Showing posts with label support. Show all posts
Showing posts with label support. Show all posts
Sunday, 25 February 2024
Friday, 1 July 2022
The parallels between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn
How did the Conservatives become Corbynites asks Bagehot in The Economist
Switch the names, change a few dates and squint a little, and the potted biographies of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn look very similar. After bohemian childhoods in the English countryside and stints at private schools, each makes his home in Islington, cycles a lot and marries thrice (to a much younger spouse on the third occasion). A career in politics is spent on the fringes of their respective parties, communicating with their most loyal fans via columns in the Daily Telegraph (for Mr Johnson) and the Morning Star (for Mr Corbyn).
Then, abruptly, each finds himself thrust into the leadership by party members frustrated about their wishes being ignored. In the case of Labour’s selectocracy, the desire was for unashamed socialism. Their Conservative cousins yearned for a proper Brexit. As leaders, both are written off by commentators and rivals alike before enjoying a surprise triumph in an election. In the 2017 general election Mr Corbyn was expected to be steamrollered by Theresa May, Mr Johnson’s predecessor as prime minister; instead the Conservatives lost their majority. Two years later Mr Johnson did pulverise Mr Corbyn, winning the Conservatives’ largest majority since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
If Mr Johnson’s ascent has been oddly similar to Mr Corbyn’s rise, so too may be his demise. James Johnson (no relation), a pollster who worked for Mrs May, argues Mr Johnson is the Conservative Corbyn: an unpopular leader, dragging towards defeat a party that is split between those deluded enough to support him and those too impotent to stop him. The problems that beset Labour during the Corbyn years are now swallowing the Conservatives.
It starts with the manner of their elections to the leadership. Just like Mr Corbyn, Mr Johnson is not a creature of the parliamentary party. Mr Corbyn derived his authority from Labour members. In 2016 he lost a confidence vote among his mps, yet shamelessly stayed on. Mr Johnson claims his legitimacy from the 14m people who voted Conservative at the election in 2019. The fact that 41% of Conservative mps opposed him in a confidence vote in June can therefore be dismissed. That creates a surreal situation in which two-thirds of the House of Commons would rather the prime minister was gone. Constitutionally, it is a mess. But Mr Johnson cares little about such disorder.
Delusion has sunk in among Mr Johnson’s remaining acolytes. In the wake of two dire by-election defeats on June 23rd, Tory flunkeys were reduced to arguing that the Conservatives won more votes across both seats, akin to a relegated football manager pointing out his team’s sturdy goal difference. Such derangement has echoes of Labour figures in 2019 who, in the wake of their worst result since 1935, claimed that the party had “won the argument”.
The ineptitude of his internal enemies was the main reason Mr Corbyn stayed in power. When a leadership challenge was launched Mr Corbyn’s opponents alighted on Owen Smith, then the mp for Pontypridd, as a candidate. His most notable moment in the campaign came when he accidentally implied he had a 29-inch penis. He lost. Mr Johnson is similarly blessed when it comes to his enemies. Conservative plotters lumbered into a poorly timed leadership contest at the start of June, a few weeks before Mr Johnson’s electoral popularity was found badly wanting in the by-elections. Organising another crack at him will take time.
In each case, some mps stay loyal because they have no prospects under another leader. Some of the 2019 intake of Conservative mps are lucky to be employed, never mind in Parliament. Mr Corbyn introduced the world to Richard Burgon, an mp whose hidden talents remained just that during a brief foray onto the front bench. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary and Mr Johnson’s staunchest ally, may be the most successful novelist in cabinet since Disraeli, but the comparisons end there.
Mr Corbyn and Mr Johnson also share an ability to drive opponents to near insanity. Mr Johnson seems sometimes to be regarded as the first politician ever to tell fibs in office, when he is just the latest to do so. When home secretary, for example, Mrs May launched a salvo at the concept of human rights after someone could not be deported “because—and I am not making this up—he had a pet cat”. (Reader, she was making it up.) Likewise, Mr Corbyn threw out a range of often reasonable, if offbeat, policies such as increased provision of free school meals or free broadband, which generated disproportionately angry reactions. Rage at their faults blinded opponents to the qualities of both men; it is impossible to understand an enemy if you cannot appreciate his appeal.
Jeremy Johnson
Yet the critics are also right to be furious. Mr Corbyn did, eventually, lead his party to electoral destruction. The Labour leader was, notoriously, the dimmest member of the party’s left-wing rump, with noxious views on everything from anti-Semitism to Russia. Voters sniffed that out. Likewise, Mr Johnson is manifestly unsuited to the job of prime minister. Brexit, which Mr Johnson did more than any other politician to bring about, has been a slow-moving disaster, throttling the British economy just as its critics warned.
Such vindication, however, is worth little on its own. And as any Labour mp can confirm, changing leader—even an unpopular one—does not solve everything. Under his aegis Mr Corbyn’s critics argued the party would be 20 points ahead of the then wobbling Conservatives with any other leader. It is now three years since Mr Corbyn stepped down as leader. Despite the backdrop of an unpopular prime minister, police investigations into Downing Street and rocketing inflation, Labour cannot even sustain a double-digit lead in the polls. Allies of Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Corbyn’s successor as party leader, blame “long Corbyn” for this slack performance. At the dispatch box Mr Johnson brings up Mr Corbyn whenever he can. When the time comes, Labour will happily repay the favour. Long Boris may linger, too.
Switch the names, change a few dates and squint a little, and the potted biographies of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn look very similar. After bohemian childhoods in the English countryside and stints at private schools, each makes his home in Islington, cycles a lot and marries thrice (to a much younger spouse on the third occasion). A career in politics is spent on the fringes of their respective parties, communicating with their most loyal fans via columns in the Daily Telegraph (for Mr Johnson) and the Morning Star (for Mr Corbyn).
Then, abruptly, each finds himself thrust into the leadership by party members frustrated about their wishes being ignored. In the case of Labour’s selectocracy, the desire was for unashamed socialism. Their Conservative cousins yearned for a proper Brexit. As leaders, both are written off by commentators and rivals alike before enjoying a surprise triumph in an election. In the 2017 general election Mr Corbyn was expected to be steamrollered by Theresa May, Mr Johnson’s predecessor as prime minister; instead the Conservatives lost their majority. Two years later Mr Johnson did pulverise Mr Corbyn, winning the Conservatives’ largest majority since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
If Mr Johnson’s ascent has been oddly similar to Mr Corbyn’s rise, so too may be his demise. James Johnson (no relation), a pollster who worked for Mrs May, argues Mr Johnson is the Conservative Corbyn: an unpopular leader, dragging towards defeat a party that is split between those deluded enough to support him and those too impotent to stop him. The problems that beset Labour during the Corbyn years are now swallowing the Conservatives.
It starts with the manner of their elections to the leadership. Just like Mr Corbyn, Mr Johnson is not a creature of the parliamentary party. Mr Corbyn derived his authority from Labour members. In 2016 he lost a confidence vote among his mps, yet shamelessly stayed on. Mr Johnson claims his legitimacy from the 14m people who voted Conservative at the election in 2019. The fact that 41% of Conservative mps opposed him in a confidence vote in June can therefore be dismissed. That creates a surreal situation in which two-thirds of the House of Commons would rather the prime minister was gone. Constitutionally, it is a mess. But Mr Johnson cares little about such disorder.
Delusion has sunk in among Mr Johnson’s remaining acolytes. In the wake of two dire by-election defeats on June 23rd, Tory flunkeys were reduced to arguing that the Conservatives won more votes across both seats, akin to a relegated football manager pointing out his team’s sturdy goal difference. Such derangement has echoes of Labour figures in 2019 who, in the wake of their worst result since 1935, claimed that the party had “won the argument”.
The ineptitude of his internal enemies was the main reason Mr Corbyn stayed in power. When a leadership challenge was launched Mr Corbyn’s opponents alighted on Owen Smith, then the mp for Pontypridd, as a candidate. His most notable moment in the campaign came when he accidentally implied he had a 29-inch penis. He lost. Mr Johnson is similarly blessed when it comes to his enemies. Conservative plotters lumbered into a poorly timed leadership contest at the start of June, a few weeks before Mr Johnson’s electoral popularity was found badly wanting in the by-elections. Organising another crack at him will take time.
In each case, some mps stay loyal because they have no prospects under another leader. Some of the 2019 intake of Conservative mps are lucky to be employed, never mind in Parliament. Mr Corbyn introduced the world to Richard Burgon, an mp whose hidden talents remained just that during a brief foray onto the front bench. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary and Mr Johnson’s staunchest ally, may be the most successful novelist in cabinet since Disraeli, but the comparisons end there.
