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      Why Are India’s Farmers Protesting?

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      Indian farmers have lately made international headlines. Popstar Rihanna, actor Susan Sarandon and activist Greta Thunberg have taken up their cause. Ozy, a glitzy Silicon Valley publication posed a provocative question: “Will the World Step In?”

      The story playing out in international media appears to be a simple one. Indian farmers are the noble David standing up to an evil Goliath-like government beholden to greedy billionaires. In an era of increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility, this narrative resonates. The fact that elite journalists in New Delhi or New York see the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a Hindu fascist party adds to its appeal.

      Publications such as Ozy convey that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought in agricultural reforms solely to benefit large corporations. As per this narrative, the government is in thrall to big business and against poor farmers. Is this narrative true, or is there something more complicated going on?

      The Burden of History

      Ever since the British Raj, Indian farmers have led tough lives. The colonial power imposed extortionate taxes on farmers, taking away at least 45% of harvests, often confiscating the whole yield. British imperialists took Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice to heart and patronized a new feudal class of landlords to act as their middlemen. They did the dirty work of squeezing farmers, enabling them to escape much of the blame. The British also created an extractive colonial bureaucracy to suck wealth out from India. Few realize that the primary job of the now-glamorous district collector — an elite civil servant who does the job elected mayors do in western democracies — was to collect taxes from poor Indian farmers.

      Writing in The World Financial Review last year, Kalim Siddiqui explained in some detail why famine stalked British India. Great Britain industrialized and became a great power partly through ruthless exploitation of farmers in what are now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which then comprised British India. As a result, millions died of starvation, and those who survived the famines suffered constant malnourishment.

      Indian Farmer Protests Explained

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      The first priority for independent India was feeding its people. Indian farmers were dirt poor with no access to credit, reliable irrigation or modern agricultural tools and farming methods. They were often in the clutches of predatory moneylenders. Yet farmers had experience of mass movements. Mahatma Gandhi led his first satyagraha in Champaran against exploitation by British landlords, mobilizing thousands of poor farmers. In India’s new democracy, farmers might have been poor but, for the first time in centuries, they wielded real political power.

      That power has carried over to today. Even as India has urbanized, farmers disproportionately decide elections. A staggering 83.5% of seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, still primarily comprise rural areas. The political power of farmers has given them many benefits. Since 1947, governments have formulated multiple economic policies to overcome India’s colonial-era rural poverty. India abolished zamindari, an indigenous form of landlordship, immediately after independence. It overturned centuries of tradition by abolishing income tax for farmers. A key purpose of the 1969 bank nationalization was to provide cash-starved farmers access to credit.

      The Green Revolution

      In the 1960s, India launched its famous Green Revolution, which subsidized farmers in India’s northwest region, comprising the states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. This part of the country is a flat fertile plain irrigated by Himalayan snow-fed perennial rivers and with relatively large landholdings. Inspired by the American agronomist Norman Borlaug, India’s government encouraged farmers in this region to grow high-yield varieties of wheat, rice and cotton. It also gave farmers massive subsidies for fertilizers, seeds and equipment, investing large sums of capital to build dams and a network of canals and giving farmers access to easy credit. As a result, the farmers of landholding communities in northwest India became the most prosperous in the country.

      The Green Revolution ended India’s ship-to-mouth existence. India’s population had exploded after independence in 1947. In a poor country, agriculture was inefficient and rain-fed. A bad monsoon meant poor harvests. Demand would outstrip supply and the specter of famine was never far off. Until production took off in India, the US supplied grains to Indian masses under the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, commonly known as PL–480 or Food for Peace. Lyndon B. Johnson limited even critical famine aid to India, demanding the country implement agricultural reforms and temper criticism of US intervention in Vietnam. The Green Revolution provided India with food security after two centuries of rapacious British rule.

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      Yet like any policy, the Green Revolution had unintended consequences. In 2009, Daniel Zwerdling chronicled how this fabled revolution was “heading for collapse.” With an emphasis on high-yield varieties, the traditional mix of crops grown in the region for centuries has been abandoned. Yields increased dramatically but only through an insatiable thirst for water. Groundwater levels have fallen by 75%-85% over the decade. In Punjab and Haryana, farmers are boring deeper and deeper for water. In 2018, 61% of wells were dug deeper than 10 meters. In a land crisscrossed by rivers fed by Himalayan snow, such water levels mark historic lows. India might have achieved food security at the cost of water security.

      Parts of India are not just running out of water. The soil itself is turning toxic. Intense use of fertilizers and pesticides over decades has pumped harmful chemicals into the soil. More than 10 years ago, astute journalists like Daniel Pepper were reporting on villagers who spoke about rising cases of cancer, renal failure, stillborn babies and birth defects. These health problems have increased since. Researchers attribute these conditions to the “overuse and misuse of pesticides and herbicides.” As Pepper reported in 2008, Punjab comprised 1.5% of India’s area but accounted for nearly 20% of the country’s pesticide consumption. Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh suffer similarly high soil pollution and consequent health problems.

      Another consequence of the Green Revolution has been the overproduction of cereals. So much wheat and rice are produced that a storage crisis has ensued. India now lacks the capacity to store grains, with millions of tons are stockpiled in poor conditions. In particular, India lacks cold storage facilities for fruits and vegetables because of restrictions on farmers, the stranglehold of Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) and a lack of incentives for the private sector to invest in the rural economy.

      A Soviet Procurement System

      After independence, India opted for the Soviet economic model. Five-year plans set out ambitious targets for a command-and-control economy. The so-called quota-permit-license raj emerged, with bureaucrats dictating “which company would produce what, but also the amount of production, as well as the price of commodities.” Agriculture was no different. In a top-down, command-and-control system, the government set targets that farmers had to meet.

      In an indigenous twist to the Soviet system, India created the institution of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee. Thousands of APMCs were to run local agricultural markets, known as mandis. Farmers could only sell to APMC-controlled mandis and only at fixed prices. Unlike their American or European counterparts, Indian farmers could not sell wheat or rice on the open market. This prohibition had two reasons. First, APMCs allowed the government to control both production and price in its planned economy model. Second, APMCs were meant to protect farmers from the vagaries of the free market and save them from exploitation.

      Over time, APMCs become the new oppressors. Local politicians and special interest groups came to control APMCs. Since they were the only buyers by law, APMC mandis began to set ceilings on what farmers received for their produce, offering precipitously low prices. Commission agents started taking greater cuts. APMCs delayed payments to farmers, forcing them to borrow from “[commission agents], local money lenders and savings for their daily expenses.” In addition, APMCs rarely gave receipts to farmers. This meant that they were denied the option of applying to banks for much cheaper credit. Instead, they were pushed into India’s infamous informal economy and became prey to exploitative lending. Tragically, inevitable and unbearable debt burdens have led to thousands of farmer suicides.

      Apart from the APMCs, the government instituted a minimum price support mechanism as part of its planned economy model. New Delhi wanted high and stable production of key crops. Farmers wanted, and still want, stable income. In a pure market system, too much production leads to falling prices. This is not ideal for farmers. Therefore, they are careful to avoid overproduction. So, India’s economic planners instituted a system that provided a floor below which prices would not fall, encouraging farmers to grow crops deemed essential for food security and economic interests.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Over time, powerful lobbies in northwestern India, the heartland of the Green Revolution, pressured the government to put the minimum support price well above the price the market would have otherwise set. What began as limited support to ensure price and production stability eventually morphed into a substantial taxpayer-funded direct subsidy.

      Support prices differed widely from one state to another. At the same time, restrictive laws compelled farmers to sell to designated APMCs within their districts. Crossing state and even district boundaries to get a better price for their produce was illegal and could land farmers in jail. For instance, Punjab’s support prices have been higher than those in Bihar. Therefore, Bihari farmers have been illegally selling paddy to markets in Punjab at a price lower than the minimum support price but higher than what they would get back home. A flourishing black market and widespread corruption emerged as a result.

