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Indian queer cyberspace has evolved drastically over the years. The internet arrived in India in 1995, and high-speed broadband technologies started only in 2004. Before that, queer mobilizing mostly took place through informal and clandestine channels. It was only in 1991 that the first Indian queer organization was formed in London, the Naz Project, which eventually established a presence in Delhi through its sister group, the Naz Foundation, in 1996.
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The late 1990s were a time when offline contact between Indian queers for non-sexual purposes was largely unimaginable, possibly because homosexuality itself was still a crime back then. Moreover, public attitudes toward homosexuals were fiercely negative, even among liberals. “When I was active in the women’s movement in Delhi from 1978 to 1990 as founding co-editor of Manushi, India’s first feminist journal, homosexuality was rarely if ever discussed in left-wing, civil rights, or women’s movements, or at Delhi University, where I taught,” recounts historian Ruth Vanita.
Globalization of Gay Rights
With time, things began to change. The policies of globalization, liberalization and privatization of the late 1990s opened up sections of the Indian economy to the world market in novel ways. These policies, which were a part of India’s overall structural adjustment program, marked a tectonic shift from old dirigiste ways of working and heralded a new era of sweeping economic reforms.
A chief consequence of these changes was the information technology boom of the 1990s. Starting in the 1970s, it eventually led the way for the proliferation of new technologies on the Indian market throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. These included Nokia smartphones, desktop computers like the famed HEC-2M, black-and-white television sets and so on. Over the years, not only did these technologies evolve, but so did their ownership patterns. In 2012, Neilsen reported that the number of smartphone users in urban India was approximately 27 million. That number shot up to 76 million in 2013 for urban and rural India, and has been rising steadily ever since. By 2025, India is projected to have approximately 974 million smartphone users.
These economic changes, however, weren’t merely restricted to urban areas. A 2019 report by the Internet & Mobile Association of India and Nielsen found that with 227 million active internet users, rural India had already surpassed urban India’s 205 million users. With 504 million active internet users over five years of age in 2019, India was the second-largest internet-user market in the world, just behind China with its 850 million users. The United States, by comparison, has 280-300 million users.
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What did the changing contours of the digital landscape in India mean for queer people? The late 1990s were a time when the Indian government finally allowed certain sectors of the economy like IT and telecommunications to engage private investment. As the strangleholds of the erstwhile permit-license raj began to loosen, queer activism also witnessed a genesis of sorts. In 1994, AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) filed the first-ever petition in the country’s history against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, an infamous British-era law that criminalized homosexuality in postcolonial India.
Various lesbian support groups also emerged during this time in response to widespread protests by Hindu right-wing groups that displayed violent disdain over the screening of Deepa Mehta’s lesbian romance film, “Fire.”
These changes were intimately related to the economic transformations of the time resulting from the transnational circulation of capital, ideas, people and funding that helped give the queer movement the impetus it needed to thrive and survive. The advent of gay rights mobilization in India, for instance, arose as a consequence of international funding for HIV/AIDS prevention in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The easing of certain regulations in the Indian economy and the greater flow of capital and people from abroad also paved the way, directly and indirectly, for the eventual scrapping of Section 377. As one scholar succinctly put it, “queer politics in India has come to be embroiled in the politics of globalization, and many believe that this history of queer politics is inseparable from the rise of neoliberal agendas in the Indian sub continent.”
Queering Cyberspace
A lot has changed over the years. Most notably, in 2014, India’s Supreme Court recognized the third gender in its landmark NALSA judgment. In 2018, the same court decriminalized homosexuality. By constitutionally recognizing these hitherto delegitimized subjects, the very shape and form of queer politics had radically transformed. Today, queer identification in urban pockets is more common than ever before. Corporations have also joined the queer bandwagon by placating homocapitalist sentiments under the problematic guise of LGBTQ+ inclusivity.
With the COVID-19 pandemic having haltered in-person queer events around the world, much of queer organizing, dating, socializing and networking has now shifted online. This is a space that continues to boom.
On the one hand, online spaces can be liberating for those who can access them. These spaces promise queer people the possibility of digitally connecting with others with a mere click of a button. This is why the IT boom was so significant: It paved the way for greater internet access and made it possible for marginalized and discreet queer people to explore their identities in ways their geographic locations wouldn’t otherwise allow.
