Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 250
July 15, 2018
All you need to know about Ethiopia and Eritrea’s rapprochement
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Hawassa, Ethiopia. Image: Fitsem Arega, Chief of Staff, Prime Minister Office, Ethiopia.
By the time this is published, it could be old news.
To recap: On June 5th, Ethiopia declared it was fully implementing the Algiers Peace Treaty signed between the two countries in 2000. This was followed by a long silence on the Eritrean side. Then, suddenly, two weeks later, Eritrea not only accepted the peace offer, but took a step further and sent a delegation to Ethiopia. Shortly after, Ethiopia���s prime minister visited Eritrea. The two leaders signed a joint Declaration of Peace; telephone service between the two countries immediately resumed after 20 years; Ethiopian Airlines will start regular flights to Asmara (a direct flight between the two countries would take an hour; it currently can take up to a day); and roads are about to be opened between the two countries, etcetera. On 14 July, Eritrea���s president Isaias Afwerki visited Ethiopia for three days. The Eritrean embassy in Addis Ababa is expected to be re-opened during Afwerki���s visit in Ethiopia.
It has been a long time since Eritrea received any positive international coverage. At best, the country fed off visits by Eritrean-American celebrities in search of ���home��� or who represent aspects of Eritrean culture at public events. Like the the comedian Tiffany Haddish (her late father is Eritrean) ��stole the show at the Oscars when she wore an Eritrean dress. Separately, Eritrean cyclist ��Daniel Teklehaimanot made history in the Tour de France when he became the ��first African to wear the ���King of the Mountains��� jersey. Otherwise, the country has been inextricably linked to tragedies (most notably having the dubious distinction of exporting the most African refugees from any country, the majority to Ethiopia.).
What has been the responses to the peace deal between the states? You could basically categorize them as three kinds:
The genuinely happy
The excitement shown by Eritreans when Ethiopia���s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, came to Asmara was close to the euphoric feelings felt during the country���s independence in 1991. Some Eritrean mothers, who composed praise songs in honor of Abiy Ahmed, named him peace ���Nabi��� (Arabic/Tigrinya word for prophet).
Similarly, Afwerki was warmly welcomed in Ethiopia. The euphoric response to the normalization of relations has been manifested in many odd, mass pursuits in Ethiopia, including random calls to Eritrea. Tickets of the first flights between the two countries were sold out in a couple of hours.
The stakes for both sides are great. Many families who have been separated for two decades will be reunited, trade is expected to resume; the landlocked Ethiopia will have access to the closest port, etcetera. Eritreans who have been held hostage for twenty years are hoping to restart living.
As for Ethiopia, there euphoria is high as Abiy has undertaken a number of reforms, including releasing political prisoners. As Nanjala Nyabola argues at Al Jazeera, ���Ethiopia constructed the most elaborate security state in East Africa. Millions of dollars that could have been spent on food security and development have instead been wasted on armies and surveillance, turning citizens into spies and destroying freedom of expression.��� There is hope this will be done away with.
The sincerely concerned
Eritreans have stopped waiting for official communication or real news from their government a long time ago. Apart from public rumors, they mainly depend on reading between the lines from interviews and speeches of their president. The silence from the Eritrean officials has been long. As many Eritreans also lost trust in their leadership, large sections of the Eritrean population is genuinely worried even if Afwerki is at all ready to make improvements. The lack of official communication from the state has opened a room for over-interpreting his speeches, toxic attacks from opposition media in exile, and wider cynicism.
Beyond trying to decipher officials��� body language or the self-congratulations by Eritrean and Ethiopian officials, the world is waiting for official announcements from the Eritrean government. Many are even worried how the Declaration of Peace between the two countries will apply to Eritrea. It has been years since the country has ceased to function normal. Quick intervention is essential in almost all sectors, including but not limited such as: lifting the ban on trade (placed in 2003); lifting the ban on construction (placed in 2006); abolishing of civilian army from the ages of 18-70 (placed in 2012); an immediate declaration on the standing army and an end to the indefinite military service (justified since the border was of the two countries in 1998); free all prisoners of conscience (mainly after 2001); free prisoners of faith and allow religions (placed in 2002), lift the restriction of movement within the country and outside, allow international monitoring groups to access the country, etc.
Despite all the progress on the Ethiopian side, the Eritrean government has not shown any signs of improvements or commitments so far.
Many Eritreans hope the country���s forced, compulsory conscription (for all young people) ends. (This system is cited as one of the main reasons Eritreans flee their country at such levels.) But in a short speech (probably the shortest in his entire tenure) Afwerki gave at the graduation ceremony of the 31st round of national service, many expected him to at least announce that this round would be the last school year to be taught at the military training center. Yet he only pronounced his departure to Ethiopia.
Many Eritreans are celebrating the rapprochement hoping that there is no way to return from this.
The irrevocably unsettled
Eritrea���s reclusive policy attracted all kinds of people. Whomever volunteered to side with the tyrannical rule received the highest state media coverage and could meet with the most senior government officials. Some non-Eritrean nationals could even claim that our nationality would be revoked if we write against the state abuse.
For others it is a career. Ms. Bronwyn Bruton, deputy director of think-tank group, Atlantic Council, is a case in point. (Check here to know more about the think-tank and its director Peter Pham). Back in 2015, Bruton announced that Eritrea has demobilized more than 100,000 soldiers, appointed a chairperson to draft a constitution, and restored the indefinite national service to 18 months (none of the three claims were true). On other occasions she discussed her meeting with President Isaias Afwerki and other top officials and praised their humility.
Slowly this reached another level. With her ���yes, but��� sophomoric argument and privileged oversimplifications, she wrote that things in Eritrea are not as bad as reported from outside. She became a guest speaker at the ruling party���s seminars. Atlantic Council then organized discussion under the theme, ���Rethinking Eritrea.��� ��Eventually, she started appearing on public forums to counter anything written against Eritrea, even in the comment sections of articles).
The rapprochement is causing a crisis for Ms. Bruton as her relevance is about to end. Last month, she wrote an op-ed for The New York Times arguing it is better if peace be delayed. According to her unchecked claim, Eritrea has accepted the peace offer because ���ensuring stability in Ethiopia is more important to them than rushing to finally end the old stalemate over the border.���
It is worth mentioning that one of the sponsors of Ms. Bruton and her organization is Nevsun Resources, a Canadian mining company operating in Eritrea whose work could be affected by the peace process. ��As Africa Talks reports, the Atlantic Council, has received between $100,000 and $249,000 in contributions from Nevsun Resources.
Nevsun Resources has been widely accused of using slave labor in Eritrea and are facing a lawsuit by Eritrean workers. ��The mining company has been beneficial of the crisis in Eritrea and peace would naturally pose unexpected challenges. That is also why the company is recruiting lobbyists in human rights forums to distort facts and justify abuses. In addition to Ms. Bruton, Nevsun Resources have recruited a British lawyer, Ruby Sandhu. In the last interactive dialogue (in the middle of the peace process) Ms. Sandu openly accused Eritrean activists of ���unashamedly provid[ing] fabricated stories in the public domain.���
The rest
Everyone was tired of the senseless war and later unjustified deadlock. No wonder many leading media outlets in the West are celebrating. The UN Security Council, for whom the Eritrean file is a priority, praised the rapprochement as ���historic.��� ��As the Horn of Africa has been a theatre of proxy wars, such normalization of relations is also expected to have a long-lasting effect in the region. Overall this is also a promising sign across the continent.
Media outside Eritrea, particularly in the West, human rights organizations and websites covering the continent (including on this site, here, and here) have long portrayed Afwerki as the worst ��villain. They were not far off: Eritrea is a one-party state with Afwerki at the head responsible for creating all the chaos the country has undergone over the last two decades. But now they���re changing their tune: Suddenly all they can go about is Afwerki���s so-called ���charisma.��� Even their favorite image of Afweki has been replaced. Like here, here and here.
How things will unfold is difficult to forecast in the fast-changing relations of the two countries. The answer to all questions? Of course wait and see.
July 14, 2018
Everything ends with a song
Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. Venue for the 2018 World Cup Final between France and Croatia. Image: Wiki Commons.
“Dear Sirs, the comedy / We are now judging / Depicts the life–lest we’re mistaken / Of the good people in this audience. / When oppressed, they curse and cry; / Writhe and seethe against their wrongs / Still everything ends with a song.”
–Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro (1778)
It also begins with one.
When France faces Croatia in the final of World Cup 2018 on Sunday, 15 July, both teams will line up on the field to listen to renditions of their respective national anthems. By FIFA rules they can be no longer than 90 seconds. A band from the hosting country will play shortened instrumental versions of the songs to which players, staff and fans are welcome to sing if the spirit moves them, and if their anthem has lyrics.
And sung they have in this World Cup: we���ve seen fans sing well past the mark, players belt out with their eyes closed, tightly packaged moments of fervor that illustrate growing nationalistic feelings across the globe.
