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May 13 - May 16, 2024
For Hazony, the only true foundation of political order and human liberty is the nation, based around a shared language, culture and religion. All successful nations, Hazony argues, need to be organised around a group ‘whose cultural dominance is plain and unquestioned and against which resistance appears to be futile’.9
Trump influenced by this
Soros was also loathed by Netanyahu, for his support of the Palestinians and Israeli human-rights organisations.
The fact that Orbán’s nationalism has more than a whiff of anti-Semitism about it is not especially shocking to Netanyahu, whose brand of Zionism has always assumed that the outside world is inherently anti-Semitic.
Despite its anti-Semitic roots, France’s National Front under Marine Le Pen has become a strongly pro-Israel party.
Having the largest country in Latin America as an ally was a breakthrough for Israel because the ‘Global South’ of developing nations had traditionally been solid in its support for the Palestinians.
For Bolsonaro, embracing Israel was a way of simultaneously appealing to evangelicals and the Trump White House, while sticking a finger in the eye of his enemies on the liberal left.
Trump’s willingness to rip up President Obama’s peace deal with Iran was much more important to the Saudis than any lingering offence stemming from the Muslim-baiting of Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
MBS’s belief that he could win an easy victory in Yemen proved misplaced. The Saudis got bogged down in the conflict and their indiscriminate bombing saw the kingdom accused of war crimes.
MBS’s economic reform programme – known as Vision 2030.
I know her well....
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest importer of armaments.
The paradox was that under MBS, social freedoms were expanding against the backdrop of a reign of terror.
aided by the fact that the most charismatic left-wing politician in the country, former President Lula, had been disqualified from running against him, after being imprisoned on corruption charges.
Bolsonaro main rival
During the Cardoso and Lula presidencies, Brazil was widely celebrated as a nation that had successfully embraced globalisation and democracy and left the dark days of authoritarianism behind it.
At the start of his political career, Bolsonaro had been an advocate of state control of the economy – he had even once suggested that Cardoso deserved to be shot, for selling off state assets. But he campaigned for the presidency as an economic liberal, arguing for privatisation and tax cuts.
Brazil’s National Truth Commission, set up in 2012, clearly identified ‘only’ 434 dissidents, who had ‘disappeared’ or been murdered by Brazil’s military rulers. But the commission also suggests that thousands of indigenous people may have been killed, and brutal torture of dissidents was also common.6 Bolsonaro, however, argues that the military’s ‘tough’ measures were justified by low crime rates and economic development.
Latin America’s transition from military regimes to democratic forms of government took place largely in the 1980s, even before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The most important trigger was the continent’s Latin American debt crisis of 1982. That year, as Michael Reid puts it, ‘the dictatorships buckled under the opprobrium of economic failure
Michael Reid argues that populism has two main characteristics, both of which have a distinct contemporary relevance. First of all, it is a ‘brand of politics in which a strong, charismatic leader purports to be a saviour, blurring the distinction between leader, government, party and state, and ignoring the need for the restraint of executive power through checks and balances. Second, populism has often involved redistribution of income and/or wealth in an unsustainable fashion.’
The main similarity of the left and right populists is that they all claim to be representing the people against the elite – and they all promise simple solutions to complex problems.
The disastrous economic record of Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro cast a shadow over much of the Latin American left. In his election campaign, Bolsonaro lost no opportunity to try to tie Lula and his Workers’ Party to the Chavez catastrophe.
another left-wing populist took power. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known universally as Amlo, was inaugurated as president of the country in December 2018 – a month before Bolsonaro –
Mexico
True to their populist instincts, Bolsonaro and Amlo reacted in similar ways. The Brazilian leader claimed that Covid-19 was not much more than a case of the sniffles. The Mexican president brandished a six-leaf clover, which he claimed would protect him against the virus. He also advised his fellow countrymen to keep going to fiestas and to visit restaurants. Amlo’s refusal to take the pandemic seriously meant that he did little to bolster Mexico’s frail health system or to put into place a spending plan to stimulate the economy.
The initial take of many experts was that the terrible toll taken by the pandemic was exposing the flaws of populism and so would weaken the grip of strongman leaders like Bolsonaro and Amlo.
the similarities between the initial responses of Bolsonaro and Amlo demonstrated that right and left populism are often underpinned by the same instincts.
Amlo’s reluctance to acknowledge Trump’s defeat was more surprising. As a Mexican and a leftist, Amlo had no obvious reason to feel any affection for a president who had labelled Mexican migrants to the United States rapists and criminals. When running for election, Amlo had indeed called Trump a neo-fascist. But as Mexican leader, he struck up an unlikely friendship with the populist
But Amlo and Trump also appeared to see something they liked in each other. They were both populist leaders who had declared war on their countries’ political and media establishments.
harsh critics of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement – demonstrating that the populist right and the populist left are also linked by a shared suspicion of free trade and liberal economics.
familiar story in Africa, where many leaders hailed as liberation heroes in the aftermath of decolonisation later turned into authoritarian despots.
