Saturday Commentary and Review #157
Populism To Counter De-Nationalized Elites?, UAE To Buy a Chunk of Prime Egyptian Real Estate, Gaza in Rochdale, "Hindu Supremacy", Chernobyl as Non-Human Paradise?
Every weekend (almost) I share five articles/essays/reports with you. I select these over the course of the week because they are either insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination of the above.
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For around 15 years now, the British have elected Conservatives to govern them, with anti-immigration sentiment the key driver in their choice of parties to rule. #Brexit was powered to victory by this same sentiment.
Instead of getting what they wanted, immigration in the UK has continually increased under each and every Tory Prime Minister. Last week, the ruling Conservatives managed to put out two messages on this same issue:
Putin has “weaponized migration” to harm Europe, including the UK
The massive spike in immigration that the UK has experienced since #Brexit was “unintentional” on the part of the Tories
Throughout the West, citizens are becoming increasingly suspicious of liberal democracy because they realize that no matter who they vote for, they always end up getting the same policies to them (yes, this is a gross generalization..please forgive me). It’s not just that people feel that their interests are not being represented by their elected representatives, but that their ruling elites are becoming increasingly distanced from the people that they purport to represent. The sentiment is growing that we are ruled by managers, and that we, the people, really do not have a say in anything.
For those of us who grew up in the West, democracy is part of our DNA. We live and work under the assumption that government rules on behalf of us, the people, and not lord over us, the peons. All of us now realize that the latter is much more true than the former, which is why you choose to read people like me. Very few of us feel that we have the ability to affect the decisions that impact us on a daily basis and that will direct our futures, and the futures of our families. We all have a stake in our respective societies, but feel powerless to do anything about our present situation.
The distance between the ruling elites and the citizens of their countries is made all the worse by what
describes as the ‘de-nationalization’ of the former. Furedi explains that the current wave of populism is “the people’s answer” to their de-nationalization:
Since the turn of the 21st century populism has emerged as a medium through which the Western Elites recycle their worst fears. In the mainstream media populism serves as a signifier of a dark, potentially dangerous force that undermine the stable political institutions that were carefully nurtured in the post-Second World War Era. That is why terms like extreme, far-right, authoritarian, xenophobic and even fascist are often coupled with the word populist. The semantic strategy for framing populism as the antithesis of democratic and liberal norms is to create a moral distance between it and the rest of society.
It also allows these same elites to have a monopoly on what is considered to be “democracy” today. They are its shepherds, and they get to define it (and constantly re-define it) as they see fit.
Populism as “illegitimate”:
Anti-populist sentiments are particularly prevalent among the oligarchy that runs the European Union. They refuse to regard populist parties as legitimate political opponents. Instead, they treat them as enemies rather than political opponents. The EU financially supports projects designed to curb the epidemic of populism. One such project titled, ‘Countering the populist threat: policy recommendations and educational tools’ is justified on the ground that ‘populist sentiments and politics are spreading across Europe, dividing society into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. It describes itself as an ‘An EU-funded project’, which ‘addresses this challenge, thereby ensuring stability of liberal democracies’.
That the EU subsidises propaganda to counter the influence of populist political movements indicates that it does not regard all European political parties as legitimate political partners. On the contrary it wishes to place such parties under a quarantine. This sentiment was most stridently expressed by Jean-Claude Juncker, the former President of the European Commission (EC), who regarded the fight against populism as something akin to the waging of a Holy War. In 2016, he warned of the danger represented by a ‘galloping populism’. When Juncker declared that ‘we have to fight nationalism’ and ‘block the avenue of populism’, he evoked memories associated with the good fight against fascism .
Everything outside of the narrow bounds of this hour’s definition of liberal democracy is grouped together as “populism”, and populism=fascism.
