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democracy

The West’s Religious Freedom Test

This article was published as part of our Spring 2019 print edition, the entirety of which may be found here.

On March 15^th, 2019, an Australian man opened fire in two New Zealand mosques, killing 50 Muslim worshippers and injuring 50 others. In the aftermath of the attack, officials discovered a manifesto written by the shooter which stated his desire “to show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, [and] our homelands are our own” among numerous other rationales for killing Muslim New Zealanders.[1] The attacks cut right at the heart of the West’s tradition of—and commitment to—religious freedom, which for centuries has defined society not by blood-and-soil nationalism or adherence to a specific religious doctrine, but rather by a commitment to a shared set of values and ideals, among them religious freedom.

The roots of religious freedom in the West can be traced to the Magna Carta, a treaty between King John of England and a group of powerful barons in the year 1215. In it, the King promised to protect the Catholic Church’s rights in exchange for the barons allowing him to retain the throne. Although the charter failed to achieve all of its stated objectives and was thus unsuccessful in the short term, the agreement has since helped form the basis of religious freedom in the West.[2] In 1789, when James Madison was tasked with composing the Bill of Rights, the first right Madison enumerated was, by no coincidence, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Ever since, religious tolerance has held a unique place within the American ethos, as presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and George Bush, among numerous others, have praised the strength that freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and a diversity of opinions and cultures provides a society.[3]

The story is similar in Europe. In 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, drafted by Abbe Sieyes and Marquis de Lafayette during the French Revolution proclaimed religious freedom across France by subordinating the Catholic Church to the newly established French government. Over a century later, in 1920, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was speaking glowingly of the British commitment to “defend freedom of conscience and religious equality,” and in 1950, Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), composed in the aftermath of World War II, specifically notes the “right to freedom of…religion,” including the “freedom to change…religion.” [4]

Yet for all the talk of religious freedom representing a fundamental underpinning of liberal society, the last ten years have seen the West’s political commitment to protecting such freedoms dwindle. The New Zealand mosque attack was simply the latest development in the West’s growing issue with religious diversity, manifesting most notably in a series of attacks, both verbal and physical, against both Muslim and Jewish communities. Like in the New Zealand attack, the attackers almost always tout their goal as ridding their native lands of religious “outsiders.” In Europe, as Muslim migrants flow in from the Middle East and North Africa, right-wing fascism has taken hold of conservative parties promising a return to the white, Christian majorities of old. In the U.S., Donald Trump’s presidency and his stranglehold on the American right can too be traced to many of the same fears. Although the West has spoken eloquently of its commitment to religious tolerance for hundreds of years, its faith in the ideal has never been truly scrutinized as the Christian majorities in European states and the U.S. have yet to come under threat. But in the globalized world of the 21^st century, when the cross-cultural movement of people from different faiths is becoming commonplace, the West’s commitment to the doctrine of religious freedom is, for the first time, truly being put to the test, and the results so far do not bode well for liberalism.

In December of 2015, following a terrorist attack by a Muslim couple in San Bernardino, California in which fourteen people were murdered and 24 more seriously injured, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”[5] As numerous legal scholars have argued, by specifically targeting Muslim-majority countries, the policy is in violation of Madison’s Establishment Clause, which bans Congress from making a law respecting the establishment of a religion. Nevertheless, a July 2017 POLITICO poll found that a whopping 84% of GOP respondents and 56% of independent respondents approved of Trump’s ban, numbers indicative of a departure from the American adherence to the doctrine of religious freedom.[6] From that moment forward, the “Muslim ban”—along with Trump’s promised border wall—have constituted the hallmarks not just of the administration’s immigration policy, but also of Trump’s presidency as a whole. As conservative political commentator Ann Coulter wrote in her 2016 book In Trump We Trust, “there’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policy,” or in other words, Trump could change his mind on just about any issue without losing our support, so long as he retains his promise to bar any more Muslims and Mexicans from entering the U.S.[7]

In addition to the Muslim ban, in July of 2017 right-wing rally-goers in Charlottesville, Virginia marched with tiki torches and shouted, “Jews will not replace us,” and received almost a tacit endorsement from the president who noted the “very fine people” among the marchers.[8] Just over a year later in October of 2018, Robert Bowers murdered eleven Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the aftermath of the attack, Bowers was found to have posted online “There is no #MAGA (Make America Great Again) as long as there is a kike manifestation,” using a derogatory term for Jews.[9] Trump’s “Muslim ban,” which was upheld by the Supreme Court in June of 2018, along with the anti-Jewish rhetoric in Charlottesville and attack in Pittsburgh, demonstrate the U.S.’s faltering over its commitment to religious liberty in the face of both Muslims and Jews being incorporated more widely and permanently into the fabric of America. Trump, the face of the Republican Party, and much of his supporters no longer seem interested in the ideal either in practice, or even in theory. As the American Jewish and Muslim populations grow and individuals of those faiths begin to occupy the highest positions in American society, Trump’s presidency appears to illustrate that a vast swath of the U.S. is questioning whether or not it is religious tolerance or rather Christianity that is truly the fundamental tenet of American identity.

