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      in World Politics

      Is GCC-Qatar Rapprochement Good or Bad News for Turkey?

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      Turkey deepened its cooperation with Qatar during the blockade imposed by the Arab quartet in 2017, when the tiny emirate was most vulnerable and highly reliant on outside assistance for food supplies and security against perceived threats from its neighbors as well as the threat of an internal coup. Given that restoring diplomatic ties announced earlier this month with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the opening of borders and airspace will make Qatar less dependent on Turkey, it might appear surprising that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the agreement and expects benefits for Turkey and the Gulf states.

      Navigating the Minefield of Arab Politics

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      The current “solidarity and stability” deal between Qatar and the GCC plus Egypt makes no mention of the 13 demands of 2017, which included closing the Turkish military base and halting military cooperation with Ankara. While full clarification of the deal’s terms and impact will have to wait, it clearly does not resolve all the problems between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors. There are challenges ahead, with three plausible consequences for Turkey.

      Three Scenarios

      First is the continuation of the status quo, where relations between Qatar and Turkey carry on largely unchanged. Although Doha’s relations with Riyadh improve, the rivalry between the United Arab Emirates and Egypt remains, and Qatar will not necessarily change its foreign policy. Saudi Arabia and its Arab quartet allies — the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt — cannot achieve with carrots what they failed to accomplish with sticks.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Continuation of the status quo would not, however, make Qatar Turkey’s unconditional ally; Ankara never had absolute influence over Doha. While Qatar did refuse to endorse an Arab League condemnation of Turkish military operations in Syria and Iraq in 2016, it chose not to block a later communique reflecting the same sentiment. Qatar Petroleum also joined ExxonMobil in signing exploration and production-sharing contracts with Cyprus in 2017, which contradicts Turkey’s Eastern Mediterranean policy. In this scenario, Turkey’s proactive, militaristic foreign policy will continue unchanged, from Syria to Libya. But Ankara will need to spend more effort on maintaining its relationship with a more independent Qatar.

      The second scenario is regional isolation. If Turkey loses its influence over Qatar as the latter’s relations with its neighbors revive, this will leave Ankara further isolated in the region. The Arab quartet had hoped that blockading Qatar would draw Doha away from Turkish and Iranian influence and squash its independent foreign policy. The plan failed and brought about the opposite effect: Qatar increased its cooperation with Turkey and deepened its ties with Iran.

      Following reconciliation, Saudi Arabia and its allies might pursue a more realistic, limited set of goals such as curbing rather than eradicating Turkish presence and influence in Qatar. This approach has a better chance of achieving results and would be a challenge to Turkey. Following the GCC summit, UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said that some issues would take longer to fix than others: “One of the big things will be the geostrategic dimensions, how do we see regional threats, how do we see the Turkish presence? Is Turkey’s presence in the Gulf going to be permanent?”

      Finally, there is the option of reconciliation with the Gulf region. Turkey’s disputes with Saudi Arabia and the UAE did not start with the Qatar blockade and will not end with its lifting. However, by agreeing to end the blockade without asking Qatar to concede any of their original main demands, Saudi Arabia and its allies have acknowledged a new power balance in the Gulf. That might give Qatar the leverage to mediate between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Turkey would then benefit from the thaw.

      Separate reconciliation processes are already underway between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt. According to Mithat Rende, former Turkish ambassador to Qatar, at the same time as communication was reestablished between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, another channel was opened between Istanbul and Riyadh. Ankara has also engaged in backdoor diplomacy and intelligence cooperation with Israel and Egypt.

      A Truce

      There can be no reconciliation without an agreement to seek common ground regarding geostrategic approaches in the region. The price for Ankara could be to moderate its approaches across the Arab world and exercising restraint in Libya, Syria and Iraq. The fact that the Saudis are currently more focused on potential threats from Iran rather than on Turkish intervention in the Middle East provides a promising context for negotiations. Reconciliation between Turkey and Saudi Arabia would also constrain the Emiratis and the Egyptians, for whom stopping Turkey’s activities is more urgent than Qatar downgrading its ties with Iran.

      Turkish-Saudi efforts to find a compromise may receive a boost from Qatar. In Doha, Turkey now has a well-connected ally in the Gulf that could serve Ankara’s ends, which are also in its own interests. Although it is unlikely that Ankara will change its geostrategic direction in order to gain friendlier relations with the Gulf states, it will still benefit from Doha restoring relations with Riyadh and its allies.