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While no official government data on queer populations exist (for obvious reasons), and despite the police and the state actively harassing queer people over the years — even after decriminalization, they continue to do so — technology has ushered in what some are calling a “sexual revolution in India.” The technological boom has ignited and kindled a new generation of young Indians’ desires for sex, romance, intimacy, and even sex work in unimaginable ways.
These desires and aspirations are being facilitated through chat rooms, instant messaging applications like WhatsApp and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Indeed, these changes have “teased the imagination of a young India, expanding her horizons and aspirations with the click of the button.”
However, such spaces also feature as sites of discrimination, bullying and violence. Take, for instance, Rohit Dasgupta’s assertion in his 2017 book, “Digital Queer Cultures in India,” that “The concept of being ‘too transgressive’ is a growing issue within queer representations in India.” Thus, only certain queer bodies and identities are typically seen as normative in queer spaces; for example, gay men who pass as straight. Those who transgress cis-normative and heteronormative ideals — like effeminate gay men — are typically shunned by queer people (mostly gay men).
Caste Supremacy
It has been argued that even though the 1991 reforms had a positive impact on India’s economic performance, their uneven implementation exacerbated existing socio-cultural inequalities. We see these inequalities manifest in queer cyberspace today, where certain privileged queer voices (mostly dominant caste, urbanized and Westernized gay men) dominate, while others (mostly queer women, and queer people from marginalized castes and classes) are systematically silenced by those in power.
On the issue of caste, for example, there is a deafening silence among queer activists in India to even acknowledge the presence of caste inequalities within the movement. This should come as no surprise because most queer activists in India (including the author of this article) belong to oppressor castes. Because of this, the issues, concerns and traumas of queer people from marginalized castes such as those from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities are sidelined.
While most of this marginalization is implicit, some of it also happens explicitly. Take, for example, writer-director Aroh Akunth’s account of how caste intimately shapes desires on gay dating platforms. Thus, “attractiveness,” skin color and a “good background” become ideas projected onto a caste, while politics of “respectability” becomes a politics of caste supremacy.
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Another pressing issue in queer cyberspace is the growing popularity of right-wing homo-Hindu nationalist aspirations. It should be noted that this problem plagued the queer movement long before the pandemic pushed everyone online. It’s just that these groups, like many others, have adapted to the new normal by moving online. They fashion themselves as advocates for queer rights while simultaneously peddling jingoism, Islamophobia anti-Black Lives Matter/Dalit Lives Matter propaganda as well as casteism.
Take for instance, “hindu_lgbt,” an Instagram handle that affiliates itself with the right-wing Hindu nationalist group, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which supports the decriminalization of homosexuality in India but not the legalization of same-sex marriage. As an ideology, Hindu nationalism is premised on the political and cultural construction of citizen-state relationships and subjectivities that are homogenized and in synch with orthodox notions of the Hindu faith, sometimes referred to as Hindutva philosophy.
It should be noted that there are many social formations in India that support this ideology. The protests against Deepa Mehta’s film “Fire,” for instance, were spearheaded by the Mahila Aghadi of Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and others, while resistance to decriminalize homosexuality in India came, in part, from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and RSS ideologues.
However, RSS views of gay rights have drastically changed over the years — perhaps more so than the views of orthodox Christian and Muslim organizations — partly due to the ruling BJP Hindu nationalist government’s relative silence on the issue, and partly because the RSS is itself trying to grapple with the ongoing social changes in India. In order to brand itself as an upholder of “inclusive” traditional family values, the RSS approach seems, on the one hand, to respect the Supreme Court’s judgment on Section 377 while, on the other hand, refuse to support any further legislation, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage, that might radically challenge existing family structures in India.
Web Citizenship
With the third COVID-19 wave expected to hit India in the coming months, online spaces will, in all likelihood, continue to facilitate queer networking for the foreseeable future. But with greater smartphone access and the increased democratization of content creation — what some scholars have called the rise of “web citizenship” — queer advocacy in contemporary India faces newer challenges.
The first is an issue of privacy. In its 2017 Puttaswamy judgment, the Supreme Court of India recognized sexual orientation as an intrinsic part of privacy but was silent about its applicability in the online realm, where catfishing and identity theft are rampant. The second is an issue of legality. Digital spaces transcend the boundaries of nation-states, thereby calling into question the juridical purview of national privacy and security laws. How do queer people facing harassment, bullying and extortion from international actors report such crimes to the police in India?