Mr Corbyn and Mr Johnson also share an ability to drive opponents to near insanity. Mr Johnson seems sometimes to be regarded as the first politician ever to tell fibs in office, when he is just the latest to do so. When home secretary, for example, Mrs May launched a salvo at the concept of human rights after someone could not be deported “because—and I am not making this up—he had a pet cat”. (Reader, she was making it up.) Likewise, Mr Corbyn threw out a range of often reasonable, if offbeat, policies such as increased provision of free school meals or free broadband, which generated disproportionately angry reactions. Rage at their faults blinded opponents to the qualities of both men; it is impossible to understand an enemy if you cannot appreciate his appeal.
Jeremy Johnson
Yet the critics are also right to be furious. Mr Corbyn did, eventually, lead his party to electoral destruction. The Labour leader was, notoriously, the dimmest member of the party’s left-wing rump, with noxious views on everything from anti-Semitism to Russia. Voters sniffed that out. Likewise, Mr Johnson is manifestly unsuited to the job of prime minister. Brexit, which Mr Johnson did more than any other politician to bring about, has been a slow-moving disaster, throttling the British economy just as its critics warned.
Such vindication, however, is worth little on its own. And as any Labour mp can confirm, changing leader—even an unpopular one—does not solve everything. Under his aegis Mr Corbyn’s critics argued the party would be 20 points ahead of the then wobbling Conservatives with any other leader. It is now three years since Mr Corbyn stepped down as leader. Despite the backdrop of an unpopular prime minister, police investigations into Downing Street and rocketing inflation, Labour cannot even sustain a double-digit lead in the polls. Allies of Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Corbyn’s successor as party leader, blame “long Corbyn” for this slack performance. At the dispatch box Mr Johnson brings up Mr Corbyn whenever he can. When the time comes, Labour will happily repay the favour. Long Boris may linger, too.
Sunday, 19 December 2021
Friday, 25 May 2018
Whether Armenia, the Nazis or Isis – if you're going to commit genocide, you can’t do it without the help of local people
Robert Fisk in The Independent
How do you organise a successful genocide – in Turkish Armenia a century ago, in Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1940s, or in the Middle East today? A remarkable investigation by a young Harvard scholar – focusing on the slaughter of Armenians in a single Turkish Ottoman city 103 years ago – suggests the answer is simple: a genocidal government must have the local support of every branch of respectable society: tax officials, judges, magistrates, junior police officers, clergymen, lawyers, bankers and, most painfully, the neighbours of the victims.
Umit Kurt’s detailed paper on the slaughter of the Armenians of Antep in southern Turkey in 1915, which appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Genocide Research, concentrates on the dispossession, rape and murder of just 20,000 of the one and a half million Armenian Christians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks in the first holocaust of the 20th century. It not only details the series of carefully prepared deportations from Antep and the pathetic hopes of those who were temporarily spared – a story tragically familiar to so many stories of the Jewish ghettoes of Eastern Europe – but lists the property and possessions which the city authorities and peasants sought to lo ot from those they sent to their deaths.
The local perpetrators thus seized farms, pistachio groves, orchards, vineyards, coffee houses, shops, watermills, church property, schools and a library. Officially this was called “expropriation” or “confiscation”, but as Umit Kurt points out, “huge numbers of people were bound together in a circle of profit that was at the same time a circle of complicity”. The author, born in modern-day Gaziantep in Turkey – the original Antep – is of Kurdish-Arab origin, and his spare, dry prose makes his 21-page thesis all the more frightening.
He draws no parallels between the Armenian holocaust – a phrase the Israelis themselves use of the Armenians – and the Jewish holocaust nor the current genocidal outrages in the modern Middle East. But no one can read Umit Kurt’s words without being reminded of the armies of ghosts who haunt later history; the collaborators of Nazi-occupied France, of the Polish collaborators of the Nazis in Warsaw and Krakow and of the tens of thousands of Sunni Muslim civilians who allowed Isis to enslave Yazidi women and destroy the Christians of Nineveh. These victims, too, found themselves dispossessed by their neighbours, their homes looted and their property sold off by the officials who should have protected them as they faced their own extermination.
One of the most powerful of Kurt’s arguments is that a central government cannot succeed in exterminating a minority of its people without the support of their fellow citizens: the Ottomans needed the Muslims of Antep to carry out the deportation orders in 1915 – rewarded with the property of those they were helping to liquidate – just as the local people needed the central authority to legitimise what we would today call war crimes.
Umit Kurt is one of the few academics to recognise the growing economic power of the Ottoman Armenians in the decades before the genocide; “the Muslim community’s envy and resentment,” he writes, “played a central role in the hatemongering atmosphere”. So, too, did repeated Ottoman claims that the Armenians were helping Turkey’s Allied enemies – the same “stab in the back” betrayal routine which Hitler used to rally the Nazis against communists and Jews in the Weimar Republic. In the Middle East today, it is the “infidels” – the “Crusader” (ie pro-Western) Christians – who have been fleeing for their lives for supposedly betraying Islam.
You would have to have the proverbial heart of stone not to be moved by the story of the Antep Armenians in the spring of 1915. Although initially harassed by the murderous Ottoman “Special Organisation” – Teskilat-i Mahsusa, the nearest equivalent to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen of the 1940s – and subject to temporary arrest, the Armenians of Antep were, at first, left alone. But they saw Armenian transports from other towns passing through Antep, the first containing 300 women and children, “injured, their wounds infected and their clothes in tatters”. For two more months, deportation convoys moved through the town and into a wilderness of suffering. “Armenian girls and boys had been kidnapped; women’s belongings and money had been plundered; they had been raped publicly with the active complicity of gendarmeries and government officials.”
Like the Jews of Europe who were initially left untouched by the genocide of their co-religionists, the Antep Armenians could not believe their possible fate. “In spite of everything that was happening around us…” one eyewitness wrote, “the number of those who buried their heads in the sand like an ostrich was not small. These people convinced themselves that they were happy, and they were trying to deceive themselves into believing that a similar deportation was not possible for Aintab [sic] and that nothing bad would happen to them.”
Like brave Polish families and the few Oskar Schindlers of Nazi Germany, a few courageous Turks opposed the Armenian genocide. Celal Bey, the governor of Aleppo – 61 miles from Antep – refused to deport Armenians. But he was dismissed. And the Christian Armenians of Antep were doomed.
On 30 July, 50 Armenian families were ordered to leave in 24 hours. First, only Orthodox Christians were sent away, leaving all their valuables behind. A survivor recalls that “our neighbours, the Turks, were singing from their homes, we could hear them…‘The dog is on its way’…” A week later, another 50 families were deported, only to be attacked by militia bandits led by the manager of the local Agricultural Bank. Inside Antep, women were raped and sent to local “harems”. A local village head (“mukhtar”) threw six Armenian children from a mountain to their deaths. The convoys grew larger – 1,500 Armenians from Antep on 13 August, for example – and sent, by train or on foot, to Aleppo and Deir ez-Zour. Then came the turn of Catholic Armenians.
A pitiful account survives of a thanksgiving service held by Protestants – the only Armenians to escape liquidation so far – in which one of their leaders miserably pleaded with his people to do nothing which might annoy the Turkish authorities. “Let no one take into his home a child or anyone else who has been told to go, whether they be of those passing through the city as refugees or from among our own friends and relatives in the town.” No good Samaritans there. But of course, the Protestants, too, were deported. Of 600 Protestant families, almost 200 had been annihilated at Deir ez-Zour by January 1916.
The local Antep police chief was promoted for his enthusiasm. In the so-called “deportation committees” who decided the Armenians’ fate could be found Antep’s local member of parliament and his brother, a variety of local officials, the president of the municipality, two officials in the finance department, two judges, a magistrate, the first secretary of Antep’s court, a former mufti, two imams, two ulema, two village sheiks, the secretary of a religious charity, a doctor, a lawyer and the director of an orphanage. “No member of these local worthies,” writes Umit Kurt, “did anything to protest the deportations, hide the vulnerable, or stop the convoys.” Of Antep’s 32,000 Armenians, 20,000 perished in the genocide.
But truly the ghosts survive.
By chance this week, I was finishing Martin Winstone’s shocking history of Nazi rule in the occupied “general government” of Poland, The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe, and discovered that the Jews – and Poles – of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin often went through exactly the same process of false hope, collaboration and annihilation as the Armenians of Antep.
