populism – Pike & Hurricane

Insults, provocation, net-politics: The war of words

Pauline Zaragoza — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 14:29:29 +0000

How new populist leaders have killed the way to practice diplomacy

In 2016, the election of Donald Trump, a former TV star, as head of the first global power marked a turning point on the world stage. The following past years have seen the arrival of other populist leaders in global superpowers such as Italy, Brazil and recently in the United Kingdom. This along with the use of social media has shuffled the cards of diplomacy’s practice.

By definition, diplomacy is the management of relationships between countries but it also implies to deal with people without offending or upsetting them. But the performance we have assisted to those previous years does not seem to correspond to this meaning anymore.

Fake news, hate speech, insults spread by political leaders have become our daily reality. In the past, we used to assist to those types of rude behavior within countries between parties. What’s new is that it is happening now at the global scale between global superpowers. This shift can be explained by the democratic accession of far-right politicians who usually represent the hard opposition to power.

Bolsonaro: provocation as the norm

One of the greatest examples of this rude diplomacy is Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president. Last summer, the Brazilian president made some great performances. During the visit of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean Yves Le Drian, he decided at the last minute to stand him up for doing a Facebook live while he was at the hairdresser. A few days later, he declared about environmental issues:

“It’s enough to eat a little less. You talk about environmental pollution. It’s enough to poop every other day. That will be better for the whole world.”

He pronounced those words while the Amazon rainforest was being torn down at a rate that it has never seen before. Then, to sustain his momentum, he rudely insulted Macron’s wife on Twitter by commenting a tweet describing her as ugly. At the same time, one of the Brazilian ministers used the Portuguese word « calhorda » to describe the French president, which can be translated as “idiot”, “bastard” or “trickster”. A word very far from the traditional diplomatic vocabulary. The response of the French president didn’t take long to come. He declared with diplomatic words:

“He said very disrespectful things about my wife. I have great respect for the Brazilian people and can only hope they soon have a president who is up to the job”.

Is this diplomatic behaviour new?

Diplomacy has its own rules. The job of diplomats such as President is to weigh the words, use euphemism and play with semantic shades. Diplomacy as an institution appeared in the Middle Age around the sixteenth centuries. Its aim was to ensure peace and set up trade by negotiations as a tool to avoid violence. This came with stabilization between states thanks to the creation of multilateral institutions such as the League of Nations and later the United Nations, with the ratification of treaty such as the Vienna Treaty in 1815 or the International Human Rights Convention in 1948.

In addition, diplomacy is a perfect instrument when it comes to solving international crisis for example, the Cuban crisis. At least, it was created to put an end to the practice of selfish states who were only looking out for their own interests. Diplomacy helps to negotiate a conflict outcome, put a stop to state raid and raise collective security.

In the past, even Hitler wasn’t insulted by other countries’ leaders. Also, during the Cold War, both sides worried about each other’s action and thus use the diplomatic language. Usually in diplomacy, leaders used to speak frankly only in private. With time, it’s getting worse. During his presidency, Obama was treated as “son of a whore” by Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte, Johnson (who after becoming chief diplomat) compared Hillary Clinton to “a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”, Trump named Kim Jong-Un in front of the UN Assembly “the Rocket Man”. We are spectators of a shifting diplomacy where insults represent the standards way of talking.

A redefinition of the political leader

This change in the political landscape raises the question of the definition of a political leader. Is it implied to be exemplary or a good person? Are Obama, Trudeau or Macron the definition of good leaders?

The Latin “Regere” means to govern and to act rightly. At least, is governing a moral matter? Because besides their disrespectful behavior, those extremist leaders have been democratically elected because they represented political game’s transparency. People are fed up with the expectation to be politically correct. They are acting, that is why there are in power now.

They represent their countries interest in a provocative way as Trump showed recently by his will to buy Greenland from Denmark to insure the US’s position in the subsurface resources race. Even with all those “diplomatic incidents”, it is working as they are popular in their country. They have legitimized a new style by institutionalizing their rude, impolite and unfiltered behavior and vocabulary. Perhaps right now governance means to behave badly.

Good things even in the worst times

However, there is still light in the dark. As well as there being those populist leaders, there are “standard” political leaders who do not have rude behavior as strategy. Diplomacy is not dead as the Pope gave us the proof when he sent a message to Donald Trump without naming him:

“A person who thinks only about building walls — wherever they may be — and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

In addition, this change has led to an increase of the political commitment. In France, during the second round of the presidential elections there was a huge mobilization against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, people are mobilized against populist leaders’ action. Demonstrations for climate change are growing around the world even if populist leader try to spread the fake news that global warming doesn’t exist. Associations for human rights, refugees’ rights, and LGBTQ rights are more active than ever in reaction to those leaders.

The hope and the opposition are here. But this change in the diplomatic area may be the reflection of our time. The question is “How are we going to respond to it?”