      To use an analogy from war, the GCC deal is a truce rather than a peace agreement. And it is still work in progress. If rapprochement within the GCC facilitates reconciliation with Turkey, this could lead to a broader process potentially including Israel, which is itself in a parallel process of normalizing relations with Arab countries such as Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan and Morocco. If, on the other hand, the GCC and Egypt manage to gradually detach Qatar from Turkey, this will have negative repercussions for Turkey’s militaristic policies in Syria and Libya, at least financially — as Qatar funds Turkey’s partners and proxies — and politically.

      Greater regional isolation and reconciliation with the Gulf would both constrain Turkey’s activities in conflicts such as Syria and Libya. European engagement, in the form of pressure on all sides to achieve resolution, would be useful. By contributing to stability in the region such efforts could ameliorate the associated security and migration challenges.

      *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

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

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      in US Politics

      Josh Hawley finds new publisher after Simon & Schuster cancels book

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      The rightwing Missouri senator Josh Hawley has found a publisher for a book dropped by Simon & Schuster over his role in attempting to overturn the US election on the day of the Capitol riot – and Simon & Schuster will distribute it.The Tyranny of Big Tech will now be published by Regnery, a conservative press, in a deal first reported by the Federalist, a rightwing outlet.But under a distribution agreement announced in 2018, Simon & Schuster “handles distribution for Regnery titles in all markets and territories around the world” and “sales in Canada and export markets”.Simon & Schuster declined to comment.The publisher dropped Hawley’s book a day after the attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump left five dead. More than 100 arrests have been made, amid reports some rioters planned to kidnap and even kill lawmakers. Trump was impeached for a second time over the riot, charged with inciting it.Hawley was photographed raising a fist towards Trump supporters at the Capitol on the day of the riot. Later, with the Capitol in lockdown, he went through with his objections to electoral college results, in support of Trump’s claims the election was stolen, which have repeatedly been thrown out of court.Hawley faces growing calls for censure, even expulsion, by Senate leadership. Some donors have suspended contributions. As reported by the Guardian on Monday, one major Hawley donor, the billionaire Jeffrey Yass, has said he feels “deceived”.On dropping Hawley’s book, Simon & Schuster said: “We did not come to this decision lightly. As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.”Hawley responded angrily, saying: “This could not be more Orwellian … Let me be clear, this is not just a contract dispute. It’s a direct assault on the first amendment … I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have. We’ll see you in court.”Simon & Schuster said it was “confident that we are acting fully within our contractual rights”.On Monday, the Federalist report about Hawley’s new deal accused Simon & Schuster of “quickly caving to a pressure campaign organized by leftist activists and making the Missouri Republican one of the highest-profile victims of cancel culture”.The report also channelled Republican defenses of Trump, referring to the insurrection at the Capitol as an “incursion” which it said was “the result of organized planning rather than impromptu incitement, as media and leftist activists had initially claimed”.Numerous rioters have been recorded, inside the Capitol and since the attack, saying they were following Trump’s instructions.“We are listening to Trump – your boss,” one told a police officer in remarks reported by the New Yorker. More