Cosmopolitanism uber Alles:
Indeed, lurking behind the strident anti-populist rhetoric is the conviction that national sensibilities must be subordinated to the outlook of cosmopolitanism. Most Eurocrats and members of the globalist elites have become de-nationalised to the point that they feel more comfortable describing themselves as citizens of the world than as member of a national community. Unlike the people who support populist parties and who identify with their nation, the cosmopolitan elites have become de-territorialised. As the sociologist Manuel Castells noted, the ‘Elites are cosmopolitan, people are local’.
Detached from their nation, the cosmopolitan elites not only fail to understand what makes people tick but they also look down on them with contempt. The cultural elites, especially their intellectuals regard themselves as wholly superior to their nationally rooted fellow citizens. For example, two well know European sociologists, Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, asserted that ‘nationalism has become the worst enemy of Europe’s nations’. Writing in the same vein, the University of Chicago’s philosopher, Martha Nussbaum attacked the emphasis on ‘patriotic pride’ as ‘morally dangerous’, and acclaimed the ethical superiority of cosmopolitanism over patriotism.
Globalization has led to a situation where elites find more in common with their fellow elites from foreign lands than they do with their own countrymen:
Superficially, the trend towards the de-nationalisation of the elites appears to be the outcome of the process of globalisation. Numerous commentators have argued that as global networks displace national ones, supra-national institutions attract the best brains. Entrepreneurs, scientists and academics begin to think more and more globally and adopt a casual orientation towards their national affiliation. However the de-nationalisation of the elites is not simply driven by globalisation. Politically and culturally they feel estranged from their own national institutions and affiliations.. Before Brexit, many English MEPs felt that they have more in common with a French colleague than with the voters who elected them. Back home, the cultural elites live a life that is detached from those of less fortunate citizens. One of the first commentator to draw attention to the trend towards the denationalisation of the elites was the American political philosopher, Christopher Lasch. He wrote in 1995:
‘Those who covet membership in the new aristocracy of brains tend to congregate on the coast, turning their back on the heartland and cultivating ties with the international market in fast-moving money, glamour, fashion, and popular culture. It is a question whether they think of themselves as Americans at all. Patriotism, certainly, does not rank very high in their hierarchy of virtues’1.
Lasch noted that in contrast to their lack of enthusiasm for patriotism, they readily embraced multiculturalism and diversity.
The globalist imagination is spontaneously drawn towards an outlook that looks down on national culture and its traditional values. That is why members of the globalist elite and their institution have played such a central role in the current Culture Wars. At the same time through the medium of the culture wars, the detachment of the elites from the life of a nation has become intensified. From this perspective they feel closer to their transnational friends than to fellow citizens ‘who do not think like us’.
National sovereignty vs. universal values:
Arguments against national sovereignty have as their premise the supposed superiority of universal and humanitarian values. However, universalism becomes a caricature of itself when it is transformed into a metaphysical force that stands above prevailing national institutions through which human beings make sense of the world. The attempt to de-territorialise sovereignty and reduces people to their most abstract individual qualities. In consequence, citizens are deprived of the cultural values through which they give their lives meaning. Humanity does not live above or beyond the boundaries and institutions it created through great struggle and effort. That is why the philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that:
‘The establishment of one sovereign world state, far from being the prerequisite for world citizenship, would be the end of all citizenship. It would not be the climax of world politics, but quite literally its end.’
Whatever its advocates’ motives, the project of de-territorialising citizenship and weakening national sovereignty constitutes a direct challenge to democracy and public life. Whatever one thinks of nation states, there can be no democratic public life outside their confines. It is only as citizens interacting with one another, within a geographically bounded entity, that democratic decision-making can work and achieve remarkable results.
The growing chasm between the elites and normal citizenry means that they are now effectively living in two different worlds, and speaking two different languages:
Cosmopolitan minded politicians simply fail to understand people’s national attachments. Nor can they grasp why millions of Europeans have decided to support political movements that they denounce as populists. They are so far removed from the lives of ordinary people that there is no real point of political contact between these two sections of society. That is why the cosmopolitan elites do not even understand those people who are targets of their hate. Populism is about many things but above all it is the people’s answer to those who would dispossess them of their national identity.
