Posts Tagged ‘fascism’
how are things in Guatemala? Trump wants to know, and learn…
Politically, there are two kinds, or wings, of extremism, left and right, or communist and fascist, though they both trend toward dictatorship. It’s always been obvious to me that the USA, if it ever went awry, would do it on the right side of that see-saw. Remember that McCarthy bloke and the anti-Red witch-hunts of the 50s? Remember the Vietnam war with its half-million civilian death toll, all about halting the ‘red menace’? Today it isn’t communism, it’s wokeism, feminism and even liberalism that have become terms of abuse in that faraway land.
I love its faraway-ness, from my more or less impoverished Australian perspective. It allows me to indulge in oodles of schadenfreude. After all, don’t United Staters deserve everything they’re now experiencing, having elected Old Shitmouth for a second time? And I’m actually grateful for their mess, as it was likely the principal reason for Australia’s centre-left government being returned with a much-increased majority in recent elections.
I have to say, I feel cynical about everything USA these days. Did Old Shitmouth really win that last election? Could any other democratic country allow someone who fomented a bloody insurrection after losing an election escape imprisonment, let alone regain the kind of absolute power afforded US Presidents, a power that no other democratic country on the planet bestows upon its leaders? I recently heard – I don’t always follow the US scene closely – that Old Shitmouth was allowed to pardon all those insurrectionists on returning to power. What kind of unutterably worthless and shit system this is, and the worst thing about it is that United-Staters don’t even seem to notice!
And so far, this term, only a few months in, looks far worse than the last, and my worry is more about the global consequences of this race to the bottom – though of course there are plenty of good people in the USA who don’t deserve this.
It’s typical of the USA that the thing that’s hurting Trump most is his associating with a very dodgy character who spent years sexually exploiting under-age girls. This doesn’t sit well with a country that has a greater percentage of Christian puritanical sects and obsessives than any other WEIRD nation. Never mind the travesty of putting RFK in charge of the nation’s health system, and so many other deplorable hacks in charge of the various agencies that should never be allowed to be politicised, but obviously can be under the US system. No wonder they have ‘no kings’ marches – it’s because they do have an elected monarchy – and dodgy, wealth-dominated elections for their monarch to boot.
Where will it end? We’ve all become pretty certain it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I’m kind of fascinated – schadenfreude again – but also disturbed and angered. At how Putin is taking advantage of all this. At how many overseas politicians are still kowtowing to this absurd US leader. At how good people are losing their jobs or being thrown out of the country. At the speed of this race to the bottom.
The overseas repercussions, though, are of great concern. Putin, who I suspect is getting desperate over this endless war he started, and its domestic effects, seems to be attacking NATO nations, hoping that Trumps’s lust for dictators like himself will keep him sidelined. Or maybe he, Putin, just wants to go out in a blaze of glory. However, it may be that the recent Putinland drone incursion into Poland will meet with virtually no NATO response, or more likely an inadequate one. It does seem, however, that Trump has begun to see that his support of Putin has been bad for his own business, and he has recently acknowledged that Putin is ‘the aggressor’ in the European situation. Hopefully he, and NATO generally, will become more aggressive in combatting him in the future.
But on the US domestic front, the cruelty and inhumanity of the Trump administration has been horrific.
So, how are things in Guatemala, as the song almost goes? While the liberal media in the US have been incensed by the treatment of some 500 Guatemalan children being rounded up and put on planes to be sent back to their country and an uncertain future, precious little has been said about the mind-boggling fact that these children were sent to the hellhole that is the USA – by their own families – in the first place. What could they have been thinking – or, to repeat myself, how are things in Guatemala?
It will come as no surprise to find that the country or region’s recent history, really since Spanish colonisation, has been tragically brutal, and successive US governments have contributed to that brutality, being behind a number of coup d’états and political killings. In 1931 Jorge Ubico was swept into power by the land-owning elites keen to maintain dominance in a region devastated by the Great Depression. Wikipedia gives a taste of Ubico’s version of fascism:
He replaced the system of debt peonage with a brutally enforced vagrancy law, requiring all men of working age who did not own land to work a minimum of 100 days of hard labor.[84] His government used unpaid Indian labor to build roads and railways. Ubico also froze wages at very low levels, and passed a law allowing land-owners complete immunity from prosecution for any action they took to defend their property,[84] an action described by historians as legalizing murder.[85] He greatly strengthened the police force, turning it into one of the most efficient and ruthless in Latin America.[86] He gave them greater authority to shoot and imprison people suspected of breaking the labor laws.