This very debate appears to be being held in Europe as well. Although Marine Le Pen, President of France’s right-wing National Front Party, lost France’s 2017 presidential election to Emmanuel Macron, she collected 34% of the vote and still today commands widespread support across the country.[10] Throughout the campaign Le Pen harped on anti-Muslim themes, proclaiming at a rally in Marseille:

“We are being submerged by a flood of immigrants that are sweeping all before them. There are prayers in the street, cafes that ban women…I will say when I become president that this is not the French way…If we carry on like this, the whole of France will become a gigantic no-go zone. …A multicultural society is a society that has multiple conflicts.”[11]

After an April 2017 attack on the Champs-Elysees, Le Pen demanded that, “Islamic mosques must be closed,” before promising to deport all foreign citizens on the terrorist watch list.[12] In 2017, about one-eighth of the French population was Muslim, the vast majority of whom are immigrants themselves, with the population expected to double in the next 20-30 years. Le Pen’s proposals to close mosques and to rid France of “multiculturalism” directly contradict the value of religious freedom. Moreover, even before Le Pen’s candidacy France made headlines for banning the “burkini” from its beaches. Since the French Revolution, France has boasted of a unique attachment to secularism and has prided itself on not including religion in public society, more so than in any other Western country. Nevertheless, the French government, via Le Pen and the “burkini” ban, has forced religion back into the public eye through blatant discrimination against Muslims in recent years. The support for both Le Pen and the ban amongst the French populace illustrate an additional Western nation’s waning commitment to religious tolerance in the face of a rising Muslim presence.

Le Pen’s anti-immigrant right-wing populism is not alone on the continent. In September of 2015, over 138,000 Muslim migrants entered Hungary, more than 1.5% of the country’s population.[13] In response, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban erected fencing along its borders with Croatia and Serbia, the entry points for most Syrian and Iraqi refugees migrating West, and refused asylum-seekers passage through Hungary.[14] Orban called Muslim migration “not a solution, but a problem [and] not medicine but a poison,” adding “we don’t need it and won’t swallow it.”[15] By the 2017 parliamentary election, opposition to immigration and migration was the centerpiece of the platform of Orban’s Fidesz Party, with the party “running a single issue campaign against immigrants.”[16] Yet as Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky notes, “Hungary isn’t really an anti-immigrant country,” as in 2016 “23,803 foreigners moved there” and up until March of 2017, the Orban government sponsored “residency bond programs targeted largely at Asians” where for a $370,000 “investment in Hungarian government bonds, permanent residency could be obtained.”[17] Budapest is, however, “fiercely against a certain kind of immigrant”: Muslims.[18] Despite a “right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion,” Hungary’s experience, like France and the U.S., is another example of the West’s loosening attachment to religious tolerance as a valued ideal.

And it is not just France and Hungary. Other European countries have shown similar tendencies. In Germany, where the Muslim population grew from 4.1% to 6.1% in just six years, the right-wing and anti-immigrant party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) has gained ground electorally.[19] While the German constitution specifically guarantees “the undisturbed practice of religion” and a “freedom of faith and of conscience,” in March of 2016, the AfD’s Lower Bavarian branch called for banning mosques, minarets, and the muezzin, the individuals who recite the Islamic call to prayer.[20] In Poland, several members of the dominant right-wing Law and Justice Party have rejected plans to construct a Saudi-funded mosque in the Polish capital, Warsaw.[21] In the Netherlands, where 17% of Amsterdam’s population is Muslim, the right-wing Party for Freedom, which holds the second-largest number of seats in the Dutch parliament, recently proposed banning the Quran and shutting down all Dutch mosques, despite the Dutch constitution’s protections for all citizens “to profess freely [their] religion or belief…without prejudice…under the law.”[22] Finally, in Austria in June of 2018, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced plans to forcibly close seven mosques and expel 60 imams for not expressing a “’positive fundamental view towards [the] state and society.’”[23] Whether it be AfD, Law and Justice, the Party for Freedom, or Kurz, each action fundamentally contradicts a commitment to religious tolerance.

As Muslim populations continue to rise across Europe and the United States, the once strong Western commitment to religious freedom appears to be faltering. It is easy to praise the idea of religious liberty when a country does not have to implement it in practice. But as Christian majorities come under threat from demographics, a once pleasant ideal no longer appears so attractive to those who feel as though the country they know is disappearing, an understandably scary notion for those who have felt at home there for centuries.

Whether the West’s commitment to religious freedom will survive the globalization of populations is uncertain, but it is only a fraction of the threat that Western democracies face in dealing with migration and religious diversity. Anti-religious freedom policies are not the only authoritarian tendencies of right-wing parties across the U.S. and Europe. Trump, Orban, and the Law and Justice Party in Poland have attacked Islam repeatedly, but they have also derided the courts, rule of law, and other institutions essential to liberal democracy in the process. While many voters may prefer democracy to dictatorship, as Ann Coulter explains when she said that Trump could, in essence, do anything and still maintain his support so long as he did not change his position on immigration, the importance of democracy apparently matters little in comparison to ensuring that religious outsiders stay out. Westerners formerly committed to a depoliticized court system and rule of law appear ready to throw those values out the window so long as their religious majorities are retained. Mass migration is unquestionably causing many in the West to rethink their commitment to religious freedom, but in so doing it may also be causing many to rethink their commitment to democracy and liberal values altogether.