While most Poles behaved with courage, dignity and heroism, a minority of gentiles – and this is why the current government of Poland is threatening to punish anyone who talks of Polish collaboration with the Nazis – “participated directly in the murder process”, according to Winstone. They included the Polish “blue” police – ordinary cops in their usual blue uniforms – but also local peasants in the Lublin area, many of whom robbed their victims before beating them to death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fugitive Jews fell victim to perpetrators “who were village heads, members of the village guards formed during the occupation, or blue policemen acting unofficially”. When 50 Jews were discovered hiding in Szczebrzeszyn, a “crowd looked on”. A powerful factor in the murder and denunciation of Jews, the author concludes, was “a lust for Jewish property”.
And today, in the Middle East, we know all too well this familiar pattern of local villainy turned against neighbours, Christian girls in Nineveh seized by Islamists, Yazidi families torn apart and their homes looted by local Sunni militias. When Isis fled the town of Hafter, east of Aleppo, I found the documents of the local Isis courts; they proved that Syrian civilians had betrayed their cousins to the Egyptian judges of the Islamist courts, that neighbours had sought financial reward by denouncing those who had lived beside them for decades. In Bosnia in the 1990s, as we know, Serb neighbours slaughtered their Muslim compatriots, raped their women and seized their homes.
No, this is not something new – but it is something we too often forget. When my own father was asked by the British government in 1940 to name those in Maidstone, Kent, who might collaborate with the Nazis after an invasion, he put one of his best friends, a local businessman, on his list of those who would assist the Germans. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass sectarian atrocities might be directed from Constantinople, Berlin, Belgrade or Mosul. But war criminals need their people to complete their projects or – to use an old German expression – “to help to give the wheel a push”.
How do you organise a successful genocide – in Turkish Armenia a century ago, in Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1940s, or in the Middle East today? A remarkable investigation by a young Harvard scholar – focusing on the slaughter of Armenians in a single Turkish Ottoman city 103 years ago – suggests the answer is simple: a genocidal government must have the local support of every branch of respectable society: tax officials, judges, magistrates, junior police officers, clergymen, lawyers, bankers and, most painfully, the neighbours of the victims.
Umit Kurt’s detailed paper on the slaughter of the Armenians of Antep in southern Turkey in 1915, which appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Genocide Research, concentrates on the dispossession, rape and murder of just 20,000 of the one and a half million Armenian Christians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks in the first holocaust of the 20th century. It not only details the series of carefully prepared deportations from Antep and the pathetic hopes of those who were temporarily spared – a story tragically familiar to so many stories of the Jewish ghettoes of Eastern Europe – but lists the property and possessions which the city authorities and peasants sought to lo ot from those they sent to their deaths.
The local perpetrators thus seized farms, pistachio groves, orchards, vineyards, coffee houses, shops, watermills, church property, schools and a library. Officially this was called “expropriation” or “confiscation”, but as Umit Kurt points out, “huge numbers of people were bound together in a circle of profit that was at the same time a circle of complicity”. The author, born in modern-day Gaziantep in Turkey – the original Antep – is of Kurdish-Arab origin, and his spare, dry prose makes his 21-page thesis all the more frightening.
He draws no parallels between the Armenian holocaust – a phrase the Israelis themselves use of the Armenians – and the Jewish holocaust nor the current genocidal outrages in the modern Middle East. But no one can read Umit Kurt’s words without being reminded of the armies of ghosts who haunt later history; the collaborators of Nazi-occupied France, of the Polish collaborators of the Nazis in Warsaw and Krakow and of the tens of thousands of Sunni Muslim civilians who allowed Isis to enslave Yazidi women and destroy the Christians of Nineveh. These victims, too, found themselves dispossessed by their neighbours, their homes looted and their property sold off by the officials who should have protected them as they faced their own extermination.
One of the most powerful of Kurt’s arguments is that a central government cannot succeed in exterminating a minority of its people without the support of their fellow citizens: the Ottomans needed the Muslims of Antep to carry out the deportation orders in 1915 – rewarded with the property of those they were helping to liquidate – just as the local people needed the central authority to legitimise what we would today call war crimes.
Umit Kurt is one of the few academics to recognise the growing economic power of the Ottoman Armenians in the decades before the genocide; “the Muslim community’s envy and resentment,” he writes, “played a central role in the hatemongering atmosphere”. So, too, did repeated Ottoman claims that the Armenians were helping Turkey’s Allied enemies – the same “stab in the back” betrayal routine which Hitler used to rally the Nazis against communists and Jews in the Weimar Republic. In the Middle East today, it is the “infidels” – the “Crusader” (ie pro-Western) Christians – who have been fleeing for their lives for supposedly betraying Islam.
You would have to have the proverbial heart of stone not to be moved by the story of the Antep Armenians in the spring of 1915. Although initially harassed by the murderous Ottoman “Special Organisation” – Teskilat-i Mahsusa, the nearest equivalent to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen of the 1940s – and subject to temporary arrest, the Armenians of Antep were, at first, left alone. But they saw Armenian transports from other towns passing through Antep, the first containing 300 women and children, “injured, their wounds infected and their clothes in tatters”. For two more months, deportation convoys moved through the town and into a wilderness of suffering. “Armenian girls and boys had been kidnapped; women’s belongings and money had been plundered; they had been raped publicly with the active complicity of gendarmeries and government officials.”
Like the Jews of Europe who were initially left untouched by the genocide of their co-religionists, the Antep Armenians could not believe their possible fate. “In spite of everything that was happening around us…” one eyewitness wrote, “the number of those who buried their heads in the sand like an ostrich was not small. These people convinced themselves that they were happy, and they were trying to deceive themselves into believing that a similar deportation was not possible for Aintab [sic] and that nothing bad would happen to them.”
Like brave Polish families and the few Oskar Schindlers of Nazi Germany, a few courageous Turks opposed the Armenian genocide. Celal Bey, the governor of Aleppo – 61 miles from Antep – refused to deport Armenians. But he was dismissed. And the Christian Armenians of Antep were doomed.
On 30 July, 50 Armenian families were ordered to leave in 24 hours. First, only Orthodox Christians were sent away, leaving all their valuables behind. A survivor recalls that “our neighbours, the Turks, were singing from their homes, we could hear them…‘The dog is on its way’…” A week later, another 50 families were deported, only to be attacked by militia bandits led by the manager of the local Agricultural Bank. Inside Antep, women were raped and sent to local “harems”. A local village head (“mukhtar”) threw six Armenian children from a mountain to their deaths. The convoys grew larger – 1,500 Armenians from Antep on 13 August, for example – and sent, by train or on foot, to Aleppo and Deir ez-Zour. Then came the turn of Catholic Armenians.
A pitiful account survives of a thanksgiving service held by Protestants – the only Armenians to escape liquidation so far – in which one of their leaders miserably pleaded with his people to do nothing which might annoy the Turkish authorities. “Let no one take into his home a child or anyone else who has been told to go, whether they be of those passing through the city as refugees or from among our own friends and relatives in the town.” No good Samaritans there. But of course, the Protestants, too, were deported. Of 600 Protestant families, almost 200 had been annihilated at Deir ez-Zour by January 1916.
The local Antep police chief was promoted for his enthusiasm. In the so-called “deportation committees” who decided the Armenians’ fate could be found Antep’s local member of parliament and his brother, a variety of local officials, the president of the municipality, two officials in the finance department, two judges, a magistrate, the first secretary of Antep’s court, a former mufti, two imams, two ulema, two village sheiks, the secretary of a religious charity, a doctor, a lawyer and the director of an orphanage. “No member of these local worthies,” writes Umit Kurt, “did anything to protest the deportations, hide the vulnerable, or stop the convoys.” Of Antep’s 32,000 Armenians, 20,000 perished in the genocide.
But truly the ghosts survive.
By chance this week, I was finishing Martin Winstone’s shocking history of Nazi rule in the occupied “general government” of Poland, The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe, and discovered that the Jews – and Poles – of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin often went through exactly the same process of false hope, collaboration and annihilation as the Armenians of Antep.
While most Poles behaved with courage, dignity and heroism, a minority of gentiles – and this is why the current government of Poland is threatening to punish anyone who talks of Polish collaboration with the Nazis – “participated directly in the murder process”, according to Winstone. They included the Polish “blue” police – ordinary cops in their usual blue uniforms – but also local peasants in the Lublin area, many of whom robbed their victims before beating them to death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fugitive Jews fell victim to perpetrators “who were village heads, members of the village guards formed during the occupation, or blue policemen acting unofficially”. When 50 Jews were discovered hiding in Szczebrzeszyn, a “crowd looked on”. A powerful factor in the murder and denunciation of Jews, the author concludes, was “a lust for Jewish property”.
