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      Biden’s New Culture of Brinkmanship

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      Taiwan is a problem. Historically separate from but linked to China, Taiwan was colonized by the Dutch and partially by the Spanish in the 17th century. Through a series of conflicts between aboriginal forces allied with the Ming dynasty and European colonial forces who also fought amongst themselves, by 1683, Taiwan became integrated into the Qing Empire. For two centuries, it evolved to become increasingly an integral part of China. In 1895, due to its strategic position on the eastern coast of China at the entry of the South China Sea, it became one of the spoils of the Sino-Japanese war and for half a century was ruled by the Japanese.

      Japan used Taiwan during the Second World War as the launching pad for its aggressive operations in Southeast Asia. At the end of the war, with the Japanese defeated and Mao Zedong’s communists in control of mainland China, Mao’s rival, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang, fled to Taiwan. This put the dissident government out of Mao’s reach. Chiang declared his government the Republic of China (ROC) in opposition to Mao’s People’s Republic of China (PRC). For forty years a single-party regime ruled Taiwan following Chiang Kai-shek’s initial declaration of martial law in 1949.

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      Because the United States had defined its post-war identity as anti-communist, Taiwan held the status of the preferred national government in what was then referred to as “the free world.” The fate of Taiwan — still referred to by its Portuguese name, Formosa — figured as a major foreign policy issue in the 1960 US presidential campaign that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. The debate turned around whether the US should commit to defending against the People’s Republic two smaller islands situated between continental China and Taiwan.

      In short, Taiwan’s history and geopolitical status over the past 150 years have become extremely complex. There are political, economic and geographical considerations as well as ideological and geopolitical factors that make it even more complex. These have been aggravated by a visible decline in the supposed capacity of the United States to impose and enforce solutions in different parts of the globe and the rise of China’s influence in the global economy.

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      Complexity, when applied to politics, generally signifies ambiguity. In the aftermath of the Korean War, the Eisenhower administration established a policy based on the idea of backing Taiwan while seriously hedging their bets. Writing for The Diplomat, Dennis Hickey explains that in 1954, the US “deliberately sought to ‘fuzz up’ the security pact [with Taiwan] in such a way that the territories covered by the document were unclear.”

      Following President Nixon’s historic overture in 1971, the US established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This led to the transfer of China’s seat at the United Nations from the ROC to Mao’s PRC. The status of Taiwan was now inextricably ambiguous. US administrations, already accustomed to “fuzzy” thinking, described their policy approach as “strategic ambiguity.” It allowed them to treat Taiwan as an ally without recognizing it as an independent state. The point of such an attitude is what R. Nicolas Burns — President Joe Biden’s still unconfirmed pick for the post of US ambassador to China — calls “the smartest and most effective way” to avoid war.

      Recent events indicate that we may be observing a calculated shift in that policy. In other words, the ambiguity is becoming more ambiguous. Or, depending on one’s point of view, less ambiguous. There is a discernible trend toward the old Cold War principle of brinkmanship. A not quite prepared President Biden recently embarrassed himself in a CNN Town Hall for stating that the US had a “commitment” to defend Taiwan. The White House quickly walked back that commitment, reaffirming the position of strategic ambiguity.

      This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to be pushing back in the other direction, threatening the Chinese with “terrible consequences” if they make any move to invade Taiwan. Blinken added, the Taipei Times reports, that the US has “been very clear and consistently clear” in its commitment to Taiwan. 

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Consistently clear:

      In normal use, unambiguous. In diplomatic use, obviously muddied and murky, but capable of being transformed by an act of assertive rhetoric into the expression of a bold-sounding intention that eliminates nuance, even when nuance remains necessary for balance and survival.

      Contextual note

      If Donald Trump’s administration projected a foreign policy based on fundamentally theatrical melodrama that consisted of calling the leader of a nuclear state “rocket man” and dismissing most of the countries of the Global South as “shitholes,” while accusing allies of taking advantage of the US, the defining characteristic of the now ten-months-old Biden administration’s foreign policy appears to be the commitment to the old 1950s Cold War stance known as brinkmanship.

