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      in World Politics

      ProPublica Reveals the US Is a Tax Haven

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      This week, ProPublica published a long, detailed article that blew the roof off two burning and intimately related questions currently in the news: wealth inequality and taxation. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Thomas Piketty, Branko Milanovic and numerous pundits in the media have written reams on the topic. Politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have highlighted the issue and made proposals to address the problem. When Sanders suggested during the Democratic presidential primary that “billionaires shouldn’t exist,” the Democratic Party turned to one of the richest billionaires, Michael Bloomberg, counting on his financial clout to prevent the Vermont senator from winning the party’s nomination.

      In the US, people are more easily impressed by wealth itself than by the serious problem that wealth inequality has created. ProPublica’s article may help to change the public’s focus.

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      ProPublica exposes the brutal fact that, contrary to the tenets of conservative Republican orthodoxy, the wealthy are the “takers” and people who work for a living, the “makers.” Worse, the taking they do no longer requires much effort. The tax system delivers everything they take away from others directly to their doorstep. Between 2014 and 2018, the 25 richest Americans “paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes.” The article calls it “a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.”

      Among the many details, ProPublica highlights the case of Warren Buffett, signaling “his public stance as an advocate of higher taxes for the rich.” Between 2014 and 2018, “Buffett reported paying $23.7 million in taxes.” But given the increase in his wealth over that period, that impressive sum “works out to a true tax rate of 0.1%, or less than 10 cents for every $100 he added to his wealth.” Who wouldn’t be happy paying taxes at that rate? And for Buffett, it isn’t even on earnings, which for most people permit survival, but on the absolute growth of his net worth.

      The article also cites the case of George Soros, the man who single-handedly broke the Bank of England. “Between 2016 and 2018,” according to a spokesman for the billionaire, “George Soros lost money on his investments, therefore he did not owe federal income taxes in those years.” The same spokesman, ProPublica reports, is quoted as affirming that “Mr. Soros has long supported higher taxes for wealthy Americans.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Support:

      To sit on the sidelines and verbally encourage other people to do things one is disinclined to do or incapable of doing on one’s own

      Contextual Note

      ProPublica has provided the world with a truly enlightening trove of information that sends a clear message. And this is only the beginning. The publication promises in the coming months to “explore how the nation’s wealthiest people — roughly the .001% — exploit the structure of our tax code to avoid the tax burdens borne by ordinary citizens.” Its reporting will certainly serve to clarify a debate that, for many, may have seemed too abstract and too polemical to try to take on board.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The numbers demonstrate the extreme, hyperreal nature of wealth distribution today. When the public learns that, in 2011, Jeff Bezos — who is, on and off, the richest man in the world — “claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children” and that his true tax rate over time is less than 1%, they may begin to take the measure of how the tax system works and to whose benefit.

      The figures, nevertheless, show that between 2006 and 2018, Bezos paid out $1.4 billion, a staggering amount for any ordinary wage-earner to even try to comprehend. But his personal fortune over that time ballooned to reach close to $200 billion today. Has he earned it through his hard work? No, it earns itself. That’s what money does. And thanks to his ability to hire tax advisers and clever accountants, all but crumbs of his wealth stay in his hands, never to pollute (or contribute to improving) the public sphere.

      Historical Note

      ProPublica went to great lengths to gather, verify and publish these carefully guarded tax secrets. Its editors were not surprised when, as Forbes reports, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig “told lawmakers that internal and external investigators are working to determine whether the data ProPublica used was illegally obtained.” In the land that enshrined free speech as a right (First Amendment) apparently even more fundamental than the right to own an AR-15 (Second Amendment), all speech is legitimate except when it is blown through a whistle.

      This simply means that the act of reporting certain types of scandalous abuse in the public interest is now deemed to violate the republic’s interest. We can expect the US government to spare no expense in its pursuit of the anonymous whistleblower who provided ProPublica with the tax returns it has put on display, whose secrecy is protected by the law.

      This is not a great time for whistleblowers. The cases of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning have made headlines over the past decade. They all did something that could be interpreted as technically illegal, especially when laws such as the Espionage Act happen to be on the books. But they clearly exposed essential information about how a democracy functions that purports to be “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou and Jeffrey Sterling and Reality Winner are among others who were prosecuted by the Obama and Trump administrations for making significant contributions to our understanding of how government manages and sometimes mismanages people’s lives, fortunes and deaths.

      Last week, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, who worked as a senior adviser at the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, was sentenced to six months in prison for revealing to BuzzFeed News what the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists qualifies as “financial corruption on a global scale.” She was arrested in 2018. Her crime consisted of sharing confidential bank documents with a journalist, an act that sparked “a global investigation into illicit money flows,” which, had she not acted, the public would never have known about.

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      BuzzFeed’s spokesman, Matt Mittenthal, helpfully explained that the resulting “investigation has helped to inspire major reform and legal action in the United States, the E.U., and countries around the world.” In other words, sometimes it is necessary to break the law to make it stronger and more equitable.

      Ben Smith, a New York Times columnist, summed up Edwards’ plight in a tweet: “This woman is going to prison for six months for her role in revealing systemic global financial corruption, and inspiring legal changes all over the world.” The law did not go after BuzzFeed in this case. Nor did it end up going after ProPublica in a 2012 case concerning tax filings for Karl Rove’s nonprofit, Crossroads GPS, in which the IRS initially told BuzzFeed “that it would consider [the] publication of them to be criminal.”

      In the eyes of the IRS, ProPublica has once again committed the crime of letting the truth out of the bag. It may well escape any punishment. The pattern is always to prosecute the whistleblower, but that requires identifying that person. If, as in the case of Edwards, the government does succeed in prosecuting and sentencing the whistleblower, that will not serve to put the truth back in the bag. That is why the government will be relentless in seeking the whistleblower and why the public should be grateful both to that person and to ProPublica.

