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      What Will a Post-Trump America Look Like?

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      Americans are still anxiously waiting to find out who will be the 46th president of the United States. But while the results of the 2020 race may still be murky, what this election has made clear is that whoever succeeds President Donald Trump — whether in 2021 or 2025 — will face an uphill battle of governing a post-Trump America.

      What will this look like in practice? One only needs to look as far as one of the United States’ closest allies in the hemisphere, Colombia, for a glimpse of the challenges that await Trump’s successor.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      Colombian politics has its own Trump-like figure. His name is Alvaro Uribe Velez. Elected in 2002, Uribe governed for eight years as a tough conservative politician. His aggressive military campaigns against the country’s guerilla groups brought long-sought stability and security to much of the country and transformed him into a national hero for many Colombians. But his presidency was also marred by controversy. He has been accused of facilitating widespread human rights abuses, corruption and drug trafficking.

      Despite — or perhaps because of — this dual legacy, Uribe has remained a central figure in Colombian politics since leaving the presidential palace. He continues to serve as the leader of the country’s ruling political party, the Democratic Center, and sat as a senator until summer 2020 when he resigned pending the results of a criminal investigation against him.

      The influence Uribe continues to wield on the Colombian political scene should serve as a warning to whoever succeeds Trump in the Oval Office. In Colombia, Uribe’s willingness and ability to mobilize broad swaths of the population to support his interests has proved a challenge for governance by opposing politicians.

      Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos experienced this firsthand in 2016 as he tried to sell the people a peace deal to end the country’s 60-year-long civil war with a guerrilla group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC). As the most visible and vocal opponent of the deal, Uribe consistently belittled both Santos as a politician and the peace he negotiated with the FARC. “Peace yes, but not like this” became his rallying cry in public speeches, interviews and perhaps his — and Trump’s — favorite platform, Twitter. His vitriolic attacks played a part in Colombians’ surprise rejection of the peace deal in a national referendum, a humiliating defeat for Santos.

      Trump May Still Influence US Politics

      The small margins of this year’s US presidential election suggest that a Democratic successor to Trump will have to confront a former president with a similarly devoted following as the one Uribe has maintained in Colombia. Trump is unlikely to bow graciously out of politics. With a large base that continues to support him, he could still influence politics informally, by calling on his followers to engage in (possibly violent) protests.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The president’s continued popularity among Republican voters may also force the GOP to maintain its current far-right policy positions to retain voters in future elections. The election of a QAnon conspiracy theorist to the House of Representatives confirms that Trump’s influence reaches beyond the presidency.

      Indeed, Democrats are not the only ones who should be worried about Trump’s continued influence after leaving office. Uribe’s handpicked successor in the 2018 presidential election, President Ivan Duque, has struggled to govern under the shadow of the former leader. Like the US, Colombia today is deeply polarized. Though Duque and his allies hold a majority in the Senate, distrust and frustration with the government sent nearly 200,000 Colombians to the streets of the country’s major cities in protest last year.  

      But Duque’s reliance on support from Uribe’s hardline followers has effectively precluded him from building bridges with his opponents, lest he be seen as abandoning Uribe’s legacy. Unable to fully satisfy either camp, Duque’s approval rating has languished far below 50% for most of his presidency.

      Confronting the Legacy

      Republicans will face a similar challenge if they wish to maintain Trump’s base while also trying to repair the deep divisions that he has sown among US society.

      It may seem extreme to compare the United States to Colombia, a country that has teetered on the edge of collapse and conflict for over 60 years. But the reality is that the US is also a post-conflict country. Our civil war may have ended in 1865, but events in 2020 — the partisan reactions to the coronavirus pandemic, racial tensions following the extrajudicial killings of black Americans, and a presidential vote that remains too close to call three days after the election — have proved that the legacy of the violence and the polarization it sowed persist today.

      Whoever succeeds Donald Trump must confront this legacy head-on. But as Colombia shows, doing so with Trump in the background will be far from easy.

      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 Real Scandal of Jeremy Corbyn’s Exclusion

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      Earlier this year, an internal report from the UK’s Labour Party revealed that some of its influential members worked to sabotage former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral chances in 2017, the election in which he nearly achieved an unexpected victory against Prime Minister Theresa May. 

      Over the next two and half years, leading up to last December’s election, a group of diligent party members, echoed by much of the media, including The Guardian, collaborated on undermining Corbyn’s chances in the 2019 snap election called by Boris Johnson. They did so by focusing on the theme of anti-Semitism.

      How Do You Fix the Soul of the Nation?

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      After Labour’s defeat last December that confirmed Johnson as an elected prime minister and led to Corbyn’s resignation as the party leader, Labour’s establishment elected Keir Starmer to replace him, but apparently that wasn’t enough. As discreetly as possible, they continued relentlessly to shame Corbyn. Last week, exploiting the anti-Semitism theme thanks to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report, Labour took the extraordinary initiative of suspending Corbyn from the party in an act that Joseph Stalin’s politburo could only have admired.

      With a tone resembling a subdued cry of victory, The Guardian announced that “Labour has suspended its former leader Jeremy Corbyn after he said antisemitism in the party was ‘overstated’ following a damning report from the equality watchdog.” The article contained this somewhat surprising assertion: “A separate issue for Labour officials to work out is their precise legal culpability for online sentiments expressed by officials and others.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Online sentiments:

      Ideas, opinions or feelings expressed on the dangerous borderline between public and private discourse known as on social media, which means that random utterances in that medium can be targeted by groups specialized in shaming individuals who fail to agree with or conform to their own agendas.