At some point, populism will have swelled to such a critical mass that it can no longer be declared something that it out-of-bounds. The smart option for the elites would be to co-opt/adopt some of their demands, thus defusing the increasing tension afflicting the West.
Shortly after the Hamas Raids of October 7th, there were feelers being put out to Egypt to see if they would agree to open their borders to permit Palestinians from Gaza to resettle in their country in return for billions of dollars to help them address the country’s precarious economic situation. The Egyptians quickly replied “no” to the offer, one reason being that resettling two million people who are either supportive or ‘just fine’ with a Muslim Brotherhood organization like Hamas would be incredibly destabilizing for them and their country. Egypt showed the Arab World that it could not be bought this time around.
Another reason has to do with the announcement that Egypt will be giving land to the United Arab Emirates for it to develop in return for $35 Billion USD. It turns out that the Egyptians were already working on a deal to remedy their economic situation, one much less politically toxic and potentially destabilizing than the offer from the Israelis:
Egypt has agreed to a $35bn deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop the area of Ras el-Hekma on its northwestern coast, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on Friday after weeks of speculations.
Madbouly said at a news conference, which was attended by Egyptian and Emirati officials, that Egypt will receive an advance amount of $15bn in the coming week, and another $20bn within two months.
The deal is the largest foreign direct investment in an urban development project in the country's modern history, the prime minister said. It is a partnership between the Egyptian government and an Emirati consortium led by ADQ, he said.
News about the sale has triggered condemnation by critics of the government, who said the land is one of Egypt's most valuable coastal locations and that it should be developed by local investors.
But Madbouly said that the Egyptian state will have a 35 percent share of the profits from this project, although it is a private investment with the majority of shares held by the UAE consortium.
I am curious as to what this development deal means in terms of control over the land earmarked for development. Who will be the sovereign? Is it akin to the many Chinese purchases of foreign ports in places like Piraeus, Greece?
Other details:
He said that the area of the Ras el-Hekma project is 170 million square metres, and will include residential neighbourhoods, tourist resorts, schools, universities, an industrial zone, a central financial and business district, an international marina for tourist yachts, and an international airport south of the city.
……..
Concerning the fate of the current inhabitants of the Ras el-Hekma area, Madbouly said they would be relocated to other areas and would be provided financial compensation, as residents have reportedly expressed fears of forced evictions.
In other words, locals will be forced out to make way for foreigners.
Alleviating its economic crisis:
Egypt is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout deal that is expected to exceed $10bn. It is expected to be followed by currency devaluation to match black market rates - nearly double the official rate of 31 Egyptian pounds to the US dollar.
Madbouly on Friday said that Cairo is now "very, very few steps away" from reaching a deal with the IMF, following the Ras el-Hekma investments.
Khaled Ikram, an economist and former director of the World Bank Egypt department, said the deal should enhance Egypt’s position in talks with the IMF.
“If things go as announced, this event should strengthen the hand of the Egyptian authorities in negotiations with the IMF,” he told Middle East Eye.
He added that the deal should “ease up on fears of Egypt's defaulting on its external obligations” as well as “reassure creditors and investors that they should stop speaking of waning support for Egypt's economy from the Gulf countries.”
Egypt, home to more than 109 million people, is grappling with a severe economic crisis, with record inflation and foreign currency shortages.
In August, annual inflation in Egypt reached close to 40 percent, according to official figures, plunging many Egyptians near or under the poverty line.
More than half the population had already been below or close to the poverty line before the current crisis.
Foreign debt has quadrupled, reaching $164bn, over President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's almost 10-year presidency. Debt servicing is currently consuming most of the state's annual expenditures. Egypt is due to pay $34.8 billion in external debt servicing in 2024 alone, according to a report by the Central Bank.