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      In November, the CIA director, William Burns, comically threatened Russia with “consequences” if it turned out — despite a total lack of evidence — that Vladimir Putin’s people were the perpetrators of a series of imaginary attacks popularly called the Havana syndrome. This week, backing up Biden’s warning “of a ‘strong’ Western economic response” to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was more specific. “One target,” France 24 reports, “could be Russia’s mammoth Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany. Sullivan said the pipeline’s future was at ‘risk’ if Russia does invade Ukraine.” This may have been meant more to cow the Europeans, whose economy depends on Russian gas, than the Russians themselves.

      These various examples have made observers wonder what is going on, what the dreaded “consequences” repeatedly evoked may look like and what other further consequences they may provoke. The US administration seems to be recycling the nostalgia of members of Biden’s own generation, hankering after what their memory fuzzily associates with the prosperous years of the original Cold War.

      Historical Note

      Britannica defines brinkmanship as the “foreign policy practice in which one or both parties force the interaction between them to the threshold of confrontation in order to gain an advantageous negotiation position over the other. The technique is characterized by aggressive risk-taking policy choices that court potential disaster.”

      The term brinkmanship was coined by Dwight Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent in both of his elections, Adlai Stevenson, who dared to mock Secretary of State John Foster Dulles when he celebrated the principle of pushing things to the brink. “The ability to get to the verge,” Dulles explained, “without getting into the war is the necessary art…if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.” Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, inherited the consequences of Dulles’ brinkmanship over Cuba, the nation that John Foster’s brother, CIA Director Alan Dulles, insisted on invading only months after Kennedy’s inauguration. This fiasco was a prelude to the truly frightening Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when Kennedy’s generals, led by Curtis Lemay, sought to bring the world to the absolute brink.

      When, two years later, Lyndon Johnson set a hot war going in Vietnam, or when, decades later, George W. Bush triggered a long period of American military aggression targeting multiple countries in the Muslim world, the policy of brinkmanship was no longer in play. These proxy wars were calculated as bets that fell far short of the brink. The risk was limited to what, unfortunately, it historically turned out to be: a slow deterioration of the capacities and the image of a nation that was ready to abuse its power in the name of abstract principles — democracy, liberation, stifling terrorism, promoting women’s rights — that none of the perpetrators took seriously. Threats and sanctions were features of the daily rhetoric, but the idea at the core of brinkmanship — that some major, uncontrollable conflagration might occur — was never part of the equation.

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      The Biden administration may have serious reasons for returning to the policy of brinkmanship. The position of the United States on the world stage has manifestly suffered. Some hope it can be restored and believe it would require strong medicine. But there are also more trivial reasons: notably the fear of the administration being mocked by Republicans for being weak in the face of powerful enemies. 

      Both motivations signal danger. We may once again be returning to the devastating brinkman’s game logic illustrated in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”

      *[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 US Politics

      The big idea: are we really so polarised? | Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel

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      The big idea: are we really so polarised? In many democracies the political chasm seems wider than ever. But emotion, not policies, may be what actually divides us In 2020, the match-making website OkCupid asked 5 million hopeful daters around the world: “Could you date someone who has strong political opinions that are the opposite of yours?” Sixty per cent said no, up from 53% a year before.Scholars used to worry that societies might not be polarised enough. Without clear differences between political parties, they thought, citizens lack choices, and important issues don’t get deeply debated. Now this notion seems rather quaint as countries have fractured along political lines, reflected in everything from dating preferences to where people choose to live.Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind the scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights.Just how stark has political polarisation become? Well, it depends on where you live and how you look at it. When social psychologists study relations between groups, they often find that whereas people like their own groups a great deal, they have fairly neutral feelings towards out-groups: “They’re fine, but we’re great!” This pattern used to describe relations between Democrats and Republicans in the US. In 1980, partisans reported feeling warm towards members of their own party and neutral towards people on the other side. However, while levels of in-party warmth have remained stable since then, feelings towards the out-party have plummeted.The dynamics are similar in the UK, where the Brexit vote was deeply divisive. A 2019 study revealed that while UK citizens were not particularly identified with political parties, they held strong identities as remainers or leavers. Their perceptions were sharply partisan, with each side regarding its supporters as intelligent and honest, while viewing the other as selfish and close-minded. The consequences of hating political out-groups are many and varied. It can lead people to support corrupt politicians, because losing to the other side seems unbearable. It can make compromise impossible even when you have common political ground. In a pandemic, it can even lead people to disregard advice from health experts if they are embraced by opposing partisans.The negativity that people feel towards political opponents is known to scientists as affective polarisation. It is emotional and identity-driven – “us” versus “them”. Importantly, this is distinct from another form of division known as ideological polarisation, which refers to differences in policy preferences. So do we disagree about the actual issues as much as our feelings about each other suggest?Despite large differences in opinion between politicians and activists from different parties, there is often less polarisation among regular voters on matters of policy. When pushed for their thoughts about specific ideas or initiatives, citizens with different political affiliations often turn out to agree more than they disagree (or at least the differences are not as stark as they imagine).More in Common, a research consortiumthat explores the drivers of social fracturing and polarisation, reports on areas of agreement between groups in societies. In the UK, for example, they have found that majorities of people across the political spectrum view hate speech as a problem, are proud of the NHS, and are concerned about climate change and inequality.As psychologist Anne Wilson and her colleagues put it in a recent paper: “Partisans often oppose one another vehemently even when there is little actual daylight between their policy preferences, which are often tenuously held and contextually malleable.”This relative lack of divergence would, of course, come as a surprise to partisans themselves. This is the phenomenon of false polarisation, whereby there is widespread misperception of how much people on the left and the right are divided, not only on issues but also in their respective ways of life. When asked to estimate how many Republicans earn more than $250,000 a year, for example, Democrats guessed 38%. In reality it is 2%. Conversely, while about 6% of Democrats self-identify as members of the LGBT community, Republicans believed it was 32%. New research from Victoria Parker and her colleagues finds that partisans are especially likely to overestimate how many of their political opponents hold extreme opinions. Those overestimates, in turn, are associated with a disinclination to talk or socially engage with out-party members, avoidance that is likely to prevent people from forming more accurate impressions of the other side.What drives these misperceptions? And why do citizens so dislike one another if they aren’t necessarily deeply divided on policy matters? Politicians certainly have incentives to sharpen differences in order to motivate and mobilise voters, rallying support by portraying themselves as bulwarks against the barbarians on the other side. Divisiveness also plays well on social media, where extreme voices are amplified. Moral outrage is particularly likely to go viral.In a recent project led by Steve Rathje and Sander van der Linden at Cambridge University, we examined more than 2.5m posts on Twitter and Facebook. We found that posts were significantly more likely to be shared or retweeted if they referenced political opponents. Every word about the out-group increased the odds of a post being shared by 67% – and these posts were, in turn, met with anger and mockery.In this increasingly toxic environment, reducing false polarisation and affective polarisation are major challenges. It is often suggested, for example, that if people were only to expose themselves to perspectives from the other side, it would breed greater understanding and cooperation. Yet this intuition turns out to be flawed.The big idea: Is the era of the skyscraper over?Read moreSociologist Christopher Bail and his colleagues offered sets of Democrats and Republicans money to follow a bot that would retweet messages from politicians, media companies and pundits every day for a month. Importantly, the messages always came from the other side of the political spectrum. Far from promoting harmony, it backfired. After a month of being exposed to conservative talking points, Democrats’ attitudes had become, if anything, marginally more liberal. And Republicans became more conservative following their diet of liberal views. When what you see from the other side strikes you as biased or obnoxious, it doesn’t endear you to their perspectives.In this regard, the behaviour of elites matters. Political scientist Rasmus Skytte showed people messages from politicians that were either civil or rude. Interestingly, aggressive and unkind messages didn’t reduce trust in politicians or increase affective polarisation. It seems that incivility is what people have come to expect. But when they saw polite and respectful messages, they subsequently felt more trust towards politicians and became less affectively polarised.These results suggest that we should expect better from our leaders and those with large platforms. Don’t reward divisive rhetoric with “likes”. Instead, follow politicians and pundits who embody norms of respect and civility, even when they disagree on policy matters. In fact, many of us might be better off if we took a break from social media altogether. When economists found that whenpeople who were encouraged people to disconnect from Facebook for a month spent less time online and were less politically polarised. They also experienced improved psychological wellbeing.No one these days is worried that our societies are insufficiently polarised. But because so much of the polarisation is about emotions and identities rather than issues, it is still not clear that citizens are presented with good choices or that important issues are being deeply debated. Here again, we must expect better. Demand that politicians and pundits get into policy specifics. Let’s focus more on actual ideas for solving actual problems, where we, as citizens, may well turn out to agree on more than we realise. Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel are psychologists and the authors of The Power of Us. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.Further readingUncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity by Lilliana Mason (Chicago, £19)Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing by Chris Bail (Princeton, £20)The Wealth Paradox: Economic Prosperity and the Hardening of Attitudes by Frank Mols and Jolanda Jetten (Cambridge, £19.99)TopicsBooksThe big ideaSociety booksSocial trendsSocial mediaDigital mediaPsychologyUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      The man who sued Trump for incitement: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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      In the aftermath of the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Donald Trump was impeached and acquitted for a second time. Jonathan Freedland talks to Congressman Eric Swalwell who talks about what a special select committee is doing to hold those deemed responsible for inciting the mob accountable

