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      COVID-19: The Lab Leak Theory Makes a Comeback

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      The sudden reemergence of the lab leak theory earlier this year — that COVID-19 was made in and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — has hit international media and occasioned nervous reactions from the Biden administration, which demanded a conclusive report on the origins of the pandemic within 90 days. That deadline has just expired, with little result. As the head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergencies program, Michael Ryan, stated last week, “The current situation is that all of the hypotheses regarding to the origins of the virus are still on the table.”

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      The radical right has, in the meantime, become obsessed with the lab leak idea. Those of us who have experienced — and survived — coordinated campaigns of abuse on social media recognize the signs: Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, people you have never heard of begin to spam your email or social media accounts. Someone has pointed the trolls in your direction, and you start to wonder, who and why?

      Someone’s Errands

      In the final days of May, “Mikael” emailed me: “So the most likely truth about Corona is a conspiracy idea that is a threat against democracy? What kind of nut are you that is so wrong? Who’s errands do you run?”

      The background to his kind email, followed up by another a few days later, was an article published a week earlier in the right-leaning Swedish journal Kvartal. Here, journalist Ola Wong suggested that a report — I happen to be its author — published by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) aims to serve the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In a gross simplification of what the report actually stated, Wong alleged that it “cautions against blaming China” and “goes so far as to claim that searching for an answer to the origin of the virus and the responsibility for its spread basically amounts to a desire to find a ‘scapegoat’. MSB says that this is the hallmark of conspiracy theories and a threat to democracy.”

      What I did in my report was provide an overview of how conspiracy theories around COVID-19 are part of what the WHO has branded the “infodemic” — an infected infoscape in which different actors spread disinformation for various purposes, such as to denigrate their political opponents and attack expert knowledge. I distinguish between six areas of conspiratorial imagination in relation to the pandemic: origins, dissemination, morbidity and mortality, countermeasures in politics and public health, vaccination and metatheories.

      Both separately or in various combinations, all these six categories have fueled conspiratorial meaning-making. In some cases, they have driven processes of radicalization toward violent extremism, such as attacks against 5G technology, mass demonstrations leading to political violence or disgusting displays of racist stereotypes.

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      Moreover, as a historian of ideas, I don’t study the root causes of or treatments for a contagious virus that has killed millions across the globe but rather the conceptions and discourses connected to it. In that sense, I am less interested in what really caused the pandemic and more invested in studying how different concepts — for instance about its origins — are used in (conspiratorial) rhetoric around the subject. It is also not my ambition or task to investigate the likeliness of a lab leak or the possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine contains a microchip. So, first of all, Wong — and, as we will see, others alongside him — has failed to capture the basic premises of the report. Just to make my case, the passage Wong reacted to (the MSB report will soon be available in an English translation), reads:

      “The question about the origin of the virus and the disease is infected because there is an underlying accusation of guilt. Could anyone who might have known about the existence of the virus also have stopped its dissemination? Was the outbreak of the virus covered up? Was the virus created in a lab or by transmission from animal to human? Questions like these are of course reasonable to ask, but already early on they were connected to what is an attribute of conspiracy theories: to place blame on someone and point out scapegoats. … By calling COVID-19 ‘the China-virus’ a narrative was established in which China was made responsible for the pathogen, disease and in extension its dissemination. In the trail of imposing guilt, racist Sino/Asiaphobic stereotypes were expressed against people with Asian appearance across the globe.”

      I then made a parallel to the famous claim made by former President Donald Trump and his followers that climate change is a “Chinese hoax to bring down the American economy” and that, in continuation of this line of thought, COVID-19 now is inserted into the narrative with the twist that it would benefit the Democrats in the 2020 election. I concluded that “in both conspiratorial narratives, scientific expertise is rejected.” Furthermore, I quoted an expert from Yale Medical School (Wong wrongly frames it as my opinion) stating that it is both incorrect and xenophobic to “attach locations or ethnicity to the disease.” I also mentioned that the spread of the virus was blamed on a cabal between the CCP and the Democrats.

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      Nowhere in the entire report is it ever claimed or even hinted at that it somehow would be wrong or illegitimate to investigate the origins of the virus as a lab leak. It is true that conspiracy theories typically use scapegoating as one of many rhetoric strategies, and that they are, by extension, threatening democracy for multiple reasons. But it is utterly wrong to suggest, as Wong does, that the report somehow alleges that it would be a threat to democracy to investigate the origins of the pandemic as a lab leak or that the report dismissed such claims as a conspiracy theory.

      Wong writes: “But if you mention China, you risk being labeled as a racist or accused of spreading conspiracy theories. Why has the origin of the virus become such a contentious issue?” But anyway, “MSB’s message benefits the CCP” and its narrative “that the pandemic is a global problem” (well, isn’t it?) and “not a problem originating from China to which the world has the right to demand answers.”

      Chinese Propaganda Machine

      Wong identifies such deflection as an outcome of a cunning Chinese propaganda machine, quoting an article that remembers how the US was blamed for the origin of AIDS/HIV in the 1980s in a similar conspiracy mode. Well, had Wong turned a page of the MSB report, he would have found a passage with the heading “The US-virus,” which exactly explains that another conspiratorial narrative about the origin of the virus also exists. Consequently, it would have similarly been completely absurd to state that the report “serves the interests of the US” since it treats the narrative about the “US virus” as a typical conspiracy theory.