Thought I should leave the links intact.
All very unwell, but what does it have to do with the USA? After all, FDR’s response to the Great Depression was quite different, to put it mildly. However, though Ubico was certainly an admirer of European fascism, he was well aware of the need for US support in his region, and was happy to round up any Guatemalans of German descent, and to provide land for a US base there when the USA entered WW2.
And then there’s the interesting story of the United Fruit Company (UFCO), a benign-sounding name for a US multinational company which became infamous in the early 20th century for monopolising trade, transportation and labour in the so-called banana republics of Central America – Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala among them. Exploitative neocolonialism, as earlier practiced in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, was the term used by its critics. These profiteering ventures and tactics, often barely distinguishable from slavery, left much of Central America almost as devastated as the ‘Belgian Congo’ after Leo Victor’s depredations.
And US interference and culpability continued. As usual it was about the exaggerated, indeed ridiculous threat of ‘commies’. Guatemala held its first fully democratic election in 1945, and successive governments instituted land, labour, health and education reforms, during a period thereafter known as the ‘Guatemalan Revolution’. It was all too much for profoundly anti-communist US governments under both Truman and Eisenhower. Truman tried to organise a coup in 1952, much influenced by the afore-mentioned UFCO, whose massive profits had been cut by the Guatemalan government’s actions, and supported by the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia, one of several brutal scumbags that dominated Nicaraguan politics for decades, fully supported and promoted by the USA in its delusory battle against ‘communism’. Presumably it’s much better, according to US leadership, to have by far the biggest rich-poor gap in the WEIRD world, than to have any kind of state support for the less well-off. And they won’t even allow neighbouring governments to express this kind of humanity!
Excuse my indignation.
Truman’s attempted coup was aborted, but his successor, Eisenhower, was, of course, even more anti-commie, and some of his team had financial interests in the corrupt UFCO, so the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz just had to go. Good old Wikipedia describes the outcome:
Eisenhower authorized the CIA to carry out Operation PBSuccess in August 1953. The CIA armed, funded, and trained a force of 480 men led by Carlos Castillo Armas.[120][121] The force invaded Guatemala on 18 June 1954, backed by a heavy campaign of psychological warfare, including bombings of Guatemala City and an anti-Árbenz radio station claiming to be genuine news.[120] The invasion force fared poorly militarily, but the psychological warfare and the possibility of a US invasion intimidated the Guatemalan army, which refused to fight. Árbenz resigned on 27 June.[122][123]
So US-fuelled corruption had become the new order. Armas, mentioned above, a militant right-wing extremist, became the next President, fully backed by the Eisenhower regime. He was murdered in 1957, and of course the CIA was heavily involved in deciding his successor, Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, a somewhat unstable figure who was finally toppled in 1963, after another coup d’état organised by his defence minister. His excuse was predictable – the regime was becoming ‘overrun by communists’ – always an essential line for keeping the Yanks onside. This was a very unstable time for the struggling nation – in fact the period between 1960 and 1966 has been described, perhaps retrospectively, as the Guatemalan Civil War. Ydigoras’ successor, Enrique Peralta Azurdia, funded death squads to deal with leftist unrest, and Wikipedia describes one of many low points:
Another notable event occurred on March 3 and 5, 1966, when the G-2 (military intelligence) and the Judicial Police raided three houses in Guatemala City, capturing twenty-eight trade unionists and members of the PGT [the Communist Party]. The twenty-eight “disappeared” while in the custody of the security force, marking it one of the largest forced disappearances in Latin American history.[7]
In 1966, the country elected it first ever civilian President, against all odds. However, backed financially and militarily by the US, extreme anti-communist repression continued. The new President, Julio César Méndez Montenegro, is described by Wikipedia as ‘left-of-centre’, but its description of events during his tenure hardly supports this. Civil war, of course, had hardened positions on both sides, with the left always suffering most. Wikipedia makes it clear:
the United States expanded training within Guatemala’s 5,000-man army and outfitted the Guatemalan security forces with the most modern counterinsurgency equipment available.[3] The United States also assisted the Guatemalan security forces in the implementation and use of counter-terrorism, and the establishment of counter-terror units under the supervision of U.S. police advisors.[4] With increased US military support, the Guatemalan Army launched a counter-insurgency campaign that successfully combated and dispersed the left-wing guerrilla organizations fighting in the mountains and country.