      The government’s aim is not to repair the damage already done, but to instill fear in any other courageous individual in the position to reveal the inner workings of a system designed for the financial elite and managed by the political elite. In Edwards’ case, US District Judge Gregory H. Woods made this point clear when he “said that it was necessary to impose a ’substantial meaningful sentence’ in order to discourage others from committing similar crimes.”

      Publishing substantial meaningful truth will always provoke the call for a substantial meaningful sentence.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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      in World Politics

      How the Radical Right Bullied Professors in 1920s Austria

      by

      As universities across the United Kingdom scramble to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to sack unwanted lecturers and professors, it becomes increasingly urgent to remember the history of labor organizing in higher education. What has and hasn’t worked in the past?

      The University and College Union is currently fighting job cuts and the closure of courses, departments and even entire campuses at 16 universities across the country, including the universities of Chester, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Portsmouth and Sheffield. Teaching has finished for the year in most places, so the strikes, boycotts and protests are relying primarily on the assumption that it is possible to shame university managers into upholding long-cherished norms about the intrinsic value of education. In several cases, the cuts are a response to the UK government’s decision to reduce funding to the Performing and Creative Arts, Media Studies and Archaeology by half. The wave of redundancies is seen as evidence that many university leaders value profit and political expediency more than research and education.

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      Whether a strategy of petitions and public shaming will work remains to be seen, but the way that universities responded to political and economic pressure during the crisis of postwar reconstruction does not bode well for the unions. In 1920s Austria, university leaders proved willing to sacrifice academic standards and the jobs and physical safety of their staff in order to placate violent bullies on the radical right.

      Austria in the 1920s

      Austrian universities struggled to stay open during World War I, welcoming women and refugees as students and offering “war degrees” for soldiers who could take crash courses and simplified exams while on leave from the front. Once the war was over, students flooded back to campuses, many of them veterans who had been forced to postpone their studies during the war. Whereas before the war students had come from across the Habsburg Empire, now that the empire had collapsed, university admissions officers privileged students who were citizens of the new Austrian Republic.

      A reforming, left-wing government in Vienna tried to reorganize the education system and bring institutions of higher education under the control of the Ministry of Education. Outside of Vienna, in particular, many university leaders resisted centralizing efforts in the hope that the republic would collapse and be absorbed into a greater German nation-state. As old power structures crumbled and new, ethnically-based democracies were established across the region, right-wing students attempted to take advantage of the upheaval to impose their agendas on universities.

      Antisemitic riots and violence against Jewish students plagued universities in at least 11 European countries during the early 1920s, as students demanded that Jews be banned from attending universities and that Jewish or left-wing professors be expelled. Students targeted individual professors, including celebrated scientists such as Albert Einstein and Julius Tandler, disturbing their lectures and vandalizing laboratories. Despite condemning the violence, in the vast majority of cases, university leaders made concessions to the students by preventing Jews from sitting their exams and, in some cases, even introducing strict quotas on the number of Jews allowed to enroll.

      Alfons Leon

      The case of Professor Alfons Leon at the Technical University in Graz is particularly instructive. An acclaimed researcher in technical mechanics with a host of accolades to his name, Leon was dean of the School of Civil Engineering for three years. His state-of-the-art laboratory was the envy of his colleagues.

      But, in 1922, he insisted that students who were war veterans sit rigorous exams when some of the other professors had been willing to let them pass without having studied the material. Leon was a known socialist and the disgruntled students began sending him threats and complaining about him to the university. The students were members of the same right-wing fraternities that were responsible for the antisemitic riots. That November, they challenged one of Leon’s teaching assistants to a duel. As the duel was clearly directed at Leon himself, he refused to allow his assistant to fight, which the students took as an insult to the honor system that fraternity life was based on.

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      Rather than support their professor, the university leadership launched an inquiry into Leon’s alleged misconduct and forced him to take a leave of absence. The investigation lasted 10 years, with Leon making skillful use of the university’s established rules and procedures to keep his job and insist that he had done nothing wrong.

      In the process, it became apparent that several of his senior colleagues supported the students because they were alumni of the same fraternities that were persecuting Leon. Professor Fritz Postuvanschitz, in particular, led the attack on Leon because he had refused to fabricate evidence that would have helped Postuvanschitz’s son escape being convicted of fraud. Other senior figures in the university sided with the students because they sympathized with their right-wing politics and disliked Leon as a graduate of Viennese universities they saw as their rivals. Eventually, Leon was forced into early retirement, but only after the collapse of democracy in Austria and the rise of an Austrofascist government.

      Lessons for Today

      Leon’s story teaches several lessons that are still relevant today. First, it reminds us that universities are eminently political places, where personal ambitions, petty jealousies and party politics frequently matter more than credentials or upholding academic standards. Second, it reveals how easily university managers are manipulated by student violence, especially when those students are supported by influential voices in the community. Third, it shows that it is indeed possible to resist managerial bullying by appealing to labor laws and following established procedures, even though doing so might be exhausting, detrimental to one’s health and, ultimately, futile. But fourth, and most importantly, it shows that even when one occupies the high moral ground, it is often impossible to shame university administrators when they cherish political power and entrenched interests over what they claim to be the values of their institutions.

      For those lecturers fighting for their jobs today, Leon offers hope that resistance is possible, but also a warning that exposing management’s cupidity and disrespect for academic values might not be enough.

      *[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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      in World Politics

      The World Needs a People’s Vaccine

      by

      A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that worries about the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States are at their lowest level since it began. Only half of Americans are either “very worried” (15%) or “somewhat worried” (35%) about the virus, while the other half are “not very worried” (30%) or “not worried at all” (20%). But the news from around the world makes it clear that this pandemic is far from over, and a story from Vietnam highlights the nature of the danger. 