      New Agricultural Reforms

      In December 2019, the parliamentary standing committee on agriculture published a major report. It concluded that APMC markets were not working in the interest of farmers. Instead, they were reducing competition, causing cartelization of traders and unduly deducting money due to farmers through market fees and commission charges. Corruption and malpractices in APMCs were rife. The committee observed that “there [was] urgent need for radical reform” and asked the government to inform parliament “about steps taken in this direction within three months.” It is noteworthy that the opposition and farmers’ unions agreed with the committee’s observations.

      Last year, the government finally instituted long overdue agricultural reforms. Several economists and policy wonks welcomed them, arguing that these reforms would “unshackle farmers from the restrictive marketing regime that has managed the marketing of agriculture produce for decades.” In their view, these reforms promised “to bring the entire world of farming technology, post-harvest management and marketing channels at the doorstep of the farmer.”

      The reforms have three key aspects. First, farmers will be able to sell their produce to anyone, including agricultural businesses, supermarket chains, online grocers or, as before, APMC mandis. The key difference from the status quo is that farmers are no longer required to sell only to APMC mandis. A Bihari farmer would now have the legal right to sell in Punjab and vice versa without fear of arrest.

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      Second, the reforms have created a framework for agricultural commercial agreements. When farmers engage directly with processors, agri-business firms and large retailers, their counterparties will have to guarantee a price and make timely payments. Third, regulations on farm produce have been simplified and eased. The command-and-control system that determined the crops or quantities farmers would grow is being dismantled. Only in extraordinary circumstances such as war, famine, a natural calamity or an extraordinary price rise will the government have the right to direct production of cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onions, potatoes or any other crops.

      In 2020, agricultural reforms became inevitable because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A nationwide lockdown caused a massive migration of urban workers back to their villages. This increased pressure on already scarce land — something needed to be done. Restrictive laws on sale, pricing and storage of produce had to go. Therefore, after two decades of endless discussion, reforms finally transpired. They seek to increase investment in agriculture, boost farmer incomes and create a national agricultural market to emerge for the first time since India’s independence.

      Who Is Protesting and Why?

      From the outset, the reforms have proved controversial. In September, the BBC wondered whether they were a “death warrant” for farmers. Some farmers worry whether the reforms might lead to the end of wholesale markets and guaranteed prices. Currently, the government offers a minimum support price that acts as a safety net for farmers. Even though the government has promised to retain such a price, farmers fear its withdrawal over time.

      There is an added fear that big private players will offer good money to farmers in the beginning, kill off their competition and then pay little for agricultural produce. Farmers might go from the local monopsonies of the APMCs to the national oligopoly of Amazon-like behemoths. It is important to remember that the government offers price support only for the staple crops of the Green Revolution. Other crops do not qualify, nor do fruits and vegetables.

      Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming number of protesters are farmers from India’s northwest, the region that has benefited most from the old system. In particular, they belong to Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, the birthplace of the Green Revolution. In 2018-19, APMCs procured 73% and 80% of the total wheat production in Punjab and Haryana respectively at a minimum support price. This was higher than the market price, but a hefty chunk of the support price ends up in the hands of middlemen through various fees and charges. Unknown to most, price support does not necessarily mean income support in the current system.

      Farmers in the Himalayas, the Nilgiris or most other parts of India never benefited from the status quo. As a result, farmers in 25 of India’s 28 states and all eight union territories have not taken to the streets. The Shetkari Sanghatana, a Maharashtra-based farmers’ union founded by the economist-turned-farmer leader Sharad Joshi, and other unions support the government’s agricultural reforms.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The late Joshi was convinced that “the root cause of farmers’ problems lay in their limited access to the market.” As per this farmer leader, open and competitive markets, instead of a top-down command-and-control agricultural economy, served farmer interests better. Joshi opposed the APMCs, and his organization naturally supports recent reforms. In fact, it wants to go much further. It wants the government to remove the ban on the export of onions and threatened to pelt BJP MPs with onion bulbs if the government fails to do so.

      Journalists unfamiliar with rural India, including those working for the market-friendly Financial Times, have failed to capture this nuance. Not all farmers are protesting. Protests are largely confined to Punjab, Haryana and Jat strongholds in western Uttar Pradesh. This northwest region around Delhi comprises less than 8% of the Indian population. It elects 38 out of 543 MPs in the Lok Sabha, but its proximity to the capital gives it disproportionate power. Home to the Green Revolution, it has benefited from massive government spending for decades.

      As per the managing editor of the Financial Express, farming households in Punjab get an average of $2,385 per year in fertilizer and electricity subsidies alone. Irrigation subsidies account for another $190 per year. Households in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh benefit from other subsidies as well. To put these figures into context, in 2019, GDP per capita in India was less than $2,100, with most farmers earning a much lower figure.

      Many of those protesting are large farmers from northwestern India. Some of their family members are part of the Indian diaspora in Australia, Canada, the UK, the US and elsewhere. Some of them continue to be absentee landlords. They have petitioned their representatives to raise the issue with the Indian government, organized demonstrations and raised the matter with the press. As a result, a narrative has emerged in the English-speaking press that is not entirely unbiased.

      On January 26, India’s Republic Day, protesting farmers marched through New Delhi. Some attacked the police, destroyed public property and flew flags on the Mughal-built Red Fort from where prime ministers address the nation. This caused outrage and weakened the movement. However, Rakesh Tikait, a farmer leader, rallied his protesters with an emotive appeal. He broke down in tears and threatened to hang himself if the BJP government did not repeal its reforms. Tikait is the son of the late farmer leader Mahendra Singh Tikait who took over the nation’s capital with nearly 500,000 farmers in 1988. Per the Indian press, Rakesh Tikait is a former policeman with assets worth 80 crore rupees ($11 million), a significant sum for a farmer in India.

      It is clear that the likes of Tikait are not poor, helpless farmers crushed by debt, contemplating suicide. They form part of the almost feudal elite that has dominated the APMCs and the rural economy for decades. Many media outlets fail to realize that such farmers have enjoyed price support, subsidies on agricultural inputs, free electricity, waived water charges, cheap credit from the state-led banking sector and no tax on farm income. They are the winners of the old system and are desperate not to lose what they have.

      Small farmers in northwestern India have joined large farmers too. They fear the unknown. Since British rule, agrarian distress has been persistent in India. Well-meaning measures like APMCs have backfired. The Indian countryside faces the unique challenge of extreme overpopulation. Low productivity, fragmented landholdings, lack of storage infrastructure, high indebtedness, strangulating red tape and entrenched corruption have held rural India back and caused simmering discontent. Leaders like Tikait are tapping into this discontent much like Donald Trump harnessed the rage of those left behind.

      What Lies Ahead?

      The government has clearly been shaken by the duration and intensity of the protests. Sustained negative media coverage in the West has rattled New Delhi. For decades, the West in general and the US in particular criticized India’s agricultural subsidies. At the World Trade Organization (WTO), the US consistently argued that Indian subsidies distort trade. The WTO has been a hostile place for India. Over the last three years, Canada raised 65 questions against India’s farm policies. Australia has complained against India’s sugar subsidies. Yet reform has led to brickbats, not plaudits, in Western capitals.

      In fact, contrary to many press reports, the government has behaved with remarkable restraint. It did not act against protesters even when they blocked highways and hindered railway traffic. Swarajya, a center-right publication, called for the government to “demonstrate it [meant] business when it comes to law and order.” Yet it did nothing. When British coal miners challenged Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s authority, she used mounted police to crack down on them.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In contrast, the Modi government has been rather conciliatory, engaging in 11 rounds of talks with protesters. The government offered key concessions and proposed amendments to its reforms. In the final round, the government even offered to suspend the implementation of its reforms for 18 months. Protest leaders rejected this offer and demanded nothing less than a complete repeal of all reforms. No government was likely to accept such an intemperate demand, especially one that was reelected with a thumping majority in 2019.

