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    The Italian Far Right’s Long-Term Investment

    When the government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was unable to find eleven lawmakers willing to join its ranks in the house of representatives in order to keep his ruling majority, President Sergio Mattarella decided to offer the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, the possibility to try to form a new governo tecnico. Italy’s last technical government was led by Mario Monti between 2011 and 2012. A third Conte cabinet did not materialize because of the opposition by Matteo Renzi, the leader of Italia Viva, a party currently polling at 2%.

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    All political parties in the Italian parliament supported Draghi’s appointment except one: Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). Even the Euroskeptic and anti-immigration populist-radical Lega (League) agreed to support Draghi, with its leader Matteo Salvini affirming, “I rather prefer to play the game and manage 209 billions of euros than not,” referring to the Italian share of the Next Generation EU plan agreed in July last year.

    Next Generation EU

    Next Generation EU, a €750-billion ($904-billlion) stimulus package designed to boost post-pandemic recovery, will be the largest ever financed by the European Union. Taken together with the EU’s long-term budget, overall recovery funding stands at a total of €1.8 trillion, aimed at rebuilding, “a greener, more digital and more resilient Europe.”

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    The complex intergovernmental dynamics that have led to the agreement behind Next Generation EU are well known. What began with the initial opposition by the so-called “Frugal Four”  — Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden — to the French-German initiative in May 2020 ended in an impasse provoked in late November by Hungary and Poland’s veto of the EU budget. Warsaw and Budapest were concerned about the Rule of Law Mechanism attached to the stimulus that would make it easier for Brussels to sanction violations of democratic principles by withdrawing aid.

    Of the €750 billion, about two-thirds would be non-repayable grants financed by joint borrowing, and one-third will consist in loans. With the aim to help less wealthy countries, Italy and Spain will get the biggest chunk, €209 billion and €140 billion respectively, with France “only” allocated €40 billion. Next Generation EU has been hailed by many as the “new Marshall Plan” that helped lift Europe out of the ruin of the Second World War. However, its practical implementation is revealing to be more complicated than earlier expected.

    For instance, the Spanish government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has already officially declared it will not seek €70 billion in loans, in a move similar to the one announced by Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa. In Italy, the recent political crisis erupted when Matteo Renzi quit the government over an objection to Conte’s plans for how to spend EU recovery money. In particular, Renzi, once an enfant prodige of Italian and European politics, was critical of the highly technocratic governance that the Conte cabinet was originally seeking to adopt vis-à-vis the stimulus package, including a task force composed of more than 300 experts. Conte, whose popularity has increased over the course of the pandemic, in order to avoid possible vetoes, had previously defended the move by highlighting that it was required by the EU.

    Grand Strategy

    With the Italian government desperately trying to avoid a return to the ballot box during a pandemic, which has already killed nearly 100,000 Italians so far, and an executive struggling to produce a consistent dossier on how to allocate the money from the EU recovery plan, the move by Giorgia Meloni to not lend support to the new government might appear pointless. In fact, Meloni was the only Italian political leader who called for new elections. According to polls, an election now would give to the Italian populist radical-right parties a landslide victory, with Salvini’s League and Meloni’s Brothers of Italy potentially garnering 40% of the votes.

    However, the Brothers of Italy, which in the last year has moved from 10,7% to the current 17%-18%, could vastly benefit from this “isolating abstention.” By simply waiting for the end of the honeymoon between Draghi’s technocratic executive and Italian political parties, the Brothers of Italy could easily build narratives based around blaming the incapacity of the current executive to efficiently utilize the EU funds; denouncing a technocratic agenda dictated by the European “bureaucrats” in Brussels or by “foreign” policymakers in Berlin and Paris; and by criticizing the opportunistic and inconsistent attitudes of other Italian parties, including the League.