      But such inconsistencies are of no interest to Wong. Instead, he now delves into the by now well-established “new evidence” (it was always suggested as a possibility) that he claims to have “disappeared from the global agenda” (did it really?) about the lab leak theory. The reason why the theory was suppressed, he argues, was because “The media’s aversion to Trump created a fear of association,” and “Because of the general derision for Trump, the established media chose to trust virologists such as [Dr. Peter] Daszak rather than investigating the laboratory hypothesis.”

      Divide and Rule: What Drives Anti-Asian Resentment in America?

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      Wong then extensively quotes from science journalist Nicholas Wade pushing for the explanation that “gain-of-function” experiments were carried out in Wuhan and that zoonotic transmission seems unlikely: “What Wade describes is not a conspiracy, but rather an accident for which no one has wanted to assume responsibility.” Wong is obsessed with responsibility and “the day of reckoning” that yet is to come, when China’s guilt finally will be revealed to the global audience. As much as he seems to long for this day when justice will prevail, he implores at the very end of his article to not “let sweeping allegations of conspiracy theories and racism undermine the work to trace the origins of the virus.”

      Wong’s article left me puzzled in many ways, almost unimpressed. I did not state anything in my report that Wong purports I did, so it is difficult to understand why a journalist would find it worthwhile challenging the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency with an argument that has no basis whatsoever.

      Lab Leak Whispers

      Just two days later, Swedish public service radio P1 invited both myself a Wong to come on its morning program to address the question of “What are you allowed to say about the origin of COVID-19?” — stipulating that there is some sort of censorship around the subject. Wong was unable to produce any credible evidence that the CCP ever has called the lab leak theory a conspiracy. There might be, and I am interested to read more about this attribution and its rhetorical function; the Chinese embassy in Washington later used such terminology.

      By then, the fringes of the Swedish radical right had already sniffed out the potential of the story, propelled by the tabloid Expressen, which in bold letters ran the story, “MSB dismisses the lab-leak entirely: follows the line of China.” The article reiterates Wong’s one, but manipulates the content of the MSB report further, alleging that accusations of racism and conspiracy theories stifle the investigation of the origins of COVID-19.

      Radical-right agitator Christian Palme posted Wong’s article on one of Sweden’s Facebook pages for academics, Universitetsläckan, which kicked off a wave of conspiratorial debate. Per Gudmundsson, of the right-wing online news outlet Bulletin, stated in an op-ed that the MSB report made him suspicious. Hailing Hunter S. Thompson’s paranoid style of reporting, Gudmundsson alleges that the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency wants to pacify the people with calming messages. He ridiculed attempts to discuss what is reasonable to do when planning interventions and designing counternarratives to toxic disinformation that can act as drivers of radicalization while at the same time exercating Islamist extremism, without any interest in countering it.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Finally, the gross simplifications of Wong’s article had reached the outer orbits of the alternative radical-right media in Sweden, Fria Tider and Samnytt. Fria Tider referenced the controversial Swedish virologist Fredrik Elgh, stating that it is “senseless” that MSB had dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory (it did not). Samnytt, in turn, amplified the Chinese whispers started in Kvartal to a completely new level. In its own version of reality, the MSB report was allegedly released in order to prevent any investigation of China (not true). Under the heading “Prohibited to ask questions,” Samnytt states: “the message of the report is that it is not allowed to ask questions about the origin of the virus” (also not true).

      Moreover, referring to and quoting Gudmundsson’s article on Bulletin, it goes on to state that “instead of questioning the established truths, the report recommends ‘to be in the present and to plant a tree’” — right quote but wrong context — “or to use other methods to calm your thoughts.” The author of the article is Egor Putilov, a pseudonym of a prolific character in the Swedish radical-right alternative media.

      And now back to Mikael. Curious to drag out trolls from under their stones (they might explode in daylight), I answered the first email he sent to me; he replied. Mikael characterized himself as a disabled pensioner (Asperger’s) living in a Swedish suburb among “ISIS-fans, clans, psychopath-criminals and addicts etc. which you most likely have taken part in to create/import.” He asserted to have insights about what is happening behind the scenes related to COVID-19 and that the recent reemergence of the lab leak theory only demonstrated his superiority in analyzing world matters: “If I think something controversial, the rest of Sweden frequently thinks the same twenty years later.”

      He recommended I look for knowledge outside the small circle of disinformed and obedient yes-people within the “system.” I must admit that Mikael’s email was one of the friendlier online abuses I have experienced. On the same day, I also received a message from “Sten” titled “C*ck” and containing a short yet threatening line, “beware of conspiracy theories and viruses… .”

      What If the Scientists Were Wrong?

      As historian and political analyst Thomas Frank eloquently has pointed out, we should expect a political earthquake if a lab leak is indeed confirmed. Frank claims that what is under attack is science itself. Science, we were told, held the answers on how to combat the pandemic. Experts in public health provided scientific evidence for political countermeasures, despised by those who routinely reject science or feel that their liberties have been infringed upon.

