the 1967 military coup d’état in Greece. But the one place where the tactic was employed most extensively was Italy. The “strategy of tension” was employed by Italian neo-fascists and elements within the state security agencies during the country’s Years of Lead — Anni di piombo — roughly 1968 to 1982.

    Strategy of Tension

    Northern Italy and Rome during the late 1960s were alive with revolutionary agitation and protest. Wildcat strikes broke out in the plants and factories of Milan, Turin and other cities during the “hot autumn” of 1968. University students throughout much of the country staged mass protests against the Vietnam War, in solidarity with their counterparts in Paris and Berkeley, and the outdated character of Italy’s system of higher education.

    In this atmosphere, extra-parliamentary leftist groups formed. With such names as Worker Vanguard, Worker Power and the Continuous Struggle, these militant bands called for violent revolution against the corrupt Italian state and the Christian Democratic Party that dominated it. What would become the country’s most notorious terrorist group, the Red Brigades, emerged from this milieu.

    At this point, we should call attention to the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the biggest Marxist bloc in the Western world. By 1968-69, roughly one-third of Italian voters cast their ballots for the PCI, whose leaders, among other things, dominated the country’s largest trade union federation. Many journalists expected the PCI would shortly surpass the Christian Democrats as the number one party in Italy.

    PCI’s leaders Enrico Berlinguer and Luigi Longo were at pains to point out that Italian communism was different — that it accepted the democratic rules of the game and aimed to enter a coalition government with the Christian Democrats to provide the country with a stable, democratic regime. Still, in the eyes of many Italians, the PCI was a communist party after all.

    Counterrevolutionary Logic

    Enter the strategy of tension. The counterrevolutionary logic of this strategy was to launch a series of indiscriminate bombings in public places disguised in such a way that the Italian public would blame the far left for these atrocities and for the breakdown of public order in general. In this way, Italians seeking a restoration of law and order would support, or at least remain indifferent to a seizure of power by the country’s military and security services.

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    Accordingly, during the summer and fall of 1969, there were a series of bombings in Rome — one in front of an elementary school — and in the north of the country. The police reported these acts were the responsibility of anarchists. A number of individuals with backgrounds in neo-fascism (members of the New Order or the National Vanguard) changed their identities and resurfaced as “revolutionaries.”

    Giorgio Almirante, the leader of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist party in parliament, appealed to a “silent majority” of Italians demanding a restoration of law and order, borrowing language from the Nixon administration in Washington. Then, on December 12, there was the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank at Piazza Fontana in Milan that killed 17 customers. The police quickly blamed revolutionary anarchists for the massacre and within days arrested two individuals with the appropriate backgrounds. One of them allegedly committed suicide by jumping out of the fourth floor of the police headquarters. Few believed the official account.

    The story unraveled quickly, thanks to investigations carried out by suspicious journalists. It’s a complex tale. But it should suffice to report that it involved a collaboration between Italy’s state security agencies, the state police and key figures in the neo-fascist movement. Arrests followed, but the subsequent court proceedings dragged on for more than a decade.

    The chances seem remote that the democratic order in Germany will be challenged as seriously as it was in Italy, now more than 50 years ago. Still, some of the same ingredients for false flag operations appear to have been present in the case of Franco A.

    *[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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    Biden’s Myth of Bipartisanship Takes a Hit

    In January, Joe Biden assumed the leadership of a nation in disarray. On Donald Trump’s watch, the US had struggled for nearly a year to come to terms with a pandemic that disrupted not just the economy, but people’s lives and relationships. Last summer, an unprecedented protest movement against the brutal treatment of black Americans rivaled the COVID-19 pandemic for headlines. These parallel events underlined deep contradictions that have long existed in the social fabric. As a parting gesture, Trump chose to put on display the apparently irreparable division of the body politic by encouraging a mob to assault Congress as it prepared to validate his election loss.

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    Those particular events were dramatic enough. But in the background lay other pressing issues. First among them was the rapid decline of the health of the planet due to anthropogenic climate change. At the same time, the effects of wealth and income disparity became ever more visible inside the US and across the globe. In the background was the persistence of wars, terrorism and global instability accompanied by a very real nuclear threat, aggravated by powerful nations’ obsession with producing increasingly sophisticated weaponry. Arms sales had become essential for the economies of Western nations, exacerbating instability in entire regions of the world. Not only the American people but also the global population were becoming increasingly aware of the stakes implied by these converging issues. In this context, expectations grew for Biden’s FDR-style change in American politics. Not that he would challenge the existing order, but that he would for once address the real issues.

