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      Xi Jinping’s Tibetan Summer of Love

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      As reported by Al Jazeera, China’s President Xi Jinping is seeking to realize the traditional Chinese ideal of harmony within the borders of Tibet. He has a threefold goal: Xi wants to “build an ‘impregnable fortress’ to maintain stability in Tibet, protect national unity and educate the masses in the struggle against ‘splittism.’”

      Anyone familiar with Chinese culture knows the central, practically sacred place that the value of harmony holds. It has both a spiritual and social dimension. It accounts for the ability of Chinese emperors in the past — as well as today’s Communist Party — to hold in tow a large and diverse population over a vast expanse of territory. It works by inducing attitudes of conformity and disciplined behavior that serve to maintain public order. Most Chinese accept this as a rational principle and an essential feature of their culture. People hailing from the individualistic cultures of the West still have trouble grasping this fact.

      The concept derives from the dynamics of music that in ancient times infused Chinese culture. Harmony is not unison. It always implies the combining of divergent elements whose different principles of resonance produce sounds that converge in an agreeable or intriguing way. Dissonance that points to resolution within the dynamics of music is a necessary ingredient. This is true of every musical tradition. Elizabethan poet and composer Thomas Campion expressed this in the simplest terms in his poem, “Rose-Cheeked Laura”: “These dull notes we sing/ Discords need for helps to grace them.”

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      Xi appears not to be too fond of discord, even when it is needed for the sake of true harmony. The Chinese government has even invented a barbarous word that English translators appear to have accepted because a more conventional translation, such as “separatist,” fails to convey its deeper meaning. That word is “splitism.” Unlike separatism, which supposes two potentially autonomous entities, splitism designates something akin to a violation of the integrity of a territory, a people or a culture. It is an attack on unison voicings.

      Concerning the status of Tibet, a territory, like Xinjiang, potentially guilty of splitism, Xi offered a practical suggestion demonstrating his unorthodox conception of harmony. Al Jazeera summarizes Xi’s message: “Political and ideological education needed to be strengthened in Tibet’s schools in order to ‘plant the seeds of loving China in the depths of the hearts of every youth.’”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Seeds of loving:

      Active principles of emotional orientation that can be based either on the authentic concern for the good of the other or on a policy of intimidation sufficiently strong in its negative force to appear superficially to resemble deep and spontaneous affection for the object of one’s fear.

      Contextual Note

      Xi’s concerns with the hearts of young Tibetans and his idea that they may be fertile ground for “seeds of loving” radically distorts the traditional notions of both harmony and love he seeks to promote. The questions every society must ask itself are, “What is harmony?” and “What is love?”

      In both Chinese and Western music, harmony implies the physical notion and even cosmological notion of sympathetic resonance. One student of Chinese musical culture describes harmony as an “inner dialectic between the creation and resolution of tension and, by extension, a similarly nuanced relationship.” Thomas Campion would undoubtedly agree. In other words, harmony is not the effect of unison or forced imitation, but of the coming together or the resolution of diverse discords.

      Xi’s idea of love appears to radically differ from that of Lao Tzu, who famously said: “Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have.” If it resonates with anything, rather than with Lao Tzu, Xi’s concept recalls the traditional right-wing slogan cast in the face of protesters against the US war in Vietnam: “Love America or leave it.” Xi wants Tibetan youth to love China, but, in contrast with Lao Tzu, he is unwilling to learn from them. They must learn from him.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Perhaps Xi is seeking to distinguish China from the decidedly superficial and jaded West that no longer pays attention to its youth. US politicians have clearly become indifferent to “the depths” within the hearts of the younger generations. China at least thinks about its youth. 

      US President Donald Trump has dismissed this generation’s young protesters as “anarchists and agitators” who must be reined in by a strict policy of “law and order.” He has shown some love for the 17-year-old vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse who killed two protesters, but the president is doing everything within his power to prevent young people from voting. The Democratic National Convention underscored the startling fact that it has consciously abandoned the youth-oriented movement led by Bernie Sanders, a movement that was clamoring for health care, social justice, reduced military engagement and relief from oppressive debt. The Democrats consider all these issues, which are truly “at the depths” of young voters’ hearts, as irrelevant to their overriding mission of electing a man with no vision for the future, who will turn 80 in his first term.

      Al Jazeera reports on Xi’s vision of the future: “Pledging to build a ‘united, prosperous, civilised, harmonious and beautiful new, modern, socialist Tibet,’ Xi said China needed to strengthen the role of the Communist Party in the territory and better integrate its ethnic groups.” And it will all be done in the name of harmony.

      Chinese political analysts and apologists claim that “China’s long tradition of thinking about harmony makes it uniquely able and disposed to exercise soft power in world politics.” In the realm of geopolitics, Xi claims to understand the value of the concept of soft power, an idea initially proposed by Joseph Nye to contrast with the hard power of military might.

      That may or may not be true. But internally, Xi mobilizes the same soft-power rhetoric, including the appeal to harmony, to justify a policy of hard power designed to enforce something more like conformity than harmony. On the international front, Xi understands that since the United States, under the past three presidents, has allowed military power and economic sanctions to define its foreign policy, by doing the opposite — notably thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative — China could emulate the success the US had with its Marshall Plan for Europe following World War II.  But can China achieve this goal in harmony with the nations it is bringing on board? That is a moot question.

      Historical Note

      Xi’s conception of the concept of harmony is innovative in the sense that it diverges from tradition. In her book, “Music Cosmology and the Politics of Harmony in Early China,” Erica Fox Brindley places the origins of the Chinese concept of harmony in ancient times, when “conceptions of music became important culturally and politically.” Xi’s musical tastes as demonstrated in this official government rap song appear to have little in common with the contemplative character of traditional Chinese music. Xi’s wife is a famous singer, but the harmony of her music on display in this patriotic song demonstrates greater respect for conventional Western harmony than it does for the Chinese musical tradition.

      While explaining the roots of the concept in Chinese spirituality and “protoscientific beliefs on the intrinsic harmony of the cosmos,” Brindley reminds her readers that the “rhetoric of harmony in the People’s Republic … is complicated.” The author identifies the Zuo Zhuan — one of the earliest works of Chinese history composed before 500 BC — as the “locus classicus for defining the term ‘harmony’ in ancient China.” Harmony refers “not merely to the conformity of similar items but to an appealing admixture of many diverse ones.” Xi’s current admixture reflects little more than the combination of stale Western trends with Chinese pop vocal style.