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      Vietnam is a COVID success story, with one of the lowest rates of infection and death in the world. Vietnam’s excellent community-based public health system prevented the coronavirus from spreading beyond isolated cases and localized outbreaks, without a nationwide lockdown. With a population of 98 million people, Vietnam has had only 8,983 confirmed cases and 53 deaths. However, more than half of Vietnam’s cases and deaths have come in the last two months, and three-quarters of the new cases have been infected with a new “hybrid” variant that combines the two mutations detected separately in the Alpha (UK) and Delta (India) variants.

      Vietnam is a canary in the pandemic coal mine. The way this new variant has spread so quickly in a country that has defeated every previous form of the virus suggests that this one is much more infectious.

      COVID-19 Variants

      This variant must surely also be spreading in other countries, where it will be harder to detect among thousands of daily cases, and will therefore be widespread by the time public health officials and governments respond to it. There may also be other highly infectious new variants spreading undetected among the millions of cases in Latin America and other parts of the world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      A new study published in The Lancet medical journal has found that the Alpha, Beta (South Africa) and Delta variants are all more resistant to existing vaccines than the original COVID-19 virus, and the Delta variant is still spreading in countries with aggressive vaccination programs, including the United Kingdom. 

      The Delta variant accounts for a two-month high in new cases in Britain and a new wave of infections in Portugal, just as developed countries ease restrictions before the summer vacation season, almost certainly opening the door to the next wave. The UK, which has a slightly higher vaccination rate than the United States, had planned a further relaxation of restrictions on June 21, but that is now in question.    

      China, Vietnam, New Zealand and other countries defeated the pandemic in its early stages by prioritizing public health over business interests. The US and Western Europe instead tried to strike a balance between public health and their neoliberal economic systems, breeding a monster that has now killed millions of people. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 6 to 8 million people have died, about twice as many as have been counted in official figures. 

      Vaccinating the World

      Now, the WHO is recommending that wealthier countries that have good supplies of doses postpone vaccinating healthy young people and instead prioritize sending vaccines to poorer countries where the virus is running wild. President Joe Biden has announced that the US is releasing 25 million doses from its stockpiles, most of which will be distributed through COVAX, the WHO’s global vaccine-sharing program, with another 55 million to follow by the end of June. But this is a tiny fraction of what is needed. 

      Biden has also agreed to waive patent rights on vaccines under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) TRIPS rules, formally known as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. But that has so far been held up at the WTO by Canada and right-wing governments in the UK, Germany, Brazil, Australia, Japan and Colombia. People have taken to the streets in many countries to insist that a TRIPS Council meeting on June 8-9 must agree to waive patent monopolies.

      Since all the countries blocking the TRIPS waiver are US allies, this will be a critical test of the Biden administration’s promised international leadership and diplomacy. So far, Biden’s team has taken a back seat to dangerous saber-rattling against China and Russia, foot-dragging on the nuclear deal with Iran, and war-crime-fueling weapons peddling to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

      Ending international vaccine apartheid is not just a matter of altruism or even justice. It is a question of whether we will end this pandemic before vaccine-resistant, super-spreading and deadlier variants fuel even more toxic new waves. The only way humanity can win this struggle is to act collectively in our common interest.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Public Citizen has researched what it would take to vaccinate the world and concluded that it would cost only $25 billion — 3% of the annual US budget for weapons and war — to set up manufacturing plants and distribution hubs across the world and vaccinate all of humanity within a year. Forty-two progressives in Congress have signed a letter addressed to President Biden to urge him to fund such a plan.

      If the world can agree to make and distribute a people’s vaccine, it could be the silver lining in this dark cloud. The ability to act globally and collectively in the public interest is precisely what we need to solve so many of the most serious problems facing humanity. For example, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) warns that we are in the midst of a triple crisis of climate change, mass extinction and pollution. Our neoliberal political and economic system has not just failed to solve these problems. It actively works to undermine efforts to do so, granting people, corporations and countries that profit from destroying the natural world the freedom to do so without constraint. 

      Neoliberalism

      That is the very meaning of laissez-faire — to let the wealthy and powerful do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences for the rest of us or even for life on Earth. As economist John Maynard Keynes reputedly said in the 1930s, laissez-faire capitalism is the absurd idea that the worst people, for the worst reasons, will do what is best for us all. Neoliberalism is the reimposition of 19th-century laissez-faire capitalism, with all its injustices, inequality and oppression, on the people of the 21st century, prioritizing markets, profits and wealth over the common welfare of humanity and the natural world our lives depend on.     

      Berkeley and Princeton political theorist Sheldon Wolin called the US political system, which facilitates this neoliberal economic order, “inverted totalitarianism.” Like classical totalitarianism, it concentrates ever more wealth and power in the hands of a small ruling class, but instead of abolishing parliaments, elections and the superficial trappings of representative government as classical totalitarianism did, it simply coopts them as tools of plutocracy, which has proved to be a more marketable and sustainable strategy.

      But now that neoliberalism has wreaked its chaos for a generation, popular movements are rising up across the world to demand systemic change and to build new systems of politics and economics that can actually solve the huge problems that neoliberalism has produced. 

      In response to the 2019 uprising in Chile, its rulers were forced to agree to an election for a constitutional assembly, to draft a constitution to replace the one written during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, one of the vanguards of neoliberalism. That election has now taken place, and the ruling party of President Sebastian Pinera and other traditional parties won less than a third of the seats. So, the constitution will instead be written by a super-majority of citizens committed to radical reform and social, economic and political justice.

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      In Iraq, which was also swept by a popular uprising in 2019, a new government seated in 2020 has launched an investigation to recover $150 billion in Iraqi oil revenues stolen and smuggled out of the country by the corrupt officials of previous governments. In 2003, former exiles flew into Iraq on the heels of the US-led invasion “with empty pockets to fill,” as a Baghdad taxi driver told a Western reporter at the time. While American forces and US-trained Iraqi death squads destroyed their country, they hunkered down in the Green Zone in Baghdad and controlled and looted Iraq’s oil revenues for the next 17 years. Now, maybe Iraq can recover the stolen money its people so desperately need and start using its oil wealth to rebuild that shattered country.