Egypt's total foreign currency reserves are $35bn. According to the Egyptian Central Bank, the ratio of short-term debts to foreign currency reserves in 2022 passed 80 percent, double that of 2021.
What is the UAE looking to get out of this deal? There has to be more to it than just financial incentives. This will give the Emirates a toehold on the Mediterranean, for one. But what beyond that? There has to be some soft power considerations as well.
UK MP for Rochdale George Galloway is one of Britain’s great political characters. Born in Dundee, Scotland, he became the youngest chair of the Scottish Labour Party, eventually entering UK Parliament in 1987. He sat in the House as a member of the Labour Party, but was expelled in late 2003 for continuously attacking his own party leadership for joining the US-led war in Iraq.
A great campaigner and fiery speaker, Galloway has also displayed an opportunist streak, best exemplified by the fact that he is now serving his 5th different constituency in UK Parliament. Galloway has long tapped into the sentiments of Muslim immigrants in the UK, and the recent outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas provided him his latest opportunity to score. This time around, he is representing Rochdale, thanks to a by-election caused by the death of a sitting MP. A former textile town that has long been a safe seat for Labour, it is now 30% Muslim and has been scarred by one of the many Pakistani rape gangs that have been uncovered all through England’s north.
Michael Crick wrote this report about Rochdale and its by-election two weeks ago, highlighting just how unique a campaign it turned out to be:
“From the river to the sea,” the familiar-hatted figure roars. “Palestine will be free,” his supporters chant in unison. George Galloway is conducting his followers like a religious cleric. “In our thousands, in our millions,” the high-priest cries. “We are all Palestinian,” they respond.
It is rare these days for a foreign issue to be so central to a British political campaign: two by-elections being fought this week — in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, and in Kingswood near Bristol — will be decided by the economy and other domestic concerns. The battle for Rochdale, which will be fought at the end of this month, is the exception.
The involuntary response would be: is he campaigning to be the Member of Parliament for Rochdale, or for Gaza? This is a valid question, but one that is not raised in polite company.
Here’s how the path was opened for Galloway to win this seat:
At the weekend, The Mail on Sunday published a recording of its candidate Azhar Ali telling a meeting of party members that Israel had “allowed” Hamas’s October 7 massacre to take place, to give it the “green light” to invade Gaza. Ali swiftly issued an apology, but it came too late: last night, the Labour Party withdrew its support for his campaign, after receiving “new information” about his comments. All of which makes for a rather peculiar scenario: come polling day, a constituency that has voted Labour since 2010 will not have a Labour candidate on the ballot.
Note the following:
From the moment it was called, after incumbent MP Sir Tony Lloyd died following a long illness, Labour insiders feared — correctly, as it turned out — that it would expose the party’s growing struggle to both retain its loyal support among Muslims and regain the confidence of British Jews. In Rochdale, around 30% of voters are Muslim; beyond the town and across north Lancashire, roughly two dozen Labour councillors have now resigned from the party over Gaza.
For years now, the UK Labour Party has been rocked by accusations of “anti-semitism” among its membership. Labour leadership felt that it could not afford to alienate its traditional Jewish support, so it expelled many members for perceived anti-semitism. This upset many anti-Israeli activists, and of course, many Muslims who vote Labour.
Making Rochdale even more flammable is this issue:
Events in the Middle East are far from Labour’s only local trial. There’s also the notorious child-abuse scandal, in which predominantly Pakistani men from the town, many of them gangsters and drug dealers, committed horrific sexual crimes against white, working-class teenage girls over many years, and indeed some are suspected of still doing so. Labour has run the council since 2010 and their councillors have been accused of brushing the issue aside — not least by Simon Danczuk, Rochdale’s former Labour MP, who was suspended by the party in 2017 following reports that he sent explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl. He is now running for the seat under the banners of the Reform Party.
