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A Generation Retrospective: The Arab Spring

The Generation first launched in January 2010, over a decade ago. Over the past ten years, our articles have followed world events from the outbreak of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, to the Mexican War on Drugs, Edward Snowden’s leaks about NSA surveillance, the outbreak of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, the Syrian Civil War and refugee crisis, and the advent of the Trump era.

But the Arab Spring holds a special place in The Generation’s memory.

We had just started writing when mass protests threatened the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Before regime change occurred, we argued, in keeping with the naiveté of the era, that “a plan to oust leader Muammar Gaddafi while preventing a potential coup by terrorist organizations seems a step in the right direction.” When Gaddafi was killed by opposition forces, we optimistically described the event as Libya “enter[ing] a new era,” greeted by the Libyan people in a “spirit of celebration.” We, like many other international observers during the Arab Spring, were caught up in the giddiness and seemingly endless potential of the moment.

We were even more enthused by the parallel outbreak of mass demonstrations in Mubarak’s Egypt. In 2011, we published personal narratives from an Egyptian-American immigrant student whose family proudly took part in the protests and a fourth-year student studying abroad at the American University in Cairo amidst the unrest who contemplated the potential boons and dangers of the regime transition after Mubarak’s ouster.

By 2012, we reflected more cautiously on Egypt’s unclear future. We noted that the underlying socio-economic causes of the initial unrest had been left unresolved by the change in leadership and that the ruling Military Council continued to resist a complete transition to civilian self-rule. Egypt’s street children, who had turned to the streets with their countrymen in protest of their poverty and marginalization, still suffered repression, denial of government services, and exclusion from the public sphere. Still, hope remained that Egypt’s newfound revolutionary “pride, as well as the memory of apathy, [would] sustain Egypt through a long, complicated and sometimes controversial transitional process.”

Since 2011, neither Libya nor Egypt has democratized, as many hoped that they would. Libya today is paralyzed by civil war. In Egypt, Abdel al-Sisi, who removed his predecessor Mohammad Morsi as president of Egypt by military coup in 2013, remains atop an authoritarian regime. The initial exuberance of the protesters and sympathetic Western observers has faded into cynicism.

What happened?

In Libya, Gaddafi was successfully pushed out of power by mass unrest and violence, but not by a unified political movement that could step into the power vacuum and restore a semblance of order. Armed militias, weak state institutions, and a fractured national identity did not bode well for a peaceful and orderly transition to democracy. This was especially true given the fraught political situation at the time — Gaddafi was not removed peacefully, but instead through a bloody civil war in which opposition forces received NATO backing. In the absence of a single post-Gaddafi movement or group with a wide-ranging mandate, the General National Council, the Libyan transitional government which lasted for only two years, failed to sufficiently legitimize itself and tamp down on disorder. Today, Libya is a war-torn proxy battleground for regional powers including the United State, Turkey, Russia, the UAE and Qatar, each intervening to protect their own economic and strategic interests.

Egypt’s revolution died in 2013, when Sisi’s military coup ousted Morsi and thwarted the country’s ongoing democratic transition. Morsi, Mubarak’s successor, was confronted in 2013 with mass protests accusing him of authoritarianism and Islamism, contrary to the Egyptian peoples’ desire for secular democracy. After Morsi failed to quell these protests, Sisi stepped in, removed Morsi from power, and suspended the Egyptian constitution. Why did this happen? Despite the population’s aspirations for Western-style democracy, Egypt lacked a political tradition of democracy, which severely hampered its ability to realize democratic government. Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood dominated electoral politics, which caused non-Islamists to distrust the vote. The Egyptian state was so accustomed to authoritarian governance that each successive regime similarly repressed its opposition by, for example, brutalizing peaceful protesters, harassing the media, and purging judges. Ultimately, many Egyptians became disillusioned with the promise of democracy, finding themselves angered by a political process which went through the shallow motions of democratic elections and politics but was deeply tainted by authoritarian political culture. Today, Sisi continues to rule as Egypt’s dictator.

Our writers were not wrong when they described and embodied the Arab Spring’s hope for peaceful revolution across the Middle East. Unfortunately, they had simply not yet seen events play out. Despite the initial success of the Arab revolutions, most were crushed by dictators or, after toppling one autocratic regime, saw the rise of a new autocrat or the outbreak of ruinous civil disorder. Only one country, Tunisia, managed to steer a course from dictatorship to healthy democracy.

Despite its unrealized promise, the Arab Spring was a defining moment in modern political history. Thousands of young people rose up spontaneously to demand an end to corruption and dictatorship, putting their bodies on the line in the hope of a better tomorrow. And as they marched for their rights, we were inspired by their passion and conviction.

In many ways, The Generation found its voice covering the Arab Spring. We saw firsthand that when young people speak, the world listens. And even though the world remains beset with problems, we maintain that writing about those problems is an act of optimism. Our generation isn’t resigned to the world as it is. We’re eager to make a better world real.

November 22, 2020 5 comments

Europe Globalization Human Rights Humanitarian Aid Immigration Populism Syrian Civil War

Greece’s Migrant Crisis: A Combination of EU Policy Failures & Populism

written by Caroline Mendoza

On September 8, Moria, a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, was engulfed in flames that burned down a majority of the camp and left more than 12,000 Syrian refugees sleeping on the streets of Greece. Although the destruction of the camp initiated promises from European Union officials for new measures to prevent refugee influxes in Greece, it also sparked conversation around the EU’s ineffective policies and Europe’s increase in populist sentiment.