Clearly both sides were now engaging in all-or-nothing fighting, bent on revenge for the suffering the other side was causing, but with US-subsidised might always on the side of the right. The story of militias and atrocities continued through the 70s and 80s. During the early years of the Reagan Administration, Guatemala was regarded as a pariah state, ruled by a murderous military junta, but Reagan was fully supportive. The ruthlessness of the Right led, unsurprisingly, to a greater integration of leftist resistance, with growing support from Mexico and other neighbours. The indigenous population was also under threat throughout these decades. In 1992 Rigoberta Menchú, a Mayan Kʼicheʼ human rights activist, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize ‘for her efforts to bring international attention to the government-sponsored genocide against the indigenous population‘, described as ‘a longstanding policy of the U.S.-backed military regimes’.
In 1996 the Guatemalan civil war, or series of civil wars, supposedly came to an end. Again, from Wikipedia,
According to the U.N.-sponsored truth commission (the Commission for Historical Clarification), government forces and state-sponsored, CIA-trained paramilitaries were responsible for over 93% of the human rights violations during the war.
More than 450 Mayan villages were destroyed, and over a million Guatemalans displaced.
I would hope, of course, that things are much better now in Guatemala, but the fact that parents are sending their own children off to the USA, of all places, unaccompanied, surely suggests otherwise. So, what’s the story? I’ve been trying to research this but it’s difficult – all I’m getting is the fulsome coverage of the Trump administration’s treatment of these kids. I have learned that the country has one of the highest violent crime rates in Central America, and that, since 2017, there has been ‘democratic backsliding’. So perhaps parents are imagining that, on balance, their children would have a better chance in the USA. Of course, few people there or elsewhere would have imagined that United Staters would’ve been so imbecilic as to re-elect Trump, if that’s what they did…
So, I’ve found a Washington Post piece, from July 2018, entitled ‘Why are so many children coming to the U.S. from Central America in the first place?’ Its author, Rachel Schwartz, reports:
Experts tend to divide the things driving Central Americans to flee into two groups: economic factors and violence and insecurity. The first group includes the lack of economic opportunity, including a lack of jobs or inadequate opportunities for education. The second group includes violence and victimization, not just by gangs, other criminal groups and state security forces but at home as well.
It seems that targeted victims of crime are mostly wanting to migrate, but these motives aren’t easy to separate from seeking greater economic opportunity. Also gang violence is hard to separate from gang recruitment. However, Guatemala’s flights to the US seem to be differently motivated than those from the two other affected Central American nations, Honduras and El Salvador. People/children from these two nations are around 4 times more likely to cite gang violence as the reason for their flight, compared to Guatemalans. This aligns with Guatemala’s significantly lower homicide rate, which has been trending downward now since 2009. Almost 25% of Guatemalans claimed domestic abuse as a reason, a similar percentage to that of the other two nations.
But that was a summary of a 2018 essay. A 2024 Human Rights Watch report begins thus:
Guatemala’s democratic backsliding accelerated during 2023 with corruption weakening the country’s democracy and justice system. Authorities undermined institutional checks on the abuse of power to prevent accountability. Independent journalists, prosecutors, and judges who had investigated and exposed corruption, human rights violations, and abuse of power faced increased harassment and criminal prosecution.