We���ve all laughed at the fans��� costumes, yet they also say much about self-definition. Croatian fans wear water polo caps in honor of player Vedran Corluka���s vaunted doggedness; the French go for folk costumes and local color trinkets (berets and baguettes, of course) and historical nods, some flaunting Revolutionary-era bicorn hats and jackets, and others helmets with hanging braids evoking the cartoonish vision of ancient Gaul made popular by the comic book Ast��rix et Ob��lix.
It���s all in good fun, but even good fun has ramifications: however humorous, like the anthems these costumes are supposed to hit a nerve, referring to easily recognizable, defining eras or events. The infamous phrase ���our ancestors the Gauls��� once was the opening sentence of French history books bandying a ���national novel��� simultaneously promoting the democratic values of the French Revolution and connecting it to a singular, separate and, it���s implied, white French ethnic group. The silly costumes give us a sense of each country���s self-image and lately perhaps more than ever since the 1930s, even as football-related migration is more brisk than ever, even as the world sees the most profound refugee crisis, nations have been projecting visions of increasing insularity that more often than not breathe what Frantz Fanon once called an ���all-white truth��� from which black people are taught to stay out.
Ethno-nationalism is never too far from football. Just this week, it was revealed that former Croatia coach Igor Stimac, echoing the spate of posts evoking French players��� African roots, hinted that they were maybe not quite French. Though many pointed out the hypocrisy of a man who once lined up Brazilian-born players on his national team. The move, here as always, is aimed at questioning the legitimacy of a team as a representation of its country���s racial makeup. Stimac���s gross comment is in line with the narrative of abnegation, strife and underdog status echoed in every other national anthem out there, an exceptionalist narrative that demands separation and hierarchy. Everyone wants to be David to Goliath. But it also points to the particular skeletons of French history, and the way they rise up to the surface of the football field in bodies, in movements and in song.
Of the seven stanzas of La Marseillaise, only the first is routinely sung, and at best one usually skips the following five stanzas for the last two. Yet the second stanza is not uninteresting:
This conspiratorial horde of slaves, traitors and kings, what does it mean to do?
For whom these loathsome tethers, these long-prepared irons?
For us, Frenchmen, ah! What an outrage
What transports it must foster
It is us they contemplate
Returning to ancient slavery!
Here ring the strains of the Enlightenment and they get right at the period���s essential paradox: Great Britain and France, the two nations that profited most from the Atlantic slave trade loved nothing more than writing about not being slaves. Think of the quintessential anthem of British imperialism, ���Rule Britannia,��� and its boastful refrain ���Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves, and Britons never never shall be slaves,��� evoking a naval supremacy ironically built on the backs of slave and impressed sailors. When Rouget de Lisle wrote this, France was not just facing all of Europe: it was attempting to put down a revolution in the West Indian colony of Saint-Domingue, where the enslaved population had risen to overthrow French colonial power. It would take them a decade, fighting off France, Spain and England at inestimable human cost. But they did it, creating in the process the nation of Haiti. That history, routinely silenced in French education and culture, is nevertheless embodied on the field in Presnel Kimpembe, whose mother hails from the West Indian island. Taste that irony; its blend should feel somewhat familiar to American readers.
George Orwell once stated, ���big-scale sport is itself, I think, merely another effect of the causes that have produced nationalism���: and so nationalistic manifestations around the game follow the ebb and flow of local and international politics. We have seen players on all teams belt out these songs as if their lives depended on it, and maybe, sometimes, they do. The evolution of anthem expectations in France are well documented. In 1998, fascist goon Jean-Marie Le Pen���s pearl-clutching about the national anthem was fairly isolated; most mainstream French politicians and commentators found the demand risible. Yet they discussed it, and then more. By 2010 French politicians across the board demanded that players sing the song, and the silent types like Benzema, Rib��ry or Nasri were skewered for not doing so. We have reached a time in 2018 when players singing is taken for granted.
But singing was not always such a big deal in France and elsewhere. French athletes in general and football players in particular used to wait out the anthem with their mouths closed, stern look on their faces. Watch France���s golden generation, Michel Platini���s 1980s, who were twice World Cup semifinalists and winners of Euro 84,��here or there. Not one of them even pretends to mouth the words. Not that they did not know them: as Platini testified, he never used to sing what he saw as a war song: ���I might have sung it had I been going to war, but I was going to play football.��� As he further states: ���When white players did not sing, it was not an issue. When players of color did not sing, it was. That���s shameful.����� That is also a practice without borders.
As Colin Kaepernick has been painfully reminding the United States over the past few years, sports is political and has routinely been used for state-sponsored propaganda throughout the modern era. Here black athletes are expected to shut up during the anthem for a reason: they might actually say something. For kneeling during the Star Spangled Banner and demonstrating that things could be said without words, Kaepernick has lost his job, and the rich white men in control of the sport done their damnedest to placate the rich white man in the White House and make sure no such uppityness is ever witnessed on the gridiron again. Further yet: Trump demanded change, and his minions at the head of NFL franchises have devised new rules requiring players on the field to ���stand and show respect��� on threat of a fine. Players may protest in their locker rooms, if they so desire, far from American eyes. A visible black body must be a docile black body. Nothing new under the sun. In the end, the idea that French players are French is hardly provocative. The national team is a siren song of ideals of individual merit and exceptionalism that in themselves, are far from incompatible with fascism, no matter the players��� background. As much as I like to think guitars and football can kill fascists, I also know that like cockroaches, fascists survive anything, and as Haythem Guesmi just pointed out on this site, it is certainly true that many of them can deal with model black citizens just fine. So long as they’re standing for the right songs.
Nothing that happens in the final will make any profound immediate difference in the way black and brown people are treated in and by France. For all the meaning we can impose upon these teams and these players, they are aristocrats of sorts, heroes in wonderful tales of exceptionalism routinely used to silence the many quotidian tales of oppression and exploitation that make up the foundation of the Western world. But then, rooted as popular culture artifacts are in the very structures they may or may not criticize, what political effects they have are more likely to be progressive rather than revolutionary; symbolic rather than concrete. The impact of culture is difficult to assess: we can discuss the messages black music carries, but it doesn���t mean that racists will listen, and even worse, if they listen, they don���t actually have to care. Everything ends with a song, and when those echoes die down we can always go back to whatever it is we were doing before. More often than not we are forced to.
And yet: I���m one to think that those echoes matter. On Sunday I���ll root for France, not out of national pride, but because I like their sound. Not the warlike strains of that two-hundred year old song, mind you: but the diasporic soundtrack DJ Kimpembe has been beaming throughout the world in video after video. Haitian kompa of Platinum D, the coup�� d��cal�� of Congolese DJ Marechal, the African pop-infused sounds of French musicians DJ Leska and especially Naza: his injunction to ���mouiller le maillot et mailler��� (wet the jersey and get loot) in MMM is not unproblematic. On the face of it, it is very much a celebration of capitalist logic, yet even as such, it necessarily throws in relief angelic definitions of national belonging. Professional football is juicy business and so are citizenship and national belonging. Recently Antoine Griezmann was telling journalists with a thin smile how proud he is to be French and live in France (he doesn���t), where the food is good and the journalists are pretty. I���m not one to judge whether or not he and the other players truly care, but I hope they don���t. They have no reason to. They play the jingoistic game like they have all of the other games they���ve been asked to play. Kudos to them, I suppose.
More crucially maybe, what I���ll root for in the final is pickup football: the painstaking, exhilarating and profoundly frustrating experience of struggling to find harmony with a bunch of strangers, and what reflections of it I see on the field, whether in red and white checkers or in that deep sea blue. And when the game is over in Russia, I���ll go play another at the field down the street. I���ll find a song to sing on the way.
Note: All thanks to Tabitha McIntosh (@TabitaSurge) for her keen eyes and editorial assistance.
The Respectable French
Image: Wiki Commons
Football exerts a tortured fascination on the French public. It is fashionable to scoff at the benighted masses turning to football as an opium and to deplore the bad behavior and flashy spending of footballers. But everyone goes back to being a fan if Les Bleus are winning.
The only country to qualify for three World Cup finals in twenty years, France also flamed out in the group stage at two of the tournaments in between 1998 and now. As Les Bleus��� athletic performance has seesawed, so has the team���s perception by an increasingly racist, classist society.
Countless retrospectives have looked back at the French 1998 squad and the illusory dream of ���black-blanc-beur��� unity. But while the memory of that victory 20 years ago is beloved, what really shapes the current iteration of Les Bleus was the tumultuous 2010 World Cup. That tournament was not just an athletic failure, it was the site of a social conflict that the French Football Federation seems determined to never repeat.