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      in Elections

      How Biden era could kickstart coordinated approach to Russia

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      Joe Biden’s accession to the US presidency has spawned a huge body of literature about his intentions towards China, but in his four years out of office Biden has in fact made Russia his primary focus in combatting authoritarianism. Now, just days from coming into office, the arrest of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has suddenly presented him with a test case, which may also lead to friction with two of his closest allies: Germany and the UK.Germany under Angela Merkel has always resisted a full confrontation with Russia, and has fought hard to keep the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany going, saying it is a commercial not a political issue.But Merkel has met Navalny, who was nursed back to health in the German capital after his poisoning and has been described as “the Berlin patient” by Vladimir Putin, and her government may now feel a personal obligation, beyond rhetoric, to help him. The Putin entourage is already heavily sanctioned by the EU as a result if their repression in Belarus as well as Navalny’s poisoning, so her options for showing disapproval through further individual sanctions is limited. And the Nord Stream 2 project will not be far from Merkel’s thoughts.In the case of the UK, British prime ministers have been rhetorically strong about Russia, but are open to the charge that the rhetoric does not extend to clamping down on the lawyers, accountants and army of estate agents that enable the Russian kleptocracy to invest their corruptly-obtained wealth in London. Chatham House, the sober minded thinktank, is, for instance, hosting an event on Tuesday promoted as follows: “The most startling findings of the ‘Russia’ report from parliament’s intelligence and security committee were not about the extent of Moscow’s malign influence in the UK, but about how unwilling the British government had been to take steps to detect and counter it.“The report identified gaping holes in both awareness of the problem, and legislation to deal with it. A formulaic response from the government promised that at least some of these holes have been plugged”. Six months on, how many holes in measures such as ”unexplained wealth orders”, have been filled?But perhaps by coincidence matters are coming to a head. Since 2019, the threat of US sanctions has left the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline about 94% complete. If finished, the 764-mile (1,230km) pipeline will terminate in Lubmin, a coastal village in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and more than double Germany’s imports of Russian natural gas.On Friday, Germany’s federal maritime authority approved extending the project’s operational time frame because of “unforeseen delays outside German waters”.Since US sanctions would target private companies involved in the project, the state government of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has gone to the lengths of establishing a public foundation that could take over the potentially sanctionable activity. Germany believes the US would not have the nerve to sanction a public body, even though this foundation is largely Russian funded.Nicholas Burns the former US assistant secretary of state suggested to the German business newspaper Handelsblatt this week that if Germany suspended construction of the pipeline the US could lift sanctions.Equally, the UK as host of the G7 summit in June looks as if it is going to revive the anti-corruption drive David Cameron started the last time Britain held the event.The west has been hampered in the past four years by the fatal ambiguity of US policy towards Russia. The State Department had been willing to confront Russia, but Donald Trump remained inexplicably averse to doing anything but indulge Putin.Biden has appointed an experienced team with a deep knowledge of Russia including: William Burns, director of the CIA; Victoria Nuland, deputy secretary of state for political affairs; Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior director for Russia and Central Asia in the future NSC; Kathleen Hicks, first female deputy head of the Pentagon; and Shanthi Kalathil, coordinator for human rights and democracy. Collectively they will try to give Germany clearer signals on US policy to Russia, and both how to combat democratic backsliding in Europe and Russian meddling. The huge cyber-attack on Washington institutions, attributed to Russia’s foreign intelligence, lies heavily on the minds of Congress.Biden has promised that he will make the promotion of democracy his guiding foreign policy principle, including a summit to attack the weapons of the authoritarians. Many have questioned the wisdom of the US presenting itself as the standard bearer of liberal values given its state of crisis.But the attack on the Capitol in Washington has only made his allies more convinced of this agenda, and its relevance to America. So the frontline of the “battlefield” where the new US administration and Russia will confront each other is likely to be extended to the post-Soviet space and will include at least Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. For all the talk of the rise of China and the implications of the “Asian century” on America, it is the threat posed by the old cold war enemy that for now at least may most exercise the transatlantic alliance. More

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      in World Politics

      Forecasting the US-China Relationship

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      With a new US administration about to be inaugurated, it is prudent to look at the dynamics and variables shaping the future of one of the world’s most important relationships, that between Washington and Beijing. President Donald Trump came into office looking to take a more aggressive approach toward China. Trump’s reliance on figures like Peter Navarro and Mike Pompeo put American foreign policy on a forceful path. While Navarro, as Trump’s trade adviser, was focused on conducting trade wars, Secretary of State Pompeo was centered on military balancing. In the final year of the Trump presidency, relations with China were rapidly disintegrating, with little room left for cooperation.

      Joe Biden Will Face a Much-Changed and Skeptical World

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      If President Trump presided over a rapid deterioration of the US-China relationship, under President Joe Biden, the relationship is likely experience a stable deterioration. A stable deterioration is typified by two features: the continuance of deviating trajectories and the transactional nature of future cooperation. These two features interact to create a new status quo in the US-China relationship.

      Deviating Trajectories

      The era of engagement between Beijing and Washington was sustained through a shared interest in China’s economic and political integration in the international community. Today, China under President Xi Jinping has sought to both blunt international political institutions and create international financial bodies, thereby challenging US spuremacy and allowing for more Chinese dexterity. Xi’s international revisionism struggles against American national interests, creating a split between the two global giants.

      As President-elect Joe Biden is in the final stages of forming his national security team, he sends a strong, clear signal: This will not be a third Barack Obama term. Biden has declared that he plans on nominating Antony Blinken as secretary of state and Jake Sullivan as national security adviser. While both are veterans of the Obama administration, their tone and language signal a break from the Obama years. Both Blinken and Sullivan have acknowledged the need to develop a new strategy for China that goes beyond traditional engagement into managing competition.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At a Hudson Institute event last summer, Blinken stated, “We are in a competition with China — and there’s nothing wrong with competition, if it’s fair.” Continuing the theme of managing competition with China, a piece for Foreign Affairs co-authored by Sullivan with Kurt Campbell, the CEO of the Asia Group, suggests that “the signs that China is gearing up to contest America’s global leadership are unmistakable, and they are ubiquitous.”