      Contextual Note

      By suspending Corbyn, Labour has demonstrated that today’s technology has enabled Stalinist tactics far more sophisticated than Uncle Joe could have imagined. It provides them with the power to neutralize opponents without the bother of having to eliminate them physically.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Perhaps a better comparison to today’s public shaming would be to the Spanish Inquisition, immortalized in modern times by Michael Palin who famously cited its three weapons, “fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency,” before adding a fourth, “an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.” Labour’s equivalent to the pope is, of course, Tony Blair, the former prime minister. In terms of papal politics, Blair could best be compared to Benedict XVI as a quiet voice in the wings, who shouldn’t even be there, working discreetly to undermine his successor. 

      Starmer demonstrated his ruthless efficiency when, as The Guardian reports, he “spoke at a press conference where he said those who ‘deny there is a problem are part of the problem … Those who pretend it is exaggerated or factional are part of the problem.’” Like the Spanish Inquisition, the Labour Party has seized on a hint of criticism of the true faith (the EHRC report) that brooks no criticism but stands as infallible dogma. Suggesting that the report — which identified a total of two culprits in a party of 500,000 members — may have “overstated” the case or that there may be factions in the political church can only be deemed heresy.

      Whether the Labour Party subjected Corbyn to the rack or even the “comfy chair” remains unknown. What is clear is that after Corbyn’s claim that the case may have been overstated, the inquisitors noticed that the former leader had committed the ultimate sin: failing to “retract” his heretical statement. “In light of his comments made today and his failure to retract them subsequently, the Labour party has suspended Jeremy Corbyn pending investigation,” a Labour spokesman said.

      Historical Note

      In the guise of reporting political news, The Guardian, known as the respectable newspaper of the left, has played a major role in remodeling the Labour Party in the image of an anonymous group of improvised moralists who, through their mostly invisible lobbying, have demonstrated their sentimental attachment to the Tony Blair era and to everything Blair himself still represents.

      Labour has effectively assimilated the Stalinist tradition but given it a humanistic face. Dame Margaret Hodge, for example, offered this gentle version of excommunication: “Jeremy is a fully decent man, but he has an absolute blind spot, and a denial, when it comes to these issues. And that’s devastating.” If she believes he’s a decent man, she should object to his being accused of anti-Semitism. It’s all about perspective. If Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t see the same things as Hodge, who happens to be Jewish, it may be that he sees something else that Hodge may be blind to: the question of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

      Corbyn has not accused Hodge, Starmer or anyone else of being anti-Semitic, which he might do on the grounds that Palestinians are also Semites and are the target of not just hatred but physical oppression. Corbyn’s anti-Semitic crime is simply that his defense of one group of Semites calls into question the unconditional support every British citizen owes to another group of Semites, a nation considered an indefectible ally.

      This sums up the hypocrisy of the entire controversy. It turns around a denial of two dimensions of historical reality. None of Corbyn’s accusers, nor The Guardian itself, dares to mention the significance of events in the Middle East and the effect they can have on judgments and opinions that may or may not entail the evocation of stereotypes.

      The second obvious but unmentioned historical dimension concerns the recent history of the leadership of the Labour Party. It is also linked to events in the Middle East. Blair has been the most electorally successful Labour Party leader in recent times. He has also been its most egregious warmonger, responsible — along with former US President George W. Bush — for a vast and ongoing humanitarian disaster, extensively documented in the Chilcot report. Clearly, electoral success in politics counts more than probity or human rights, even though the worst perpetrators of human suffering, such as Blair, claim they are acting in the name of human rights.

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      The drama of Labour leadership reveals that the entire anti-Semitism campaign had a single purpose. It was designed not just to cripple the left but to definitively crush it. The Guardian quotes Peter Mason, the national secretary of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), who, before Corbyn’s suspension, made the intentions clear: “Jeremy Corbyn does not have a future in the Labour party, he is yesterday’s man.”

      In an interview with Chris Williamson, Aaron Maté, the American investigative journalist, explores the historical background of the issue. Williamson had earlier been suspended from Labour on the grounds of anti-Semitism but was fully exonerated by the EHRC inquiry. His detailed testimony, critical of Corbyn on political grounds, provides some much-needed context.

      The late and deeply regretted David Graeber — an influential American anthropologist who taught in the UK before his premature death in September — provided a thorough historical perspective on the anti-Semitism question in a video apparently no one at The Guardian seems aware of. Had they seen it, they might have used some of Graeber’s historical knowledge to nuance their judgment of Corbyn.

      For a declared and condemned anti-Semite, Corbyn had a surprising number of Jewish supporters ready to claim that he “has a proud record of fighting all forms of racism and antisemitism.” Will those Jewish supporters and the 60,000 members who signed the petition also be suspended? Will they be asked to retract?

      The Guardian’s role in promoting the controversy and shaming Corbyn has been as appalling as it has been successful. The only trace of someone offering pertinent historical perspective published in The Guardian is a letter to the editor they can easily dismiss as someone’s mere opinion. 

      The New York Times at least offered a dry appreciation of the meaningless of Corbyn’s suspension: “The party did not immediately make clear what rule Mr. Corbyn had breached, though analysts said it likely had to do with bringing the party into disrepute.” Labour didn’t need Corbyn to bring it into disrepute. Blair accomplished that with panache 17 years ago. Keir Starmer has jumped on Blair’s bandwagon.