In South Africa, France���s stacked roster (Thierry Henry, Franck Rib��ry, Patrice Evra, Yoann Gourcuff, among them) underperformed. Everyone seemed certain why. Commentators played up the supposed fracture between players from ���rough neighborhoods��� (Rib��ry; the ���jemenfoutiste��� Nicolas Anelka) versus those from the provinces (Hugo Lloris, the banker and lawyer���s son; ���polite, well-mannered, calm��� Gourcuff). The coach, Raymond Domenech, was frustrated by the players��� strong personalities���not only their interpersonal tensions but also their desire to have a say in tactics.
At halftime during their match against Mexico, Domenech clashed with Anelka, and according to the sports magazine L���Equipe, Anelka said to Domenech, ���go get fucked, you son of a whore.��� Domenech sent him off and would send him home him a few days later following a media outcry.
Years later, the coach would admit Anelka hadn���t uttered the words L���Equipe printed, saying what had offended him gravely was the player���s use of the informal pronoun tu instead of vous. Domenech had expected deference, like that of an employee to a boss.
Fittingly, Domenech���s attachment to hierarchy sparked a labor dispute. All 22 remaining players went on strike in solidarity with Anelka���but also maybe to remind the coach and the country that without them there was no team, that they were not disposable. Soon eliminated, they flew home to face national opprobrium.
The strike was the subject of national outrage targeted directly at the banlieusard players who���d led it. Sports minister Roselyne Bachelot called the players ���immature gangsters���; for Acad��mie fran��aise philosopher Alain Finkielkraut they were ���arrogant and unintelligent thugs,��� evidence that ���we must reckon with the ethnic and religious divisions undermining this team.���
Since 2010, the French Football Federation has sought to define itself against the strike and cultivate a ���respectable,��� controlled team. The strike was led by players who had the stature to stand up to the management, because you don���t just replace Rib��ry or Henry; perhaps this is why by 2014 a new crop of mild-mannered fresh faces was phased in.
This year, Didier Deschamps has assembled a side of players who can compartmentalize their strong personalities or just don���t have one. They are captained by Lloris, the milquetoast lone holdover from 2010. All toe the line in press briefings, fluent in la langue de bois, the French art of saying nothing. On the field, Deschamps plays politics, suppressing the attacking talents of Paul Pogba���France���s creative force, who had the misfortune to be a flamboyant black player with fun hairstyles���while spotlighting great white hopes Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud. The watchword seems to be: don���t produce a star that can���t be controlled. Any charismatic, talented player who is independent-minded and doesn���t fit the white, bourgeois profile���any potential leader who might side against or simply look bad for the team management���must become a cog.
Yes, the obvious exception to this rule is Kylian Mbapp��, whose greatness is so irrepressible that the FFF machine just has to deal with it. The team���s wunderkind impressed all observers with his almost surreal humility and calm���but it���s not like he had a choice, as an incredibly young black player commanding record sums of money, other than to be cartoonishly exemplary. The second he slips up, the tide is sure to turn.
But for now, the team is an impeccable PR success. It���s also a boon for the increasingly unpopular president Emmanuel Macron, who could use a wave of positivity. Macron���s government even used the World Cup as a pretext to delay the announcement of the anti-poverty plan. Don���t worry, all is well in the startup nation.
The Respectable, Start-Up Nation
Image: Wiki Commons
Football exerts a tortured fascination on the French public. It is fashionable to scoff at the benighted masses turning to football as an opium and to deplore the bad behavior and flashy spending of footballers. But everyone goes back to being a fan if Les Bleus are winning.
The only country to qualify for three World Cup finals in twenty years, France also flamed out in the group stage at two of the tournaments in between 1998 and now. As Les Bleus��� athletic performance has seesawed, so has the team���s perception by an increasingly racist, classist society.
Countless retrospectives have looked back at the French 1998 squad and the illusory dream of ���black-blanc-beur��� unity. But while the memory of that victory 20 years ago is beloved, what really shapes the current iteration of Les Bleus was the tumultuous 2010 World Cup. That tournament was not just an athletic failure, it was the site of a social conflict that the French Football Federation seems determined to never repeat.
In South Africa, France���s stacked roster (Thierry Henry, Franck Rib��ry, Patrice Evra, Yoann Gourcuff, among them) underperformed. Everyone seemed certain why. Commentators played up the supposed fracture between players from ���rough neighborhoods��� (Rib��ry; the ���jemenfoutiste��� Nicolas Anelka) versus those from the provinces (Hugo Lloris, the banker and lawyer���s son; ���polite, well-mannered, calm��� Gourcuff). The coach, Raymond Domenech, was frustrated by the players��� strong personalities���not only their interpersonal tensions but also their desire to have a say in tactics.
At halftime during their match against Mexico, Domenech clashed with Anelka, and according to the sports magazine L���Equipe, Anelka said to Domenech, ���go get fucked, you son of a whore.��� Domenech sent him off and would send him home him a few days later following a media outcry.
Years later, the coach would admit Anelka hadn���t uttered the words L���Equipe printed, saying what had offended him gravely was the player���s use of the informal pronoun tu instead of vous. Domenech had expected deference, like that of an employee to a boss.
Fittingly, Domenech���s attachment to hierarchy sparked a labor dispute. All 22 remaining players went on strike in solidarity with Anelka���but also maybe to remind the coach and the country that without them there was no team, that they were not disposable. Soon eliminated, they flew home to face national opprobrium.
The strike was the subject of national outrage targeted directly at the banlieusard players who���d led it. Sports minister Roselyne Bachelot called the players ���immature gangsters���; for Acad��mie fran��aise philosopher Alain Finkielkraut they were ���arrogant and unintelligent thugs,��� evidence that ���we must reckon with the ethnic and religious divisions undermining this team.���
Since 2010, the French Football Federation has sought to define itself against the strike and cultivate a ���respectable,��� controlled team. The strike was led by players who had the stature to stand up to the management, because you don���t just replace Rib��ry or Henry; perhaps this is why by 2014 a new crop of mild-mannered fresh faces was phased in.
This year, Didier Deschamps has assembled a side of players who can compartmentalize their strong personalities or just don���t have one. They are captained by Lloris, the milquetoast lone holdover from 2010. All toe the line in press briefings, fluent in la langue de bois, the French art of saying nothing. On the field, Deschamps plays politics, suppressing the attacking talents of Paul Pogba���France���s creative force, who had the misfortune to be a flamboyant black player with fun hairstyles���while spotlighting great white hopes Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud. The watchword seems to be: don���t produce a star that can���t be controlled. Any charismatic, talented player who is independent-minded and doesn���t fit the white, bourgeois profile���any potential leader who might side against or simply look bad for the team management���must become a cog.
Yes, the obvious exception to this rule is Kylian Mbapp��, whose greatness is so irrepressible that the FFF machine just has to deal with it. The team���s wunderkind impressed all observers with his almost surreal humility and calm���but it���s not like he had a choice, as an incredibly young black player commanding record sums of money, other than to be cartoonishly exemplary. The second he slips up, the tide is sure to turn.
But for now, the team is an impeccable PR success. It���s also a boon for the increasingly unpopular president Emmanuel Macron, who could use a wave of positivity. Macron���s government even used the World Cup as a pretext to delay the announcement of the anti-poverty plan. Don���t worry, all is well in the startup nation.
Kylian Mbapp��, Karim Benzema and France���s Second-Class Citizens
Image Credit: Metro
Fascists love Kylian Mbapp�� because his exceptional talents and attitude confirm to their ideal of citizenship for black and brown people. The 19-year old kid, the new Pele, is not only the amazing forward who is now the second-most expensive transfer in the history of professional football and the third teenager ever to play in a World Cup final, he is also wonderful philanthropist who will donate his entire World Cup earnings to fund a charity that sets up sport activities for children with disabilities.
Mbapp��, and other black French football players such as Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kant�� transcend race and class because they continue to embody these assumptions of what it means to be a good French citizen.
After the semi-final when France defeated Belgium, Marine Le Pen, the French far-right National Front leader — who insists that ���football is not her thing��� and who once sneered: ���When I look at Les Bleus, I don���t recognize France or myself��� — tweeted her support for the French team.
For fascists, Mbapp�� is the football version of Mamoudou Gassama, the heroic Malian immigrant who was offered fast-tracked and honorary French citizenship and rewarded with a fireman job. Gassama, in a moment of exceptional heroism, climbed four floors of an apartment building to save a four-year-old boy who was hanging from a balcony. Le Pen, of all people, saluted an act of extreme bravery and publicly supported his naturalization.
In a new poll published this week, the French chose Mbapp�� as their favourite player with 57% of the votes, ahead of Antoine Griezmann and Hugo Lloris, two other white players who are also stars of the national team in Russia. At the same time, recent polls showed that the majority of French people believe there are ���too many immigrants” in France. 56% of them supported their government decision to refuse the passage of Aquarius, the rescue ship carrying 629 refugees and migrants.
