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      in World Politics

      Divide and Rule: What Drives Anti-Asian Resentment in America?

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      Donald Trump might have left the White House. His nefarious legacy, however, lingers on. A prominent case in point is the dramatic rise in the number of attacks on Asian Americans, ranging from verbal insults and harassment to physical assault to deadly acts of violence that has gone hand in hand with the pandemic.

      Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. It stands to reason, however, that Trump’s repeated characterization of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” significantly contributed to the mobilization of anti-Asian resentment, particularly among his most ardent supporters. Trump had started to blame China as early as mid-March last year, when the pandemic was starting to spread in the United States. The results of an Ipsos survey from April 2020 suggests that it had a considerable impact on public opinion. Among other things, the survey found that 60% of Republican respondents believed that “people or organizations” were responsible for the virus, most prominently the Chinese government and the Chinese people in general. In short, large numbers of Americans blamed China and the Chinese for spreading the virus — with sometimes fatal consequences.

      Xenophobia and Denial: Coronavirus Outbreak in Historical Context

      READ MORE

      In mid-March, a man attacked the members of an Asian American family with a knife at a retail store in Midland, Texas. Only the intervention of a courageous bystander prevented a bloodbath. Nevertheless, several persons suffered serious injuries, among them two children aged 2 and 6. When interrogated, the perpetrator stated that he had thought “the family was Chinese and infecting people with the coronavirus.” They were actually Burmese.

      A report published in early April recorded over 1,000 incidents of anti-Asian cases of various types of aggression and discrimination associated with COVID-19 in the last week of March alone. Among them were individuals reporting having been verbally assaulted, spat on and shunned in grocery stores, supermarkets and pharmacies. Most of the incidences occurred in California, New York and Texas.

      Divide and Rule

      In the meantime, a year has passed, information available about the virus has dramatically increased, yet Asian Americans continue to be scapegoated and victimized. The dramatic increase in conspiracy thinking over the past several months, promoted by right-wing media and politicians alike, has done its part to fuel the flames of anti-Asian prejudice and hatred. The most recent cases that have caught widespread attention have been deadly assaults on elderly Asian Americans in California. One victim, an 84-year-old man, was knocked to the ground in a San Francisco street by a young man. The victim died two days later of his injuries, with the perpetrator now facing murder and elder abuse charges. The other victim was a 91-year-old man, pushed to the ground by a young man wearing a mask and a hoodie in Oakland’s Chinatown. The victim survived the attack.

      On the surface, the recent wave of anti-Asian hostility might easily be explained as being directly related to COVID-19. On second thought, however, things are significantly more complex and intricate. What might appear to be spontaneous outbursts of violence, verbal or physical — as, for instance against refugees in Germany and other Western European countries — are, in reality, the result of deep-seated diffuse resentments. What COVID-19 has done is to provide something like an excuse allowing these resentments to get out into the open.

      Embed from Getty Images

      To a large extent, as has been frequently pointed out these days, anti-Asian resentment is intimately tied to the myth of Asian Americans as the “model minority.” In this narrative, what accounts for the success of Asian Americans is intact family structures and a high priority accorded to education and traditional values such as thriftiness and discipline. This explains why, on average, Asian American household incomes have been higher than those of white households. As has also been noted, this narrative has been primarily used not to celebrate the achievements of Asian Americans but to blunt charges of racism and privilege. As Bill O’Reilly, the disgraced former Fox News star, asked rhetorically during a debate on the “truth of white privilege,” “Do we have Asian privilege in America?”

      For O’Reilly and other prominent figures on the American right, the success of Asian Americans was a convenient occasion to bolster a rhetoric that blames blacks, Hispanics as well as the poor (independent of color) for their plight. If only they followed the example of Asian Americans, worked hard, kept their families together, and lived within their means — or so the charge goes — they too would be able to achieve the American dream. In short, individual flaws, rather than racism and discrimination, are to blame if some Americans fail “to make it.”

      In order to bolster their case even further, right-wing “thought leaders” such as Charles Murray, the author, together with Richard Hernstein, of the 1994 bestseller “The Bell Curve,” had no qualms to note that with regard to IQs, Asian Americans came out on top, ahead of whites. More recently, Murray wrote a short blog entry on the state of American education, charging that high schools were “going to hell” — unless “you’re Asian.” Analyzing SAT test scores over the past decade or so, Murry pointed out that the scores had declined for all major ethnic groups, except for Asians. Their scores had actually increased, and this not only in math, but also in verbal skills, where Asians had trailed whites in the past.

