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      Nadia Mohamed Calls Her Minnesota Mayoral Win the First Chapter

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      Nadia Mohamed, the 27-year-old mayor-elect of St. Louis Park, Minn., says her win is just the first chapter.[This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here.]When Nadia Mohamed arrived as a 10-year-old refugee in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, she remembers, there were no faces that resembled hers. On Nov. 7, as the 27-year-old mayor-elect, she became the new face of the city of 50,000.Mohamed will become the country’s first elected Somali-American mayor on Jan. 2, after she completes her term as a City Council member — a seat she won at 23, becoming the youngest person, the first Muslim and the first Somali-American to serve in that body. Her family migrated to Kenya after the civil war in Somalia, and she lived in the Kakuma refugee camp until she was about 10.Election Day also brought mayoral milestones in Philadelphia, where Cherelle Parker became the first woman and the first Black woman to win the position, and in Wichita, Kan., where Lily Wu became the first Asian American elected to that office.In St. Louis Park, whose population is 80 percent white, Ms. Mohamed centered her campaign on increasing homeownership and community policing. I recently spoke with her, and our conversation below has been condensed and lightly edited.Was there a moment when you had a political awakening? Or did the need to become the change you wanted to see happen gradually?2016. I was going to college, and I grew up with Michelle Obama and Barack Obama. I had only known a Black president, and one that ran on unity.And then in 2016, here came this candidate who attacked the Somali community in Minnesota. Oh my gosh, is this politics in America?It was my first time being able to vote in a presidential election. I remember feeling like I was not at ease. Is my face the kind that America wants?So I started reaching out to my neighbors, organizations and our Police Department. I connected people and had those dialogues. Not only did it add to my sense of belonging, but other people felt like they belonged here, regardless of what was happening outside St. Louis Park. I was then asked to run for office. It opened up a possibility of political life and how I could make an impact.The experience of that election was an awakening. I think a lot of people woke up. You handily won this race. How did you get people interested in civic participation and build a coalition?Mohamed votes on Election Day at Wat Promwachirayan in St. Louis Park, Minn., on Nov. 7.Leila Navidi/Star Tribune, via Associated PressWhat really helped was reminding people that I grew up in St. Louis Park. I lived in many of the neighborhoods that I was door-knocking in during the campaign, and people recognized me and they knew the work that I was doing. What was really inspiring was the college students and high school students going out after their classes and obligations. The older generations would see that and said it was amazing. We need the younger generation to be active in their civic duty and participate. We actually got the biggest turnout in St. Louis Park in at least 30 years.What has been the biggest takeaway from your experience as an elected official?Government is slow, and it should be slow. When we are not being intentional with our policies, we’re not doing our jobs right. Being fast is an easy route to making mistakes.“This is a milestone — this is not the destination,” you said after your election. What do you mean by that?It’s important to note that I’m Black, Somali-American, a woman. We still have so much work to do and often BIPOC elected officials don’t get their stories told beyond their identities.I want people to be proud of the work that we’ve done. It’s a testament of how hard we worked as a community to be inclusive. And it’s just the first chapter.The world doesn’t automatically become more equitable just because we have a person of color at the seat.Black Americans live a complex existence when they live and go to work and go to school in spaces that are largely controlled by white people. Sometimes they can’t be their authentic selves. You appear to have overcome that challenge. If that is right, how do you think you resisted that tension?Resisting that tension isn’t something that I’ve overcome. It’s something I will continue to experience, and I will use the people in my network, whether it’s my neighbors or colleagues, to help me fight that.It’s also important to acknowledge that we have had our fair share of discriminatory policies in Minnesota. For example, we see higher rates of white Americans in St. Louis Park who own their homes versus people of color. How we advocate and implement policies that lead to equitable impact starts with recognizing our history. Now we have a first-generation home buyers program. We have to be aware of who’s being impacted and what barriers remain. I’m in a unique spot where I have lived experience to be able to speak to that.If you can be immodest for a moment, what can others learn from your life story and your successful campaign?Honestly, even being immodest, I didn’t get here by myself. It takes a coalition who truly supports you. A little courage doesn’t hurt. Who are your political role models?I’ve spoken with mayors in the area who’ve offered their support and advice. But I’m more of a Maya Angelou girl. In my heart of hearts, I am a poet. It’s even in my Somali culture — we are a people of poetry and oral languages. She has long commented on the injustices of the world in a beautiful way. I take her with me everywhere I go.Invite your friends.Invite someone to subscribe to the Race/Related newsletter. Or email your thoughts and suggestions to racerelated@nytimes.com. More

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      Can Taiwan Continue to Fight Off Chinese Disinformation?