This binary opposition between exceptional black and brown immigrants and those deemed ���a bad batch,��� goes beyond recent political tribalism that seemingly divides metropole France into neoliberals and fascists. During colonialism, the French framed naturalization and citizenship as a key resource for elevation and integration of the ���Negroes of the colonies.��� The assimilationist approach, which continues to drive French policy on immigration, relied on ideals of exceptionalism and civility. Here the only difference between neoliberals and fascists lies in their capacity to manage and ���mask this racism by a multiplicity of nuances.���
Failure to accommodate these assimilationist demands puts Blacks and Arabs at risk of being excluded as second-class citizens. Or worse, of being denaturalized. These things are never complex to me; there is always this tacit certainty that now or in fifty years, a second citizenship will be like a temporary visa, a random privilege that can be revoked depending on who is governing.
Compare Mbappe to the reception given to Karim Benzema, the Real Madrid forward.
Fascists hate Karim Benzema, the Banlieue boy par excellence. Born to Algerian immigrants, Benzema is considered, according to Zinedine Zidane, himself a French legend and until recently Benzema���s coach, to be the ���world’s best No. 9.��� For Zidane, Benzema is the epitome of what a modern striker should be. Yet, none of this proved enough to secure Benzema a position in the final French 23-man squad for the 2018 World Cup.
Many media explanations for Benzema���s exclusion rehearse the narrative that Benzema was excluded from the French team since 2015 because of his alleged involvement in a sex-tape blackmail case against his former teammate Mathieu Valbuena.
But the malaise is much more profound between Benzema and France. Long before the blackmail scandal, Benzema was accused of spitting during the singing of the French national anthem and targeted by Le Pen���s Front National over his refusal to the sing the Marseillaise. Even though the blackmail charge was dropped a year ago and Benzema not charged with anything, he is still persona non grata�� to French national team coach Didier Deschamps, the national federation, and of course, to fascists.
Benzema was clinical when he declared to Spanish sports paper, Marca: ���Deschamps folded due to pressure from France’s racist element.��� To which Marine le Pen responded by accusing Benzema of ���hiding his wickedness behind a violent charge against the French people.���
Marine le Pen���s ��reference to Karim���s ���wickedness��� and othering him ���against the French people��� is meant to degrade him and to rehearse the same colonial vocabulary of uncivility and aggressiveness. After all, Benzema, the Muslim of Arab background, is an ideal subject for the irrational fears and hysteria among fascists and pseudo-humanist neoliberals. (Incidentally, Mbappe���s mother is from Algeria. His father is from Cameroon. In the popular imagination, however, he is associated with his father���s background and thus black.)
Mbapp�� and Benzema are black and brown bodies in white spaces. They are never safe. And same with colonialism, fascism and neoliberalism is continental in its scope.
What happened to Karim can also happen to Kylian. For a nation which oppresses its black and brown citizens when they don���t fit the mold of a “good immigrant;” a nation which justifies xenophobia and exclusion – and therefore criminalize the ���bad batch��� – is ���already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased, to quote Aime Cesaire.���
There is this repressed fear that these exceptional immigrants can always fall back into their inferior and barbaric instincts.
The notion of the French team as an African team is indefensible.
What Would a World Cup Win for France Mean in the French Caribbean?
Raphael Varane, the France defender, whose father is from Martinique, is one in a long line of players with links to the French Caribbean. Image: Twitter.
The symbols associated with France���s advance to the World Cup final have followed a familiar formula: the singing of Marseillaise and police breaking up over exuberant celebrations at the Champs ��lys��es. As for the players, their post-match celebrations however, are not what some would consider traditionally French. The victory playlist is Martinican zouk and Haitian kompa, a reminder that French can mean many things. In a viral video doing the rounds, Presnel Kimpembe, whose mother is from Haiti, organizes the music. Apart from Kimpembe, two other players in the 2018 World Cup squad, have strong connections to the French Caribbean. Thomas Lemar was born in Guadeloupe and Raphael Varane���s (he scored the team���s first goal in the quarterfinal game against Uruguay) father is from Martinique. A long line of French national team players–Liliam Thuram and Thierry Henry, among them, have connections to French ���overseas possessions��� in the Caribbean. Thuram was born in Guadeloupe, while Henry���s mother is from Martinique and his father from Guadeloupe.
The result is that the French team today is as multicultural as it was when France won its first and only World Cup twenty years ago. Over half of the players have roots in the Caribbean and Africa. Much ink was spilled in 1998 about the so-called rainbow team, and much ink will be spilled again in the coming months about what the 2018 team���s diversity means for race and national identity in France. French President, Emanuel Macron, struggling to shed his image as an elitist president, will no doubt seek to ride the wave of the revival of ���black, blanc, beur��� to higher popularity in the polls.
But the political effects of the French team���s diversity are not only contained within the borders of the Hexagon, as mainland France is known. They reverberate across the ocean, in Africa and the French Caribbean. The debates about race and citizenship are not only happening in the French cities that many of the players call home. They are just as crucial in the Caribbean islands where some of them have roots. So, what would a World Cup victory mean on an island like Martinique that often registers in the French imaginary as no more than a vacation destination, but whose inhabitants hold French citizenship?
Here in Martinique, on the eve of the World Cup final, the euphoria about a possible French victory hovers like a thin layer of hope that barely veils the simmering anger at France���s neglect of the island and pessimism about the future. The high cost of living has been an ongoing reality that exploded in a 44-day strike in January 2009. Prices of basic goods remain high, but the palpable anger and disenchantment goes beyond the cost of living. There is something in the air. Or more precisely, there is something in the water and in the soil.
In 2007, two Martinican public figures, Louis Boutrin and Rapha��l Confiant, broke the news of an incredible scandal in the French Caribbean. Their book, Chronicle of a Poisoning Foretold: The Scandal of Chlordecone in the French Antilles, 1972-2002, charged that Martinique���s and Guadeloupe���s soil and water had been poisoned by the pesticide chlordecone used on banana plantations. France had permitted the continued use of a toxic pesticide in the Caribbean over two decades after its interdiction in France.
The report sent a shockwave throughout the islands. A flurry of medical tests and studies by government bodies, journalists and independent organizations revealed the potential links between the contamination and the startling statistic that the small island of Martinique today has the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world. The court case to determine responsibility has dragged on for 12 years and is still ongoing. Recent journalistic expos��s have brought the problem of choloredecone poisoning back into the spotlight this year. They are a reminder that the pesticide is still ever present. It will take centuries for the molecule to decompose on its own. For many Martinicans, the fact that for decades France allowed the use of a banned toxic substance in the Caribbean is further evidence of the continued devaluing of French citizenship in the overseas departments.
The anger and frustration over the chlordecone situation has been compounded by ecological problems in an increasingly warmer climate. Since 2011, unprecedented quantities of Sargassum, a brown seaweed, have washed up on Caribbean beaches. Many of the beautiful white sand beaches that draw tourists to Martinique in the summer months are now covered in layers of brown algae that emit a noxious gas. Coastal inhabitants have reported headaches, vomiting and diarrhea. Schools in the worst hit areas like the town of Robert recently had to be evacuated.
Living with the effects of a seaweed invasion for a summer can range anywhere from unpleasant to irritating to dangerous. But as with the chlordecone poisoning, the long, interminable period of politicians��� hand-wringing and inaction exacerbates the problem. Seven years is a long time to wait for something, anything to happen. Conversations about the Sargassum invasion these days inevitably end with someone expressing the hope that the seaweed will end up on the beaches of Miami. ���If this happens in America someone will finally take action��� they tell me. ���No one listens to us. No one cares about us.���
Poisoned water and invasive seaweed have nothing to do with soccer. Except that they do when French Antilleans have a significant presence on the national team but relatively less political agency. So, what would a World Cup win mean for French Antilleans who inhabit a double location between French political citizenship and Caribbean cultural identity, between the euphoria of possibly being world champions, and the anger at being neglected as, in the words of Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, the wretched of the earth?
It might mean a temporary period of elation, a reprieve from the frustration of being treated like second-class citizens. It will mean several days of celebration with zouk and kompa blaring not only from the speakers of the soccer team���s bus in Russia but also from the cars and houses of their compatriots in the Caribbean. But it will also be a reminder that the ghosts of France���s colonial past continue to haunt not only the inner cities of Paris but also the Caribbean islands. Underneath the victory songs will be the rumblings of discontent that may very well be the chronicle of a social revolution foretold.
July 13, 2018
Nigeria���s World Cup Adventure is Over: Do We Still Love Her?
Nigerian forward, Alex Iwobi. Image: Nike.
The quadrennial football tournament has a tendency to make it feel as though we live in a more pluralistic world, one where players of various racial and religious backgrounds, from both Western and non-Western countries can compete squarely on a level playing field. Of course, none of that is real, but I suppose it���s healthy, at least once in a while, to forget that we live in an inequitable world.