      The Economist, a longtime critic of Modi and the BJP, takes the view that “agronomists and economists are in nearly uniform agreement” with India’s agricultural reforms. It attributes protests to the “trust deficit” of the BJP government. The publication sees large-scale cold storage as the most obvious benefit of the reforms. Such storage would involve removing limits on stockpiling commodities for future sale. Farmers fear that this could give large companies too much power and undue advantage. They could buy large quantities of produce from farmers within a few days of harvest, hoard this produce and sell it when the price was high.

      Such fears of change are only natural. No entrenched system changes without upheaval even when the status quo is untenable. The Indian agricultural system no longer works, economically, environmentally or ethically. Agriculture needs investment. Neither the government nor the farmers have the ability to provide this investment. In the post-1991 world, India’s private sector has been a success. It is the only player in the Indian economy with the ability to invest in the villages. Hence, Modi has called for a greater role for the private sector in an unexpectedly candid parliamentary speech.

      Despite the current sound and fury, India’s farmer protests will simmer down. Like the Green Revolution, India’s agricultural reforms will have intended and unintended consequences, both positive and negative. 

      Finally, it may be prudent to think about agriculture in the global context. Most countries subsidize agriculture in one way or another for reasons ranging from food security to cultural preservation. The country of Jean Jacques Rousseau has championed the Common Agricultural Policy. Even the free-market US is generous with its farm subsidies. If either France or the United States were to implement agricultural reforms, demonstrations would ensue, legislators would face pressure from electors and sections of the media would accuse them of one sin or another. India is doing something that both the EU and the US may need — but have not yet dared — to do.

      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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      Will Britain Become Scot-Free?

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      Among the consequences of Boris Johnson’s greatest accomplishment, Brexit, the question looms of the possible imminent fracturing of the union of nations known as the United Kingdom. The act of shattering one union — the EU — may have launched a trend. 

      As the second most important political entity of the British union, Scotland sees its quest for independence as symmetrical with Britain’s withdrawal from Europe. The Scots have long felt as oppressed by the English as the Brexiters felt oppressed by Brussels. Moreover, Scotland has traditionally felt a strong kinship with Europe. It once took the form of the Auld Alliance, established in 1295 by France’s Philippe IV, as both nations opposed England. The idea of the alliance resurfaced in the troubled period after James II, the last of the Stuart kings of England, was forced to flee to France following the 1688 Glorious Revolution.

      More recently, following the hesitating but finally successful integration of Great Britain into the EU in 1975, Scotland reveled in its European status. In June 2016, the Brexit referendum that then-Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to hold shocked the world by producing a victory for the “leave” camp. Scotland, however, unambiguously favored remaining in the European Union by a score of 62% to 38%. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, immediately saw a reason to hold a second referendum for Scottish secession from the UK, an initiative that had been attempted but failed in 2014. Today, the polls indicate a clear majority of Scots will vote for independence. This time around it will be justified by the UK’s effective withdrawal from Europe. Scotland feels a deeper loyalty and kinship to Europe than to England.

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      The Scots are nevertheless divided. Breaking with England would revert to a situation that hasn’t existed since 1707, the year the Treaty of Union was signed. Creating a border between Scotland and England in the 21st century will likely be more of a challenge than the knotty quandary still facing Northern Ireland concerning the unsettled question of a border that may need to be enforced with the Republic of Ireland, which is still part of the EU. The Roman Emperor Hadrian may have presciently anticipated the question of Scottish independence when he ordered the construction of his famous wall in 122 AD.

      As disappointment with Brexit increases and polling shows the Scots as likely to show the same alacrity to exit their union as the Brexiters did with regard to the European one, the minority of Scottish “remainers,” known as unionists, are beginning to worry. To understand the nature of their panic,Al Jazeera quotes one unionist, Sheena Francovich, a retiree from Argyllshire on Scotland’s west coast: “As far as I’m concerned, we had a vote [in 2014] and we voted to stay part of the UK and that’s end of story. Nobody has ever convinced me that [independence] would make any economic sense. If there was another vote and people did vote [Yes] it would be a sad, sad day.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Economic sense:

      The idea that better economic conditions will result from a choice the person speaking has already made, despite having no access to the full range of factors that determine economic success or failure.

      Contextual Note

      Brexit has been officially in place for a month and a half. One commentator highlighted the gap that has become evident between the promises Prime Minister Boris Johnson made five years ago and the reality of what is turning into a new winter of discontent: “During the 2016 Brexit campaign, proponents promised businesses that leaving Europe would mean liberation from suffocating regulations and infernal bureaucracy that supposedly prevailed across the Channel. It was all a lie. Post-Brexit, British companies that trade with the EU now deal with expensive disruptions to their businesses, and watch as their export profits plunge.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Boris Johnson and his cohorts cannot complain that it’s all because they haven’t had enough time to prepare. The Europeans were ready to allow the UK more time, but it wasBoris who insisted that it was crucial to “get Brexit done.” The long-term consequences of Brexit, including the eventual dismantling of the United Kingdom, are unknown. But the short-term consequences have given an idea of the scope of the material and economic damage. It will take longer to assess the psychological and cultural damage. 

      This will, of course, be compounded by the incalculable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, not just on the economy, but on the entire youth of the nation. This is occurring at a curious moment of history, marked in recent decades by the vaunted interdependence associated with the idea of globalization. The edifice has begun to shatter, with nothing stable in view to replace it. Sheena Francovich may be right to say that any nation’s independence makes no “economic sense” — but neither does dependence.

      On Sunday, for the first time, pro-independence parties have won a majority in Catalonia’s regional parliament, putting pressure on Spain to take into account a powerful centrifugal force that has been building for some time. The Catalans are already watching closely the drama unfolding in Scotland, hoping the much clearer case for Scottish independence prevails. Fragmentation as a reaction to decades of forced globalization may become a dominant trend of the 21st century.

      It doesn’t even stop there. The world has entered into a new era of uncertainty concerning the way people imagine their future. This has always been the biggest intangible factor of stability for any society. Political and cultural disarray has become the norm throughout the West and across much of the globe, including another “united” nation, the USA. The events of January 6 in Washington, DC, may portend the disunifying of the entity celebrated as “one nation, indivisible,” a scenario difficult to imagine. There are nevertheless telltale signs of serious cracks in the national narrative that, unlike the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, famous for its crack, offer no reassurance about a tranquil future.

      Historical Note

      The UK became united only slowly and in a largely haphazard way. When Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, died in 1603 leaving no successor to perpetuate the Tudor line, the rules of monarchy required seeking a new king among her cousins, the Stuarts. The nearest of kin was the reigning king of Scotland, James VI, son of Mary Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots, who was martyred by her cousin Elizabeth for remaining loyal to the Catholic faith. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, to seal his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, had assumed the equivalent of papal authority over the newly created Anglican Church. 

      The accession of the king of Scotland, who now became James I of England, established the Stuart family as future heirs to the throne. All did not go well. James’s son, Charles I, was dethroned and decapitated by Oliver Cromwell after a civil war in which the Roundheads (the anti-Anglican Puritans) defeated the Cavaliers (the royal army).

      When, following the restoration of the monarchy, James II, son of Charles II and grandson of James, declared his Catholic faith and, to add insult to injury, had a son with his Catholic wife, the defenders of Protestant England were upset enough to stage a coup. A bloodless revolution took place. The Protestant establishment celebrated it as the Glorious Revolution. Luckily for the revolutionaries, James II’s first daughter, Mary, had had the good sense to marry a Dutch Protestant, William of Orange, and the couple were called back from the continent to reign over England.