[1] Jane Coaston. “The New Zealand Shooter’s Manifesto Shows How White Nationalist Rhetoric Spreads.” Vox, March 18, 2019. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/3/15/18267163/new-zealand-shooting-christchurch-white-nationalism-racism-language.

[2] “Magna Carta,” Wikipedia. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta.

[3] NPR. “Transcript: JFK’s Speech on His Religion.” December 5. 2007. Accessed April 1, 2019, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600.; Elisabeth Bumiller. “Bush, Calling U.S. ‘A Nation Guided by Faith,’ Urges Freedom of Worship in China.” The New York Times, February 22, 2002. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/22/world/bush-calling-us-a-nation-guided-by-faith-urges-freedom-of-worship-in-china.html.; Frank Weathers. “Abraham Lincoln on the Importance of Freedom of Conscience and Religious Liberty.” Patheos, June 10, 2012. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2012/06/abraham-lincoln-on-the-importance-of-freedom-of-conscience-and-religious-liberty.html.

[4] Andrew Roberts. “Churchill Proceedings – Winston Churchill and Religion – A Comfortable Relationship with the Almighty.” International Churchill Society, November 1, 2013. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-163/churchill-proceedings-winston-churchill-and-religion-a-comfortable-relationship-with-the-almighty/.; “European Convention on Human Rights.” Wikipedia. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights.

[5] The Associated Press. “How Donald Trump’s Plan to Ban Muslims Has Evolved.” Forbes, June 28, 2016. Accessed April 1, 2019, http://fortune.com/2016/06/28/donald-trump-muslim-ban/.

[6] Steven Shepard. “Poll: Majority of Voters Back Trump Travel Ban.” Politico, July 5, 2017. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/05/trump-travel-ban-poll-voters-240215.

[7] Ann Coulter. In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome, (New York City: Sentinel, 2016).

[8] Robert Tracinski. “The ‘Charlottesville Hoax’ Hoax.” The Bulwark, April 1, 2019. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://thebulwark.com/the-charlottesville-hoax-hoax/.

[9] Paula Ward, Rich Lord, and Liz Navratil. “29 Federal Charges Filed Against Suspect Robert Bowers.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 27, 2018. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2018/10/27/squirrel-hill-synagogue-shooting-suspect-pittsburgh-mass-officers-victims-casualties/stories/201810270072.

[10] Matt Bradley. “French Election: Marine Le Pen Loses but Propels Far-Right to Mainstream.” NBC News, May 9, 2017. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/french-election-marine-le-pen-loses-propels-far-right-mainstream-n756716.

[11] Yonette Joseph. “In Their Own Words: Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron.” The New York Times, May 5, 2017. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/world/europe/emmanuel-macron-marine-le-pen-quotes.html.

[12] ibid.

[13] Shane Savitsky. “Border fences and refugees bans: Hungary Did it – Fast.” Axios, February 1, 2017. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.axios.com/border-fences-and-refugee-bans-hungary-did-it-fast-1513300201-a344dd93-a4bd-4a34-85f7-10086f2ec678.html.

[14] ibid.

[15] Staff and Agencies. “Hungarian Prime Ministers Says Migrants Are ‘Poison’ and ‘Not Needed.’” The Guardian, July 26, 2016. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/26/hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-praises-donald-trump.

[16] Leonid Bershidsky. “Hungary Is Winning Its War on Muslim Immigrants.” Bloomberg. April 13, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-13/hungary-is-winning-its-war-on-muslim-immigrants

[17] ibid.

[18] ibid.

[19] Pew Research Center. “The Growth of Germany’s Muslim Population.” November 29, 2017. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.pewforum.org/essay/the-growth-of-germanys-muslim-population/.

[20] Zoya Sheftalovich. “German Far-Right AfD Calls for Mosque Ban.” Politico. March 31, 2016. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.politico.eu/article/german-far-right-afd-calls-for-mosque-ban/.

[21] Jack Montgomery. “Polish Lawmaker Backs Burqa Ban, No Saudi Mosques in Europe Until Poland Can Build Cathedral in Saudi Arabia.” Breitbart, August 28, 2018. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/08/28/polish-lawmaker-burqa-ban-no-saudi-arabia-mosques-europe-build-cathedrals/.

[22] “Islam in the Netherlands” Wikipedia. Accessed April 2, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_Netherlands#Demographics.

[23] Tara Isabella Burton. “Austria is Closing 7 mosques and Licking Out 60 Imams.” Vox. June 8, 2018. Accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2018/6/8/17442240/austria-closing-mosques-kicking-out-imams.