    What is certain is that a highly deteriorated and inflamed post-pandemic landscape could provide a perfect context for the Brothers of Italy to gain support by reverting to social policies that à la Orban or à la Kaczyński, focusing on the pillar of “traditional” family. The Brothers of Italy was formed in late 2012 following the open disagreement with the center-right People of Freedom party launched by Silvio Berlusconi, and since then, Miloni has been clearly outlining social and family policies she wants to adopt in Italy. Those policies are based on the principles of conservativism and nationalism, and on intelligent, soft Euroskepticism in the name of sovereignty.

    The policies are the focus of a grand strategy to increase birth rates and protect the traditional family, with generous incentives for both parents and children alongside investment in social housing. It is important to note here that, differently from the League’s economic policies, based on a syncretic and opportunistic mix of both neoliberal and autarchic worldviews protecting small and medium enterprises, the Brothers of Italy has a clear and organic economic vision. As Mitchell Orenstein, among others, has brilliantly demonstrated in the case of Hungary and Poland, these types of policies can be particularly effective in buying many voters into the nationalist right’s vision of a social state. Could this be the case in post-pandemic Italy?

    *[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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    Beware! Populism Might be Bad for Your Health

    Dresden is one of Germany’s great cities, known worldwide for its meticulously rebuilt historic center, destroyed in one night at the end of World War II. Pre-Christmas shoppers have probably come across a Dresdner Christmas stollen, a bread full of nuts and candied fruit, coated in powdered sugar. Music lovers might have visited the city’s …
    Continue Reading “Beware! Populism Might be Bad for Your Health”
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    What WhatsApp Conversations Reveal About the Far Right’s Ideology

    Forum for Democracy (FvD) is a political party on the rise in the Netherlands. Thierry Baudet, FvD’s conservative revolutionary leader, positions himself and his party as right-wing and as an acceptable ideological alternative to all other Dutch parties. All media controversies about his radical-right ideology are labeled by Baudet as the work of opponents trying to frame him and the party in a negative way. A careful analysis of WhatsApp messages shared between the youth divisions of the party, however, shows a different reality, namely that mass media reporting helps shape a metapolitical discourse without deradicalizing the core ideology. 

    Intimate Conversations

    Thierry Baudet likes to use controversy to normalize his ideology. This strategy can be seen in his victory speech following the 2019 election and his review of Michel Houellebecq’s book “Sérotonine” for American Affairs. The two interventions were in essence about what he calls the decline of the boreal (or “Northern”) civilization and what Baudet sees as the devastating impact of the party cartel in particular and the individualization and atomization of society since 18th-century Enlightenment in general.

    Such discourse is emblematic of Baudet’s ideological position. He regularly echoes anti-Enlightenment, conservative revolutionary and new right thinkers such as Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye. All the classic tropes from these thinkers are present in his discourse: the decline of the nation, the demographic question, the loss of identity, traditional family and gender roles, and the devastating impact of globalization, liberalism and the French Revolution. And, as with any new right leader, he also loudly stresses the need for a national and civilizational rebirth. 

    Most notable, however, is that both his victory speech and his review became the object of intense media scrutiny. In Baudet’s victory speech, the use of the word “boreal” was read as an indication of his radical-right stance. In his review, it was the use of the word “suicide” in relation to abortion and his suggestion that women entering the workplace causes the decline of society that affirmed this profile. But despite all the classic ingredients of generic fascism being on full display, the Dutch media centered around some emblematic features without discussing the ideology that gives meaning to those excerpts.

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    This allowed Baudet to claim that the media was taking his words out of context and that it avoided the real debate on the issues that he was proposing. He constructed, as usual, the idea of an unfair witch hunt by fully exploiting the multilayered meanings attached to his words.

    In light of this public debate, the discussions in the party WhatsApp groups are revealing. WhatsApp groups have become important tools for political parties and for populists in particular. The groups are used to share political messages among young FvD militants and even to suggest a direct line between Baudet and his sympathizers. The closed spaces of those groups not only enable so-called echo chambers, but they also facilitate more intimate conversations among party members and sympathizers as well as functioning as a teaching environment for new recruits.