      Mary’s sister Anne became queen in 1702. Under her reign, the Acts of Union were ratified by the English and Scottish parliaments respectively, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The 18th century witnessed the rapid expansion of the British empire. Scotland tagged along with the triumph, though sometimes grudgingly. The last attempt at securing Scotland’s independence was led by the Stuart pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, who had returned to Scotland from France via Ireland. The Scots and their allies were defeated ingloriously at the 40-minute battle of Culloden in 1746 by the equally inglorious duke of Cumberland, known to this day as “Stinking Billy.”

      Though the Scots quickly gave up on the hope of a Stuart restoration, they have never really forgotten the humiliation of Culloden. Brexit, for many Scots, is another Culloden.

      *[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 Storming of the US Capitol Through Identitarian Eyes

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      As history unfolded before those refreshing their Twitter feeds and watching live TV, attempts to define the storming of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, immediately emerged, including those by the radical right. Among the various radical-right voices that tried to frame the event, evaluations going beyond, for example, the clownish (though not undangerous) stories of QAnon activists offer insights into the workings of more complex radical-right ideological programs, including glimpses of imagined futures. Following the media-savvy Martin Sellner during a few days of digital activism, from Wednesday, January 6, to Sunday, January 10, illustrates how one of the main proponents of the Identitarian Movement makes sense of and utilizes the insurrection, and highlights the concerns and hopes he connects to the event.

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      Sellner is, of course, a leading figure in the “movement” (and still head of the Austrian branch), contributes to, for example, the main German new-right periodical, is a prolific producer of digital content and a man who, having been in contact with the Christchurch terrorist, has been banned from major social media platforms and now disseminates opinions via Telegram (about 58k subscribers) and BitChute (about 17k subscribers). Sellner began commenting on the event on Telegram in the early evening (CET) of January 6 and, over the next few days, offered discussions with fellow members of the radical right and commentary. (The following quotations are taken from Sellner’s Telegram channel, a column he wrote and various recordings that are available through his BitChute channel).

      Not a Coup

      In a column published the day after the storming that Sellner describes the event not as “a historical, but a hysterical moment,” a “chaotic, planless happening,” an act of “political masturbation and discharge of emotional urges” — not a “coup d’etat,” an “armed uprising” or a “terrorist attack.” This latter part is connected to accusations against the “mainstream press” and its alleged double standard, including in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement (the “Madness of Black Lives Matter”). According to Sellner, the latter aims for the destruction of property and lives, while the events of January 6 were a “mostly peaceful protest.” Indeed, referring explicitly to Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle,” a book he has long drawn on, Sellner regularly speaks of the power of the media to define reality and truth, and the weaponization of the event against “patriots.”

      While such condemnation of the so-called “lying press” is hardly new, Sellner also criticizes the unfolding of the protest itself. Here, he mourns a lack of planning and leadership and, unsurprisingly, calls for an “activism elite” that can channel the idealism of these “patriots.” Referring also to QAnon, he calls for overcoming conspiracy theories that have prevented “patriots” from assessing the situation realistically and taking responsibility in their own hands. Fully in line with his metapolitical orientation, Sellner proclaims that there is no “silver bullet” but a need to fight for hegemony.

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      This points to alternative forms of protest, and he repeatedly raises the idea of a (“symbolic”) “siege.”  That is, Sellner envisages an alternative January 6 that would have not ended in a counterproductive storming of the Capitol, but in a sustained demonstration of strength via a “protest camp” in Washington to influence the political system.

      Celebrating powerful imagery of protesters on the stairs of the Capitol, the course the event took thus appears as a missed opportunity to “awaken the people” and to put the elite in its place. Indeed, one type of victim present in Sellner’s narrativization is a rather broad group of “patriots,” of those who lack a voice, those who are “economically marginalized” and who have no political representation. Ultimately, this covers all those suffering from the establishment, the “disenfranchised, delegitimized people who are not allowed a chance … the indigenous, the Europeans, we are not given a chance, everything is taken away from us, one wants to annihilate us, one wants to destroy us, one wants to, entirely openly with an announced revolution remove us from history.”

      The apparent need to rescue the ethnic collective from an unbound “left-liberal-globalistic ideology” is also visible in another recording as it is this ideology that supposedly results in the “destruction of organically-grown communities, destruction of nation-states.”

      The Old Is Crumbling

      Another type of victim includes particular individuals, from Ashli Babbitt, who was shot during the riot (not forgetting to mention that she was shot by a “black policeman”), to the radical-right activist Nick Fuentes and Donald Trump for being banned from social media. The former president’s future is repeatedly thematized, noting that Trump has seemingly given in (at least in his fight over the election), though acknowledging that this might simply be an act of self-preservation. While Sellner initially speculated that Trump could reveal “dirty background secrets of the globalists” during his last days in office, the imagined threat posed by the enemy is stark: they “really want to completely finish him off … [and beat him] to the rocks like Prometheus: whoever dares to stand up against the globalists will be finished off.”

      Ultimately, he assumes that that revelations are unlikely to happen as Trump loves his life and fortune. As this “total digital annihilation” unfolds, Sellner regularly comments on Big Tech, speaking, for example, of Silicon Valley as the “glowing city of the hill … they are really the masters of the planet, if they want.”

      Such an ending would leave little hope for the radical right, but like every good attempt to forge and mobilize, hope is presented too. Sellner reports of a “civil war” within major tech companies and claims that 2021 could see “vital progress in the area of alt-tech,” the financing of their “own platform,” possibly even their own “fin-tech structure.” This hope goes hand in hand with what he calls a “repression-accelerationism” and the claim that “we have to go through a time of suffering.” With no way back, Sellner calls for a renewed struggle for hegemony and, citing the poet Friedrich Schiller, proclaims early on, “The old is crumbling down — the times are changing — And from the ruins blooms a fairer life.” As these lines are typed, it remains unclear what future will emerge from the storming of the Capitol and, thus, what fairness will blossom.

      *[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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in World Politics

      Is Turkey’s Ruling Alliance on the Attack or the Defensive?

      by

      Since January 4, Istanbul’s prestigious and politically liberal Bogazici University has been gripped by student unrest. The protests were initially provoked by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to appoint a member of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) as rector. The government has responded harshly, detaining students, raiding homes, criminalizing protesters and their supporters as “terrorists,” and vilifying the university and its students as deviants from the “nation’s true values.”

      Condemnation was not limited to the government: On February 7, Alaattin Cakıcı, an organized-crime boss and a former member of the ultranationalist Grey Wolves, tweeted a hand-written note stating the protests aimed to “harm the state and the People’s Alliance [AKP/MHP], which is the guarantor of our state.”

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      This episode of interference in the university’s administration is not an isolated incident. Under the state of emergency decree of October 2016, all rectors at public universities are now selected directly or indirectly by the president’s office, in conjunction with the Turkish Higher Education Council. The extensive purges that followed the 2016 coup attempt have created opportunities for the president to distribute academic posts to his supporters. Erdogan also regards the universities as central pillars of the “nation’s cultural hegemony.”

      Ramping Up Repression

      The attack goes beyond the universities, however. Ankara is determined to suppress all opposition. About 90% of the country’s media outlets are linked to the AKP through personal and/or financial ties. Prosecution of social media users for insulting the president is common. A new law from 2020 permits multiple bar associations, aiming to create an institutional wedge between pro-government and opposition lawyers. Ankara has also expanded its oversight over civil society organizations and worked to rein in local governments by replacing elected mayors in Kurdish municipalities with government-appointed trustees, cutting funding for opposition-held councils. It also works to contain civil society through prosecution, police violence, propaganda and, recently, even open support from mafia figures. The aim is to create a political community of supporters operating as agents of regime control.

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      In reality, the AKP is far from achieving cultural hegemony, as Erdogan himself admitted last year. In fact, popular discontent is growing. The pandemic has exacerbated Turkey’s already mounting economic woes and limited the AKP’s ability to redistribute resources to its supporters. Big business is complaining, while many small and micro-businesses are in debt. The official figure for youth unemployment reached 25.4% last November. Even AKP supporters are not immune to discontent over the rising cost of living.