      *[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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      US Senate and House election results: Politics Weekly Extra podcast

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      As nail-biting as the US presidential election has been, Jonathan Freedland and Lauren Gambino have been following the battle for control of Congress. They discuss the latest in both races.

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      The Democrats were hoping for the “blue wave” to crash over the Senate, but that didn’t happen. As it stands, Biden is edging ever closer to the White House but we still don’t know for sure. Democrats are still in control of the lower chamber, and the Republicans still have the upper chamber. There wasn’t a wave, but there were some interesting tidal changes over the last few days and to navigate us through some of these, Jonathan Freedland is joined by senior political reporter for Guardian US Lauren Gambino. Let us know what you think of the podcast. Send your feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Can America Restore Its Democracy?

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      You know about the five-second rule. According to conventional wisdom, food that has dropped on the floor can be safely eaten if retrieved within five seconds. Some scientists have even set up experiments to confirm this folk saying. Of course, all bets are off if your toast falls on the floor buttered side down and you haven’t mopped the kitchen in recent memory.

      How Do You Fix the Soul of the Nation?

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      Today, after a contentious election and with the results of the presidential race still uncertain, we are all now looking down at the ground. It’s been four years since Donald Trump dropped the buttered toast of our democracy onto the floor. After four years face down in the dirt, can our democracy be picked up, dusted off and restored to some semblance of integrity?

      The 2020 Election

      The polls made it look like Joe Biden would be an easy winner, maybe even in a landslide. The Democrats were expected to retake the Senate. The huge number of early votes — nearly 100 million — suggested that the 2020 turnout would be the greatest in more than 100 years. The Democratic Party is supposed to benefit from more souls at the polls.

      The polls were off. If Joe Biden wins, he will do so by a slender margin and only after considerable legal wrangling by both parties. The Democrats are now a long shot to win control of the Senate. And the huge turnout has translated into Donald Trump getting more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, more in fact than any Republican candidate in history.

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      Texas did not go blue. Neither did Florida or Ohio. The Republican Party went all in for Trump, and he delivered beyond his base. But Arizona may have flipped, and Georgia might as well. If the infamous “Blue Wall” holds — at least Wisconsin and Michigan if not Pennsylvania — then Biden will become the next president.

      Still, who in their right mind would want to lead the United States at this perilous moment? The pandemic is surging. The economy hasn’t climbed out of its hole. Donald Trump has applied his scorched-earth approach to both foreign and domestic policy. The Republican Party has demonstrated that it delights in playing dirty, refuses to compromise for the national good and embraces the most malign of Trump’s many fictions from the uselessness of masks to the myth of climate change.

      Exit polls, meanwhile, reveal a country divided by more than just party affiliation. Democrats, for instance, overwhelmingly want to contain the current pandemic while Republicans want to focus on reopening the economy. This dynamic explains why so many Trump voters believe the president better handles both the economy and the pandemic, even if the evidence of his mismanagement is obvious to everyone else.

      Trump’s “law and order” message also proved influential among Republican voters, despite the president’s blatant violations of law and disruptions of order. Heck, according to a recent judicial ruling, even the president’s Commission on Law Enforcement broke the law!

      Perhaps the most sobering conclusion from the election is that nearly half the country is indifferent to the actual mechanisms of democracy. They just don’t care that their president refused to endorse a peaceful transition of power if he loses. They don’t care that he has derided the very act of voting by insisting, as he did early Wednesday morning, on enlisting the Supreme Court in an effort to stop the counting of the remaining ballots (except in those states, like Arizona, where he hopes to catch up). Nor do they see anything wrong with the Republican Party’s efforts to keep certain groups of people away from the polls.

      That doesn’t bode well for the future of American democracy, especially if the country continues to abide by the Electoral College. For the last several decades, US presidential elections have resembled Groundhog Day — and I don’t mean the movie. Why should one groundhog determine the length of winter? Don’t the other groundhogs get a vote? Likewise, why should a voter in Pennsylvania matter more than a voter in Maryland or Wyoming?

      Trump is not the only culprit here. The ground was dirty before he dropped our democracy on it. The Democrats and their patronage systems, like Tammany Hall in New York and Richard Daley’s machine in Chicago, set some dismal precedents. But now it is the Republican Party that, to preserve its governing majority in the absence of a popular mandate, is warping the rules of the game and breaking the few rules that remain.

      People vs. Putative Adults

      Let’s say that Biden ekes out a victory. What’s the damage report on Trump’s four-year assault on democracy? After the 2016 election, the pundit class asserted that one man, however powerful, could not tear down the 250-year-old edifice of American democracy. There was much talk of “guardrails” and “adults in the room,” all of which were supposed to contain the ungovernable id in the White House.

      Over the course of four years, however, Trump systematically disposed of the supposed adults in the room — Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, John Kelly — in favor of yes-men and one or two yes-women. In addition, through executive orders, judicial appointments and obsessive Twittering, he moved the guardrails so that he could steer America wildly off the road.