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      Listen to the latest episode of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets

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      TwitterTwitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outletsHome feed promotes rightwing tweets over those from the left, internal research finds Dan Milmo Global technology editorFri 22 Oct 2021 08.04 EDTLast modified on Fri 22 Oct 2021 10.59 EDTTwitter has admitted it amplifies more tweets from rightwing politicians and news outlets than content from leftwing sources.The social media platform examined tweets from elected officials in seven countries – the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also studied whether political content from news organisations was amplified on Twitter, focusing primarily on US news sources such as Fox News, the New York Times and BuzzFeed.The study compared Twitter’s “Home” timeline – the default way its 200 million users are served tweets, in which an algorithm tailors what users see – with the traditional chronological timeline where the most recent tweets are ranked first.The research found that in six out of seven countries, apart from Germany, tweets from rightwing politicians received more amplification from the algorithm than those from the left; right-leaning news organisations were more amplified than those on the left; and generally politicians’ tweets were more amplified by an algorithmic timeline than by the chronological timeline.According to a 27-page research document, Twitter found a “statistically significant difference favouring the political right wing” in all the countries except Germany. Under the research, a value of 0% meant tweets reached the same number of users on the algorithm-tailored timeline as on its chronological counterpart, whereas a value of 100% meant tweets achieved double the reach. On this basis, the most powerful discrepancy between right and left was in Canada (Liberals 43%; Conservatives 167%), followed by the UK (Labour 112%; Conservatives 176%). Even excluding top government officials, the results were similar, the document said.Twitter said it wasn’t clear why its Home timeline produced these results and indicated that it may now need to change its algorithm. A blog post by Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter’s director of software engineering, and Luca Belli, a Twitter researcher, said the findings could be “problematic” and that more study needed to be done. The post acknowledged that it was concerning if certain tweets received preferential treatment as a result of the way in which users interacted with the algorithm tailoring their timeline.“Algorithmic amplification is problematic if there is preferential treatment as a function of how the algorithm is constructed versus the interactions people have with it. Further root cause analysis is required in order to determine what, if any, changes are required to reduce adverse impacts by our Home timeline algorithm,” the post said.Twitter said it would make its research available to outsiders such as academics and it is preparing to let third parties have wider access to its data, in a move likely to put further pressure on Facebook to do the same. Facebook is being urged by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to distribute its research to third parties after tens of thousands of internal documents – which included revelations that the company knew its Instagram app damaged teenage mental health – were leaked by the whistleblower Frances Haugen.The Twitter study compared the two ways in which a user can view their timeline: the first uses an algorithm to provide a tailored view of tweets that the user might be interested in based on the accounts they interact with most and other factors; the other is the more traditional timeline in which the user reads the most recent posts in reverse chronological order.The study compared the two types of timeline by considering whether some politicians, political parties or news outlets were more amplified than others. The study analysed millions of tweets from elected officials between 1 April and 15 August 2020 and hundreds of millions of tweets from news organisations, largely in the US, over the same period.Twitter said it would make its research available to third parties but said privacy concerns prevented it from making available the “raw data”. The post said: “We are making aggregated datasets available for third party researchers who wish to reproduce our main findings and validate our methodology, upon request.”Twitter added that it was preparing to make internal data available to external sources on a regular basis. The company said its machine-learning ethics, transparency and accountability team was finalising plans in a way that would protect user privacy.“This approach is new and hasn’t been used at this scale, but we are optimistic that it will address the privacy-vs-accountability tradeoffs that can hinder algorithmic transparency,” said Twitter. “We’re excited about the opportunities this work may unlock for future collaboration with external researchers looking to reproduce, validate and extend our internal research.”TopicsTwitterSocial mediaDigital mediaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is having a moment

