donald trump – Pike & Hurricane

The Clash of the Titans – Public Figures against the Tech Giants

Julia Kavanto — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:17:53 +0000

President Donald Trump of the United States of America became the first president to achieve many things. He was the first US president to be impeached twice, and his administration was the first to declare that China was committing genocide on Uighurs, but now I am talking about Trump being the first world leader to be permanently suspended from Twitter.

Trump supporters stormed the halls of the United States Capitol on January 6th, and their agenda was to stop the inauguration of Joe Biden. Soon after the coup, Trump’s Twitter account was first suspended for twelve hours, and then for good, as he continued to violate the community rules of the platform.

Multiple social media platforms followed Twitter’s example and suspended Trump’s accounts. We are having this discussion because permanently suspending a person of authority is considered a threat to the freedom of speech. The concern is valid. The common social media platforms, especially Twitter, are crucial to the hectic politics of the modern world; it is there where the political debate is the most heated. So, is it right to suspend a political leader permanently?

What is freedom of speech? What is it not?

Freedom of speech essentially means that any individual should have the right to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of sanctions. The right is universal, so it applies to everyone regardless of status, race, religion et cetera. There is a limitation to it, though. Freedom of speech should not be exercised to harm. A very important question to this is that who decides when someone or something has been harmed. One would think that the person who is harmed decides if they have been harmed, but then there is the question of people who cannot reply or, for example, non-human entities like nature. Who decides for them?

Twitter decided for the people who were injured in the coup of Capitol. Five people died in the attack, and Twitter understood President Trump’s tweet on the 8th of January about not joining President Biden’s inauguration was an invitation for his supporters to be violent. Trump’s use of words was interpreted as violating the platform’s glorification of violence policy.

Yes, Twitter can decide, and they did right to protect American citizens from further acts of violence. However, this does not mean that there should not be a more democratic way to decide. The board of Twitter who presumably called the shot to suspend Trump’s account was not selected democratically, and should not, therefore, have the right to take away the freedom of expression, even from Donald Trump.

On the other hand…

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny travelled back to his home country from Berlin where he was treated after having been poisoned in August 2020. Navalny was immediately detained upon his arrival on the 17th of January, and he soon posted a video on Twitter where he urged his supporters to “take it to the streets” because of his jailing. The protests were unauthorized, but successful, as the demonstration was organized in 100 Russian cities and there were 40,000 participants only in Moscow.

It is no surprise, then, that someone got hurt in the protests; Navalny must have known that the riots were unauthorized and would be met with violence. Videos show how the police are dragging people and using batons relentlessly. For the western democrat, it seems obvious that Navalny, Putin’s arch-rival, would not be banned for social media. That would be a victory for tyranny. But essentially, Navalny and Trump used Twitter for the same: for rallying supporters to protest against the government. It can be that Navalny’s tweets were not seen “to incite violence”, as Trump’s tweets were, according to Twitter’s blog post on Trump’s suspension. That, though, is problematic, that there is no universal guideline to fall back on.

Of course, Trump was not banned solely because of the tweet to join him on the 6th, but also because of the countless times he posted fake news on the platform. A certain president of Russia would argue that Navalny has also posted fake news, as the opposition leader recently uploaded a video to Twitter exposing Putin’s palace of corruption. Putin denies that the palace is his or any of his close relatives. The media in the United States seems to have agreed that Trump often tweeted lies. The same could be said about the Russian media breaking the news of Navalny’s accusations, as Pravda and Russia Today repeat Putin denying that the palace is his. American media agrees that Trump posted lies, and Russian media that Navalny posted lies, but the reception is very different.

There needs to be a universal guideline for social media usage, which states when a person has crossed the line of what is accepted. The board of directors of tech giants should not be the ones who decide who has the right to be heard. There are many questions regarding the universal guideline for social media that I am suggesting, such as who should be trusted to tell the truth i.e. who says what is “fake news”. Russian media argues against Navalny’s allegations of Putin’s Palace, but the allegations are still not put down by Twitter as lies.