      Just before the 2018 midterm elections, I wrote, “it would be poetic justice if what’s left of the mechanisms of democracy — voting, the courts, and the press — can still be used to defeat a potential autocrat, his family, and all the putative adults he’s brought into the room to implement his profoundly anti-democratic program.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Over the last two years, those mechanisms were in fact on full display. Despite Trump’s full-court press, the judiciary has represented an important check on his power, blocking some of his attacks on immigrants, his efforts to withhold his financial information and to throw out ballots. The mainstream media, meanwhile, continued to nip at Trump’s ankles. The New York Times, for example, published one expose after another about Trump’s record on the pandemic, his taxes, his financial relations with China and so on.

      And now the voters have had their say. Despite all the efforts by the Republican Party to suppress the vote, around 67% of eligible voters turned out this year, the highest percentage since 1900. Trump supporters did what they could to push against that tide. They intimidated voters. They disrupted Democratic Party events and even tried to run a Biden bus off the road in Texas. They restricted the number of ballot drop-off locations. The post office, run by a Trump appointee, ignored a court order to locate 300,000 mail-in ballots at risk of not being delivered. But voters gonna vote.

      Let’s also salute all the people who have made that vote possible. Despite the pandemic, tens of thousands of people showed up to staff polling sites and count ballots. Then there are all the volunteers who participated in get-out-the-vote campaigns by knocking on doors, making phone calls, sending texts and doing grassroots fundraising to keep the operations going. Democracy, in other words, is not just about the politicians and the voters. It requires an immense effort by a veritable army of people. They, not the candidates, are the winners of the 2020 election.

      Democracy’s Future

      Trump is not done. Even if he doesn’t get his presumed entitlement of four more years, he has two more months to trash his frat house of a presidency before turning it over to the next administration. That means more executive orders like the recent ones that opened up Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and removed workplace protections from federal civil servants. If Biden manages to take his place in the Oval Office, he’ll likely face a Republican-controlled Senate that will block his every move, just like Republicans adopted a no-compromise position after the election of Barack Obama.

      Certainly, Biden aims to reverse many of Trump’s executive orders with his own ones. That will work in the foreign policy realm, for instance recommitting the United States to the Paris climate accords. But any domestic orders will face court challenges, and suddenly the Republican Party’s strategy of pushing through an unprecedented number of federal judges takes on an even more ominous cast. Popular will be damned. The Republicans will rely on senators, lawyers and judges to institutionalize Trump’s legacy.

      Unlike 2008, the Democrats will be hard-pressed this time to claim an overwhelming popular mandate after such a close election. Trump voters, meanwhile, are not going away. They’ll continue showing up with guns. They’ll refuse to wear masks. They’ll spread fake news and outlandish conspiracy theories.

      They’ll also challenge the federal government — now led by an adversary, not an ally — at every turn. Remember the 2016 standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, when a bunch of right-wing extremists seized government property and faced off against law enforcement? Expect an uptick in outright confrontations between federalists and anti-federalists during Biden’s presidency.

      Let’s face it: The democracy that Donald Trump dropped on the floor suffered a great deal from the experience. It’s going to take more than an election to put it right.

      *[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

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      Why Populists at the Helm Are Bad for the Economy

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      Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a man on a mission. The goal: to make Turkey great again. Making Turkey great again, I guess, means wiping history clean of a series of humiliations, from the ignominious decline of the Ottoman Empire, dismissed as the “sick man upon the Bosporus” in the late 1800s, to the no less ignominious Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 that forced Istanbul to cede vast parts of its territory to France, the UK, Italy and Greece. The treaty not only marked the beginning of the empire’s demise, but also the origins of Turkish nationalism, which led to the establishment of the modern Turkish republic.

      President Erdogan is but the most recent and arguably most egregious expression of Turkish nationalism that seeks to restore past glory by gathering all Turkish peoples under one roof, similar to what once was known as pan-Slavism. This explains why Erdogan has been adamant in his support for Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. Ironically enough, Erdogan has been amazingly sanguine with respect to the oppression of Muslim Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province. As so often, money trumps convictions while hypocrisy runs rampant.

      In an Era of Strongman Politics, Turkey Is Hard to Call

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      This is deplorable, but, as US President Donald Trump has put is so eloquently, albeit in a different context, “It is what it is.” In any case, the topic here isn’t Erdogan’s attempt to establish himself as the champion of pan-Turkish nationalism or his attempt to affirm his claim to champion the cause of Islam, exemplified in his recent attacks against French President Emmanuel Macron. Instead, the focus is on Erdogan as a typical exponent of contemporary authoritarian populism.

      Claim to Legitimacy

      Populists base their claim to legitimacy on the notion that they promote the interests of “ordinary citizens” against an aloof elite far removed from everyday life, an elite that could care less about people’s concerns and worries. Against that, populists maintain that if elected, they will make the concerns and wellbeing of ordinary citizens their main priority. This is how Erdogan, Trump, India’s Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro swept into office. This is what has been their claim to legitimacy.

      Unfortunately, hard reality is a far cry from lofty promises. Decades of experience with populist regimes shows that populists in power have a disastrous economic track record. To make things worse, populists appear to be particularly resistant to taking advice from those who have studied populist economics or learning from the glaring mistakes made by populist regimes in the past.

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      There is, by now, a substantial record of serious analysis of populist economics, largely based on the experience of Latin American populism. Take, for instance, Jeffrey Sachs, who certainly is above any suspicion of harboring right-wing proclivities. In a paper from 1989, he analyzed what he called the “populist policy cycle”: Overly “expansionary macroeconomic policies,” he observed, “lead to high inflation and severe balance of payments crises.”