The rest of the report makes for extremely depressing reading. Clearly today’s Guatemala is a disaster zone. And the Trump administration is clearly doing its best to send children back there, while perhaps learning a few lessons about how to increase corruption and create a more permanent neo-fascist state domestically.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/guatemala
on fascism, buffoonery, criminality and a pretty crappy political system
On asking myself what fascism is, considering that it’s quite topical at present, my first answer is ‘nothing much’, by which I mean, on an intellectual level. The standard fascists of the past, Mussolini and Hitler, could never be described as intellectuals, and nor could Trump, though all might be described as clever in their extremely self-regarding ways. Good old AI describes fascism as ‘a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology characterised by a dictatorial leader, a centralised, autocratic government, militarism, and suppression of opposition’. This certainly describes much of the current Trump playbook, though it says little about the psychology of the typical ‘fascist’ leader, who, it seems to me, is always noisy, extremely thin-skinned, and has huge problems with listening to voices other than his own (though of course it needn’t be an exclusively male thing, but few women have ever been given the political power that the aforementioned men have been given).
The term didn’t exist before the 20th century, but of course the character type certainly did. It was apparently born out of the first world war – think of Hitler’s war experience; but it was Mussolini in particular who was central to the term, founding the Partito Nazionale Fascista, (PNF) in the early 1920s. It involved wholesale militarisation of the state, ultra-nationalism, and was of course molto macho. With Trump the draft dodger, however, fascism has taken on a different character. Definitely not so macho (many of his fellow-travellers are women), and focussed more on bullying his own critics, as well as a collection of ‘outsiders’ and competitors, and generally seeing the world in terms of win-lose scenarios, with a brutal edge. Whether or not this can be called fascism is no doubt an open question, and it isn’t of huge interest to me. It sure isn’t what I would call humanism (I was formerly involved with the SA Humanists), or a fair, inclusive, healthy or effective approach to politics.
So, much as I’m depressed with current US politics, and have long found their politico-social system far less impressive than most United Staters seem to think it is, I can’t help but hope it can be reformed and improved, considering the power that nation wields globally.
Firstly the US presidential system is quite obviously a bad system – obvious to most people outside the US. It gives a ridiculous degree of power to one individual, with limited checks and balances. Not only the ridiculous level of immunity, and the over-reaching pardoning powers, but the power to choose any unelected person as ‘running mate’, a person who can become President if something unforeseen happens, as has occurred in the past. This is clearly not democratic. Another problem is the influence of the almighty dollar. Campaign financing is very inadequately regulated and has been rising steadily over the past 30 to 40 years. Obviously this favours the rich in a nation with a larger rich-poor gap than any other democratic nation.
This one-man rule (it has always been a man and I can’t see that changing in the foreseeable) seems unable to be stopped even by clear evidence of criminal activity (Trump was convicted on 34 counts of felony business fraud re hush money payments in 2024; was found to have sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll in two lawsuits, in which Caroll was awarded $88.3 million dollars in damages, the case being currently under appeal; was indicted on 40 felony counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents related to his 2016-2020 presidency; and of course Trump’s involvement in the violent January 6 2021 insurrection in Washington DC and subsequent fraudulent attempts to claim that the election had been won by Trump, have never received proper legal treatment from the court system, due to his re-election in 2024). It’s surely obvious that no other nation in the English-speaking world, or throughout western Europe, would have allowed such an obvious reprobate to continue to play a role in their political affairs. (I must also say that the Wikipedia articles on the above-mentioned Trump ‘activities’ are impressively detailed and damning).
So what is to be done? Is there any hope for a nation that allows such a felon to be their president twice, with no doubt the hope of evading justice by buying a third term? And the way things are going over there, he might just succeed.
I have many good, and screamingly obvious, ideas about how the US polity could be overhauled, but I’m absolutely certain none of them will be implemented. In order for that to happen, the nation needs to be far more modest about itself, and to subscribe to a philosophy of constant renewal, to match the renewal of social values recognised by most other WEIRD nations, and by some progressives within the US.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned some of these ideas before in this blog, but… first, scrap the presidential system, which is beyond repair. Giving such vast powers to one person, who doesn’t even have to subscribe to the discipline of a political party and its collectively devised platform, more or less understood by the voting public, or at least there for every voter to consider, is highly problematic. Such a system is tailor-made for wannabe dictators. Nobody in Australia, where I live, or Britain, where I was born, goes into politics hoping to be a dictator – they would have to win over their local electorate, as a member of a political party (if campaigning as an independent they would’ve had to gain a local reputation through commercial or community activity), and then, if elected, would have to impress their party colleagues vis-à-vis their ideas, their communication skills, all the factors that make for a good team captain. This isn’t to say all ‘team captains’ have been effective or anything much more than disastrous -in Australia I can think of Mark Latham for Labor, or Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott for the Liberals (aka Conservatives – yes, it’s confusing: it’s about individual liberty and small government – think Thatcher’s ‘no such thing as society’).
