Politics

COVID-19's 'politics of humiliation': A chance for the US to lead — or to lose control | TheHill – The Hill

Published

4 years ago

June 1, 2020

Mohamed Bouazizi did not seize the world’s imagination because he was handsome or rich or powerful. Instead, the Tunisian fruit vendor, whose self-immolation kicked off the “Arab Spring” in 2010, inspired tens of millions of Arabs because they empathized with his despair and sense of humiliation.

We often think of politics in binary terms: right versus left, rural versus urban, north versus south. However people come to identify themselves, their political identities are products of circumstance and belief, with some sort of calculation at their core.

Widespread humiliation gives rise to a different kind of politics, one with far less calculation and much more emotion. Today, as COVID-19 guts global economies and takes an especially grim toll on those with the least security all across the world, the politics of humiliation will rise globally. And the impacts of these politics will last for years.

What is at issue is not the politics of the poor. The world’s perpetually immiserated often suffer in silence, as the toll taken by years of struggle for mere survival breeds passivity and disengagement.

The humiliated are, by their nature, not passive. They recall an earlier status, or they aspire to a sharply better one. Their humiliation can follow a massive change — for example, a defeat in war, or exile, or economic collapse — or a rising consciousness. The humiliated may suffer individual traumas, such as the torture that al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri and former ISIS head Abu Musab al-Zarqawi suffered in prisons.

Whatever the cause, part of what drives the humiliated is a deep belief that their low status is a product of injustice. Their humiliation ignites an emotional reaction that, like a wildfire, burns hot and burns wide through communities. When enough people in any given populace feel humiliated, their humiliation spreads into politics. There, they not only raise the temperature of politics; they raise the stakes. The politics of the humiliated quickly become existential.

Given the depth and global nature of the current economic slowdown, even optimistic scenarios put normalcy as being months away. We will not reach a new equilibrium for quite some time, and it will be different from what came before. In the meantime, and even afterward, suffering will be widespread.

It is hard not to imagine that there are whole classes of people — in the United States and around the world — for whom the COVID-19 pandemic will be a humiliating flame. As uncertainty and restrictions linger for months or years, sharply rising unemployment among service workers — in food service, hospitality and retail — will throw middle-class families into poverty, and poor families into crisis. Government subsidies will run out, and financial markets will soften. Governments will face budget crises, their capacity will diminish, and their ability to afford the sorts of infrastructure and construction projects that often undergird economic stimulus programs will evaporate. Millions could liquidate their lifetime savings, lose their housing, and go hungry.

What hits hard in the Western world will hit even harder in the developing world. There, social safety nets are even weaker, and even larger segments of the workforce either work for small businesses or in the “informal” sector. They have tighter margins, and there is even less assistance on which to fall back. Even more so, governments lack the ability of their Western counterparts to ease burdens, to save jobs and to provide shelter.

We already have seen governments such as India’s back off coronavirus-related restrictions because the economies cannot handle a nationwide shutdown. In places such as Iran that were slow to impose restrictions until the disease was well dispersed, the economies are reopening despite sharply rising infection rates. The seeds of the future crisis are already being sown.

It is optimistic to think that the politics that will emerge from COVID-19 will be gratitude toward infectious disease experts and public health experts whose admonitions saved societies from even further despair. Technocrats always hope that their wisdom will be appreciated.

Much more likely will be an emotional political search for those responsible for widespread misery. Governments are likely to be on the receiving ends of that rising hostility.

Governments that can afford to do so will seek to co-opt the humiliated, acceding to their demands for greater benefits. The U.S. government has so far committed $6 trillion to recovery, and the government of Japan recently devoted $1 trillion to the effort. They will hope to take the emotion out of politics.

Governments that cannot or will not commit such sums may seek to harness the emotion that has been unleashed, diverting the blame to some other scapegoat, surviving to fight on. Some governments likely will seek to be increasingly repressive, hoping that the humiliated will transition into being merely immiserated, recognize that resistance is futile, and struggle for survival rather than for changing the system.

For the United States, the domestic landscape is likely to be different, and the global landscape even more so. Here, political polarization is likely to increase, as shrinking government resources and growing demands pit interest groups against each other and squeeze state and local governments. Sustained restrictions on immigration will be enacted. The international outlook that the United States adopted reluctantly in the midst of World War II and embraced robustly in its aftermath will diminish. Meanwhile, a reckoning is ahead for U.S. military spending, and for U.S. commitments around the globe.

Overseas, wealthier countries are likely to muddle through, while most middle-income and poorer countries will suffer from rising misery and political turmoil. Politicians will seek to rally constituents around common enemies, be they sectarian, religious, national or ideological. We could see a resurgence in both civil wars and cross-border wars, and with that, a rise in terrorism.

Overall, most of these changes serve to raise China’s global influence while diminishing that of the United States. Governments in trouble will look admiringly to China’s authoritarian model, and the benefits of associating with the United States — economically, politically and militarily — will diminish. The Chinese government makes few demands of its partners, and it has few qualms about how they operate internally. As a country with literally no allies and a generally pessimistic view of human nature, a Hobbesian global future is one for which China feels prepared.