      It should not entirely come as a surprise if comments like these and similar remarks provoke resentment, particularly on the part of minorities that are constantly subjected to this kind of comparison. One might suspect that this was exactly what was intended. By suggesting that Asian Americans might be “privileged” or pointing out, as Murray does, that Asian Americans constitute “the unprotected minority” they drove a wedge between minorities that share a common, if differentiated, history of oppression, discrimination and structural violence directed against them. In Roman times, they used to call this strategy of safeguarding one’s hegemonic position divide et impera — divide and rule.

      A History of Migration

      The history of Asian migration to the West Coast in the 19th and early 20th century is replete with episodes of anti-Asian mobilization. The arguably best-known case was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers — but only after they helped build the nation’s railway system. It came at the heel of intense anti-Chinese agitation, both “on the ground” in California and Oregon and in the US Congress. The rhetoric was highly charged, inflammatory — and meant to be so. In a speech on Chinese immigration, Senator Mitchell from Oregon, for instance, in 1876 characterized Chinese immigrants as a “festering sore which, like a plague-spot, has fastened itself upon the very vitals of our western civilization and which to day threatens to destroy it.” 

      Two years later, Representative Davis from California, in a speech in the House, warned that Chinese immigrants posed a fundamental threat to the institutions of the republic.  The Chinese of California, Davis charged, clung to their nationality and separated themselves from other men; they were incapable “to change their ways and adapt themselves to their surroundings.” This alone rendered them “most undesirable immigrants.” Arrested in their development as a result of “ages of uniformity” that had “fixed the type,” they had “nothing in sympathy with the social and political thoughts of a free people.” Instead, their “political aspirations” were limited to a “paternal despotism, with no conceptions of a popular government.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      This meant that the Chinese were unfit for life in the United States. Exclusion was the logical consequence, as were various measures adopted in the decades that followed targeting Asians. In the decades that followed, western states and territories passed various pieces of legislation that prevented aliens from acquiring land. Although general in nature, they were primarily directed against Chinese and particularly Japanese aliens.

      One of the more ludicrous exclusionary measures was San Francisco’s Cubic Air Ordinance of 1870. Disguised as a sanitary measure, it was designed to expel Chinese workers from their crowded tenement quarters in the city’s Chinatown and thus “persuade” them to return to China. The ordinance led to the incarceration of thousands of Chinese from 1873 to 1886 “under a public health law driven by anti-Chinese sentiment.”

      Even the populists, arguably the most progressive political force at the end of the 19th century, adopted nativist rhetoric directed against the Chinese. In the early 1890s, several state populist platforms included a passage calling for the exclusion of Chinese and/or Asian immigration. The passage appealed particularly to women who felt threatened by competition from Chinese men for domestic services and laundry jobs. Anti‐Chinese agitators seized the opportunity and charged Chinese workers with threatening the job opportunities of working women. Anti-Asian exclusion and discrimination were also reflected in anti-miscegenation and naturalization laws. The first anti-miscegenation law, which derived its justification from views on racial distinctions and barred marriages between whites and Asians, was passed in 1861 by Nevada. In the decades that followed, 14 more states passed similar laws. It was not until the middle of the 20th century to miscegenation laws were abolished.

      This was also the case when it came to naturalization, the right to which was established in the Naturalization Act of 1875 that restricted American citizenship to whites and blacks. Whenever Asian immigrants in subsequent decades petitioned for naturalization, American courts ruled that Asians belonged to the “Mongolian race.” Ergo, they were not white and, therefore, not eligible for citizenship. In response to these court cases, Congress passed a law in 1917 banning immigration from most parts of Asia. Seven years later, Congress passed a further measure, excluding foreign-born Asians from citizenship “because they no longer were able to enter the country, and they could no longer enter the country because they were ineligible for citizenship.” It was not until 1952 that race-based naturalization was formally abolished.

      A Privileged Minority?

      Given this background, the suggestion that Asian Americans somehow constitute a privileged minority so dear to right-wing apologists of white privilege rings more than hollow — as does the myth of the model minority. The reality is quite different. The narrative of Asian American success obscures, for instance, the fact that over the past decade or so, inequality has risen most dramatically among Asian Americans. According to Pew Research, between 1970 to 2016, the gap between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder “nearly doubled, and the distribution of income among Asians transformed from being one of the most equal to being the most unequal among America’s major racial and ethnic groups.”