While Syria’s civil war has raged on since 2011, the over 5.6 million refugees that have fled the country exist in a state of limbo between the jurisdiction of multiple countries, perhaps most notably Greece and Turkey. In 2015, the EU experienced a mass influx of close to 100,000 refugees fleeing predominately from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, prompting the bloc to form the 2016 EU-Turkey deal- to prevent the entrance of refugees at Greece’s shores, the EU bargained with neighboring Turkey to provide monetary aid in return for Turkey accepting all refugees attempting to seek asylum in Greece. Turkey received 6 billion Euros (6.7 billion USD) to aid the now 3.6 million Syrian refugees registered in the nation.

While the deal worked in Greece’s favor for several years succeeding its conception, recent dynamics have changed- Turkey has expressed that the monetary support from the EU is insufficient compared to the burden of millions of Syrian refugees as well as migrants from Afghanistan. In March 2020, Turkey opened its borders with Greece and openly bused refugees to the nations’ shared northwestern border as a means of exerting pressure on Greece and showcasing the threat of additional refugees. Many have accused Turkey of utilizing the struggling refugees as political pawns, prompting the EU to reassert that the bloc would not be “blackmailed” into exacerbating the migrant crisis for Greece.

While the current situation remains politically fragile and is only heightened with the threat of COVID-19, the challenges Greece is facing as its camps crowd with thousands of desperate migrants are reflective of the EU’s overall structural issues and policies on asylum-seekers. The EU’s Dublin Regulations, which mandates that the first nation an asylum seeker enters must process the asylum seeker’s registration, disproportionately places large responsibilities on Mediterranean states whose borders are common points of entry for those leaving North Africa and the Middle East. While the Regulations were originally conceived to ensure that those registering do not apply to multiple member states, nations, including Italy and Greece, have led the growing opposition to the Dublin Regulations.

In an attempt to create responsibility-sharing and ease pressures off of Italy and Greece, the EU initiated yet another lacking migration policy 一 the EU’s relocation scheme, devised after the 2015 influx of asylum seekers, planned to relocate over 160,000 asylum seekers across member states over two years. By the time 2017 arrived, a mere 29,144 people had been relocated.

In an attempt to remedy this, the EU released a new plan to improve its handling of Greece’s refugees following the incineration of Moria. The EU’s most recent migration pact will expedite pre-entry screening at borders by taking a maximum of five days while increasing responsibility sharing amongst member states by having nations contribute based on their populations and GDPs. Poland, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, however, expressed a staunch opposition to the plan in stating that the borders of the EU should remain “perfectly sealed.”

While the EU’s policymaking and failure to prioritize the rights of asylum seekers are to blame for situations like Moria, the EU’s member states have experienced a recent rise in populism that hinder the success of any relocation or migration plans. Poland, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic’s anti-immigrant stance is a trend across western Europe. In Denmark, the Danish People’s Party has introduced multiple policies to cut back on welfare for migrants- one law requires that migrant children, or those of a “non-Western” background, take Danish language classes for their families to receive welfare. In the Netherlands, a burqa ban was put in place in August 2019 that restricts face-covering clothing from being worn in areas including public transport, government facilities, and healthcare centers. Similar laws exist in Denmark, Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, and France, and are representative of xenophobic and discriminatory policymaking implemented to highlight migrants as “outsiders.”

A similar sentiment was also seen in many “Brexiteers”一 for members of the UK’s conservative party, an incentive to leave the EU was that the UK would no longer be part of the EU’s “free movement of persons” right, which allows individuals to move and reside freely amongst the EU member states. The conservative argument promoted leaving the EU to prevent refugees who entered through eastern Europe from residing in the UK. Now that Brexit has passed, the UK has already begun implementing policies to prevent immigrants from entering. A new set of laws will close the UK’s borders to immigrants who do not speak English and are unskilled laborers.

While the EU itself has a history of failed migration plans, there is only so much the commission can do; with raging anti-immigrant sentiment and an increase in European populism, member states are increasingly unwilling to welcome any new migrants, much less carry out responsibility-sharing plans released by the EU. Close to 12,000 asylum seekers will be left on the shoulders of Greece and perhaps exacerbate the already tense relations with Turkey. As the European Commission has already begun financing the construction of new camps to replace Moria, the futures of many refugees may be in cramped, under-resourced camps while the EU attempts to persuade nativist leaders and member states or bribe neighboring states to ease some of Greece’s burdens. Either way, the EU has much work to be done to handle this migrant crisis adequately and humanely, perhaps starting with urgency for more tolerant and inclusive policies in its own member states.

November 9, 2020 0 comment

Europe Featured Immigration International Trade Populism The International Economy

State of the European Union

written by Grayson Peters

Two years after the British people narrowly voted for a “Brexit” referendum to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union, the EU is more threatened than ever. Trade and customs negotiations between the British government and the European Union are at a standstill, nationalist parties blame the EU’s open border policy for enabling the passage of Syrian and and African refugees into Europe, and support for pan-European internationalism appears to be in decline. Political pressure from emboldened Eurosceptics like former London Mayor Boris Johnson and ardent Europeanists like French President Emmanuel Macron complicates the already fraught negotiations between the EU and UK. How these negotiations unfold may well determine whether or not the European system endures or succumbs to nationalist revolts in its member states.

At 11 PM on March 29, 2019, the United Kingdom is scheduled to exit the European Union. In the event of a “No-Deal” Brexit – that is, an exit without any trade or customs agreements with the European Union – the UK will be left without a legal framework for trade or border controls with the EU. In the short term, the result would be absolute pandemonium.

At present, EU-UK negotiations are deadlocked. Despite UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s insistence that a deal on border controls and other contentious issues such as aviation rules and fishing rights is still possible, disagreements persist without a resolution in sight. More critically, however, is the potential for a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which concluded the Troubles – decades of sectarian violence between Irish supporters of the United Kingdom and those desiring an independent Irish state – established a ceasefire between Irish Republican guerillas and the United Kingdom. The division between British-governed Northern Ireland and its southern neighbor, the Republic of Ireland remained. As a compromise, citizens of Northern Ireland were given the option of being both Irish and British citizens, and the border between the two Irish states was softened to allow greater freedom of movement.

