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      Incite, smear, divide: why are the Tories and Labour copying the tactics of America’s vilest strategist? | Nels Abbey

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      Will 2024 be a repeat of 1992 or 1997, is the (binary) question people ask: a repeat of Neil Kinnock’s shock defeat to the Tories in 1992 or Tony Blair’s triumphant landslide victory in 1997.But while we are talking about the what will happen next time, we had better discuss the how. The means matter. The means help shape society. They impact how cohesive we are, how we treat each other. The means last longer than victory or defeat. And by many current indications, the means suggest we are looking at neither 1997 nor 1992, but at a mirror image of the 1988 US presidential election.The name might not mean much, but the brutal political genius of Lee Atwater looms large over today’s British politics – to such an extent that even he would not believe it. Atwater was a highly influential strategist who helped shape modern presidential campaigning for the Republicans. Perhaps the foremost part of his legacy was the ruthless, nihilistic mainstreaming of dog-whistle racism into political campaigning. He explained how that worked.“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger’. By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger’.” Atwater’s crowning achievement, having advised President Ronald Reagan, was masterminding Vice-President George HW Bush’s 1988 presidential election victory against the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis. And to do so, he leveraged the most reliable of western tropes: the Black bogeyman. Atwater conceived and created the now notorious Willie Horton ad. The advert offered a simple juxtaposition: George Bush, a tough-on-crime Republican who believed in the death penalty for murderers, or Michael Dukakis, a wet liberal who allowed murderers to have weekend passes to get out of jail.And then came the money shot: a menacingly scary black-and-white mugshot of William Horton (his name was altered by Atwater from William Horton to Willie Horton; the intended effect is self-explanatory), a Black man who had been convicted of murder and rape in Dukakis’s Massachusetts, yet was granted a temporary release from prison pass (otherwise known as a furlough). While out on furlough he carried out even more horrific crimes. The advert did what it intended: to make Horton and Dukakis look like an inseparable couple, the Democrats and the black felon as running mates: a racist signal to rally the vote.Intentional or otherwise, I see a clear link between the Willie Horton advert and Labour’s “soft on paedophiles” attack advert on Rishi Sunak. Sadly, given the chance to pull back from his Willie Horton moment, the Labour leader stood “by every word”.But then, looking across the divide, Atwater would see much to admire in Tory politics as well. Last week the home secretary, Suella Braverman, pointed at Pakistani Muslim men with the message that she would not let “political correctness” get in the way of apprehending grooming gangs – despite the fact that her own department had found it was overwhelmingly and disproportionately white men who constituted grooming rings. But why stop there? Atwater wouldn’t. There goes Braverman apparently upholding a landlord’s decision to display golliwogs in his pub.There she goes, telling some of the world’s most desperate people that, should they dare to show up here, they’ll end up on prison barges. Just the place for the political scapegoat. Atwater would have loved those barges.In his pomp, he would have loved the intolerance, the viciousness, the very British race struggle in our politics right now: the tussle of one side to out-racist the other, to make complexity and decency look weak, often leveraging polite and innocent sounding substitutes and subtleties for race along the way – think: wokeness, political correctness, virtue signalling. Call it Atwater signalling perhaps, make a dead man happy. But ultimately we must decide if we are happy with politics conducted like this.Because the next election will have a victor and a vanquished, and the victor will feel the means justified the ends. But if both parties continue down this dark and dirty path, what will the following election be like, and the next? And what kind of country will emerge from them?Look at what devil-take-the-hindmost politics has done to America. We know it can work – that’s the tragedy. And we know where it ends.
      Nels Abbey is a writer, broadcaster and former banker. He is the author of the satirical book Think Like A White Man

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      What You Need to Know About the US Presidency

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      The New Shift from Pink to Green in Latin America

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      The man who connected Bill Clinton and Gerry Adams: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      Next week, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton will arrive in Northern Ireland to join commemorations of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. Clinton is now celebrated as one of the key players behind the agreement, but he didn’t do it alone. It took years of background efforts – of secret meetings, discreet lobbying and high-risk shadow diplomacy, by people whose names we’ve never known – to convince the United States to get involved.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to one of those people, Niall O’Dowd, who tells the extraordinary story of how he built a secret channel between Clinton and the Irish republican movement

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      Pacific trade deal is more useful to Joe Biden than it is to the UK’s economy