      If it is proven that “science has failed the global population,” either by accident, by gain-of-function research getting out of control or, worse, by deliberately creating a bioweapon, both scientists and those who rely on their expertise will come under attack and their authority will be seriously undermined, with unpredictable consequences. Why would people have reasons to believe that climate change is real, that 5G technology is harmless or that cancer might be cured with rDNA treatment? Frank posits that what is at stake is a liberal “sort of cult” of science that was developed against the “fool Trump.” Should it turn out that scientists and experts were wrong, “we may very well see the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism go up in a fireball of public anger.”

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      Frank and others, such as Wade and his Swedish apologist Wong, allege that it somehow was the media’s fault to cement the lab leak origin as a crazy conspiracy theory just because it was peddled by a president who made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims while in office. When the “common people of the world” find out that they might “have been forced into a real-life lab experiment,” a moral earthquake will be on its way since they will come to the ultimate realization “that here is no such thing as absolute expertise.”

      In the end, this will imply that populism was right all along about the existence of an existential dualism between “the people” and the well-to-do, well-educated ruling “elite” minority that creates and manages an eternal cycle of disasters affecting the majority. I tend to agree: This dualism is in fact a strong driver of populist mobilization and one that reoccurs in most conspiracy theories: we, the suffering people, the victims, against them, the plotting elite, the perpetrators.

      But I would like to add to Frank’s conclusions, that the (social) media outlets as much as the radical-right propagandists were immediately able to smell out the potential of the lab leak as a typical frame by which “the people” like Mikael, Sten, Martin and Per (more and more of them — all male — have started contacting me directly) could be pitched against “fake science,” government agencies and politicians.

      I would say that this, in fact, is the real purpose. In reality, the radical right does not care one bit about the origins of the virus but has discovered a perfect trope with which public distrust in authority can be deepened further. This is the reason why Wong needed to unleash an unsubstantiated attack against the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. He, as much as Gudmundsson, despises any attempt to provide citizens with tools to decode disinformation and conspiracy theories as to allow informed members of society to judge the accuracy of various claims beyond populist apocalypticism. If media literacy and the ability to detect conspiratorial messages increase, sensationalist media outlets will lose their power.

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      One of the three key elements of populism as defined by Benjamin Moffit is a permanent invocation of crisis, breakdown or threat. If this perpetuum mobile is disrupted, the source of populist power is dismantled, which is why Wong and others have to target the firefighters, and why Gudmundsson doesn’t want to hear about how to counter radicalization. The eternal flame of catastrophe is the campfire of populist socialization. Right now, the lab leak theory is a giant burning log providing heat for all these gratifying marshmallows to be grilled and fed to “the people.”

      But there might also be other reasons. By pushing the lab leak hypothesis, the radical right makes the case that “Trump was right” about the “China virus” and, if so, he might also be right about the “stolen” election and all other 29,998 lies uttered during his presidency. Moreover, it was the liberal mainstream media’s fault that the lab leak was “buried” (which it never was) because they are all agents of Chinese disinformation (and communism, as we all know, is the great evil of the 20th century), classical guilt by association. So, in the bigger picture, the lab leak is needed as proof of the infallibility of the great leader in his quest to “drain the swamp.” QAnon will celebrate on the ruins of Capitol Hill.

      However, what worries me most is that the lab leak theory is used by the radical right as an attempt to minimize the danger of anti-Asian racism or any other racist attribution and abuse in case of earlier or later crises and catastrophes. Somehow, not only will science be proven wrong and the great leader right, but racism will be defended as a rational and normal reaction to pandemics. Wait, didn’t the Jews poison our wells at one point?

      *[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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      Critical Race Theory: A Dictatorship of the Woke?

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      In Washoe County, Nevada, parents protest critical race theory (CRT), while a conservative group is pushing for teachers to wear body cameras to make sure they aren’t indoctrinating students. In Loudon county, Virginia, home to Leesburg, a town named after Confederate General Robert E. Lee, wealthy white parents scream in school meetings. Across the US, mostly white parents picket school board meetings, holding up “No CRT” signs as though it were 1954 and their schools were about to be integrated.

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      This demonization of an academic theory is supported by virulent media discourses. Fox News says that the teachers’ unions support CRT and will push it on your schools at a cost of $127,600. Breitbart takes it further, suggesting that CRT is going to set up “a dictatorship of the anti-racists.” On Twitter, opponents compare CRT to anti-white racism and the far-right conspiracy of white genocide.

      Undoing Racism

      So what is critical race theory? Is it a radical anti-racist Marxist program bent on overturning power structures for an amount equivalent to what Tucker Carlson earns in a week? Scholars say CRT is in fact a framework from critical legal studies emphasizing not the social construction of race but the reality of racism, in particular racism’s deep roots in American history and its perpetuation in legal and social structures. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term, emphasizes that it is an ongoing scholarly practice of interrogating racism.

      Is it being taught in your schools? Nobody is teaching CRT to kindergarteners. Critical race theory has become part of education studies, one of many frameworks influencing researchers and instuctors who want a framework for understanding, and undoing, racism in education. Some link CRT in schools to The 1619 Project launched by The New York Times that seeks to center black history and slavery in the story of America’s founding.