September 21, 2019 0 comment

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Featured Journalism

A Budding Bipartisan Consensus on the Liberal World Order

written by Zach Emanuel

On June 26th, Democratic Representative Joe Crowley of New York was defeated in a primary challenge from the left by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a twenty-eight-year-old former organizer for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory shocked many as Crowley, the powerful chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, had been named as a potential replacement for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and led in several polls in the weeks leading up to election day. Yet despite the upset, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said Ocasio-Cortez “represents the future of our party;” and based on her support amongst younger voters, he would seem to be correct.
In addition to running on a progressive platform similar to that of Senator Sanders in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez’s policy positions are indicative of a larger trend within the Democratic Party. Over the last eighteen months, Democrats have begun pivoting to the left of their Obama-Era stances as a result of President Donald Trump’s actions in an effort to oppose him as strongly as possible.
Take immigration for instance. President Barack Obama famously deported more people than any of his predecessors and called for tough and secure borders, while simultaneously supporting a path to citizenship and implementing the DACA program, which protected minors who were brought to the U.S illegally from deportation. All of which were at the time moderate. Obama called them, “common sense” solutions. Yet Trump’s rhetoric and actions on immigration, regardless of how disrespectful and inhumane they may be, have caused Ocasio-Cortez to call for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, and a number of other high-profile Democrats are now doing the same. The policy represents a strong shift to the left from Obama’s positions. Thanks to Trump, Democrats who used to back Obama’s “common sense” immigration reform and strong border security measures would be hard pressed to utter any sort of support for them now.
The same is happening in healthcare. Before Trump, Democrats supported working to improve the flaws within the Affordable Care Act. Regardless of what many in the Republican Party may say, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement was both a moderate plan and a compromise solution to one of the nation’s toughest and most divisive issues. However Trump’s efforts to strip Americans of their health insurance and wreck the Obamacare market through repeal of the individual mandate have led rising Democratic stars such as Ocasio-Cortez to instead call for a more radical Medicare for All plan. Again, due to Trump, attempting to fix the flaws in Obamacare is seen as outdated while support for a Single Payer system has now become a litmus test for Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2020.
Across many issues, the pattern remains. Democrats under Obama supported moderate policies and positions. Along comes Trump, and Democrats move to the left to oppose him as strongly as possible. Ocasio-Cortez and her campaign platform embody this trend, and now it “represents the future of [the] party.”
Yet when it comes to foreign policy and support for the U.S-led liberal, international order, the pattern stops. On domestic policy, Ocasio-Cortez’s platform is filled with aggressive stances opposing Trump, and yet there is no mention of his tariffs jeopardizing the global network of free trade, no position on Russian election interference constituting a threat to American democracy and democracy worldwide, and no reference to Trump’s rhetoric and actions against NATO threatening the Western-democratic alliance. What explains the dichotomy?
Given the lack of criticism Trump has received from Ocasio-Cortez for his actions, it has become clear that the far left is willing to go along with the President in renouncing America’s role as the world’s leading economic, democratic, and military power. For instance, Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of opposition to Trump’s tariffs and potential instigation of a global trade war can be explained because, like Trump, progressives have their own issues with free trade. President Obama championed trade deals through pursuit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the U.S-Korea Free Trade Agreement. In contrast, Bernie Sanders said in 2015 that agreements like these “have been a disaster for the American worker,” because “corporations that shut down here move abroad.” Later in a Democratic primary debate, Sanders even touted his “being on the picket line in opposition to NAFTA” in the 1990s. And Sanders is not alone. A number of left-leaning economists such as J.W Mason and Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Policy and Economic Research, have also spoken out strongly against the benefits of free trade. Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of criticism towards- and agreement with- the President’s trade policy is actually in line with her fellow progressives. What’s notable is that just as Trump’s victory represented the triumph of protectionism within the GOP, Ocasio-Cortez’s has done the same for Democrats.
Second, similar to her silence on trade, there is not a word in Ocasio-Cortez’s platform, criticizing Russia’s efforts to sway the result of the 2016 Presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Likewise, I have yet to hear her denounce President Trump’s denials of what unquestionably constitutes a foreign threat to the strength of American democracy, or comment on how the President’s partisan attacks against the Justice Department, FBI, and the media over investigating those threats are eroding public faith in American institutions. Moreover, Bernie Sanders– for all his vocal support and outspoken appeals for progressive policies–has not really spoken strongly either about the dangers Russian meddling poses to democracy worldwide. Why is that?