      In Bolivia, also in 2019, a US-backed coup overthrew its popular indigenous president, Evo Morales. But the people of Bolivia rose up in a general strike to demand a new election and Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) party was restored to power. Now, Luis Arce, the economy minister under Morales, is Bolivia’s president.

      Around the world, we are witnessing what can happen when people rise up and act collectively for the common good. That is how we will solve the serious problems we face, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the climate crisis to the terminal danger of nuclear war. Humanity’s survival into the 22nd century and all our hopes for a bright future depend on building new political and economic systems that will simply and genuinely “do what is best for all of us.”

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

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      The Madison Avenue Brain of a “Guns Right” Judge

      by

      The most memorable three words of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, may well be: “Aux armes, citoyens.” Composed in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution and five years after the ratification of the US Constitution, the anthem’s lyrics dramatically recreate the atmosphere of the tumult that overthrew Louis XVI’s monarchy. The song calls the citizens to join the battle in a collective revolt against an unjust regime. All the “children of the fatherland” are invited to bear arms, take part in the struggle and, if all goes well, irrigate the furrows of their fields with impure blood.

      Of course, that isn’t an exact description of how the revolution took place, but the lyrics of national anthems never pretend to be accurate historical documents. America’s Star-Spangled Banner is just as bellicose as the Marseillaise, especially in its later stanzas. But it begins as the story of someone passively observing a battle unfold and noting that, as the sun rose on a new day, “the flag was still there.” 

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      Despite its anthem celebrating the romanticized call to arms of a ragtag citizenry against its own rulers, republican France has very strict laws concerning firearms. It correspondingly has produced a culture that sees little value in citizens’ owning, using or bearing arms designed for killing other human beings. Unlike former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, French hunters focus on their zoological prey and studiously avoid directing their fire at other people.

      Americans have never had much use for the uncomfortable reality of history, preferring to romanticize it in the interest of patriotic motivation. Hollywood has long served that purpose. But we might expect that professionals of the law, and especially magistrates, might feel compelled to respect the reality of history. In an article with the title, “California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons is unconstitutional, federal judge rules,” the Los Angeles Times reports that one US district judge in San Diego is willing to go one better on Hollywood. In the decision he rendered, Judge Roger Benitez has produced an extraordinary piece of historical and legal fiction that, upon examination, nevertheless falls well below the linguistic discipline of even the tawdriest Hollywood screenwriter.

      The judge “ruled that the state’s definition of illegal military-style rifles unlawfully deprives law-abiding Californians of weapons commonly allowed in most other states and by the U.S. Supreme Court.” It is a well-known fact that Californians, more than most Americans, do not appreciate feeling “deprived” of anything. In that sense, the judge is clearly in phase with the culture of the people. But to make his case, detailed in his justification of the court’s decision, he begins with this extraordinary simile: “Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Perfect combination:

      A standard item of marketing language used to promote trendy merchandise, rarely used in legal documents with the exception of venal or partisan magistrates

      Contextual Note

      The world of marketing provides endless examples of the phrase, “a perfect combination.” It can apply to any kind of product. “A perfect combination of modern technology and design elements” (laser scanner); “a perfect combination of her design and delicate craftsmanship techniques (jewelry); “A perfect combination of functionality and design.” (Lamborghini clothing line); “perfect combination of comfort and style” (shoes); “The Perfect Combination Of Eye-Popping Visuals And Talented Acting” (movie).

      Embed from Getty Images

      There are even examples in the realm of lethal weaponry: “a perfect combination of nozzle design and high voltage supply (gun nozzle). Or this one: “the perfect combination of rigidity and comfort” (gun belt). Judge Benitez appears to have been more powerfully influenced by the clichéd language of consumer marketing than careful legal reasoning when composing the text of his decision. How else can one explain a sentence such as this one? “Good for both home and battle, the AR-15 is the kind of versatile gun that lies at the intersection of the kinds of firearms protected under District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) and United States v Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939).”

      Benitez may have been inspired by the fictional TV series, “Mad Men.” The idea of associating home and battle is a stroke of legal (i.e., advertising) genius worthy of the series’ hero, Dan Draper. Like Draper, we can imagine Mad Judge Benitez in a strategy meeting evoking an advertising spot in which we see the closeup of a homeowner dramatically pacing about the house armed with an AR-15 to ensure that all is well before suddenly flinging open the door to reveal that in the street before him, the battle to save America is now raging. What better definition of versatility than defense of the home coupled with rescuing the nation? (We actually suspect that Benitez’s brain was culturally programmed in his younger days by the perennial advertising campaign for Jeep, originally a military vehicle, whose marketers successfully identified the vehicle with the idea of versatility.)

      The first paragraph of Benitez’s judgment contains only three sentences, the first two resembling the logic of a Madison Avenue strategy session. The third and fourth abruptly switch to the law, and not just any law: the US Constitution. “Yet, the State of California makes it a crime to have an AR15 type rifle. Therefore, this Court declares the California statutes to be unconstitutional.”

      It’s as simple as that. Failure to recognize a great consumer product violates the Constitution. Not necessarily the Constitution of the United States — which to be understood ordinarily requires paying minimal attention to the institutions that existed in the late 18th century — but the more modern unwritten but carefully scripted constitution of the consumer society that simply requires tuning into consumers’ desires.

      Historical Note

      Roger Benitez is not the only American who believes one can understand a historical document — specifically, the Constitution of the United States — without making any attempt to understand the history that produced it. Other Americans have done the opposite and made significant discoveries about the link between the amendment and the institution of slavery. The question of the meaning of the Second Amendment as it has evolved over time has produced the surreal situation today of a nation divided into two hostile camps incapable of understanding one another.