      Poverty rates among Asian Americans have been slightly higher than among whites, with some groups, such as Hmong and Burmese, far above the national average. This underscores the fact that Asian Americans constitute a community that is ethnically, socioeconomically and, in particular, culturally highly diverse.

      The dominant narrative of the model minority, largely promulgated by the white right, largely ignores these subtleties. Instead, it creates the image of the privileged minority — singled out by the white majority compared over other minorities — and, in the process, sows discord among America’s subordinate communities. The resulting resentment goes a long way to explain the recent wave of anti-Asian hatred. It is hardly a coincidence that both recent hate crimes against Asian Americans in northern California were committed by blacks.

      It is also hardly a coincidence that the two attacks put Asian American activists into a quandary. As one of them noted, “If addressing violence against Asian Americans entails furthering stereotypes about Black criminality and the policies associated with those stereotypes … we’ve misdiagnosed the problem.” The problem, of course, is the widespread disgruntlement toward Asian Americans, wrongfully seen as constituting an “honorable white” minority bent on defending its privileges.

      A case in point is the lawsuit launched against Harvard University in 2014 charging it with discriminating against Asian American applicants in favor of less-qualified black and Hispanic students. Hardly surprising, the Trump administration, ever eager to stir the resentment pot, sided with the plaintiffs. The administration’s brief argued that the evidence showed that “Harvard’s process has repeatedly penalized one particular racial group: Asian Americans. Indeed, Harvard concedes that eliminating consideration of race would increase Asian-American admissions while decreasing those of Harvard’s favored racial groups.”

      For those in the know, the language echoed Murray’s notion of “protected groups.” Once again, divide et impera was in action. Courts finally rejected the plaintiffs’ case. But ill feelings are likely to linger on, feeding into extant resentments that appear to have poisoned the Asian American community’s relations with other visible minorities in the United States. Under the circumstances, anti-Asian hostility, hatred and violence are unlikely to fade out in the near future.  

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      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 Elections

      Key Biden aide said pandemic was 'best thing that ever happened to him', book says

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      A senior adviser to Democrat Joe Biden in his campaign for president believed “Covid is the best thing that ever happened to him”, a new book reports.It was, the authors add, a necessarily private comment that “campaign officials believed but would never say in public” as the US reeled from the impact of the pandemic amid hospitals stretched to breaking and with deaths mounting and the economy falling off a cliff.The remark, made to “an associate” by Anita Dunn, a Washington powerbroker who the Atlantic called “The Mastermind Behind Biden’s No-Drama Approach to Trump”, is reported in Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.The first major book on the 2020 election, a campaign indelibly marked by the coronavirus, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.This week, President Biden commemorated the 500,000th US Covid death with solemn ceremony and a request that Americans “remember those we lost and those we left behind”.Allen and Parnes, of NBC News and The Hill, also collaborated on Shattered, a similarly speedy history of Hillary Clinton’s White House run in 2016. In their new book they record Biden’s view of his predecessor in her defeat by Trump – he thought her a “terrible candidate” – and the views of Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice-president from 2009 to 2017, as the 2020 campaign unfolded.Obama first “seemed to be enamored with a former Texas congressman, Beto O’Rourke”, Allen and Parnes write, then later told Biden’s aides he feared his friend, aged 77 when the primary began, would only succeed in embarrassing himself and tarnishing a distinguished Washington career.But Dunn’s reported comment points to what became the dominant theme of the election. As the pandemic capsized Trump along with the economy Biden, through a much more cautious approach to campaigning and basic public health concerns, appealed to voters as the right man to manage a recovery.Trump sought to hammer Biden for “hiding in his basement” – a reference to Biden’s decision to rarely leave home in Wilmington, Delaware, instead campaigning virtually while the president held rallies and ignored public health guidelines. But such attacks did not hit home.Though “both Trump and Biden were comfortable with the stylistic and substantive contrasts of their … responses to the coronavirus”, Allen and Parnes write, “Trump led loudly, Biden calmly said Trump misled”.Like many members of his family and inner circle, Trump contracted the virus. He was reportedly more seriously ill than was publicly admitted. Biden stayed healthy and won the electoral college 306-232 and the popular vote by more than 7m.Dunn, 63, is a veteran of six Democratic campaigns and three winning ones, having worked for Obama in 2008 and 2012. She has not taken a role in the Biden administration and according to her own consulting firm, SKDK, is “currently on leave … expected to return later this year”.According to the profile published by the Atlantic in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s win in November, Dunn “came of age in the time when aides were neither seen nor heard … and still values discretion above almost all else”. More