I suspect it stems from the fact that many on the far left have long seen American democracy and its institutions as intensely flawed, and therefore don’t view them with much essential value. If the American political system was not valuable to progressives to begin with, then attacks by foreign adversaries against it are not perceived of as being particularly threatening. Similarly, if the U.S can’t reasonably claim to represent democratic ideals, then it has no moral right to tout democracy around the world. Though conservatives always questioned whether or not President Obama “loved America,” he never failed to speak glowingly about the country and its political system, saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” and “in no other country is my story even possible.” Certainly those statements illustrate a belief in a system worth protecting from foreign threats. Yet as Peter Beinart noted in The Atlantic on July 4th, it is hard to imagine Ocasio-Cortez, or any progressive of her caliber for that matter, saying something similar. Thus, unlike Trump’s immigration policy, his passivity regarding defense of democracy and actions in assistance of its demise have failed to provoke Ocasio-Cortez and others on the far left to speak out.
When President Woodrow Wilson announced America’s entrance into World War I with the intention of making “the world safe for democracy,” he became the first U.S. President to articulate a belief in defending the American system of government both at home and abroad. Trump’s victory however symbolized the end of a Republican Party that cared about Wilson’s conviction of protecting American ideals and institutions in the face of foreign threats. Apparently this view now constitutes “the future” of the Democratic Party as well.
Third, Ocasio-Cortez’s platform lacked criticism of Trump’s dismissal and undermining of American multilateral military alliances such as NATO. Additionally, she has not discussed in any of her post-Election Day interviews the effect those actions have had on weakening and eroding the U.S.-led liberal order that every post-War President, including Barack Obama, has strongly supported. On the campaign trail Trump consistently complained about NATO, lamenting the fact that our European allies weren’t paying their fair share towards their defense and that the distribution of costs was “unfair, economically, to us.” Just this past week in advance of the NATO summit in Brussels, the President levied criticism at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, claiming Germany free rides off U.S security guarantees and threatening to pull back the 35,000 U.S troops deployed to Germany. Such actions are indicative of Trump’s belief that America is getting a raw deal when it comes to NATO and that the U.S would be better off avoiding the international entanglements and obligations that come with the alliance.
When it comes to scaling back U.S military commitments abroad, progressives like Ocasio-Cortez often agree with Trump. Bernie Sanders has long sought to cut American defense spending and once criticized President Obama’s plan to combat ISIS for not encouraging Middle Eastern states to “step up their military efforts and take more responsibility for the security and stability of their regions,” a statement with echoes of Trump’s rhetoric towards Europe. To quote Reihan Salam, the executive editor at the National Review, Ocasio-Cortez is actually “keeping with the fact that many on the hard left have their own objections to the status quo in U.S foreign policy.” Whether it be military interventions or alliances, progressives aren’t shy about their belief that the U.S should take a less activist role. So just as Trump has cowed the GOP into reversing and renouncing its history of support for multilateral agreements and mutual defense, if Ocasio-Cortez’s politics truly constitute the future, then the Democratic Party will soon do the same.
In 1947 when Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Arthur Vandenberg declared that partisan politics should stop “at the water’s edge,” he solidified a bipartisan consensus behind Democratic President Harry Truman’s proposals to drag the U.S from its isolationist past towards an internationalist future. However President Trump’s takeover and transformation of the GOP into an inward-looking party hostile to globalization has threatened the strength of this internationalist consensus. Moreover, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the likely soon-to-be Democratic-Socialist Congresswoman from New York, who openly and proudly opposes Trump on domestic issues, has yet to criticize the President and GOP for this radical shift. If the Republicans are the party of Trump and Ocasio-Cortez is the Democrats’ future, then there may yet be a bipartisan consensus on foreign affairs. It just isn’t the one Truman and Vandenberg had in mind.
The belief that the U.S should abdicate its world leadership arises for different reasons on the Trumpian Right and the Progressive Left. While Trump believes America is better off when it doesn’t concern itself with the interests of the rest of the world, progressives believe the world is better off when America doesn’t. Both positions however are intensely flawed. There is widespread agreement amongst economists on the benefits of free trade for all parties involved. American democracy, imperfect as it may be, is a stronger force for good in the world than Russian or Chinese autocracy. And without military alliances to defend Western liberalism from Moscow and Beijing, there is no way to guarantee its survival. Hopefully one of America’s two parties will recognize this reality before it’s too late.