A contemporary example of this was the infamous gay marriage scam, as detailed in a UK-based investigation by VICE. This expose sent shockwaves through sections of the queer circles both in India and abroad, bringing to the fore the inadequacy of Indian laws, which, unlike those in the UK, neither recognize gay marriage nor extortion that specifically targets queer populations.
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The queer movement in India is currently at a crossroads. On the one hand, it has to tackle the increasing popularity of right-wing Hindu nationalist sentiments; on the other, manage the tensions and contradictions associated with Indian law.
Indeed, the challenges are many and the means to address them are few. One way of effecting change is by pursuing the law and lobbying lawmakers like Dr. Shashi Tharoor of the Indian National Congress, Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party and Tejasvi Surya of the ruling BJP, all of whom have expressed support for queer rights in India. While some scholars are skeptical of using the law as a vehicle for bringing about social change in India, others, like Arvind Narrain, are less skeptical. To date, this dispute remains unsettled — as does the inclusion of the BJP into this discussion.
The other way of effecting change is by radically reimagining queer spaces as zones where people of all identities can be made to feel safer. This exercise is perhaps harder to carry out because it has no prescriptions and is contingent on the ability of privileged queers to self-reflect. Thus, would dominant-caste queer men be willing to cede space to marginalized-caste queer women and transgender people? We should hope so. All in all, queer cyberspace in India is both a stuffy and an expansive zone. Its contradictions and contestations make it an exciting site for further scholarship into queer mobilization in India.
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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On August 15, Taliban militants entered the outskirts of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. It was the worst thing that could have happened to former Afghan employees of foreign institutions, women and civil rights defenders, religious and ethnic minorities, local journalists and even ordinary people.
Now, with the final withdrawal of US and NATO forces, nearly 38 million Afghans have been handed over to a group that has conducted suicide attacks, oppressed women and massacred minorities.
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Chaotically, people packed their bags and hurried to Kabul International Airport, apparently the only way left to get out of the country. Some did not even have visas and passports, without knowing their destination. The only thing they wanted was to get as far away from Afghanistan as possible. Some Afghans boarded planes, but others were unable to get on and desperately clung to an American aircraft that was about to take off. While some managed to safely arrive in other countries, others fell from the plane. This included a 19-year-old Afghan national footballer who lost his life.
In a matter of weeks, the Taliban have managed to dismantle an army built by the United States over the past two decades. Officially, the Afghan forces were at least four times the size of the Taliban and had greater combat capabilities. This failure was unpredictable for the Afghan people and anyone involved in Afghanistan. How is it possible for such a costly army to kneel before a relatively irregular terrorist group after receiving training from the world’s most powerful military?
Why Did the Afghan Army Kneel?
There are many possible reasons for this catastrophic defeat. This includes the lack of NATO air support for Afghan troops, low morale and faith in resisting the Taliban, widespread corruption in the army and among politicians, illegal deals and mass desertions. Reports indicate that some brigades and corps of the army had not fought a war against the Taliban in some provinces. This meant local forces who took up arms were on the front lines in key cities were without support from the Afghan army. Soldiers in the 209th Corps in Mazar-e-Sharif left their base without informing their allies. The local commanders in this strategic province later called the army’s withdrawal a betrayal and conspiracy.
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Over the years, Afghanistan’s defense and security institutions have become increasingly corrupt and inefficient due to the interference of politicians. This is according to Munira Yousefzada, the former deputy defense minister. In an interview with BBC Persian, she claimed that decisions at all levels of the army were illegally taken from the Ministry of Defense and assigned to the office of Hamdullah Mohib, the national security adviser. These included critical decisions over war, intelligence, the appointment of officials, training and personnel matters. Therefore, “the Ministry of Defense had no role in the war,” she said, “and all commanders, from district commanders to commanders of corps, had to be close to Hamadullah Mohib.”
An “Unpatriotic” Fugitive
Ashraf Ghani, the now-former president, made the national army an incapable institution by unnecessarily dismissing and appointing personnel during his rule. The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), as the military was officially known as, was not disintegrated by the Taliban, but by the mismanagement of Afghan politicians. Ghani used his position to marginalize non-Pashtun actors from the government. When the Taliban began their operation of seizing districts, large cities and then the capital, commanders of corps and divisions surrendered one after another without putting up a fight.