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      in US Politics

      'Tired of getting slapped in the face': older Black farmers see little hope in Biden's agriculture pick

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      James “Bill” McGill has been a farmer for 40 of his 76 years. He can’t remember the year his 320-acre farm was put up for sale by the same man from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) he’d gone to for a loan to help him keep it. He can sum up the loss succinctly: “The government took it away. It has always been that way for us.”His treatment by the USDA over the years, it turns out, has conditioned him to have an easier time raising 60 or so pigs for slaughter on property in Bakersfield, California, he inherited from his parents. “I don’t get attached to hardly nothing any more,” he said. “So much hard luck over the years as a farmer, you learn.”Most older Black farmers like McGill have stories of being disregarded by the USDA, regardless of the administration, or who holds the title of agriculture secretary. They’re disillusioned to the point that it seems wise not to get too invested in USDA affairs, smart not to hold out hope for change. McGill didn’t even know that Biden had nominated Tom Vilsack, who was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday. “It doesn’t really mean a whole lot,” he said.A change of some sort would have come if Ohio congresswoman Marcia Fudge, a senior member of the House agriculture committee, was selected, as had been anticipated – she would have been the first Black woman to serve as agriculture secretary (she was instead selected to be secretary of housing and urban development). Vilsack, who has spent the time between his two stints as agriculture secretary in a high-paying job in big ag, is more of the “same ol’, same ol’”, as McGill put it. He served two terms in the same role in the Obama administration. Many of Biden’s cabinet picks have been praised by progressives; Vilsack’s nomination was met with confusion at best, disappointment and anger at worst.In what could be seen as a response to the backlash, Biden nominated Jewel Bronaugh, currently Virginia agriculture commissioner, as Vilsack’s second-in-command. If confirmed, she would be the first woman of color to serve as deputy secretary of the department.Black farmers peaked in number in 1920 when there were 949,889; today there are only 48,697; they account for only 1.4% of the country’s 3.4 million farmers (95% of US farmers are white) and own 0.52% of America’s farmland. The acreage they have managed to hold on to is a quarter the size of white farmers’ acreage, on average. All of this is the result of egregious discrimination from the USDA that Black farmers faced for decades.Vilsack’s first term should have offered some hope – he was appointed by the first Black president, who also oversaw the 2010 $1.25bn settlement of Pigford II, the second part of a 1999 class-action lawsuit that alleged that from 1981 to 1997, USDA officials ignored complaints brought to them by Black farmers, and that they were denied loans and other support because of rampant discrimination. Instead, a two-year investigation by reporters at the Counter found that during Vilsack’s eight-year tenure under Obama, fewer loans were given to Black farmers than during the Bush administration, and the USDA foreclosed on Black farmers who had discrimination complaints outstanding, despite a 2008 farm bill moratorium on this practice.Many of those complaints were left unresolved. The report states that from 2006 to 2016, Black farmers were six times as likely to be foreclosed on as white farmers.This disappointment is compounded by Vilsack’s kneejerk firing in 2010 of Shirley Sherrod, a longtime Black farmer advocate and civil rights activist who was serving as the Georgia state director of rural development for the USDA, when a deceptively edited clip that made her appear racist towards a white farmer was circulated by the rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart. Vilsack later apologized and offered her a different high-level USDA role, which she declined.About an hour east of Oklahoma City in Wewoka, George Roberts farms 500 acres with his two brothers. A third-generation farmer, he was pulling for Fudge. “She could have understood what we were up against, she’s walked in our shoes. Pretty sure Vilsack never has,” he said.Roberts is familiar with why many Black farmers call the USDA the “last plantation”.“Because we are still answering to ‘boss’. Can we do this, can we do that? They still have their hand over us, saying: no, you can’t.”His father tried a few times for USDA loans, but “he didn’t have much luck,” Roberts said. “You get tired of getting slapped in the face. Hate beggin’. The more you beg the worse they treat you.”Roberts got a USDA loan of about $80,000 in 1982 – “That was rare especially back then. I was one of very few,” he said, referring to the chances of a Black farmer getting a loan. Today, instead of “going through all that red tape” and facing disappointment, he has set up a GoFundMe to hire labor for work he and his brothers, now each in their 60s, can no longer do. Meanwhile, they’ll keep farming one way or another, “because land is something they don’t make any more”, he said.Older Black farmers who mentored Thelonius Cook when he was just starting to farm in 2015 cautioned him against expecting any government help.“They told me don’t waste your time. And I get it,” he said of the older generation’s disillusionment. Still, Cook utilized USDA grant programs to help him purchase high tunnels and hoop houses, among other essentials, for his 7.5-acre plot of land in Virginia.“The younger generation is more willing to seek out what is available. I’ll take my reparations any way I can,” he said. “It’s never going to be enough. Aside from giving us land after so much was taken. That’s the ultimate goal. That’s how we can balance that deficit.”Karen Washington, who co-founded Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York, six years ago, also understands the disappointment experienced by previous generations. “Older Black farmers have been hurt,” she said. “They’re throwing their hands up and saying, they’ve never done anything for us in the past, why would the Biden administration change anything?”But she said it was important to hold Vilsack accountable; she suggested he start by making amends with Sherrod, whose firing Washington said she felt personally betrayed by. “He needs to offer her a position,” she said. “Then, sit down with Black leaders to hammer what they want, not just what they need – which is capital for machinery, land, money to expand their operations,” she said. “Then put the resources and money – I mean millions – behind that.”In a prepared statement to the Senate agriculture committee, Vilsack wrote he would “take bold action” to address discrimination across USDA agencies and root out systemic racism, but failed to say how, nor was he pressed on it by any member of the committee during his hearing on Tuesday.Vilsack said in his opening remarks: “It’s a different time, and I’m a different person.” A new set of eyes will be watching for proof.“The younger generation of Black and brown farmers may have to carry the elders here,” Washington said. “Our numbers may be small, but our voices can be huge.” More