July 22, 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

Security Security and Conflict

The Specter of “Foreign Influence” – Boogeyman of 21st Century Authoritarians Everywhere

written by James Walker

by James Walker
Editor

During the seismic shifts in the Arab world over the past few years the question has often arisen as to what an Islamic democracy would look like in Libya or Egypt or Tunisia. Gallons of ink have been spilled in earnest discussions in the West over whether the forces at play in the Arab Spring would bring about “true” democracies — meaning ones that we in the West are comfortable with — or “Islamofascist” pseudo-democracies. Reductionist thinking suggests that those are the only two possible outcomes — either proto-Western satellite states or Islamic theocracies in the throws of religious fervor, along the Iranian model. However, just occasionally you could hear a commentator suggest a third possible alternative — the so-called “Turkish” model of mildly Islamic democracy.

For over a decade an openly Islamic party has dominated Turkish politics, albeit one that promotes a vision of “conservative democracy” and the Turkish state as the guiding principle of government. The Justice and Development Party (JDP) is led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an energetic and (some would say) increasingly autocratic figure who has managed to maintain a popular base in Turkish society, even though the country has a strong secular tradition dating back to the founding of the state at the end of the First World War … until now, that is.

Over the past two weeks, what started out as a simple protest against the development of a small park in Istanbul has grown into a full-fledged national emergency. Thousands of protesters have gathered in Taskim Square, Istanbul to protest not only the heavy handed response from the government to legitimate protests, but also the aggressive suppression of freedom of speech and political opinion. Erdoğan has wasted no time in sending in the riot police; saturating the area in tear gas, arresting hundreds of protestors, doctors, lawyers, and reporters; and strictly curtailing the domestic reporting of the incident. The situation changes so rapidly, that by the time you read this it will have already shifted again into the next phase.

From the safety and comfort of California, it is difficult to see what we as students can add to the analysis of this event — evolving as it does by the hour. However, in an effort to show solidarity with the youth of Turkey who stand together in the face of clear oppression, let us look at the language of Erdoğan and place it in the historical and political perspective it deserves.

On June 7, Erdoğan gave a speech at a mass rally, suggesting that the protestors were violent criminals who should “have their hands broken” and that they were part of a grand conspiracy to undermine the Turkish state by “outside forces.” Who exactly these forces were is hard to pin down, but the inference was that both Marxist/Leninist terrorist groups, and the Western media were responsible for the civil unrest in Taskim Square. He has singled out the BBC as a force bent on meddling in the domestic affairs of the state on the basis that they have devoted extensive coverage to the protests, unlike their Turkish counterparts. The other major foreign influence identified was social media, and in particular Twitter, presumably because it offers the people of Turkey an avenue of self-expression that is not subject to government oversight or control.

As must be clear by now, these claims are becoming something of a trope in the world of desperate authoritarianism. A quick review of the past few years will demonstrate the highly selective company among whom Erdoğan places himself with the use of such populist rhetoric:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran — during the “Green Movement” uprising of June 2009:

“Bullying powers, including the United States, must correct their behavior, language and thoughts with regard to the Iranian nation…Today, those making accusations against the Iranian nation or other nations have been unmasked.. …Inside the country, their agents were activated. Vandalism started. Sabotaging and setting fires on the streets started. Some shops were looted. They wanted to create chaos. Public security was violated. The violators are not the public or the supporters of the candidates. They are the ill-wishers, mercenaries and agents of the Western intelligence services and the Zionists.”

Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan — during the contested, fraudulent elections of April 2010:

“No doubt, there was huge fraud. There was vast fraud. The fraud is not by the Afghans. This fraud has been done by the foreigners…including officials of the U.N., the European Union and the embassies here in Kabul… this election was occurring during a time where there were threats from the terrorists…It was not only the threat from the terrorists. But seriously, it took place under the threat of foreign interference.”

Muammah al-Gaddafi, “Leader” of Libya — during the “Arab Spring” uprising of February 2011:

“Those who have come on to the streets are under the influence of drugs supplied by al-Qaeda… It’s al-Qaeda. It’s not my people. They came from outside… There is an intention to colonise Libya. And this makes the Libyan people want to fight the new colonisation by the West.”

Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria — during the ongoing civil war, June 2012:

“What we are facing is a conspiracy of sedition, division and destruction of our homeland … This crisis is not an internal crisis. It is an external war carried out by internal elements… The masks have fallen and the international role in the Syrian events is now obvious.”

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia — speaking to the FSB about expanding the definition of treason and the registration of NGOs, February 2013:

“Any direct or indirect interference in our internal affairs, any form of pressure on Russia, our allies and partners is unacceptable… no one has the right to sow hatred, stir up society and thus threaten the lives, well-being and peace of millions of our citizens … Neither does anyone have a monopoly on speaking in the name of Russian society, especially structures financed from abroad and serving foreign interests.”

Quite why leaders in the 21st century still feel able to draw such a fine distinction between the domestic realm and the shadowy powers of “the rest of the world” is something of a mystery. Attempting to hold back the tide of public opinion, especially in the globalized age of social media, internet access to uncontrollable news sources, and widespread diasporas, is as futile now as King Cnut’s attempting to hold back the tide. At least in Cnut’s case, he was making a point about “how empty and worthless is the power of kings,” something the current crop of rulers might want to take into consideration.

During the debacle that was the Gaddafi regime’s response to the will of the people, a wise, respected, senior Islamic politician went on-the-record and stated that, “One cannot establish future, liberty, stability, peace and justice on blood.” That man was Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Let us hope that he is able to take his own advice, not only for the sake of Turkey but also for the sake of the “Turkish Model.”

James Walker is a first year MA student in Political Geography at UCLA, and an Editor for The Generation. He is also a lifelong political activist, and a firm supporter of the Occupy Gezi movement — #occupygezi, https://www.facebook.com/OccupyGezi

All quotes taken from the BBC, MSN, The Guardian, The Moscow Times, and Al Jazeera.

June 24, 2013 1 comment

Africa

Uncertainty Shadows the Eve of Egypt’s Elections

written by thegeneration

On May 23, Egypt will experience her first presidential election since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak

By Sallie Pisch

On the eve of such historic elections, Egyptians are wary. No one has any idea who will win the country’s first post-Mubarak presidential race. And many of the Egyptians who aren’t boycotting the election also aren’t voting for any candidate.