      On one side, there are those — like Congressman Matt Gaetz — who see the amendment itself as a divine commandment. It enshrines the idea that every man’s home is his castle and every man is a private police force working for the “true” public interest. It then moves on to the idea that every right-thinking person is implicitly enrolled as a soldier in an army of righteousness that, when required, will mobilize its collective firepower to overturn those who call into question its righteousness. 

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      On the other side are those who simply believe that it is a good thing not to have too many firearms in circulation. They have given up trying to reason about the meaning of the Second Amendment in its historical context. They often are just as indifferent to the reality of history as the gun rights fanatics. Those soft-headed “liberals,” who militate for gun control, set themselves up to be accused of weakness by their opponents who point out that their argument is based on moral sentiment alone, rather than their own rigorously respectful reading of a text that enshrines individual ownership of weapons. The fact that the drafters of the Constitution highlighted the needs of “well-organized militias” — a collective need — never enters into their linguistically incorrect belief that the amendment is about the rights of individuals.

      Benitez picks up this precise point with an inventive distortion of meaning: “At the same time, ‘the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms … that ‘have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.’” Relationship? To what? Where is the militia with which he believes one can establish a relationship? Even Hollywood hasn’t managed to imagine that relationship.

      With this judicial pronouncement, Judge Benitez offers the state of California a perfect combination of historical ignorance, a willful absence of logic and appalling linguistic imprecision.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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      Global Solidarity Brings Hope to Palestinians After Decades of Oppression

      by

      If there is one thing Palestinians are known for, it is that we are extremely patriotic. We decorate our homes with Palestinian merchandise and paintings, we continue to dress in traditional patterns, and even though many of us have never even seen Palestine, we continue to identify ourselves as Palestinians. There is even a well-known joke about how Palestinians always have to bring up the fact that they are Palestinian in any setting or conversation. But the underlying reason behind that is our need to prove to the world that we exist.

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      Palestinians all over the world have been struggling and calling for the same things for over 70 years while not only being ignored, but invalidated. However, for the first time ever, there is a trace of hope. Palestinians — and their supporters — have used many terms to describe the conditions they have been living in under the Israeli occupation, including apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing, among others. While those inside Palestine have been trying to show the world the truth and sub-par living conditions, those of us outside are trying to shed light on our family history and lack of right to return to our own land.

      Nevertheless, for once, we are seeing notable progress. Now, with the latest developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with the evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and Gaza and the assaults on peaceful protesters, one cannot look at all the footage on social media and the news and continue to believe that the Zionist state of Israel is not ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

      Shifting Narrative

      For years, Palestinians all over the globe felt like they were alone in this fight to shed light on their plight with no success or extremely slow progress. We have been fighting more battles than anyone knows. Above all, we have been tackling those who spin the narrative to make it look like the oppressors are the victims, which is emotionally and mentally draining. Twitter user Jehad Abusalim says, “One of the worst things about experiencing this pain is that Palestinians need to mourn but also are expected to educate the world from scratch, every time, and make the case for why they must be treated like humans.”

      One of the most dominant arguments against Palestinians and their supporters is the anti-Semitism argument. For years, celebrities, leaders and individuals have avoided discussing the crisis in Palestine for fear of being labeled as an anti-Semite. Yet another battle that we have been fighting is the burden of having to explain to the world how criticism of Israel does not make someone anti-Semitic.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But now, with the help of social media, the narrative is shifting. People are differentiating between Zionism and Judaism. It is no longer a taboo to call out the injustices happening to Palestinians. We no longer feel alone in this fight because Palestine is seen as less of a political cause and more of a humanitarian one. Showing support and standing in solidarity with the Palestinians is becoming normalized because the truth is being exposed. For once, Palestinians are hopeful. We feel change coming.

      Several changes have already taken place. Besides the worldwide protests with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to spread awareness on the many issues in the occupied territories, a few examples of such change is the number of celebrities with millions of followers who are speaking out against the Zionist state. Political leaders, especially in the US, Israel’s strongest ally, are calling for change and sanctions. Senator Bernie Sanders submitted a resolution to limit the sale of American weapons to Israel. Dockworkers in Italy have refused to load arms for Israel, some governments have stood firm in their response to Israel, and many people are boycotting Israeli products and companies that financially support the Israeli military.

      The biggest and most prominent proof that Palestinian voices are being heard is different social media platforms attempting to censor and silence supporters of the Palestinian cause so that Israel remains in control of the narrative. But this time, it is not working. Israel has lost control.

      Despite the major progress in raising awareness of the Palestinian plight, there continues to be excessive pressure on influential people to change the narrative, “tone down the rhetoric” and even apologize for standing with the Palestinians. Some, such as actor Mark Ruffalo, have caved but other influential people, such as writer Shaun King and model Bella Hadid, continue to stand strong.

      Keep the Momentum

      Now that Palestinians are hopeful, this is our time to turn our hope into reality. We are calling on everyone who wants to support our cause to boycott companies that support the Israeli apartheid regime and put pressure on their representatives and leaders for political change. But most importantly, we want everyone to continue making noise and keep the momentum going. Although Israel has agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza, as Palestinians have experienced in the past, this is only a cover-up for other crimes against Palestinians in an attempt to kill the buzz.

      Our biggest concern is that the conversation will die down and Palestinians will go back to living under the status quo, which remains unjust. After all, if one were really on the right side of history, they would not try to cover up their crimes.

      There is a beautiful quote being shared on social media that reads: “The only thing Israel failed to consider when they expelled 750,000 Palestinians 73 years ago was their grandchildren — now from all over the world — coming back to defend their rights.” So, why are Palestinians more patriotic than any other group of people? We believe that our existence is resistance, so we are doing everything in our power to highlight our existence and resist crimes committed against us. Palestinians have always been courageous fighters, saying: “It’s free Palestine until Palestine is free.” And we will never give up on that fight.

      *[This article is submitted on behalf of the authors by the Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Communications Directorate. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the university’s official stance.]