    As a result of the more informal and private nature of such groups, participants tend to lower their guard. Those conversations, when made public, can become highly explosive scandals. The FvD experienced this first-hand in April this year when a group of young party militants leaked a series of racist, radical-right memes and posts that were posted on the party’s official WhatsApp groups. They did this after their concerns remained unanswered by the leaders of the youth division and the party elite.

    The whistleblowers categorized the communication in those groups as “expressions that correspond to authoritarian, fascist and/or National Socialist ideas, including anti-Semitism, homophobia and racist imperialism.” In short, the posts showed the integration of the members in the global new right culture. The media backlash was substantial, but the party, even though it called the discourse “disgusting,” refused to apologize. 

    Surveillance Culture

    This summer, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant asked this author to analyze another 900 WhatsApp messages of the FvD’s youth divisions. Those new chats were collected after the media storm caused by the first leak and illustrate the impact of earlier leaks. Concretely, we see how members of the WhatsApp group act as if they are being watched by mainstream media like de Volkskrant or the NRC. 

    Moderators help members to imagine surveillance and to self-surveil. Party member Iem Al Biyati, for instance, explains how members should interact in the WhatsApp group: “Place yourself in the position of a journalist before you post edgy memes. You know very well how everything can be framed, so don’t open up that space.” In the literature, this is called imagined surveillance: moderators imagine “the scrutiny that could take place … and may engender future risks” for the party and act accordingly. As a result, a culture of (self-)surveillance is installed within the group chat. Not only the moderators but also regular members intervene when somebody posts something that can create bad optics.

    Why is this important? The interventions and the non-interventions of moderators and members help us understand what the party and its members understand as acceptable discourse within both the party itself and society at large. It also allows us to understand the reception and appropriation of the discourse of the party elite by the militants and staffers. This is especially relevant when the party elite regularly claims to be misunderstood by the (left-wing) mass media and academia. And, lastly and maybe most importantly in the context of this article, it allows us to assess the impact of mass media hype on the discourse among party members.

    Moderation policies in the WhatsApp group affect those topics that can connect the party to national socialism, Nazism and, in particular, anti-Semitism. Explicit anti-Semitism, explicit racism or incitement to violence are (sometimes) moderated. Any association with those topics has the potential to destroy the metapolitical construction of the party and push it out of the Overton window. Despite this surveillance culture, we see that members are still very explicit in their aversion toward LGBTQ+ people, migrants and migration, and the left. The analysis that Dutch identity has been emptied and is now filled with “transgenderism” in an attempt to destroy the nation passes without moderation. The framing of criminals as mainly “non-boreals” is not moderated, indicating that the controversy the media has created around Baudet’s use of the term didn’t succeed in harming the party. 

    A similar pattern is visible after mainstream media claimed that Baudet questioned the role of working women, as well as the availability of euthanasia and abortion in his review of Houellebecq’s book. Baudet himself claimed that his words were taken out of context, but in the WhatsApp group, the members, including the moderators, were enthusiastic, responding with “It was about time,” “nice!,” “he is just a great thinker, who thinks things through and puts them up for debate. Very well done! Proud of Cherry.” These takes were not only similar to what the mainstream media read in Baudet’s interventions, but in many cases, this back-facing discourse was far more radical than what Baudet explicitly stated or what the media made of it. Mainstream media reporting didn’t have an impact on the reception of Baudet’s words among peers.

    Triggering Outsiders

    Already in the 1990s, J.B. Thompson stressed that the study of ideology should not only look at the original text, but also at the transmission, construction, reception and appropriation of ideological discourse. From the FvD’s WhatsApp messages, we see how the party’s ideology is shaped in the interaction between the members of the WhatsApp group, the official party discourse and mass media reporting. 

    The moderation policies in the WhatsApp groups are partially informed by previous media attention. An earlier WhatsApp scandal created a surveillance culture that steers the militants away from damaging scandals. But this surveillance culture is rarely legitimized in terms of the party and its ideology. The need for self-surveillance is advocated to avoid what the journalists, in the words of another moderator, can use it to “frame” the party. 