In 2016, Northern Ireland, still a part of the United Kingdom, overwhelmingly opposed the Brexit referendum and voted to remain in the European Union, but was outvoted by the rest of the UK. If the UK is unable to reach an agreement with the EU that includes free movement of citizens (akin to the existing Schengen Area), a political crisis may result. A hard border between a non-EU Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, still an EU member state, could undo the fragile peace and inflame Irish nationalist and unionist passions.

While talks between the British government and the European Union stall, internal political pressure from hard-line Brexiteers like Boris Johnson, who demand a more complete withdrawal than even Prime Minister May is proposing, threatens the likelihood of a deal. Johnson and other proponents of total disengagement from European institutions are fomenting an internal revolt within the UK’s Conservative Party, claiming that Prime Minister May’s “Chequers Plan” preserves unacceptably close ties with the EU and fails to “take back control” from European customs and trade regulatory agencies. Johnson resigned his cabinet post in July in protest of the Chequers Plan, sending May’s government into a tailspin and renewing concerns about the feasibility of a Brexit deal. Any agreement reached between May’s government and the EU will likely be seen as too moderate by Johnson and other strict Brexiteers, but the EU is unlikely to accept a “Hard Brexit” akin to what Johnson proposes.

To further complicate matters, French President Emmanuel Macron has taken a noticeably tougher stance on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, labeling Brexit proponents “liars” and rejecting May’s insistence that the EU accept the Chequers Plan as a framework for ongoing negotiations. For Macron, this hard-line stance on Brexit negotiations is not motivated by any pragmatic concern for the fine print of an eventual UK-EU deal, but by an overarching desire to preserve the integrity of the European system.

The European Union is extremely vulnerable, more so than at any previous time since it was founded by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. The Greek bailout, in which the EU (mostly Germany and France) were obliged to extend credit to a fiscally-irresponsible and oft-corrupt Greek government, concluded on August 20th of this year, but financial instability in neighboring Italy, whose populist government under the Five Star Movement is violating EU fiscal rules as it increases welfare spending, has experts worried that another sovereign debt crisis is on the horizon. Nationalist movements are ascendant across Europe; along with the Five Star Movement, Germany’s AfD, France’s National Rally (formerly National Front), and others have capitalized on their constituencies’ opposition to the liberal democratic order, internationalism, and immigration embodied by the European Union.

Macron’s stance on Brexit should be read as an intentional show of force to impress upon other nations the costs of exiting the European Union. If the UK were allowed to exit the EU with favorable terms, this would likely embolden other Eurosceptics like France’s own National Rally. If other European nations believed that they could free-ride and keep the benefits of EU membership, such as the tariff-free common market, while avoiding the dues, restrictions, and open-border policy, they would likely follow in the UK’s example. Macron is thus determined to make the UK’s exit from the European Union difficult either to dissuade continental Eurosceptics in the event of a “Hard Brexit” or to encourage the UK to reverse course in face of the likely costs.

Even though France continues to insist that a Brexit deal is achievable, the French government has begun drawing up contingency plans, pointing to a real fear that no deal will be finalized before the March 2019 deadline. The French Parliament published a draft bill, which can be quickly passed in the event of a “No-Deal” Brexit, to address issues including work permits and residency visas for British nationals. According to French minister of European Affairs Nathalie Loiseau, the Eurostar train which connects England and France underneath the English channel might be barred from entering French soil, and British planes could be denied access to French airspace if no Brexit deal is finalized.

This would be a dramatic departure from the current state of affairs, which is essentially a state of open borders between the UK and continental Europe. At present, the journey from France to England is a 35 minute train ride under the English Channel, so brief that so-called “Eurocommuters” can live in one country but work in the other. Next year, that same train may be turned away by armed police at the French border.

The potential economic costs of Brexit are severe for both the United Kingdom and European Union nations like France. The Center for European Progress estimates that, even though the UK has not yet officially left the European Union, wary European investors and reduced cross-channel trade have already made a dent in the British economy, to the tune of “€26 billion [$29.49 billion] per annum – or €500 million [$567 million] a week.” The Center’s study projected that as a result of the passage of the 2016 Brexit referendum, the British economy is 2.5% smaller than it otherwise would have been. When the UK actually exits the EU, the economic repercussions will be even more severe, especially in the event of a “Hard” or “No-Deal” Brexit which results in significant barriers to trade and investment. The International Monetary Fund projects that a “No-Deal” Brexit would cost the EU around $250 billion, or about 1.5% of the EU’s GDP.

It is a very real possibility that, in the event of a “No-Deal” withdrawal from the European Union, the United Kingdom will become immediately isolated from the European continent and excluded from the European body politic for the first time in twenty years. If that comes to pass, continental nationalist parties will no doubt be emboldened, and the European experiment of free trade, free movement, and free people may find itself in mortal danger. At a time when illiberal sentiments such as hyper-nationalism, xenophobia, and distrust of globalism appear to be in vogue, the survival or disintegration of the European Union will likely determine whether or not the liberal international order can endure.

What does all this mean for confused American spectators? Since the end of the Second World War, the U.S has greatly benefited from this liberal order, built on rules-based international organizations, free trade agreements, and, ideally, respect for human rights. In large part, this is because the United States was the de-facto leader of the postwar West, hence the moniker “Leader of the Free World,” and has therefore traditionally held great sway over the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and similar institutions.

Nationalist movements which threaten the European Union are in many ways identical to the post-2016 American Right which calls for immigration restrictions, trade protectionism, and a withdrawal of American support for international institutions like NATO. With the U.S. itching to abdicate these responsibilities, if the European Union falls, so too may the international system upon which American hegemony has rested for the last 70 years.