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      So why does your uncle who spends too much time on the internet think this is a dictatorship of the woke? The moral panic over CRT is the brainchild of Chris Rufo, who began using the term to refer to a catch-all, nefarious force behind all kinds of social change, from Joe Biden’s weak liberalism to Black Lives Matter. Conservatives link CRT to trans rights and communism, the Heritage Foundation compares it to Marxist critical theory. The Trump administration launched a counter to The 1619 Project, the 1776 Commision, to elevate whiteness and fight “critical race theorists” and “anti-American historical revisionism.”

      Moral panics position one idea, process, identity or group as evil, a threat to public order, values and morality, but they align institutional power with popular discourses to enforce the social positions and identities behind them. As of July, 22 states have proposed bills against teaching critical race theory and five have signed them into law. These bills ban teaching CRT, which they insist makes white students uncomfortable and introduces “divisive concepts.” For the right, the vision of US history is one that teaches color-blind unity and pride in being American. Of course, it also teaches that the KKK was OK.

      Anti-Anti-Racist Panic

      This is far from the first moral panic over education. Historian Adam Laats compares the fight against CRT to the fight against the evolution of teaching. This first moral panic led to widespread distrust in public schools. More recent moral panics also led to divestment in social institutions. In the 1980s, a panic about satanic kindergartens in the US led to the reinforcement of dominant gender and racial power structures, but also to the withdrawal of support for daycare and early childhood education.

      Panics over sex education, from Australia to Aabama, called for defunding these programs, shrinking already limited school budgets while increasing conservative opposition to public education. In the UK, the Conservative Party wants to ban teaching white privilege because it hurts working-class boys — while at the same time dismantling the free school meals program.

      What will the effects of this anti-anti-racist panic be? Will they curb the freedom of teachers to share the truths of history or push them to teach a still more nationalist version of the American story? Will history classes explicitly celebrate white masculinity, full of heroic founders fulfilling a holy promise for freedom and capital? Or might it also serve as another push to demonize public schools, painting them not as (unequally funded) shared democratic institutions but as anti-American indoctrination centers?

      Embed from Getty Images

      Even if the bills do not reshape education standards, the dramatic language around CRT and white genocide continues the longstanding push to defund and privatize public schools. As education scholar Michael Apple notes, the right’s education reform has long linked neoliberal privatization with neoconservative curriculums, something that continues with the opposition to CRT.

      Breitbart mentions Utah’s Say No to Indoctrination Act that will “keep taxpayer dollars from funding discriminatory practices and divisive worldviews,” linking cost and curriculum. It is not a coincidence that conservative media mention the price of anti-racist interventions and the dog whistle of “taxpayer dollars.” Fighting CRT might mean bills to change curriculum standards, but it could equally mean a push to cut funding for public schools reframed as cutting funding for CRT — as Senate candidate J.D. Vance suggests on Twitter — or a call for greater support for private, religious and home education.

      Both increased nationalism and privatization of education were key issues for the right. Donald Trump’s 2020 education platform’s first point was to teach American exceptionalism; his second was to have school choice. With this panic over critical race theory, far-right drama serves to reinforce the more banal nationalism of capital and conservatism. Painting schools as cultural-Marxist madrassas makes it a lot easier to stop paying for them.

      *[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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      From Merkel to Baerbock: Female Politicians Still Face Sexism in Germany

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      Angela Merkel has become a symbol of women’s success and self-assertion in a political arena still dominated by men, both in Germany and globally. Until a few months ago, the prospect of a female successor seemed very likely. But the initial euphoria, shortly after the Green Party named Annalena Baerbock as its candidate for the chancellorship, has died down.

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      In May, polls showed that 43% of the German population perceived Baerbock as a suitable successor for Merkel, leading over her two main contenders; at the end of August, this figure was down to 22%. Targeted online campaigns have been busy exploiting Baerbock’s missteps and stoking fears of political change among voters. These attacks have laid bare how modern political campaigns in the age of social media flush sexist attitudes that persist in both politics and the wider society to the surface. 

      Belittled and Patronized

      Before Merkel rose to become one of the world’s most powerful female politicians, she was underestimated and belittled throughout the 1990s as a woman from East Germany by a male-dominated West German political class. Despite prevailing in intra-party struggles by often adapting to male behavior, she still had to face gender-based headwinds during her first general election campaign in 2005 as the front runner of her party.

      The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) began the campaign polling at 48%, only to plummet to a sobering 35.2% on election day, securing a knife-edge victory over the incumbent, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Even back then, when social media was still a negligible factor, Merkel had to face partly overt, partly subliminal gender-discriminatory reporting. German media dissected Merkel’s outward appearance, starting with the corners of her mouth and her hairstyle and ending with her now-famous pantsuits.

      According to Rita Süssmuth, president of the German Bundestag from 1988 to 1998, at times, “there was more discussion about hairstyle, outer appearance, facial expression, hands, etc. than there was debate about the content. And how often did the question come up: Can the girl do it?”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Her competence was called into doubt, as stereotypical headlines from the time show: “Angela Merkel — an angel of understanding kindness,” “A power woman … corpses pave her way.” In 2004, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse came to the following conclusion to the question of why Merkel had to face such inappropriate media scrutiny: “Because she is a woman and comes from the East. And that is not the stuff of political fantasies that make West German men’s clubs ecstatic.”

