Timothy Garton Ash's Blog, page 13

Populists are out to divide us. They must be stopped | Timothy Garton Ash

The US is the latest country to be seduced by nationalists. Liberals should brace themselves for a long struggle

So now the challenge is in plain view: we face the globalisation of anti-globalisation, a popular front of populists, an International of nationalists. “Today the United States, tomorrow – France,” tweets Jean-Marie Le Pen. It will be a long, hard struggle to defeat them, at home and abroad, and we may now have to look elsewhere for the “leader of the free world”. But defeat them we will.

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia we have something very close to fascism. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey is rapidly crossing the line between illiberal democracy and fascism, while Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is already an illiberal democracy. In Poland, France, the Netherlands, Britain and now the US, we have to defend the line between liberal and illiberal democracy.

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on November 10, 2016 23:00

Liberal internationalists have to own up: we left too many people behind | Timothy Garton Ash

Globalisation was great for some, but created widespread grievances that are now being exploited by populists

“The trouble with Hillary,” said a fellow watcher of Clinton’s second debate with Donald Trump, “is that she comes across as the liberal consensus personified.” Exactly so, and anti-liberalism is one of the threads that connects Trumpism, the Brexit vote, Poland’s nationalist populist government, Putinism and much else.

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 13, 2016 10:00

Do you live in a Trump bubble, or a Clinton bubble? | Timothy Garton Ash

The myths, exaggerations and lies of our fragmented media have distorted reality for both left and right. This is eroding our democracy

‘Trump wears deception as a foreskin.” Thus said Nathan, a small-business owner, when talking to me in Chicago the other day. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

A recent analysis concluded that Donald Trump averaged one lie or inaccuracy for every five minutes of speaking. There’s a great debate raging here about how the American media should cover this narcissistic, bragging, mendacious, ignorant, dangerous demagogue. But what’s happening to the media themselves is part of the problem.

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 29, 2016 12:42

Safe spaces are not the only threat to free speech | Timothy Garton Ash

Be it Prevent or no-platforming, attacks on academic freedom from the left and right must be resisted

Universities should be safe spaces – safe spaces for free speech. When I started working on freedom of expression some years ago, I never imagined that threats to it in the university itself would become such a hot topic. But today, a great debate about this is echoing across the English-speaking world.

The dean of students at the University of Chicago recently wrote to inform all new students that: “We do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” And a mighty row erupted when the University of Cape Town rescinded (quite wrongly, in my view) a lecture invitation to Flemming Rose, the journalist who commissioned the Danish cartoons of Muhammad.

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 15, 2016 22:30

Trump’s best chance of winning? A Hillary show trial | Timothy Garton Ash

This presidential campaign is built on anger, and the wounds it inflicts will be slow to heal

Lock her up! Lock her up!” they chant at the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio – “her” being Hillary Clinton. Hatchet-jawed General Mike Flynn, a former head of the defence intelligence agency, sweeps both his arms like a football coach to stoke the anger. The next day, New Jersey governor Chris Christie introduces himself as a former federal prosecutor and then rolls out a fulminating, partisan indictment of her alleged failures as secretary of state in Libya, Nigeria, China, Syria, Russia and Cuba (“a coddler of the brutal Castro brothers”), inviting the massed delegates to respond with their verdict after every indictment point. “Guilty! Guilty!” they chant, sometimes spontaneously reverting to “Lock her up!” It’s a political show trial, an auto-da-fé, a witch-hunt, and Hillary is the blue witch.

Earlier, the mother of one of the Americans killed in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi says: “I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son.” My heart goes out to this woman, but not to the party organisers who put her on stage as part of this deliberate strategy of fomenting anger against the Democrats’ presidential candidate. In speech after speech, Donald Trump punches home his message: “Hillary Clinton is a liar. Hillary Clinton is corrupt.” Taking it to the extreme, Trump’s adviser on veteran affairs, Al Baldasaro, tells a radio show that “Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.”