      There is a traditional saying in Chinese, lǐ yuè bēng huài, which literally means “rites and music are in ruins.” As Jamie Fisher explains on his website dedicated to learning Mandarin, the idiom “refers to a society in disarray.” Xi would claim that his new rites and music are solidly built and are a protection against the prospect of ruin that the entire world is facing. Lao Tzu might disagree, at least concerning the methods employed.

      *[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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      Discovery of Natural Gas Exposes Turkey’s Political Rifts

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      President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement on August 21 that Turkey had discovered some 320 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the Black Sea has exposed the acutely divided domestic political environment in the country. Whereas the pro-Erdogan camp hailed the development as an important milestone toward the government’s declared ambition to become a leading global power — it has the potential to significantly reduce Turkey’s current account deficit — the opposition, particularly the Republican People’s Party (CHP), sent out messages that disdained the importance of the discovery by declaring it financially unfeasible.

      The secretary general of the CHP, Selin Sayek Boke, went so far as to argue that Erdogan is going to use the gas for his own ends. Engin Atalay, the deputy chairman of CHP’s parliamentary group, had previously declared that “Even if the government has done the best thing in the world, we will unconditionally criticize and refuse it,” which is indicative of the opposition’s modus operandi.

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      So, what explains the opposition’s hostility toward this seemingly groundbreaking development in the Black Sea, as well as its steadfast total rejection of government actions? Simply put, it is part of the opposition’s long-time perception that Erdogan is consolidating his power and that the hydrocarbon discovery may serve his interests. This state of mind is also a reflection of the opposition’s fear that it is running out of options to stop Erdogan’s rise.

      Safety Valve

      Since CHP’s inception on September 9, 1923, by Mustafa Kemal, a secular nationalist and founder of modern Turkey, the CHP elite has considered itself entitled to govern the country. Having completely severed ties with the Ottoman past, Kemal crafted the state on the strict interpretation of Westernism and secularism. The CHP elite assumed the responsibility of upholding those principles by perpetuating the CHP single-party regime by suppressing any opposition. This state of privilege and entitlement lasted until 1950. That year, the first democratic elections in the history of modern Turkey were held as a prerequisite for receiving funds as part of the Marshall Plan, which the CHP desperately needed given the abysmal state of the economy after World War II despite Turkey’s neutrality.

      The opposition, under Adnan Menderes, a conservative who overtly displayed his Muslim identity, won the elections by a landslide, allowing him to form a single-party government — a blow to the CHP elite. In his 10-year tenure, Menderes defied the Kemalist establishment by, among others, reverting the Muslim call to prayer to Arabic, and allowing the education of the Quran in primary school. He declared in 1951 that “Turkey is a Muslim country and will remain so.” Secular CHP’s three electoral defeats against Menderes convinced the CHP elite that democracy is not an option to regain what they believe was theirs and that the erosion of the Kemalist principles can only be halted by force.

      In 1960, the Kemalist Turkish armed forces (TAF) stepped in and toppled Menderes, executing him and the two other prominent cabinet members. This launched the tradition of military coups in Turkey, where the TAF assumed the guardianship (praetorian) role of the Kemalist principles, specifically secularism. In the next 50 years, the TAF would “keep the civilians in line” by stepping in three more times, in 1971, 1980 and 1997. It made its presence known to governments through the supreme national security council, in which top generals dictated domestic and foreign policy recommendations to civilian government members. 

      Fast forward to 2002, when Erdogan’s ascent to power and the beginning of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) single-party rule in Turkey heralded the impending clash with the military reminiscent of the Menderes era. This time the Kemalist military would lose. Erdogan had long believed that the military’s interpretation of strict secularism, particularly in the 1990s, suppressed the pious masses to which he belonged. He skillfully used Turkey’s European Union accession process to take on the military. He did this by zealously implementing EU guidelines, among which was the “civilianization” of politics requiring the demilitarization of the supreme national security council. In 2004, for the first time since its inception in 1938, a civilian, Mehmet Yigit Alpogan, became the secretary general of the council.

      The Turkish military would strike back in April 2007 by issuing a stern warning against the election of Erdogan’s then-comrade, Abdullah Gul, as president. The move backfired, and the AKP won the general election by a landslide that summer, heralding the beginning of total civilian control over the Turkish armed forces. It is this loss of the Kemalist “safety valve” that began to raise alarm bells for the CHP. The abortive coup of July 15, 2016, was probably the oppositions last dimming hope. To its dismay, the popular resistance against the coup resulted in failure, along with the widespread purge of the supporters of Fethullah Gulen — Erdogan’s “public enemy number one” — in the military, judiciary and law enforcement, allowed Erdogan to further consolidate his grip on power. 

      The New System

      An unexpected glimmer of hope for the opposition in its effort to topple the invincible Erdogan emerged with the introduction of the presidential system in 2017, which replaced the parliamentary system. In the parliamentary system, the main opposition party, the CHP, had no chance of forming a government, mostly due to unfavorable demographic realities. Its numbers consistently hovered around 20%-25%, whereas the AKP doubled that. In the new two-round presidential elections, a candidate is required to obtain at least 50%+1 of the popular vote in order to be elected. If no overall majority is reached, then a runoff is held between the two most popular candidates from the first round.    

      The first such election was held in June 2018, where four major parties — the AKP, the CHP, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and the Good Party — nominated their candidates, with President Erdogan polling highest. With what is now called the People’s Alliance, where the AKP and the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) formed an official pact, Erdogan won 52% of the popular vote. However, a win by a slight margin convinced the opposition that in a 50%+1 system, it may have a chance against him. Therefore, in an unprecedented turn in Turkish politics, the opposition began to coalesce around the idea “anybody but Erdogan.”

      The opposition formed what is now called the Nation Alliance, where the CHP and the Good Party created an official pact with the HDP and the Felicity Party (SP, Erdogan’s former party) throwing in their unofficial support. The Good Party, with its moderate nationalist ideology, did not want to enter into an official pact with the Kurdish nationalist socialist-leaning HDP, which is the political arm of the outlawed PKK terrorist organization. The prospect of this new style of opposition was first tested in the March 2019 mayoral elections.

      Embed from Getty Images

      To ensure success, the Nation Alliance nominated only the candidates whose party had the highest chance of winning against the People’s Alliance. This tactic seemed to have worked. For the first time in 30 years, a party with a manifestly leftist and secular worldview and with the support of the rest of the opposition, the CHP, won the mayoral elections in Turkey’s four biggest cities: Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana.