      Even Merkel’s nickname, “Mutti” (mommy), used affectionately by most Germans now, was originally a derisive epithet. The slow reinterpretation of this nickname is emblematic of how difficult it is for women in politics to break away from antiquated role models.

      Since then, Merkel has emerged victorious in four consecutive elections, at the moment the country’s second-longest serving chancellor after Helmut Kohl. She is one of the countless global role models who have proven women to be apt leaders. In light of this overwhelming evidence of women’s political prowess, the levels of sexism and disinformation launched against Baerbock are astonishing. 

      Targeted From Day One

      When the Green Party chose Baerbock as its front runner in April, it did so with confidence that after 16 years of Angela Merkel, voters had shed their misgivings about aspiring female politicians. If anything, the Greens expected a young, energetic woman to embody political change and provide an appealing contrast to the stodgy, veteran, male candidates like Armin Laschet of the CDU and Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). But soon after the announcement of her candidacy, voices emerged online questioning whether a mother of two would be suitable for the chancellorship. However, it’s not just her status as a mother that made Baerbock an ideal target, especially for conservatives and far-right populists on the internet: Unlike Merkel, she is young, politically more inexperienced, liberal and green.

      Adding to that, Baerbock exposed herself to criticism by making unforced mistakes. False statements in her CV, delayed declarations of supplementary income and alleged plagiarism in her book published in June provided further ammunition to her adversaries. Her book’s title, “Now. How We Renew Our Country,” and the criticism she faces mirror the Greens’ current dilemma. Before Baerbock could even communicate a new, innovative policy approach with climate protection at its center to the voters, public attention had already diverted to her shortcomings.

      While part of the blame rests with Baerbock herself, a lack of proportionality of criticisms toward her as opposed to other contestants in this election is apparent. For more than a year now, accusations loom around her contender for the post of chancellor, Olaf Scholz. As finance minister and chairman of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, he is accused of failing to prevent the biggest accounting scandal in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany surrounding Wirecard AG, a payment processor and financial services provider. Luckily for Scholz, still-unanswered questions concerning the scandal receive scarce media attention, partly due to the complexity of the issue at hand making it harder to distill into bite-size news. 

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      Armin Laschet, the CDU‘s candidate for chancellorship and minister president of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, had to navigate rough waters during the COVID-19 crisis. The state government used opaque procedures to award a contract for protective gowns worth €38.5 million ($45.6 million) to the luxury fashion manufacturer van Laack, a company linked to Laschet’s son. Laschet also received criticism for a good-humored appearance during a visit to areas affected by floods that killed at least 189 in July. In addition, he too was accused of plagiarism due to suspicious passages in a book published in 2009.

      Even though Scholz’s, and especially Laschet’s missteps have not gone unnoticed by the media, the public and political opponents, Lothar Probst, a researcher at the University of Bremen, recognizes a systematic character in the criticism faced by Baerbock. In an interview with the German Press Agency, he surmised: “Her credibility, respectability, and authority are undermined, she is portrayed as sloppy. … A young, urban smart woman [is] once again tackled harder than her competitors.”

      Even before Baerbock’s gaffes were in the spotlight, she found herself in the firing line. Conspiracy theories surfaced, suggesting that Baerbock was a puppet of George Soros and an advocate of the “great reset” conspiracy. Disinformation about Baerbock was also gender-based. Collages of sexualized images quickly circulated, including deepfake photographs disseminated via the messenger Telegram.

      Such disinformation originated significantly from far-right circles. In 2019, according to the federal criminal police office, 77% of registered hate posts were attributable to the center-right and far-right political spectrum. According to political scientist Uwe Jun, from Trier University, female politicians from green parties are primary targets for right-wing attacks and disinformation because topics such as climate protection and emancipation inflame passions and mobilize the political right.

      Worldwide Concern

      Baerbock’s political opponents and critics deny disproportionate criticism, insisting that she should have known what she had signed up for; after all, election campaigns are not for the faint-hearted, especially when entering the race as the front-runner. Yet statistics prove that in Germany, hatred toward female politicians is an everyday occurrence. A survey by Report München showed that 87% of the female politicians interviewed encountered hate and threats on an almost daily basis; 57% of these were sexist attacks.

      These results are in line with international studies. In a 2019 report “#ShePersisted. Women, Politics & Power in the New Media World,” conducted by Lucina di Meco and Kristina Wilfore, 88 global female leaders were interviewed, most of whom were “concerned about the pervasiveness of gender-based abuse.” The study concluded that “A new wave of authoritarian leaders and illiberal actors around the world use gendered disinformation and online abuse to push back against the progress made on women’s and minority rights.”

      A recent study from January, “Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex, and Lies are Weaponized Against Women Online,” by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, also shows that 12 of the 13 surveyed female politicians suffered gendered abuse online. Nine of them were at the receiving end of gendered disinformation, containing racist, transphobic and sexual narratives, with the latter being the most common.