Written by Pauline Zaragoza

Photo Credits

Jair Bolsonaro, Jeso Carneiro, CC BY-NC 2.0

Union nations Headquarters, United Nations Photo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Climate change march, Matthew Kirby, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Declaracao a impresa, Palacio do Planalto, CC BY 2.0

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Going around in circles: Headed towards yet another financial crisis

Merle Emrich — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 15:09:39 +0000

Ten years ago, Lehman brothers collapsed. The shock waves of the financial crisis of 2008 could be felt throughout North America and Europe. One consequence was that trade finance trickled away and between 2008 and 2009 global trade and the stock market value decreased with a velocity not even observed during the Great Depression of the 1930s. To prevent another crisis of the same scale as the 2008 financial crash, provisions, i.e. mechanisms to monitor banks, were taken. The question, however, is: Are they sufficient?

What Awaits

Generally, the global economy was back on the path of recovery in 2012. Due to international cooperation, it is argued, international trade and foreign direct investment was improving. But while it may seem as if our economy is almost out of the metaphorical woods, with unemployment rates below the level of 2008 and the US economy being fairly strong, the next crisis is already looming on the horizon. And the structures we have in place might be far from helpful to prevent it or even soften the blow, not helped by an incomplete implementation of reforms decided upon after the Great Recession.

Inflation has, with nearly three percent, reached the highest level of the last six years, corporate debt is rising and with it the interest on that debt. In fact, global debt has reached a level three times higher than the global GDP and the Federal Reserve has already raised interest rates eight times since 2015. China is targeted by the US government’s trade war, as the dollar gets stronger it becomes increasingly difficult for emerging markets to repay their dollar debts (if there even is any chance of repayment at all). Pakistan requested a bail-out from the IMF, Turkey and Argentina are plunging head first into financial troubles, in 2018 the stock markets have recorded a decline due to US monetary policy and Brexit has left the UK vulnerable to a financial crisis. The list goes on.

And as if that was not enough, there are now ten banks that own more than fifty percent of the top hundred commercial banks’ assets. And the bigger the bank, the harder it falls when it falls. These ten biggest banks are so called ‘too-big-to-fail banks’. Their fall would send shudders through the economic world exceeding the seismographic scale, surpassing the extent of the Great Recession. And who will be left to clean up the rubble we have already seen in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis?

Economy and Populism

Unfortunately, financial troubles for banks, states, corporations and citizens are not the only consequence of the 2008 economic crisis. Not only has the crisis been linked to rise of suicide rates among the affected population, but to an increase of nationalist populism. In 2015 the Center for Economic Studies & Ifo Institute (CESifo) published a study showing that financial crises usually play into the hands of far-right parties, based on data of 100 financial crises and roughly 800 national elections in 20 democratic states since 1870.

Indeed, we can observe the surge of right-wing populism in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Since 2014, India has a nationalist government and recently Poland had to face repeated criticism by the European Union concerning their right-wing policies. Austria is governed by a coalition of the conservative party ÖVP and the right-wing populist FPÖ and only by a hair’s breadth elected Green Party politician Van der Bellen as president instead of right-wing candidate Hofer. Trump is the President of the United States, the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats (SD) have made it into parliament with almost 18% in the 2018 general elections. And while in German cities such as, perhaps most heard about, Chemnitz, the counter-protests are considerably bigger than the Nazi protests; the fact that these protests happened speaks for itself.

Tell Me Why

But why do financial crises lead to a surge of right-wing populism? One explanation might be that crises do not appear out of nowhere. Usually people made of flesh and blood can be found to have made mistakes or miscalculations leading to the crisis. In the case of the most recent financial crisis, that would be the political and economic elites. This opens the door for right-wing populists using a people versus elites rhetoric based on portraying identification with the disillusioned voter and a simple, familiarity-creating language, and promising stability, and law and order.

One might assume that elite-skeptic left-wing parties would gain votes as well. Yet they do not. In contrast to left-wing parties, right-wing politicians are more willing to use foreigners and minorities as their scapegoat, providing seemingly easy answers, and making use of and feeding people’s fears. The availability and skill to use television and social media to spread their ideology and creating polarisation plays into the hands of populist parties.

While voting patterns usually swing back to their pre-crisis status quo after about five years, that was not the case after 2008. The financial crash of 2008 was not only a great shock with effects exceeding their average duration, but it was merely one stumbling block in a ten years long series. And as if that was not enough, populists were able to utilise terrorist attacks and refugee flows to drive their wedge into society.

What Happens After the Next Crisis

As populist parties gain votes, government majorities decrease making it harder to make decisions and effective policies in parliament, and also making it more challenging to deal well with a possible future financial crisis. The consequences of the 2008 crisis could have been much worse, had it not been for international cooperation. The increase of right-wing populism, however, is likely to lead us on the path of protectionism, complicating international cooperation. And another financial crisis itself would be likely to trigger an even higher increase of far-right populism.

In an interview with the Economist philosopher Slavoj Žižek goes even further. He claims that “populism is simply a new way to imagine capitalism without its (…) socially disruptive effects” and explains modern populism as a reaction to experts’ expertise not working. As an example he gives the 2008 financial crisis that appeared to catch even experts off guard. This loss of trust in not only political elites but so-called experts has lead to the return of the “traditional authoritarian master”.

by Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

That was supposed to be going up, wasn’t it?, Rafael Matsunaga, CC BY 2.0

Occupy Wall Street -45, Esther Lee, CC BY 2.0

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