Enter George Galloway:
Yet the scent of defeat was never far away. Galloway’s announcement that he would join the fight in Rochdale must have terrified Labour organisers. Galloway, after all, is the most effective constituency campaigner of modern times. For 16 years, he was a Labour MP in Glasgow, before his party expelled him for attacking Tony Blair over the Iraq War and calling the party leadership “a blood-spattered, lying, crooked group of war criminals”.
Galloway took his revenge by moving to London’s East End, where he took the safe Labour seat of Bethnal Green and Bow for his new Respect Party in 2005. Then, in 2012, he contested a by-election in another strongly Muslim Labour constituency — Bradford West — and scored the most spectacular by-election victory of modern times, with a swing of 36.6%. He almost repeated his success three years ago in Batley and Spen, when, despite running a campaign accused of homophobia, he won almost 22% of the vote and gained so many ex-Labour Muslim supporters that Starmer’s party held on by barely 300 ballots.
“There’s a Labour mafia in Rochdale, run by total inadequates,” Galloway, now standing for the Workers’ Party, tells me when I visit his campaign headquarters in a Suzuki showroom. Despite the pro-Palestine chants at his launch rally, Galloway claims, “this by-election is about Labour, not about Gaza… Labour’s name is mud here. Gaza is just the hat on it.”
Ackshually, it turned out to be all about Gaza.
had the best summation of Galloway’s stunning victory:
The Western World, particularly the Anglosphere, is becoming more Subcontinental due to the sheer numbers of migrants moving from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka to these countries. As we saw in the previous entry, their worldviews are already having a significant impact on local politics, whether it be Rochdale or the US Presidential Elections. And it isn’t just politics either; look at how successful Indian-Americans have become in the business world, especially the tech sector. They have done so well economically as a group in the USA that Indian-Americans are now among the wealthiest Americans in terms of median household income.
These people are very heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity, language, confession, culture, and so on. It does them a great disservice to lump them all into one category, something that is plainly obvious for those of us who have had contact with them to see for ourselves. Hindus and Muslims do not get along with each other for reasons both historical and contemporary. India is also home to an ancient caste structure that does not mesh well with the notions of equality that dominate western attitudes.
The point that I am clumsily trying to make here is that the significant size of their populations in the West brings with it their political and cultural attitudes that are often out of place in their new homes. Assimilation can resolve this matter, but this is a process that 1. takes time and 2. works both ways. Immigrants from these lands will be changed by their new homes, but they too will change the countries that they have moved into.
Both India and Pakistan are members of the nuclear club, in that they both have nuclear missiles in their arsenals. India has long been predicted to become a superpower all its own due to its size and its rapid (although very uneven) pace of development. For most of my life, India was dominated by the relatively-liberal Congress Party and the Gandhi family within its leadership. Lately, it has been under the rule of the Hindu Nationalist BJP. Where Congress ruled as a “big tent” party, open to all, BJP is more restrictive in that it elevates the Hindus to a position of prominence in India. BJP rule means strained relations with India’s tens of millions of Muslims.
How did the BJP come about? And what is its vision? In this very long essay, Indian journalist Mihir Dalal introduces us to the early 20th century Indian revolutionary and nationalist, Vinayak Savarkar, explaining his impact on the development of Hindu Nationalism and how it inspired the politics of today’s ruling BJP:
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a polymath who read law in London, enjoyed Shakespeare, admired the Bible, wrote important historical works, and became an accomplished poet and playwright. His lifelong obsession was politics.
Savarkar took up political activity in his teens and became a cherished anti-British revolutionary. While serving a long prison sentence for inciting violence against the British, he transformed into a Hindu supremacist bent on dominating Indian Muslims. His pamphlet Essentials of Hindutva (1923), written secretively in jail, remains the most influential work of Hindu nationalism. In this and subsequent works, he called for Hindus, hopelessly divided by caste, to come together as one homogeneous community and reclaim their ancient homeland from those he considered outsiders, primarily the Muslims. Savarkar advocated violence against Muslims as the principal means to bind antagonistic lower and upper castes, writing:
Nothing makes Self conscious of itself so much as a conflict with non-self. Nothing can weld peoples into a nation and nations into a state as the pressure of a common foe. Hatred separates as well as unites.