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      in US Politics

      US Capitol rioters ‘came prepared for war’, Senate hears in testimony

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      Testifying on Tuesday in the first congressional hearing on the US Capitol attack, the chief of Capitol police who resigned over the riot said the pro-Trump mob which stormed the building “came prepared for war”.
      Merrick Garland would seem to agree. In a confirmation hearing on Monday which set the scene for Tuesday’s session before the Senate homeland security and rules committees, Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general said he would expand the criminal investigation into the 6 January assault, telling Congress domestic terrorism is a greater threat to American democracy than it has been for decades.
      Before the Senate judiciary committee, Garland described the insurrection of Trump supporters and white supremacists as “a heinous act that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy”. He said his first act if confirmed would be to focus on domestic terror.
      Describing the events of 6 January as “not necessarily a one-off”, Garland, currently a federal judge, pledged to use the full powers of the justice department to prevent a repeat attack.
      “I intend to look more broadly at where this is coming from, what other groups there might be that could raise the same problem in the future,” he said.
      On Tuesday, the two top officials in charge of securing the Capitol the day of the deadly assault were called to give evidence to Congress.
      Paul Irving, the former sergeant-at-arms for the House, and Michael Stenger, his equivalent for the Senate, both resigned after the breach. Their testimony marked the start of a congressional investigation into security lapses behind the insurrection.
      Stenger said: “This was a violent, coordinated attack where the loss of life could have been much worse.”
      Irving said: “Based on the intelligence, we all believed that the plan met the threat, and we were prepared. We now know we had the wrong plan.” More