So if the US scrapped its much-worshipped Presidential system, what then? It already has a functioning Congressional-Parliamentary system, elected every four years (called mid-term elections). It seems to have become increasingly partisan, whereas in Australia, cross-bench numbers (independents or ‘mini-parties’), with stops and starts, have grown. In Australia, our national elections vaguely resemble the US mid-terms, in which we elect local electorate hopefuls to the parliament (or re-elect incumbents), most of whom are members of the right or left party. The leaders of those parties are chosen, and can be dumped, by their elected peers in the party. Thus we have a Prime Minister and an Opposition Leader, working in a parliament, defending their policies and attacking the policies of the opposition, as of course occurs in the US Congress. We don’t have this extra, surely unnecessary, layer of power, an individual who sits in the White House like a king in his palace, surrounded by courtiers and flunkies, appointing various unelected ‘Secretaries’ to positions of massive power and authority (Treasury, State, Defence, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Education, etc, etc, – and also members of the judiciary – all subject at least to Congressional approval). The same king also has massive immunity and pardoning powers.
What could go wrong?
Anybody who thinks this is a good, let alone great, political system has surely to be certifiably insane, or born in the USA. Propaganda, anyone?
I’ve touched on just some of the problems of the US system. There’s also a disastrous ideology of ‘individualism’, in which you’re on your own, you’ll get very little government help in terms of education, health and general welfare, leading to a massive ‘left behind’ population susceptible to obvious charlatans like Trump. Hilary Clinton once called them ‘deplorables’, an indication of the problems they face vis-à-vis the wealthy elites on both sides of the political divide. The nation seems to have no shame about having the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world (this is always arguable, as naturally the world’s vilest nations don’t come clean about their rates), and some of the most disgusting prisons.
All in all, it’s pretty depressing, and I don’t see any change on the horizon. Yes I’m happy I wasn’t born there – if so, I would surely have been marked as another deplorable, given my background. I just hope the country doesn’t infect others with its disease. We all have enough problems…
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_(election_obstruction_case)
slowly slowly catchy monkey
As we approach the rather significant US election on November 5 (and the fact that they hold their national elections on Tuesdays is very stupid, but one of the least stupid things about their elections in general), I’ve been indulging in absurd fantasies – though I prefer to call them thought experiments – about a future electoral system. ‘Absurd’ isn’t a term I like to use about myself, but I must admit that when I mention this thought experiment, I get a ‘please go away and stop bothering me’ response. So what do I do when nobody wants to listen? I post it on my blog and pat myself on the back.
So my idea is that, perhaps under the influence of some soma-type happy drug, or perhaps just because there’s a near world-wide irritation with male political leadership, at least in the democratic world (let’s not get too optimistic), laws are passed in quick succession banning males from standing for political office and banning males from voting (ok, let’s leave aside for now all the gender-bending categories… if you identify as female you can vote?…but what if you’re pretending to identify…?)
Anyway, in justification of such an absurdity, in the US Presidential elections, which began in 1788-9, 45 separate individuals have been elected, none of them female. Women weren’t given the right to vote until 1920, under the 19th amendment, after decades of heroic struggle. Hilary Clinton became the first woman to stand for election, in 2016, after nearly 230 years of elections! She won, of course, on the popular vote, but that don’t matter in the US of A.
So how would such an impossible scenario go? And, yes, of course I’m going to invoke bonobos.