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      Ahead of a presidential election in January, Taiwanese fact checkers and watchdogs say they are ready for Beijing. But they are still worried.Suspicious videos that began circulating in Taiwan this month seemed to show the country’s leader advertising cryptocurrency investments.President Tsai Ing-wen, who has repeatedly risked Beijing’s ire by asserting her island’s autonomy, appeared to claim in the clips that the government helped develop investment software for digital currencies, using a term that is common in China but rarely used in Taiwan. Her mouth appeared blurry and her voice unfamiliar, leading Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau to deem the video to be almost certainly a deepfake — an artificially generated spoof — and potentially one created by Chinese agents.For years, China has pummeled the Taiwanese information ecosystem with inaccurate narratives and conspiracy theories, seeking to undermine its democracy and divide its people in an effort to assert control over its neighbor. Now, as fears over Beijing’s growing aggression mount, a new wave of disinformation is heading across the strait separating Taiwan from the mainland before the pivotal election in January.Perhaps as much as any other place, however, the tiny island is ready for the disinformation onslaught.Taiwan has built a resilience to foreign meddling that could serve as a model to the dozens of other democracies holding votes in 2024. Its defenses include one of the world’s most mature communities of fact checkers, government investments, international media literacy partnerships and, after years of warnings about Chinese intrusion, a public sense of skepticism.The challenge now is sustaining the effort.“That is the main battlefield: The fear, uncertainty, doubt is designed to keep us up at night so we don’t respond to novel threats with novel defenses,” said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s inaugural digital minister, who works on strengthening cybersecurity defenses against threats like disinformation. “The main idea here is just to stay agile.”Taiwan, a highly online society, has repeatedly been found to be the top target in the world for disinformation from foreign governments, according to the Digital Society Project, a research initiative exploring the internet and politics. China was accused of spreading rumors during the pandemic about the Taiwanese government’s handling of Covid-19, researchers said. Representative Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island as speaker of the House last year set off a series of high-profile cyberattacks, as well as a surge of debunked online messages and images that fact checkers linked to China.For all of Beijing’s efforts, however, it has struggled to sway public opinion.In recent years, Taiwan’s voters have chosen a president, Ms. Tsai, from the Democratic Progressive Party, which the Communist Party views as an obstacle to its goal of unification. Experts and local fact checkers said Chinese disinformation campaigns were a major concern in local elections in 2018; the efforts seemed less effective in 2020, when Ms. Tsai recaptured the presidency in a landslide. Her vice president, Lai Ching-te, has maintained a polling lead in the race to succeed her.China has denied interloping, instead saying it is the “top victim of disinformation.”News about the presidential race on a television in a Taipei noodle restaurant. Many Taiwanese have internal “warning bells” for disinformation, a founder of a group called Fake News Cleaner said.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesMs. Tsai has repeatedly addressed her government’s push to combat Beijing’s disinformation campaign, as well as criticism that her strategy aims to stifle speech from political opponents. At a defense conference this month, she said: “We let the public have knowledge and tools that refute and report false or misleading information, and maintain a cautious balance between maintaining information freely and refusing information manipulation.”Many Taiwanese have developed internal “warning bells” for suspicious narratives, said Melody Hsieh, who co-founded Fake News Cleaner, a group focused on information literacy education. Her group has 22 lecturers and 160 volunteers teaching anti-disinformation tactics at universities, temples, fishing villages and elsewhere in Taiwan, sometimes using gifts like handmade soap to motivate participants.The group is part of a robust collective of similar Taiwanese operations. There is Cofacts, whose fact-checking service is integrated into a popular social media app called Line. Doublethink Lab was directed until this month by Puma Shen, a professor who testified this year before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent agency of the U.S. government. MyGoPen is named after a homophone in the Taiwanese dialect for “don’t fool me again.”Taiwan’s anti-disinformation groups include Doublethink Lab, formerly led by Puma Shen.Chiangying-Ying/Associated PressMascots at the entrance of the Taiwan Fact Check Center in Taipei.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesCitizens have sought out fact-checking help, such as when a recent uproar over imported eggs raised questions about videos showing black and green yolks, Ms. Hsieh said. Such demand would have been unthinkable in 2018, when the heated emotions and damaging rumors around a contentious referendum inspired the founders of Fake News Cleaner.