They’re voting against all the others.

The liberals, leftists, Islamists, moderates, conservatives, and everyone else are all suspicious of each other.

A year ago, Egyptians were still high on hope after an adrenaline-filled uprising toppled three-decade ruler Hosni Mubarak from power. Egyptians hoped their next presidential election would be free and fair, a chance to democratically elect Egypt’s new head of state.

The feeling now is one of uncertainty. Few Egyptians have found a candidate they strongly support among the field of 13. Instead, many are casting ballots for the candidate they think has the best chance of winning against the candidate they least want to see in power.

The activists who risked their lives on the streets to oust Mubarak last year don’t see a liberal candidate who represents them. Some have said they’ll vote for the closest thing – Nasserist Hamdeen Sabbahi or leftist lawyer Khaled Ali – but others have chosen to simply boycott the vote.

“We can’t elect a president under military rule,” one such activist said a few days before the election. For him, Egypt’s ruling military council must be ousted before truly fair elections can take place.

He plans to boycott the election entirely.

Some Egyptians see Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh as a moderate choice. Once a prominent member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Aboul Fotouh was kicked out of the organization when he announced his intention to run for president last year. At the time, the Brotherhood insisted it would not front a candidate.

Others see Aboul Fotouh as just another Islamist, even if he is more moderate than the official candidate of the Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, Mohammed Morsi. The country’s Coptic Christian community, in particular, is wary of both candidates.

“I’d like to vote for Khaled Ali, but he doesn’t have a chance,” said Farida, a Coptic Christian businesswoman. “And I hate the thought of voting for Amr Moussa, but at least he has a chance to beat Aboul Fotouh.”

Many “revolutionaries” label those who support Moussa or former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq as felool, literally ‘remnants’ of Hosni Mubarak’s formerly ruling regime. What some view as a return to stability they view as a return to the former president’s dictatorial ways.

Some see Moussa as a legitimate option and others, like Farida, as the lesser of two evils. As former head of the Arab League Moussa is familiar with international politics and Egypt’s role in the international community, plus he was not a direct part of the Mubarak government.

Sabbahi, who gained more than some expected in the Egyptian overseas vote last week, is also controversial. On one hand, Sabbahi is seen as a true revolutionary rather than a free rider, someone who fought the regime for years before the outbreak of last year’s revolution. Others argue that Egypt needs stability right now, and that a Nasserist would only further destabilize the country and disrupt the economy.

The conservatives voting for Moussa or Shafiq fear instability from the ‘revolutionaries’ like Sabbahi or Ali; the Islamists are suspicious of the leftists and liberals, the liberals are skeptic of everyone; and everyone except the Islamists worry that Aboul Fotouh or Morsi will try to apply a strict Islamic law on the country.

There is fear and suspicion across the board, but some still hope that at the very least this week’s election will set Egypt on a new course to recovery and success.

Sallie Pisch is a journalist and photographer based in Cairo, Egypt. Writing for various Egyptian and foreign media outlets, she has covered Egyptian politics since 2010 and was an eyewitness to the Egyptian Revolution and its aftermath.

May 22, 2012 0 comment

Security and Conflict Society and Culture

Resilience in Tahrir Square

written by thegeneration

A sign listing various demands on the government. Some of the demands included a cease of violence against protestors, justice for people who died during the protests, and an elected committee to draft a new constitution. Photo taken by author.

By F.A., Commentary from Cairo, Egypt.

Night cloaked Tahrir Square as the lampposts cast a dim light over the thousands of people gathered in the vicinity. Street vendors and food carts made their way between groups of protesters. We attempted to weave our way through the crowds with boxes of supplies to the heart of the square where protesters were setting up field hospitals. It was the night of the “Millionnaya,” or “Million Man March” on November 22nd. The sky was prickled with banners listing demands and calling for the step-down of Tantawi. Young men dangled from light poles waving Egyptian flags and calling chants that were echoed from below. While the square itself remained fairly safe, the real battle blazed on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, a street leading to the Interior Ministry. A line had been cleared leading from the main street through the square and down Mohammed Mahmoud Street. Every other minute, ambulances, cars, and mopeds carrying the injured zipped through the road. At the first ring of the ambulance siren, the crowd would part and the vehicles would maneuver through the crowd, narrowly missing stray protesters. During the intervals of calmness, groups of young men, their faces concealed with gas masks and plastic glasses would march into the very heart of the battleground. As they walked, they chanted anti-SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) slogans. Some of them would return in ambulances during the night, shot in the eyes with rubber bullets or choking from toxic tear-gas the police had released.

One young demonstrator recounted to me the set-up of the street. The police had drawn three lines: crossing the first resulted in tear gas, crossing the second resulted in a spray of rubber bullets, and crossing the third resulted in live ammunition. He himself had stood in the front lines tossing Molotov cocktails. He told me of a man who desperately wanted to throw his Molotov cocktail, but had no hands to reach and grab them. He explained that he had lost both hands as a result of police brutality during the revolution in January. So he grasped the bottle between his wrists and flung it towards the police.