      However, in the aftermath of this success, the anyone-but-Erdogan alliance began showing signs that it was headed for a catastrophic failure. One of the biggest problems was that the alliance had only one requirement — without any meaningful policy contribution to Turkish politics — for the completely opposite political views, and that was to coexist in the name of toppling Erdogan. The right-wing Turkish nationalist Good Party constituency grew resentful of the de facto alliance with the HDP. Furthermore, the HDP’s claim that “without its some 1 million votes [10-12% of total votes], the anti-Erdogan alliance would not have won the elections in Istanbul” further inflamed the Good Party base, which represented some 7%-8% of voters. This led to the resignation of five Good Party deputies.

      Moreover, in order to appeal to conservative constituents, which was necessary to take on Erdogan, the leftist-secular CHP nominated former ultranationalists and conservatives as mayoral and presidential candidates. For instance, the current mayor of Ankara, Mansur Yavas, is listed as affiliated with the CHP, but he used to be a prominent member of the MHP, which is currently in an official alliance with Erdogan. Yavas’ newly surfaced undated video where he called Deniz Gezmis and his friends — the icons of the Turkish leftist movement who were executed in 1972 on charges of communist affiliations — a “bunch of thugs” drew criticism from certain leftists within CHP.

      The biggest threat to the alliance appeared to be Muharrem Ince, who unsuccessfully contested the current CHP premier Kemal Kilicdaroglu for the seat of party chairman. He has sternly criticized Kilicdaroglu for being undemocratic and lambasted him for leading the CHP astray from Mustafa Kemal’s interpretation of secularism and nationalism (ulusalcilik) by courting the former conservative candidates and aligning with the Kurdish secessionist HDP. Ince, poised to form his own party, drew criticism from the anti-Erdogan coalition for dividing the much-needed block of votes.

      Foreign Entities Against Erdogan  

      With the armed forces now under Erdogan’s full command following the July 15 coup, Turkey began to display activism abroad, which once again is perceived by the opposition as part of Erdogan’s powerplay. Since 2016, Turkey has successfully conducted three incursions into Syria, saved the UN-recognized Libyan government from implosion, and defended its maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean against a coalition of countries including Greece, France and the United Arab Emirates.    

      The anybody-but-Erdogan coalition has harshly criticized the president’s virtually every foreign policy move. The “What are we doing in …?” phrase has become an iconic expression the anti-Erdogan block used to decry Turkey’s military involvements in Syria, Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean, which pro-Erdogan circles see as a crucial matter of national security.

      In the name of weakening Erdogan, the members of the opposition have not shied away from supporting foreign countries and entities that Turkey is known to clash with militarily and politically. For instance, as opposed to Erdogan, Kilicdaroglu does not recognize the PKK’s Syria branch, the YPG, as a terror organization. Whereas Erdogan has expressed his desire to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad, Kilicdaroglu advocated dialogue with him.

      Kilicdaroglu believes Turkey has no business in Libya, whereas the government states it is an important move to counter the Greek maritime claims in the East Mediterranean that could cripple Turkey’s ability to navigate in those waters. Moreover, the CHP mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, criticized the government for converting the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque, which led the pro-Erdogan circles accusing Imamoglu of being a “Greek spy.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Despite these appeals, the Turkish opposition has very few prospects to receive meaningful support from abroad. The bygone days when the Western governments were able to wield absolute influence on the Turkish authorities are just that — gone. The inability of the US and EU to dissuade Turkey from dislodging the PKK from northern Syria is a clear sign of a relative weakening of Western influence over Turkey, conversely signaling Erdogan’s ever-growing power. Likewise, last week’s refusal of EU members — Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Malta — to adopt the sanctions against Ankara proposed by Greece indicates that Erdogan’s Turkey is much more important to Germany in the post-COVID-19 world than a member state’s declared interests in the Mediterranean. What is more, France was dismayed when President Emmanuel Macron could not convince NATO that Turkey was at fault in the naval incident where Turkish and French frigates dangerously came too close off of Libya in July. Finally, Greeks mourn that Europe has bowed to Erdogan on Hagia Sophia.  

      The entitled CHP elite still resents that the country it believes it founded has been taken over by what it sees as a conservative Muslim. What is more disappointing for the CHP is that the Turkish military’s DNA to meddle with domestic politics has been removed, leaving little chance for a coup. It also appears that growing infighting among the members of the anti-Erdogan coalition after the successful 2019 local elections is likely going to affect the opposition’s prospects of taking on Erdogan in 2023.

      The impression that, in the name of weakening Erdogan, it would rather collaborate with foreign entities hostile to Turkey will further damage the opposition. Most Turks are wary of this type of political game. Perhaps some sort of cooperation with Erdogan is a must for the Turkish opposition to save itself from extinction.

      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 Iran Can Learn From Saudi Arabia

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      Over three years have passed since Mohammed bin Salman became the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The challenges he has faced throughout this time have been too colossal for a 35-year-old leader to accommodate. Yet the prince has sought to give the impression of a strong social reformer. Indeed, some of the changes he has introduced will significantly transform the public image of Saudi Arabia and global attitudes toward the kingdom, at least in the long term.

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      Under Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, Saudi Arabia has repealed a longstanding ban on women driving, allowed female singers to perform publicly, relaxed male guardianship laws on women, implemented employment discrimination protection and allowed women into sports stadiums. These are some of the most notable steps the crown prince has taken to socially liberalize a conservative country. Add to the list the curbing of the religious police’s powers and efforts to appeal to international tourists by introducing an e-visa system and you could say that Saudi Arabia is changing.

      The crown prince has also faced his fair share of criticism. The assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Riyadh’s deadly and costly war in Yemen, a diplomatic spat with Qatar, deteriorating relations with Syria and tensions with rival Iran are only some of the issues that have caused critics to rail on Mohammed bin Salman.

      MBS Is Popular in Saudi Arabia

      Despite this, the future Saudi king has undoubtedly scored significant gains both domestically and internationally. MBS, as the crown prince is commonly known, is popular among young Saudis, and he has a favorable public image in the eyes of Western political and business elites.

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      In 2018, the Arab Youth Survey found that more than 90% of young people in Saudi Arabia between the ages of 18 and 24 endorse the crown prince’s leadership, believing that he is moving the country in the right direction. The Economist has dubbed the reforms spearheaded by MBS as a “social revolution,” and The New York Times has described the measures he introduced as “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring.”

      What is important is that MBS has admitted that Saudi Arabia has enforced a rigid reading of Islam for a long period of time. This is reflected in the restricted level of civil liberties and social freedoms granted to its citizens over the years, as well as the stringency of Saudi Arabia’s bureaucratic and judicial processes. The prince thinks it’s time for a change.