November 5, 2018 0 comment

Cartoon Donald Trump Featured Geopolitics Human Rights Populism Russia United States Vladimir Putin

Conservatives and the Kremlin: An Emerging Alliance

written by Zach Emanuel

This past summer while leading a Congressional delegation to Moscow, Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama proclaimed in a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the United States and Russia “don’t necessarily need to be adversaries” and that “the world is better off…if Russia and the U.S. have fewer tensions.” While it is tough to disagree with Shelby, such statements are often expected from the perpetrators of cyber-warfare and election interference, not the victims.

Among fellow Republicans, Shelby is not alone in his conciliatory and even flattering tone towards our former Cold War enemy. Vice President Mike Pence said that it was “inarguable” that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.” Likewise, President Donald Trump has gone from calling Putin a “strong leader” and “very smart” to asking “wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia”.

Ronald Reagan would recoil and reject his fellow Republicans’ words. In 1983, Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be an “evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Indeed, these recent statements are a far cry from the hawkish tone Republican leaders used under Reagan. They also differ tremendously from the way Republicans spoke about Russia just a few years ago when Barack Obama still occupied the Oval Office, such as when 2012 Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney famously called Russia our “number one geopolitical foe.”

To what can we attribute this sudden, yet strong change of perspective within the GOP leadership?

It might be that former Russia hawks who have reversed their positions have done so out of political necessity. In just four years, the percentage of Republicans who consider Russia an ally has nearly doubled to 40 percent, while just 10 percent now consider Russia the greatest immediate threat to the United States. Russia, like Trump, is popular with the GOP base and Senators, like Shelby, want to keep their jobs.

But if politics can answer the question of why Republican elected officials have changed their minds on Russia, then what can possibly explain the Republican base’s change of heart?

Surprisingly, the Republican base’s pivot towards Moscow began well before Trump entered the political arena, let alone the Oval Office. In August of 2013, Matt Drudge, the conservative pundit and founder of the right-wing Drudge Report, called Putin the “leader of the free world.” Later that year, Pat Buchanan, the same Pat Buchanan who was a senior advisor to both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, penned a column defending both Putin’s leadership and conservative record. And in 2014, evangelist Franklin Graham, long a prominent face on the religious right along with his father, Billy Graham, defended Putin on a host of issues ranging from LGBT rights to military engagement in Syria. What gives?

While Buchanan and Graham’s respective defenses of Putin have been tied to his crackdown on gay rights in Russia, the right-wing obsession with Russia extends beyond “homosexual marriage,” (Buchanan’s words) and into the broader culture war taking place in the U.S. and across the Western world. On issues such as racial diversity and multiculturalism, immigration, LGBT rights, and abortion, the left and right in America and in Europe are increasingly divided.

Where does Putin stand on multiculturalism, gay rights, abortion rights, and immigration? Firmly in the conservative camp.

When it comes to racial diversity and immigration, Russia represents a Trump-Republican’s dream. While whites in the U.S make up 61% of the population, in the next 20 to 25 years, the U.S will become a majority-minority nation. Russia’s population on the other hand is still over 82% white– and not shrinking. And there is no immigration to Russia. As of January of 2018, Russia has granted only one Syrian national refugee status since the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011. To quote HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher, “Russia is a honky oasis and Republicans love it.”

Putin’s record on gay and abortion rights is similar. In advance of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia famously passed a law banning “the propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” and threatening stiff penalties for those who “promote homosexuality to anyone under 18.” Same-sex couples in Russia are ineligible for a number of legal protections available to heterosexual couples and there are no laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Finally, in the Russia republic of Chechnya in 2017, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was accused of rounding up and detaining over 100 men suspected of being gay, three of whom were killed. In the aftermath Kadyrov denied the claims and Putin appeared to back him up.

Restrictions on abortion are similarly harsh. In 2011, the Russian Parliament passed a law banning abortions after the twelfth week of pregnancy and instituted a mandatory waiting period of two to seven days to allow the woman to “reconsider her decision.” Moreover, the law mandates that abortion providers devote “10 percent of any advertising to describing the dangers of abortion to a woman’s health” while making it illegal to “describe abortion as a safe medical procedure.”

With bans on public expressions of homosexuality and restrictive abortion laws, its no wonder Christian conservatives in the United States like Franklin Graham and Mike Pence find Vladimir Putin to be a strong and admirable leader. Many Republican voters overlooked Trump’s anti-democratic tendencies when voting for him in 2016 simply so they could finally overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s not a leap to say that those same Republicans could overlook Putin’s despotism for similar reasons.

The Republican base no longer views Russia as an “evil empire” but rather as the “leader of the free world” because the battle lines dividing our world are no longer ideological, but cultural. Communists and dictators are no longer the enemy, liberals are.

The consequences of viewing the world through a cultural lens rather than an ideological one are nothing short of profound. If the features that unite people with one another are their race or policies on abortion and gay marriage rather than their commitment to American values, then it’s no wonder Republicans view Russia, rather than Democrats, as a more natural ally.

At the summit meeting between Russia and the United States in Helsinki this past July, President Trump was asked whether or not he believed America’s intelligence agencies or Vladimir Putin when it came to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He sided with Putin. While even GOP leaders chastised Trump for his comment and came to the defense of the FBI and CIA, his decision to believe and defend the Russians over fellow Americans is a sign of what’s to come if cultural values continue to supersede democratic ones. To avoid this fate, Americans must again find a way to replace partisanship with patriotism, and commitment to our causes with a commitment to our country.