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      Sixteen years have passed between Angela Merkel‘s and Annalena Baerbock’s first campaigns for the chancellorship. Today, women striving for power still have to deal with mistrust and gender-discriminatory prejudice. Merkel had to hold her own in a male-dominated environment where she was underestimated and often treated disparagingly. But compared to Merkel, the campaign against Baerbock has reached a new, unprecedented dimension. Merkel, who is childless, outwardly inconspicuous and politically more conservative, offered less of a target to conservative, male adversaries than the young, modern and progressive Baerbock.

      Besides, Baerbock’s opponents in 2021 have more effective tools for spreading gendered disinformation on social media. While disinformation targets both male and female politicians, women are more affected. It aims to undermine women’s credibility and their chances of electoral success and discourage future generations of women from pursuing political careers. Germany’s female politicians must keep in mind that such disinformation is spread by distorted, unrepresentative groups that don’t reflect the social progress made over the years.

      At this particular moment, it appears unlikely that Baerbock will move into the chancellor’s office as Merkel did in 2005 by the narrowest of margins. Yet the race is far from over, with nearly a month until election day. Baerbock’s recent performance in the first of three TV debates proves that she is not ready to abandon the field to (online) campaigners spreading gender-based prejudice and disinformation. Despite polls declaring Scholz as the debate’s winner, narrowly ahead of Baerbock, she presented herself as a modern and socioecological alternative to both her contenders and reverted attention to policy away from her persona and gender.

      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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      Stopping at Diego Garcia Raises Questions for Germany

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      The frigate Bayernset sail for the Indo-Pacific at the beginning of August, as a German contribution to upholding the “rules-based international order.” Germany increasingly views the rules-based international order as under threat, not least through China’s vast territorial claims, including its artificial islands, in the South China Sea.

      The German government has repeatedly drawn attention to China’s disregard for international law, especially in the context of its refusal to abide by a ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which declared its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegal under international law in 2016. Yet the German warship’s chosen route takes it to a US base whose status under international law is — to say the least — contested, thus torpedoing the implicit criticism of China.

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      Diego Garcia is the largest island in the Chagos Archipelago, which formerly belonged to the British Indian Ocean colony of Mauritius. In 1965, the British illegally retained the Chagos Islands in order to construct a military base there. The United Kingdom declared the archipelago a restricted military area and deported its entire population to Mauritius and the Seychelles. Since then, the base on Diego Garcia has largely been used by the United States. The Brits have leased the island to the Americans until 2036.

      Violation of the Right to Self-Determination

      Mauritius has been seeking to reclaim its sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago since the 1980s. In 2019, an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the UK’s claim to the archipelago contradicted the right to self-determination and called on UN member states to “co-operate with the United Nations to complete the decolonization of Mauritius.” A resolution adopted by a large majority of the UN General Assembly called for the United Kingdom to “withdraw its colonial administration.” Most European states abstained, including Germany.

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      While the advisory opinion and resolution are not legally binding, they certainly possess normative power. In 2021, a ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg concurred with the ICJ’s interpretation. A separate issue of fundamental human rights is also involved: The US base housed a detention facility where terror suspects are known to have been tortured. Unlike Guantanamo Bay, the Diego Garcia facility remained completely secret until it was revealed by investigative journalists in 2003.

      A so-called bunker call at Diego Garcia is the obvious option for keeping the German warship’s replenishment as simple as possible on the long leg from Karachi in Pakistan to Perth in Australia. Calling at a NATO ally’s port is easy to arrange, with simplified procedures for procuring food and fuel. Resupplying in Sri Lanka or Indonesia, for example, would be much more complex.

      Alternative Route Possible

      The obvious operational benefits are outweighed by the cost to the mission’s normative objectives: Calling at Diego Garcia will inevitably invite accusations of double standards. The UK’s open defiance of the ICJ opinion and UN resolution means that visits to the Chagos Islands implicitly accept — if not openly support — a status quo that is at the very least problematic under international law.

      The bunker call would run counter to both the ICJ opinion and the ITLOS ruling, as well as boosting Beijing’s narrative that the West is selective in its application of the rules of an already Western-dominated international order. At a juncture where international norms and rules are increasingly contested in the context of Sino-American rivalry, none of this is in Germany’s strategic interest.

      Embed from Getty Images

      There are alternatives to replenishing at Diego Garcia. Changing the route would involve costs, but it would also underline Germany’s interest in upholding the rules-based international order. One possible outcome of a reevaluation of the current route planning would be to omit the call at Diego Garcia but, at the same time, to take the vessel closer than currently planned to the contested Chinese-built artificial islands in the South China Sea.

      In connection with a detour avoiding Diego Garcia, that would represent a gesture boosting international law, rather than a demonstration of military might toward China. Germany could show that it is willing to comply with international law, even where doing so contradicts its own immediate operational interests and its partners’ expectations.