    The imagined surveillance does not seem to affect the uptake of Baudet’s discourse by the militants and staffers in the WhatsApp groups. Mass media hypes that avoid tackling the larger ideology of the party contribute to the metapolitical character of the discourse. They help to establish a radical discourse that avoids explicit connotations with neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism and fascism. At the same time, we see that mass media reporting hardly affects the ideological core conviction of its members. With the exception of explicit or so-called “ironic” racism, anti-Semitism and references to Nazism, militants and moderators in the Young Forum for Democracy WhatsApp groups amplify Baudet’s discourse even when they think that they are being watched.

    The word “boreal” has been used in over 100 WhatsApp messages. Baudet clearly has succeeded in introducing the term and establishing a strategic ambivalence concerning its meaning. The militants clearly understand the strategic potential of the ambivalent meaning, which now functions as an identity emblem in the group. It is clear that when media hypes fail to sketch the bigger ideological picture, the words and sentences that are extrapolated from of Thierry Baudet’s discourse become badges of honor because they have succeeded in triggering the outsiders without causing bad optics. 

    *[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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    America’s Parallel Realities: Are We All in the Wrong Movie?

    In the early 1960s, one of the most popular series on American television was “The Twilight Zone.” This was a time when television, even in the United States, was still in black and white. Most of the show’s episodes were riveting, poignant and, in a number of cases, scary as hell — starting with the haunting tune at the beginning of each episode.

    “The Twilight Zone” reflected the anxieties and fears of a generation faced with the horrifying potential of technology capable of obliterating humanity. At the same time, it was informed by the equally terrifying capability of humans, if given the chance, to commit the most horrendous atrocities against other humans as long as there was a political regime that both sanctioned and encouraged them in the name of some kind of narrative, based on religion, race, class or superior insight.

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    It might not come as a surprise that in recent years, there has been an upsurge in references to “The Twilight Zone.” As the author of a 2018 article put it, the “anti-fascist, anti-racist themes of ‘The Twilight Zone’ are more relevant today than ever.” So are the themes referring to environmental catastrophes which also featured prominently in the series.

    For me, however, the reason “The Twilight Zone” has increasingly popped up in my mind lies elsewhere, in the way many of the episodes were constructed. A person wakes up in the morning in his or her familiar setting. A few hours later, he or she enters a fundamentally different reality, finds him or herself “in the wrong movie.” This is how I feel when I read American newspapers today and expose myself to the latest news. What is most striking in today’s America is the fundamental disjointedness, for lack of a better word, between realities.

    Episode 1: The Case of the Racist USC Professor

    A couple of days ago, the idyllic world of American academia was rudely awoken by an egregious case of blatant racism in the classroom or, rather, in the virtual space of Zoom-enhanced higher learning. A widely-known and celebrated business communications professor at the University of Southern California, which is generally better known for its prowess in college football than its academic achievements, repeatedly used the N-word — or at least what appeared to be the N-word — during a lecture.

    Commenting on the importance of filler words in communications, he used as an example the expression “nei ge.” The use of the expression caused much distress among African American students, resulting in the demand that the professor be immediately sanctioned. The university complied, putting him on administrative leave.

    As it happens, my wife is Chinese. When she speaks to her relatives and friends, every other sentence is interrupted by “nei ge.” It appears to be one of the most common expressions in Chinese, much like an English “um” or “uh,” allowing the speaker to take a pause to find the appropriate words to finish the sentence. In today’s victim culture, however, an innocent expression is turned into a signifier of racism, given the phonetic similarity between it and the N-word, much to the bewilderment of those like my wife who come from the culture that has used the expression for centuries (apparently a similar expression exists in Korean).

    In the end, there is no easy way to resolve the issue. It would be easy to demand that Chinese speakers in the United States show a modicum of sensitivity when using words that might cause offense. At the same time, however, Chinese speakers have a just cause to demand that others show a modicum of sensitivity to them, give them the benefit of the doubt and abstain from assuming evil intentions.