In an interview with Afghanistan International, General Yasin Zia, the head of the joint chiefs of staff in the Afghan government, said that Ghani had betrayed the soldiers by making wrong decisions and fleeing the country during a war. Mohammad Mohaqiq, the former security adviser, also told the broadcaster that the president was the main culprit in the defeat of ANDSF. For the past seven years, Mohaqiq said, Ghani was overwhelmed by the illusion of power, made wrong decisions and, upon witnessing Taliban fighters reaching Kabul, fled the country with $169 million in cash.
Ghani’s presidency will be remembered as one of the worst points in Afghan history. Thanks to his mismanagement and the crimes that took place during his rule, Afghans have accused Ghani of committing suspicious acts against national interests. His political opponents have long considered him as one of the biggest obstacles to peace.
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In particular, the president did not back down when US politicians, almost all members of the Afghan High Peace Council and even Taliban leaders gathered in Qatar and called for an interim government. In early March, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a scathing letter to Ghani, saying the threats are too high and that a UN-led peace agreement with the Taliban should be signed. If this was not done, Blinken warned, the security situation in Afghanistan would spiral out of control. Shortly thereafter, several high-level US delegations, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, visited Afghanistan to speak to Ghani about reaching an agreement with the Taliban. The warnings went unheeded.
Can the Taliban be Trusted?
Since seizing power, the Taliban have announced a general amnesty for all people in Afghanistan, including employees of foreign institutions. According to this, everyone has immunity. As per Taliban leaders, women can return to work by observing Islamic law. Media outlets can also operate freely, as long as they follow Islamic principles. Nevertheless, it cannot simply be concluded that the Taliban are trustworthy. In the coming weeks, it will become clearer if they are tolerant toward women, minorities and activists.
In 1996, the Taliban announced an amnesty as they entered Kabul and took control of Afghanistan; they ruled the country until the US-led invasion in 2001. Yet soon after, the Taliban launched a retaliatory campaign. The worst crimes against humanity took place during the Taliban’s rule. In August 1998, thousands of Hazaras, an Afghan minority, were massacred in Mazar-e-Sharif. Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid described the killing as “genocidal in its ferocity.”
Taliban leaders who have appeared in the media portray a more moderate regime. They speak of forming an inclusive government, tolerance toward minorities and respecting women’s rights. But this is far from the reality.
Taliban militants are still committed to the group’s core ideology. Their fighters follow extremist thought, such as the Deobandi school and jihadi Salafism, one of the most basic principles of which is intolerance toward other Islamic sects. There have been reports of jihadists from Pakistan and other countries fighting alongside the Taliban. According to the United Nations, there are between 8,000 and 10,000 foreign fighters in Afghanistan who are either affiliated with the Taliban, al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (IS-KP).
Afghans Are Left at the Mercy of the Taliban
The Taliban have so far worked closely with terrorist groups operating in Central Asia and South Asia. Needless to say, this cooperation is likely to continue in the future. The Taliban’s view of religious principles is at odds with human dignity and civil rights. In particular, the Taliban’s definition of women’s rights and freedom does not apply to Afghan society.
The group’s fighters have no faith in democracy and elections, and they are suspicious of women and minorities. Taliban leaders try to portray the group as tolerant in the media and talk about women’s rights to gain international support. In practice, their fighters on the ground believe that “women are mindless in general knowledge and religion.”
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The Taliban do not have a development-oriented mindset. They do not have a plan or even skilled followers to govern, and they certainly cannot manage the country’s shattered economy. A Taliban government would presumably be accompanied by widespread opium cultivation, drug trafficking and human rights violations.
The theory that the Taliban have changed is just an illusion. The Taliban have already begun targeted house-to-house inspections searching for Afghans who worked with US and NATO forces. There are also reports indicating that people, despite a general amnesty, have been arbitrarily persecuted publicly. Four former Afghan commanders and a relative of a Deutsche Welle journalist have reportedly been killed by Taliban fighters.
The Taliban have not treated ethnic and religious minorities well either. Just one night after their takeover, the Taliban’s unbridled fighters destroyed a statue of Abdul Ali Mazari, a Hazara religious and national leader, in Bamiyan province where the Taliban demolished two 1,600-year-old Buddha statues in 2001. According to Amnesty International, the Taliban brutally massacred nine Hazaras in July this year after seizing the rural village of Mundarakht in the Malistan district of Ghazni province. Six of them were allegedly shot dead and three were tortured to death by Taliban fighters.