      In a similar vein, Rüdiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards noted in 1991, “Again and again, and in country after country, policymakers have embraced economic programs that rely heavily on the use of expansive fiscal and credit policies and overvalued currency to accelerate growth and redistribute income.” After a short-lived economic boom, problems emerge, engendering “unsustainable macroeconomic pressures that, at the end, result in the plummeting of real wages and severe balance of payment difficulties. The final outcome of these experiments has generally been galloping inflation, crisis, and the collapse of the economic system.” Ultimately, those supposed to benefit most from populist economic policies, i.e., the poor, end up worse off than they had been before the populists came to power.

      Recent developments in Turkey suggest that Erdogan’s regime might be heading in the same direction. Take, for instance, the evolution of the country’s currency, the lira. Over the past nine months, the lira has lost almost 25% of its value compared the US dollar and the euro. This reflects investor worries about rising inflation, depleting currency reserves and the fact that Turks appear to be fleeing into foreign currencies.

      Same Direction

      The concerns are hardly unfounded. In late September, the Turkish central bank raised interest rates by 200 basis points, from 8.25% to 10.25%, in an attempt to counter rising inflation. This marked a drastic reversal of previous policy. Starting in December 2019, it had successively slashed the interest rate, which at the time stood at 14%. The move was not entirely of the bank’s own making. In July, Erdogan, unhappy about the bank’s slow pace in cutting interest rates, dismissed its chief for not having “follow[ed] instruction.” His replacement dutifully embarked on a course of monetary easing, based on official projections that the inflation rate would fall to around 8% by the end of 2020.

      Monetary easing provoked a massive “credit binge” by both businesses and households, which, in turn, stoked the flames of inflation, far surpassing the projected 8% mark. In reality, inflation rose to around 12% in 2020. In response to monetary easing, private debt increased substantially, with often disastrous consequences. A prominent case in point is Turkey’s professional football clubs. The four most prominent ones — Besiktas, Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Trabzonspor — have accumulated around €1.5 billion ($1.8 billion) worth of debt.

      The reason? In line with Erdogan’s goal to turn Turkey into a major global power, the country’s top football clubs endeavored to move into the Gotha of European football, on par with the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern München and Manchester City. In order to reach this goal, they borrowed heavily in euros and dollars in order to be able to attract international star players. The partial collapse of the Turkish lira, together with the drying up of revenues in the wake of COVID-19, has pushed all four clubs to the abyss of financial ruin.

      It would be going too far to suggest that this might be a preview of things to come for Turkey as a whole. In fact, the regime’s economic track record has been relatively successful in performing a balancing act between sane economic policy and populist inclinations. This has been due, to a significant extent, to the central bank’s relative independence, even if this has noticeably eroded over the past several years, constantly under pressure from the president to support the regime’s economic program. The recent rate hike might suggest, or so one might hope, that realism has once again gained the upper hand.

      This would certainly be a departure from business as usual as far as populist regimes are concerned. A recent extensive study by economists from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the University of Bonn in Germany provides an extensive and detailed account of the profound incompetence populist regimes have demonstrated when it comes to the basics of economics. Silvio Berlusconi’s tenure, for instance, did little to advance the life chances of ordinary Italians.

      Embed from Getty Images

      On the contrary, the upsurge in voter discontent and disenchantment that, for a short period of time, propelled the Five Star Movement to the top of Italian politics, reflects the opportunities wasted during Berlusconi’s reign. This has been particularly pronounced in Latin America, but not only there. In the medium and long run, as the study’s authors conclude, “virtually all countries governed by populists witness subpar economic outcomes evidenced by a substantial decline in real GDP and consumption.” It would be easy to dismiss these outcomes as the result of misguided policies, informed by good intentions but with disastrous consequences. My guess is, however, that this is only part of the story, and the less important one at that. Not for nothing those who have studied populism have emphasized the importance of the “common sense of common people” as a central trope in populist rhetoric, targeting expert “elites.”

      Unfortunately, more often than not, the common sense of the common people is completely wrong. Even more unfortunately, ignoring expert advice more often than not has disastrous consequences — in economics, as well as with regard to the coronavirus pandemic.

      Once again, Erdogan is a prominent example. Despite an upsurge in COVID-19 infections, the president has been more than reluctant to follow advice to impose stringent measures to contain the virus. At the same time, his political allies have accused Turkish medical experts of “treason,” reminiscent of similar slanders in the United States. To make matters worse, Erdogan’s shameful attack on President Macron in the wake of Islamicist-inspired terrorist attacks in France is hardly conducive to improving Turkey’s economic relations with Western Europe, a vital market for Turkish exports. So much for common sense.

      *[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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      What Is Behind the Rise of Islamophobia in France?

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      On October 29, the French Ministry of Interior sent out a message on social media warning of “Violent radicalization, Islamism … If you have any doubts about someone you know, contact the toll-free number.” The situation in France has exploded into what is now increasingly reminiscent of 1930s Germany when Hitler sought informants on Jews.

      Muslims Will Not Kill God for Marianne

      READ MORE

      Samuel Paty, a schoolteacher who showed his students the derogatory cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that inspired the 2015 attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, was killed by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, Abdoullakh Anzorov. When French President Emmanuel Macron defended the display of the cartoons, which are considered by Muslims to be extremely offensive, as a matter of freedom of expression, the ongoing tension between the French state and its roughly 6 million-strong Muslim population (or 10%) is, in fact, a manifestation of a much deeper crisis, heralding what seems to be a growing trend across Western civilization.