      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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      Anthony Blinken’s Sales Pitch

      by

      After his meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, during his visit to Israel following last month’s ceasefire, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explained his goals: “As I told the president, I’m here to underscore the commitment of the United States to rebuilding the relationship with the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people, a relationship built on mutual respect and also a shared conviction that Palestinians and Israelis alike deserve equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity.”

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      Blinken praised Egypt’s role in brokering the truce. According to Al Jazeera, Blinken believes Egypt can play a “vital” role in making it possible for Palestinians and Israelis to “live in safety and security to enjoy equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity.” One wonders about Egypt’s own commitment to freedom, opportunity and dignity, but Blinken apparently sees those three words as having some sort of magical effect, masking the blemishes of both of his trusted partners, Israel and Egypt.

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Freedom, opportunity and dignity:

      An example of the rhetorical ploy that aligns three incontestably noble ideals to create the belief that the only imaginable outcome of the policies or initiatives a politician is proposing will be resoundingly positive

      Contextual Note

      Adepts of the art of rhetoric have given the trope linking three ideas a technical name: tricolon. The association of three positive notions has the effect of persuading an audience of the gravitas of the speaker’s intentions. Tricolons also make for excellent motivational slogans. Julius Caesar left no doubt about his conquest of Gaul when he wrote “veni, vidi, vici.” The French revolutionaries made clear their noble intentions in the formulation “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” a historically enduring slogan, if ever there was one. 

      Thomas Jefferson, inspired by John Locke’s celebration of “life, liberty and property,” left an indelible trace in Americans’ historical memory when he summarized the basic rights of a people as “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Curiously, Blinken’s trio of meritorious wishes can be traced back to the title of a book published in 1942 by Samuel Crowther. The full title of the book is “Time to Inquire: How Can We Restore the Freedom, Opportunity, and Dignity of the Average Man?” The only commentary on Crowther’s book visible after a thorough web search appears in the catalog of the Library of Congress. It contains a single sentence: “Questions the general social, political, and economic values as they exist in the United States today, particularly the ‘internationalist complex,’ to which he attributes our being in the war.” 

      In other words, Crowther appears to be one of the last of the generation of isolationists who dominated US thinking about foreign policy between the two world wars. Did Blinken read his book? Does the secretary of state’s thinking in any way reflect the isolationist ideology that shamefully retreated into the background after the rise of the US empire in the wake of World War II? More likely, his adoption of the three words in Crowther’s title is a coincidence. But that’s what great marketing minds do. When they see an inspiring idea for a slogan, whatever the source, they seize it and turn it into a slogan.

      Does that mean we should think of Anthony Blinken as the secretary of international marketing rather than his official title of secretary of state? In some very real sense, a secretary of state can be defined as the head of international marketing for the US brand. And no one can doubt that the US has always been focused on selling its brand. 

      In one version of his sales pitch, Blinken adds a fourth word to introduce — and, in a certain sense, encompass — his trinity of virtues. To President Abbas, Blinken cited the importance of “equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity.” He cites “security” as the condition sine qua non that must be put in place to permit the flowering of “freedom, opportunity and dignity.” Modern states, such as the US and Israel, insist on putting security first. It is, after all, thanks to the existence of a security state — largely regulated, monitored and even enforced by the intelligence community — that the wonders associated with the prosperous American and Israeli way of life emerge. Both countries have produced an enviable military-industrial complex.

      Blinken’s trio of words defines the ideal toward which any modern society must aspire. Combining the three terms creates a compelling argument. Freedom, of course, points to the free market, the right of every individual to compete with everyone else in their quest to make it to the top. Opportunity means that there are no legal obstacles to the downtrodden in their quest to become equals of the wealthy and powerful. Everyone has a shot at winning the race. The only real obstacles are other peoples’ wealth and power. But that is precisely what makes the struggle so satisfying for the winners, knowing that they have overcome such formidable obstacles. 

      And what about dignity? The French tricolon puts liberty and equality first, both of which serve to establish an abstract legal principle denying an official social status to privilege. This leaves fraternity as a random choice of sentiment for a liberated people. Fraternity has no status in the law and may never truly exist in a competitive society. 

      Blinken’s first two terms — freedom and opportunity — describe the modern capitalist economy. It allows people to aspire to dignity while instituting a social and economic system that empowers the successful few to deny dignity to the many whose lives, thanks to their liberty, remains precarious. Without precarity, the noble ambition to achieve dignity would not exist. In other words, what the secretary of international marketing is selling is quite simply the American ideology.

      Historical Note

      Winston Churchill was a consummate rhetorician. In a wartime speech he famously intoned, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” He added a fourth term to what was already a proverbial tricolon. The gravity of a world war justified adding this extra item. Subsequent generations reduced Churchill’s four-term litany to the more classical tricolon in the idiom, “blood, sweat and tears.” That trio of words became not just a part of standard modern English vocabulary but also the name of a legendary rock group. 

      It is worth pointing out that just as Blinken may have consciously or unconsciously borrowed his tricolon from Samuel Crowther, Churchill’s inspiration can be traced to the 17th-century poet, John Donne, who in his long poem, “Anatomy of the World,” wrote:

      “Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is.

      And learn’st thus much by our anatomy,

      That ’tis in vain to dew, or mollify

      It with thy tears, or sweat, or blood: nothing

      Is worth our travail, grief, or perishing,

      But those rich joys, which did possess her heart.”

      Luke most literary men and women of his time, Donne understood the power of the tricolon. In two successive lines he offers a pair of tricolons. Donne’s contemporary, William Shakespeare, took it one step further when Ophelia, speaking admiringly of Hamlet, mentions “The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword.” Shakespeare aligns two tricolons in a single pentameter line.