The Taliban have no suitable personnel and capacity to run a country, and their only means of maintaining power is carrying out large-scale violence and ruling through fear. Under the Taliban, media will be censored and civilians will be forced to live like people in the dark ages. With the Taliban taking power, poverty, violence and organized repression will rage in the country. During their rule, civil rights advocates have no chance of survival.
Afghan civilians have been left defenseless and helpless at the mercy of one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
When the United States began Operation Enduring Freedom, leading its forces into Afghanistan to empower local resistance to oust the Taliban, Afghans around the world cheered in sheer jubilance. The unipolar hero that is the United States of America had come to save the day and defeat the wicked Taliban, presided over by the one-eyed tyrant Mullah Mohammad Omar. But now, after 20 years of “missteps,” “miscalculations” and “misunderstandings,” we Afghans now wonder whether we were grossly mistaken.
The DC foreign policy community, nevertheless, has come up with predictably uncreative rebuttals to accusations of failure. We trained the Afghans wrong, the story went, ignoring the fact that Afghan soldiers have held their own for the entirety of the war. Leadership was weak, they said, ignoring the fact the US endorsed the power-sharing deal that kept those leaders in power. The Afghans couldn’t build an economy, we were told, ignoring the fact John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, had been consistently putting out reports for over a decade pointing out that the US strategy needed dramatic reimagining. There was no local support and Afghans had no will to fight, they surmised, ignoring the fact that Afghan special forces continue to defend their homeland.
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These excuses and reflections come as little surprise to those the United States has already abandoned: the South Vietnamese to the northern Viet Cong, the Iraqis to Iran and the Islamic State, the Kurds to the Turks, and, most notably, the American troops who had fought and sacrificed their lives in these “forever wars” to history. All were left to perish at the hands of an evil so vile that the US had no other option but to first invade, only to later leave, suggesting that maybe the evil was not so bad after all.
Vietnam, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan: seven different administrations, Democrat and Republican. Kabul is simply the latest victim learning the valuable lesson President Joe Biden is teaching future allies by allowing Afghans to fall from the wings of departing American jets: The US will not defend you.
All an adversary needs to do is be consistent and not give up. Time after time we have been shown that if the resistance is stubborn enough, the US will inevitably turn its back, exclaim, “What can we say, the locals just can’t be helped!” while waiting for a politically opportune time — just long enough before any election so that constituents forget — and then buck and run.
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China’s state-run media has already begun to propagate this message to Taiwan: The US will abandon you, maybe not in five years, maybe not in 10 or even 20, but it will abandon you eventually — and we will be here. For once, China’s propaganda departments are perhaps not wrong. The US can’t rely on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, given its non-interference principle. Japan’s self-defense forces aren’t equipped to assist. South Korea has its hands full with the north. The US Navy is not built for combat with China’s modern and flexible fleet, and there are no ideal places to base and supply consistent military engagement in Taiwan.
Likewise, politics will always play a role in US military engagements, but would its domestic population ever stomach a hot conflict with China over an island it shares no language, culture or customs with outside of it being a democracy?
China, on the other hand, holds the good cards. It has more ships than the US Navy. Taiwan is just 100 miles away, and the Chinese people are fanatical about reunification. And, just like the Taliban, Beijing isn’t going anywhere.
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US Vice President Kamala Harris has proclaimed that the US will not tolerate China’s unlawful actions in the South China Sea, recently reaffirming Washington’s commitment to its allies. But will the vice president 20 years into a “forever war” with China think the same?
It’s likely that future White House administrations will have new considerations, ones that might make a trillion-dollar war with China far less palatable to the US voter base than trillion-dollar climate change legislation to end America’s fossil fuel dependency. Then all the US foreign policy community has to do is look back and state that the failure was a result of “missteps,” “miscalculations” and “misunderstandings,” entirely forgetting that the last time these blunders were made, they vowed to learn from their mistakes, and they vowed to stand by their allies.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Arizona’s Maricopa County is ground zero in the continuing debate over election integrity in the United States. The so-called audit of the 2.1 million votes cast in that county in last year’s presidential election — by the almost comically inept firm Cyber Ninjas — was supposed to arrive at the Arizona Senate this week. But delivery was once again delayed as three members of the five-person ninja team contracted COVID-19.
The Maricopa “audit” has assumed such mythic proportions among the Trump diehards who insist that their Il Duce won the presidential election that some QAnon believers have insisted that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is a hoax — to distract attention from the allegations of vote-tampering in Arizona. No doubt rumors have begun somewhere in cyberspace that the forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and droughts sweeping across the world are also “false-flag operations” designed by the Biden camp to help them erase evidence of election fraud.