“Now, everyone will stop and think: ‘This seems odd. Can you help me check this? We suspect something,’” Ms. Hsieh said. “This, I think, is an improvement.”Still, fact-checking in Taiwan remains complicated. False claims swirled recently around Mr. Lai, an outspoken critic of Beijing, and his visit to Paraguay this summer. Fact checkers found that a memo at the center of one claim had been manipulated, with changed dates and dollar figures. Another claim originated on an English-language forum before a new X account quoted it in Mandarin in a post that was shared by a news website in Hong Kong and boosted on Facebook by a Taiwanese politician.China’s disinformation work has had “measurable effects,” including “worsening Taiwanese political and social polarization and widening perceived generational divides,” according to research from the RAND Corporation. Concerns about election-related fake news drove the Taiwanese government last month to set up a dedicated task force.A banner in Taipei depicts Sun Yat Sen, the first president of the Republic of China, and Taiwan’s flag.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTaiwan “has historically been Beijing’s testing ground for information warfare,” with China using social media to interfere in Taiwanese politics since at least 2016, according to RAND. In August, Meta took down a Chinese influence campaign that it described as the largest such operation to date, with 7,704 Facebook accounts and hundreds of others across other social media platforms targeting Taiwan and other regions.Beijing’s disinformation strategy continues to shift. Fact checkers noted that Chinese agents were no longer distracted by pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, as they were during the last presidential election in Taiwan. Now, they have access to artificial intelligence that can generate images, audio and video — “potentially a dream come true for Chinese propagandists,” said Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, a RAND researcher.A few months ago, an audio file that seemed to feature a rival politician criticizing Mr. Lai circulated in Taiwan. The clip was almost certainly a deepfake, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice and the A.I.-detection company Reality Defender.Chinese disinformation posts appear increasingly subtle and organic, rather than flooding the zone with obvious pro-Beijing messages, researchers said. Some false narratives are created by Chinese-controlled content farms, then spread by agents, bots or unwitting social media users, researchers say. China has also tried to buy established Taiwanese social media accounts and may have paid Taiwanese influencers to promote pro-Beijing narratives, according to RAND.Disinformation that directly addressed relations between China and Taiwan grew rarer from 2020 to 2022, the Taiwan Fact Check Center said last month. Instead, Chinese agents seemed to focus more on stoking social division within Taiwan by spreading lies about local services and health issues. Sometimes, other experts said, questionable posts about medical remedies and celebrity gossip guided viewers to conspiracy theories about Taiwanese politics.The ever-present menace, which the Taiwanese government calls “cognitive warfare,” has led to several aggressive attempts at a crackdown. One unsuccessful proposal last year, modeled after regulations in Europe, would have imposed labeling and transparency requirements on social media platforms and forced them to comply with court-ordered content removal requests.Critics denounced the government’s anti-disinformation campaign as a political witch hunt, raising the specter of the island’s not-so-distant authoritarian past. Some have pointed out that Taiwan’s media ecosystem, with its diverse political leanings, often produces pro-Beijing content that can be misattributed to Chinese manipulation.At an event in June, President Tsai stressed that “well-funded, large-scale disinformation campaigns” were “one of the most difficult challenges,” pitting Taiwanese citizens against one another and corroding trust in democratic institutions. Disinformation defense, she said, must be “a whole-of-society effort.”Fact checkers and watchdog groups said public apathy was a concern — research suggests that Taiwanese people make limited use of fact-checking resources in past elections — as was the risk of being spread too thin.“There’s mountains of disinformation,” said Eve Chiu, the chief executive of the Taiwan FactCheck Center, which has around 10 fact checkers working each day. “We can’t do it all.”From left, Lu Hong-yu, Lee Tzu-ying and Cheng Hsu-yu placed third as a team in a Taiwan fact-checking competition.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAttempts to increase interest in media literacy have included a nationwide campaign, “humor over rumor,” which leveraged jokey meme culture and a cute dog character to debunk false narratives. In September, the Taiwan FactCheck Center also held a national virtual competition for youths that drew students like Lee Tzu-ying, Cheng Hsu-yu and Lu Hong-yu.The three civics classmates, who finished in third place, acknowledged that Taiwan’s raucous politics allowed disinformation to breed confusion and chaos. Their Taiwanese peers, however, have learned caution.“If you see something new, but don’t know if it is true or false, you need to verify it,” Ms. Lee, 16, said. “I just want to know the truth — that’s very important to me.” More

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      Debates Over Words Amid War: ‘Antisemitism,’ ‘Anti-Zionism,’ ‘Apartheid’