      It is refreshing to note that a modern politician like Anthony Blinken has a feel for classical rhetoric, mobilizing the traditional literary devices to conduct his sophisticated political marketing. It reassuringly contrasts with Donald Trump’s jarring populist rhetoric that relies not on balanced phrases, clever verbal alignments and persuasive touches, but instead on provocative innuendos and insults, hyperboles (“great,” “huge,” “amazing,” “tremendous,” “terrific,” “phenomenal”) and on an insistence that the audience “believe me” or “trust me,” even when what he says is clearly unbelievable and he himself comes across as totally untrustworthy.

      Despite their stylistic differences, what Blinken and former President Donald Trump have in common is a commitment to “Make American Ideology Great Again” in the eyes of a world that has begun not only to doubt its legitimacy but to fear the consequences of the policies carried out in its name. Blinken’s (as well as President Joe Biden’s) tone is more soothing, or at least less upsetting, whereas Trump’s has more political impact. But the message they convey is similarly superficial and unrealistic. Both translate as a pretext for domination in a hypercompetitive world.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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      Understanding Racism in All Its Forms

      by

      Twenty years ago, Amnesty International’s “Racism and the Administration of Justice” report warned that “unchecked racism can lead to tragedy on a massive scale.” Last week, as we remembered George Floyd and pondered over the meaning of his death a year ago, another aspect of unchecked racism resurfaced. On May 21, just as a cautious ceasefire was beginning thousands of miles away between Israel and Hamas, Joseph Borgen, a Jewish man reportedly on his way to a pro-Israel rally in Manhattan, was attacked by demonstrators attending a pro-Palestine rally, one of whom has since been charged with a hate crime.

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      The day after the attack, Borgen was interviewed by CNN anchor Don Lemon, where he said that he wanted to understand what made those who attacked him “act the way they did.” Prejudice, of course, comes in all shapes and sizes, all colors and cultures — as does violence. But the linchpin to unpacking the absurdity of this attack, of Muslim-on-Jew hate or Jew-on-Muslim hate, is understanding anti-Semitism and, through the drivers of that phenomenon, Islamophobia.

      Familiarity Breeds Contempt

      This attack, despicable as it was, should not surprise us given our understanding — or lack of it — of anti-Semitism, described as that “very light sleeper,” so easy to awaken. Such attacks are privileged acts of hate because the attackers consider their own particular cause to be exceptional and thus far from racist. Whether you are Jewish or Muslim, Arab or Israeli, the internet is a particularly convenient place to find vindication for what you think is the “truth.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      What we encounter online is a cacophony of privileged hatreds. Jeremy Rosen wrote in his blog recently that, “In the age of social media and mass communication, so many people only believe one propagandist side of the argument and make no effort to hear another point of view.” He writes of how this saddens him in the same way that jihadism has given Islam a bad name “when it is only the most primitive, insecure, and misled who think that way.” But as he rightly states, “these are the tools of the prejudiced.”

      When otherwise peaceful demonstrations manifest themselves in brutal attacks by individuals, verbal or physical, on a perceived “other,” it is racism, pure and simple. But when the perpetrators of such acts are themselves from minority communities, it kowtows to only one agenda — that of white supremacy — which has no sympathy with any of them. The murder of George Floyd and the ensuing public awakening among so many diverse communities — of color, of faith, of culture, of economic disparity, of difference — should be a cue for communities everywhere to reexamine their own attitudes and get their priorities right.

      In relation to Jews and Muslims, a navel-gazing complacency has largely ignored the bigger picture, which is the fight against systemic, institutional or structural racism. The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests have reminded the world that all people of good conscience should be focused on this type of discrimination. However, the Middle East question continues to revolve around, perhaps fatalistically, over the relationship between Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, to the detriment of those communities themselves as well as that greater struggle for minorities — combating discrimination and all forms of racism within the societies they actually inhabit.

      Common Ground

      Can Jews and Muslims find common ground from the example of what the killing of George Floyd has taught us? It isn’t as though they have not had opportunities to focus on a more nuanced understanding of each “other.” Attempts in the past to do so have covered art, music, academic enquiry and dialogue. The British composer Roxanna Panufnik’s work, “Abraham,” for instance, is a beautiful musical example of bridge-building between religions that share the essential belief in one God.

      In 2008, “The Call for Peace, Dialogue and Understanding between Muslims and Jews,” an open letter with 40 Muslim signatories, highlighted how, “although many … only know of Muslim-Jewish relations through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there needs to be an awareness of other positive encounters at different stages of our history.”

      In 2004, I co-convened a remarkable initiative called Alif-Aleph with Dr. Richard Stone, a former chair of the UK-based Runnymede Commission on Islamophobia. The manifesto of that initiative remains relevant and ought to be revived in the context of George Floyd’s wider legacy. The initiative ambitiously aimed to create a new golden age in which Muslims and Jews in the diaspora would spread the example of working together to other communities, building on their mutually positive contributions to society. Living side by side in the West is a new situation that provides new opportunities.

      In practice, the initiative explored a unified purpose in addressing racism. Underlining it was “a common experience of having to address hostilities that derive from mistaken stereotypes of our religions and our cultures, leading to Islamophobia and Antisemitism.” It declared that those who wish to promote negative stereotypes of Muslims and Jews as people who hate each other will be recognized as extremists, because “What the world needs are Harmonisers, not Polarisers.”

      Violently attacking and verbally abusing an innocent person because of how you perceive a particular truth makes you anathema to that truth, makes you a hypocrite, a hater and a racist. It makes you as unjust as those you are trying to expose.

      So what made the attackers “act the way they did”? Don Lemon probably answered that question on his show when he earlier told fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo that “the issue is for people to understand their own implicit bias and racism. … There are different cultures in different places but that doesn’t change … what racism is.” That is the lesson the jury heard when convicting the racist killer of George Floyd. That is the lesson Jews and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis must hear in their own search for a meaningful resolution of what divides them.