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The Trump forces that have taken over the Republican Party regularly fulminate against The Squad, antifa, that “socialist Biden” and other convenient punching bags. But the real target of their ire is closer to home: Republicans who have refused to join the Trump personality cult.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is a very conservative Republican who supported Donald Trump as his party’s leader. He has also refused to lie for the president. Prior to the release of the Cyber Ninja “audit,” he reiterated that a tri-partisan (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian) hand count of the ballots immediately after the election matched the machine count 100% while a live-streamed assessment of the tabulation equipment revealed no manipulations whatsoever.
The thanks Richer has gotten for standing up for the rule of law? Death threats and ridiculous trolling for being a RINO (Republican In Name Only).
Bill Gates is an Arizona Republican who serves on the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, which oversaw the 2020 election and certified the results. Gates is one of four Republicans who serve on the five-person board. He and his colleagues resisted calls for the Cyber Ninja audit even as his GOP colleagues in the Arizona Senate unanimously supported a resolution calling to arrest all the supervisors for contempt.
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In a telling passage in Jane Mayer’s recent New Yorker piece on the financing of the anti-democratic initiatives of the far right, Gates spoke of the death threats that he received for what would ordinarily be the routine actions of the Board of Supervisors. “Part of what had drawn Gates to the Republican Party was the Reagan-era doctrine of confronting totalitarianism,” Mayer writes. “He’d long had a fascination with emerging democracies, particularly the former Soviet republics. He had come up with what he admits was a ‘kooky’ retirement plan—‘to go to some place like Uzbekistan and help.’ He told me, ‘I’d always thought that, if I had a tragic end, it would be in some place like Tajikistan.’ He shook his head. ‘If you had told me, You’re going to be doing this in the U.S., I would have told you, You’re crazy.’”
Democracy promotion — it was supposed to be a method by which the US remade the world to look more like us. Thus, the interchangeability of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the above passage couldn’t be more revealing. In traditional democracy promotion, the foreign contexts have been wildly diverse — and largely irrelevant. The important part of the equation has never been the various facts on the ground but, rather, the verities of the American constitutional system.
These verities are now under attack as insurrectionists, vigilante groups and conspiracy theorists attempt to undermine the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. With Democrats rushing to promote democracy at home, Americans are now getting a taste of our own medicine. Actually, given the rapid spread of the anti-democratic disease, we’re in desperate need of a full course of antibiotics.
Destroy Democracy to Save Democracy?
After the January 6 insurrection, I wrote about the future of democracy promotion overseas, concluding that the concept was still viable as long as democracy means not only checks and balances, but also grassroots efforts to promote racial justice, reduce economic inequality and address the climate crisis. At the end of the piece, though, I noted that “at some point in the future, we may need to call upon the international community to help us save our democracy as well.”
So, only six months later, how close is America to sending out that SOS? For the time being, much depends on Trump.
In the best-case scenario, Trump exits the political scene as smoothly as he did the White House after one disastrous term. He continues to poll poorly in the country as a whole with a 60% disapproval rating (and only 76% of Republicans viewing him favorably). Still banned from Facebook and Twitter and largely ignored by the mainstream media, he lacks a platform to appeal beyond his base. And let’s not forget the multiple lawsuits he faces from election tampering, inciting violence on Capitol Hill, sexually assaulting at least two dozen women and engaging in myriad corrupt business practices.
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If Trump drops out of political life, his followers in the Republican Party will be left leaderless, though any number of rogues aspire to take his place. Without a broadly popular standard-bearer, the Trump forces would disintegrate and the Republican Party would face the inevitable. America is becoming increasingly multiracial (and the Republican Party isn’t). Climate change is raging across the country (and the Republican Party remains in denial). The US needs to retool its economy to meet the demands of the global market and the constraints of natural resources (and the Republican Party still has its head in the tar sands).
In this scenario, Trump has been little more than a deus ex machina inserted into the final act of the Republican Party’s story to enable it to escape, momentarily, its self-inflicted marginality. Trump has been the last-ditch effort of America’s version of the Nationalist Party in South Africa, the minority Afrikaner party that presided over apartheid, to preserve white power.