The United States cannot prevent such a future, but it can make it less likely. The United States needs to grasp the present circumstances and refocus on the unique abilities the United States possesses to influence the global environment. No country or collection of countries has the leverage of the United States, both in terms of coercion and co-optation. For decades, the United States has been unfocused about its interests and its means to advance them.

The opportunity available now to the United States is not about money or guns – the obvious tools that U.S. government officials seek to deploy around the world. The opportunity is about the ability to lead, the ability to define, and the ability to inspire. The United States needs to be about something bigger than itself, and it needs to point toward a future to which billions of other people aspire, and also see a pathway to achieving. The United States is not seizing this opportunity, and if missed, the results will echo for decades to come.

Jon B. Alterman is senior vice president, Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank focusing on defense, national security and international relations issues.

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Politics

Review finds no case for formal probe of Beijing’s activities under elections law

Published

13 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – The federal agency that investigates election infractions found insufficient evidence to support suggestions Beijing wielded undue influence against the Conservatives in the Vancouver area during the 2021 general election.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections’ recently completed review of the lingering issue was tabled Tuesday at a federal inquiry into foreign interference.

The review focused on the unsuccessful campaign of Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu in the riding of Steveston-Richmond East and the party’s larger efforts in the Vancouver area.

It says the evidence uncovered did not trigger the threshold to initiate a formal investigation under the Canada Elections Act.

Investigators therefore recommended that the review be concluded.

A summary of the review results was shared with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP. The review says both agencies indicated the election commissioner’s findings were consistent with their own understanding of the situation.

During the exercise, the commissioner’s investigators met with Chinese Canadian residents of Chiu’s riding and surrounding ones.

They were told of an extensive network of Chinese Canadian associations, businesses and media organizations that offers the diaspora a lifestyle that mirrors that of China in many ways.

“Further, this diaspora has continuing and extensive commercial, social and familial relations with China,” the review says.

Some interviewees reported that this “has created aspects of a parallel society involving many Chinese Canadians in the Lower Mainland area, which includes concerted support, direction and control by individuals from or involved with China’s Vancouver consulate and the United Front Work Department (UFWD) in China.”

Investigators were also made aware of members of three Chinese Canadian associations, as well as others, who were alleged to have used their positions to influence the choice of Chinese Canadian voters during the 2021 election in a direction favourable to the interests of Beijing, the review says.

These efforts were sparked by elements of the Conservative party’s election platform and by actions and statements by Chiu “that were leveraged to bolster claims that both the platform and Chiu were anti-China and were encouraging anti-Chinese discrimination and racism.”

These messages were amplified through repetition in social media, chat groups and posts, as well as in Chinese in online, print and radio media throughout the Vancouver area.

Upon examination, the messages “were found to not be in contravention” of the Canada Elections Act, says the review, citing the Supreme Court of Canada’s position that the concept of uninhibited speech permeates all truly democratic societies and institutions.

The review says the effectiveness of the anti-Conservative, anti-Chiu campaigns was enhanced by circumstances “unique to the Chinese diaspora and the assertive nature of Chinese government interests.”

It notes the election was prefaced by statements from China’s ambassador to Canada and the Vancouver consul general as well as articles published or broadcast in Beijing-controlled Chinese Canadian media entities.

“According to Chinese Canadian interview subjects, this invoked a widespread fear amongst electors, described as a fear of retributive measures from Chinese authorities should a (Conservative) government be elected.”

This included the possibility that Chinese authorities could interfere with travel to and from China, as well as measures being taken against family members or business interests in China, the review says.

“Several Chinese Canadian interview subjects were of the view that Chinese authorities could exercise such retributive measures, and that this fear was most acute with Chinese Canadian electors from mainland China. One said ‘everybody understands’ the need to only say nice things about China.”

However, no interview subject was willing to name electors who were directly affected by the anti-Tory campaign, nor community leaders who claimed to speak on a voter’s behalf.

Several weeks of public inquiry hearings will focus on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign meddling.

In other testimony Tuesday, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis told the inquiry that parliamentarians who were targeted by Chinese hackers could have taken immediate protective steps if they had been informed sooner.

It emerged earlier this year that in 2021 some MPs and senators faced cyberattacks from the hackers because of their involvement with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which pushes for accountability from Beijing.

In 2022, U.S. authorities apparently informed the Canadian government of the attacks, and it in turn advised parliamentary IT officials — but not individual MPs.

Genuis, a Canadian co-chair of the inter-parliamentary alliance, told the inquiry Tuesday that it remains mysterious to him why he wasn’t informed about the attacks sooner.

Liberal MP John McKay, also a Canadian co-chair of the alliance, said there should be a clear protocol for advising parliamentarians of cyberthreats.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.

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Politics

NDP beat Conservatives in federal byelection in Winnipeg

Published

21 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.

The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.

Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.

The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.

A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.

Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.

“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.

The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.

“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”

Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.

“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.

Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024

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Politics

Trudeau says ‘all sorts of reflections’ for Liberals after loss of second stronghold

Published

21 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.

His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.

Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.

Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.

It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.

The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.

“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.

When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”

In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.

Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.

“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.

The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.

Singh called it a “big victory.”

“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.

“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”

New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.

Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.

The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.

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