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      More from our inbox:Expanding Advanced Placement Classes: Harmful or More Equitable?Election LessonsAmericans’ Love of Outlaws Stefani Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Question of Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism,” by Charles M. Blow (column, Nov. 16):The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, adopted by dozens of countries around the world, indeed does define anti-Zionism as antisemitism. It cites as an example of antisemitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”That the Jewish people deserve the right of self-determination, after the Holocaust and the persecution throughout Arab lands for centuries, was resolved in 1948. To debate Zionism is precisely the problem facing the Jews today and most especially Israelis who live in an absurd world in which the nature of their birthright is called into question, as every single Israeli is born of Zionism.How ironic that in this day and age in the United States, where every minority is protected and words matter more than ever, it is somehow acceptable to define oneself as anti-Zionist, even if Jewish. It is offensive, absurd and deeply antisemitic.As an American Israeli, I cannot stress enough how toxic this concept is to Israelis and how it does nothing to help the cause of peace today.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Taiwan’s Opposition Splits After Collapse of Unity Bid

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      The split over a proposed joint ticket bolsters the governing party candidate’s chances in the coming presidential election. That won’t please Beijing.For weeks, Taiwan’s two main opposition parties were edging toward a coalition, in a bid to unseat the island democracy’s governing party in the coming presidential election, an outcome that Beijing would welcome. The election, one elder statesman from Taiwan’s opposition said, was a choice between war and peace.This week, though, the two parties — which both argue that they are better able to ensure peace with China — chose in spectacular fashion to go to war against each other. An incipient deal for a joint presidential ticket between the long-established Nationalist Party and the upstart Taiwan People’s Party unraveled with the speed, melodrama and lingering vitriol of a celebrity wedding gone wrong.A meeting that was opened to journalists on Thursday seemed to have been meant as a show of good will within the opposition. But it featured sniping between rival spokesmen, a long-winded tribute to the spirit of Thanksgiving by Terry Gou — a magnate turned politician trying to cajole the opposition toward unity — and mutual accusations of bad faith between the two presidential candidates who had been trying to strike a deal: Hou Yu-ih of the Nationalist Party and Ko Wen-je, the founder of the Taiwan People’s Party.Mr. Gou tried to break the icy tensions at one point by saying that he needed a bathroom break.“I don’t want a silent ending on this Thanksgiving Day,” he later told journalists after Mr. Hou and his two allies had left the stage. “But unfortunately it looks like it will be a silent ending.”Friday was the deadline for registering for Taiwan’s election, which will be held on Jan. 13, and by noon both Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko had officially registered as presidential candidates, confirming that there would be no unity ticket. Mr. Gou, who had also thrown his hat in the ring, withdrew from the race.Taiwan’s young, vigorous democratic politics has often included some raucous drama. Yet even experienced observers of the Taiwanese scene have been agog by this week, and baffled as to why the opposition parties would stage such a public rupture over who would be the presidential candidate on a unity ticket, and who would accept the vice presidential nomination.“It really defies theories of coalition building,” Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said of the week’s bickering. “How do you tell undecided voters ‘still vote for me’ after having a very publicly messy, willfully uninformed debate about who ought to be first and who ought to be second?”The collapse of the proposed opposition pact could have consequences rippling beyond Taiwan, affecting the tense balance between Beijing — which claims the self-governing island as its own — and Washington over the future status of the island.The situation also makes it more likely that Taiwan’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate for the governing Democratic Progressive Party, or D.P.P., will win the election — a result sure to displease Chinese Communist Party leaders.Mr. Lai’s party asserts Taiwan’s distinctive identity and claims to nationhood, and has become closer to the United States. China’s leaders could respond to a victory for him by escalating menacing military activities around Taiwan, which sits roughly 100 miles off the Chinese coast.A victory for the Nationalists could reopen communication with China that mostly froze shortly after Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president in 2016. And a third successive loss for the Nationalists, who favor closer ties and negotiations with Beijing, could undercut Chinese confidence that they remain a viable force.Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s vice president, and a candidate from the Democratic Progressive Party. A split between Mr. Hou and Ko Wen-je of Taiwan People’s Party may benefit his campaign.I-Hwa Cheng/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTaiwan’s first-past-the-post system for electing its president awards victory to the candidate with the highest raw percentage of votes. Mr. Lai has led in polls for months, but his projected share of the vote has sat below 40 percent in many surveys, meaning that the opposition could claw past his lead if it coalesced behind a single candidate. Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko for months sat around the mid- to high 20s in polls, suggesting that it could be hard for either to overtake Mr. Lai unless the other candidate stepped aside.