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      in US Politics

      Deb Haaland faces hostile Republican questioning in confirmation hearing

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      Deb Haaland, seeking to make history as the first Native American to hold a cabinet secretary position in the US, has weathered a torrent of hostile questioning from Republicans during her confirmation hearing as secretary of the interior.In a striking opening statement, Haaland, a member of Congress for New Mexico, said: “The historic nature of my confirmation is not lost on me, but I will say that it is not about me,” adding that she hoped her elevation would “be an inspiration for Americans, moving forward together as one nation and creating opportunities for all of us”.A Laguna Pueblo member, Haaland, 60, said she had learned about her culture from her grandmother’s cooking and participating in traditional ceremonies, and had learned about the importance of protecting the environment from her grandfather. Haaland said “our climate challenge must be addressed” but conceded that fossil fuels would play a role in the US for “years to come”.Haaland is considered a progressive on the climate crisis and has spoken out on the impact of fossil fuel development upon the environment and Native American tribes, positions that Senate Republicans were keen to attack during a sometimes contentious confirmation hearing.John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, criticized Haaland for a tweet from October 2020 in which she stated that “Republicans don’t believe in science”. Barrasso, who has incorrectly said the role of human activity in climate change is “not known” and that ambitious climate action in the form of the Green New Deal would mean “cheeseburgers and milkshakes would become a thing of the past”, said the tweet was “concerning to those of us who have gone through training, believe in science, and yet with a broad brush, we’re all disbelievers”.Haaland responded to Barrasso, a surgeon, saying: “If you’re a doctor, I would assume that you believe in science”. Scientists have repeatedly said that the US, and the rest of the world, needs to rapidly reduce planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels in order to prevent disastrous heatwaves, flooding and societal unrest associated with runaway climate change.The early exchange set the tone for more than two hours of questioning where Republicans repeatedly assailed Joe Biden’s decision to pause oil and gas drilling on federal lands as calamitous for jobs. As interior secretary, Haaland would oversee the management of lands that make up nearly a third of America’s landmass, including tribal lands.At times the questions were extremely pointed, with Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, asking Haaland: “Will your administration be guided by a prejudice against fossil fuel, or will it be guided by science?” Importantly for the chances for Haaland’s nomination, Joe Manchin, a Democrat who represents the coal heartland of West Virginia, said that he wanted to see the “evolution, not elimination” of coal mining.Haaland said: “We want to move forward with clean energy, we want to get to net zero carbon” but also struck a conciliatory note with her questioners. The nominee said that changes to energy use “are not going to happen overnight” and that she looked forward to working with the senators. At one point when Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, asked why she supported a bill protecting grizzly bears, Haaland responded: “Senator, I believe I was caring about the bears.”Haaland had to repeatedly correct Republicans who said Biden had scrapped, rather than paused, oil and gas leases but acknowledged her role as a progressive champion would have to change somewhat if she were confirmed. “If I’m confirmed as secretary, that is far different role than a congresswoman representing one small district in my state,” she said. “So I understand that role, it’s to serve all Americans, not just my one district in New Mexico. I realize being cabinet is very different; I recognize there is a difference in those two roles.”During later questioning, Haaland raised the disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic upon Native Americans and raised concerns over tribes such as the Navajo being subjected to polluted water. In a response to a question from the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders about the opening up of an area sacred to native Americans in Arizona to mining, Haaland said she would “make sure that the voice of the tribal nation is heard on the issue”.Haaland’s nomination has been vigorously supported by environmental and Native American groups as a landmark moment to confront the climate crisis while addressing widespread inequities experienced by tribes.Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the steering committee for the Gwich’in people in Alaska, called Haaland a “visionary leader who knows we must protect places sacred to the American people like the Arctic national wildlife refuge.“Our way of life, our survival is interconnected to the land, water and animals. Today we honor the woman set to be the first Native American in history to fill a presidential cabinet position, and look forward to working with her to ensure that indigenous voices are heard and our human rights respected.”Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of the NDN Collective, a grassroots indigenous organization, said: “Today we watched Senator Daines mansplain and whitesplain to the Honorable Deb Haaland about public lands and the impacts of poverty – issues he knows nothing about and that Haaland has actual lived and professional experience addressing. These microaggressions and racism on full display only further solidified the need for strong Indigenous Women’s leadership in the highest places of government.” More

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      in World Politics

      Alternative for Germany Is Failing to Keep Up

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      If not for the familiar awkwardness of social distancing rules, the scene at the digital party conference of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) would have been fit for a daytime game show. With the theme from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” playing in the background and the CDU‘s secretary-general, Paul Ziemiak, reading the results from online balloting to determine who would become the party chairman… and drive off in a brand new Volkswagen. Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, and Friedrich Merz, a former CDU parliamentary leader, stood at one end of the TV studio. If not for coronavirus guidelines, they would have probably been holding hands, saying: I hope it’s me who wins, but I’m honored just to stand here with you.

      Beware! Populism Might be Bad for Your Health

      READ MORE

      With 521 of the 991 votes, Laschet was named the new CDU leader on January 16. Although the exaggerated melodrama may invite some mockery and agonized groans from readers, the designation of the new CDU leader is the first key party event before the federal elections in September, which will be pivotal for Germany’s far right.