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      Pass notesCommunismWhy Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is having a momentThe Canadian musician Grimes tweeted an image of herself with the 1848 document last week – just after her reported split from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. She isn’t the only one reading it right now Mon 4 Oct 2021 13.24 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 14.45 EDTName: The Communist Manifesto.Age: 173 years.Remind me what it is again. A pamphlet first published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. I thought Marxism was dead … at least it seemed that way at the Labour party conference last week. Not so! It’s never been hotter!Really? Yes! Even Grimes has been spotted reading a copy.The Canadian musician? Real name Claire Boucher? The one who had a baby with Elon Musk? The very same. In her first public appearance since her reported split with Musk – the richest man in the world, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – she was photographed wearing a fantasy-themed outfit on a street corner in that hotbed of communism, Los Angeles.Is she a Marxist? No. The whole thing was staged; she tweeted that she had done the stunt to spark ridiculous headlines.Even more ridiculous headlines than calling your child X Æ A-Xii? One assumes so, yes.Is it a case of her hilariously trolling her definitely-not-a-communist ex? Perhaps, although she did write on Instagram: “I’m still living with E and I am not a communist (although there are some very smart ideas in this book …)”.Remind me, what are those smart ideas? That human history was based on class struggles between the oppressors and the oppressed. And – to put it very simply – this was not good.Sounds a lot like my life in 2021. Quite, which is why it is having a bit of a moment. It is still one of the most influential political documents ever written, and its ideas do have a habit of popping up in times of economic and social crisis.Because it shows us how many of the problems in the world can be attributed to capitalist production, greed and property? Exactly. Check out the Pandora papers if you need more evidence. Or people hogging petrol.What does it say is the answer to all this then? Revolution, of course. And the elimination of social classes as well as the means to appropriate private property. Is this why young people keep saying: “Eat the rich”? Well, yes, huge numbers of young people are turning their backs on capitalism. Well, that’s because they can’t afford to get a toe on the property ladder. Whatever the reason, the Communist Manifesto is strangely popular right now. Last year, it was translated into Somali for the first time and there’s even a site where you can teach your parrot to recite it. Do say: “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”Don’t say: “My Tesla shares are doing well.”TopicsCommunismPass notesGrimesUS politicsKarl MarxfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Boris Johnson will return from US energised despite achieving little