And today, in the Middle East, we know all too well this familiar pattern of local villainy turned against neighbours, Christian girls in Nineveh seized by Islamists, Yazidi families torn apart and their homes looted by local Sunni militias. When Isis fled the town of Hafter, east of Aleppo, I found the documents of the local Isis courts; they proved that Syrian civilians had betrayed their cousins to the Egyptian judges of the Islamist courts, that neighbours had sought financial reward by denouncing those who had lived beside them for decades. In Bosnia in the 1990s, as we know, Serb neighbours slaughtered their Muslim compatriots, raped their women and seized their homes.
No, this is not something new – but it is something we too often forget. When my own father was asked by the British government in 1940 to name those in Maidstone, Kent, who might collaborate with the Nazis after an invasion, he put one of his best friends, a local businessman, on his list of those who would assist the Germans. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass sectarian atrocities might be directed from Constantinople, Berlin, Belgrade or Mosul. But war criminals need their people to complete their projects or – to use an old German expression – “to help to give the wheel a push”.
Sunday, 5 February 2017
Trump is no fascist. He is a champion for the forgotten millions
John Daniel Davidson in The Guardian
Amid the ongoing protests against President Trump, calls for “resistance” among Democratic politicians and activists, and the overheated rhetoric casting Trump and his supporters as fascists and xenophobes, an outsider might be forgiven for thinking that America has been taken over by a small faction of rightwing nationalists.
America is deeply divided, but it’s not divided between fascists and Democrats. It’s more accurate to say that America is divided between the elites and everybody else, and Trump’s election was a rejection of the elites.
That’s not to say plenty of Democrats and progressives don’t vehemently oppose Trump. But the crowds of demonstrators share something in common with our political and media elites: they still don’t understand how Trump got elected, or why millions of Americans continue to support him. Even now, recent polls show that more Americans support Trump’s executive order on immigration than oppose it, but you wouldn’t know it based on the media coverage.
Support for Trump’s travel ban, indeed his entire agenda for immigration reform, is precisely the sort of thing mainstream media, concentrated in urban enclaves along our coasts, has trouble comprehending. The fact is, many Americans who voted for Trump, especially those in suburban and rural areas across the heartland and the south, have long felt disconnected from the institutions that govern them. On immigration and trade, the issues that propelled Trump to the White House, they want the status quo to change.
During his first two weeks in office, whenever Trump has done something that leaves political and media elites aghast, his supporters cheer. They like that he told Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto he might have to send troops across the border to stop “bad hombres down there”. They like that he threatened to pull out of an Obama-era deal to accept thousands of refugees Australia refuses to admit. They want him to dismantle Dodd-Frank financial regulations for Wall Street and rethink US trade deals. This is why they voted for him.
The failure to understand why these measures are popular with millions of Americans stems from a deep sense of disconnection in American society that didn’t begin with Trump or the 2016 election. For years, millions of voters have felt left behind by an economic recovery that largely excluded them, a culture that scoffed at their beliefs and a government that promised change but failed to deliver.
Nowhere is this disconnection more palpable than in the American midwest, in places such as Akron, a small city in northeast Ohio nestled along a bend in the Little Cuyahoga river. Its downtown boasts clean and pleasant streets, a minor league baseball park, bustling cafes and a lively university. The people are friendly and open, as midwesterners tend to be. In many ways, it’s an idyllic American town.
Except for the heroin. Like many suburban and rural communities across the country, Akron is in the grip of a deadly heroin epidemic. Last summer, a batch of heroin cut with a synthetic painkiller called carfentanil, an elephant tranquilliser, turned up in the city. Twenty-one people overdosed in a single day. Over the ensuing weeks, 300 more would overdose. Dozens would die.
The heroin epidemic is playing out against a backdrop of industrial decline. At one time, Akron was a manufacturing hub, home to four major tyre companies and a rising middle class. Today, most of that is gone. The tyre factories have long since moved overseas and the city’s population has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s. This is what Trump was talking about when he spoke of “American carnage” in his inaugural address.
Akron is not unique. Cities and towns across America’s rust belt, Appalachia and the deep south are in a state of gradual decline. Many of these places have long been Democratic strongholds, undergirded by once-robust unions.
On election day, millions of Democrats who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 cast their votes for Trump. In those earlier elections, these blue-collar Democrats were voting for change, hoping Obama would prioritise the needs of working Americans over the elites and special interests concentrated in Washington DC and Wall Street.
For many Americans, Hillary Clinton personified the corruption and self-dealing of the elites. But Trump’s election wasn’t just a rejection of Clinton, it was a rejection of politics as usual. If the media and political establishment see Trump’s first couple of weeks in office as a whirlwind of chaos and incompetence, his supporters see an outsider taking on a sclerotic system that needs to be dismantled. That’s precisely what many Americans thought they were doing eight years ago, when they put a freshman senator from Illinois in the White House. Obama promised a new way of governing – he would be a “post-partisan” president, he would “fundamentally transform” the country, he would look out for the middle class. In the throes of the great recession, that resonated. Something was clearly wrong with our political system and the American people wanted someone to fix it.
After all, the Tea Party didn’t begin as a reaction against Obama’s presidency but that of George W Bush. As far as most Americans were concerned, the financial crisis was brought on by the excesses of Wall Street bankers and the incompetency of our political leaders. Before the Tea Party coalesced into a political movement, the protesters weren’t just traditional conservatives who cared about limited government and the constitution. They were, for the most part, ordinary Americans who felt the system was rigged against them and they wanted change.
But change didn’t come. What they got was more of the same. Obama offered a series of massive government programmes, from an $830bn financial stimulus, to the Affordable Care Act, to Dodd-Frank, none of which did much to assuage the economic anxieties of the middle class. Americans watched as the federal government bailed out the banks, then the auto industry and then passed healthcare reform that transferred billions of taxpayer dollars to major health insurance companies. Meanwhile, premiums went up, economic recovery remained sluggish and millions dropped out of the workforce and turned to food stamps and welfare programmes just to get by. Americans asked themselves: “Where’s my bailout?”
At the same time, they saw the world becoming more unstable. Part of Obama’s appeal was that he promised to end the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, restore America’s standing in the international community and pursue multilateral agreements that would bring stability. Instead, Americans watched Isis step into the vacuum created by the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. They watched the Syrian civil war trigger a migrant crisis in Europe that many Americans now view as a cautionary tale. At home, Isis-inspired terrorist attacks took their toll, as they did in Europe. And all the while Obama’s White House insisted that everything was going well.
Amid all this, along came Trump. Here was a rough character, a boisterous celebrity billionaire with an axe to grind. He had palpable disdain for both political parties, which he said had failed the American people. He showed contempt for political correctness that was strangling public debate over contentious issues such as terrorism. He struck many of the same populist notes, both in his campaign and in his recent inaugural address, that Senator Bernie Sanders did among his young socialist acolytes, sometimes word for word.
In many ways, Trump’s agenda isn’t partisan in a recognisable way – especially on trade. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump made good on a promise that Sanders also made, pulling the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and proclaiming an end to multilateral trade deals. He also threatened US companies with a “border tax” if they move jobs overseas. These are not traditional Republican positions but they do appeal to American workers who have watched employers pull out of their communities and ship jobs overseas.
Many traditional Republicans have always been uncomfortable with Trump. They fundamentally disagree with his positions on trade and immigration. Even now, congressional Republicans are revolting over Trump’s proposed border wall, promising to block any new expenditures for it. They’re also uncomfortable with Trump personally. For some Republicans, it was only Trump’s promise to nominate a conservative supreme court justice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia that won their votes in the end – a promise Trump honoured last week by nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch, a judge very much in Scalia’s mould.
Once Trump won the nomination at the Republican national convention, most Republican voters got on board, reasoning that whatever uncertainty they had about Trump, the alternative – Clinton – was worse.
In many ways, the 2016 election wasn’t just a referendum on Obama’s eight years in the White House, it was a rejection of the entire political system that gave us Iraq, the financial crisis, a botched healthcare law and shocking income inequality during a slow economic recovery. From Akron to Alaska, millions of Americans had simply lost confidence in their leaders and the institutions that were supposed to serve them. In their desperation, they turned to a man who had no regard for the elites – and no use for them.
In his inaugural address, Trump said: “Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people.” To be sure, populism of this kind can be dangerous and unpredictable, But it doesn’t arise from nowhere. Only a corrupt political establishment could have provoked a political revolt of this scale. Instead of blaming Trump’s rise on racism or xenophobia, blame it on those who never saw this coming and still don’t understand why so many Americans would rather have Donald Trump in the White House than suffer the rule of their elites.