“This may scare off moderate voters who might have been into voting for a joint ticket for the sake of blocking the D.P.P.,” Mr. Nachman said of the falling out between the opposition parties. “Now those moderate voters will look at this team in a different light.”For now, many Taiwanese people seem absorbed — sometimes gleeful, sometimes anguished — by the spectacle of recent days. “Wave Makers,” a recent Netflix drama series, showed Taiwanese electoral politics as a noble, if sometimes cutthroat, affair. This week was more like the political satire “Veep.”Last weekend, the Nationalist Party and Taiwan People’s Party appeared poised to settle on a unity ticket, with each agreeing to decide on their choice of joint presidential nominee — Mr. Hou or Mr. Ko — by examining electoral polls to determine who had the strongest shot at winning.But teams of statistical experts put forward by each party could not agree on what polls to use and what to make of the results, and the parties became locked in days of bickering over the numbers and their implications. At news conferences, rival spokespeople brandished printouts of opinion poll results and struggled to explain complex statistical concepts.The real issue was which leader would claim the presidential nominee spot, and the quarrel exposed deep wariness between the Nationalists — a party with a history of over a century that is also known as the Kuomintang, or K.M.T. — and the Taiwan People’s Party, which Mr. Ko, a surgeon and former mayor of Taipei, founded in 2019.“The K.M.T., as the grand old party, could never make way for an upstart party, so structurally, it was very difficult for them to work out how to work together,” said Brian Hioe, a founding editor of New Bloom, a Taiwanese magazine that takes a critical view of mainstream politics. On the other hand, Mr. Hioe added, “Ko Wen-je’s party has the need to differentiate itself from the K.M.T. — to show that it’s independent and different — and so working with the K.M.T. would be seen by many of his party membership as a betrayal.”A supporter of Kuomintang, or the long-established Nationalist Party, holding a flag outside the Central Election Commission in Taipei on Friday.Annabelle Chih/Getty ImagesMa Ying-jeou, the Nationalist president of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016, stepped in to try to broker an agreement between his party and Mr. Ko. Hopes rose on Thursday when Mr. Hou announced that he would be waiting at Mr. Ma’s office to hold negotiations with Mr. Ko.But it quickly became clear that Mr. Ko and Mr. Hou remained divided. Mr. Ko refused to go to Mr. Ma’s office, and insisted on talks at another location. Mr. Hou stayed put in Mr. Ma’s office for hours, waiting for Mr. Ko to give way. Eventually, Mr. Hou agreed to meet at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Taipei, and party functionaries announced with solemn specificity that the talks would happen in Room 2538.Dozens of journalists converged on the hotel, waiting for a possible announcement. Expectations rose when Mr. Hou entered a conference room where the journalists and live-feed cameras waited. But he sat with a fixed smile for about 20 minutes before Mr. Ko arrived, glowering. Mr. Gou, the magnate, opened proceedings with his tribute to Thanksgiving and calls for unity, recalling his wedding ceremony in the same hotel. But it soon became clear that Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko were no closer.On Friday, Taiwanese people had shared images online and quips ridiculing the opposition’s public feuding. Photographs of Room 2538, a suite at the Grand Hyatt, circulated on the internet. Some likened the spectacle to “The Break-up Ring,” a popular Taiwanese television show that featured quarreling couples and their in-laws airing their grievances on camera.Some drew a more somber conclusion: that dysfunction on the opposition side left Taiwan’s democracy weaker.“In a healthy democracy, No. 2 and No. 3 will collaborate to challenge No. 1,” said Wu Tzu-chia, the chairman of My Formosa, an online magazine. “This should be a very rigorous process, but in Taiwan, it’s become very crude, like buying meat and vegetables in the marketplace.” More

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      La lección más importante de la victoria de Javier Milei

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      La elección como presidente de Argentina de Javier Milei —un personaje peculiar, fanfarrón de cabello indomable, con cinco mastines clonados y una costumbre de comunión psíquica con la difunta mascota que les dio origen— ha suscitado un gran debate sobre la verdadera naturaleza del populismo de derecha en nuestra era de descontento general.En Milei hay muchas manifestaciones de una política trumpiana: la energía extravagante y poco convencional, la crítica a las élites corruptas, los ataques a la izquierda, el apoyo de los conservadores sociales y religiosos. Al mismo tiempo, en política económica es mucho más un libertario doctrinario que un mercantilista o populista al estilo Trump, es una versión más extrema de Barry Goldwater y Paul Ryan que un defensor del gasto público y los aranceles. Mientras que el movimiento al que derrotó, la formación peronista que gobernó Argentina durante la mayor parte del siglo XXI, es de hecho más nacionalista y populista en lo económico, pues llegó al poder tras la crisis financiera de 2001 que puso fin al experimento más notable de Argentina con la economía neoliberal.La divergencia entre Trump y Milei puede interpretarse de varias maneras. Una lectura es que el estilo del populismo de derecha es la esencia del asunto, que su sustancia política es negociable siempre que presente figuras que prometan el renacimiento nacional y encarnen algún tipo de rebelión bufonesca, por lo general masculina, contra las normas del progresismo cultural.Otra lectura es que, sí, la política es bastante negociable, pero en