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      Foreign policyBoris Johnson will return from US energised despite achieving littleAnalysis: tangible gains were hard to come by but PM will have enjoyed the up close and personal politics Heather Stewart Political editorThu 23 Sep 2021 03.27 EDTLast modified on Thu 23 Sep 2021 03.28 EDTBoris Johnson has flown back to the UK after his transatlantic jaunt reassured about his personal relationship with Joe Biden after the pair sought to put the chaos of the Kabul airlift behind them with face-to-face talks in the Oval Office.The warm personal rapport that characterised Johnson’s relationship with Donald Trump – who called him “Britain Trump” – was not obviously on display as he and Biden briefly addressed the press before retiring for private talks. Biden told an involved anecdote about travelling more than a million miles on Amtrak, which US reporters revealed he has wheeled out on several other occasions.Once the press had been forcefully ushered out by White House media handlers, however, witnesses said the pair held constructive talks. They discussed expanding the Aukus pact – announced last week – into a broader alliance that could cover other areas of shared interest, including safeguarding human rights, technology and expanding open markets.And on Capitol Hill, Johnson took the opportunity to try to soothe concerns about the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol, saying he remained committed to the Good Friday agreement.But news that the UK has all but abandoned hopes of a bilateral free trade agreement with the US underlined the fact that to bond with Biden, Johnson has had to trim his ambitions to fit the president’s agenda.The arch dealmaker Trump used to boast about the prospects for a trade agreement with the UK, but Biden has a packed legislative agenda at home that will take precedence over trying to win congressional backing for a complex set of trade negotiations.As well as taking on China – essentially the purpose of the Aukus pact – the two countries are both committed to tackling the climate crisis, and in doing so, creating more green jobs in their own economies.Johnson’s hopes of securing a successful outcome to the Cop26 climate summit in November that keeps 1.5C of warming within reach took a significant step forward when Biden doubled the US’s contribution to climate finance. When the prime minister met Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, they were able to agree that the $11.2bn US climate pledge made it, as Johnson put it, “a great day for the world”.Other tangible gains from the visit were harder to come by: Johnson said he had won the backing of the president to lift the ban on British lamb exports, though consultations are ongoing and no formal decision has yet been announced.No 10 was also keen to claim credit for the lifting of the US travel ban, claiming a bilateral “travel taskforce” that has been operating since the summer had helped to change the Americans’ minds. But the changes apply equally to scores of countries.The UK government appeared to have had little warning that the decision would be announced on Monday morning, and was left scrambling to establish the details, including whether AstraZeneca jabs would be accepted under the new system.But Downing Street will be happy to bank the intangible benefits of a closer rapport with the US – and Johnson, no fan of Zoom calls, returns to the UK energised by three days of the kind of politics he likes best: up close and personal.TopicsForeign policyBoris JohnsonJoe BidenUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Trump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism

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      Politics booksTrump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism It is liberal fantasy to imagine that poor handing of the pandemic has lessened the allure of Modi and Bolsonaro. They are learning fast how to subvert votingJan-Werner MüllerMon 20 Sep 2021 05.00 EDTWhen the pandemic struck, newspaper opinion pages were full of pieces predicting the end of authoritarian populism. Surely Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro couldn’t survive their mishandling of Covid-19? Finally, people were waking up to the reality of what these leaders represented.Trump may not have lasted, but the expectation that the pandemic might see off populism is mistaken. Liberal observers have long assumed that populists are by definition incompetent demagogues. But populism is not all about promising simplistic solutions in a complex world and, contrary to a complacent liberal narrative, populist leaders are not incapable of correcting failed policies. The threat of authoritarian populism is compounded by the fact that these leaders are learning from each other – though what they are copying are not more effective strategies to combat the pandemic, but techniques for disabling democracy.When despairing about the rise of populism, liberals have been eager to identify underlying causes. And indeed, there are striking similarities in the way far-right populist leaders govern in different parts of the globe: Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Jarosław Kaczyński, Viktor Orbán, Modi, and, as a hopefully historical example, Trump. But similar outcomes do not prove similar causes. Rather, the reason for the emergence of what we might as well call a far-right populist art of governance is that leaders can copy each other’s best (or worst) practices. They are busy perfecting the art of faking democracy: ballot boxes are not stuffed on election day, but between them we see voting rules manipulated, media outlets taken over by business leaders friendly to the government, and civil society systematically intimidated and therefore election outcomes are rarely in doubt. Liberals, meanwhile, are drastically underestimating their adversaries.Populist leaders are not all nearly as incompetent and irresponsible as Trump and Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid would suggest. Their core characteristic is not that they criticise elites or are angry with the establishment. Rather, what distinguishes them is the claim that they, and only they, represent what they often refer to as the “real people” or also the “silent majority”.At first sight, this might not sound particularly nefarious. And yet this claim has two consequences deeply damaging for democracy: rather obviously, populists assert that all other contenders for office are fundamentally illegitimate. This is never just a matter of disputes about policy, or even about values. Rather, populists allege that their rivals are simply corrupt, or “crooked” characters. More insidiously, the suggestion that there exists a “real people” implies that there are some who are not quite real – figures who just pretend to belong, who might undermine the polity in some form, or who are at best second-rate citizens.Obvious examples are minorities and, in particular, recent immigrants, who are suspected of not being truly loyal to the polity. Think of Modi’s policy of creating a register of genuine citizens. Ostensibly, this is about identifying illegal immigrants; but especially in combination with new refugee policies that effectively discriminate against Muslims, its actual message is all too clear to Hindu nationalists. Or think of Trumpists who would never really engage in argument with critics, but simply denounce the latter as “un-American”.Populists reduce political issues to questions of belonging, and then attack those who are said not to belong. That is not a matter of mere rhetoric. Sooner or later, the appeal to the real people – and the exclusion of supposedly fake people – will have effects on streets and squares: Trump rallies have been associated with a local increase in assaults. The concept of “trickle-down aggression” – coined by the feminist philosopher Kate Manne – captures this dynamic.Populist leaders present themselves as the great champions of empowering the people, and yet always exclude particular people. The shameless attempts by US Republicans to suppress the vote (and subvert election outcomes) are playing on the sense that the “real America” is white and Christian – and that black and brown people should not really be participating in politics in the first place. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is gearing up to repeat Trump-style claims about a stolen election, should he lose the vote next year; he will have learned that, beyond casting doubt on the legitimacy of those not casting a ballot for you, bringing at least parts of the military to your side might be decisive.In Hungary, Orbán has long provided a model from which others can learn how to stretch laws to the limit in order to create pliable courts and media organisations. They can also study subtle tactics of how to mislead the EU and the Council of Europe long enough to entrench partisan advantages.When Poland’s Law and Justice Party returned to power in 2015, it could reach for Orbán’s manual of how to build an autocracy under the eyes of the EU. Like the Hungarian leader, it learned the lesson that, during its first time in office, it had wasted political capital on culture wars, instead of capturing independent institutions. To keep oneself in power, one must control the judiciary, the election system and TV in particular – once that has happened, one can wage culture wars and incite hatred against minorities to one’s heart’s content.None of this is to say that the new authoritarian systems are invincible, but we need to better understand their innovative techniques. Some are so dangerous because they are getting technologically more sophisticated: Pegasus spyware, the use of private companies to spread misinformation, or the extensive use of social media by leaders such as Modi (the world’s most tech-savvy populist) are only the most obvious instances. Still more dangerous than digital autocracy, though, is the ability of authoritarians to disable democracy, while at the same time advancing democratic-sounding justifications for their actions.What is happening in the US and the UK is a prime example. The push by the Johnson government to make the presentation of voter ID mandatory can look reasonable on paper: nobody is against the prevention of voter fraud. Northern Ireland already has such measures in place, as do countries on the continent. But, as we should have appreciated by now, legal measures can be deployed to, in effect, shrink the demos, the political body, for partisan purposes: minorities, the unemployed and especially the poor – lacking drivers’ licences and passports for travel abroad – are most likely not to have the time and resources to secure the required forms of ID. We have also learned the hard way that the staffing of election commissions is not some bureaucratic trifle (as Tom Stoppard observed long ago, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting”), but can make the difference between keeping and losing democracy.‘We the people’: the battle to define populismRead moreWhy do populists so often get away with these kinds of measures? We have not grasped the extent to which they have succeeded in imposing their distorted understanding of basic democratic practices. The vast majority of those identifying as Republicans regard voting as a “privilege” tied to responsibilities, while Democrats respect it as an unconditional right.It is not true that masses of people are longing for strongmen and are turning away from democracy. But it has become easier to fake democracy. That is partly because defenders of democracy have not argued for its basic principles well, and partly because they keep underestimating their adversaries.TopicsPolitics booksUS politicsViktor OrbánCoronavirusPolandHungaryBrazilfeaturesReuse this content More