October 23, 2018 0 comment

Europe Featured Global Health Immigration Populism

Measles: Europe’s Underreported Epidemic

written by Andrea Zachrich

Worldwide, measles cases have been declining for decades, but in Europe there has been a dangerous reversal of that trend throughout the last several years. In 2016, there were 5,273 cases of measles recorded in Europe, an all-time low. Yet, in 2017, the number of cases jumped to 23,927. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the first 6 months of 2018, there were over 41,000 recorded cases and 37 fatalities, and that number continues to grow.

Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease spread through airborne particles exhaled by an infected individual. About 1 percent of all cases are fatal and the disease can cause permanent harm. In some cases, the disease can result in permanent hearing loss or affect brain functioning and development. Although Europe’s recent measles outbreak is a seemingly insignificant issue that’s consequences are often ignored, its roots can be traced in part to other, more notable European phenomenons such as populism, disruption of healthcare due to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and poor funding, and massive waves of immigration.

Over the last several years, Europe has witnessed a resurgence of right-wing populism and ethno-nationalism in many countries, embodied by the politics of Viktor Orban of Hungary, Beppe Grillo of Italy, and Marine Le Pen of France, among others. Many of these populist politicians show a deep distrust of the scientific community and their research, including those regarding vaccines. As such, many have claimed that vaccines are harmful in spite of vast amounts of evidence to the contrary. Some, such as Grillo, founder of Italy’s Five Star Movement, have explicitly linked vaccines and autism. In July, Italy passed a law reversing their parliament’s earlier requirement that parents have documentation of 10 vaccines before sending their children to school. The popular myth that there is a link between vaccines and autism can be traced back to a now-debunked 1998 study by British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. The study was shown to have used falsified data and Wakefield has since lost his medical license. Moreover, numerous studies since have found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Despite this, many still cite Wakefield’s paper to support their opposition to vaccines. Marine Le Pen, the French right-wing politician and 2017 presidential candidate, voiced her opposition to a bill in parliament requiring school-aged children to be vaccinated, citing a lack of long-term evidence of the effects of vaccines, despite the fact that such evidence exists. Additionally, in France, the trust citizens have in vaccines is alarmingly low; 41 percent of people surveyed in France disagree that vaccines are safe. Other European countries hit hard by the recent measles outbreak, such as Ukraine and Greece, also show low levels of trust, and having high ranking members of globally powerful governments discussing the links between vaccines and diseases certainly won’t help. This political rhetoric and the distrust of a once widely-respected scientific community by populist politicians is already having- and therefore likely will continue to have- dire effects on global health.

In addition, another cause of the spike in measles cases in Europe can be traced to Ukraine and the disruption of its healthcare system due to violence. Ukraine was home to over half the measles cases from 2018. Experts have blamed Russia’s invasion of the Crimea, a small peninsula on the Black Sea, for the disruption of health care services that have prevented many Ukrainians from receiving vaccinations. In addition to the invasion, the Ukrainian healthcare system requires individuals to pay higher out of pocket fees for services than those in other European countries. Ukraine’s share of healthcare spending out of pocket is the second-highest in Eastern Europe at around 50 percent. Cost to the patient is thus a strong motivator for Ukrainians not to get vaccinated. While there are plans to reform this system, Ukrainians continue to pay more than their Eastern European counterparts in the meantime. With a healthcare system that disincentivizes vaccinations for many through high out of pocket fees and a war that has prohibited it for others, it’s no wonder the European measles outbreak has hit Ukraine particularly hard.

The final piece of Europe’s measles puzzle can be traced to the continent’s ongoing migrant crisis. Between 2013 and 2016 the number of applications for asylum in Europe jumped from 354,000 to 1.1 million per year, with a peak of 1.23 million in 2015. Since these migrants- most of whom are of Middle Eastern and North African descent- are escaping violence in their home countries, many of them haven’t received the measles vaccine like their European neighbors have. This has led to huge outbreaks of the disease in popular refugee destinations such as Greece, which had 173,000 migrants living in reception centers or camps in 2016. At the time, Greece was not routinely offering vaccines to adult migrants (although they were giving them to children). Greece also waits to offer vaccines until migrants are living at the holding or the community level, thus missing the opportunity to vaccinate people as they arrive. Italy– another migrant haven due to its location on the Mediterranean- has exhibited similar problems with vaccinating migrants entering the country. This influx of unvaccinated adult migrants combined with the existing population’s low vaccination rate has too been partially responsible for the measles flare-up in Europe.

The often ignored measles outbreak can therefore best be understood as a symptom of the larger, more reported trends in Europe such as right-wing populism, Russia’s invasion of the Crimea, and the high level of Muslim immigrants entering the continent. With these cultural and political shifts unlikely to change anytime soon, it is of the utmost importance that European countries, the EU, or even the WHO pursue tactics to address the disease and become more aggressive in their vaccination efforts. Possible solutions include education campaigns for new parents or for young school children, a push for stronger vaccination laws, and vaccination requirements for all immigrants – not just the children. Vaccines have extraordinarily high success rates and have saved countless lives, but they require upwards of 95 percent of the population to be vaccinated in order to prevent an outbreak of the disease. In September of 2017, measles was declared dead in England, meaning that it had low enough case numbers for three years to determine that it was not spreading through the population. This decision was reversed earlier this year. It should be a public health goal to declare measles dead in all of Europe. With vaccines being the only tool we have at our disposal, it is of the utmost importance that governments, the EU, and GNO’s alike make widespread vaccination a priority.

October 4, 2018 0 comment

Featured Freedom of Speech Globalization Immigration Interview Journalism Populism UCLA and the World United States

An interview with Fareed Zakaria

written by Andrea Zachrich

Dr. Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s show GPS, a columnist for the Washington Post, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, and a New York Times bestselling author of three books. Born in India, he immigrated to the United States to attend university and went on to receive his Bachelor’s of Arts from Yale and a PhD degree in Philosophy of Government from Harvard. Dr. Zakaria was invited to UCLA to give the annual Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture in Journalism and International Relations. He was kind enough to sit down with members of The Generation before he gave the lecture and answer our questions about immigration, democracy, and journalism with patience, insight, and humor.