      French Islam

      For France, the issue has its roots in the country’s domestic and international politics. The concept of radical assimilation has been a part of France’s governance tradition since its colonial reign. In the 19th and 20th centuries, in Francophone Africa, the natives were considered “French” and “civilized” as long as they rejected their own cultures in favor of that of the colonial power.

      The same mentality applies to the immigrants who have moved to France from former African colonies, particularly Algeria, Tunisia, and those countries across West Africa. This strict interpretation of the assimilation policy is further reinforced at home by the rigorous redefinition of French secularism, or laïcité, whereby the visibility of religion, particularly Islam, is suppressed in the public sphere, and the responsibility of immigrants, and Muslims in particular, is to demonstrate their attachment to French values and culture.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The suppression of religion in the public sphere has created enormous friction between the secular state and Muslims, whose faith requires observance around the clock. For example, the arrest of Muslims who have had to pray in the streets due to lack of mosques has become commonplace. In a striking display of French secularism, a Muslim woman was forced on a beach in Cannes in 2016 by police to remove her Islamic burkini and given a citation for “wearing an outfit that disrespects good morals and secularism.” France’s aggressive attempt to create nationwide equality has naturally led to repression of diversity, forcing Muslims to retreat to ghettoized suburbs. This in turn created discrimination and a fear of social rejection among France’s rapidly growing Muslim population.

      This brings us to how Islam is viewed in France. Much as across Europe, Islam is the fastest-growing faith in France. French Muslims are much younger and have considerably more children than other French nationals. Correspondingly, Christianity in France is in free fall. According to the survey by St. Mary’s University, London, only 25% of the French between the ages of 16 and 29 identify as Christian. What is even more concerning for the French state is that the number of people converting to Islam is on the rise as well. Out of France’s 6 million Muslims, 200,000 are estimated to be converts, among whom are celebrity figures such as the rapper Diam’s and footballer Franck Ribery. Conversion to Islam is particularly prevalent among women, which has created a body of research examining this trend.

      The increasing demographic disparity between Islam and Christianity, coupled with an increasing refugee influx from Muslim countries, has given rise to the notion that within two generations, Muslims are going to be the majority in Europe. Naturally, this argument has been used by right-wing politicians across Europe. France is no exception. Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, has skillfully used this argument throughout her political career. In the first round of the 2017 French presidential elections, Le Pen garnered a sizable 21.3% of the vote against Emmanuel Macron’s 24%, only to lose in the run-off election. The 2017 election clearly showed that right-wing politics are on the rise in France and elsewhere in Europe.

      Macron’s harsh stance toward French Muslims should also be seen from this angle. In the 2022 French presidential race, Macron is expected to seek a second term against Le Pen, his most likely contender. To the president’s dismay, the current polls suggest that at 26%, Le Pen has an edge over his 25%. This being the case, the incumbent Macron is clearly courting the far-right constituency by adopting Islamophobic policies that would be expected from a Le Pen presidency.

      More Problems

      The current atmosphere is highly conducive for a further rise of the far right across Europe. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was facilitated by the Great Depression of 1929 and its devastating impact on Germany. Likewise, the 2008 global financial crisis jolted the West so much that we have been witnessing the demise of the center-left and the gradual rise of the radical right in Poland, Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States.

      Macron’s current effort to elevate Islam as France’s biggest problem should also be seen as an attempt to distract the public from his failures at home and abroad. The rapidly deteriorating economy, austerity measures, heavy taxation and the proposed pension reform have inspired the yellow vests movement that has been staging violent demonstrations against the government since 2018. Abroad, France appears to be bogged down in its never-ending wars in former African colonies as French casualties pile up. In Libya, Macron has failed to secure warlord Khalifa Haftar’s rule. In the East Mediterranean, France has failed to secure the interests of Greece, an ally.

      There is one country that France has had to unsuccessfully counter in the above-mentioned regions: Turkey. It is for this reason that Macron has consistently perceived Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his archrival and increased his anti-Turkey rhetoric. Furthermore, Erdogan, at the moment the most outspoken critic of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, is the only world leader who can influence Muslims in France, and Macron knows it. Erdogan’s call on Muslims for a worldwide boycott of French products prompted the French government’s plea to the Muslim world to denounce the boycott. While the economic effect of the boycott is not known yet, Macron seems to be softening his tone on the cartoon issue.               

      France’s unsuccessful assimilation policies, rapidly deteriorating economy, failed foreign policy alongside the ensuing rise of the far right have all contributed to the current demonization of Muslims in the country. As Western values such as democracy, human rights and equality are losing relevance, there is little hope that this trend will change any time soon.

      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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      Who Are the Men Hoping to Succeed Angela Merkel?

      by

      The decision of who will follow Angela Merkel to become Germany’s next chancellor is still up in the air. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party conference to elect a new leader has been postponed until January next year.

      Merkel’s approval ratings have skyrocketed during the pandemic. Recent polls show that 72% of Germans are either satisfied or very satisfied with her performance. The last time Merkel enjoyed such high popularity was in January 2015, shortly before the refugee crisis, which saw her approval ratings plummet. The refugee crisis divided German society and eroded trust in democratic institutions and the political class. Recovery from this, at least during Merkel’s tenure, appeared unlikely. But it seems another crisis was needed to reignite the love between the German public and the chancellor, a relationship that is entering its 16th — and final — year. 