      These statements follow a larger trend within the Democratic Party of getting tougher on China. For example, in the 2016 Democratic Party Platform, China is only mentioned seven times. In the 2020 document, mentions were up to 22 and included language like “push back against” and “stand up to.” A Biden administration is going to bring strategic clarity to US-China competition. Key advisers like Sullivan and Blinken are not pollyannish about the relationship and recognize the dramatic change that has been occurring for nearly a decade. As Biden leaves America’s engagement strategy behind, he will advance a more confident and more energetic foreign policy in defense of US interests and values.

      Meanwhile, on the Chinese side of the relationship, President Xi Jinping has pursued an aggressive posture that has shaken the regional order. His ambitious “national rejuvenation” strategy has created consternation. Xi has abandoned institutional integration and instead established his own multilateral financial institutions to blunt the influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The People’s Liberation Army has also been more assertive in promoting Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The complete political absorption of Hong Kong has alarmed neighboring Taiwan. Lastly, Xi’s extraordinary Belt and Road Initiative has expanded China’s political influence across the region.

      President Xi’s national rejuvenation campaign is in direct conflict with the interests of the United States and its allies. The US stands atop of an international order that promotes political and economic liberty. Through this alliance system, the United States promotes and secures a free and open Indo-Pacific. Under Xi’s helmsmanship, China wants to displace, if not replace, the US and develop a new, Sinocentric order. These trajectories will only continue to deviate until a new status quo can develop.

      Areas of Cooperation

      While the chasm in the US-China relationship widens and deepens, there are several areas where American and Chinese interests align. The United States and China must develop procedures for collaboration in these areas. If the relationship is only limited to competition, problems will arise that could otherwise be solved. Additionally, neither country gains from complete destruction of bilateral relations.

      The stabilization of the Korean Peninsula will require significant coordination between Washington and Beijing. Neither the Chinese nor the Americans want to see conventional or nuclear conflict on the peninsula. The two countries do not need to feign friendship to achieve stabilization, but it does require communication.

      Climate change is an issue that is not only an opportunity for cooperation but a problem that demands collaboration. As the world’s two largest economies, the US and China have a lot of influence in affecting the trajectory of global warming and climate change. Both countries stand only to gain from working together on this issue. Collaboration on the environment does not require a new proclamation of camaraderie between the two nations. Each government can recognize that cooperation on climate change is important without declaring a new era of relations. The business-like, transactional nature of US-China cooperation creates an environment where the two countries can work together without upsetting the aggressive factions within their respective countries.

      When accounting for these dynamics, the most likely scenario to play out under the Biden administration is stable deterioration. Stable deterioration recognizes the continued decline in bilateral relations brought about by the deviating trajectories of the two countries but understands that there is a limit to that decline. Both countries accept collaboration when interests align, but the nature of cooperation is transactional. Through managing competition and transactional cooperation, a new status quo in the US-China relationship will develop.

      This scenario assumes that neither President Biden nor President Xi perceives any value in the destruction of bilateral relations, but both recognize that competition is unavoidable. Both countries will continue to pursue their interests in the region, and neither will apologize for it. But both the United States and China will work together to develop a new relationship that allows them to compete without the total abandonment of the relationship.   