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      Tory MPs hailed the UK’s entry last week into the Indo-Pacific trading bloc as a major step on the road to re-establishing Britain as a pioneer of free trade.It was a coup for Rishi Sunak, said David Jones, the deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Tory Eurosceptics, who was excited to be aligned with “some of the most dynamic economies in the world”.Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch also used the word “dynamic” to describe the 11 members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). She pushed back against criticism that signing a trade deal with a loose collection of countries on the other side of the world would only add 0.08% to the UK’s gross national product, and then only after 10 years of membership. That figure was an estimate by civil servants 10 years ago, she said in an interview with the Daily Mail. The CPTPP is more important these days.And it might be, but not for the trade it facilitates. The significance lies in the geopolitical realignment it promotes and how such pacts could harm future Labour governments.The CPTPP was signed on 8 March 2018. Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore were the first to form a bloc before being joined in the five years that followed by Vietnam, Peru, Malaysia and Chile.Former president Barack Obama hoped the US would also be a founder member before coming up against a Republican Congress that disagreed. Later, Donald Trump abandoned the deal altogether.Obama wanted to throw a friendly arm around Pacific countries threatened by China’s increasingly aggressive attitude to its neighbours – or, looked at another way, maintain open markets for US goods and services across south-east Asia in opposition to Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road investment initiative. Joe Biden, despite having control of Congress, refused to consider reopening talks about US membership, paving the way for China to apply in 2021.Thankfully for Biden, Britain’s application preceeded Beijing’s by six months, putting the UK ahead in the queue; quickly it became apparent that Britain’s role could be to help block China’s entry to the CPTPP without the US ever needing to join. For the Americans, the potential loss of trade was a side issue.Brexit was never considered by Washington to be a positive development, but there was a silver lining once it became clear the UK could be deployed more flexibly in a fight with China – a confrontation that Brussels has so far backed away from.The Aukus defence pact between Australia, the UK and US is another example of this anti-China coalition – and of Sunak’s efforts to win back Washington’s approval.The move also plays to a domestic agenda. In the same way that Margaret Thatcher’s sale of state assets – from council housing to essential utilities – denied Labour the means to directly influence the economy without spending hundreds of billions of pounds renationalising those assets, so global trade deals undermine Labour’s promise to use the state to uphold workers’ rights and environmental protections.Secret courts form the foundation stone of most trade deals and allow big corporations to sue governments when laws and regulations change and deny them profits.Badenoch’s civil servants say they are comfortable with the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunal system because the UK government has never lost a case.However, a government that wanted to push ahead at a faster pace with environmental protections, carbon taxes, or enhanced worker’s rights might find themselves on the wrong end of a court judgment.The TUC’s general secretary, Paul Nowak, was quickly out of the blocks to voice these fears when the deal was announced on Friday. That is why the EU parliament has forced Brussels to ban ISDS clauses from future trade deals.Sunak, on the other hand, appears comfortable with the prospect of CPTPP countries beginning to dictate how the UK considers basic rights – and how this could become the price of easier trade, and more importantly, foreign policy. More

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      The US Congress Is Now in the Pocket of the Arms Industry

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      The Guardian view on Iraq, 20 years on: the costs of war | Editorial