      *[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

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      in UK Politics

      EU must talk to Taliban since they ‘won the war,’ says bloc’s foreign policy chief

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      The EU must talk to the Taliban since they have “won the war” in Afghanistan, the bloc’s foreign policy chief has said.Josep Borrell said Brussels had decided it was necessary to engage with the country’s new ruling power after an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers to discuss the crisis.“We have to get in touch with authorities in Kabul. The Taliban have won the war and we have to talk to them,” said Mr Borrell at a news conference on Tuesday.But the foreign policy chief insisted that the EU will only cooperate with the Taliban if it respects women’s rights and prevents the use of Afghanistan’s territory by terrorist groups.“I haven’t said that we are going to recognise the Taliban,” he said. “I just said that we have to talk with them for everything – even to try to protect women and girls. Even for that, you have to get in touch with them.”Mr Borrell added: “We will put conditions for continual support, and we are going to use our leverage … to make the human rights to be respected. I know that when I’m saying that it looks a little bit wishful thinking. But we will use all our leverage.”The Taliban claimed animosities with foreign powers were over at a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday afternoon. The militant group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told journalists: “We do not have any grudges against anybody. We have pardoned … all those who have fought against us.”The spokesman also claimed that women’s rights were “very important” and would be respected “within the framework of Sharia”.Mr Mujahid added: “Our sisters … have the same rights, will be able to benefit from their rights. The international community – if they have concerns – we would like to assure them that there is not going to be any discrimination against women, but of course within the frameworks that we have.”Although Germany has decide to temporarily halt development aid to Afghanistan, the EU will continue to provide assistance to the Afghan people to address the “worsening humanitarian situation”, Mr Borrell announced.UK foreign minister Dominic Raab suggested on Tuesday that aid spending to Afghanistan could be increased by 10 per cent, despite millions already being removed from the budget due to government cuts.Mr Borrell called on the Taliban to allow safe and unhindered access for humanitarian assistance to Afghan women, men and children in need, including internal refugees.“The EU calls on the Taliban to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law in all circumstances. The EU will also support Afghanistan’s neighbours in coping with negative spillovers, which are to be expected from an increasing flow of refugees and migrants,” he added.Mr Borrell also said that while the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan succeeded, the process of nation-building failed, despite the enormous amount of resources directed to the country.The foreign policy chief said the immediate priority was to evacuate remaining EU staff, their interpreters and others working with the bloc’s officials in Kabul.“The first objective, the priority, is to ensure the evacuation in the best conditions of security of the European nationals still present in the country, and also of the Afghan citizens who worked with us for more than 20 years, if they want to leave the country,” he said.Meanwhile, Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan praised the Taliban’s conduct, saying that the group – still designated a terrorist organisation in Russia – made Kabul “better” than it had been under the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani. More

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      in World Politics

      The Delta Variant of Global Stupidity

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      You’d think that the whole world could unite against a deadly virus. COVID-19 has already sickened over 200 million people around the world and killed over 4 million. It has now mutated into more contagious forms that threaten to plunge the globe into another spin cycle of lockdown.

      The Politics of American Protest: A North Korean Twist

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      Avoiding global catastrophe from the more infectious Delta variant of COVID-19 doesn’t require a huge commitment from people and governments. Richer countries just have to ensure more widespread availability of vaccines, and individuals have to get vaccinated. COVID-19 is not an asteroid on a collision course with the planet. It’s not an imminent nuclear war. It’s an invisible enemy that humanity has demonstrated it can beat. It just requires a bit of cooperation. So, what’s the problem?

      Three Problems

      Actually, there are three problems. The first has to do with supply, since the richest nations have cornered the vaccine market and have been criminally slow to get doses to poorer countries. On the entire continent of Africa, for instance, less than 2% of the population has been fully vaccinated.

      The second problem, on the demand side, is the commonplace resistance to the newfangled, in this case a vaccine that was developed very quickly, hasn’t yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and has some side effects that are harmful for a very small number of people. Hesitation is understandable. But not when placed against the obvious lethality of COVID-19 and the clear benefits of herd immunity.

      The third problem is political. The far right has jumped on the anti-vaccination bandwagon, seized control of the wheel and is driving the vehicle, al-Qaeda-style, straight into oncoming traffic.

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      Both in the United States and globally, the far right has long been infected by various harmful delusions — the superiority of white people, the fiction of climate change, the evils of government. As the far right has spread, thanks to vectors like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orbán and Narendra Modi, those delusions have mutated.

      Now, with its anti-vaccine opportunism, the far right is circulating a new Delta variant of global stupidity: virally through social media, in a shower of spit and invective on the street and through top-down lunacy from politicians and political parties. COVID-19 and all of its variants will eventually burn themselves out, though at who knows what cost. The latest versions of global stupidity promoted by the far right, however, are proving far more resistant to science, reason and just plain common sense.

      Hijacking the Anti-Vax Movement

      The Brothers of Italy is a neo-fascist formation that is now polling the highest of any political party in the country today. With 21% support, this pro-Mussolini throwback is just ahead of the far-right Lega party. Throw in Silvio Berlusconi’s Forward Italy party at 7% and the hard right looks as if it could form the next government in Italy whenever the next elections are held.