Immigration:

The Generation’s first question for Dr. Zakaria concerned the relationship between immigration and populism that he has explained in one of his past articles for the Washington Post, and why this issue is so potent at this particular moment. Zakaria noted a visible rise of “right wing populism” in countries that are both lagging behind economically and those that are succeeding. Yet regardless of their economic prospects, “the one common trait you see is immigration.” What’s to blame for the backlash? Zakaria says its the forces of globalized capitalism.

“Globalized capitalism is a very dynamic but destructive force. We always think about the upside, the new products, the new companies, but we forget about the downside, the destruction of companies and communities. Now that’s what gives [globalized capitalism] its power, its dynamism, its productivity. But there’s a real downside…. And in that, when you go through a particularly accelerated phase of it, which I think we’ve been going through ever since the end of the Cold War, I think it’s easy to accept the globalization of goods, of services, of capital, these are all abstractions. But the globalization of people, that’s very hard.”

In addition, Zakaria observes, paradoxically, that places without many immigrants have the strongest reaction to immigration.

“Where is it that you find this rhetoric about [Donald Trump’s proposed border] wall has played the best? Its in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. These are not places that have vast numbers of immigrants. The places that have immigrants- New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Bay Area – they’re fine, because it’s much easier to fear the unknown, the image, the stories, the scare tactics.”

The combination of the globalization of people and the fear of the unknown person are the causes of this current rise in populism worldwide. Furthermore, Zakaria finds political leadership to be at fault for the populism rearing its head today as opposed to in the past.

“At the end of the day, political leadership matters. You have had one party, and within one party, one person, who systematically drummed up this fear. And of course he had something to play with, there was a great deal to play with in terms of the underlying anxiety. But that’s what leadership does for better or for worse. It takes that raw material and then it can fashion it as it wishes. And it’s always easier to scare people. It’s always much easier to scare people than to give them hope.”

Dr. Zakaria is, of course, referring to President Donald Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric. Throughout his candidacy and presidency, Trump has spewed rhetoric almost daily about building a wall on the Mexican-American border and implementing a ban on Muslim travel to the U.S. According to Zakaria these campaign promises exacerbated fears of immigration and helped lead to the rise populism in the United States.

We also asked Dr. Zakaria about struggles of assimilation in Europe and the United States for new immigrants. He discussed the differences between the two regions, and how he believes it to be much easier for immigrants to assimilate into American society, calling it an “assimilation machine”, and noting that “as an immigrant I can tell you the great challenge for American immigrants, for me with my kids, is to make them retain some small element of the old culture. That is the biggest challenge.” This is in contrast to Europe, where there is “a certain degree of multicultural relativism that said everyone can just live their own lives and practice their own practices even if they were very illiberal practices” and that Europeans have “tended to neglect the issue [of immigration]”. He goes on to make the point that in the U.S every immigrant is trying to assimilate, that every immigrant in the U.S wants themselves and their children to speak English as there are huge economic incentives for doing so. As opposed to the xenophobic rhetoric of President Trump, who often portrays immigrants as the “other,” and as foreigners seeking to come into the country bringing elements of the old culture here, Zakaria paints a different picture of immigrants. He describes immigrants not as people who wish to come to the U.S and retain an “other-ness” but as people who wish to become American and assimilate into the country’s culture.

Democracy:

In the face of numerous events at UCLA that have been canceled or disrupted by student protestors, The Daily Bruin reporter Megan Daley asked Dr. Zakaria about the excessive “political correctness” that is often at fault for such disruptions on university campuses across the country. These students subscribe to a type of individual identity politics that Zakaria finds detrimental to free speech. Last year, for example, Bruin Republicans had planned on hosting conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, but canceled the event amid fears of protests similar to those that occured at UC Berkeley and UC Davis that turned violent and forced the event’s cancellation.

In relation to these events on our campus and others, Zakaria spoke about how excessive political correctness can be detrimental to the university’s goal of creating an environment for discussion and academic discourse. While acknowledging that he understood the impulses of historically marginalized groups who “feel that they want to be full participants, that they want to have their voices heard, [that] they don’t want to be demeaned or marginalized again, or excluded again,” Zakaria argued that the instinct to shut out and not listen to speech they find offensive is harmful and might actually make that speech more attractive to people who see this type of inflammatory speech as “ideas that nobody wants to hear”. He argues that the problem with completely shutting down these ideas “is that the nature of an intellectual arena has to be one that allows open, unfettered conversation, discussion, and debate. And the best answer to bad ideas are good ideas, not to shut down those ideas, to not hear them”. He then broadened his explanation of what he believed to be a systematic problem with the way politics are framed on college campuses.

“People want politics to be primarily about their experience, their identity rather than a shared experience and a common identity. Because if it becomes all about your identity, first of all it becomes impossible to have a common, joint conversation that includes everybody. Secondly, if it’s all about your identity, almost by definition, nobody else can understand it as well as you, so your answers are always going to be right. And again that can’t be the basis on which you can construct a policy. So I think there’s almost a bigger problem which is that politics has become very narrowly personal and very narrowly about these kind of identity issues”.