National pride soars during the tournament for every country that qualifies, but as with most things, Nigerians took such pride to unmatched levels. In the lead-up to the games, it was as though we existed in a time-suspending bubble that allowed us to relish freely in the pandemonium surrounding our kits, the increasing influence of our cultural exports, and the ever-indomitable Nigerian spirit. It was a welcome feeling that, even I, neither a lover of sports or conspicuous patriotism, was not immune to. I purchased one of our modish green and white jerseys, and even said a prayer over the Super Eagles prior to their first game���arguably the single most ���Nigerian��� thing I could have done. As Nigeria���s national anthem beckoned, the ���compatriot in me arose.���
Collective reverence for Nigeria helped provide a timely distraction from how our country is usually perceived: a youth codeine crisis, an ongoing conflict over land in the country���s central region, and an aging President Muhammadu Buhari���s unfounded appraisal of Nigerian youth.
Focusing on sports allegiance to Nigeria, offered a break from pondering over all of its widely-documented social ills. I unguardedly held on to hope that if Nigeria was to see success at the World Cup, that success would help establish a more triumphant story, one that would eclipse the harsh realities that often make it a challenge to love Nigeria.
The admiration we afforded our country in those weeks before the World Cup was the sort of effortless, unconditional love that a person grants to tasty food or a child who gets all A���s. Now that we���ve been knocked out of the World Cup���our run cut much shorter than most of us would have liked���it���s time to return to the tough love that sometimes makes us want to pull our hair out.
It���s the kind of obligatory, yet unrelenting love that Nigeria���s team captain, John Mikel Obi, displayed so stoically when he faced Argentina despite learning just four hours before the game that his father had been abducted in Southeastern Nigeria���again. ���I was confused. I did not know what to do, but in the end I knew that I could not let 180 million Nigerians down,��� he told reporters. Mikel Obi���s situation read as an exasperating metaphor for how Nigeria mistreats the very people who strive to put their best foot forward���no pun intended���in its name.
The prolific James Baldwin once wrote of the United States: ���I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.���
I have similar feelings about my homeland. Because I love Nigeria, I will continue to focus on the bad. I will openly acknowledge its shortcomings and even reprimand it like a problem child when it misbehaves. I will encourage it to do better: be more equitable, just, and collectively minded, not just when it comes to football. That���s my way of lovingly cheering Nigeria on, whether on or off the playing field.
The new anti-migrant national consensus
Leader of the far-right League (Lega Nord) party, Matteo Salvini.
Italian politics has taken a sharp turn to the right. The post-electoral populist alliance of the far-right League, led by Matteo Salvini, and the post-ideological 5 Star Movement, led by Luigi Di Maio rode a wave of populism. But this populism has echoes on the left, portending similar moves around the globe. Italian politics are global politics.
The government is headed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a professor of private law with no political experience. He ��is effectively under the tutelage of Salvini and Di Maio, his deputy prime ministers. Salvini is the new home affairs minister (overseeing all immigration matters), and Di Maio is in charge of the ministry of economic development, and the ministry of labor and welfare. The coalition partners are committed to stopping new arrivals of immigrants and refugees, deporting undocumented migrants in large numbers, and prioritizing Italian citizens in social and economic policy.
On 9 June, the Aquarius ship, carrying 629 refugees rescued in the Mediterranean, was refused the right to dock in Italy. This is part of a wholesale attack launched by Salvini on humanitarian rescue ships operated by NGOs. Since then, other NGO ships have been refused entry. In a shocking move ��� and in clear violation of international and national laws ��� the Italian coast guard is now unwilling to intervene when called for help to rescue immigrants and refugees at risk of drowning in Libyan waters.
At the end of June, when one such call was refused, around 1,000 people were rescued by the Libyan coast guard and brought back to Libya, a country with documented evidence of widespread human rights abuses against migrants and refugees, including torture, rape, slavery and other forms of forced labor.
Evoking specters of Nazi-style policies, Salvini announced a census of Roma people, with the aim of deporting those who are not Italian citizens. He also added that ���unfortunately, we will have to keep Italian Roma, because they can���t be deported.��� He backtracked afterwards, but continued to fuel anti-Roma hate on his social media. These moves are part of ongoing negotiations with other EU states to further tighten European borders and stop migration flows to Italy, and deepen Italy���s already tougher stand on immigration that previous home affairs minister, the center-left Democrat Marco Minniti, developed.
News reports suggest a dramatic increase in racist and xenophobic violence in 2018 alone ��� especially against African immigrants and black Italians ��� with at least two hate murders with a clear racial motive, an attempted mass murder of African migrants, and several reports of violent attacks on migrants and refugees.
Idy Diene, a 54-year-old Senegalese street vendor, was murdered in Florence on the morning after election day in March, when the results confirmed the overwhelming victory of the populist forces. In another case, Soumaila Sacko, a Malian trade unionist with regular residence permit, was executed in San Calogero, a small southern Italian town, a few hours after Matteo Salvini emphatically stated at a political rally that ���for undocumented migrants, the party is over���. Recently, three Italian youth in the southern city of Caserta attacked and injured two Malian asylum seekers, using an air gun to shoot at them, while shouting ���Salvini Salvini���.
These attacks build on longer term trends. If you were born and brought up in Italy, but have parents who are not Italian, especially if you are darker skinned, then you are not Italian. As Ghali, popular Milan rapper of Tunisian origins, sings in Cara Italia (���Dear Italy���): ���When they tell me ���go home���, I reply ���I am already here.������
Discriminatory laws do not recognize birthright citizenship: if you were born in Italy and lived there for several years, you have no automatic rights to citizenship ��� you are an Italian without papers. The word immigrati (���immigrants���) is used to refer to all Italians of color, as well as migrants and refugees. In a recent interview, Nigerian-born Toni Iwobi, the first Italian black senator, makes a similar point ��� ironically, he was elected in the League ranks and is a strong supporter of Salvini���s anti-immigrant policies. Iwobi said that his parliamentary colleagues listen to him across the political spectrum because he can speak from the standpoint of a immigrant. When challenged by the interviewer that he was no longer a migrant, he replied: ���I am and will always be a immigrant, but Italian.���
This hostile atmosphere is not confined to black Italians and migrants and refugees from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It affects Roma people, especially after Salvini���s propaganda. Italians are the most prejudiced European population when it comes to attitudes towards Roma communities. Muslims have long been targeted by rampant Islamophobia ��� thinly disguised in new measures announced by the government to counter ���terrorism���. Migrants from Eastern Europe are also discriminated and treated with hostility.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise, fueled by the quick spread on social media of conspiracies about Jewish financier George Soros, accused of all sorts of ���plots��� to bring down Italy and Europe. In early June, in the central square of San Maurizio Canavese, a small town outside Turin, attackers burned a car and vandalized a hairdresser shop front with red paint. They left a message that read ���this is a Jewish shop.���
If we add to this that Salvini and other far right politicians have often evoked Italy���s ���Christian��� values and the importance of protecting ���traditional families��� from the threat posed by LGBTQ and feminist movements, there is a real danger of a descent into a reactionary spiral opposed to all forms of diversity.
Italy’s League and 5 Star get together
The formation of the coalition has met widespread opposition from many powerful quarters. EU technocrats are worried about the parties��� well-known Euroscepticism. Financial markets are concerned that announced measures will further increase public spending in a country with one of the highest debt burdens in Europe. Old political players such as the rightwing Silvio Berlusconi (whose mix of celebrity, perceived business acumen and ���straight-talking��� was aimed at the voters now attracted by the League and 5 Star) and the center-left Democrats fear the end of their political relevance, and that they might end up as the main domestic political targets of the new alliance���s anti-establishment populism.
Despite this, the two parties were able to find agreement on several grounds, and signed a voluminous 57-page program ��� the ���contract for a government of change���, as they call it.
The announced policies are a mix of neoliberalism ��� 20% flat tax for high income individuals and companies, 15% for everybody else ��� and social protectionism ��� a citizen���s income of ���780 per month for the unemployed, and reduction of retirement age. All this framed within a narrative that cast Italians as the priority of all government actions ��� evoking Salvini���s Trumpian slogan ���Italians first.��� The agreement marks the revival of an imaginary Italian nation under attack from migrants and refugees, corrupt politicians, and international financial elites. The frequent appeal to the social category of ���Italians��� is tacitly narrowed down to include only those with a white skin.
Together 5 Star and League have convinced the electorate that they are the true protectors of a revived Italian nation reminiscent of our fascist and colonial past. In the general election in March, 5 Star became the first-ranked Italian party, with 33% of the votes. League���s phenomenal growth saw their consensus jump from 4% in 2013 to 17% in this round.