      The unexpected success of opposition parties in the 2019 local elections and their united front against the presidential system further complicate the picture. The government’s divide-and-rule tactics have so far failed to bring opposition actors fully into line. Moreover, tensions and cracks within the ruling alliance are increasingly visible. For all these reasons, Ankara is in attack mode and on the defensive at the same time, which explains its disproportionate reaction to the Bogazici protests. It is no coincidence that government officials and pro-government journalists have consistently compared them to the Gezi protests of 2013 to which the AKP responded with similar criminalization, vilification and repression.

      The ghosts of the Gezi protests continue to haunt Ankara. One stark manifestation of this is the Kafkaesque trial of Osman Kavala, a Turkish businessman and human rights defender who was detained in 2017. The charges included “attempting to change the constitutional order and to overthrow the government” by leading and financing the Gezi protests. A second wave of arrests followed in 2018 for alleged links to Kavala. While the Gezi defendants were acquitted in February 2020, an appeals court overturned the acquittals of nine in January 2021. On February 5, the court rejected a request for Kavala’s release and merged the cases against him. On the same day, Erdoğan accused Ayse Bugra, a retired faculty member of Bogazici University who happens to be married to Osman Kavala, of being “among the provocateurs” of the student protests.

      Europe Should Not Turn a Blind Eye

      Europe should voice stronger criticism of Ankara’s repression of its citizens. While first and foremost a matter of principle, calling Ankara out is also in the EU’s own interests. While European policymakers have often enough prioritized stability over democracy in relations with authoritarian states, in Turkey’s case, that logic is associated with two problems. For one, it is unclear whether an authoritarian but stable Turkey would cooperate harmoniously with the EU. Even more importantly, the stability of authoritarianism in Turkey is uncertain for several reasons.

      Firstly, Turkey’s economic capacity depends heavily on popular consent, in particular because the country lacks the kind of natural resources that can be exploited through coercion. Secondly, the country’s sociopolitical diversity makes it difficult for the AKP to thoroughly penetrate the civil sphere, making future protests highly likely. Finally, the personalization of power and the tensions within the ruling alliance make the government vulnerable. While the EU certainly cannot force Turkey to democratize, it can and should hold Ankara more accountable, especially at a time when it is turning to the EU for economic support.

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

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

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      Beating Back the Far Right

      by

      After four years of shock, confusion and paralysis, the United States is finally taking action against the far right. Perhaps most dramatic has been the de-platforming of Donald Trump: the suspension of his Twitter and Facebook accounts and the targeting of his prominent followers across social media platforms. Even a few months ago, such a radically sensible action would have been inconceivable. Kick a president off of social media?

      But such are the indignities visited upon sore losers. Not surprisingly, these moves have significantly decreased the amount of misinformation in the public sphere and made it that much more difficult for white nationalists to organize actions.

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      The events of January 6 also led to Trump’s second impeachment. The Senate trial, which took place last week, may not have resulted in a conviction, but it forced the Republican Party to choose between upholding the Constitution and supporting a president who tried to overthrow democracy.

      The penalties for remaining the party of Trump are slowly beginning to mount. The corporate world has moved against the ex-president by canceling events at his resorts and hotels and suspending financial services with his company. Several high-profile donors have abandoned the most vocal congressional adherents of the phony election fraud narrative, like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Not only has Simon & Schuster canceled Senator Hawley’s book contract, but the chief promoter of MAGA texts at Hachette — who published screeds by Donald Trump, Jr., Corey Lewandowski and Jeanine Pirro — was recently fired.

      Some politicians have faced steeper penalties. For their participation in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, West Virginia State Delegate Derrick Evans was pushed to resign and Jorge Riley was forced out of his position in the California Republican Assembly. At the federal level, House Democrats and 11 of their Republican colleagues recently voted to strip Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. That seems like a mere slap on the wrist for someone who has promoted the assassination of her political opponents. But it’s something.

      A defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, all of whom spread conspiracy theories about the company’s voting machines used in the 2020 election, has already claimed one success. Fox canceled Lou Dobbs, one of its many factually compromised show hosts. Dominion is readying another round of suits against as many as 150 targets including Newsmax, One America News Network and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Justice Department has opened up “domestic terrorism” cases against a number of the participants in the January 6 insurrection. Congress is beginning to consider new legislation on federal penalties for domestic terrorism.

      The campaign against the far right isn’t exactly a full-court press. Greene continues to push Trump-like pronouncements on Twitter, and all the attention she’s gotten in recent weeks has only enlarged her platform. Corporate boycotts are not affecting the bottom lines of politicians like Hawley, who depends more on individual donors (he actually saw a big increase in donations after January 6). Trump retains his hold over much of the Republican Party, especially at the state level as the censures of Liz Cheney in Wyoming and Doug Ducey in Arizona indicate.

      In other words, the far right is down but not out. The much-feared round of violence at the state level in the wake of January 6 did not happen. Rallies and marches in support of MAGA or Trump or QAnon have not materialized. When Twitter suspended Trump’s account, a demonstration outside the company’s San Francisco office brought out dozens of police officers and exactly one protester. But neither the Proud Boys nor the white activist militias have disbanded. And according to a poll at the end of January, 64% of Republicans would join any party that Trump sets up.

      Even as the US establishment begins its tentative detox of the public sphere, the handwringing has also begun. The de-platforming of Trump has raised concerns over the tyranny of unregulated social media giants. The campaigns to limit the platforms of Hawley and Greene have generated a fear that the silencing of minority opinions will be applied to radical voices on the left as well. Critics worry that the labeling of the January 6 insurrectionists as “domestic terrorists” will inevitably be used against communities of color and others protesting racial inequities.

      The threat of white nationalist movements is not hypothetical. Four years of Trump have provided ample evidence of what can happen when these movements gain mainstream legitimation. But the anxieties over how “cancel culture” can be applied to the left and communities of color are also legitimate, as erstwhile football star Colin Kaepernick can readily confirm.

      The Biden administration has already begun its de-Trumpification of the US government by reversing the previous administration’s policies, removing Trump appointees and cutting off high-level access for right-wing crazies like Giuliani, Steve Bannon and members of the MAGA media.

      But the banishing of the far right back to the fringes of American society is going to require a different set of strategies. And here, the United States could learn a few lessons from other countries.

      Quarantining Politicians and Parties

      Although several European countries ban Nazi or neo-Nazi parties, a more effective tactic to reduce the political influence of extremist parties that fall just short of fascist has been to quarantine them. In Belgium, for instance, the major parties have an informal agreement not to partner with Vlaams Belang, a far-right Flemish nationalist party. This agreement became increasingly difficult when Vlaams Belang received the second most votes in the last parliamentary election in 2019. Austria abided by a similar “cordon sanitaire” until 2000, when the conservative People’s Party invited the far-right Freedom Party into government. The European Parliament has nevertheless borrowed the cordon sanitaire strategy to prevent members of the far-right Identity and Democracy bloc from holding any key posts such as the presidency of committees.

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      In Germany, the major parties have similarly avoided any coalition arrangements with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). But the German government, presided over by the conservative Christian Democrats, has deployed another interesting tactic against the AfD. Last spring, the country’s domestic intelligence agency declared one wing of the AfD “extremist” and placed its leaders under surveillance. “But many saw in Thursday’s announcement a step toward broader measures targeting the entire Alternative for Germany party, setting the stage for a battle between the state and a party whose influence has steadily grown even as it has radicalized,” writes Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times.

      In Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn grew to become the third-largest party in the parliament. The government successfully pursued a legal strategy to criminalize the organization, charging it with murder, racketeering, illegal possession of firearms and attacks on migrants. In the end, 37 members of the party, including 17 MPs, were convicted of crimes and imprisoned. By the 2019 election, the party couldn’t get enough votes to have even one representative in parliament.