Well of course there are fascist-style, ‘I alone can fix it’ type women, but they’re far out-numbered by the men of that type, and there are collaborative-style, non-adversarial men, but women are generally better at working together. Just look at the stats, from any country you prefer, on male versus female violence. Just look at the Palestinian and Israeli women’s peace organisations, which have been struggling together for decades, with no male alternative. Just look at the hooliganism associated with men’s soccer games, in some countries, and its absence in the women’s game. Just think of (projected) 30% rules in the various military organisations worldwide, because it’s known that female boots on the ground are more effective at winning hearts and minds, and finding collaborative solutions. Actual peace-keeping.
Of course, banning men from this or that organisation or activity is coercive and won’t happen (to men), but it’s certainly a pleasant thought experiment. An all-female military? Imagine it if you can. You certainly won’t have trouble imagining an all male one. It fact it doesn’t require any imagination whatsoever. Any more than an all-male Presidential system, an all-male Politburo, or an all-male dictatorship.
So while I’m not trying to create a new SCUM manifesto, I do think that cutting down severely on male domination, in politics, finance and every other power-making activity, something that the WEIRD world is oh so gradually doing, is pretty well essential for our long-term survival. And bonobos provide something of a template.
It’s easy to scoff and point out that we’re so vastly superior to our language-deprived, tree-climbing closest rellies. After all, look where patriarchy got us – eight billion plus people, world domination, and geniuses like Donny Trump and Vlady Putin. But today’s human aims – sustainability rather than endless increase, sharing the resources of the biosphere rather than exploiting them, peace, persuasion and preservation rather than domination and destruction, and so on, are obviously more suited to the nurturing sector of humanity than the murderers and blowhards.
So how to give power to the bonobo possibilities within our human natures? By noticing, that’s the first thing. Actually taking note. Not only of how bonobos bring up children, deal with families, and treat (bonobo) strangers with guarded friendliness and peace offerings, but of how similar behaviour in humans, led predominantly by the females, bring about a similar bonding, mutuality and trust. Think of the waste, the desolation created by Putin’s territorial nonsense, by Xi’s pretended ‘need’ to take back Taiwan, by the hapless hope of many ‘Arabs’ and ‘Israelis’ of winning and ridding their world of the other. Think how very male it all is.
Of course, I’m being very idealistic, or at least too impatient. Humanity evolves, and, I’m hoping, in a good way. Yes we’re facing, or I should say creating, huge problems – climate change, over-population, species depletion, the nuclear threat, the lure of fascism, and still, decisions are being made here and there, that are worsening the situation. I don’t quite believe in David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity depiction of humanity’s future, but I do think that, overall, we’re evolving in the right direction. Patriarchy is coming under pressure, and the pressure is very gradually growing. And bonobos, those dumb primates, are putting us to shame in that department.
So – slowly slowly catchy monkey.
References
David Deutsch, The beginning of infinity, 2011
feminism in China? Must be too busy holding up half the sky…
Chinese feminists, happily out there, but sadly not in China
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not just religion that’s providing a brake to the progress of female empowerment. The Chinese ‘Communist’ Party, which seems to be religiously opposed to religions of all kinds, with their popes and patriarchs, hasn’t benefitted from this opposition by promoting any of its female citizens to leadership positions.
I say ‘communist’, because there’s surely no organisation on the planet that’s less communist than the thugocracy that currently rules China, and has done for the last seventy-odd years, since Mao bludgeoned his way to power. If we take communism to mean the dictatorship of the proletariat, clearly it will only happen when ‘prole’ and ‘dictator’ mean the same thing – that’s to say, never. And it’s a sad irony that any nation with any reference to communism in its title has always engaged in the most brutal – and very macho -authoritarianism. So basically I’ve come to consider both communism and fascism as synonymous with thugocracy.
So Mao’s statement that woman hold up half the sky was just patronising claptrap, apparently. Xi Jinping, the unutterably worthless bag of scum that is China’s latest dictator (I’m sorry, but I always get emotional where thugs like Mr Pudding and his Chinese mate – can’t think of a nickname just yet – are concerned. My anti-authoritarianism goes back to earliest childhood and is deeply ingrained), is suppressing the equality of women as part of his corruption campaign. It doesn’t seem to be phasing outspoken women in China, most of whom are destined to outlive the scumbag. Still, for the time being, they’re being muzzled, their Weibo accounts suspended, and their harassment by Party goons adds another layer to the harassment they’ve lately been experiencing on campuses and in workplaces.