The South African riots were a reminder of the difficulties of sustaining democracy, in countries suffering from deep poverty and inequality.
Much like Kagame, Zenawi presented himself as the acceptable face of strongman rule. President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, spoke on his death in 2012 of his ‘world-class mind’, declaring, ‘He wasn’t just brilliant. He wasn’t just a relentless negotiator and a formidable debater. He wasn’t just a thirsty consumer of knowledge. He was uncommonly wise.’
Hypocrites when the leader develops the economy
If even in the wealthy and powerful United States, identity-based politics has become a powerful enough force to threaten the country’s long-established democratic structures, it is perhaps not surprising that African countries such as Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe – all of which have powerful ethnic divisions that have caused wars – should struggle to establish pluralist democracies.
In 2007, the value of Chinese trade with Africa stood at around $148 billion. The US managed $39 billion. For obvious reasons, Beijing has no interest in making aid or trade conditional on democratic governance, so there is less pressure for political reform.
China does more than just enable dictators – it also gives them tools to tighten their grip on power.
Participants are taught to produce effective propaganda, manage opposition and monitor dissent.
which has bestowed thousands of scholarships on its students. The repercussions for political culture could be distinctly illiberal. ‘In 10 years’ time, one of [these students] will be the leader of South Sudan,’ remarked Samson Wasara, the vice chancellor of South Sudan’s University of Bahr el Ghazal. ‘When you go to China they will not be talking about democracy.’
The pay-off of such spending for Beijing became apparent when Zimbabwe, along with fifteen other African countries, signed off on a letter to the UN Human Rights Council lauding Beijing’s ‘remarkable achievements in the field of human rights’ and rebranding its internment camps for Uighurs as ‘vocational education and training centers’.28
Democratic Republic of Congo held elections in January 2019, the US did nothing to condemn the massive fraud which pushed Felix Tshisekedi to the presidency. Instead, it fully endorsed the results.
population boom taking place on the Africa continent. Projections by the United Nations and other organisations suggest that the population of Africa is likely to double between 2020 and 2050, as the continent adds an extra 1.2 billion people.
Finding convincing answers to those fears may be the most urgent dilemma facing European liberals in the coming years.
Immigration
Macron’s politics is determinedly futurist in tone. As he self-confidently proclaimed: ‘What our country needs is to rediscover a taste for the future, rather than a morbid fascination with an uncertain past.’2
March 2020, Merkel endorsed the idea that the EU should – as Macron had long pleaded – issue common debt on the financial markets to fund joint projects. It was sold as a one-off project to fund Covid relief. But the details mattered less than the significance of the gesture. In Berlin, Paris and Brussels, it was generally agreed that a Rubicon had been crossed: the common currency was now going to be backed by commonly issued debt. In the long run, Macron envisioned the development of a deep EU bond market that could rival the US Treasury market as a safe asset for the world’s investors. That
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Decades of immigration have changed its demographic make-up and France now has the highest Muslim population of any EU country.
In response to the persistent challenge from the far right, Macron moved to the right himself, positioning himself as France’s champion in a war against radical Islam. In foreign policy, Macron’s France found itself clashing increasingly with Erdogan’s Turkey, particularly over Libya and the eastern Mediterranean.
Gerald Darmanin, the hard-line interior minister, described Islamism as a ‘Trojan horse containing a fragmentation bomb that is targeting our society’.
For a new generation of nationalists Soros has become the perfect villain. He is an internationalist in an age of nationalism. He is a supporter of individual not collective rights. He is the fifty-sixth richest man in America, according to the 2020 Forbes rich list,
worth $8.6 billion.2 (His fortune would be considerably larger, had he not also given away $32 billion since 1984.)3 The fact that Soros is Jewish taps into anti-Semitic sentiments
His father, Tivador, was a lawyer and author, who edited a literary magazine in the international language, Esperanto, beloved by believers in a global community.
The origins of Soros hatred in the US may date back to his opposition to the Iraq war and his efforts to prevent the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. Soros’s financial aid to liberal causes in the US, such as voter registration drives for minorities, further enraged the Republican right; as did his support for international institutions, such as the UN.
In 2015, the Putin government forced the Open Society Foundations out of Russia, since it was no longer willing to tolerate its support for organisations such as Memorial, which promoted research into the Soviet terror and Stalin’s gulags.
‘China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society.’
Trump had redefined the idea of the West. Rather than portraying the US and its allies as the champions of freedom and of universal values, he had presented a view of the West ‘based on bonds of culture, faith and tradition’ – bonds that were far from universal.