      If Trump ends up creating a new political party, a public pressure campaign could be mounted on the Democrats and Republicans to follow a strict policy of no talks, no committee assignments and no joint actions with any entity that Trump touches. Whether the disgraced ex-president follows through on his threat, a similar approach should be applied to all Republicans who continue to embrace a “stop the steal” agenda. Biden should make clear that his efforts at bipartisanship should exclude those who believe his administration to be illegitimate.

      Purging the Far Right from Security Forces

      When the National Guard was called in to secure the Capitol for Inauguration Day, two members were removed from duty because of possible ties to right-wing extremist movements. This additional vetting was deemed necessary because nearly one in five participants in the January 6 insurrection had links to the military. As a first step in addressing the longstanding problem of far-right proselytizing, the new head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, has already notified the armed forces to conduct a one-day stand down to address extremism in the ranks.

      The United States could learn from the example of Germany where the country’s special forces, Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK), had become a veritable haven of far-right sympathizers. The working group investigating the KSK discovered “soldiers who expounded unconstitutional views, a ‘toxic leadership culture’ among superiors, and the unexplained disappearance of 62 kilograms of explosives and large quantities of ordnance from KSK depots.” As a result of the investigation, the German government disbanded one entire company of the KSK and reorganized the remaining units. It has also tightened its screening process.

      In the US, only thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and other efforts to bring accountability to policing did the FBI begin collecting data in 2018 on the use of force in law enforcement. The next step is to purge police ranks of racist extremists, jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

      Hate Speech and Digital Controls

      Because of First Amendment protections, the United States does not have any hate speech laws. However, such provisions can be found in the private sector, such as universities.

      Other countries, however, have sought to penalize hate speech in a number of different ways. Germany has outlawed “incitement to hate” or Volksverhetzung, which applies to verbal attacks on national, racial, religious or ethnic groups but also, according to a 2020 ruling, the denigration of women. Denmark, too, has recently expanded its hate speech law to include extremist language directed at gender identity and gender expression. Since the 1970s, New Zealand has had a law on the books criminalizing the incitement of “racial disharmony,” and the government has been considering additional measures following the Christchurch killings in 2019.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But legislating against hate is notoriously tricky. Canada repealed a hate speech law that tried to balance a commitment to free expression with equally strong commitments to multiculturalism and equality (but has more recently explored reviving it). France passed an online hate speech law last spring only for the country’s constitutional court to strike down large portions of it.

      Dealing with hate speech became even more urgent when the far right discovered how to use social media to recruit, organize and inject its messages into the conservative mainstream. In the US, the home of the largest social media platforms, there has been no move to legislate against extremist content online as long as it isn’t criminal (like libel, threats to kill or child pornography).

      Rather, in typically American fashion, policing has been left to the private sector, which determines who to “de-platform” and what posts to take down. Initially, the mainstream social media platforms only suspended the accounts of those on the lunatic fringe, like Alex Jones of InfoWars infamy or Milo Yiannopoulos formerly of Breitbart News. Facebook and Twitter were reluctant to take a more proactive approach to white nationalists not only for fear of being labeled “censors” but because it would also have meant banning Republican politicians who voiced similar sentiments.

      By 2020, however, Facebook and Twitter reversed themselves because politicians like Trump were openly challenging American democracy. Well, actually, Trump and his cohort had been doing so from day one, thanks to an indirect assist from the social media giants. But after the November election, Twitter and Facebook could rationalize their moves because Trump had become a lame-duck president.

      De-platforming demonstrably works, whether measured by the bankrupting of Milo Yiannopoulos, the reduction of an audience for groups like the Islamic State and QAnon, or the virtual disappearance of Donald Trump from public discourse. It doesn’t qualify as censorship, since Twitter and Facebook are not public spaces. They are corporate spaces, and the corporation decides who speaks there, just like The New York Times decides who to publish.

      But this raises two problems: To whom are Twitter and Facebook accountable? And why aren’t there rules governing the internet more generally, since the web is certainly a public commons?

      Facebook instituted an oversight board last year that looks at decisions with an eye toward possibly overturning them. Three of the first six cases have involved hate speech. Here’s one of them: “A user posted two screenshots of tweets by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, which said ‘Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.’ Facebook removed the post for hate speech violations, but the user’s appeal indicates they wanted to spread awareness of the prime minister’s ‘horrible words.’” Perhaps more consequentially, the oversight board will soon make the call on whether to restore Trump’s Facebook account.

      As for generating rules for the web more generally, that’s a tougher challenge, given the anarchic, libertarian spirit that has presided over the enterprise since its inception. But here’s one interesting “fix” that New Zealand has instituted: Any Kiwi who views extremist content online is now automatically directed to websites that help people leave hate groups.

      Going After Terrorists

      For two decades, the US has conducted a “war on terror” largely against “radical Islam” in countries like Afghanistan and Syria. It has ignored state supporters of such groups, like Saudi Arabia, when they’re allies, while going after governments like Saddam Hussein’s that were mistakenly identified as al-Qaeda boosters.

      Meanwhile, the US government largely ignored home-grown, right-wing extremists who organized with near-impunity particularly during the Trump era. So, why are some people unhappy about calling the right-wing extremists who overran the Capitol on January 6 “terrorists”?

      “The use of these words only elevates a harmful counterterrorism framework that has historically been used to target Arab, Muslim, and Black communities,” writes Rania Batrice in The Boston Globe. “Call them white supremacists. Call them a violent, murderous mob. Call them insurrectionists. Call them fascists. Call them traitors or treasonous. But please remember that the words used have an impact on broader, already oppressed communities.”

      I am sympathetic to this argument. But is it not problematic that the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list does not include any far-right extremist groups? A number of these outfits — the Proud Boys, the Atomwaffen Division, the Base — have an international presence. Canada just labeled all of them terrorist outfits. An FTO designation would permit greater international cooperation to disrupt the global networking of the far right.

      Yes, I’d like to see the United States criminalize white supremacy and fascism. But the terrorism designation, for all its problematic history, focuses not so much on words but on actions. And in the US, it has historically been easier to go after the far right for what it does, not for what it says.

      Whatever language we use, however, it’s critically important to keep up the pressure to delegitimize the far right. Extremists are trying to maintain a toehold in power via Hawley, Greene and others in the hopes that Trump will run again or some equally malign candidate will emerge in 2024. It’s time to resurrect a global anti-fascist consensus to name, shame and throw these guys out of the game.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      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 Magnanimous Gesture of Mohammed bin Salman

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      Donald Trump famously cultivated a personal friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). To critics of the evil prince, Trump claimed that his loyalty was justified by the hundreds of billions of dollars of arms sales their friendship generated. The fact that those weapons served to engage the US actively in yet another Middle Eastern war appeared to trouble no one in Washington. Despite a growing crescendo of condemnation from the public, US support of a catastrophic military campaign in the name of helping an ally foment a humanitarian disaster in Yemen has continued to this day. The new US president, Joe Biden, has promised to modify that commitment, but not necessarily to cancel it.

      The NBA Is Conflicted Over National Symbols

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      MBS has made other headlines since becoming the effective head of state in the kingdom. Successfully drawing the US into a genocidal war of his own design is not his only claim to fame. Mohammed bin Salman got major headlines with the Jamal Khashoggi affair in 2018. Trump himself seemed only momentarily embarrassed by the Saudi regime’s gruesome killing of the journalist in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate. In the end, Trump proved wise to count on the passage of time to efface the crime from the public’s and the media’s memory. 

      But the unexpected outcome of the 2020 presidential election in the US meant bad luck for MBS. The Biden administration has promised to release the findings of the CIA’s assessment that pointed unambiguously to the crown prince’s personal responsibility in ordering the crime. Although announced in the days following his inauguration three weeks ago, we are still waiting. The media may soon stop wondering why, like so many other things on Biden’s promised agenda, it is still not forthcoming and focus on more pressing issues. 