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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      Why Designating the Azov Movement as an FTO Is Ineffective

      by

      In early April, a member of the US Congress, Elissa Slotkin, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking that 13 radical-right extremist groups and movements be officially designated as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) in the United States. This designation would, in theory, ban any American from providing “material support or resources” to any of these designated organizations, ban foreign members of these groups from entering the US, and freeze funds held in American banks belonging to these groups.

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      Some of the groups on the congressperson’s list are familiar names to any observer of transnational radical-right extremism over the last several years: the Nordic Resistance Movement, Blood and Honour, National Action and what Slotkin, a former CIA employee focused on extremism in the Middle East and North Africa, describes collectively as the “Azov Battalion” in Ukraine. Not surprisingly, as someone who has written extensively about the threat of the radical right in Ukraine, the mention of Azov caught my attention. But it wasn’t for the right reasons, and it shows that, when the radical right is concerned, group designations and proscriptions aren’t always the best policy tool.

      What’s in a Name?

      For one, I’ve seen this play out before. In 2019, another member of US Congress, Max Rose, authored a similar letter demanding that the Azov Battalion be designated as an FTO. Rose’s letter was, ultimately, a complete failure. As I wrote from Ukraine in November 2019, it contained inaccurate information, including the unproven claim that the Christchurch terrorist admitted to training with Azov, and ended up being a propaganda boon to the radical right.

      Slotkin’s letter, fortunately, doesn’t make those kinds of sweeping, evidence-free claims. But it’s not without its major flaws. For one, the letter incorrectly refers to the Azov Battalion. The military unit once known as the Azov Battalion, formed in 2014 to combat Russian-backed insurgents in a still-hot war in eastern Ukraine, has been under the auspices of Ukraine’s National Guard and properly known as the Azov Regiment for years. While referring to it as the “Azov Battalion” could be excusable as something a commentator without experience in Ukraine might mention in passing, it’s not so excusable in an official letter demanding that said organization be designated as a terror group. In particular, how can a group be designated if it can’t even be named and identified correctly?

      Embed from Getty Images

      The accurate descriptor would, of course, be the “Azov Movement.” I’ve described the Azov Movement, which grew out of the original battalion and regiment, as a heterogenous radical-right social movement. At its core, the movement encompasses the regiment itself, the National Corps political party, the Centuria (formerly the National Militia) paramilitary organization as well as a number of affiliated subgroups and initiatives including a book club, youth camps, a “leadership school” and a (temporarily closed) three-story social center just off Kyiv’s central Independence Square.

      It also encompasses organizations and networks that are clearly led by and are made up of members of the movement who appear to function with some degree of independence, often without any stated relationship to the movement and who are more open or extreme in their rhetoric. There are also smaller radical-right organizations that are nominally independent but still appear to have at least some relationship with the movement and who circle around its orbit.

      Superficial Terms

      Slotkin’s letter, on the other hand, describes Azov in superficial terms. The movement is referred to solely as “a well-known militia organization in Ukraine [that] uses the internet to recruit new members and then radicalizes them to use violence to pursue its white identity political agenda,” with one sole reference to a relatively recent January 2021 article. Sure, there’s not enough space in a letter like this to discuss the Azov Movement in considerable detail. But there’s no shortage of material in English on the movement’s activities over the past several years (certainly not just from this author), and, what’s more, it is easily accessible and digestible to anyone who chooses to take a few minutes to read beyond a simple Google search.

      Having even a cursory understanding of what the Azov Movement actually is and how it functions would reveal just how difficult it would be in practice to designate it as an FTO, and, in fact, how difficult it is to proscribe these kinds of movements in practice. Even as the UK has moved to ban the violent neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, reports from Germany suggest that sympathizers are using still-existing networks to rebuild an offshoot of the group there.

      The question then turns to who would be designated as an FTO. Would it be the regiment alone, which is itself a member of Ukraine’s National Guard and thus a member of the country’s armed forces? As counter-extremism expert Kacper Rekawek pointed out last week in a blog post for the Counter Extremism Project, the US would surely never designate an official unit of an American ally’s military, whether one likes it or not.

      Moreover, and to move further into the morass, would the broader movement be proscribed as an FTO, and if so, whom would that include? One could see it encompassing the National Corps and Centuria, but does that include every single affiliated organization, from sports clubs to youth camps? What would be the legal criteria for determining whether an entity is or isn’t part of the movement? And, moreover, which individuals can even be described as being part of the movement? Trying to parse these questions would be a veritable nightmare.

      A Better Way

      Even worse, I can easily imagine how affiliated organizations within the movement would worm their way out of being part of the designation, which exposes a serious flaw with going after the radical right through the means of executive group proscription. Daryl Johnson, an American domestic terrorism expert and former senior analyst with the US Department of Homeland Security, told a journalist in Canada, my home country, that its government’s efforts to ban groups like the Proud Boys were “more of a symbolic gesture,” and that radical-right organizations facing these kinds of bans could simply just change their names and regroup under a new banner.

      Given that, in the Ukrainian context, radical-right organizations and affiliates have a history of changing their names and branding while maintaining the core leadership, one should expect this to continue if an attempt to proscribe the entire movement were to actually happen. If US and Ukraine’s other Western allies are seriously concerned about the Azov Movement — as they should be — there are far more effective means at their disposal than the clumsy if attention-grabbing mechanism of a foreign terrorist organization designation.

      They should consider, for one, designating specific individuals, with specific and justified reasons, instead of broader groups and movements. Visa and travel bans for specific prominent individuals, which would also encourage European allies to extend visa-free Schengen Area restrictions to those same individuals, would also be useful. There is also the option of placing pressure, both public and private, on Ukraine’s government and elements in the Ukrainian state to properly acknowledge and tackle the issue of the violent radical right in their country — pressure that could even include making some international funding and financial support contingent on tackling the problem.

      These would be much more effective starting points for the US or any other Western country worried about the activities of Ukraine’s Azov Movement than any attempted FTO designation.

      *[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