realidad hay profundas afinidades ideológicas entre el nacionalismo económico de derecha y lo que podría llamarse paleolibertarismo, a pesar de que no coinciden en cuestiones específicas. En términos estadounidenses, esto significa que el trumpismo lo anticiparon de diferentes maneras Ross Perot y Ron Paul; en términos globales, significa que cabe esperar que los partidos de la derecha populista se muevan constantemente entre tendencias de regulación y libertarias, dependiendo del contexto económico y de los vaivenes políticos.He aquí una tercera interpretación: mientras que el descontento popular debilitó el consenso neoliberal de las décadas de 1990 y 2000 en todo el mundo desarrollado, la era del populismo está creando alineamientos muy distintos en la periferia latinoamericana que en el núcleo euro-estadounidense.En Europa Occidental y Estados Unidos, ahora se ve de manera sistemática a un partido de centroizquierda de las clases profesionales enfrentarse a una coalición populista y de la clase trabajadora de derecha. Los partidos de centroizquierda se han vuelto más progresistas en política económica en comparación con la era de Bill Clinton y Tony Blair, pero se han movido mucho más a la izquierda en cuestiones culturales, sin perder su liderazgo influyente y meritocrático, su sabor neoliberal. Y, en su mayoría, han sido capaces de contener, derrotar o cooptar a aspirantes de izquierda más radicales: Joe Biden al superar a Bernie Sanders en las elecciones primarias demócratas de 2020, Keir Starmer al marginar al corbynismo en el Partido Laborista británico y Emmanuel Macron al forzar a los izquierdistas franceses a votar a su favor en la segunda vuelta contra Marine Le Pen con la estrategia del menor de los males.Por su parte, la derecha populista ha conseguido muchas veces moderar sus impulsos libertarios para apartar a los votantes de clase baja de la coalición progresista, dando lugar a una política de centroderecha que suele favorecer ciertos tipos de proteccionismo y redistribución. Eso podría significar una defensa trumpiana de los programas de prestaciones sociales, los tibios intentos de los conservadores de Boris Johnson de invertir en el desatendido norte de Inglaterra o el gasto en prestaciones familiares de Viktor Orbán en Hungría, así como la recién desbancada coalición populista en Polonia.Te puedes imaginar que el abismo entre estas dos coaliciones mantendrá a Occidente en un estado de crisis latente, en especial teniendo en cuenta la personalidad de Trump, tan propensa a las crisis. Pero también es posible imaginar un futuro en el que este orden se estabilice y normalice un poco y la gente deje de hablar de un terremoto cada vez que un populista asciende al poder o de que la democracia se salva cada vez que un partido del establishment gana unas elecciones.La situación es muy distinta en América Latina. Allí el consenso neoliberal siempre fue más endeble, el centro más frágil, y por ende la era de la rebelión populista ha creado una polarización más clara entre quien esté más a la izquierda y más a la derecha (con la izquierda culturalmente progresista, pero por lo general más expresamente socialista que Biden, Starmer o Macron y la derecha culturalmente tradicional, pero por lo general más libertaria que Trump, Orbán o Le Pen).La nueva alineación en Argentina, con su libertario revolucionario que supera a una izquierda populista-nacionalista, es un ejemplo de este patrón; la contienda entre Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva y Jair Bolsonaro en Brasil el año pasado fue otro. Pero los recientes vaivenes de la política chilena son de especial interés. A principios de la década de 2010, Chile parecía tener un entorno político más o menos estable, con un partido de centroizquierda que gobernaba a través de una Constitución favorable al mercado y una oposición de centroderecha que luchaba por distanciarse de la dictadura de Pinochet. Entonces, las protestas populares echaron por tierra este orden y crearon un giro abrupto hacia la izquierda, además de un intento de imponer una nueva Constitución de izquierda que, a su vez, provocó una reacción adversa, que dejó al país dividido entre un impopular gobierno de izquierda encabezado por un antiguo activista estudiantil y una oposición de derecha en ascenso temporal liderada por un apologista de Pinochet.En cada caso, en relación con las divisiones de Francia y Estados Unidos, se observa un centro más débil y una polarización más profunda entre extremos populistas rivales. Y ahora, si la cuestión para América Latina es qué tan estable será la propia democracia en condiciones tan polarizadas, la cuestión para Europa y Estados Unidos es si la situación argentina o chilena es un presagio de su propio futuro. Tal vez no de inmediato, pero sí después de una nueva ronda de rebeliones populistas, que podría aguardar más allá de alguna crisis o catástrofe o simplemente al otro lado del cambio demográfico.En tal futuro, figuras como Biden, Starmer y Macron ya no podrían gestionar coaliciones de gobierno y la iniciativa en la izquierda pasaría a partidos más radicales como Podemos en España o los Verdes en Alemania, a los progresistas al estilo de Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez en el Congreso de Estados Unidos, a cualquier tipo de política que surja del encuentro entre la izquierda europea y las crecientes poblaciones árabes y musulmanas del continente. Esto daría a la derecha populista la oportunidad de prometer estabilidad y reclamar el centro, pero también crearía incentivos para que la derecha se radicalice aún más, lo que produciría mayores oscilaciones ideológicas cada vez que perdiera una coalición en el poder.Esta es, en cierto modo, la lección más clara de la victoria aplastante de Milei: si no se puede alcanzar la estabilidad tras una ronda de convulsiones populistas, no hay límites inherentes a lo desenfrenado que puede llegar a ser el siguiente ciclo de rebelión.Ross Douthat es columnista de opinión del Times desde 2009. Es autor, más recientemente, de The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. @DouthatNYT • Facebook More