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

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      in US Politics

      Trump to hold early morning sendoff ceremony on Biden inauguration day

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      Donald Trump is planning an early morning sendoff event for himself at a military airfield in Maryland on Wednesday several hours before his successor, Joe Biden, is inaugurated as the 46th US president at the Capitol in Washington DC.For his last presidential ceremony, Trump reportedly wants an ostentatious military parade and an official armed forces farewell as the commander-in-chief, as well as a large crowd of supporters, selected backers and current and former officials in his administration and their guests at a huge red-carpet affair.But latest reports indicate that Trump, who is facing an impeachment trial in the Senate and a number of criminal and civil investigations, will not be afforded a big military sendoff just two weeks after a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol that followed his exhorting supporters to fight to overturn the election.Invitations have been issued from the White House for an event taking place at Joint Base Andrews, the military base in Maryland used by Air Force One, at 8am on Wednesday – four hours before Biden will take his oath.Many details of the ceremony are not yet clear, although attendees will have to make a pre-dawn start and have been told to arrive by 7.15am, when temperatures are forecast to be below freezing.Attendees may not bring items including firearms, ammunition, explosives, laser pointers or toy guns.President Trump is leaving office on Wednesday. Plans are underway for a departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews. This is the invite sent to supporters. It includes a list of prohibited items such as ammunition, explosives, firearms, laser pointers and toy guns. pic.twitter.com/AZNoPUxCWB— Brie Jackson (@PositivelyBrie) January 18, 2021
      In his last few hours as president, Trump will fly to his private Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, aboard the Air Force One jumbo jet for the last time in a presidential capacity, ensuring he and his wife Melania are almost 1,000 miles away from the White House and Capitol when Biden takes over.Air Force One will then be at the disposal of Biden. Trump would have had to have permission from the Democrat who defeated him to use it if he had waited to leave Washington until Biden was sworn in.According to some reports, a 21-gun salute has been under consideration for the event at Andrews, and officials are considering an elaborate ceremony that would have the feel of a state visit.Senior Pentagon officials reportedly told the security and intelligence news website Defense One that no military farewell was being planned for the commander-in-chief, unlike ceremonies for Ronald Reagan, George HW and George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.With the sun barely up at the start of an expected-to-be-chilly Wednesday, a minimal group of staff still left in a rapidly emptying White House will see off Trump as he takes one last walk across the lawn to enter Marine One, the presidential helicopter, for the short flight to Andrews just a few miles away.Strict security arrangements in place for the inauguration, following the 6 January violence , have also limited the number of people who can attend the White House departure.Four years ago, Barack and Michelle Obama hosted Donald and Melania Trump for tea at the White House before traveling to the ceremony to watch Trump inaugurated as the 45th US president.But Trump has made it clear he would become the only president in a century and a half not to attend his successor’s inauguration and only the fourth in history not to do so, with the plans for his premature departure unprecedented.Vice-President Mike Pence is attending Biden’s inauguration, but it is not yet known if he will attend Trump’s farewell at either the White House or Joint Base Andrews beforehand.Pence traveled to thank troops in California and New York over the weekend as part of a farewell from the Trump-Pence administration, engagements that would have been expected to be carried out by the president.Trump has not been seen in public since he traveled to the US-Mexico border last Tuesday. In recent weeks he has not visited the US military. And has not visited or spoken of healthcare workers overwhelmed at hospitals and vaccination sites as the US coronavirus death toll approaches 400,000.The Bidens may be able to see and hear Trump departing aboard Marine One as they are staying close to the White House the night before the inauguration.There is no word on whether Trump will call Biden or leave the traditional letter to his successor upon the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.Reports on Monday afternoon said that the Bidens would be greeted by the White House chief usher on Wednesday, whereas traditionally it would be the departing president and first lady.Joe and Jill Biden won’t be greeted by Donald and Melania Trump Wednesday, breaking White House tradition.Instead, they’ll be greeted by the White House chief usher, @KateBennett_DC reports.— Alexis Benveniste (@apbenven) January 18, 2021
      They also said Melania Trump would become the first modern first lady not to invite her successor for a tour of the private living quarters.Melania Trump will become the first modern first lady not to invite the woman who will replace her to the White House for a walk-through of the private living quarters on the second and third floors. https://t.co/a1e9RVzq6l— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 18, 2021
      Workers have already hung bunting that reads “2021 Biden-Harris Inauguration” from temporary stands across from the White House’s north portico, visible from the third-storey residence, CNN reported.The cable network also reported that on the day the White House Military Office will ensure there are several “nuclear footballs” available, the heavy briefcase that is always carried near the president with codes to launch weapons in case of nuclear attack.One such football will reportedly travel with Trump to Florida and his codes will be deactivated by the time Biden is sworn in at noon on Wednesday, when an aide carrying another nuclear football and working codes will then begin to shadow the new president.The invitation for Trump’s sendoff specifies that masks must be worn .Late last year, Trump was criticised for hosting a series of indoor and outdoor events at the White House where social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines were not enforced, leading to several high-profile Covid cases, with the gatherings described as “super-spreader” events. More

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      in US Politics

      The Capitol riot wasn't a fringe 'uprising'. It was enabled by very deep pockets | Brendan O'Connor