      In an interview with The Guardian in 2017, MBS said Saudi Arabia has been “not normal” for three decades. “What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East,” he added. The prince promised that Saudi Arabia will be pivoting to “moderate Islam” in preparation for changing the kingdom for the better. He echoed the same sentiments in a 2018 interview with Time magazine: “We believe the practice today in a few countries, among them Saudi Arabia, is not the practice of Islam.”

      And he was right. In a country labeled as the “most profoundly gender-segregated nation on Earth,” carrying the accolade of one of the most conservative cultures in the world, change was and is still needed. To abandon an unprogressive reading of Islam as a government-prescribed lifestyle is the first step.

      MBS has embraced those changes and introduced reforms that are meaningful and important in a troubled region riddled with conflict and the absence of democracy. It was only on April 24 that Saudi Arabia’s supreme court announced it had abolished flogging as a form of punishment, which will be replaced by imprisonment or fines. Moreover, the kingdom has rescinded the death penalty for juvenile offenders and minors who commit serious crimes, and the maximum sentence that can be handed down to them is a 10-year prison term.

      Saudi Arabia is still far from becoming a democratic state. However, the prince’s boldness in busting dogmas that were so entrenched in Saudi society that they couldn’t even be debated publicly should serve as an example for other Muslim countries that continue to curtail their citizens’ civil liberties and human rights. Iran, another religiously conservative nation, is a case in point.

      Meanwhile, in Iran…

      Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are regional rivals and have barely maintained cordial relations in recent decades. In denominational terms, they are on the two extremes of the spectrum. Iran is a Shia-majority nation at the helm of which is a Shia jurist who is the ultimate authority on all matters. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-majority country founded on the puritanical doctrine of Wahhabism — an ultraconservative branch of Islam — that is deeply at odds with Shia Islam.

      Yet the two rivals are socially similar. In Iran, like Saudi Arabia, a conservative interpretation of Islam is practiced. Public celebrations that are not based on religion are rare. Some degree of male guardianship is enforced. For example, women need the consent of a male relative to apply for a passport. Iran’s compulsory hijab rules are highly strict, and religious police penalize non-Islamic, non-pious public behavior, including drinking and eating during Ramadan and dressing styles that violate governmental edicts. Foreign visitors are also subject to restrictions, including being required to follow the mandatory Islamic dress code of the state. Other than a few occasions since 1979, female spectators have not been allowed into sports stadiums. And the list goes on.

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      Although the revolutionary zeal of the early 1980s has subsided and civil liberties have grown to some extent, Iran is still a conservative country, and the government sees the orthodox enactment of Islamic decrees as its top priority.

      Characterized by tens of executions per year, a strict dress code for women and constant intrusion into people’s lives, Iran has not yet woken up to the threat of extremism pitting the public against the ruling elite and tarnishing its global image. The Islamic Republic’s religious and political authorities have not been willing to adjust their reading of Islam with life in the 21st century.

      This is particularly troubling because, in Iran, daily life is closely tied to religion and how it is construed. As Iranian leaders stringently proselytize the idea that Islam and politics cannot be separated, an “Islamic” prefix or suffix accompanies the name of most public bodies, the school curriculum has religious undertones and 80% of state TV programs have religious motifs.

      What Iran Can Learn

      Iran needs reform. To survive and thrive in a globalized world, attract foreign investment, put an end to decades of hostility with the US and the West, draw international visitors to nourish its tourism sector, decrease its debilitating reliance on oil revenues and diversify its economy, Iran must take bold steps and opt for change. Opening up to the world and reducing restrictions on social and political freedoms of its citizens are essentials that will help the country come out from the cold and have warm relations with the international community.

      Saudi Arabia’s reform bonanza on social life is perhaps the benchmark that Iran can build on to implement reforms of its own. Saudi Arabia is a member of the G20. This shows its economic prosperity and global standing. Iran is not short of resources for it to be in a similar situation. What it lacks is the courage to accept that it needs change. When Iran makes that admission, there will be better days for its citizens.

      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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      Could COVID-19 Bring Down Autocrats?

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      The outbreak of COVID-19 initially looked like a gift to autocrats around the world. What better pretext for a state of emergency than a pandemic?

      It was a golden opportunity to close borders, suppress civil society and issue decrees left and right (mostly right). Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and others took advantage of the crisis to advance their me-first agendas and consolidate power. Best of all, they could count on the fear of infection to keep protestors off the streets.

      However, as the global death toll approaches a million and autocrats face heightened criticism of their COVID responses, the pandemic is looking less and less like a gift.

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      The news from Mali, Belarus and the Philippines should put the fear of regime change in the hearts of autocrats from Washington to Moscow. Despite all the recent signs that democracy is on the wane, people are voting with their feet by massing on the streets to make their voices heard, particularly in places where voting with their hands has not been honored.

      The pandemic is not the only factor behind growing public disaffection for these strongmen. But for men whose chief selling point is strong leadership, the failure to contain a microscopic virus is pretty damning.

      Yet, as the case of Belarus demonstrates, dictators do not give up power easily. And even when they do, as in Mali, it’s often military power, not people power, that fills the vacuum. Meanwhile, all eyes are fixed on what will happen in the US. Will American citizens take inspiration from the people of Belarus and Mali to remove their own elected autocrat?

      People Power in Mali

      Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won the presidential election in Mali in 2013 in a landslide with 78% of the vote. One of his chief selling points was a promise of  “zero tolerance” for corruption. Easier said than done. The country was notoriously corrupt, and Keita had been in the thick of it during his tenure as prime minister in the 1990s. His return to power was also marked by corruption — a $40-million presidential jet, overpriced military imports, a son with expensive tastes — none of which goes over well in one of the poorest countries in the world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Mali is not only poor, it’s conflict-prone. It has been subject to military coups at roughly 20-year intervals (1968, 1991, 2012). Several Islamist groups and a group of Tuareg separatists have battled the central government — and occasionally each other — over control of the country. French forces intervened at one point to suppress the Islamists, and France has been one of the strongest backers of Keita.

      Mali held parliamentary elections in the spring, the first since 2013 after numerous delays. The turnout was low, due to coronavirus fears and sporadic violence as well as the sheer number of people displaced by conflict. Radical Islamists kidnapped the main opposition leader, Soumaila Cisse, three days before the first round. After the second round, Keita’s party, Rally for Mali, claimed a parliamentary majority, but only thanks to the constitutional court, which overturned the results for 31 seats and shifted the advantage to the ruling party.