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      Dutch Election Results Deliver a Turn to the Far Right

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      In an election result that sent shock waves across Europe, Geert Wilders, a longtime far-right provocateur, is closer than ever to becoming prime minister.The Netherlands, long regarded as one of Europe’s most socially liberal countries, woke up to a drastically changed political landscape on Thursday after a far-right party swept national elections in a result that has reverberated throughout Europe.Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, which advocates banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance of asylum seekers, won 37 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, making it by far the biggest party, in a clear rebuke of the country’s political establishment.The results, tabulated overnight after Wednesday’s voting, give Mr. Wilders enough support to try to form a governing coalition. Centrist and center-right parties long wary of the firebrand have left the door ajar to a possible partnership, giving Mr. Wilders a chance to become the Netherlands’ first far-right prime minister.While people across the political spectrum expressed surprise at the election outcome, and the Dutch reputation of liberalism persists, experts say that Mr. Wilders succeeded by tapping into a discontent with government that dates back at least two decades.“It’s not suddenly out of nowhere,” said Janka Stoker, a professor of leadership and organizational change at the University of Groningen.Mr. Wilders’s party has previously drawn more support in opinion polls than in the voting booth. This time the trend was reversed. Peter Dejong/Associated PressMr. Wilders has been a persistent political presence in the Netherlands through those years, and now it seemed his time had come.A career politician, Mr. Wilders has served as a member of the Dutch House of Representatives since 1998. In 2004, he split from the party headed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, forming the Party for Freedom two years later.Exceptionally, Mr. Wilders’s party is not based on a membership structure, making him the sole decision maker and synonymous with his party.He is close ideologically to Marine Le Pen of France, the far-right National Rally leader, and received hearty congratulations from Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has become another icon of the far right.At times Mr. Wilders has also been compared to former President Donald J. Trump, for his penchant to say things in the most direct and divisive of ways. Many of Mr. Wilders’s supporters say they feel buoyed and relieved that he is willing to give voice to what they cannot say, or feel they are not supposed to say.Yet Mr. Wilders’s provocations have required him to move through life with a security detail, and he has said that days can go by during which he does not see the daylight.Because of the need for security over the apparent threats against him, not much is known about Mr. Wilders’s isolated private life. He has been married since 1992 to a Hungarian diplomat, Krisztina. His rare public appearances guarantee that every time he ventures out he attracts a media circus.Mr. Wilders told the Dutch magazine Panorama in March that as part of his security, the windows to his study are blacked out, making it impossible to see outside. He also told the magazine that he had not been able to drive in his own car since 2004, saying it was a “symbol of freedom that I crave, but that I don’t have anymore.”A protester greeting Mr. Wilders at a 2017 campaign stop with a sign reading “Don’t Give Hate And Fear a Vote.” He lives with tight security, rarely appearing in public.Peter Dejong/Associated PressMr. Wilders’s political talk has been so divisive that his own brother Paul has publicly spoken out against him.Over the years, Mr. Wilders’s comments about Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands have gotten widespread media attention. They have also landed him in court.In 2014, Mr. Wilders asked his supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, which resulted in a crowd chanting, “Fewer! Fewer!”A Dutch court convicted Mr. Wilders of insulting a group with the anti-Moroccan chant, but he avoided punishment.At a campaign event in 2017, Mr. Wilders referred to Moroccan immigrants as “scum.”During the current campaign he ran on a “Dutch First” platform, though in the final days of the race he moderated some of his anti-Islam vitriol, saying there were “more important priorities.”He also said that his proposals “would be within the law and Constitution,” in an effort to court other parties to govern with him.But while his language may have softened, his party platform did not. “The Netherlands is not an Islamic country: no Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques,” it says.“The borders are wide open and everyone who comes in wants a living space,” it adds, while advocating a “zero tolerance” policy to rein in what it calls “street terrorists” and promising funding for 10,000 extra police officers.