Amid the ongoing protests against President Trump, calls for “resistance” among Democratic politicians and activists, and the overheated rhetoric casting Trump and his supporters as fascists and xenophobes, an outsider might be forgiven for thinking that America has been taken over by a small faction of rightwing nationalists.
America is deeply divided, but it’s not divided between fascists and Democrats. It’s more accurate to say that America is divided between the elites and everybody else, and Trump’s election was a rejection of the elites.
That’s not to say plenty of Democrats and progressives don’t vehemently oppose Trump. But the crowds of demonstrators share something in common with our political and media elites: they still don’t understand how Trump got elected, or why millions of Americans continue to support him. Even now, recent polls show that more Americans support Trump’s executive order on immigration than oppose it, but you wouldn’t know it based on the media coverage.
Support for Trump’s travel ban, indeed his entire agenda for immigration reform, is precisely the sort of thing mainstream media, concentrated in urban enclaves along our coasts, has trouble comprehending. The fact is, many Americans who voted for Trump, especially those in suburban and rural areas across the heartland and the south, have long felt disconnected from the institutions that govern them. On immigration and trade, the issues that propelled Trump to the White House, they want the status quo to change.
During his first two weeks in office, whenever Trump has done something that leaves political and media elites aghast, his supporters cheer. They like that he told Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto he might have to send troops across the border to stop “bad hombres down there”. They like that he threatened to pull out of an Obama-era deal to accept thousands of refugees Australia refuses to admit. They want him to dismantle Dodd-Frank financial regulations for Wall Street and rethink US trade deals. This is why they voted for him.
The failure to understand why these measures are popular with millions of Americans stems from a deep sense of disconnection in American society that didn’t begin with Trump or the 2016 election. For years, millions of voters have felt left behind by an economic recovery that largely excluded them, a culture that scoffed at their beliefs and a government that promised change but failed to deliver.
Nowhere is this disconnection more palpable than in the American midwest, in places such as Akron, a small city in northeast Ohio nestled along a bend in the Little Cuyahoga river. Its downtown boasts clean and pleasant streets, a minor league baseball park, bustling cafes and a lively university. The people are friendly and open, as midwesterners tend to be. In many ways, it’s an idyllic American town.
Except for the heroin. Like many suburban and rural communities across the country, Akron is in the grip of a deadly heroin epidemic. Last summer, a batch of heroin cut with a synthetic painkiller called carfentanil, an elephant tranquilliser, turned up in the city. Twenty-one people overdosed in a single day. Over the ensuing weeks, 300 more would overdose. Dozens would die.
The heroin epidemic is playing out against a backdrop of industrial decline. At one time, Akron was a manufacturing hub, home to four major tyre companies and a rising middle class. Today, most of that is gone. The tyre factories have long since moved overseas and the city’s population has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s. This is what Trump was talking about when he spoke of “American carnage” in his inaugural address.
Akron is not unique. Cities and towns across America’s rust belt, Appalachia and the deep south are in a state of gradual decline. Many of these places have long been Democratic strongholds, undergirded by once-robust unions.
On election day, millions of Democrats who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 cast their votes for Trump. In those earlier elections, these blue-collar Democrats were voting for change, hoping Obama would prioritise the needs of working Americans over the elites and special interests concentrated in Washington DC and Wall Street.
For many Americans, Hillary Clinton personified the corruption and self-dealing of the elites. But Trump’s election wasn’t just a rejection of Clinton, it was a rejection of politics as usual. If the media and political establishment see Trump’s first couple of weeks in office as a whirlwind of chaos and incompetence, his supporters see an outsider taking on a sclerotic system that needs to be dismantled. That’s precisely what many Americans thought they were doing eight years ago, when they put a freshman senator from Illinois in the White House. Obama promised a new way of governing – he would be a “post-partisan” president, he would “fundamentally transform” the country, he would look out for the middle class. In the throes of the great recession, that resonated. Something was clearly wrong with our political system and the American people wanted someone to fix it.
After all, the Tea Party didn’t begin as a reaction against Obama’s presidency but that of George W Bush. As far as most Americans were concerned, the financial crisis was brought on by the excesses of Wall Street bankers and the incompetency of our political leaders. Before the Tea Party coalesced into a political movement, the protesters weren’t just traditional conservatives who cared about limited government and the constitution. They were, for the most part, ordinary Americans who felt the system was rigged against them and they wanted change.
But change didn’t come. What they got was more of the same. Obama offered a series of massive government programmes, from an $830bn financial stimulus, to the Affordable Care Act, to Dodd-Frank, none of which did much to assuage the economic anxieties of the middle class. Americans watched as the federal government bailed out the banks, then the auto industry and then passed healthcare reform that transferred billions of taxpayer dollars to major health insurance companies. Meanwhile, premiums went up, economic recovery remained sluggish and millions dropped out of the workforce and turned to food stamps and welfare programmes just to get by. Americans asked themselves: “Where’s my bailout?”
At the same time, they saw the world becoming more unstable. Part of Obama’s appeal was that he promised to end the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, restore America’s standing in the international community and pursue multilateral agreements that would bring stability. Instead, Americans watched Isis step into the vacuum created by the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. They watched the Syrian civil war trigger a migrant crisis in Europe that many Americans now view as a cautionary tale. At home, Isis-inspired terrorist attacks took their toll, as they did in Europe. And all the while Obama’s White House insisted that everything was going well.
Amid all this, along came Trump. Here was a rough character, a boisterous celebrity billionaire with an axe to grind. He had palpable disdain for both political parties, which he said had failed the American people. He showed contempt for political correctness that was strangling public debate over contentious issues such as terrorism. He struck many of the same populist notes, both in his campaign and in his recent inaugural address, that Senator Bernie Sanders did among his young socialist acolytes, sometimes word for word.
In many ways, Trump’s agenda isn’t partisan in a recognisable way – especially on trade. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump made good on a promise that Sanders also made, pulling the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and proclaiming an end to multilateral trade deals. He also threatened US companies with a “border tax” if they move jobs overseas. These are not traditional Republican positions but they do appeal to American workers who have watched employers pull out of their communities and ship jobs overseas.
Many traditional Republicans have always been uncomfortable with Trump. They fundamentally disagree with his positions on trade and immigration. Even now, congressional Republicans are revolting over Trump’s proposed border wall, promising to block any new expenditures for it. They’re also uncomfortable with Trump personally. For some Republicans, it was only Trump’s promise to nominate a conservative supreme court justice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia that won their votes in the end – a promise Trump honoured last week by nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch, a judge very much in Scalia’s mould.
Once Trump won the nomination at the Republican national convention, most Republican voters got on board, reasoning that whatever uncertainty they had about Trump, the alternative – Clinton – was worse.
In many ways, the 2016 election wasn’t just a referendum on Obama’s eight years in the White House, it was a rejection of the entire political system that gave us Iraq, the financial crisis, a botched healthcare law and shocking income inequality during a slow economic recovery. From Akron to Alaska, millions of Americans had simply lost confidence in their leaders and the institutions that were supposed to serve them. In their desperation, they turned to a man who had no regard for the elites – and no use for them.
In his inaugural address, Trump said: “Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people.” To be sure, populism of this kind can be dangerous and unpredictable, But it doesn’t arise from nowhere. Only a corrupt political establishment could have provoked a political revolt of this scale. Instead of blaming Trump’s rise on racism or xenophobia, blame it on those who never saw this coming and still don’t understand why so many Americans would rather have Donald Trump in the White House than suffer the rule of their elites.
Thursday, 4 February 2016
First Corbyn, now Sanders: how young voters' despair is fuelling movements on the left
Owen Jones in The Guardian
On both sides of the Atlantic, economic insecurity is fuelling the rise of new movements on the left.
Bernie Sanders was neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in this week’s Iowa caucus. Photograph: Yin Bogu/Xinhua Press/Corbis
He’s the septuagenarian powered by youth. The figures behind Bernie Sanders’ triumph in Iowa – in which his grassroots insurgency scored a virtual tie against what he rightly described as “the most powerful political organisation” in the US – are astonishing. Among Iowa Democrats aged between 17 and 29, 84% opted for this unlikely youth icon; among those aged 30-44, Sanders still had a 21-point lead over Hillary Clinton. It was older Americans who flocked to Clinton’s camp: nearly seven out of 10 of those aged over 65. The generations appeared separated by a political chasm.