      Back in 2018, the uproar in the immediate aftermath of the gruesome killing of a journalist working for The Washington Post drew a few bad reviews from Congress and even provoked the indignation of President Trump’s most loyal supporter in the Senate, Lindsey Graham. Two years have now passed since Graham’s insistence that MBS be “dealt with” and that there would be “hell to pay.” Senator Graham seems to have decided that that reckoning can now wait till the Last Judgment.

      It is too early to have a clear idea of how the Biden administration intends to deal with Saudi Arabia. MBS has reason to worry now that his BFF Trump has checked out of the White House. Especially after Biden announced, as The New York Times reported, “that he was ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, including some arms sales.” The fact that this dramatic announcement concerns “some” arms sales rather than, say, simply “arms sales” may mean Biden is hedging his bets. Or simply it is intended to reassure those who are counting on the windfall of continuing arms sales. But its ambiguity should worry anyone who was expecting a reversal of traditional US obsequiousness to the Saudis, which has been the pattern since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

      Embed from Getty Images

      With the surprising announcement of the release of activist Loujain al-Hathloul after three years of imprisonment, MBS seems to be playing a similar game. It consists of announcing what appears to be a sudden change of policy, in this case, the loosening of his dictatorial grip on Saudi society. Most commentators see his gesture as an attempt to seduce President Biden, who MBS fears may be under pressure to keep his promises concerning both Yemen and the Khashoggi assassination. 

      Hathloul is a young Saudi female who has been incarcerated and tortured for the crime of publicly denouncing Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving, which MBS subsequently lifted. Biden has applauded the crown prince’s clemency. The Guardian quotes Lina al-Hathloul, the sister of Loujain, who isn’t quite so pleased: “What we want now is real justice. That Loujain is completely, unconditionally free.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Real justice:

      An unattainable ideal in which most governments expect people to believe, while at the same time manipulating events and institutions in such a way that the workings of the judicial system conform to the reigning laws of hyperreal justice

      Contextual Note

      Nobody expects a dictatorship to be a paragon of justice. But even the most Machiavellian dictatorship needs to make its people believe it is capable of being just. The author of “The Prince” made that very point when he famously wrote in chapter 18 that “it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.” MBS is, of course, beyond Machiavellian, since, unlike Italian princes five centuries ago, who had to earn their position of power through acts of valor, he was handed power on a gold-plated platter. He never needed to cultivate Machiavelli’s art of appearances.

      Despite the popular belief that democracies provide a recourse against injustice and offer — to quote the American pledge of allegiance — “liberty and justice for all,” the principle that determines how justice is meted out (or withheld) is eerily similar in democracies and totalitarian regimes, differing only in degree. Injustice will exist in any regime to the extent that power believes it can escape criticism for its injustice.

      Any good lawyer will tell you that the law and justice should never be confused. Every nation has laws that permit — and may even encourage and reward — unjust acts. Their effective enforcement protects some forms of injustice and punishes acts that challenge the injustice. That protection and punishment is brazenly given the name of justice because it is managed and enforced by the nation’s judicial system. To those who criticize such a system, Machiavelli would object that “real justice” in the real world can only be an illusion.

      The case of Hathloul nevertheless tells a more extreme story. Like so many things in Saudi Arabia, it represents a total travesty of justice. Loujain was branded a terrorist and imprisoned for speaking her mind on an issue — allowing women to drive a car — that MBS himself turned into law shortly after she was thrown in prison. The point was that every good citizen must trust the rulers of the kingdom to determine what is just. Doubting their impeccable judgment is treasonous.

      But the real travesty of this case concerns the nature of the punishment. The Saudi government denies the young woman’s claim of being tortured while in prison. Following her release, she has been subjected to a five-year travel ban and three years of probation. To survive, she must remain silent. If she so much as recounts the torture she claims to have undergone, she will be undoubtedly be punished, probably by further imprisonment and torture.

      Historical Note

      Dictatorships are not alone in producing unjust laws. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy in America” (chapter XV) that democracies are equally capable of passing and enforcing unjust laws: “When a man or party suffers an injustice in the United States, to whom can he turn?” Responding to his own question, the French aristocrat carefully listed the various possibilities of recourse and discounted each of them. So long as the majority adopts a position and passes laws, democracy is capable of enthroning certain forms of injustice as the law of the land.

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      Loujain al-Hathloul’s sister rightly demanded “real” justice as opposed to the purely legal justice of enforcing the written laws. But the real justice she cites is an abstraction that political regimes, in their pragmatism, have no need to recognize or comply with. 

      Saudi Arabia has the luxury of never having to speculate on the intellectual distinction between its established justice system and a philosopher’s ideal of justice. Democracies encourage intellectual activity, even when they avoid applying its lessons. Authoritarian regimes feel comfortable promoting justice as identical to the autocrat’s will. Mohammed bin Salman deemed that eliminating the discordant voice of Jamal Khashoggi was a form of justice. After all, it costs nothing to remain silent, so why should Khashoggi or Hathloul choose to make waves at their own peril?

      The democracy known as the United States of America has recently demonstrated similar reasoning with the cases of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Like beauty, justice will always be in the eye of the beholder. But it will be concretely applied only by those beholders who have a firm grip on the reins of power.

      *[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 Fringe Feeds a Familiar Narrative

      by

      Finally, it has come to pass in the land of the free and the home of the brave that the cancerous core of America’s Republican Party is in full metastasis, spreading its poisonous tentacles far into the body politic. There is so little substantive pushback from Republican Party “leadership” that the spread of the disease threatens not only the party but the institutional integrity of the nation as a whole. The only good news is that unchecked cancers usually destroy the host.

      In this case, it might just be the best outcome. The fringe has morphed into the identity of the Republican Party so completely that somewhat hinged used-to-be Republicans don’t stand a chance of turning this around. But they don’t deserve another chance, having previously sold their souls to Ronald Reagan’s vision of undermined governance and unchecked capitalism as a means to a better end. Many Americans are just now beginning to figure out how poorly that has actually worked out for them.

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      The spectacle of the Republican Party dancing around their new poster child, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, is a bit like watching some moron taking a selfie at the edge of a cliff only to realize as she falls that the rope around your waist is tethered to her waist. Republicans should have known that they would be in trouble when their old Uncle Mitch warned them that that rope was a bad idea.

      Since Greene is no ordinary moron teetering at the edge of a cliff, she has been empowered to drive the Trump narrative as a creed for both the party and the nation. Then there is the newly crowned “conscience” of the Republican House leadership, Representative Liz Cheney. She covered herself in “glory” by voting to impeach Trump for sedition and inciting an insurrection, and then a few scant weeks later covered herself in dung by failing to take the minimal step of removing Greene from her committee assignments. I can only guess, but maybe she used up her family allotment of “conscience” on that first vote.

      If you are wondering about the top guns in the Republican congressional orbit, you would be wondering about Mitch McConnell, now Senate minority leader, and the wannabe speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. These two supported the whole Trump national trauma for four years and then, faced with armed insurrection inside the Capitol, still can’t say never again. And they still can’t clearly and unequivocally hold Trump responsible for his incitement of the mob.

      Republican Frauds

      Let me be clear about one thing: Even though there are those trying to proclaim themselves newly-crowned “heroes” of the Republican Party, they are all frauds of one kind or another. This includes the Lincoln Project crowd and the host of “former” Republicans trying desperately to resurrect their right-wing version of their right-wing party. Today’s self-proclaimed Republican heroes did everything they could to torch the Affordable Care Act, have for decades pushed scandalous tax relief for the wealthy, and have promoted some version of unregulated capitalism through which their personal greed could thrive amid the economic distress of so many others.