Nearly 70% of voters supported parties with openly anti-immigrant platforms. Not only League and 5 Star, but also Berlusconi���s party Forza Italia (14%), and the nationalist formation Brothers of Italy (4%): all of them call for drastic measures to stop the arrival of immigrants and refugees, and their leaders frequently mention the need for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. They are quick to add that they are against clandestini (a negative term for undocumented immigrants, stressing their ���illegal��� status), but regolari (those with legal status) already in Italy are fine. What they neglect to say is that, with a hostile state that has made immigrants dispensable cheap labor in informal markets controlled by organized crime and exploitative Italian entrepreneurs, it is easy to find yourself on the wrong side of the law ��� and become the target of virtual and physical mobs hunting for clandestini.
The League���s brand of racism and xenophobia is crude. Salvini���s social media posts single out immigrants and refugees as criminals and undesirables, often linking to trashy tabloid reporting from local news. Last year he said that Italy needed a ���mass cleansing��� of immigrants and welcomed Trump-styled policies. In 2015 he announced he would ���raze to the ground��� all Roma settlements in Italy. In 2013, another prominent League politician and then Senate vice-president, Roberto Calderoli, compared Italian black politician Cecile Kyenge, then integration minister, to an orangutan.
That is why, in the aftermath of the March election, the international press identified Matteo Salvini and his party as dangers to be avoided at all costs ��� many liberal and progressive circles in Italy and abroad were hoping at that stage for an unlikely alliance between 5 Star and their arch-enemies on the left, the Democratic Party.
Like other far right populists in US and Europe, Salvini has tried hard to normalize his speech in official channels and the established media. The party finds it difficult to shed its long history of racism and xenophobia, which dates back to the 1980s, when the party started as a Northern Italian secessionist party that blamed southerners for all Italian problems. Salvini has overt connections with far-right parties across the world: from a formal cooperation agreement with Vladimir Putin���s party United Russia, to close ties with Marine Le Pen in France, and a recent endorsement by Donald Trump���s former aide Steve Bannon.
5 Star is a more complex case. The movement was founded in 2009 by comedian politician and influential blogger Beppe Grillo, and late tech entrepreneur Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist interested in influencing people���s opinions through digital methods. Since the beginning, the movement stressed digital direct democracy ��� where all key decisions, usually crafted by a handful of leaders, are voted online by members ��� and the green economy, and denounced widespread corruption in politics, with a sustained campaign against excessive salaries and perks for politicians in office. 5 Star was seen as a breath of fresh air, in a country stifled by patron-client relations, unaccountable structures of power, and general conservatism on social and economic matters. One key refrain of 5 Star propaganda is that they are ���neither left nor right.���
Grillo and Casaleggio crafted the political messages and used the power of the internet to build an informal media ecosystem that quickly overthrew traditional media. 5 Star representatives rarely appear on TV, and when they do, they usually give unilateral messages and do not engage in debate with critics. By ignoring TV talk shows and dismissing traditional media as out of touch with society, they have created a new mainstream, made entirely of social media and blogs.
Critics claim that Casaleggio Associati, a digital strategy consultancy company, run 5 Star propaganda as a tightly controlled top-down machine, profiting from online traffic, and leaving little space for internal debate. A former 5 Star high ranking media officer recently stated that coordination of social media messages across the powerful online galaxy included smearing selected political rivals. Casaleggio Associati was founded and run by Gianroberto Casaleggio until his death in 2016, when his son Davide took over. Davide is also president of the not-for-profit Associazione Rousseau, which is in charge of Rousseau, the 5 Star digital democracy platform.
The informal media network supporting 5 Star propaganda thrives on fake news. A 2016 BuzzFeed investigation has shown how influential alternative media websites owned and run by Casaleggio Associati, and linked to 5 Star official accounts, spread conspiracy theories�� about Soros and the US State Department plotting to smuggle immigrants from Libya to Italy, and the health dangers of compulsory vaccines. Since then, anti-Semitic conspiracies about Soros, with no basis in fact, have spread like wildfire in 5 Star social media ��� in parallel with League and other far right outlets. This is a clear sign of convergence with right-wing groups all over the world, from Hungary���s government waging an anti-Soros crusade, to white supremacist AfriForum in South Africa, or the alt-right in the US.
The League has its own ecosystem, and its media networks are separate from the 5 Star, but interconnected. A recent investigation unveiled pro-Putin social media accounts aimed at the Italian public, that supported both 5 Star and League in the last election campaign.
5 Star are particularly good at circulating inflammatory materials through their fake news networks, while speaking a different language in official messages. For instance, the popular Facebook group Club Luigi Di Maio, an outlet for fans of the 5 Star political head, regularly allowed racist and anti-Semitic content, and toxic violent language against political adversaries, but Di Maio does not use such tones. The leader distanced himself from the group, claiming there is no connection to him or the movement, but another investigation shows that one of his close collaborators regularly posted Di Maio���s messages in the group, and influential 5 Star activists are group admins.
Beppe Grillo has often dog whistled to anti-Semitic and xenophobic themes and expressed sympathies for racist politicians. His obsession with George Soros is thinly disguised as a concern about the wrongdoings of financial elites and bankers. He praised Trump for his ���anti-establishment��� victory, which he likened to the rise of 5 Star in Italy. He defended Hungary���s Prime Minister Viktor Orb��n and his harsh anti-immigration measures, lauding his economic policies and blaming Germany���s Prime Minister Angela Merkel for ���throwing Hungary into chaos.���
Other members of the 5 Star frequently stress that Grillo is not the voice of the movement, and there are people who disagree with him. This position has lost legitimacy, as the recent weeks have shown a strong convergence between League and 5 Star supporters of the anti-immigrant messages spearheaded by Salvini. The home affairs minister���s attacks on NGO ships have been actively supported by 5 Star transport minister Danilo Toninelli, who has direct oversight over Italian ports. Other 5 Star leaders closed ranks over Salvini���s line. Many analysts have pointed out that there are essential cultural and socio-political differences between 5 Star and League electoral bases, but these views are clashing against mounting evidence to the contrary. Recent opinion polls show that 5 Star voters overwhelmingly support the government anti-immigrant stance, in numbers only marginally lower to League voters.
Until recently, 5 Star leaders refused to clarify whether their popular citizen���s income proposal would cover all unemployed people regardless of nationality or be restricted to Italian citizens. The government program settles the question: the income is for Italians only. What could be the most important welfare policy for the unemployed in a country without universal employment benefits, has now been weaponized to fuel xenophobia. The agreement announces the intention to exclude immigrants from other welfare measures as well. For instance, free cr��ches are announced, but reserved for Italian families. The most draconian anti-immigrant measure announced in the contract is mass deportations of up to 500,000 undocumented immigrants ��� the more neutral word ���repatriation��� is used, but the meaning is the same.
5 Star ���post-ideological��� respectable xenophobia
It would be incorrect to pin the xenophobic rhetoric and content of the government agreement entirely on League���s influence. In recent years, 5 Star have developed a substantial anti-immigrant platform, which has been successfully packaged as non-racist, just, reasonable and desirable. Though it claims a ���post-ideological��� position, 5 Star���s function in the current historical conjuncture is to normalize the wave of xenophobic and racist hate and violence, culminating in the rise to prominence of League strongman Matteo Salvini.
The distance between 5 Star politicians��� speeches and their written proposals (predating the current agreement with League) is significant, as is the relationship between political messages in official channels and fake news spread through their informal networks.
Even though leaders like Beppe Grillo and the left-leaning charismatic politician Alessandro Di Battista have called for mass deportations before, the official 5 Star electoral program did not, although it called for increased deportations through bilateral agreements with immigrants��� countries of origin.
The 5 Star document emphasizes the need for legal and secure ways for refugees to access the EU, appropriating the progressive rhetoric of humanitarian corridors. In order to deal with asylum requests more efficiently, they should be processed in the countries of origin or transit outside the EU. Humanitarian corridors and processing requests outside Europe would satisfy three different demands: treating refugees humanely and guaranteeing their rights, by sparing them a dangerous journey in the Mediterranean; defeating human traffickers; and, most important of all, reducing arrivals in Italy. Only those whose refugee rights are established would eventually be allowed to travel to Italy ��� possibly very few, given the emphasis on limiting arrivals.
According to 5 Star, even with such a tightening up of borders, the burden of refugee arrivals should be shared by other European states. Italy is often depicted in 5 Star speeches as a welcoming nation that has been burdened with an unsustainable number of arrivals. It is only fair, so goes the narrative, that refugees are relocated to other European countries according to specified parameters. The truth is that the refugee population in Italy is lower than in other rich European countries such as Germany, Sweden or France, and general immigration levels are in line with other big countries in Europe.
The official position also remarks, in apparently innocuous ways, how Italian migration reception structures are marred by criminal activities and speculation by organized crime and illegal interests ��� adding to the criminal dimension of human traffickers transporting migrants to Italy. Immigration is thus stigmatized in more roundabout, ���acceptable��� ways: 5 Star can claim not to be xenophobic, because they criminalize those who transport immigrants and manage their arrivals, rather than immigrants themselves. This is in marked contrast with the vehemently xenophobic speech that is common among 5 Star followers on social media.