Trump or no Trump, the Republican Party extremists have latched onto an age-old method of maintaining control: voter suppression. Democrats have demography on their side: African-American voters supported Biden over Trump by a margin of seven to one, Latinos by two to one and Asians by almost two to one. Instead of trying to woo the non-white vote, which is growing every election cycle, Republicans have decided simply to make it as hard as possible for those folks to vote.
So far in 2021, 17 states have passed 28 laws making it harder to vote. Democrats in Texas fled the state to prevent one more such vote from passing, but that looks to be only a temporary gambit. Meanwhile, the omnibus voting rights bill (For the People Act) has attracted exactly zero Republican support in the Senate, which means that it will die without some modification of the filibuster. The narrower bill that just passed the House along party lines, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, faces a similar fate in the Senate.
Then there’s the effort among some Republican extremists to do an end run around the popular vote altogether by empowering state legislatures to pick electors in the Electoral College and thereby determine the outcome of presidential elections. They call it the “independent state legislature doctrine,” and unfortunately it has even attracted some support from four Supreme Court justices. In one 2024 scenario, Richard Hasen writes in Slate, “Republican legislatures in states won by the Democratic candidate could seize on some normal election administration rule created by a state or local election administrator or some ruling from a state court, and argue that implementation of the rule renders the presidential election unconstitutional, leaving it to the state legislature to pick a different slate of electors.”
So, all those careful arguments about Trump’s unpopularity, the divisions within the Republican Party, and the demographic transformation of the United States mean little in the face of a brazen power play by Republican stalwarts who have already demonstrated on multiple occasions that they could care less about rules, law or the rule of law. Like the US Army units in the Vietnam War that were determined to “save” Vietnamese villages by destroying them, the Republican Party is mission-driven to “save” American democracy in their own special way.
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In between the voter suppression laws and ploys like the “independent state legislature doctrine” are the more insidious efforts to call into question the integrity of all elections that produce outcomes that Trump supporters simply don’t like. The spread of insane conspiracy theories undermines not only the impartiality of elections, but the verifiability of their integrity. Conservative Republicans have time and again debunked the outlandish claims of “voter fraud” in Maricopa County, but that has not silenced the crazies.
Multiply Maricopa by the hundreds, even the thousands, and US elections will no longer reflect popular will but extremist skepticism. When faith in elections erodes, democracy can’t endure.
Geopolitical Implications
It would be comforting to report that the defeat of Trump in 2020 has taken the wind out of the sails of the far right around the world. But the success of the far right relies on a globally networked set of ideas — the failures of neoliberal globalization, the perfidy of “globalists” in supporting this failed project and the perception of immigrants as the foot soldiers of globalization — not any one figure.
In fact, Trump proved to be something of a liability to the global far right. He’s an American (a no-no among the anti-American right), a nationalist (who believes that America is better than everywhere else) and an ignoramus (whose gaffes are so gross as to embarrass the more discerning members of the far right). In America, Trump was the perfect candidate to unite disaffected independents, traditional conservatives and the American alt-right. As his would-be Svengali Steve Bannon discovered in his failed effort to create a nationalist international, Trump was not a grand unifier on the international stage.
Without Trump in the White House, the far right continues to prosper. In Europe, right-wing nationalists remain securely in power in Poland, Hungary and Slovenia. A neo-fascist party leads the polls in Italy, the far-right Sweden Democrats are poised to exercise real power after helping to oust the Social Democratic prime minister, and the extremist Marine Le Pen continues to run head-to-head with Emmanuel Macron in France’s presidential polls (though her Nationalist Rally didn’t do so well in recent regional elections).
Authoritarian nationalists still preside over the largest countries in the world: China, India, Russia, Brazil, Turkey. The Taliban have taken over in Afghanistan, the conservatives have come to power in Iran and the Saudis are still running their extremist theocracy. In the one Arab Spring success story, Tunisia, Kais Saied just extended the state of emergency he declared last month. Coup leaders continue to control Thailand and Myanmar. It’s hard to find good news on the democracy front in Africa. Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela: all still run by strong-arm caudillos despite significant public protests.
All of this means that the list of countries that can pitch in to save American democracy is a short one. New Zealand and Iceland can teach Americans how gender equality is central to a healthy political system. South Korea can give us some pointers on how to put a Green New Deal at the center of national policy. A number of European countries can provide guidance on the importance of strong social policy for any thriving democracy.
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US President Joe Biden plans to invite these countries to his Summit for Democracy in December. The three pillars of this initiative are reasonable: “defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, advancing respect for human rights.” Given the trends in the world, however, the gathering has a whiff of the desperate. It threatens to be a farewell party: Alas, poor democracy, I knew it well for it hath borne me on its back a thousand times.