    President Biden thus entered the White House with an implicit mission to restore a semblance of order, whatever that meant. Observers quickly discovered that today’s version of US democracy entertains two possible approaches to restoring order. The first, which to many people appears logical, requires assessing the nature of the crises and promoting policies designed specifically to address the perceived causes. The second is clearly less logical but represents a long-standing tradition a seasoned politician such as Joe Biden fully understood. It consists of weighing the opinions and interests of the two parties that share power and devising solutions that do not threaten their specific interests. It also implies relegating the needs and desires of the nation’s population to a secondary position.

    Biden quickly put his well-honed skills to work. The New York Times describes the dramatic scene in which he “strode to the cameras on the White House driveway on [June 24], flanked by an equal number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to proudly announce an overall infrastructure agreement totaling $1.2 trillion over eight years that could cement his legacy as a bipartisan deal maker.” 

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Bipartisan:

    A descriptive term for any agreement between the two dominant parties designed to buttress the status quo, bipartisanship becoming a necessary ingredient when the status quo itself has become exceptionally dysfunctional, built on policies that are unpopular with the majority of the electorate but considered vital to the preservation of donor support by the political class

    Contextual Note

    Progressive Democrats wasted no time expressing their displeasure with a bill that fails to address even the most tepid of Biden’s campaign promises concerning the real problems the nation was facing. Emboldened by his belief in his own bipartisan superpowers and wishing to appease progressives, Biden explained, in response to a question from the press, his commitment to pushing through another bill that would deal with those issues. He even promised to reject the bipartisan version he had just negotiated if it was not accompanied by the partisan version. The Times commented: “It may not seem like much, but it was enough to upend Mr. Biden’s proud bipartisan moment.” Pride certainly appears to be a more powerful motivator for the president than problem-solving.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Revealing the strategy that would have had a chance of working only if left unmentioned, Biden announced, “if this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.” This set off a firestorm among his bipartisan partners, who judged they had been taken for a ride. Over the next 24 hours, Biden had to find a way of walking back his imprudent remarks. He dutifully promised to back the original bill with no conditions, and peace was restored. Republicans now have a clear path to devise ways of canceling the threat of action being taken on the issues that matter.

    There is still a small chance Biden could succeed by mobilizing every member of the Democratic Party to pass the “real” infrastructure bill through reconciliation. But the odds seem rather long. This leaves some observers wondering whether the gaffe was inadvertent. Perhaps Biden’s real bipartisan aim was to provide his opponents with a pretext for ensuring that the second bill never gets passed.

    “The drama does not appear to have sunk the deal,” The Times writes reassuringly, “but Mr. Biden admitted that his comments on Thursday left ‘the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to.’” That was ‘certainly not my intent,’ he added.” This glib explanation of the confusion may sum up the public’s perception of the first months of the Biden presidency. There is a thick fog around his intent.

    Politico reports that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell criticized accused Biden of “‘completely caving’ to the party’s left wing and has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to derailing Biden‘s progressive agenda.” What this means is that the nation must prepare for a direct confrontation between the ideologies of the two parties, the very opposite of bipartisan government. The logic has come full circle, as often happens these days in Washington.

    Historical Note

    The myth of bipartisanship in US politics is relatively new. It is linked to the emergence a century ago of a binary political system in which only two dominant parties could legitimately claim the right to govern. It took new meaning in recent decades once the parties had settled into their stable ideological identities. For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Democratic Party drew its capacity to govern from its force as a coalition of Northern liberals and Southern segregationist Dixiecrats. The Republicans had their own two factions: Northeastern liberals and heartland conservatives. In such circumstances, bipartisanship was both an inevitable ingredient of almost all legislation and a meaningless concept. Once the Democrats became “the liberals” and the Republicans “the conservatives,” bipartisanship would become a real challenge.

    Joe Biden entered Congress at a time when the old bipartisanship was fading but not yet deceased. At one point, progressives excoriated Biden for expressing his nostalgia for the days when he collaborated respectfully with white supremacists. The progressives were right in their reproach, but not for the moral reasons they cited. Rather for what it indicates about Biden’s inability to dissociate himself from an irrelevant past. He still hasn’t adapted to today’s very different reality.

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    The idea of bipartisanship may be the central myth of the Biden presidency. Conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have fallen in love with it and revere Biden for his commitment to it. Senator Mark Warner, a conservative Democrat, lauded Biden’s successful negotiation in these terms: “The message it sends to the American people, and also to our friends and adversaries around the world, is so important. In a post-Jan. 6 world, it shows that people who come from different political views can still come together on national priorities.” The fiasco that followed Biden’s threat to veto his own bill demonstrates the absurdity of this maudlin sentiment.

    Despite persistent public quarrels about budgets and taxation required to maintain the conservative or liberal label of the two parties, bipartisanship has actually been the norm in recent decades. And it is a destructive norm. Critiquing Biden’s brazenly illegal bombing this weekend of Iraq and Syria, Glenn Greenwald makes this historical point: “This has continued for close to two full decades now because the establishment wings of both parties support it. Neither of them believes in the Constitution or the rule of law, nor do they care in the slightest about the interests of anyone other than the large corporate sectors that fund the establishment wings of both parties.”