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      While law enforcement officials in Washington ought to be held accountable for their alleged culpability in the deadly violence at the US Capitol earlier this month, and the off-duty cops and members of the military who participated in it ought to be disciplined, the attempted auto-coup cannot solely be understood through the lens of policing and security. At least as much responsibility lies with the billionaire donors and corporate interests – in other words, the capitalists – who made this moment possible.Already a picture of the individuals, organizations, and institutions who lent their weight to the movement that stormed Congress has begun to emerge. Last year, the secretive and influential Council for National Policy (CNP), which author Anne Nelson describes as “connecting the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives,” called for state legislators in six swing states to reject Joe Biden’s election victory. CNP leaders were scheduled to speak at the rally on the morning of 6 January, where Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol.Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, which has contributed millions to the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga), listed as one of the participating organizations in the rally. Raga’s fundraising arm, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent robocalls encouraging Trump supporters to march on the Capitol ahead of the 6 January rally, at which the former chairman of Raga, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, spoke. But major donors to Raga include not only rightwing bogeymen like Koch Industries, Walmart, or the Adelson family but also household corporate names like Comcast, Amazon and TikTok.Likewise, although Koch Industries is the single largest corporate donor to Republican representatives who pledged to try to overturn the election results, the next biggest contributors included defense companies like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, as well as tech (Amazon) and finance (Goldman Sachs) and insurance (Aflac), according to the Center for Media and Democracy. And while Charles Koch has maintained a posture of personal ambivalence, verging on distaste, for Donald Trump, super Pacs heavily funded by the donor network he and his late brother founded have spent millions supporting congressional Republicans who rejected the outcome of the 2020 election.Dick Uihlein, the chief executive of the Uline shipping company and a contributor to the Koch donor network, spent at least $2m getting Josh Hawley elected to the US Senate and has contributed more than $4m to the Tea Party Patriots, another one of the 11 groups listed as participating in the Stop the Steal coalition. In 2019, more than $20m was funneled through DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund that disguises the source of major giving to nonprofits, to a dozen organizations that would ultimately contest the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, including $103,000 to Tea Party Patriots. In a statement provided to the Intercept, Tea Party Patriots cofounder Jenny Beth Martin denied spending any money on the Stop the Steal rally and condemned the violence that occurred.Investigative journalists will continue to trace and disentangle the funding networks that facilitated 6 January. The list of names will grow longer; the sum of individual and corporate contributions greater. But already it is clear that what happened at the Capitol was not just the unintended consequence of specific capitalists’ ill-advised campaign donations; it was an expression of a deeper, ongoing crisis of capitalism, and the ruling class’s (sometimes contradictory) attempts to manage that crisis.According to a report released late last year by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness, the 651 billionaires in the United States added more than $1tn to their collective wealth since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, bringing the total to slightly more than $4tn. Meanwhile, the racialized distribution of labor in the United States – the concentration of workers of color in both essential industries, where they are more likely to be exposed to the pandemic, and service and hospitality industries, where layoffs have been rampant – means that Black, Latino, and Native Americans are significantly more likely to be hospitalized and die of Covid-19 than non-Hispanic white Americans. This serves as a stark reminder of the white supremacist character of the decades-long effort to defang and declaw the American labor movement – an effort funded and organized by the same far-right capitalists who laid the groundwork for 6 January.The Capitol siege was just one battle in an ongoing, decades-long assault on democracy. Racist ideologues have served as the vanguard, but they have long been supported (sometimes openly, often tacitly) by a wide swathe of capitalists. The ultranationalist Maga diehards, Qanon cultists, and various fascists that stormed the Capitol are shock troops searching for a leader. Trump will likely prove too self-absorbed, too cowardly, and too lazy for the job. But no matter how many arrests are made or officials fired, the tide of history has returned us to the rocky shores of political violence and mass upheaval. More

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      in Elections

      How the Republican voter fraud lie paved the way for Trump to undermine Biden’s presidency