These are backward steps for women in China. It was the fascinating Empress Dowager Cixi, one of China’s most under-rated political leaders, who first banned foot-binding back in 1902, a ban that was overturned, probably because it was instituted by a woman, but later reinstated. Even so, China was at the forefront of women’s rights in the early twentieth century. A researcher on women’s rights in China, Emeritus Professor Louise Edwards of the University of NSW, points out that early progress in equality and supportive legislation came from within the system rather than from grassroots activism:
If you were working in the state sector in China, as a woman in the 1950s, you had access to maternity leave, breastfeeding leave — these kinds of protections were way ahead of Australia at the time.
But the Party has become more repressive and ‘anti-western’ since the events of 1989, and especially since the rise of Mr Pingpong (okay this needs a bit of work). Clearly the Party has become more macho (there has never been a woman on the politburo standing committee, in its almost 70-year history), so feminists have had to work from outside that framework, and are more of a threat, and therefore more ‘western’. It’s all rather predictable in its stupidity. So China has dropped down the rankings for gender equality, temporarily. But Mr Pingpong will be dead meat soon enough (actually, not soon enough), and women will rise again, inevitably. The arc of the moral universe may be long, but it bends toward justice, in spite of these pingpongy, Mr Puddingy gremlins in the works. In fact, once Pingpong is out of the way, hopefully without being able to secure another fascist to replace him, feminism will likely burst into the public sphere with a vengeance, as identification with feminism is increasing big-time in China. Lu Pin, the founder of Feminist Voices, an influential media outlet shut down in 2018, remains confident about the future. An ABC article, linked below, quotes her:
Today, more young people than before agree that they are feminists. Today, the debate on feminism in Chinese society is unprecedentedly fierce.
Again, it’s a matter of nature eventually overcoming oppressive cultural artifice, but meanwhile the attitude of the Party towards increasing sexism and male brutality is to downplay the violence and to avoid at all costs any mention of feminist values and aspirations. It’s a very backward move considering that, by the 1970s, Chinese women, who in ancient China often didn’t even have their own names, formed the largest female workforce in the world. The one-child policy, introduced in 1979, led to abortions and abandonment of female infants, and a noticeable gender imbalance problem into the 21st century. Although the policy has since been relaxed, women are reluctant to become ‘baby factories’ for the Party, given the lack of support for child-rearing, and the current patriarchal fashion.
China’s first ever law dealing with domestic violence was enacted in 2016, over 40 years after Australia’s Family Law Act (1975) defined and legislated against domestic violence. However, it appears that the law is largely a well-kept secret. Frida Lindberg, in an article on women’s rights and social media for the Institute for Security and Development Policy (a Swedish NGO), writes this:
Despite the Anti-Domestic Violence Law, domestic violence cases have nevertheless continued. Some argue that the law is ineffective due to low public awareness about the issue and punishments that are too lenient. In addition, the law has been criticized for promoting family harmony and social stability, a principle that stems from Confucianism, as this seems to contradict the law’s principle of preventing domestic violence.
Lindberg’s article shines a light on current obstacles to female participation and progress in the Chinese workforce, obstacles that many WEIRD women now in their sixties and seventies (my generation) experienced regularly four or more decades ago. But of course the social media issue is new. Weibo and other social media sites became a vital outlet for women after the treatment of the so-called feminist five were muzzled, at least partially, after street protests in 2015 over domestic violence and the lack of public facilities for women. Unsurprisingly there was a backlash against feminist posts, which many in the movement saw as a good thing – any publicity being good publicity – but the Party decided to put a stop to the argy-bargy, removing many social media accounts of prominent feminists in 2021. It also appears to be lending support to anti-feminist nationalists, who have been trolling outspoken women for anything they can find, including sympathy for Hong Kong and for oppressed minorities. The Party has used the excuse of ‘disrupting social order’ to harass and shut down whistleblowers who’ve posted about sexual harassment, but the number of views these posts garnered argues for a groundswell of concern about the issue, one way or the other. Feminists have fought back by coding their messages to avoid censorship, but this obviously has its limitations for attracting public attention, and is usually identified and reported by the ‘nationalists’.