Any protesters in the vicinity of Mohammed Mahmoud street, even those protesting in the square itself (which remained largely peaceful throughout the event), could be subject to wafts of teargas said to contain extra chemicals that resulted in anything from itchiness, to fainting spells and seizures. In the words of many I’ve met, “the government is trying to poison the people.” Those exposed to the gas could be seen with a layer of white dust coating their faces–medicine applied on the face to stifle the sting of teargas.

Police corruption and sheer abandonment of public duties, not to mention exaggerated use of force towards demonstrators, has made protection of the public a collective duty in Egyptian society. In the media, shocking images emerged of police officers beating injured, peaceful protesters and throwing dead bodies in trashcans from the early days of the recent demonstration.

For days, the street leading to the Interior Ministry remained a battleground between protesters and policemen eager to use teargas and rubber bullets. Eventually, the military intervened to form a barrier between the police and demonstrators. Yet this move only came after at least 40 civilians were killed and thousands were injured through police brutality.

The ruling Military Council continues to attempt to stifle calls for a transition to civilian governance. They continue to play a waiting game, resisting demands as demonstrations ebb and flow in Tahrir Square each week. Any changes in government are internal, rearranging leadership by merely recycling politicians and players from the old regime.

A dwindling number of demonstrators continue their sit-in of Tahrir Square. Many of them are families of those who had lost their lives in the protests. Others are protesters that have been injured and have been denied the health care promised by the government. Reports of violence from the square are often attributed to “Baltagaya” or “thugs” that are said to be infiltrators sent by the government, meant to internally cause problems within the demonstrations. Harassment of women during the protests has also been attributed to their presence. These are all attempts to disperse the crowds and discourage the people from attending demonstrations.

While the disillusionment with the current situation can be felt, there is a resilience that brings the people back to Tahrir Square week after week. In many ways, the revolution continues and undermining the long-established military institution is its challenge.

February 5, 2012 7 comments

Security and Conflict Society and Culture

Egypt: Remembering the old and approaching the new

written by thegeneration

Woman marching from Mohandiseen into Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011. Photo taken by Sallie Pisch.

The Generation welcomes its newest contributor, Sallie Pisch, to the team! Sallie currently lives in Cairo, Egypt, and is an extremely talented writer. Exactly one year after the January 25 uprising in Egypt, she reflects on the overall situation on the ground in Cairo. The following video was put together by Sallie using her personal video clips that she filmed on January 25th.

By Sallie Pisch

Egypt is approaching the one-year anniversary of the January 25 uprising that sent shockwaves through the region and captured the attention and the hearts of the world. But has anything really changed in the Arab world’s most populous country?

Walking the streets of Cairo, it’s hard to tell.

Africa’s largest city, home to roughly 20 million, is still dusty and crowded. Emissions from cars long past their prime choke the air as those same cars, pedestrians, and the occasional donkey-cart choke the streets. Children still go to school; old men still sit in traditional ahwas drinking tea and smoking water-pipes; upper-class twenty-somethings still frequent trendy cafés and nightclubs and spend enough money nightly to feed a small army.

The changes are subtle, but they’re there if you know where to look: the colors of the Egyptian flag painted on bridge supports and curbs, anti-regime graffiti scattered across the city, BBC Arabic playing in a café instead of MTV Arabia.

In 2010’s parliamentary elections, voter turnout was roughly 10 percent (despite government claims that it was 25 percent). In the first round of parliamentary elections in 2011, voter turnout was roughly 60 percent.

There were irregularities in the 2011 elections – polling stations opening late, illegal campaigning on election day, the use of religious slogans. But there were no reports of ballot-stuffing and no one died as a result of scuffles between supporters of opposing candidates.

What’s more, even those skeptical of Egypt’s transitional process know there IS a process. In 2010, many Egyptians didn’t even know parliamentary elections were happening. Today, from cab drivers to political gurus, every Egyptian knows who the political players are and what they think of them.

This is perhaps the most important change, and the thing that will keep Egypt moving forward despite the challenges: today, Egyptians care.

Regardless of how the political process moves forward (or doesn’t), no one can take back the feeling of national pride Egyptians felt during those 18 days of demonstrations in 2011. For the first time in decades, Egyptians found their voices.

When police forces withdrew from Cairo on January 28 after hours of bloody clashes with demonstrators, Egyptians stepped up to the plate. They organized neighborhood watch groups and checkpoints that were manned around the clock.

For the first time in their lives, young men who were born and lived their entire lives under the regime of Hosni Mubarak felt like their streets were their own, and watched over them with pride.

Egyptians remember that feeling. They also remember the apathy, helplessness and frustration they felt before. Many are still frustrated with what they perceive as an unfinished revolution, with many goals still unmet. But they no longer feel helpless.

That pride, as well as the memory of apathy, is what will sustain Egypt through a long, complicated and sometimes controversial transitional process.

January 24, 2012 0 comment