More recently on February 26th, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin came to UCLA to give the Arnold C. Harberger Lecture. I attended the lecture that afternoon after the Generation interviewed him. During the lecture, protestors were extremely disrespectful and hissed at Mnuchin as he was speaking. He attempted to laugh off this hissing, and even addressed a protestor directly about why he was hissing, to which the protester replied “I think you’re full of shit!”. These protests made Mnuchin very hostile, flustered, and essentially prevented him from discussing what he came here to discuss, which was United States economic policy and international sanctions. This is an excellent example of Dr. Zakaria’s discussion of identity politics and how this type of politics can prevent academic discourse. These students were only reflecting on their own personal identity as people who feel as though they have been harmed by the Trump administration, and failed to allow for a productive academic discussion. You may not agree with Mnuchin’s policy or business decisions, but shutting down his ideas and not allowing them to be heard only further polarizes people and does not fight “bad ideas” with “good ideas” as Dr. Zakaria advocates academic discussion should do.

Given that that the U.S was recently downgraded from a “full-democracy” to a “flawed-democracy” by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, Zakaria also discussed the concept of an illiberal democracy as described in his book “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.” A liberal democracy is one that we find in places such as the United States, where there is protection of individual liberties from the majority and the government and popular participation in democratic processes. An illiberal democracy is one that keeps its democratic processes but loses its individual liberties and checks and balances. Dr. Zakaria finds this lose of liberal democracy in the United States problematic on “two levels”, for Americans and non-Americans alike. Using disenfranchisement of African American voters as an example to illustrate how this is a problem for citizens, Zakaria stated:

“We are the only democracy that I know of, I haven’t done an extensive study, but certainly the only advanced democracy I can think of where there are systematic efforts to disenfranchise people, to ensure that certain parts of the public don’t vote. You can see this happening today as the supreme court relaxed it’s interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. A whole series of states put in place laws that had only one purpose, which was to make it harder for certain groups of people, primarily African Americans to vote. That’s a pretty big flaw to be living with in a democracy”.

The Supreme Court Case Zakaria is referring to, Shelby County v. Holder (2013), struck down sections 4b and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which required states to get preclearance from the federal government before changing their voting practices and declared which states must obtain this preclearance based on analysis of past discrimination. Since the decision, states such as Texas and North Carolina among others have enacted Voter ID laws and gerrymandered districts to disadvantage minority voters.

Zakaria then discussed how the downgrade of American democracy is damaging on an international level:

“When you look at violations of democratic rights, of civil rights, of human rights around the world, over the last 25 years certainly, the United States has been a pretty consistent and strong voice opposing. It didn’t always do as much as it could have but this is one thing I think Americans can take a great deal of pride in that the United States was always a voice cataloging these issues and highlighting them”.

This is in stark contrast to what Zakaria sees happening now.

“Today we have a completely different atmosphere. Almost every authoritarian ruler in the world today that has in some way attacked, imprisoned, bankrupted or punished members of the media in his own country has cited Donald Trump’s use of the word ‘fake news’… So here we have our situation where the United States is becoming a role model for an illiberal democracy rather than for democracy, human rights, liberty, and the free expression of ideas. I cannot think of a time in recent memory when you have had dictators around the world using the United States as an example to justify its practices.”

Leaders in Syria, Cambodia, Libya, and China have all used Trump’s term of “fake news” to deny or downplay atrocities in their country or silence political opposition. Rhetoric from leaders of the United States has global influence, and this can either be used to promote democracy or to weaken it. As Dr. Zakaria points out, it currently appears to be doing the latter.

Journalism:

The students from Daniel Pearl Memorial High School asked Dr. Zakaria about the atmosphere when covering stories at the White House during the presidency of Donald Trump. While he does acknowledge that “it’s a great time to be a journalist because the public is fascinated by the news”, he finds covering the White House difficult for two reasons. “One of which is a lot of the interest frankly is in the circus of what is going on in Washington”. He goes on to compare now with what it was like shortly following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center or the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, people were concerned about policy and why these events were happened, but “what now we are witnessing is the fascination with the circus of the Trump administration and Trump personally”,

The second reason Zakaria finds it frustrating to cover the White House is because of the hostility towards the press coming from the White House.

“You are living, working in a circumstance where the President of the United States and the administration are systematically and actively hostile to the press, hacking it, threatening legal punishments, non legal punishments, demeaning it, and that’s a very weird atmosphere to live in.”

As discussed earlier, the term “fake news” has spread to leaders around the globe thanks to Trump’s. In January, President Trump handed out “Fake News Awards” to organizations who had given him unfavorable coverage. Dr. Zakaria says these attacks on the press can be especially dispiriting because the United States is meant to be one of the freest countries in the world and the oldest constitutional democracy. He also postulates on what this attitude may mean for the future of democracy in America:

“You think to yourself it’s fine, the institutions are strong but you know, they are only strong until they collapse, until they get weak. I’ve seen that happen in other countries. America is not somehow you know endowed by the creator with some kind of magic force field that will prevent that so that’s the worrying part about this”.

To conclude the interview, I asked Dr. Zakaria what advice he had for novice international affairs journalists such as ourselves. He emphasized that the challenge of writing about foreign places and people in the United States is making Americans care about it. Zakaria elaborates:

“I think we have a huge problem in this country in that we are a vast continent surrounded by two benign neighbors and two vast oceans and so it’s easy to think that the world doesn’t affect the United States and that you can imagine an America First or America Alone agenda, but the reality is that we are deeply interconnected with the world, as we should be.”

Yet Zakaria thinks this problem can be overcome by making the issues more salient to readers. As journalists, he believes we need to show this connection and explain why these problems are important to an American audience. While broader issues such as ethnic rivalry or sectarianism often catch people’s attention, sometimes just “telling a great human story” allows people the opportunity to relate. He concluded, “just recognizing those people out there who look different, and sound different, and worship different gods, you know, there’s often an element of common humanity that we forget.”

Dr. Zakaria was incredibly articulate and a pleasure to speak with. I was both impressed and grateful that he took the time answer all of our questions thoughtfully and thoroughly despite the fact he usually works with higher profile individuals, including presidents and prime ministers. His comments and ideas on immigration, democracy, and journalism come from years of experience as a journalist, and this experience showed. Many thanks to him for taking the time to sit down and talk with us.