Perhaps the only Republican Hillary could beat is Trump. But perhaps the only Democrat Trump could beat is Hillary

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on July 21, 2016 11:48

If you think Britain is angry and divided, look at the continent | Timothy Garton Ash

Now is not the time for knee-jerk responses to the Brexit vote. Better to watch the shifting jigsaw and make the right move

Brexit is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake. What a weird week this has been. On trips to the Netherlands and Portugal, where I am now, continental friends hug me as if there has been a tragic death in the family. A longtime Serbian friend says, “Now you know what it felt like to be us, explaining that not all Serbs think that way … ”

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on June 30, 2016 22:30

As a lifelong English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life | Timothy Garton Ash

Britain voting to leave the EU feels as bad as the fall of the Berlin Wall felt good. It will likely spell the end of the United Kingdom, and the impact on Europe itself could be even worse

Britain cannot leave Europe any more than Piccadilly Circus can leave London. Europe is where we are, and where we will remain. Britain has always been a European country, its fate inextricably intertwined with that of the continent, and it always will be. But it is leaving the European Union. Why?

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on June 24, 2016 12:06

Remainers, your country needs you. Spread the word, and make a difference | Timothy Garton Ash

The EU referendum is the most important vote in Britain for 40 years. As it approaches, let’s re-embrace democracy as a game in which we are all players

We have just six days to keep Britain in the European Union – and the result will depend on you. Precisely because polls suggest this contest is too close to call, because everyone is sick to death of the claim and counterclaim, and because it’s ultimately a question of personal judgment, the voices of individual friends and neighbours can make all the difference. Politically, the coming week is the most important one in Britain for 40 years, and one of the most pivotal for Europe.

So if you live in Britain, and want us to remain, please talk to everyone you know. Reach out to those you think may be undecided or veering towards leave. Send that email; make the telephone call to your aunt or grandad. Ensure the postal votes go off in time. Volunteer via the Britain Stronger in Europe website. And follow the advice of Sue Vaughan: after herself pounding the streets of Norwich, she wrote to the Guardian this week urging us all to “just get out and speak to 10 people and see how it goes”. That’s what I’ll be doing this Sunday. If 100,000 of us meet the Vaughan target, that will be 1 million people canvassed.

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on June 17, 2016 23:00

Whether it’s in or out, vote – even if you’re from New Zealand | Timothy Garton Ash

Brexiters are strangely silent about voter registration. Are they afraid of democracy?

New Zealanders, Australians and Canadians may decide whether Britain remains in the EU. One of the wildest oddities of Britain’s electoral system is that a million or more Commonwealth and Irish citizens living in the UK can vote in the referendum, while French and Italian people who have lived here for 30 years cannot. This makes no sense, but then, as Benjamin Disraeli observed, England is governed not by logic but by parliament.

'The side of the leave battlebus should proclaim: Turn Out, Grandpa; Chill Out, Grandson

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

1 like · Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on May 30, 2016 22:00

Free speech is under attack, from Beijing to Istanbul | Timothy Garton Ash

Britain, the land of George Orwell, must stand up against this anti-liberal tide, and keep its government’s hands off the BBC

Wherever you look, free speech is under attack. In China, an independent-minded journalist disappears at the airport, one of many to be detained, censored and intimidated. In Egypt, an Italian student researching for his Cambridge University doctorate is found tortured and murdered, while hundreds of bloggers and activists have been detained. In Turkey, two prominent journalists are sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for publishing an important story about covert Turkish arms deliveries to Syria, while two more receive two-year sentences for reprinting cartoons from Charlie Hebdo. Since 2014 some 1,845 suits have been filed against people alleged to have “insulted” the thin-skinned Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

What can we do? Secure free speech at home. Support those defending it in far more difficult conditions abroad

View more on Timothy Garton Ash's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on May 12, 2016 09:51