In a related case that exploded last year, 5 Star leaders were pivotal in spreading a moral panic about NGO ships rescuing migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean, and their alleged collusion with human traffickers. These events provide an essential backdrop to understand why the majority of Italians support Salvini���s line today.
At the end of April 2017, Grillo���s blog posed questions about NGO ships rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean, casting doubts about the legitimacy of their operations and their funding. He suggested that there might be a plot to bring migrants to Italy, feeding into news reporting thousands of arrivals around the Easter period. The conspiratorial tones of the post rehashed, in diluted form, fake news about geopolitical ploys to smuggle immigrants into Italy.
5 Star leader Luigi Di Maio reposted Grillo���s blog on his Facebook wall, calling NGO ships ���taxis of the Mediterranean,��� and released more statements attacking NGOs for allegedly causing more deaths in the Mediterranean ��� wild accusations unsupported by evidence. Soon after, Di Maio gave several TV interviews restating and elaborating his position. Di Maio���s main source was Carmelo Zuccaro, an Italian prosecutor who claimed that some NGOs were in contact with traffickers. Earlier that year, Zuccaro had launched an investigation into NGO ships and their funding. The prosecutor later admitted he had no evidence to back such claims, and that this was just a working hypothesis. That didn���t stop him from pushing the argument when testifying in several parliamentary committees.
Di Maio incorrectly claimed that a 2017 Frontex report also defined NGO ships as ���taxis��� ��� again, a statement with no factual basis. The story had its origins in a Financial Times report of December 2016 stating that, in confidential documents, the European border agency Frontex expressed concerns about some NGOs colluding with traffickers. Frontex denied such claims.
In previous months, social media messages and populist online magazines of various political inclinations had prepared the ground for Di Maio���s mainstreaming. Video blogger Luca Donadel released a fake news video allegedly proving that NGO ships were colluded with traffickers. In early March, Donadel was interviewed in a prime time slot on a popular satire TV programme, Striscia La Notizia. But it was Di Maio���s intervention that catalyzed this informal campaign, and consolidated popular consensus around it. The operation was so successful that the then center-left home affairs minister, Marco Minniti, introduced a controversial code of conduct for NGO rescue ships, which required them to have police officers on board.
In another post by an external contributor, originally published in Beppe Grillo���s blog in May last year (and now moved to the official 5 Star blog), the conspiratorial dog whistles about Soros are mentioned more explicitly. The post cites conspiracy theory websites such as ZeroHedge and Gefira as reliable sources. According to the article, Soros��� support for NGOs helping immigrants and refugees is part of a broader plan by global financial elites to bring immigrants to Europe:
Taking into account the aging population in the West, especially in Europe, and the low birth rate, opening the doors to migrants is essential for the global financial system and its elites ��� Soros is a key player. It is a way to reduce pressures in regions (Middle East, Eurasia) and continents (Africa) where military interventions and wars are taking place. The latter are an organic component of Western and American geopolitical strategy.
The post continues with disturbing insinuations that activists and organizations helping refugees are doing so as part of a grand plan, where people such as Soros profit from the ���business of immigration.��� In posts of this kind ��� this is only one of many ��� the distinction between the informal world of fake news and the presentable fa��ade of 5 Star official messages is blurred, yet another sign that there is little left to chance in the 5 Star propaganda machine.
The regular repetition of cycles of apparently contradictory messages ��� often from the same politician ��� ranging from wild conspiracies to moderate appeals to reason, suggests the deployment of coordinated and highly effective tactics, rather than unintended confusion and incoherence.
The moral panic fueled by these interventions was so effective that according to a poll in May 2017, a relative majority of Italians (36%) believed that some NGO rescue ships colluded with smugglers, while only a minority (15%) thought that NGOs were performing their humanitarian duties.
Another apparently ���progressive��� element of 5 Star propaganda has been to link an anti-war stance to an anti-immigrant one. As the argument goes, it is wars that produce refugees. We should stop wars to avoid devastation in sending countries and reduce refugee flows to Italy.
But the program agreed with League provides a more ambivalent outcome that, in Trumpian fashion, mixes isolationist statements about reviewing Italy���s role in international military missions, with increased support for the defense sector, and counterterrorism. Part of the counterterrorist measures include an open attack on Muslims in the form of shut downs of mosques that are deemed ���illegal,��� and the immediate closure of largely undefined ���radical Islamic��� organizations. When it comes to the flourishing arms industry, the government program says that arms sales to countries with conflict will be stopped, while promising more funds for the defense industry, but allegedly for products that are not strictly for war purposes. Instead the program mentions ships, aircrafts and high-tech systems.
The leftist appeal of the great convergence
There is no doubt that many on the left have fallen for 5 Star anti-establishment propaganda. Over the years, the party attracted many left-wing disaffected voters ��� they also attracted previously centrist and right-wing voters. Major left-wing figures such as the late Nobel Prize actor and playwright Dario Fo enthusiastically endorsed 5 Star from the beginning. Fo was praised by the Swedish Academy for ���upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.��� How could he ignore the plight of Italians of color, immigrants and refugees, in favor of narratives that center white Italians?
Fo was close to founders Grillo and Casaleggio from early on and knew of their open anti-migrant positions in the years when the convergence with League was not yet clearly formed. When 5 Star joined far right party UKIP in the same European parliamentary group, Dario Fo cautiously defended the deal and said he didn���t think UKIP leader Nigel Farage was a racist.
Many politicians from classic left formation Free And Equal, and some from the Democratic Party, had hinted before the election that a government alliance of the left with 5 Star was indeed a desirable outcome. These voices became prominent after March, when a large number of leftist intellectuals and journalists pushed for a 5 Star/Dems deal, arguing that it would be a much better outcome than a 5 Star/League government. The argument however was flawed. It ignored that 5 Star and League supporters shared similar views on immigration and a general hostility towards centrist parties. There were no indications that the 5 Star leadership was seriously considering the possibility of a coalition with the Dems.
Since the new populist coalition materialized, left intellectuals outside mainstream parties, such as Diego Fusaro and Giulietto Chiesa, have greeted the 5 Star/League alliance and Salvini���s anti-immigration stance as the necessary evolution of a crisis of neoliberalism that demands a radical rupture with the status quo, with left and right forces uniting against the existential dangers posed by the ���liberal world order.���
These positions are aligned with US far right strategist Steve Bannon, and Russian neo-fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin. Bannon and Dugin welcomed the formation of Italy���s new government as a historic event that will lead to populist victories throughout the West. Dugin has been proposing for some time a global alliance of right and left populists against the common enemy of liberalism. In a recent event in Rome, Bannon talked about the success of the coalition of the ���left populism��� of 5 Star with the ���right populism��� of League, saying it will be a blueprint for the ���global revolt against the elites���. He compared the Italian situation to what he envisaged for the US: ���we would have liked to unite Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, but we didn���t manage.���
Towards a reactionary ���Europe of nations���
Bannon���s and Dugin���s worrying endorsements hint at the turbulent political realignments that are taking place in North America, Europe and Russia. The battle for the future of Europe is a key site of a broader global struggle for power and hegemony.
One strength of the 5 Star/League alliance has been a careful approach to the thorny issues of EU relations and Western geopolitics. Salvini and Di Maio are not inexperienced Brexit supporters. They are not calling for radical breaks with the EU. Their agreement pays lip service to European treaties and avoids threats of a potential eurozone exit. It also makes it clear that the EU rules will be changed to conform to the principles of their contract, not the other way around. The two parties assert the primacy of the NATO alliance, but call for the withdrawal of sanctions against Russia (on Russia, Trump makes the same kind of demand in international fora).
This approach is more akin to a far-right version of the platform of early Greek party Syriza before the 2015 bailout referendum, than the uncompromising tones of the Brexit campaign. The technocratic language is yet another sign of the intention to change the rules from within. Syriza failed to challenge EU hegemony. They faced formidable opposition from Brussels, Germany and the IMF, but they were also weakened by the internal contradictions of subscribing to progressive principles, while compromising with national populist sentiments. League and 5 Star will not have such a burden. Their anti-immigrant nationalism is in the open and finds consensus across Europe. Italian populists could be in the driving seat of a coherent reactionary pan-European alliance for a ���Europe of nations��� that thrives on racism, xenophobia and violence.
July 12, 2018
The masters of the improbable
Falcao, 1982 World Cup.
Canadians think that to put their flag on a backpack earns them safe-passage globally. ����They have no idea. Outside of Europe and North America, to show a Brazilian passport is to not only earn smiles but to instantly invite reverie about people���s memories of Pel��, Rivelino, Zico, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho; if not to hear their condolences, and maybe explanations, about Brazil���s humiliation during the 2014 World Cup. ����To travel most of the world with a Brazilian passport is to engage in one long, existential and extended conversation about Brazilian football.