March 28, 2018 0 comment

Blandine Le Cain/Wikimedia Commons, 2012; (https://goo.gl/O4mxfH). CC BY 2.0 (https://goo.gl/d02on1).

Europe Featured Populism

To Resist Le Pen, France Must Overcome A Nationalistic Precedent

written by Sarah Wyman

2016 was a productive year for the populist far-right. With Great Britain’s decision to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election setting a dangerous precedent, the French electorate will vote on their own far-right, hyper-nationalist candidate for president on April 23rd.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front (FN) has more than a little in common with her populist contemporaries in the United States and Great Britain. She has advocated for a French “Brexit” since she declared her candidacy last September, and her political momentum is built on xenophobia and a nativist response to financial globalization. It’s tempting to lump Le Pen’s presidential campaign in with the populist forces credited with approving Brexit and electing Donald Trump. However, to do so would be to radically underestimate the longevity of her movement and its profound appeals to a marginalized component of the French identity.

Marine isn’t the first Le Pen to run for France’s highest office. In 2002, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, upended pollsters’ projections by leading the FN to France’s second round of presidential voting. Although Le Pen’s showing in the final round of the election was far from successful by traditional metrics—he lost to Jacques Chirac by over 80% of the vote—it was enough to propel the FN to the forefront of political conversation in France and cement its relevance nationwide.

However, Le Pen’s brazen rhetoric and total disregard for political correctness ultimately proved too extreme even for the far-right. In 2015, his remarks characterizing Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” of World War II—the latest in a series of anti-Semitic slurs—led to a public outcry and prompted legal action from his own party. The ensuing legal effort, led by his daughter Marine, ultimately relegated Le Pen to the position of “honorary president,” formally expelling him from the party he founded. Marine Le Pen capitalized on media coverage of the highly-publicized fallout to further distance herself and the FN from her father’s extreme views.

While Marine Le Pen’s cosmetic fixes to the FN’s damaged reputation may have been enough to fool a quarter of French voters, the party remains firmly planted in the extreme right. Le Pen’s rhetoric—though less abrasive than her father’s racist gaffes—is no less extreme. On the campaign trail, she has repeatedly characterized multiculturalism as dangerous to France, perpetuated racist and xenophobic generalizations about immigrants, and marginalized first and second generation French communities by implying that their cultural values pose a threat to France’s national integrity. In a recent televised debate, Le Pen denied French responsibility for Vél’ d’Hiv—a Nazi directed raid and mass arrest of Jews in Paris by the French police for which Jacques Chirac formally apologized in 1995. The comment garnered criticism from other presidential candidates, including centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron who observed “no one has forgotten that Marine Le Pen is Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter.”

However, thanks largely to the precedent set by her father, Le Pen gets away with these remarks. She has played the French political conscience to perfection, positioning her party and her platform as a “lite” version of what Jean-Marie Le Pen stood for fifteen years ago and gaining traction with voters who were hesitant to openly embrace the blatant extremism he spouted. In today’s France, it’s possible to publicly declare support for Marine Le Pen without provoking allegations of anti-Semitism. An expressed desire to curb immigration and halt the perceived degradation of French values isn’t necessarily equated with racism. One can maintain a nostalgic conception of French identity without appearing totally out of touch. These trends are xenophobic, and they are dangerous.

Calling Le Pen “France’s Trump,” as some political commentators have done, is a gross oversimplification. Unlike Trump, Le Pen is not a political outsider. She has spent years fine-tuning her message and positioning her party for success within the political arena. The FN currently controls mayoralties in twelve French cities, and 40% of voters aged 18-24 support her candidacy for president. As a result, Le Pen does not have to contend with the questions of legitimacy which have plagued Trump’s administration, nor will the FN have to build up a political presence from nothing should she be elected president. Le Pen will almost certainly advance to the final round of voting in early May, and the FN stands only to gain from her time in the limelight.

While the FN’s rhetoric has softened under Marine Le Pen’s leadership, it remains focused on the superiority of French values and the threat posed to France’s international standing and sovereignty by foreign powers. These appeals are Le Pen’s greatest asset. Instead of reinventing French national identity, she draws upon century-old currents of nationalism deeply ingrained in the popular conscience. For instance, when Le Pen speaks reverently of a France opposed to multiculturalism—which she calls an “immigrationist religion”—she privileges French values and traditions over foreign ones, echoing the ideology disseminated by imperialist propaganda in the late 1800s. Furthermore, her insistence that the religious values of Muslim immigrants are fundamentally incompatible with France’s secular society is informed by the French law of laïcité. Although intended to prevent religious discrimination in France, laïcité ultimately reaffirms the cultural superiority of secular and Catholic French while forcing other groups to choose between their religious and national identities.

The strain of populism which produced Brexit and Trump is fundamentally different from the ideology driving the rise of Le Pen and the FN. There are similarities, of course—all three movements draw their support primarily from economic losers of globalization. They exploit fear to inflame nationalistic sentiment and enact xenophobic policy. They are nativist and deeply suspicious of the world outside their borders. But these currents run deeper in France, and Le Pen’s success is testament to the degree to which historically-rooted nationalism and the strength of France’s exclusive national identity are intertwined with its future.

The tenets providing the FN’s ideological foundation were incorporated into French politics long before Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen capitalized on their prevalence to catapult their party to power, and they will continue to enfranchise the far-right for years to come. However, Le Pen’s candidacy and the threat of her victory provide an opportunity for the French populace to confront the problematic notions residual in their national identity. Win or lose, the FN’s presence in the runoff of France’s presidential election justifies a national discussion about the shared values that paved the way for Le Pen’s success.

April 21, 2017 0 comment