Navalny joined the suspension discussion

Navalny himself responded to the suspension of President Trump negatively by saying that it “is an unacceptable act of censorship”. He says that Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump is based on personal political views. Therefore it can be said that the decision was not democratic. But does it even have to be in a private company? I think so, as they carry so much power in the public speech arena where freedom of speech is exercised. It is a slippery slope that Twitter has entered, as with permanently suspending Trump they open the possibility to suspend other people who do not follow the prevailing ideology. Silencing people is too great a power for any company to have.

No matter how much I disagree with Trump’s views, he, too, has the right to be heard. Imagine if Navalny was suspended. How radically would the Western world react to silencing the one figure who is against the all-mighty Vladimir Putin? In a democratic world, everyone needs to be heard, regardless of views. In a democratic world, everyone is treated equally, and with the universal guideline of social media usage, the same rules would be applied to everyone, regardless of power they possess.

Related articles:

Delusive Donald

The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Photo credits:

Tech/Book Special NRC Handelsblad, by Jenna Arts, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Freedom of Speech, by Vladan Nikolic, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Tightening the Grip: Is Experience Necessary for a Successful Autocrat?

Filip Zahariev — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 18:21:01 +0000

Right-wing populists and autocrats do not accept defeat. Challenged by reality, they clamp down—their position is rigid, very often averse to even the slightest possibility of change. Truth has been devalued, facts are treated as opinion, those who possess knowledge and expertise are treated with contempt. We live in an age of rampant anti-intellectualism, where the divisions on social issues are widening instead of narrowing. Consensus has never been further away, as the divisions on social issues show, ranging from equality to freedom of speech and the press to racism to xenophobia.

The Man Who Would Be King

This has been illustrated full well over the last month. Look to the USA. After months of sowing doubt about mail-in voting, Trump lost because of it. He has not conceded—and he never will. It’s likely he believes the baseless accusations he spouts; populists and autocrats are ever prone to the worst bouts of paranoia. If the political crisis in Belarus has hammered a point home, it is that no would-be autocrat is willing to go quietly into the night. Even if Trump himself is aware of reality, his rhetoric has made certain that a sizeable number of the seventy-three million Americans, who cast their votes for him, will never accept Joseph Biden as their legitimate president.

Seventy-three million. That is the number of souls who have voiced unconditional support for the conduit of the United States’ forty-fifth president. For the strongman whose approach has placed loyalty first, second, and third, and made competence not even a necessity. This approach has flourished on all levels of Trump’s White House, decreasing America’s prestige in the eyes of its old allies, while encouraging others of Trump’s ilk––the elected despots who lead ever more “illiberal states,” if we use the term Hungary’s Viktor Orban employed some years back.

America’s Favourite Strongman

Orban himself has much to teach us about control, more even than Trump. While one flaunts his inexperience in public office, the other is an old hand at politics. Following the European Union’s attempt to rein in Hungary and Poland’s “waning of democracies” via a rule of law mechanism, both countries’ leaders have vetoed the EU’s budget for the next seven years—a move that might very well bring about a full-blown political crisis in the bloc. It would come as no surprise if the Union blinks before Orban does—the individual member-states of the EU are desperate for the financial relief this new budget will provide them, to deal with the aftermath of the coronavirus.

Orban has used every excuse he can to centralise authority on his own person; his popularity has suffered little for it. He has curtailed judicial powers and independence, has blamed many of the issues that plague the country on outside influence, most commonly George Soros—who has long been a political foe and critic of his—and immigrants, including when the coronavirus first reached the country. Orban continues to be viewed as a hero, in the highest echelons of the European Union but elsewhere, too; his past accomplishments are compelling. There is ample reason why Viktor Orban has been described as “the American right’s favourite strongman”. He has shown a capacity for using any crisis to his ultimate benefit—something the current American president has attempted to emulate, to mixed results.

For the “elected despots” of the European Union, politicking has proven thicker than the blood of those who have viewpoints opposing their own.