      This court decision sparked the initial protests. The main protest group, Movement of June 5 — Rally of Patriotic Force, eventually called for Keita’s resignation, the dissolution of parliament and new elections. In July, government security forces tried to suppress the growing protests, killing more than a dozen people. International mediators were unable to resolve the stand-off. When Keita tried to pack the constitutional court with a new set of friends, protesters returned to the street.

      On August 18, the military detained Keita and that night he stepped down. The coup was led by Assimi Goita, who’d worked closely with the US military on counterinsurgency campaigns. Instead of acceding to demands for early elections, however, the new ruling junta says that Malians won’t go to the polls before 2023.

      The people of Mali showed tremendous courage to stand up to their autocrat. Unfortunately, given the history of coups and various insurgencies, the military has gotten used to playing a dominant role in the country. The US and France are also partly to blame for lavishing money, arms and training on the army on behalf of their “war on terrorism” rather than rebuilding Mali’s economy and strengthening its political infrastructure.

      Mali is a potent reminder that one alternative to autocrats is a military junta with little interest in democracy.

      Democracy in Action in Belarus

      Alexander Lukashenko is the longest-serving leader in Europe. He’s been the president of Belarus since 1994, having risen to power like Keita on an anti-corruption platform. He’s never before faced much of a political challenge in the country’s tightly-controlled elections.

      Until these last elections. In the August 9 elections, Lukashenko was seeking his sixth term in office. He expected smooth sailing since, after all, he’d jailed the country’s most prominent dissidents, he presided over loyal security forces, and he controlled the media.

      But he didn’t control Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The wife of jailed oppositionist Sergei Tikhanovsky managed to unite the opposition prior to the election and brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets for campaign rallies.

      Nevertheless, Lukashenko declared victory in the election with 80% of the vote (even though he enjoyed, depending on which poll you consult, either a 33% or a 3% approval rating). Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania. And that seemed to be that.

      Except that the citizens of Belarus are not accepting the results of the election. As many as 200,000 people rallied in Minsk on August 23 to demand that Lukashenko step down. In US terms, that would be as if 6 million Americans gathered in Washington to demand Trump’s resignation. So far, Lukashenko is ignoring the crowd’s demand. He has tried to send a signal of defiance by arriving at the presidential palace in a flak jacket and carrying an automatic weapon. More recently, he has resorted to quiet detentions and vague promises of reform.

      Just like the Republicans in the US who appeared as speakers at the Democratic National Convention, key people are abandoning Lukashenko’s side. The workers at the Minsk Tractor Factory are on an anti-Lukashenko strike, and many other workers at state-controlled enterprises have walked off the job. Police are quitting. The ambassador to Slovakia resigned. The state theaters have turned against the autocrat for the first time in 26 years.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Despite COVID-19, Belarus doesn’t have any prohibitions against mass gatherings. That’s because Lukashenko has been a prominent COVID-19 denialist, refusing to shut down the country or adopt any significant medical precautions. His recommendations: take a sauna and drink vodka. Like Boris Johnson in the UK and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Lukashenko subsequently contracted the disease, though he claims that he was asymptomatic. The country has around 70,000 infections and about 650 deaths, but the numbers have started to rise again in recent days.

      There are plenty of oppositionists ready to usher in democratic elections once Lukashenko is out of the way. A new coordinating council launched this month includes former Culture Minister Pavel Latushko as well as prominent dissidents like Olga Kovalkova and Maria Kolesnikova.

      Even strong backing from Russia won’t help Lukashenko if the whole country turns against him. But beware the autocrat who can still count on support from a state apparatus and a militant minority.

      The End of Duterte? 

      Nothing Rodrigo Duterte could do seemed to diminish his popularity in the Philippines. He insulted people left and right. He launched a war on drugs that left 27,000 alleged drug dealers dead from extrajudicial murders. Another 250 human rights defenders have also been killed.

      Still, his approval ratings remained high, near 70% as recently as May. But Duterte’s failure to deal with the coronavirus and the resulting economic dislocation may finally unseat him, if not from office then at least from the political imagination of Filipinos.

      The Philippines now has around 210,000 infections and 3,300 deaths. Compared to the US or Brazil, that might not sound like much. But surrounding the Philippines are countries that have dealt much more successfully with the pandemic: Thailand (58 deaths), Vietnam (30 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths). Meanwhile, because of a strict lockdown that didn’t effectively contain the virus, the economy has crashed, and the country has entered its first recession in 29 years.

      Like Trump, Duterte has blamed everyone but himself for the country’s failings, even unleashing a recent tirade against medical professionals. But Duterte’s insult politics is no longer working. As Walden Bello, a sociologist and a former member of the Philippines parliament, observes at Foreign Policy In Focus, “The hundreds of thousands blinded by his gangster charisma in the last 4 years have had the scales fall from their eyes and are now asking themselves how they could possibly have fallen in love with a person whose only skill was mass murder.”

      In the Philippines, presidents serve one six-year term, and Duterte is four years into his. He may well attempt to hold on for two more years. He might even pull a Vladimir Putin and change the constitution so that he can run again. A group of Duterte supporters recently held a press conference to call for a “revolutionary government” and a new constitution. Another possibility, in the wake of recent bombings in southern Philippines, might be a declaration of martial law to fight Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to the Islamic State group.

      But the combination of the pandemic, the economic crash and a pro-China foreign policy may turn the population against Duterte so dramatically that he might view resignation as the only way out.

      Democracy in the Balance

      Plenty of autocrats still look pretty comfortable in their positions. Putin — or forces loyal to him — just engineered the poisoning of one of his chief rivals, Alexei Navalny. Xi Jinping has just about turned Chinese politics into a one-man show. Viktor Orban has consolidated his grip on power in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suppressed or co-opted the opposition parties in Turkey, and Bashar al-Assad has seemingly weathered the civil war in Syria.

      Even Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, despite an atrocious record on both the pandemic and the economy, has somehow managed to regain some popularity, with his approval rating nudging above his disapproval rating recently for the first time since April.

      The US presidential elections might tip the balance one way or the other. Although America still represents a democratic ideal for some around the world, that’s not the reason why the November elections matter. Donald Trump has so undermined democratic norms and institutions that democrats around the world are aghast that he hasn’t had to pay a political price. He escaped impeachment. His party still stands behind him. Plenty of his associates have gone to jail, but he has not (yet) been taken down by the courts.

      That leaves the court of public opinion. If voters return President Trump to office for a second term, it sends a strong signal that there are no penalties for ruining a democracy. Trump operates according to his own Pottery Barn rule: He broke a democracy and he believes that he now owns it. If voters agree, it will gladden the hearts of ruling autocrats and authoritarians-to-be all over the world.