Here is a phenomenon far from specific to the United States. It is a story of young people facing a present and future defined by economic security, often apparently doomed to a worse lot in life than their parents. They often feel unrepresented, ignored, betrayed or outright attacked by the political elite. They are far more progressive on social issues than their grandparents’ generation. And they are helping to drive movements from Sanders’ to Podemos in Spain, from Syriza to Jeremy Corbyn.
That’s not to exaggerate or oversimplify. A “generation” is itself a sweeping generalisation: it may include the retired white billionaire and the black pensioner shivering in a cold home, or the daughter of a miner and the privately educated young man whose rich parents pay his mortgage deposit. Only a minority of young people are meaningfully politically engaged, let alone politically active, and that includes those who opt for conservative or even far-right parties.
But there’s no question that a swath of disenfranchised youth is powering the new movements of the left. Political attitudes have changed. Labour’s rout last May is often compared to the party’s 1983 disaster; but when Labour was defeated under Michael Foot, the Tories had a nine-point lead among 18- to 24-year-olds, while in 2015, Labour achieved a 16-point lead among 18- to 24-year-olds. What’s more, younger Britons were twice as likely to opt for the leftwing Greens as the rest of the population. While a poll last month found that a derisory 16% of those over the age of 60 think Jeremy Corbyn is doing well, the figure rises to 41% among 18- to 24-year-olds. During the leadership contest that swept Corbyn to power, it’s reported that an influx of relatively young members drove the party’s average age down from 53 to 42.
He’s the septuagenarian powered by youth. The figures behind Bernie Sanders’ triumph in Iowa – in which his grassroots insurgency scored a virtual tie against what he rightly described as “the most powerful political organisation” in the US – are astonishing. Among Iowa Democrats aged between 17 and 29, 84% opted for this unlikely youth icon; among those aged 30-44, Sanders still had a 21-point lead over Hillary Clinton. It was older Americans who flocked to Clinton’s camp: nearly seven out of 10 of those aged over 65. The generations appeared separated by a political chasm.
Here is a phenomenon far from specific to the United States. It is a story of young people facing a present and future defined by economic security, often apparently doomed to a worse lot in life than their parents. They often feel unrepresented, ignored, betrayed or outright attacked by the political elite. They are far more progressive on social issues than their grandparents’ generation. And they are helping to drive movements from Sanders’ to Podemos in Spain, from Syriza to Jeremy Corbyn.
That’s not to exaggerate or oversimplify. A “generation” is itself a sweeping generalisation: it may include the retired white billionaire and the black pensioner shivering in a cold home, or the daughter of a miner and the privately educated young man whose rich parents pay his mortgage deposit. Only a minority of young people are meaningfully politically engaged, let alone politically active, and that includes those who opt for conservative or even far-right parties.
But there’s no question that a swath of disenfranchised youth is powering the new movements of the left. Political attitudes have changed. Labour’s rout last May is often compared to the party’s 1983 disaster; but when Labour was defeated under Michael Foot, the Tories had a nine-point lead among 18- to 24-year-olds, while in 2015, Labour achieved a 16-point lead among 18- to 24-year-olds. What’s more, younger Britons were twice as likely to opt for the leftwing Greens as the rest of the population. While a poll last month found that a derisory 16% of those over the age of 60 think Jeremy Corbyn is doing well, the figure rises to 41% among 18- to 24-year-olds. During the leadership contest that swept Corbyn to power, it’s reported that an influx of relatively young members drove the party’s average age down from 53 to 42.
Is it all just youthful naivete? “In 1984 and 1988,” notes the US journalist Peter Beinart, “young voters backed Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush by large margins,” just as Margaret Thatcher attracted a level of youth support that has eluded David Cameron. The evidence that people become naturally more conservative as they age is not conclusive; indeed, on social issues, older people are often simply keeping the conservative attitudes of their youth. “Change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism,” notes one US study. For older Britons, the left may be associated with the disastrous failure of Soviet totalitarianism and the breakdown of the postwar consensus. For younger Britons, the aftermath of financial collapse and a self-evidently profoundly unequal society may loom larger. It’s the fall of Lehman Brothers, not the Berlin Wall, that may be more significant.
The generations seem to live on different political planets. American youth are far more likely to support immigration than their elders, and to have a positive view of Muslims; and while the over-35s are slightly more likely to believe government does too much, the under-35s are decisively more likely to believe it does too little. Here is a generation that has grown up in a world defined by market failure rather than one shaped by cold war rivalries. As a self-described socialist, Sanders is an exceptionally rare breed of American politician. But it is notable that, while just 15% of Americans over 65 have a positive view of socialism, that rises to 36% among the 18- to 29-year-olds, just three points fewer than those who opt for capitalism.
Yet it is surely economic insecurity that drives today’s young radicalism. A poll last year found that nearly half of so-called “millennial” Americans – those aged 18 to 35 – believed that they faced a “dimmer future than their parents”. Forty million Americans are now saddled with student debt, helping to suppress their living standards and leaving them with less disposable income for, say, a mortgage or a car. Home ownership across the Atlantic – the linchpin of the “American dream” – is now at its lowest level for nearly half a century. The economic recovery is an abstraction for many young Americans, all too often driven into insecure and low-paid occupations with little prospect of rising wages or a standard of living they believe they deserve.
A similar picture could be painted in Britain, of course. Government policies have disproportionately targeted younger people: whether it be the punishing of educational aspiration with the trebling of student fees, the cutting of youth services, the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, a minimum wage that discriminates against the young, cuts to youth services or a fall in living standards that older Britons have not had to endure. A young person may find that attending university – which now means accruing a huge pile of debt – does not open doors it once did. Home ownership is at its lowest level for a quarter of a century, and it has particularly plummeted among the young, with evidence that many have given up saving up for a deposit altogether. There are now more private tenants than social tenants, and half of those in an often unregulated private rented sector with what can be income-devouring rents are under 34.
But here is the danger. Like other western nations, Britain is an ageing society, and older voters are both decisively opting for the Conservatives, and turning out to vote in great number. The new movements face a formidable task: to both inspire younger voters to turn out in greater number, and persuade a substantial number of older Britons of their cause. A failure to do so will doom these movements. But the mainstream political elite should not feel complacent. They seem to believe they can abandon the young and face no political consequences. They may find that, one day, they run out of luck.
The generations seem to live on different political planets. American youth are far more likely to support immigration than their elders, and to have a positive view of Muslims; and while the over-35s are slightly more likely to believe government does too much, the under-35s are decisively more likely to believe it does too little. Here is a generation that has grown up in a world defined by market failure rather than one shaped by cold war rivalries. As a self-described socialist, Sanders is an exceptionally rare breed of American politician. But it is notable that, while just 15% of Americans over 65 have a positive view of socialism, that rises to 36% among the 18- to 29-year-olds, just three points fewer than those who opt for capitalism.
Yet it is surely economic insecurity that drives today’s young radicalism. A poll last year found that nearly half of so-called “millennial” Americans – those aged 18 to 35 – believed that they faced a “dimmer future than their parents”. Forty million Americans are now saddled with student debt, helping to suppress their living standards and leaving them with less disposable income for, say, a mortgage or a car. Home ownership across the Atlantic – the linchpin of the “American dream” – is now at its lowest level for nearly half a century. The economic recovery is an abstraction for many young Americans, all too often driven into insecure and low-paid occupations with little prospect of rising wages or a standard of living they believe they deserve.
A similar picture could be painted in Britain, of course. Government policies have disproportionately targeted younger people: whether it be the punishing of educational aspiration with the trebling of student fees, the cutting of youth services, the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, a minimum wage that discriminates against the young, cuts to youth services or a fall in living standards that older Britons have not had to endure. A young person may find that attending university – which now means accruing a huge pile of debt – does not open doors it once did. Home ownership is at its lowest level for a quarter of a century, and it has particularly plummeted among the young, with evidence that many have given up saving up for a deposit altogether. There are now more private tenants than social tenants, and half of those in an often unregulated private rented sector with what can be income-devouring rents are under 34.
But here is the danger. Like other western nations, Britain is an ageing society, and older voters are both decisively opting for the Conservatives, and turning out to vote in great number. The new movements face a formidable task: to both inspire younger voters to turn out in greater number, and persuade a substantial number of older Britons of their cause. A failure to do so will doom these movements. But the mainstream political elite should not feel complacent. They seem to believe they can abandon the young and face no political consequences. They may find that, one day, they run out of luck.
Friday, 14 August 2015
With hundreds of thousands of new supporters, Labour is on the verge of something big – what a complete disaster!