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      When an American president is inaugurated, it’s supposed to mark the height of American democracy and power. The elaborate ceremony is designed to convey the peaceful transfer of power and that no matter how bitter the election, the nation is moving on.But when Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th US president on Wednesday, the ceremony will seem anything but that. America is arriving at the inauguration at an incredibly perilous moment, just two weeks after a violent pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol and several Republican members of Congress voted against certifying the results of the election. For months, Donald Trump has refused to acknowledge Biden as the legitimate winner of the election – a belief shared by legions of his supporters. The ceremony will have a heavy military presence because of threats of violence. Trump isn’t bothering attending.While Trump has accelerated this dangerous moment, it’s been shaped by a deliberate Republican strategy to undermine faith in elections to make it harder to vote. The myth of voter fraud and repeated allusions to elections being stolen have moved from fringe theories to the center of Republican ideology over the last several decades. The refusal to accept the election, and the attack on the Capitol, are a consequence of that strategy.“Donald Trump was definitely the spark and he had many enablers and facilitators, but the kindling had all been laid,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The strategy has been to slowly, steadily, undermine Americans’ faith in the security of elections, increase their belief in the existence of widespread voter fraud so as to enable them to accept what would otherwise be perceived as a really illegitimate and anti-democratic agenda of restricting access to voting.”For years, Republicans have used misleading and faulty data to suggest that elections are at risk of fraud. In Kansas, Kris Kobach, the former secretary of state, used the threat of non-citizen voting to justify a law requiring people to prove their citizenship when they registered to vote (the law has since been blocked by a federal court). Conservative lawyers in recent years have also used misleading data analyses to suggest that voter rolls are filled with ineligible voters.By 2016, when Trump claimed that voter fraud cost him the popular vote, it fit neatly into the narrative the Republican party was beginning to embrace.Two years later, there were signs that questioning election results were moving to Republican orthodoxy. Paul Ryan, then serving as speaker of the House, said it was “bizarre” and “weird” that Republicans fell behind in California races as more mail-in ballots were counted after election night. When Trump started making similar claims last spring and summer that mail-in ballots would lead to fraud and cost him the election, few Republicans objected.The party began to attack ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting, something Republicans long relied on. When Trump claimed there was something amiss as states continued to count ballots after election day, Republicans – with a few exceptions – supported him too. The rhetoric began to have real consequences, as supporters started protesting at vote counting sites and harassing workers trying to count ballots during November’s election.And by the time of electoral college certification, the effort to undermine faith in the vote had gone so far that it made it possible for two-thirds of the House Republican caucus and a dozen senators to back the idea of throwing out the election results entirely.“It’s gone from voter fraud in a particular election to ‘stolen election’,” said Lorraine Minnitte, a professor at Rutgers University-Camden, who has studied allegations of voter fraud. “I don’t think it would have been as successful if the fraud myth hadn’t been planted a long time ago.”Kobach, a Trump ally who briefly led a White House panel to investigate voter fraud, said it was “entirely appropriate” for members of Congress to object to the certification of electoral college votes. He noted that since 2000, Democrats had objected repeatedly to the counting of electoral college votes for Republican presidential winners (in all of those cases, however, the effort was not supported by the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who had already conceded the race).He dismissed the idea that there was any connection between raising concerns about election fraud and the attack on the Capitol.“I’ve talked about voter fraud to small audiences and very, very large audiences over 100 times. Maybe multiple hundreds of times. Never has it inflamed passions so that people want to go march on something and break windows,” he told the Guardian. “The idea that talking about the integrity of our elections is inflammatory is idiotic.”Kobach, who built a national reputation by focusing on voter fraud, also downplayed the significance of a Biden presidency in which a significant number of people do not accept him as a legitimately elected figure.“I would say it’s going to be very similar to the last four years where you had many on the left thinking Donald Trump wasn’t legitimately elected because they believed Russian interference caused him to be elected,” he said. “You will have many on the right harboring doubts as to whether the results in those five states were accurate accounts of legal votes in those five states, but I don’t think it’s going to be all that different.”Hillary Clinton conceded the election to Trump the day after the polls closed in 2016.Since last week’s electoral college vote, several businesses have announced they are pausing donations to the Republican members of Congress who voted against upholding election results. The pause comes after business interests for years have supported conservative groups that have facilitated voter ID laws and extreme partisan gerrymandering that allowed Republicans to take votes without fear of the consequences.“People were willing to tolerate this anti-democratic conduct up to a point. And then when it boiled over, when it became so extreme that people couldn’t ignore it, then they became willing to repudiate it,” Weiser said. “Seeing it so vividly all at once has broken that complacency.”Biden will be inaugurated on Wednesday on the Capitol’s west front amid a growing rejection of that complacency. But convincing Trump’s supporters that the election was legitimate and overcoming the doubt sowed in American elections may be an impossible task. We may have only begun to see the consequences of the damage. More

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      Billionaire backer feels 'deceived' by Josh Hawley over election objections