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      It did not take long for anyone to realise that the Iraq war was the disaster that many had predicted; not much longer than it took to confirm that it was launched on a lie and that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Whatever relief or joy was felt by Iraqis at the fall of Saddam Hussein’s violent and oppressive regime, it was soon subsumed by the horror of what followed. The body count and wider damage have not stopped rising since. When the 10th anniversary arrived, Islamic State (IS), birthed by the war’s fallout, had yet to make its frightening rise to establishing a “caliphate”. Two decades on from the beginning of the war, with the “shock and awe” assault of 19 March 2003, we are still fathoming the impact of the US-led and UK-backed invasion.The toll has been felt most of all, of course, within Iraq itself. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the violence that followed. The Costs of War project estimates that several times as many may have died from knock-on effects. More than 9 million Iraqis were displaced. Thousands of coalition personnel, mostly American, were killed. Trillions of dollars that could have been spent on improving lives were instead squandered destroying them. Much of the Pentagon spending went to just five huge corporations.The catastrophe was compounded by the failure to plan for what came next. Iraqis watched as power stations and national treasures were looted, while American troops guarded the oil ministry and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, glibly dismissed the turmoil: “Freedom’s untidy”. The security vacuum and de-Ba’athification strategy fomented sectarianism not only in Iraq itself, but far beyond its borders – and fuelled terrorism that has proved not only most deadly in the region, but has taken lives in the west, too. Later decisions such as support for Nouri al-Maliki made matters worse.The invasion curtailed hopes of stabilising Afghanistan, by drawing away attention, resources and troops. It strengthened and emboldened Iran. It reinforced North Korea’s conviction that it was essential to acquire and defend WMDs. It hastened the end of the brief unipolar moment and undercut visions of a rules‑based global order. A military adventure conceived by many of its players as a brash reassertion of US supremacy in the wake of the September 11 attacks only weakened and undermined the country – all the more so after the horrors of Abu Ghraib and wider brutality against civilians. Russia and China took note. So did the global south, hindering efforts to garner support for Ukraine. It was hardly the first time America’s foreign policy had clashed with its declared ideals, but it had not been so public and inescapable since Vietnam. Liberal interventionism was badly discredited. The refugee flows produced by regional instability, along with IS-led or -inspired attacks in Europe, contributed to growing ethno-nationalism and fuelled support for Brexit.Iraq currently appears relatively calm. But US troops are still present due to the ongoing battle against IS. Though there is now a government, following a year of deadlock after elections and an outburst of violence in Baghdad, the state remains unable to keep the lights on or provide clean water. Politicians and officials have pocketed billions.More than half of Iraqis are too young to remember life under Saddam Hussein. Some now aspire to a society and government that looks beyond sectarianism and towards a brighter future, as the 2019 Tishreen movement, and the re-emergence of participants in 2021’s elections, showed. Yet the low turnout underscored that others have given up on democracy, thanks to those who boasted that they were bringing it to justify their war. It may be many more years before we fully reckon the effects of the catastrophe unleashed two decades ago. More

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      Will UK follow US in demanding TikTok be sold by its Chinese owner?

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      When asked this week whether the UK would ban TikTok on government phones, Rishi Sunak’s response signalled a change in stance: “We look at what our allies are doing.”Previously ministers had seemed sanguine, even saying that whether or not the app stayed on someone’s phone should be a matter of “personal choice”.Not any more. The UK’s allies are turning against TikTok and it was when Sunak said he was watching their actions closely that a government ban became inevitable. The US, Canada and the EU’s executive arm have already decided to strip the app from official devices. It is now a matter of geopolitical choice.TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance. The fear among its critics on both sides of the Atlantic is that the Chinese state can access data generated by its more than 1 billion users and manipulate its recommendation algorithm in order to push a China-friendly point of view to unsuspecting users.There is no hard evidence this is the case and TikTok says it would refuse any data request from the Chinese government, although the UK government cited concerns about “the way in which this [user] data may be used” for the ban on Thursday. But tensions over Taiwan, concerns that China will supply weaponry to Russia, the shooting down of a spy balloon that hovered over the US and warnings of state espionage have created a toxic backdrop to those denials. And on Monday a refreshed integrated review of UK defence and foreign policy described China as an “epoch-defining” challenge.TikTok’s reputation was severely damaged last year when ByteDance admitted employees had attempted to use the app to spy on reporters.TikTok will be concerned that Sunak will match each upward ratchet in pressure from his counterparts. On Wednesday the Biden administration demanded the platform’s Chinese owner sell the app or face a complete ban. Will the UK ultimately threaten the same?If geopolitics is the leading factor in these moves, as opposed to hard proof that TikTok poses a security threat, then it is likely every deterioration in relations between China and the west will push the app further along the road to a complete ban or forced divestment from its owners in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, a forced sale in the US – if the Chinese government lets TikTok’s owners do so – could lead to TikTok being peeled off from ByteDance in its entirety.The shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon off the east coast of the US last month was followed by reports that negotiations between TikTok and the Biden administration over a deal to resolve security concerns had stalled, while this week the White House gave its support to a Senate bill giving the president the power to ban TikTok.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTikTok’s attempts to assuage those concerns – for instance announcing plans to store US and European user data on third-party data servers – seem to have failed with the current American president in the same way they did with his immediate predecessor, who also tried to force a divestment of TikTok’s US business. The backstop used by TikTok’s critics is the existence of Chinese laws that could force ByteDance to cooperate with Beijing authorities, including the national intelligence law of 2017, which states that all organisations and citizens shall “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. For many, this is enough evidence.Perhaps eliminating the concerns over Chinese interference by selling TikTok to non-Chinese investors is the only way to quell the critics. But there are plenty of other aspects of the Chinese tech industry – from Huawei mobile phones to other electronic devices – that are just as capable of eliciting similar fears. Without strong supporting evidence there is no way of knowing how proportionate the UK government is being – and the same could be true for moves against other Chinese tech interests. More