Mark Steel in The Independent
It’s easy to see why those in charge of the Labour Party are so depressed. They must sit in their office crying: “Hundreds of thousands of people want to join us. It’s a disaster. And loads of them are young, and full of energy, and they’re really enthusiastic. Oh my God, why has it all gone so miserably wrong?”
Every organisation would be the same. If a local brass band is down to its last five members, unsure whether it can ever put on another performance, the last thing it needs is young excited people arriving with trombones to boost numbers and raise money and attract large audiences. The sensible response is to tell them they’re idiots, and announce to the press that they are infiltrators from the Workers’ Revolutionary Party.
The Labour Party in recent years has insisted that it’s a party that understands business. But if it were running Apple, it would employ a novel approach. A report could come in that a new product was so successful that customers were queuing up to see it, and the sales staff were having to stand on fire engines to address the crowds eager to buy it. So Labour would say: “We’ll scrap that for a start. Let’s promote our other models that have initiated no interest from anyone whatsoever, such as a digital table mat. That’s how to make money.”
The fervour around Jeremy Corbyn is extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be fair to suggest he’s the only Labour politician who can bring large crowds on to the streets to greet him. Tony Blair is just as capable. In his case the crowds are there to scream that he should be arrested for war crimes and to throw things at him, but that’s being pernickety; he can certainly draw an audience.
Blair made another contribution to the leadership debate this week, and his prose is worth quoting. It goes: “The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched, over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below. This is not a moment to refrain from disturbing the serenity of the walk on the basis it causes 'disunity'. It is a moment for a rugby tackle if that were possible.”
It’s fitting this was published on the day that A-level results were announced, as it’s hard to imagine how any examiner would have marked this. It’s possible he didn’t even write it himself, and he’s stolen it from the lyrics of an obscure prog rock band from 1975. Maybe there’s another verse: “As we float across Narnia in a bubble of tadpoles, an iguana with a beard threatens to make us anti-business by renationalising the railways, and we cry in a golden canoe that no one will vote for us in Nuneaton.”
Or he was simply trying to convey the scale of apocalypse that will result from Labour electing a leader who stands for something. Tomorrow he’ll add: “Our great party is literally climbing into the mouth of a lion, as it stands unaware of an American dentist poised behind, dozing as it climbs into a ride at Alton Towers that hasn’t been checked since 2008, placing our economy in a shopping mall in America just before a teenager goes berserk with a machine gun. Is THAT what you WANT?”
His accomplice of old, Alastair Campbell, has been just as coherent, insisting Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party to disaster beyond imagination. Maybe there’s still time for Alastair to prove his point by compiling a dossier explaining in detail exactly how Jeremy Corbyn would cause this disaster, showing beyond doubt that the disaster would be caused within 45 minutes, so that the only rational response is to invade Jeremy Corbyn.
This week, I was lucky enough to enjoy at first hand this calm approach of Labour’s leaders, when my application to register as a supporter was turned down on the grounds that: “We have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party.” I suppose it’s encouraging that they’re being so thorough, although it could be argued that leading your country into a disastrous invasion, having justified it with a set of premises it turns out you made up, is also slightly at odds with the aims and values of the Labour Party. So, presumably, Blair and Campbell and their supporters will have received the same email as me?
Or there’s Simon Danczuk, the MP who has pledged to do all he can to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn from day one of his leadership. I wonder if publicly committing yourself to bringing down the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party could give someone a reason to believe you didn’t support the aims and values of the Labour Party?
If not, this could lead to a whole new way of running organisations. When someone joins the Scouts they should have to pledge to bring down the Scouts from day one, otherwise they’re not allowed to join. If a new member applies to join a bowls club, they should be asked if they’re prepared to abide by the rules of the elected committee, and if they are, they should be told to sod off and never come back.
Then there’s John McTernan, the former adviser to Jim Murphy, who insists that Corbyn will be a catastrophe, and that the party should continue with the strategy he devised in Scotland, which took the party’s MPs from 41 to a much more manageable one, making it far easier to deal with admin.
These are the types you want to make a party successful, not crowds of young enthusiastic people eager to change society. Isn’t it obvious?
It’s easy to see why those in charge of the Labour Party are so depressed. They must sit in their office crying: “Hundreds of thousands of people want to join us. It’s a disaster. And loads of them are young, and full of energy, and they’re really enthusiastic. Oh my God, why has it all gone so miserably wrong?”
Every organisation would be the same. If a local brass band is down to its last five members, unsure whether it can ever put on another performance, the last thing it needs is young excited people arriving with trombones to boost numbers and raise money and attract large audiences. The sensible response is to tell them they’re idiots, and announce to the press that they are infiltrators from the Workers’ Revolutionary Party.
The Labour Party in recent years has insisted that it’s a party that understands business. But if it were running Apple, it would employ a novel approach. A report could come in that a new product was so successful that customers were queuing up to see it, and the sales staff were having to stand on fire engines to address the crowds eager to buy it. So Labour would say: “We’ll scrap that for a start. Let’s promote our other models that have initiated no interest from anyone whatsoever, such as a digital table mat. That’s how to make money.”
The fervour around Jeremy Corbyn is extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be fair to suggest he’s the only Labour politician who can bring large crowds on to the streets to greet him. Tony Blair is just as capable. In his case the crowds are there to scream that he should be arrested for war crimes and to throw things at him, but that’s being pernickety; he can certainly draw an audience.
Blair made another contribution to the leadership debate this week, and his prose is worth quoting. It goes: “The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched, over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below. This is not a moment to refrain from disturbing the serenity of the walk on the basis it causes 'disunity'. It is a moment for a rugby tackle if that were possible.”
It’s fitting this was published on the day that A-level results were announced, as it’s hard to imagine how any examiner would have marked this. It’s possible he didn’t even write it himself, and he’s stolen it from the lyrics of an obscure prog rock band from 1975. Maybe there’s another verse: “As we float across Narnia in a bubble of tadpoles, an iguana with a beard threatens to make us anti-business by renationalising the railways, and we cry in a golden canoe that no one will vote for us in Nuneaton.”
Or he was simply trying to convey the scale of apocalypse that will result from Labour electing a leader who stands for something. Tomorrow he’ll add: “Our great party is literally climbing into the mouth of a lion, as it stands unaware of an American dentist poised behind, dozing as it climbs into a ride at Alton Towers that hasn’t been checked since 2008, placing our economy in a shopping mall in America just before a teenager goes berserk with a machine gun. Is THAT what you WANT?”
His accomplice of old, Alastair Campbell, has been just as coherent, insisting Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party to disaster beyond imagination. Maybe there’s still time for Alastair to prove his point by compiling a dossier explaining in detail exactly how Jeremy Corbyn would cause this disaster, showing beyond doubt that the disaster would be caused within 45 minutes, so that the only rational response is to invade Jeremy Corbyn.
This week, I was lucky enough to enjoy at first hand this calm approach of Labour’s leaders, when my application to register as a supporter was turned down on the grounds that: “We have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party.” I suppose it’s encouraging that they’re being so thorough, although it could be argued that leading your country into a disastrous invasion, having justified it with a set of premises it turns out you made up, is also slightly at odds with the aims and values of the Labour Party. So, presumably, Blair and Campbell and their supporters will have received the same email as me?
Or there’s Simon Danczuk, the MP who has pledged to do all he can to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn from day one of his leadership. I wonder if publicly committing yourself to bringing down the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party could give someone a reason to believe you didn’t support the aims and values of the Labour Party?
If not, this could lead to a whole new way of running organisations. When someone joins the Scouts they should have to pledge to bring down the Scouts from day one, otherwise they’re not allowed to join. If a new member applies to join a bowls club, they should be asked if they’re prepared to abide by the rules of the elected committee, and if they are, they should be told to sod off and never come back.
Then there’s John McTernan, the former adviser to Jim Murphy, who insists that Corbyn will be a catastrophe, and that the party should continue with the strategy he devised in Scotland, which took the party’s MPs from 41 to a much more manageable one, making it far easier to deal with admin.
These are the types you want to make a party successful, not crowds of young enthusiastic people eager to change society. Isn’t it obvious?
Saturday, 6 September 2014
Failing the Tebbit test - Difficulties in supporting the England cricket team
by Girish Menon
The article by second generation British writer Kishan Koria applying the 'cricket test' to examine the behaviour of Britons of Asian origin was interesting and revelatory but it may be a case of blaming the victim and not the perpetrator. So, I am going to raise some issues which are never raised in the politics of Tebbit's followers.
The article by second generation British writer Kishan Koria applying the 'cricket test' to examine the behaviour of Britons of Asian origin was interesting and revelatory but it may be a case of blaming the victim and not the perpetrator. So, I am going to raise some issues which are never raised in the politics of Tebbit's followers.