      Voting out Trump may not simply resuscitate American democracy. It may send a hopeful message to all those who oppose the Trump-like leaders in their lands. Those leaders may have broken democracy, but we the people still own it.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      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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      Jerry Falwell Jr. and the Misery of American Evangelicals

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      It could not have come at a worse time. President Donald Trump has promoted himself as the ultimate protector of American Christianity — against the subversive invasion of Muslims, against the equally subversive threat of atheism, against the destructive forces of secularism. According to recent polls, almost 60% of evangelicals still support Trump, no matter what.

      Trump owes his popularity among evangelicals to a large extent to the fervent endorsement he has received from evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. Falwell is the heir to his father’s evangelical empire that includes Liberty University in Virginia, a fundamentalist school which, among other things, explicitly forbids sexual relations “outside of a biblically-ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman.”

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      Apparently, the ordinance applies only to students, not to the university’s president. As has recently been reported by several reliable news outlets, Jerry Falwell Jr.’s wife entertained an extra-marital sexual relationship for several years with a former pool boy, apparently with full knowledge and endorsement by her husband, who reportedly indulged in watching the pair have sex.

      Falwell has finally agreed to resign from the presidency of the university. But as a good Christian, he still expects to get more than a $10-million severance package for services rendered, such as severely tarnishing the reputation of Liberty University.

      Persecuted Minority

      Evangelicals justify their support for Donald Trump by charging that they have increasingly become the target of ridicule and derision, their faith dragged through the mud, their values mocked and derided. Over the past several decades, American evangelicals have increasingly seen themselves as a beleaguered, even persecuted minority, threatened with cultural extinction.  

      There are good reasons for both why evangelicals become the target of mockery and derision and why they feel persecuted and oppressed. Take the question of evolution, one of the defining issues in what came to be known as the culture wars of the last decades of the 20th century. According to a Gallup poll, in 2017, almost four out of 10 American adults said they believed that God created humans at some point during the past 10,000 years or so (aka Young Earth Creationism).

      This in itself is a remarkable finding, which makes most Europeans shake their heads in disbelief. One would think evangelicals relish these numbers. Yet the opposite is the case, and for good reason. The 2017 findings marked the lowest point in the belief in creationism since the early 1980s when Gallup first posed the question.

      Embed from Getty Images

      For evangelicals, this is just one more piece of evidence for the creeping advance of secular humanism, which they believe is destroying the very fabric of American society. In fact, when evangelicals look around, they have a strong sense that they are in the wrong movie. In a recent Pew poll, 55% of evangelicals supported the view that homosexuality should be discouraged. At the same time, the American Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had a fundamental right to marry. Almost two-thirds of evangelicals believe that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. At the same time, the vast majority of Americans agree that Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court case that established the legality of abortion in the United States, should be upheld, albeit modified. Each of these cases, and others, such as the question of school prayer, have increased the sense of alienation many evangelicals feel with regard to the direction American society has taken over the past several decades.

      Once considered the mainstay of American society, evangelicals have increasingly been pushed to the margins, as reflected in a recent survey by the Christian pollster Barna. In 2016, Barna found that a growing number of Americans associated Christianity with extremism. For instance, more than 80% percent of respondents thought that refusing to serve somebody because their lifestyle conflicted with their belief — such as the case of a bakery refusing to provide a wedding cake to a gay couple — constituted extremism.

      More than 50% considered it extremist to demonstrate outside of an organization — such as Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions among a range of services — they consider immoral. Even trying to spread the Gospel and convert non-believers was considered an act of extremism.

      To make matters even worse, recent polls found that young evangelicals had apparently been infected with the “liberal bug.” In 2017, in a Pew poll, millennial evangelicals showed considerable support for a stronger state and more public services as well as agreeing with the notion that government aid did more good than harm. To top it off, a slim majority thought that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

      Even at Liberty University, young evangelicals have started to realize that life today is more complex and challenging than a simplistic view of reality based on a book composed a long time ago might allow for. And with COVID-19, there is no doubt that support for a strong state is going to increase even more, among the general public and among evangelicals alike.

      The Ultimate Huckster

      Under the circumstances, the public scandal surrounding the former president of Liberty University is even more devastating for a community that already feels under siege. His behavior cannot but confirm the impression, created by numerous cases in the past, that those who constantly wear their Christianity on their sleeve are nothing but a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites who consider themselves exempt from the strict rules they impose on others. It certainly reaffirms the impression that televangelists are modern-day snake oil salesmen, grifters and hucksters taking advantage of the naiveté of their victims.

      Some readers might still remember Jim and Tammy Bakker, of “Praise the Lord,” who transformed televangelism into the high art of getting their followers to support their opulent life style. Or Jimmy Swaggart, who managed to have himself caught more than once in the company of a prostitute. Ironically enough, this did not prevent him from broadcasting his message from a place called Family Worship Center.

      Swaggart and the Bakkers have found a worthy successor in the evangelical game of duping the rubes — Becki Falwell. According to The New York Times, Jerry Falwell Jr.’s wife served on the advisory board of Women for Trump, where she promoted — you would struggle to make this up — family values.

      And yet, Jimmy Swaggart is still out there, polluting the airwaves. No doubt, Jerry Falwell Jr. will publicly atone for his transgressions, asking his loyal followers (and Jesus) to forgive and reinstall him as one of the guiding lights of American Christianity, while at the same time enjoying his millions in compensation. No wonder a large majority of evangelicals will vote for Trump in November.

      Blatant hypocrisy and outright depravity have never prevented evangelicals from doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord: voting for a man who is proud to grab any woman he desires as long as he pays lip service to protecting America’s most oppressed and persecuted minority. He is the ultimate huckster, much better than Swaggart, Falwell Jr. and all the others. After all, Trump has perfected the art of the deal — a great deal for him and his toadies, a raw deal for the rest of America.

      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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      Russia’s Denials of Navalny’s Poisoning Fall on Deaf Ears

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      The Russian government has said it will not investigate the poisoning of the opposition politician and anti-corruption investigator Alexei Navalny until there is evidence of a crime. Navalny, who is 44, collapsed during a flight to Moscow after drinking a cup of tea at Tomsk airport on August 20. After much wrangling with the Russian authorities, he was flown to Germany on August 22 and remains in a medically-induced coma at Berlin’s Charité hospital.

      On 24 August, German doctors announced that they had detected the presence of a cholinesterase inhibitor in Navalny’s blood. Cholinesterase is a component of nerve agents. The Russian doctors who treated Navalny after his plane made an emergency landing at Omsk have contested this conclusion, insisting that their tests for cholinesterase inhibitors were negative.