His Polish counterpart, Jarosław Kaczyński, is no different. Rather than take a step back from the controversial abortion law that sparked the “Women’s Strike”, Kaczyński’s party has used these protests to draw a line in the sand, polarizing Polish society and enervating the Polish conservatives by painting the conflict not as one against the law itself but rather, as an attack on the Catholic church. The gall of another member of the ruling party PiS (Law and Justice) in “likening the red lightning symbol of the protests to the runes of Nazi Germany’s SS forces” shows the extent to which PiS is willing to stoke the flames of social strife.

For the “elected despots” of the European Union, politicking has proven thicker than the blood of those who have viewpoints opposing their own. The overall theme is the same: They are all nationalists quick to point a finger of blame, unwilling to backtrack. They are—unlike Trump, who ran as one—economic populists, which is where the vast amount of their support comes from. Peter Beinart writes for the NYRB:

“In 2019, Poland’s xenophobic and homophobic Law and Justice party won a dominant election victory in large measure because of its immensely popular payouts to Polish families, which, according to the World Bank, dramatically reduced child poverty. (Law and Justice’s popularity has fallen since then as many Poles have revolted against its draconian efforts to outlaw abortion.) In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has launched a New Deal-style public works program that gives hundreds of thousands of Hungarians government jobs.”

These are social policies that earn no small amount of goodwill, difficult to break despite raising discontent. And—as the Polish ruling party is all too willing to prove—social cohesion is not high in the list of priorities for the democratically elected despots, not when they hold onto the firm belief that they can energize a large enough percent of their populations to continue being reelected to office.

“The people” is not as inclusive a label as we might think; in the eyes of a caudillo, this concept extends only to those who are firm in their support. The opposition is the enemy—this lesson, at least, Trump learned well and early.

Related articles:

Delusive Donald

Will the Refugee Crisis be the Downfall of the EU and its Ideals?

Photo credits

Trump by geralt No attribution required

Viktor Orban by Łukasz Dawidziu CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

People in Groups by Sukanto DebnathlCC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Delusive Donald

Franziska Fink — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 12:42:00 +0000

The next time people start talking about Donald Trump, I want you to conduct a little social experiment. As soon as you hear the name of the current US president, try to observe the change in the face of the person you are talking to. You will inevitably notice how they roll their eyes, how a condescending smirk scurries over their lips or how they give an amused shake of their head. Maybe someone will point out Trump’s latest ridiculous statement or how particularly orange he looked the other day.

What started out as an absurd event as Trump won the 2016 election and moved into the White House, underwent a rough, yet somehow subtle adaptation period in which the world more or less came to terms with the former reality show star stepping into the role of the “leader of the free world”. Nonetheless, even after almost four years in the most powerful position that one can hold, Donald Trump remains nothing but a joke to many. So do the people who marked a cross next to Trump’s name in 2016. This is largely due to non-US media coverage in which the president is often depicted as a kid that happens to have its playground on the premises of the White House, and which correspondingly presents his supporters as irresponsible parents who, first of all, brought this child upon us and second, now fail to be strict and hold it accountable for its misbehaviour. Moreover, they even seem to be proud parents and actively encourage all of his actions.

A person consuming regular news outside of the United States is thus very likely to succumb to this image of Trump. Given the fact that US politics are seemingly far away from the average daily life of non-Americans, this person will probably be amused rather than concerned. This exact point is where it gets dangerous. When Donald Trump is seen as something to only laugh or sigh about, rather than as the most powerful man in the world, a critical space opens up between a perilous delusion and reality.

The Two Sides of the Medal

Within the medical field, delusions are a pathological state of mind, characterized by “fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence”. Unfortunately, politics are not as clear as psychological definitions when it comes to “evidence”. We tend to obey the fixed belief that Trump has failed as a president. This belief is fuelled by current news, which show the United States as a nation more polarized than ever; this became even more visible in the outbreaks of the “Black Lives Matter” protests and in Trump’s response of sending national troops to fight against their fellow citizens. Additionally, the coronavirus continues to rage across the country, having left more than 200 000 people dead. Yet there has still not been a clear strategy implemented on how to best fight COVID-19 under the Trump administration. All of this does not look too well on the president’s record, further reinforcing his image of
ineptitude for the office he holds.