    The controversy reminds of the brouhaha over the word “niggardly,” which is the synonym of “stingy,” and has nothing to do with the N-word. Yet on several occasions, it has provoked accusations of racism, grounded more in the accuser’s unfamiliarity with the intricacies of the English language than the evil intentions of the person who dared to use it. To be sure, there are good reasons to avoid using the word. It is largely outdated, and “stingy” is a perfectly appropriate equivalent. At the same time, it is preposterous to sanction a person for the single reason that he or she uses a word that might evoke phonetic associations but which has absolutely nothing to do with the offensive term.

    Episode 2: The Case of the Racist Romance Novelist

    Romance novels are big sellers. In fact, they outsell most other literary genres. Its readers number in the millions, not only in the United States but worldwide. Most of the authors are women — as are the readers — and most of the women authors happen to be white. As a result, most of the stories revolve around white women getting involved with white men of either the affluent or the dangerous variety. Romance novels are replete with millionaires and billionaires just waiting to fall in love with single moms and members of motorcycle gangs with a soft core falling for the “sassy girl” next door.

    There are relatively few women of color who have made it in and into the genre. One of them is Alexandria House. Her novels center around some of the strongest women the genre has produced. In fact, Alexandria House’s stories are every feminist’s dream, and for good reason. Her heroines refuse to take shit from anyone, and particularly from good-looking, cocky African American men. Her heroines are strong, ballsy women who know what they want, and they have no problem asking for it and pursuing their goals with determination and verve.

    And then there is this: One of House’s best novels is “Let Me Love You,” with a Goodreads score of 4.6 out of 5. The setting is the hip-hop scene, and the main protagonists are top performers making millions with their songs. The novel has all the drama and heartache one would expect from an outstanding romance, and it delivers in a big way. This, however, is not the point. What is particularly striking to a reader sensitized to the intricacies of racist language is the fact that the novel’s author has absolutely no qualms using the N-word throughout the story. In fact, thanks to Kindle, the precise number of the N-words is easy to ascertain — 39 times, to be exact.

    To be sure, things are never as clear-cut as today’s hypersensitized purists would like us to believe. The debate about the N-word, in its two versions, has been going on for decades, and it has hardly been conducted in as straightforward a fashion as one might expect. To be sure, it does make a difference who uses the N-word. In fact, as has been pointed out, used on the part of an African American author, the word has a different connotation — including expressing a sense of endearment, which, I presume, is House’s intention — than used by a white author. 

    Embed from Getty Images

    In a recent essay in The Atlantic, John McWhorter from Columbia University has discussed the question at great depth. One of his conclusions: “Even when discussing rather than wielding the word, people —including black ones — might avoid barking out the word any more than necessary. (Or avoid writing it more than necessary, as in this very essay.) Surely, its history means that it provokes negative associations; it doesn’t sound good.”

    McWhorter starts his essay with controversy at Columbia following a white professor’s evoking the N-word in reference to James Baldwin’s 1963 public statement that he was “not a nigger.” One of her (white) students objected to her uttering the word, the administration agreed and put her under investigation. Ultimately, she was cleared of suspicion that she had violated the university’s anti-discrimination rules.

    For McWhorter, the very fact that a professor would be sanctioned for exploring the question of why James Baldwin would have chosen to say what he did is a clear indication of what he calls mission creep, “under which whites are not only not supposed to level the word as a slur, but are also not supposed to even refer to it. That idea has been entrenched for long enough now that it is coming to feel normal, but then normal is not always normal. It borders … on taboo.”

    This brings me back to the main topic of Episode 1. Here is a case that goes even further than the “mission creep” McWhorter alludes to. It surely is a case of that “hypersensitive to injury so abstract,” so inane, it should never have become an issue of controversy. To make the point quite clear: This is not about the use of Alexandra House’s use of the word. It is about the controversy generated by the use of “nei ga.” As said before, Alexandria House is one of the very best authors of romance novels. Her rather frequent evocation of the word is largely owed, I presume, to her attempt to reflect the realities of the setting of the novel, the hip-hop scene. 