      Yet Another Poisoning

      Depressingly, yet another poisoning of an enemy of Vladimir Putin is no surprise. Navalny has been a vigorous anti-corruption campaigner and prominent critic of the Russian president and his circle, for the last decade. In return, Putin’s security services have harassed, arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, threatened and now poisoned Navalny —apparently a second time. He joins a list of dozens of opposition politicians, investigative journalists and critics of Putin’s regime who have been forcefully silenced.

      These include Boris Nemtsov, a political high flyer who turned against Putin, assassinated in 2015 right outside the Kremlin. Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire former ally of Putin’s, was found dead in his home in the UK in 2013. Sergei Magnitsky, a tax-law investigator who exposed widespread government fraud spanning some 23 companies and $230 million, who died in police custody in 2009 after being brutally beaten and denied medical treatment. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist and politician who played an instrumental role in the passing of the Magnitsky Act by US Congress, was poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017.

      Anna Politkovskaya, a renowned investigative journalist, was shot to death in the elevator of her Moscow apartment block in 2006 following a failed poisoning attempt two years earlier — also involving a cup of tea on a flight. Alexander Litvinenko, an FSB defector, was poisoned with polonium 210-laced tea in London in 2006. Sergei Skripal, a former military intelligence officer and double agent, was poisoned alongside his daughter with the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury in 2018. The list goes on and on. Russia has denied any involvement in any of these cases, despite mountains of forensic, surveillance and other evidence to the contrary.

      Of course, no rational person believes the Russian denials, although the followers of the Putin cult seem willing to swallow it. But Vladimir Putin clearly does not care whether he is believed or not. The purpose of these assassinations or poisonings is to cow the opposition, bludgeon it into silence, to prevent the investigation of the government’s crimes and to establish Putin as the autocrat, accountable to nobody. Vladimir Putin wants to ensure that no one in Russia dares to oppose him.

      A Good Moment

      The West is in disarray about how to respond to Navalny’s poisoning and particularly desperately misses the leadership of the United States. President Donald Trump has yet to comment on the Navalny case. But Trump, the Russian president’s self-proclaimed “fan,” generally refuses to criticize Putin, so we should fully expect him either to say the Navalny case “never reached his desk” or that he was prepared to believe Putin’s sincere denials, as he did over the conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election. Russia is once again heavily engaged in the campaign to reelect Trump, so we should not expect him to take effective action. Putin thrives on Trump’s weakness.

      President Putin is not as secure as he would like to believe. The economy is doing badly, oil prices are down, the number of COVID-19 infections is the fourth-highest in the world, and in Khabarovsk, in Russia’s far east, tens of thousands of demonstrators have been taking to the streets since July, protesting the arrest of the popular governor on Moscow’s orders. In neighboring Belarus, where the dictator Alexander Lukashenko is fighting to hold on to power, the popular uprising against the rigged election may foreshadow Russia’s future. 

      Putin has regional elections of his own to rig in September, and a national election next year. Alexei Navalny, with his well-organized political movement, is the most prominent, effective and popular figure opposing Putin. Rather than take any chances of the Belarusian uprising being contagious, Putin may well have thought this would be a good moment to eliminate his chief opponent and to terrorize Navalny’s supporters. Now would also be a good time for the West to show some spine and oppose Putin’s murderous dictatorship.

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      Does Joe Biden’s Transition to the Center Have Any Meaning Today?

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      The New Yorker features a lengthy biographical portrait of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden written by Evan Osnos. Clearly recognizing Biden’s positioning on the electoral spectrum, the title of the article takes the form of a question: “Can Biden’s Center Hold?” Though it doesn’t provide an answer to the question, it implicitly pleads in favor of Biden’s tactical choice of occupying the center, not just of the Democratic Party but of the entire oligarchic system.

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      Osnos focuses on the candidate’s own characterization of his strategy. “Biden has described himself as a ‘transition candidate,’ able to overcome generational and ideological rifts,” he writes.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Transition candidate:

      A candidate lacking definition in terms of vision or coherent policy agenda, but intent upon influencing the choice of future leaders, presumably who will share the same deficiency of vision and clarity

      Contextual Note

      Osnos zeroes in on Biden’s idea of what it means to ensure a transition. He writes: “In the spring, Biden began describing himself as a ‘transition candidate,’ explaining, ‘We have not given a bench to younger people in the Party, the opportunity to have the focus and be in focus for the rest of the country. There’s an incredible group of talented, newer, younger people.’”

      We might marvel at the tautology offered by a 77-year-old man, whose political career spans more than 50 years, referring to people who are at the same time “newer” and “younger.” The two attributes tend to go together. But Biden undoubtedly remembers that his opponent, US President Donald Trump, was new to politics at the age of 69 when he launched his first real political campaign in 2015. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden is also correct in noticing the rise of a generation of newer, younger people who have been making headlines, such as “the squad,” led by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Ilhan Omar. They are now being joined by a host of new candidates for this election, some of whom have successfully unseated longstanding incumbents, such as Cori Bush, who defeated the William Lacy Clay dynasty in Missouri, or Jamal Bowman, who upended the career of Eliot Engel, chairman the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

      But those aren’t the youngsters Biden has in mind. Had that been the case, he would have insisted on highlighting their contribution at last week’s Democratic National Convention. Instead, AOC was given a minimal spot only on the insistence of Senator Bernie Sanders, who himself was only reluctantly included because of his status as the uncontested leader of a future-oriented movement. Andrew Yang, who made a major impact during the debates thanks to his groundbreaking ideas, was belatedly invited only after he publicly expressed his astonishment at not being invited. 

      The most telling absence was that of the most courageous and credible of the young presidential candidates, Tulsi Gabbard. She has attained the status of an unmentionable within a party dominated by the Obama and Clinton dynasties. The young and articulate veteran is guilty of vehemently opposing the bellicose foreign policy favored by every Democratic president since Harry Truman.

      That leaves the party’s hopes of prominent new talent essentially in the hands of two people. Biden’s vice-presidential pick, Kamala Harris, performed poorly in the Democratic primaries and is no youngster. She will be 60 in 2024. Pete Buttigieg, who enjoyed a moment of glory in the Iowa caucuses where he was helped along by the software the party chose to use for tabulating the votes, is the image of a young technocrat with no political vision.

      Perhaps Biden’s idea of a transition candidate simply means that he sees the US itself transitioning to something different than the past four years of Trump. That would mean that anyone outside of Trump’s own family would be a transitional candidate. But that is too obvious a truism to take seriously.