      The Downward Spiral of Angela Merkel’s CDU

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      Since Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced her resignation as party leader in February this year, three potential successors have been waiting in the wings. They will find it hard to live up to Merkel’s qualities that endeared her not only to the German, but also the global, public. Merkel’s unagitated, unpretentious and clear-headed governing style that proved particularly effective during the pandemic threatens to overshadow the three men itching to succeed her.

      Friedrich Merz: Merkel’s Antithesis

      Leading the polls among the three candidates is Friedrich Merz, a lawyer and former supervisory board chairman of the asset managing firm Blackrock. He comes from the economically liberal and conservative wing of the CDU, endorsing less state regulation of the economy. In 2000, before Merkel ousted him as CDU whip in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, Merz demanded a so-called “German leading culture” as a counterweight to the model of multiculturalism. Even today, he proposes cuts to social benefits for immigrants. Furthermore, he set off controversial intra-party debates during CDU regional conferences in 2018 by questioning the individual right to asylum. 

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      His appeal: Despite losing to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in his first attempt to become the CDU leader in 2018, Merz is a popular figure among party members and has a devout group of supporters. He is a good speaker and can draw large crowds. Merz comes across as authentic and a straight talker. Furthermore, he embodies the times of the 1990s and the early 2000s, when the world seemed less complicated. That could give him an advantage, especially among older male voters.

      His Achilles heel: Merz is an old foe of Angela Merkel and hasn’t occupied political office for almost 18 years. Hence, he cannot count on much support among senior party figures in the CDU, which is vital to securing the leadership. He recently underlined his intra-party role as a divisive lone warrior by stating that the cancellation of the conference on December 4 was the latest part of a concerted effort to prevent him from becoming party leader.

      How he has fared during the pandemic: Without a government position and after catching COVID-19 in March, Merz struggled to get much public attention during the first few months of the pandemic. That has not changed despite his attempts to initiate a debate about the post-coronavirus economic recovery. Only his recent accusations around the delay of the party conference caught attention, probably not to his advantage.

      Armin Laschet: Merkel’s Man

      Merz’s closest rival, Armin Laschet, is the minister president of Germany’s most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia. He represents a continuation of Merkel’s policies and is known for defending her controversial stance on refugees and migration policy. Concerning national issues, Laschet tends to strike a moderate rather than conservative tone. Nonetheless, he has shown to be capable of appealing to the conservative wing of the party by buckling down on crime in his home state.

      His appeal: Laschet is a candidate for cosmopolitan, left-leaning swing voters. Also, he has an ace up his sleeve: Laschet has teamed up with Health Minister Jens Spahn, whose conservative profile appeals to voters in rural Germany. This double ticket, which speaks to a broad voter base, and the support of the largest and influential CDU state association from North-Rhine Westphalia, make him a favorite to win the leadership.

      His Achilles heel: Laschet’s attributes of being a unifier and striking moderate tones has its flipside. He is not a charismatic leader who can capture people’s hearts, which might be a disadvantage in the final weeks of the leadership race. 

      How he has fared during the pandemic: As head of a state government, the COVID-19 crisis was a chance for Laschet to get an advantage over his competitors. He failed to seize it. In his attempt to take a more light-hearted approach to the virus, Laschet exuded nervousness. It came across as a desperate attempt to distinguish himself from his adversary, the Bavarian Minister President Markus Söder, who implemented more rigorous measures to fight the pandemic. But with time, as people become weary of constraints, his strategy might come to fruition.

      Norbert Röttgen: Merkel’s Smartest

      Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, represents the left-wing of the CDU. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, he instigated the phasing out of Germany’s nuclear power as federal environment minister. He also favors a yet unprecedented coalition between the CDU and the Greens on a national level. Regarding foreign policy, he demands a more decisive and self-assured role for Germany in international affairs.

      His appeal: As a former member of Merkel’s cabinet, Röttgen was referred to as “Muttis Klügster” — Mother’s Smartest. His strength is a profound knowledge of policy, coupled with rhetorical skills that allow him to come across thoughtful and precise.

      His Achilles heel: Röttgen has no noteworthy supporter group within the party and is having trouble distinguishing himself from the other two candidates. On the one hand, his policies resemble Laschet’s too closely while also not appealing to conservative party members. He is the clear outsider in the race.

      How he has fared during the pandemic: Not very well. Without inhabiting any political office, Röttgen was hardly visible during the pandemic.

      What About Markus Söder?

      Regardless of how the leadership race unfolds, Markus Söder, the party leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is touted as Germany’s next chancellor. Most Germans would prefer him over the three candidates running for the CDU’s party leadership. According to opinion polls, 37% of the German electorate would choose Söder as chancellor over potential competitors from the Greens and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Despite being the second choice among CDU members after Friedrich Merz, 53% of the membership regards Markus Söder as the candidate with the highest chances of winning a general election. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Söder’s rising popularity is nothing short of unexpected. In his younger years, Söder came across as an overambitious agitator and a vain self-promoter. But he has masterfully used the COVID-19 crisis as a stage to demonstrate a statesmanlike demeanor with a supposedly firm grip on things. Remarkably, above-average coronavirus case numbers and failures in Bavarian testing centers have not affected his high approval ratings. But Söder himself has remained tight-lipped about his ambitions. When asked whether he rules out running for chancellor, he typically replies with the phrase, “My place is in Bavaria.” Until now, this non-committal strategy has proved to be shrewd. While the three candidates might wear themselves out in petty skirmishes, he can enhance his idealized self-image of the caring and resolute Bavarian chief minister.