      Angela Merkel‘s long tenure as German chancellor will draw to a close this year. After leading the country through the 2008 financial crash and the 2015 refugee crisis, Merkel will likely leave office just as Germany vaccinates most of its adult population. Germany’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the popularity of Merkel. Similarly, polling suggests the CDU has benefited from the government’s efforts. Whereas the party polled as low as 19% (25% with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) in 2019, it now has upward of 30% (and as much as 37% with the CSU) of support.

      Germany’s Far Right

      At the same time, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is failing to keep up. Unlike countries such as the United States where COVID-19 skeptics and conspiracy theorists have coalesced on one side of the political spectrum, in Germany, these critics have merged into broad and unexpected coalitions over the course of the crisis. Yet crucially, these coalitions have not resulted in a dealignment or realignment of party loyalties. Rather, they are short term and held together only by grievances about coronavirus restrictions. Consequently, the AfD has not gained sufficient support from these mobilizations and has slipped a couple of percentage points — from its 2017 result of 12.6% to support hovering at around 11%.

      Given developments within the AfD over the last two years, its political stagnation is not surprising. In late 2019, a court in the eastern state of Thuringia ruled that it is not defamatory to call the AfD politician Bjorn Hocke a “fascist” as that — as was argued before the court — seems an accurate description of his politics. Further self-inflicted damage followed when the party’s leader in Brandenburg, Andreas Kalbitz, was expelled in May 2020 for previous membership in an extremist youth organization called the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend. The party’s somewhat formalized far-right wing (Der Flugel) was classified as extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BfV recently moved to expand its investigation, categorizing the entire AfD as a “suspected case” of anti-constitutional activity. This designation permits close observation and monitoring of party members’ activities.

      AfD Would Lose Seats

      All these developments, combined with an attempt by far-right extremists to invade the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, have stunted the AfD‘s growth. The party entered the Bundestag in 2017 as the third-largest faction. Subsequent polling even reported its support surged to 18% in 2018. Yet if the election were held today, the party would likely lose at least a dozen seats.

      The question of Angela Merkel‘s successor as chancellor is not yet decided. Laschet is in poll position, but the CDU must perform well in regional elections in Baden-Wurttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate in order to repel an internal challenge from Markus Soder, the minister-president of Bavaria and leader of the CSU.

      Yet regardless of that outcome, the 2021 elections look set to knock the AfD and Germany’s far right back on its heels. There is no chance of banishing it from the Bundestag, but the federal election in September could deprive the AfD of its position as the largest party of the opposition, from where its representatives’ language has been intentionally provocative and their behavior notoriously disruptive.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      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

      'Deeply alarming corruption': US bill would sanction Honduran president

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      A group of influential Democratic senators are introducing legislation which would sanction the president of Honduras – an alleged drug trafficker and key US ally – and cut off financial aid and ammunition sales to the country’s security forces which are implicated in widespread human rights abuses and criminal activities.The Honduras Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act, co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Van Hollen, would suspend certain US assistance to the Central American country until corruption and human rights violations are no longer systemic, and the perpetrators of these crimes start facing justice.Joe Biden has vowed to tackle the root causes of migration from Central America’s northern triangle – Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – the most violent region in the world outside an official war zone, which accounts for most migrants and refugees seeking safety and economic opportunities in the US.This bill makes clear that tackling migration from Honduras will be impossible if the US continues to prop up the president, Juan Orlando Hernández, and the security forces.It lays bare the violence and abuses perpetrated since the 2009 military-backed coup, as a result of widespread collusion between government officials, state and private security forces, organized crime and business leaders.It also catalogues the systematic use of force against civilians, a clampdown on the freedom of speech and protest, and targeted attacks such as arbitrary arrests, assassinations, forced disappearances and fabricated criminal charges against human rights and environmental defenders, political opponents and journalists.In the past year alone, at least 34,000 citizens have been detained for violating curfew and lockdown restrictions including nurse Kelya Martinez, who earlier this month was killed in police custody.“The United States cannot remain silent in the face of deeply alarming corruption and human rights abuses being committed at the highest levels of the Honduran government,” said Merkley, who serves on the Senate foreign relations committee. “A failure to hold President Hernández, national officials and the police and military accountable for these crimes will fuel widespread poverty and violence and force more families to flee their communities in search of safety.”This is the first time the Senate has proposed legislation which could genuinely threaten the post-coup regime, which has used drug money, stolen public funds and fraud to maintain its grip on power with few consequences from the international community.Hernández, who has been identified as a co-conspirator in three major drug trafficking and corruption cases brought by New York prosecutors, would be investigated under the Kingpin Act to determine whether he is a designated narcotics trafficker – a criminal status given to drug bosses like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.Hernández has repeatedly denied any links to drug trafficking including prior knowledge about his younger brother’s cocaine and arms deals for which he was convicted in New York last year.The bill also details Hernández’s role in the demise of the rule of law in the country: as a congressman, he supported the 2009 coup, and later created the militarized police force which is implicated in extrajudicial killings, oversaw a purge of the judiciary and pushed through unconstitutional reforms in order to stay in power and shield corrupt officials from prosecution.Hernández, who has so far enjoyed a close relationship with key military and political leaders, would have his US visa revoked and assets frozen as part of the proposed sanctions.The bill would also ban the export of munitions including teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, water cannons, handcuffs, stun guns, Tasers and semi-automatic firearms until the security forces manage 12 months without committing human rights violations. Financial assistance including equipment and training would also be suspended, though waivers in the national interest would remain possible. The US would also vote against multilateral development bank loans to the security forces.“This legislation is designed to send a clear message to Biden that it will be impossible to tackle the root causes of migration without getting rid of Hernández and withdrawing support from the security forces which have a long track record of corruption, organised crime and repression,” said Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California and author of The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the CoupIn order for the restrictions to be lifted, Honduran authorities would need to demonstrate that it had pursued all legal avenues to prosecute those who ordered, carried out and covered up high-profile crimes including the assassination of indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres, the killing of more than 100 campesinos in the Bajo Aguán, the extrajudicial killings of anti-election fraud protesters, and the forced disappearance of Afro-indigenous Garifuna land defenders. 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      AOC criticizes Manchin over apparent targeting of Biden’s nominees of color