    *[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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    Young People Are the Key to Reconciling China and Hong Kong

    In 2019-20, a pro-democracy movement erupted in Hong Kong. Students from both high schools and universities took to the streets. They gambled with their futures for democratic ideals. Instead of getting inspired by the youth in Hong Kong, many of their counterparts in mainland China turned against them. Some mainland Chinese youth even supported the harsh crackdown by authorities and other repressive measures.

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    The divide between mainland Chinese and Hong Kong youth has reached alarming levels. Multiple surveys have revealed that almost no one under 30 in Hong Kong identifies as Chinese. The clash between these two groups has now arrived at university campuses around the world as both sides are adamant in presenting their side of the story. COVID-19 has only exacerbated these differences. Mainland Chinese see the success of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in managing the pandemic as proof of its competence. Hong Kongers do not trust their CCP-influenced government and view the measures to control the pandemic as another excuse for increased repression.

    Despite the Differences

    The divergent beliefs among young people in mainland China and Hong Kong assume importance in the context of new geopolitical realities. US President Joe Biden is championing a democratic agenda for the world, corralling like-minded countries to counter growing Chinese influence. Hong Kong is key in this new global struggle between democracy and autocracy. Having been under British rule until 1997, the territory is still governed by common law and has enjoyed greater relative freedom than mainland China. Now, that era seems to be ending. 

    Embed from Getty Images

    Since 1997, many mainland Chinese have moved to Hong Kong. In particular, students have arrived in large numbers. At the end of 2019, more than 38,000 mainlanders were studying in Hong Kong. Greater interaction between these young people was supposed to increase mutual understanding. Instead, they still live in parallel universes. Mainland students live together, hang out with each other and tend to share similar beliefs. As hosts, Hong Kongers have made little effort to reach out.

    Despite many differences, both groups of students have a lot in common. Both are tired of the rat race, the decreasing social mobility and widening inequality. Mainlanders celebrate slacking off during work. They speak of “mō yú,” a phrase that means “feeling the fish.” They also speak of “tǎngpíng,” or “lying flat.” This is a refusal to participate in the economic rat race. Hong Kongers are equally, if not more jaded about the economic system. They see the city’s economy in decline. They worry about getting decent jobs, buying an apartment and raising children. Prima facie, mainland and Hong Kong students should be uniting around common economic concerns.

    Yet Chinese and Hong Kong youth have very different perspectives. The former has strong feelings of national pride due to ideological indoctrination. For many Chinese students, the CCP has delivered good governance, economic growth and social stability. The CCP’s “performance legitimacy” has increased among mainlanders. They are wary of Western democracies that criticize the Chinese model. This wariness is rooted in an education system that the CCP developed in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

    The education system highlights the “century of national humiliation” that began when late imperial China was forced to cede sovereignty and territory to foreign powers. It glamorizes the CCP-led “national rejuvenation” that entails China reclaiming its seat at the top table as a great power. Under President Xi Jinping, the CCP has redoubled its drive to promulgate nationalist education. In 2019, the government published a new outline for Chinese patriotic education that emphasizes rejuvenation even further. As per this document, national rejuvenation is “the Chinese Dream,” Xi’s pet slogan from November 2012.

    A Different Reading of History

    Hong Kong students have a different reading of history. In 2012, they took to the streets to protest against a proposed curriculum that emphasized China’s model of political meritocracy over the messiness of Western democracies and downplayed political events like the Tiananmen Square massacre. In 2014, students rose up again in what came to be known as Occupy Central, or the Umbrella Movement. They demanded universal suffrage as promised in the Basic Law, the city’s constitution. 

    Hong Kong students have a very different experience when compared to their mainland peers. Hong Kongers have opposed the CCP’s increasing interference in the territory’s governance. Mainlanders see the CCP as the torchbearer of national rejuvenation. Hong Kong students want the autonomy and freedoms of the “one country, two systems” model to continue. Mainlanders want China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong asserted.

    Importantly, young Hong Kongers are increasingly cynical of authority. They are prepared for prolonged underground resistance to the harsh new national security law. Some have adopted a destructive philosophy of “ultimate burnism” because they have lost faith in the future. Today, almost 60% of those between 15 to 30 would leave Hong Kong if they had the chance to do so.

    It is clear that young mainlanders and Hong Kongers have different historical memories and political aspirations. Consequently, prospects for long-term reconciliation between the two sides appear grim. However, such reconciliation is more important than ever. Hong Kong was once a model for the coexistence of Western democracy and Chinese one-party rule. Its political fate is a bellwether for the future relationship between China and the West.

    As such, it is important to build trust among young people on both sides of the divide. Only when they start understanding each other’s history and grasping their respective cultural nuances does reconciliation stand a chance.

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