Savarkar has proven prescient if not prescriptive. Over the past four decades, the Hindu Right’s violence against Muslims has indeed helped Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to cement a degree of Hindu political unity long considered unattainable.
Dalal does not hide his own biases, but this is still very much worth a read:
Some of Savarkar’s views on Hindus and their religion embarrass the Right. An agnostic, Savarkar declared that Hindutva – his construction of Hindu nationalism – was bigger than Hinduism, the actual religion of the Hindus. Later in life, he railed against Hindus and urged them to become more like Muslims (or his perception of them). Writing about Muslims in the medieval period allegedly raping and converting Hindu women any chance they got, Savarkar characterised it as ‘an effective method of increasing the Muslim population’ unlike the ‘suicidal Hindu idea of chivalry’ of treating the enemy’s women with respect. He wrote disparagingly about cow worship and other Hindu practices, and refused to discharge the funeral rites for his devout Hindu wife. Although Savarkar’s Hindutva helped inspire the launch of the BJP’s parent organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a century ago, he was disdainful of its decision to avoid direct political participation. ‘The epitaph for the RSS volunteer will be that he was born, he joined the RSS and he died without accomplishing anything,’ he reportedly said.
Savarkar as central to today’s BJP:
Until Modi became prime minister in 2014, Savarkar was known to few Indians, and those few knew him as a minor freedom-fighter. Since then, the BJP-RSS have placed Savarkar at the centre of their efforts to rewrite Indian history from a Hindu supremacist perspective. Today’s BJP positions Savarkar as a nationalist icon on a par with Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, if not greater. If Savarkar’s ‘repeated warnings against the Congress’s appeasement politics’ had been heeded, India could have avoided Partition, the separation of Pakistan from India, writes Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief.
I don’t have much of value to add to this essay, so I will excuse myself from making more unnecessary commentary. If you read this piece (and you should), you’ll notice quite a lot of parallels with the development of nationalism in 19th century Europe, but with the added bonus of the author’s very obvious anti-nationalism bent.
Click here to read it in its entirety.
We end this weekend’s SCR with a look at how some scientists believe that ‘the radioactive, human-free landscape’ around Chernobyl “might be a haven for plants and animals”:
In the 1990s, a preliminary study of rodents showed that radiation had no effect on population. Twenty years later, a team of international researchers counting actual animals from helicopters found no measurable difference in the populations of elk, deer, and wild boar—and a sevenfold increase in wolf population—compared with similar, uncontaminated nature preserves. And all those populations had gone up since the first decade after the accident.
Why the difference? Possibly it’s that the animals in question reproduce faster than the radiation can kill them. “If 10 percent of the population was impacted by something—and I’m not saying they are, but if they were—in most situations, that wouldn’t be enough to cause a decline,” says Beasley, an author of that 2015 study. “A very low level of mortality wouldn’t be enough to manifest in a population-level response.”
Or maybe the animals die before something like a mutation or a cancer can kill them. “Most animals die within their first months of life, and those that make it to adulthood, most don’t live more than several years,” Beasley says. “Cancer is often a long-developing sort of thing.” That doesn’t take into account the quality of life or health of an individual in those populations, though—as Møller says. The animals might not be dying of radiation toxicity, but they might have cataracts or tumors. Their lives might not be shorter, but they might suck.
Click here to read the rest.
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I have been working very, very hard on the next entry of the Spanish Civil War series. I know it's late, but it's going to be quite an entertaining read.
I remember watching and listening to George Galloway in the early 2000s and thinking something along the lines of “this slimy Bolshevik is among the lowest forms of human being, even by politician standards.” Now I’m reading about his current activities and, well, at least he has the virtue of being consistent.