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has stepped into the intensifying dispute around the treatment of women and people of color nominated to top jobs in the Biden administration, as the confirmation process in the US Senate begins to sour.The leftwing Democratic congresswoman waded into the debate amid growing concerns in progressive circles that Joe Biden’s nominees from minority backgrounds are being singled out for especially harsh scrutiny.Several women of color are facing daunting hurdles to confirmation with Republicans withholding backing and the Democratic majority in the Senate imperiled by the opposition of the conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin.The senator from West Virginia announced on Friday he would oppose the candidacy of Neera Tanden to become the first Asian American woman to fill the post of budget director. On Monday he also indicated that he was having doubts about Deb Haaland, who would become the first Native woman to take a cabinet seat.With the Senate evenly divided at 50-50 seats, Manchin’s no vote can only be overturned if moderate Republicans can be found willing to back the nominees. So far, however, such cross-aisle support has been hard to find, with Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio all expressing likely opposition to Tanden.In a tweet on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez turned the spotlight onto the record of Manchin himself. She pointed out that the Democratic senator had voted to confirm Jeff Sessions as Donald Trump’s first attorney general despite the fact that the former senator from Alabama was dogged with accusations of racism throughout his career.“Jeff Sessions was so openly racist that even Reagan couldn’t appoint him,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that as attorney general, Sessions went on to preside over the brutal family separation policy at the US border with Mexico.“Yet the first Native woman to be Cabinet Sec is where Manchin finds unease?” she posted.The apparent targeting of Biden’s nominees of color has started to generate mounting frustration and anger. Judy Chu, a Democratic congresswoman who leads the Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus, told Politico that “there’s a double standard going on” in the treatment of Tanden whose prospects of leading the Office of Management and Budget are now dwindling.The president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, told Politico that the outcome of the confirmation votes would make clear “whether or not those individuals who are women or people of color are receiving a different level of scrutiny. I hope we will course-correct, quickly, and not allow that to be a legacy of the Senate”.The sense of unequal treatment has been heightened by the heavy focus by Manchin and others on Tanden’s Twitter feed. In her current role as president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, she frequently posted spiky and direct tweets without mincing her words, more than 1,000 of which she has since deleted.Tanden notably called Collins, one of the Republican senators who has declined to come to her rescue, “the worst”.Yet Manchin was content to confirm some of Trump’s nominees with highly controversial social media histories, while Trump himself made many racist and sexist tweets and is now permanently suspended from Twitter.“We can disagree with her tweets, but in the past, Trump nominees that they’ve confirmed and supported had much more serious issues and conflicts than just something that was written on Twitter,” the Democratic congresswoman Grace Meng told Politico. More