Nonetheless, this is only one side of the coin. Its backside is characterized by a significant block of loyal Trump supporters who have the power to heave him into the Oval Office for yet another four years. It is not that they are uneducated or blind to the events which are tearing their country apart. They simply see other aspects as well. Even though political measurements like the “Trump-O-Meter,” which track the actual implementation of Trump’s election promises, show a fairly different image (49% of promises broken, 24% kept), in the eyes of the president’s supporters, Trump has delivered, nonetheless. His most famous promise, to build a wall at the border to Mexico (and make Mexico pay for it), actually never exceeded the construction of 170 km out of the 800 km promised, as Mexico did not pay a penny and Congress did not agree to its funding.

Most of the immigrants who try to enter the US illegally come from the very poor countries of Central America. Trump hence declared states like Honduras “safe countries of origin” and made Mexico oblige to secure its borders more strictly. Within a year, the number of illegally picked up immigrants saw a decline of more than 80%. A big success for Trump, and not the only one.

His campaign motto “America First,” was underpinned by various actions, for example the withdrawal of American troops from Germany or Syria. Likewise, Trump pressured NATO member states to “pay their bills” and insisted on a fairer distribution of the alliance’s costs. Before Trump’s presidency in 2016, the US share of NATO budget amounted to 72%. Yet, while NATO’s total budget grew over the last few years, the US share declined to 70%. With these actions, Trump reacted to a popular feeling which the majority of US citizens share, namely being taken advantage of by the rest of the world.

Another crucial topic under Trump’s presidency is the economy. Under Trump, the country’s economy was thriving. He cut taxes and requirements and, in the end, even Democrats had to admit that they were profiting from Trump’s economic policies. Moreover, unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, the lowest value in 51 years.

An unexpected Twist – The Corona Virus

Many analysts claim that, if the Corona virus had not occurred, i.e. forcing the global economy to shut down and accounting for a decline of a stunning 4.8% of the US economy, then Donald Trump would certainly be re-elected. COVID-19 has added an unpredictable twist to that assertion, because all of a sudden, Trump has to prove himself as a determined leader in times of crisis. This worked out semi-optimally with Trump refusing to acknowledge the danger of the disease in the beginning, downplaying the pandemic, and doubting the effectiveness of wearing masks to help contain the spread of the virus. The situation got devastatingly worse, with Trump suffering from Corona himself. The realization of the Trump campaign that this pandemic could hinder the re-election of the incumbent led to a series of disturbing and, if actually implemented, dangerous threats to democracy.

To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, many Americans consider postal voting. Regarding Trump’s currently low approval ratings (42,6%) and the related expectation that many voters will thus vote for his opponent Joe Biden, Trump continuously insisted on how postal ballots will lead to voting fraud and even suggested a delay of the election. On top of that, he has not yet confirmed a peaceful transfer of power in case he loses. Since Trump has so far kept his word on his most important promises, chances are he will keep this one too.

All of these are worrying developments. The Democracy Report 2020, published by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, actually measures global democracy based on hundreds of variables and has found the United States to be undergoing “substantial autocratization” in the Trump era.

Next time people start talking about Donald Trump, keep in mind that this man has the substantial support of loyal followers who embrace everything he says and does. Even when these words and actions are slowly turning one of the oldest democracies of the world into an autocratic regime. Do not succumb to the delusion that he is nothing but an angry orange joke which does not have to be taken seriously, but rather accept that he is a powerful president that tends to keep his word.

Related articles:

Tightening the Grip: Is Experience Necessary for a Successful Autocrat?

Photo credits:

Trump, by IoSonoUnaFotoCamera, CC BY-SA 2.0

Donald Trump with supporters, by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0

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