      Historical Note

      Evan Osnos cites the Northwestern University historian Brett Gadsden, a native of the part of Delaware where Joe Biden grew up: “There’s probably a metaphorical lesson in the fact that Biden hails from a place that has this mythical reputation as a middle-ground state. It’s emblematic of a kind of imagined center.” Gadsden hints that the meaning of “center” in terms of both US politics and culture can only be elusive, if not totally imaginary.

      The ambiguity surrounding the center perhaps defines better than anything else the legacy of Donald Trump. The nation is polarized, split in two. The center, represented by the establishment of both parties, has lost much if not yet all of its credibility among the traditional bases of Democrats and Republicans. It still maintains its hold on power in the world of finance and technology, but only a minority “believe” and adhere to its values. 

      On one side, Trump represents the defiance of the hyper-individualistic, assert-your-personality-at-all-costs wing, not so much of US politics as of US culture. On August 24, at the Republican National Convention, Kimberly Guilfoyle expressed the voice of that hyper-aggressive segment of the culture. It was as if Guilfoyle, a campaign official and the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., was calling to arms the unregulated militias that represent President Trump’s constituency in a battle against a satanic enemy. “They want to steal your liberty, your freedom, they want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live,” she said. 

      Biden embodies and symbolizes the problem of the center. The Yahoos on the right unleashed by the Trump revolution are ready to challenge everything to their left, including that part of the Republican Party that can be called the center, which appears now to have joined forces with the establishment of the Democratic Party. They have become virtually indistinguishable.

      In contrast, without revolting, the progressive left has declared its growing mistrust of a center that has increasingly focused on resisting any kind of reform designed to respond to the increasingly grave crises society is facing. Seeking control is not a feature of the left’s culture. It basically counts on the growing awareness by the center of the gravity of the problems all previous administrations have failed to address. But the progressive wing’s patience is clearly wearing out.

      If after a Biden victory in November he has the opportunity to demonstrate the transition he has promised, a real danger awaits him. Unlike what happened with Barack Obama, the progressive wing will offer Biden no honeymoon. The messy and probably violent Trumpian revolt against the government itself after a defeat in the polls will occur simultaneously with the seriously organized contestation by the left of Biden’s likely “transition” team. In the midst of intractable crises, his policy choices and his capacity to govern will be vehemently challenged.

      Squeezed from both sides, the center’s fate is unsure. In his poem, “The Second Coming,” written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, William Butler Yeats prophesied:

      “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
      The best lack all conviction, while the worst
      Are full of passionate intensity.”

      The “center of power” is not just Washington. The “center of finance” is not just Wall Street. The center that has held Western society relatively intact for more than seven decades is already under severe pressure. It increasingly requires arbitrary force to hold back the growing tide of chaos unleashed by the not totally coincidental convergence of a pandemic, multiple irrational military ventures across the globe and exacerbated inequality of income, wealth and treatment by official institutions.

      In his New Yorker piece, Osnos quotes a senior Obama administration official’s description of Biden: “He is very much a weathervane for what the center of the left is. He can see, ‘O.K., this is where the society is moving. This is where the Democratic Party is moving, so I’m going to move.’”

      But the Democratic Party, committed to flirting with never-Trumper Republicans, no longer represents its own voters. And when “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed” — and Jacob Blake lies on a hospital bed as its latest witness — even a transition candidate finds himself in a situation similar to that of a refugee of the American wars in the Middle East. There’s simply nowhere safe to move where one will be welcome.

      *[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.]

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      The 2020 US Census Could Threaten Human Rights

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      On July 21, President Donald Trump signed an unprecedented memo directing the commerce secretary to collect data on undocumented immigrants and remove them from the final population totals. The memo follows up on a July 2019 executive order that assigned the Census Bureau to determine how many residents are US citizens.

      It remains unclear how this plan — seemingly a workaround the Supreme Court decision that blocked the administration from including a question about citizenship on the census — would be enforced or survive a legal challenge. However, removing undocumented immigrants from the population totals would have the effect of distorting the count, thus diminishing political representation and federal funding for states with larger undocumented populations.

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      The decennial census, enshrined in the US Constitution, was conceived to count all residents of the country — regardless of citizenship or eligibility to vote — as a basis for taxation and the regular reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives among the various states. In March 2018, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that for the first time in 70 years, the 2020 census would include a question about citizenship status for all households. After months of court battles, the Supreme Court issued a complicated ruling that kept the question off the census, noting that the administration’s rationale for adding the item was contrived.

      Nonetheless, recent surveys by civil society groups indicate that Latino communities remain fearful of participating in the census: as a result of the controversy, many mistakenly believe that a question about citizenship status will still appear and fear that census data could be shared with law enforcement or other government agencies. Now, the Trump administration seems determined to work around the Supreme Court ruling, noting that it is the “policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

      The ramifications of removing undocumented immigrants from the count loom large as census information is used not just for congressional apportionment, but also for the allocation of an estimated $900 billion in federal funding for programs on issues such as nutrition, public health, housing, transportation, education, law enforcement and environmental protection. International human rights law — including the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) — recognizes the rights to education, health and an adequate standard of living.

      Distorted census results would damage the protection of these fundamental human rights by putting communities with large immigrant populations at risk of limited access to essential services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this seems particularly punishing. Further, an undercount would place certain states at a political disadvantage in terms of proportional representation in Washington, undermining the fundamental democratic principle that voters should have equal power to choose their representatives. Removing undocumented immigrants from the census count would ensure that everyone in the country, both citizens and residents, ultimately suffer.

      The Trump administration has come to be associated with a xenophobic, exclusionary and race-based conception of American identity. Indeed, President Donald Trump has stood apart from all of his recent predecessors in displaying open hostility toward immigrants, asylum seekers and other vulnerable and minority groups. The president has proposed dramatic new restrictions on legal immigration and pledged to abrogate birthright citizenship — the constitutional guarantee that those born in the United States, whether or not their parents are citizens, have a right to citizenship. As a result, this proposal, beyond its harmful practical impact, has been criticized as an effort to enforce that identity.

      The proposal can also be seen as part of a larger pattern in which politicians seek to define American political membership, determine voters’ political identity according to demography and then maximize their chances at the polls through the manipulation of district boundaries or the rules of voting eligibility. In effect, a census that undercounts immigrant populations and distorts reapportionment could amount to an enormous partisan gerrymandering exercise. Like all such efforts, this would undermine the fundamental democratic principle that voters should have equal power to choose their representatives rather than representatives choosing their voters, further eroding the idea that elected officials should serve and appeal to all segments of society. Everyone in the country, both citizens and residents, would ultimately suffer from such an outcome.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]

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