      How did the Brothers of Italy grow in several months from a few percent to the leading party in the polls? Led by Giorgia Meloni, a woman who predictably decries Islam and immigrants, the Brothers of Italy started out as a booster of vaccines, which seemed like a pretty safe position in a country that has suffered so much at the hands of COVID-19.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But Meloni abruptly shifted the party’s stance when the Italian government, currently led by technocrat Mario Draghi, introduced a “green pass” that allows the vaccinated to eat in restaurants, go to bars and enter various public places like museums. Meloni called the pass “the final step on the road to the creation of an Orwellian society,” which “limits the freedom of citizens, further devastates the economy and de facto introduces a vaccine mandate.”

      Limits the freedom of citizens? The freedom to infect other people with a deadly virus? Effectively, Meloni wants to grant all citizens the same right that James Bond famously possessed: the license to kill. Unfortunately, such nonsense has support outside Italy as well.

      Batting for a Pathogen

      In France, the government of Emmanuel Macron has instituted a similar health pass as well as mandating that all medical professionals get vaccinated. The response has been ferocious, with several demonstrations of over 100,000 people mobilizing around the country.

      It might seem at first glance that the French protestors are just ordinary folks who are sick and tired of government intrusions in their lives, similar to the yellow vests protestors from 2018. But the organizers of these anti-vax protests are the usual suspects from the far right like Florian Philippot, a former top aide of the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen. National Rally and the equally rabid Stand Up France have come out against Macron’s policies. Unfortunately, some leading members of the left-wing France Unbowed party have also endorsed the rallies. As in the United States, French anti-vaxxers are resorting to anti-system conspiracy theories up to and including QAnon.

      Despite the size of these rallies whipped up by the far right, a majority of French support the health pass and nearly 70% of the population has gotten at least one shot, compared to only 58% in the United States. But the far right sees the anti-vaccine movement as an opportunity to worm its way into the mainstream in France and elsewhere, such as the Querdenken movement in Germany, the anti-Semitic far right in Poland and evangelical Christian organizations in the Philippines.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Toward this end, the far right has eagerly employed the services of such “useful idiots” as Robert Kennedy, Jr., perhaps the most famous face of the anti-vaccine movement. The Polish far-right party Confederation invited Kennedy to speak on-ine to a Polish parliamentary group on vaccines. Kennedy also put his social media power behind a global day against vaccines that took place last October in 15 countries from Europe to Latin America, which a number of far-right parties helped to organize.

      Originally in the United States, vaccine skepticism circulated mainly on the left, where suspicions of chemicals and corporations created a resistance to having just any substance injected into one’s arm. But then along came Donald Trump, the dark conspiracy theories of the alt-right and ultimately QAnon, which focused latent anti-government sentiments against the medical establishment and its COVID-19 vaccines. Suddenly, videos like “Plandemic” were zipping around cyberspace, and prominent anti-vaxxers like “healthy lifestyle advocate” Larry D. Cook fell under the sway of QAnon.

      Today, in a tired repeat of 2020, US anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are again protesting in front of governors’ mansions, bringing their message to Disneyland and shutting down school board meetings. If COVID-19 were a wealthy corporation that underwrote such disruptions, these actions would make at least some economic sense. If COVID-19 were a wildly popular musical group or a subversively attractive religious cult that governments were trying to suppress, the frenzy of crowds would be somewhat understandable. But COVID-19 is a deadly virus. Why on earth would anyone go to bat for a pathogen?

      The Far Right Has Its Reasons

      Conservatives have traditionally supported the powerful pillars of society: the police, the army, the state. Today’s far right is not conservative. It detests the state. It prefers vigilante justice — everyone standing their ground with gun in hand — to the police and the army, since these latter are representatives of the state.

      Effectively, the far right embraces the old Hobbesian concept of a “war of all against all,” which was the status quo before the emergence of the state. To achieve this “golden age” of general mayhem, the far right pursues any means necessary. It supports homeschooling to destroy public education, privatization of state assets to weaken the government, and deregulation to tilt the playing field in favor of corporations.

      And now, in the age of COVID-19, the far right is even willing to support germ warfare. For that’s what the anti-mask and anti-vaccine ideology amounts to: siding with the novel coronavirus against the sensible policies of the state. One wonders: If the state issued a mandate that required people not to jump off cliffs, would the far right suddenly launch a Lemming Crusade simply to spite the state?

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      I can well imagine the segment on Newsmax.

      Reporter: I’m here with patriot James Q. Public. He and his family are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Tell me, James, why are you about to take a big step into the unknown?

      James Q. Public: The government can’t tell me what to do. I believe in choice. And this is my choice.

      Reporter: Do you think of yourself as a pioneer?

      James Q. Public: Absolutely. This socialist government with its Five Year Plans sickens me. I take it one day at a time. One minute at a time.

      Reporter: Your youngest child doesn’t look happy about your choice.

      James Q. Public: Oh, he’s just a crybaby. He’ll get used to it.

      Reporter: Get used to falling off a cliff?

      James Q. Public: What makes you think we’ll fall?

      Reporter: Well, uh, gravity —

      James Q. Public: Come on, man, you believe in all that nonsense those scientists are trying to force down our throats? Vaccines? Climate change? Gravity? Okay, everyone, let’s go. One small step for the Public family, one large step for arrgghhh….!

      It would all be grimly amusing, like some pandemic version of the Darwin Awards, if the far right’s Lemming Crusade wasn’t threatening to drag the rest of us off the cliff with it.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

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