      Nevertheless, his opportunity to run for chancellor is dependent on the outcome of the leadership race. An equally ambitious fighter, Friedrich Merz would hardly give the chancellorship a miss if elected party leader. Only a victory for Laschet or a surprise candidacy of his running mate, Jens Spahn, would open a clear window of opportunity for Söder.

      The delay of the party conference has added a new dimension to the race. It has given candidates in public offices like Laschet and Söder more time and opportunity to shine. In contrast, other candidates, particularly Friedrich Merz, are scrambling for the limelight. That has led to resentment as Merz sees the delayed party conference as a plot to thwart his chances. He might have a case.

      The longer Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer remains party leader, the more she can pull strings toward a more favorable outcome. It is an open secret that she, as well as Angela Merkel, would prefer Laschet over Merz. Also, Kramp-Karrenbauer warned against possible surprise candidacies to avoid a “ruinous competition.” Rumors suggest that Jens Spahn, who is increasingly popular among CDU members as well as voters, could enter the race.

      As the infighting in the party commences, the CDU should not forget why the leadership race is taking in the first place. The CDU is at a crossroads and under severe pressure from the right. As the pandemic continues to create problems for Angela Merkel’s government, her party has to decide whether it wants to win back conservative voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany party or stay on a liberal course set by Merkel.

      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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      Muslims Will Not Kill God for Marianne

      by

      Two conflicting narratives have been clashing anew in extremely heated debates amid what we may call “a new cartoon crisis.” On one side, there is a sizable portion of orthodox Muslims with a strong aniconism tradition and who perceive the representation of sacred characters as unpardonable blasphemy. On the other are defenders of secularism who consider freedom of expression a holy human right. The world is witnessing the confrontation of two epistemologically divergent civilizations: a humanist one that killed God and put the human at its center, and a metaphysical one ready to die and kill for its deity and sacrosanct icons.

      Is Peace Religious or Secular?

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      “Islam is a religion that is in crisis,” stated French President Emmanuel Macron, as he unveiled his plan to defend French secularism against Islamic extremism in early October. This prompted a backlash from Muslim communities around the world. The events escalated further amidst the beheading of a French teacher who shared with his class derogatory caricatures featuring Prophet Muhammad. In an act of defiance, Macron insisted the French will make no concessions and would “not cease drawing caricatures” as Paris displayed gigantic reproductions of the cartoons in question on government buildings.

      Post-Truth Era

      The current situation is a classic case of a post-truth-era dilemma. Each camp firmly believes it is the keeper of a universal, irrefutable truth, while in reality it lives inside its own ideological bubble and refuses to accept that there are other truths out there and probably a transcendental one that is beyond all opposing paradigms.

      Post-truth — which was named the Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary in the midst of the divisions caused by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump — is a philosophical concept that signals a context where shared rational facts are replaced by subjective and emotional beliefs that shape public opinion. French humanism is rooted in centuries of reforms ending in a rupture between the state and the church. Muslim societies lived a completely different historical reality, where metaphysics are central and populations still romanticize the theological concept of the umma (global Muslim community).

      Embed from Getty Images

      In an ideal world, both “truths” would be able to coexist peacefully. Nevertheless, France never overcame its colonial mindset with its good old “civilizing mission.” Macron arrogantly insinuates that it is the white man’s burden to modernize and secularize a Muslim world “in crisis.” Acts of terror committed by Muslims are indubitably repugnant and humanly unacceptable, but so is radical secularization and the extremist modernization dogma that blindly attempts to assimilate citizens into the fifth republic’s grinding machine.

      Defenders of the French perspective would say: Why don’t followers of other religions get angry when we draw Jesus or Moses? This is a shallow and simplistic comparison that does not take into consideration the cultural and anthropological particularity of the Muslim community, nor the sanguinary colonial encounter it had with France just decades back in Africa. It also characterizes the obstinate myopia with which the country of Marianne continues to deal with its almost 6 million Muslims.

      Maybe the most revealing inconsistency in the French discourse can be summed up in a saying repeated by those who call to boycott French products: “Insulting a black person is racism, insulting a Jew is anti-Semitism, insulting a woman is sexism, but insulting a Muslim is freedom of expression.”  

      Both Sides Demonize the Other

      Of course, not all French people are rigid defenders of the values of the republic. Many philosophers, artists and journalists came out to condemn the French president’s provocations. However, as in many post-truth dichotomies, both antagonists compete to demonize the other, which fuels further hate and animosity. Moreover, instead of fighting violent extremism, it can do just the opposite, such as with the previous Danish cartoon controversy of 2005 and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015. Meanwhile, Muslims are flooding the internet with hashtags and memes against Macron, while countries like Kuwait removed French products from its shelves and the Turkish president even questioned the mental health of his counterpart in Paris.

      To answer Macron’s statement, we can regrettably say that France is a country in crisis because of its failure to address systemic racism against Muslims and its refusal to embrace cultural plurality and hybridity. In the French context, Edward Said’s “clash of ignorance” can no longer be used as an excuse to hide the clash of truths between radical secularism and Muslims refusing to kill God for Marianne.

      *[An earlier version of this article was published by Raseef22.]

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