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      A secretive billionaire supporter of Josh Hawley and other rightwing lawmakers suggested he had been “deceived” by the Republican senator from Missouri, who led the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Jeffrey Yass is a co-founder of Susquehanna International Group – headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a critical swing state – who has donated tens of millions of dollars to hardline Republican groups who supported Donald Trump’s effort to invalidate his defeat at the polls by Joe Biden.Yass privately told a longtime associate he had not foreseen how his contributions would lead to attempts to overturn US democracy.“Do you think anyone knew Hawley was going to do that?” Yass wrote to Laura Goldman, a former stockbroker who has known him for more than three decades.“Sometimes politicians deceive their donors.”Yass, who does not give interviews and generally avoids publicity, also told Goldman he did not believe the 2020 election had been “stolen”, even though he has directly and indirectly supported rightwing Republicans who have repeatedly – and falsely – sought to discredit the results.The latest fallout of the 6 January attempt to invalidate the election, in which 147 Republicans in Congress objected to electoral college results in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, comes as both Hawley and his donors face pressure and criticism for his role.Hawley has said he objected to the counting of electoral votes in order to instigate a “debate” on the issue of election integrity. He has denied that his actions helped to incite the violent outburst and breach of the Capitol in which five people died, including a police officer.Goldman told the Guardian she emailed Yass because she was upset to learn about his support for Hawley and other Republicans, especially since the lawmakers were seeking to invalidate the election results in their home state, Pennsylvania, which helped Biden clinch the White House.“I approached Jeff Yass upset after reading the Guardian’s article [about his involvement in donations] because I was shocked he would allow my vote and the vote of his neighbors to possibly be invalidated by politicians to whom he gives millions of dollars,” she said.She added: “Yass lives here. He knows local politicians … he could simply call them and ask questions if he thought the election results were funky, which they absolutely were not. He doesn’t need Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, or Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, to question the election results in the state that he has lived almost 40 years.”Goldman published snippets of Yass’s private remarks to her on Twitter. The Guardian was able to verify the authenticity of the statements.Yass, a trader and poker aficionado who is an active Republican donor and has been a force in Pennsylvania elections, donated about $30m to conservative Super Pacs in the 2020 election cycle, making him the eighth-largest donor in the election, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.Most of those donations were made to the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that in 2018 and 2020 supported 42 Republican hardliners who ultimately voted to overturn election results even after insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol.The Club for Growth has been a major back of both Hawley and Cruz, his partner in seeking to invalidate the election.Yass has not responded to requests for comment from the Guardian. Nor has he responded to questions about whether he will continue to donate to the Club for Growth or whether he discussed issues with Hawley and others. Goldman said she sought out a discussion with him in part because she knows he is a “hands on” political donor.The Club for Growth did not respond to a request for comment. The group’s president, David McIntosh, has been an avid supporter of some of most anti-democratic lawmakers elected in 2020, including Lauren Boebert, a QAnon follower and gun rights advocate from Colorado who has been criticized for tweeting the location of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, during the riot in the Capitol, against the advice of police.In an endorsement of Boebert in July 2020, McIntosh lauded the the restaurant owner and political novice for her understanding of the “irreparable harm” caused by “government overreach” and said he had no doubt Boebert would be a “conservative firebrand” in Washington.Yass told Goldman he donated to the Club for Growth a year ago and suggested he could not have anticipated what Hawley and others might do.But public records show Yass also donated $2.5m to the Protect Freedom Pac on 10 November 2020, a week after the US election. The Protect Freedom Pac, affiliated with the Kentucky Republican senator Rand Paul, ran advertisements against Democrats ahead of two January runoff elections in Georgia, including ads that claimed Democrats were seeking to defund the police, institute “socialist healthcare” and raise “trillions in new taxes”.The Protect Freedom Pac’s website currently – and falsely – states that Democrats “stole” the 2020 election and used the Covid-19 crisis to illegally change election laws. It has also endorsed an in-person voter ID law, a policy that would disproportionately block minority voters.Yass has received far less attention than other billionaire donors, such as Mike Bloomberg or the late Sheldon Adelson, but has been known to get involved in local politics, donating money to candidates who support charter schools.Goldman told the Guardian Yass has been a longtime supporter of the Republican majority in the Pennsylvania legislature that led the fight to stop mail-in ballots from being counted until election day. Pennsylvania’s final results were not known until days after the election and Biden’s victory was clinched in large part because of hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that were counted after in-person ballots.Hawley’s office did not respond to a request for comment. More