    At the same time, however, in light of the controversy over the use of “nei ga,” it opens up legitimate questions that are not easy to resolve. In any case, it is probably a blessing that most college students don’t read romance novels. They might find themselves in the wrong movie.

    Episode 3: The Case of the Conspiracy Theory to End All Conspiracy Theories

    On August 31, during a mass protest against the German government’s draconian measures (i.e. wearing a mask) to combat the spread of COVID-19, dozens of Germany’s new freedom fighters managed to break through police lines to storm the Reichstagsbebäude in Berlin, the seat of the German parliament. For many of the demonstrators, having to wear a mask, according to one sign, was “inhuman,” almost a crime against humanity.

    As it turns out, many of the freedom stormtroopers were inspired by QAnon, which has taken the white global biosphere, from the US to Germany, from Australia to France, by storm. QAnon is the new all-encompassing master narrative for all those eager minds who want to know, but for whom Marxism is far too sophisticated, Nostradamus too obscure, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion too parochial (a Jewish cabal? So 19th century!), and Scientology far too expensive. To be a QAnonista, all you need is a sign with a big “Q” and you too can sow terror and fear among the elite.

    From what I understand, QAnon is a “theory,” albeit a conspiratorial one, postulating that whatever happens today is the result of the evil designs of obscure forces, from the World Economic Forum to powerful individuals such as George Soros, Bill Gates and, why not, Elon Musk. As Mike Wendling describes it for the BBC, “At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, unfounded conspiracy theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.”

    In the world some of us inhabit, theory is a bunch of ideas that only gain value if subjected to an empirical test. A famous example is the Ptolemaic system, which postulated that the Earth was the center of the universe. It sounded good at the time but turned out to be completely false. The theory was debunked to be replaced by a new theory that made sense. Today, apparently, the word “theory” has a different connotation — at least among the growing number of those who believe there are dark forces at work seeking to manipulate and, ultimately, control humanity. Today we know because we know, because it makes common sense or because we’ve read it somewhere.

    Embed from Getty Images

    This is why creationism — the notion that the Earth was created some 10,000 years ago — is a viable theory, on a par with Darwin’s theory of evolution. (Creationism is absolutely true. I saw pictures of Jesus riding and petting dinosaurs. Or the theory that the world is flat, and if you are not careful, you’ll fall off the edges. Absolutely true, too. I read it in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, the ultimate source of scientific knowledge for sophisticated endeavoring teenage minds.)

    In today’s populist world, where science is scorned (it’s just so last century) and scientists loathed, something is true if enough people believe it is true. QAnon is the perfect example. According to a recent poll — unfortunately based on scientific method and therefore prone to fake news-ism — one in three Republicans believes that the “theory” is mostly true. A further quarter thinks that some parts of it are true. That leaves only a bit more than a tenth who think that it is not true at all. Against that, among Democrats, a three-quarter majority hold it not true at all — the definitive proof of the pernicious influence of living in the real world.

    The “success” of QAnon “theory” is symptomatic of the utter bizarreness of the schizophrenic state of reality in today’s world. For many of us, the fact that Donald Trump was elected president already evoked a strong sense that we had somehow passed into the twilight zone. Over the years of his presidency, this sense has gotten stronger and stronger. Like COVID-19, the Trump virus — that mixture of fear-mongering, appealing to raw emotions and a dose of paranoia — has slowly been infecting growing parts of our world, as recently demonstrated during the siege on the German parliament, inspired by claims that Russian and American troops were on their way to deliver the German people from its tyrannical government which forced them to wear masks.

    At the same time, the fact that a professor’s reference to one of the most common expressions in the Chinese language would provoke charges of racism suggests that bizarreness is hardly confined to the right. Add COVID-19 to the mix, which has created a new dimension of parallel realities, and the scenario for a brand new “Twilight Zone” series practically writes itself.

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