“The police need to be in charge in the street again,” according to the platform. “Criminals have to be arrested immediately and put in prison for a long time.”An election poster for Mr. Wilders outside the Dutch Parliament building in The Hague. His standing appeared to rise in the final days of the campaign.Yves Herman/ReutersMr. Wilders — as well as other politicians, including Pieter Omtzigt, a centrist who had hoped to upend the election — had linked an increase in migrants to a shortage of housing, which was among the biggest issues for Dutch voters.But it was Mr. Wilders who ultimately spoke to a discontent that experts said could be traced back at least to the rise of Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing populist who was assassinated a week before elections in which he had led the opinion polls. Mr. Fortuyn, who hoped to become the Netherlands’ first gay prime minister, ran on a strong anti-immigrant platform more than 20 years ago.Voter dissatisfaction was also evident in more recent elections: Regional votes this year and in 2019, which decide the makeup of the Dutch Senate, saw big victories by populist newcomers.Last year, 60 percent of Dutch people said they were unhappy with how politics was done in the country, according to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research.Elections are often a reaction to what happened previously, Ms. Stoker said, referring to Mr. Rutte’s record-breaking 13-year tenure as prime minister. The Rutte government collapsed in July over disputes on immigration policy, precipitating Wednesday’s election.While Mr. Rutte has been a stalwart of Dutch politics, several scandals plagued his leadership which added to an erosion in trust in the government, according to Dutch political experts. Mr. Rutte will stay on as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed.Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, who has served a record 13 years in the role, will stay on until a new government is formed.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockIn the final days of the campaign, Mr. Wilders started inching up in the polls partly helped by what many people regarded as strong performances in televised debates, a stronger media focus on him and a slight softening of some of his extreme positions on Islam.But the margin of victory was unexpected. Mr. Wilders’s party has often performed better in opinion polls than in elections. This time, the trend reversed.“These were the most volatile elections ever — never before have so many seats changed hands,” said Tom van der Meer, a professor in political science at the University of Amsterdam.Mr. Rutte had long said that he would not govern with Mr. Wilders. But Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, Mr. Rutte’s successor as the lead candidate for the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, had left open the door to forming a coalition with Mr. Wilders.That softening appears to have bolstered Mr. Wilders’s performance — long a protest candidate with little hope of real power, this time he could present himself to Dutch voters as a strategic choice: a viable governing partner, even a potential prime minister.Still, it will be complicated for Mr. Wilders to move from the opposition into a stable coalition in a country where politics rests on the art of compromise.In 2010, he had an informal liaison with the mainstream conservative party’s coalition, but he bolted when it wanted to cut back pension benefits. More

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      Putin Eyes Another Term as President, With War as Backdrop

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      There is little doubt about the outcome, should he run, but the election in March carries more significance as the first one since the invasion of Ukraine.When asked last week what kind of leader should replace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, his longtime spokesman gave a quick and simple answer: “the same.”“Or different, but the same,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told a Russian television network, adding that he was confident that should Mr. Putin run, he would win the election “without doubt” and would remain “our president.”Few doubt that Mr. Putin will seek another presidential term in an election scheduled for March. He is widely expected to formally announce his candidacy next month.There is little question about the outcome, too; in Russia’s authoritarian political system, Mr. Putin is always reported to have won in a landslide. He has led Russia as either president or prime minister since 1999.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Far-Right Party Predicted to Win Dutch Elections in Landslide

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      The party of Geert Wilders, a longtime political provocateur with a history of antipathy toward immigrants and Islam, held a wide lead, according to early results, an outcome that could send shock waves through Europe.The Netherlands on Wednesday took a startling turn in national elections with the potential to ripple through Europe, as Dutch voters threw most support behind the party of a far-right icon with an incendiary reputation who had campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform.Geert Wilders, a political provocateur long known for his anti-Islam and anti-Europe stances, appeared poised to come out significantly ahead with the most parliamentary seats, according to some early results and exit polls, which were expected to be dependable, especially given the margin of victory they indicated.“The Dutch voter has spoken,” Mr. Wilders said in a speech on Wednesday night, declaring himself the winner. “The voter has said, ‘We are fed up.’” He added that he wanted to return “the Netherlands to the Dutch.”If the preliminary results hold up, the Netherlands will be at the threshold of uncertain new political terrain after 13 years of stewardship by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a stalwart of Dutch politics and a dependable presence on the E.U. stage.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More