      And that doesn’t even reach the infamy of a political party and its adherents who have for those same decades fueled racial animus and anti-immigrant sentiment in the country for political and personal gain. Before trying to find virtue amid the wreck of the Republican Party, remember that the party and its minions are now, and have for those decades, promoted the delusional “American exceptionalism” so comforting to their white base and so destructive of a meaningful confrontation with the nation’s past that is rooted in the truth.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As with the racists in their midst that Trump legitimized and encouraged, any welcome unmasking of these new Republican “heroes” is long overdue. Some of them served a useful purpose in giving voice to the national disaster that was the Trump presidency. But none of them has given us any reason to believe that the recent past has engendered a new and truly inclusive vision for a policy partnership with Democrats that could begin to legislate a better future for those who have watched and waited for so long.

      The coronavirus pandemic has done more than even a close reading of history and outraged truth telling could have done to lay bare the moral and institutional bankruptcy that is America today. Systemic racism is finally on the lips of a US president because it has to be. Huge health care, housing, educational and economic deficits are everywhere to be seen, and now so obvious that ignoring them again would be yet another epic betrayal.

      To understand the depth of that betrayal and the Republican Party’s role in it requires a clear understanding that the kind old Republican “hero,” Ronald Reagan, cravenly gave white America a clear path away from the promise of the civil rights movement. That same national “hero” told the nation that government was the problem, not the solution and then set about to prove it on the backs of those most dependent on good government to realize a share of America’s bounty. Other Republican Party “heroes” willingly followed in those soiled footsteps.

      This is not to say that there is a purity of vision or spirit in the Democratic Party. Rather it is to say that America’s way forward cannot depend on either the cooperation or the acquiescence of Republicans. If you doubt this, the spectacle of the Trump impeachment trial in progress will again demonstrate the depths to which the Republican Party has sunk in its drive to regain power at all cost. A disgraced former president with the blood of hundreds of thousands of citizens already on his hands who delivered insurrection to the Capitol will continue to command Republican loyalty and get it.

      A Message for Biden

      So, President Joe Biden, don’t waste a minute on them. Don’t repeat the mistakes you and Barack Obama made from 2008 forward. Go all in this time. With those same Republicans already at work legislating new voter suppression measures where they can, your time to act may be short. In doing so, remember every day that closing the human value gap in America is essential to any attempt to reach for a better nation.

      And whatever else you do, President Biden, remember every day that systemic racism is the original sin that begat today’s deeply flawed America. Telling the truth about that is America’s irreplaceable first step forward.

      *[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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      How QAnon Followers Saw the US Inauguration

      by

      In the days leading up to the inauguration of US President Joe Biden, followers of the QAnon movement were jubilant — not because they were looking forward to the incoming administration; rather, they believed the military was moments away from intervening, arresting Biden and the rest of the deep state cabal on so-called charges of treason, pedophilia and various other offenses.

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      The thousands of National Guard members securing the Capitol and the barricades surrounding Washington verified their belief in swift military-led retribution. The fact that these elements were in place to secure the incoming administration — as opposed to dismantling it — was viewed derisively as the mainstream media’s narrative.

      From “prison buses” invading the US capital to transport scores of deep state officials for trial, to Vice President Kamala Harris’ formal resignation from the Senate that opened her up for arrest, QAnon adherents discussed the “signs” foretelling success of “the plan” on an online forum.

      Inauguration Day and Its Aftermath

      The day of inauguration was prophesized as a moment of reckoning when Q adherents would finally be vindicated or, as some members acknowledged, when Q would be proven as a “LARP” (live action role play), a “psyop” or a troll. Adherents spoke out in the early hours of January 20 against “moving the goalposts” — that is, changing the terms under which Q would be proven correct. Stating that whether or not Biden was inaugurated, they must accept that as proof — or lack thereof — of Q’s legitimacy.

      Embed from Getty Images

      While most QAnons imbued the 20th with this importance, others speculated that no one really knew what the plan required. This ambiguity left adherents open to continuing to follow Q even if Biden was sworn in. Donald Trump’s silence — enforced through social media blackouts — also increased uncertainty for these individuals as the hour quickly approached inauguration. Regardless of the outlook, QAnon followers across the globe waited with bated breath for noon on that Wednesday morning.

      On January 20, 2021, at 12:00 pm on the National Mall, Biden took his oath of office. Immediately after on the QAnon forum, feelings of disappointment, shame and grief took center stage. Although a few QAnons had hedged their bets prior to the inauguration, stating that no one really knew what the plan was or that maybe Biden being sworn in was necessary to “complete the crime,” most saw that moment as the answer to whether or not Q was legitimate.

      Tension arose on the forum between those who felt betrayed, let down and convinced of Q’s falsehood against those who declared that they must “hold the line” and “trust the plan.” “Nothing can stop what is coming” (NCSWIC) was a frequent refrain, with many forum users turning toward religious allegories and symbolism for comfort. 

      Some posters commented that Biden’s inauguration would mean them leaving the movement — calling the turn of events a “con.” Others echoed Trump’s language and referred to Q as a “bigly” troll after the lack of military intervention. Overall, users argued with one another and despaired when the promise of mass arrests did not materialize. A few hours later, and with the help of moderators and long-time Q supporters “deporting” “shills” (i.e., blocking accounts that spoke negatively about Trump and/or Q), the mood of the forum took a decidedly more optimistic turn.

      What Happened?

      Far from being over, discourse on the QAnon forum evolved in ways that incorporated the events of the 20th while continuing to push conspiracies involving the deep state. Three major narratives erupted as QAnons struggled to reconcile the events of the day with their belief system.

      The first narrative held that regardless of Biden’s inauguration, the plan itself was still going strong. This position acknowledged people’s frustration but implored them to have faith and was often couched in religious terms. Posters stated that QAnon followers needed to keep looking for clues and trust the military was truly in control. Over and over, adherents turned toward religious allegories in order to comfort their distressed fellows.

      The second major conspiratorial narrative was that Biden was not actually president. Some supported this belief through the supposed dismantling of the “USA Inc.” Biden was “president” over the “fake” United States, while Trump continued to lead the “real” American Republic. Others found “evidence” of the military rejecting Biden, which proved that they did not see him as the president and suggested that either the military or Trump were truly in charge. In addition, posters posited that the inauguration was pre-recorded (or a “deepfake”) and did not actually occur live on January 20. Some took this to mean that mass arrests had already taken place in Washington and the country was under military control.

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      The third narrative held that regardless of anything else — Q’s existence or the truth of a master plan — the conspiracies were true. The election was stolen, the democrats were part of a pedophilic, satanic cabal, and China was controlling Biden’s actions. Articles from popular conservative publications were shared on the forums, which continued to push the election fraud conspiracy.

      This narrative — the splitting of Q belief from support for conspiracies — is essential to keep in mind. Through Trump and the Republican Party, these conspiracies have become so mainstream that they are now fully operational outside of a conspiratorial fringe. Thus, the “fringe” can be marginalized, i.e., those who still believe in the Q figure, while those who believe in conspiracies are incorporated into the mainstream of Trump supporters — growing the movement. One user puts this cleavage succinctly, deriding both the “deep state” for stealing the election and the false nature of “Q”: “Fuck the Deep state for stealing the election and Fuck Q for brainwashing gullible fools.”

      Where We Go From Here

      As the days wore on, posters continued to dissect clues in order to determine which of the above narratives made the most sense. In particular, the military’s behavior was scrutinized as this was seen to lend credence to the idea that they did not support Biden as the legitimate president. In addition, the media’s increased attention on Q and QAnon followers fueled the notion that Q was legitimate. If it was a “LARP,” why would mainstream media be trying so hard to discredit them?

      Finally, members sought out official statements from trusted figures like Trump, General Michael Flynn, Lin Wood, Mike Pompeo and others, asking what their official statements (or silence) told followers, with the aim of finding guidance as to what would happen next.

      As the first month of 2021 drew to a close, QAnon adherents who initially spurned the movement after Biden’s inauguration shifted back toward the group, seeking narratives that would allow them to continue believing. Perhaps the future of QAnon is best summed up in the following quote: “I said if Biden was inaugurated I would give up hope — Sorry I lied.”

      *[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