Firstly, why should it be a natural assumption that if you have resided in England for years you must support the English cricket team? If England's home advantage against India is reduced to fixing the pitch to suit its bowlers then so be it. The English cricket team must earn the support of the ticket buyers with its acts on and off the pitch.
The spectator in a cricket match has paid a high price to be there. That s/he should cheer for the England cricket team was never a condition of the contract. She is a free agent and can support whoever she pleases.
The manner in which the English cricket establishment has treated players like Pietersen and Panesar gives the outsider an impression that they don't care about the views of their followers in any case. I'm sure even Bopara may be surprised at the number of times he has been in and out of the England team.
The cricket blog The Full Toss has often highlighted the uncaring way the ECB deals with the supporters of the English cricket team. So, will it not be natural for cricket lovers to express their disgust in manifold ways?
As far as citizenship in a land goes so long as residents pay taxes and obey the laws of the land then they are free to do what they like with the rest of their lives. This is usually the argument of free marketers like Tebbit, so why then do they wish to deny choice to these consumers of cricketainment with the nanny state telling them who to support in a cricket match?
So, the likes of the ECB should be happy that it is the English citizens of Indian origin who are putting the bums on stadia seats and the brown pounds in their coffers. Many English bums (pun unintended) stay away from cricket stadia for a variety of reasons including ticket prices, poor team selection policies etc. Hence the ECB should not further risk their luck by telling these high fare paying spectators who to support. Instead they should earn their support by fair minded policies and listening to the voices of their dwindling support base.
Personally, I fail the Tebbit test every time England play India and I have been unable to understand why. This is funny because in my growing years I supported the Mumbai team against other Indian teams even though my parents were immigrants from the state of Kerala (far away from Mumbai), and despite there always existing a violent campaign against immigrants in Mumbai.
It maybe out of alienation in a land where me and my family's future fortune lies. It maybe the jingoism in the highly conservative media. It maybe the 'institutional racism' referred to in the Macpherson report. It may be the 'barging of Gavaskar by Snow'; the negative lines bowled by Giles; the Zaheer Khan jelly beans incident; the failure to criticise Anderson for his foul mouthed pronouncements in the quest for victory; the failure to understand the invalidity of the predicted path in a DRS while castigating the non believer as a Luddite; or invoking the spirit of cricket argument selectively. As for the booing of Moeen Ali, a fine prospect, to my mind this appears to be a continuation of the Indo-Pak rivalry which has been carried forward by the diaspora.
However, I have also noticed periods when I begin to like the English team but then something happens and the old English superiority biases surface in the commentariat and I am driven once again to dislike the team, probably wrongly, probably not due to the players' actions. But, most importantly, the overriding reason is the brand of cricket the team plays. I have for long been a fan of the Pietersen, Botham and Gower brand of English cricket. But, so long as the clones of Boycott and Tavare dominate the approach to batting it is a trifle difficult to stay awake let alone support the England team.
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
One in 10 do not have a close friend and even more feel unloved, survey finds
Study by relationship counsellor Relate finds a divided nation with many left without vital support of friends and family
Millions of people in the UK do not have a single friend and fewer still feel loved. Photograph: keith morris / Alamy/Alamy
Millions of people in the UK do not have a single friend and one in five feel unloved, according to a survey published on Tuesday by the relationship charity Relate.
One in 10 people questioned said they did not have a close friend, amounting to an estimated 4.7 million people in the UK may be leading a very lonely existence.
Ruth Sutherland, the chief executive of Relate, said the survey revealed a divided nation with many people left without the vital support of friends or partners.
While the survey found 85% of individuals questioned felt they had a good relationship with their partners, 19% had never or rarely felt loved in the two weeks before the survey.
"Whilst there is much to celebrate, the results around how close we feel to others are very concerning. There is a significant minority of people who claim to have no close friends, or who never or rarely feel loved – something which is unimaginable to many of us," said Sutherland.
"Relationships are the asset which can get us through good times and bad, and it is worrying to think that there are people who feel they have no one they can turn to during life's challenges. We know that strong relationships are vital for both individuals and society as a whole, so investing in them is crucial."
The study looked at 5,778 people aged 16 and over across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland and asked about people's contentment with all aspects of their relationships, including their partners, friends, workmates and bosses. It found that people who said that they had good relationships had higher levels of wellbeing, while poor relationships were detrimental to health, wellbeing and self-confidence.
The study found that 81% of people who were married or cohabiting felt good about themselves, compared with 69% who were single.
The quality of relationship counts for a lot, according to the survey: 83% of those who described their relationship as good or very good reported feeling good about themselves while only 62% of those who described their relationship as average, bad or very bad reported the same level of personal wellbeing.
The survey, The Way We Are Now 2014, showed that while four out of five people said they had a good relationship with their partner, far fewer were happy with their sex lives. One in four people admitted to being dissatisfied with their sex life, and one in four also admitted to having an affair.
There was also evidence of the changing nature of family life – and increasing divorce rates – in the survey, which found that almost one in four of the people questioned had experienced the breakdown of their parents' relationship.
When it comes to the biggest strains put on relationships, a significant majority (62%) cited money troubles as the most stressful factor.
The survey also found that older people are more worried about money, with 69% of those aged 65 and over saying money worries were a major strain, compared with only 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds.
When it comes to employment, many of those questioned had a positive relationship with their bosses, but felt putting work before family was highly valued in the workplace.
Just under 60% of people said they had a good relationship with their boss, but more than one in three thought their bosses believed the most productive employees put work before family. It also appears that work can be quite a lonely place too: 42% of people said they had no friends at work.
Nine out of 10 people, however, said they had a least one close friend, with 81% of women describing their friendships as good or very good compared with 73% of men.
Friday, 27 September 2013
A new meaning for 'relationship support'
From Cambridge News
A day of bondage workshops at a village hall was cancelled as red-faced trustees in Cambridge said they had got the wrong end of the stick.
A day of bondage workshops at a village hall was cancelled as red-faced trustees in Cambridge said they had got the wrong end of the stick.
Officials at Trumpington Village Hall believed the venue was booked for ‘relationship support’ meetings.
But after the News exclusively revealed the High Street venue was in fact booked by a bondage group the trustees were stunned to discover the hall, which usually hosts WI meetings, bingo and Brownies, was actually going to host lessons in flogging, spanking and domination.
Community listings for the Fifty Shades of Grey-style event also promised tips on how to “truly get a bottom’s attention with canes”.
Organisers Peer Rope Cambridge also promised advice on “violence/resistance play” and the “basics of erotic hypnosis”.
Another lesson entitled ‘Kink on a budget’, said it would focus on “BDSM (Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission), without breaking the bank”
The fee for the day was £10 - which included tea, coffee, pastries and biscuits.
Hall committee members cancelled the event and said the booking was “made under false pretences”.
Outraged hall manager Barbara Fernandez, 51, said she would be seeking legal advice over the matter.
Part-time teacher Mrs Fernandez, a mother-of-two, said: “The woman who made the booking said the group would be doing one thing, but they were doing something else.
“On the forms she said it was a ‘relationship support group meeting’. But it is not. It is bondage. It did not see bondage on the booking form.
“We provide services for little old ladies and child care groups. Some of our little old ladies who come to play Bingo will be upset.
“It is not a question of what activities they are doing, it is more about lying to us. We take things in good faith when they fill out the booking form.
“We do not bang on the doors to find out what people are doing. We expect people to be honest about they are using the halls for.
“Had we known what the booking was for I would have consulted the trustees about whether we wanted to host the event. I will be seeking legal advice.”
The sex workshop was advertised to take place on October 12.
A similar event was held by the group last year and the village hall said they had several invoices from them for other ‘meetings’.
Participants were told ‘Mistress Bond’ would lead “a group discussion on how to ensure your sessions go with a bang!”.
The programme said “topless nudity (covered ladynipples please) is permitted once inside the venue” and under ‘things to bring’ the instruction leaflet states “er rope”.
The small hall was also set to host flogging lessons while a ‘maid’ would serve snacks throughout the day, including sandwiches, crisps and fruit for lunch.
The hall trustees said: “It has been brought to our attention that the premises have been hired under false pretences by PRC Cambridge.
“When the bookings were made, the activity was described as a ‘relationship support group meeting’.
“This description did not fully state the activities being undertaken. The trustees have therefore cancelled all future bookings and have no further comment to make.”
Peer Rope Cambridge said they had a policy of not commenting to the press.
Trumpinton Village Hall was founded in 1908 and owned by a charitable trust.
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