It���s hard to fully appreciate the extent to which Brazil���s Sele����o is the team of Everyone Else on the planet. ��From Haiti to India and Mexico, Brazil is almost always everyone���s second team, if not their first. ��Many cultures in Africa and Latin America have the figure of a trickster. In Brazil we have a team full of them at every World Cup. ��They are multiracial, oddly and singly-named (Hulk? Kak��?), often not especially physically gifted (or fit), but who manage to be the masters of improvisation, flair, and, most of all, beautiful and fun football. ��The history of the Sele����o is full of legendary moments, their players seeming to do the impossible in their bright yellow and blue uniforms, defeating bigger and stronger opponents, not with strength, but with flashes of individual brilliance and art. ����They are postcolonial superheroes from a very fun and groovy future. Bandung may have fizzled but we will always have Pel�� in 1958. And if you squint just so, you can almost imagine they are playing barefoot and not actually touching the ground. ��
A former combatant from the FMLN in El Salvador once told me he���d heard that Socrates, Brazil���s bearded and chain-smoking Marxist attacking midfielder, organized players to throw the 1982 quarter-final match with Italy as a way to snub the Generals and bring down the military regime. ��In the former guerilla���s account, government shelling of the rebels ceased for the duration of the match, broadcast on radio. ����But no one could understand the outcome of the game. I have a sharp recollection of that game, too. I was ten that July, when Italy���s Paolo Rossi sent home the amazing team that was going to finally earn the glory denied the country since 1970. ��After matches, I would go outside with my friends and imitate the moves of the players, Socrates��� heel-kicks, Zico���s gentle penalties, and Falc��o���s improbable runs. ������Brazil���s incomprehensible defeat that afternoon sent many of us outside, away from the TVs, there in the outskirts of S��o Paulo. ��I remember walking in disbelief down the middle of an empty street and an adult, maybe a friend���s dad, pulled me aside and whispered that I should not be sad because, for sure, this would surely hurry the end of military rule.
Over the years I have often thought about that account. ��It is true, of course, that the regime had a lot of interest in the national team, and probably vetoed Reinaldo, Rei (���King���) an amazing striker prone to making black power salutes. (He was later a politician in Lula���s PT.) ����They might have also vetoed Zico and the outspoken Socrates, had they not been so famous, and frankly, so good. Zico was one of the founders of the country���s first union of football players in Rio in the late 1970s, while Socrates led Democracia Corinthiana, a hugely important participatory democracy movement within his team, and was very public in the movement for direct elections that started in 1983. ������
The former FMLN guerilla���s theory is almost certainly not true, though. ��If nothing else, a victory might have given Socrates ��� so outspoken ��� an even bigger platform. ����There has been so much reflection and recollection about that day and it is clear that the team really wanted to win. ��But they simply couldn���t. It happens. But it is nice to think that the men in the canary-yellow jerseys with their super-human powers might have had another plan that included bringing down dictators and the powers to do so.
As of this writing, we don���t know who will win the World Cup, but we know it will be an European team again (France play Croatia in the final on 15 July 2018). ��Like every time but twice in the last three decades, the title will remain in the continent that invented the game in first place. Of course, there is hope that the rainbow face of today���s European teams, the amazing talent of the Mbappes and Pogbas of this world, will help bring along a reimagining of what a Europe can be, or at least make it slightly more friendly to immigrants and their children who call the continent home.��
But it will still be an European team. ����We were taught as kids that football was the people���s sport because unlike most other sports you don���t need any equipment to play, just a surface and a round object. And having ���happiness at your feet���–as Brazil���s coach likes to say of Neymar–was what made the difference and a Brazilian���s birthright. ����Nowadays, though, to win internationally you need other things, too. Like an organized infrastructure from youth clubs to professional leagues, the latest fitness and training regimens, constant exposure of your players to high-level international club play, and access to technology for coaching, among other things. ��Of course, as pundits are saying, that almost does not exist outside of Europe. Brazil���s own football infrastructure is in shambles, a shadow of earlier glory days, some teams essentially reduced to talent farms for foreign scouts.
But ,as I tell my kids, heartbroken over yet another Brazilian defeat at the hands of an European team, this does not rule out Brazil in the future. ��Of course, we have no Socrates to defend democracy today. And sure, much is stacked against Brazil. But I tell them the story of 1982 and of Brazil���s importance in so many places. ��But most of all I tell them about that, in the end, their gift has always been about mastering the improbable.
July 11, 2018
Ibrahim Usman���s Road to Qatar
Seattle Sounders players, Ibrahim Usman (left) and Rodrigue Ele (second from left) react to a near miss by Nigeria in the World Cup match vs Argentina. Images: Danny Hoffman
���He���s small, but he is powerful,��� Ibrahim Usman said of Ahmed Musa, Nigeria���s star forward. ��Squeezed into a corner table, Usman had only an oblique view of the modest television screen mounted over the bar. ��On it, Musa was celebrating his first goal against Iceland in the World Cup. ���When I kick him, I know I���ve kicked something.���
Usman is an 18-year old defender with Sounders FC 2, the United Soccer League (USL) farm team to Seattle���s Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise, the Seattle Sounders FC. ��Born in Lagos and raised in Kaduna, he and Cameroonian teammate Rodrigue Ele are the only African internationals on the S2 squad. (F��lix Chenkam and Nouhou Tolo, also from Cameroon, play with the first division team.) ��Four years from now Usman will be prime age for a national squad player. He has every intention of being a Super Eagle in Qatar.
Usman signs autographs after Seattle Sounders FC 2���s July 8 match against Reno 1868 FC. Image: Danny Hoffman.On June 22, we met Usman and Ele at Caf�� Presse in Seattle���s hipster Capitol Hill district, one of few venues live broadcasting Cup matches in the neighborhood. ��Our corner table was a lonely Nigerian outpost. A young man at the bar was staking a contrarian position, but he seemed more anti-Iceland than pro-Nigeria; next to us a table of Argentina fans offered a buffer and moral support. ��Otherwise, the crowd of roughly 45 patrons in the small Euro-themed restaurant were overwhelmingly, if somewhat sedately, Iceland fans. We were alone in a Nordic sea of blue and red.
Usman was nervous, but smiling. ��With every Nigerian success, he looked down the line of tables. �����I don���t want to shout,��� he said. ���After the game, I���ll put my hood up and take my time before I go out.���
Caf�� Presse may be the apsis of a professional Nigerian footballer���s orbit. ��But Usman���s path to the Super Eagles is less unlikely than it might at first appear. Conventional wisdom holds that the road to Africa���s national squads runs through Europe. ��In Russia, the Nigerians fielded players drawn almost exclusively from the English Premier League, La Liga, or other top-flight European leagues, and Usman confirmed that the national team coach prioritizes players plying their trade in Europe. ��Watching the Super Eagles from a faux-Euro cafe, playing second division ball in an American city proudly throwing its support behind tiny Iceland is a questionable variation on the typical European trajectory.
At the end of regulation, the caf�����s Iceland supporters have yet to show their infamous Viking Clap.��But when Usman charts his own route to wearing the national colors, he emphasizes an overlooked aspect of that narrative: a surprising number of Nigeria���s professional footballers come from the same neighborhoods and played together as children. ��They may disperse to the far corners of the world, but they learn their craft at home. Players become national squad caliber in part because they are raised in the exceptional footballing neighborhoods of Lagos or Port Harcourt, Kaduna or Jos, and they grow up playing the world���s most competitive pick-up games.
The caf�� gets progressively quieter as Nigeria thrashes the lackluster Icelanders, and Usman is more relaxed. ��He rattles off names on the Nigerian roster, the nation and division in which they currently play ��� and how they fared in neighborhood small-side tournaments and afternoon matches of ���world cup.��� ��He tells the story of an informal off-season match organized in 2015 by an agent in Jos, in which a 15-year old Usman squared up against Musa alongside Moses Simon, the KAA Gent striker whose own injury prevented him from playing in this year���s tournament. ��
Usman calls up a recent facebook post, in which he chided fans of the Super Eagles for their unduly harsh criticism of the team following the loss to Croatia.Usman���s theory of professional development may not be iron-clad. ��But his running commentary at Caf�� Presse does challenge the rescue narratives that hound African players: the lone rough diamond plucked from some obscure part of the continent, lucky to have his preternatural raw talent spotted by a wandering scout. ��Rather, local and international social networks play a vital role in the careers of developing players. And dreams of national team glory help even distant MLS and USL teams recruit international players, as Chris Henderson, the Sounders��� Vice-President and Sporting Director, confirmed in conversation with us. ��It���s a path that Sounders left back Nouhou followed just last year. Capitalizing on a successful year with S2 in 2016, Nohou earned his first cap for Cameroon in a World Cup qualifier against Zambia in November 2017. If Usman���s unorthodox route to the Super Eagles via Seattle succeeds, then the distance between Caf�� Presse in 2018 and Qatar in 2022 may be shorter than we think. ������
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