It would be a different matter if Biden convened the summit as a true listening session. The Summit for Democracy could be an opportunity for America to admit that it has a problem and submit to a 12-step program of self-help, perhaps with a couple of sponsors (South Korea, Costa Rica) to keep us on the road to political health.
But that’s just a fantasy. The United States doesn’t listen to other countries. America is like the alpha male who refuses to ask for directions even when he’s dangerously lost. Right now, America is heading into uncharted political territory. Will any of our leaders ask for directions before it’s too late?
*[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
TexasTexas house passes sweeping voting restrictions billBill comes amid nationwide Republican effort to restrict votingDemocrats attempted to block bill by walking out last month Sam Levine in New YorkFri 27 Aug 2021 00.34 EDTLast modified on Fri 27 Aug 2021 00.36 EDTThe Texas house of representatives has passed a sweeping elections bill that would prohibit 24-hour and drive-through voting, block election officials from sending out absentee ballot applications, impose new identification requirements on mail-in ballots, and give more leeway to partisan poll watchers at voting sites.The bill – which passed on a 79-37 mostly party-line vote – now moves to the Texas senate, which has already passed a similar version. The senate can either concur with the house legislation or produce a final version using a conference committee. After that, it will go to the desk of Texas governor Greg Abbott, who is likely to swiftly approve it.The legislation comes amid a nationwide effort by Republicans, who control state government in Texas, to enact legislation that imposes new restrictions on voting access. The Texas bill exploded into the national spotlight after Democrats in the state legislature repeatedly blocked it by walking out of the state legislature, denying Republicans the ability to move forward with legislative business. The standoff, which lasted a little over a month, ended last week when enough Democrats returned to the state capitol to allow the process to move forward.Texas Democrats return to state capitol, ending 38-day effort to block voting billRead moreMany of the provisions in the Texas bill are aimed at Harris county, Texas’ most populous county, and home of Houston, a Democratic stronghold. Harris County election officials took several steps to make voting amid the pandemic easier. Those measures included adopting drive-through and 24-hour voting. The majority of voters who used both processes in 2020 were either Black, Hispanic or Asian, according to an estimate by the Texas Civil Rights Project. About 127,000 people used the process.Andrew Murr, the bill’s sponsor, said the measure would prevent fraud, increase voting access, and help prevent ballot secrecy. But he was unable to say how many instances of fraud there were in the 2020 election and couldn’t name any voters who had complained about the secrecy of their ballot during drive-through voting.Rafael Anchía, a Dallas Democrat, said the little evidence of actual fraud presented was clear evidence the states justifications for the bill were a “pretext”.“This is all about furtherance of the Big Lie,” Anchía said.The lengthy debate on the bill and proposed amendments was mostly cordial on Thursday afternoon, but it was clear that tension lingered in the chamber, where Republicans recently authorized the arrest of House members who refused to come to the capitol, none were ultimately arrested.“The chair would appreciate members not using the word ‘racism’ this afternoon,” said House speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican.Murr and other Republicans have defended the legislation by arguing that it increases the minimum hours polls are required to be open during early voting. But state representative John Bucy III, a Democrat from Austin, noted that the bill for the first time would set a maximum cap on the amount of early voting hours a county could choose to offer.The data proves it: 2020 US election was a remarkable success | The Fight to VoteRead moreThe new restrictions would make it harder to cast a ballot in a state that already has some of the strictest voting rules, and the lowest turnout in the country. Texas is only one of a handful of states that only allows a select group of people – those who are age 65 and older, disabled or out of town – to vote by mail. The state also does not have online voter registration and ranked among the bottom of US states in 2020.The Democrats in the state house of representatives spent much of the last six weeks in Washington, where they were lobbying federal lawmakers to pass two measures that would implement significant voting rights protections.One of those measures cleared the house on Tuesday and would require states with a recent history of voting discrimination, including Texas, to get any voting changes approved by the federal government before they go into effect. The measure faces an uphill path in the US senate, where it needs the votes of 10 Republican senators to overcome the filibuster and pass.TopicsTexasUS politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More
AfghanistanKabul airport atrocity offers a glimpse of the chaos to come in AfghanistanJoe Biden left with no good options after deadliest day for US troops in Afghanistan in more than a decade David Smith in Washington@ More