So, it’s a ‘watch this space’ situation, or rather, watch this region. Having taught scores of Chinese women over the years, I know all about their intellect, their passion and their power. In his book Asia’s reckoning, the Australian journalist Richard McGregor described the irony of how conformist Japan has become a liberal democratic country of sorts, while the more liberal and individualist Chinese are saddled with the Party and its goons. It’s surely a temporary situation, but just how temporary is temporary?
References
Click to access Lindberg.-2021.-Womens-Rights-in-China-and-Feminism-on-Chinese-Social-Media.-1.pdf
Richard McGregor, Asia’s reckoning, 2017
some thoughts on fascism and American exceptionalism
Fascism isn’t compatible with democracy, that’s the common view. Yet we know that fascism can utilise democracy to get started, and then toss it aside, when it, fascism, gets itself sufficiently established. It happened in Germany, of course, and in modern Russia Putin has trampled upon the seeds of democracy that were just starting to take root after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now his brand of fascism has managed to prevail for the foreseeable.
Also, fascism, though somewhat limited, can occur between democratic elections, if the elected person or party is given too much power, or leeway to increase his power, by a particular political system.
Fascism is a particular type of popularism, generally based on the leadership rhetoric of particular, highly egotistical individuals, almost always male. Other current examples include Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Phillippines, Erdogan in Turkey, Kadyrov in Chechnya, Kim Jong-Un in North Korea and Orban in Hungary. There are certain features of this political brand. Ultra-nationalism, militarism, ‘law and order’, control of the media and persecution of opposition are all essential elements.
I note that historians would mostly disagree with the ‘fascist’ moniker being used today – they like to restrict it to the early-to-mid 20th century, generally being quashed as a ‘coherent’ political movement by the second world war. Even the term ‘neo-fascist’ is generally grumbled about. I think this is false and ridiculously so. The elements of fascism described above have been used by states not only in the 21st century but since the origins of the state thousands of years ago, though of course no two fascist states are identical, any more than their leaders have been.
Every state, even the most democratic, is susceptible to fascism. The USA’s susceptibility is worth noting. To me, its ‘soft underbelly’ is its obsession with the individual. Perhaps also an obsession with worship, saviours and superheroes. Of course, Americans like to describe themselves as the most democratic people on earth, and the world’s greatest democracy. In fact, having listened to more US cable news shows since 2016 than is good for my health, I find this declaration of America’s top-class status by news anchors, political pundits, lawyers and public intellectuals to be both nauseating and alarming. It betokens a lack of a self-critical attitude towards the USA’s political system, which lends itself to populist fascism more than most other democratic systems. Few other such nations directly elect their leaders, pitching one heroic individual against another in a kind of gladiatorial contest, two Don Quixotes accompanied by their Sancho Panzas. Their parliament, too – which they refuse to call a parliament – has become very much a two-sided partisan affair, unlike many European parliaments, which feature a variety of parties jostling for popularity, leading to coalitions and compromise – which to be fair also has its problems, such as centrist stagnation and half-arsed mediocrity. There are no perfect or even ‘best’ political systems, IMHO – they change with the personnel at the controls.
It’s unarguable that the current administration which supposedly governs the USA is extremely corrupt, venal and incompetent. It is headed by a pre-teen spoilt brat with an abysmal family history, who has managed to succeed in a 50-odd year life of white-collar crime, due to extraordinarily lax laws pertaining to such crime (the USA is far from being alone amongst first-world nations in that regard), and to be rewarded for that life, and for the mountain of lies he has told about it, by becoming the president of the world’s most economically and militarily powerful country. Unfortunately for him, the extremely high-profile status he now has, and which he revels in, being a lifelong, obsessional attention-seeker, has resulted in detailed scrutiny and exposure. Now, it may be that, even with the laying bare of all the criminality he has dealt in – and no doubt more will be laid bare in the future – the USA’s justice system will still fail the simple test of bringing this crime machine to book after he is thrown out of office. Then again, maybe it will be successful, albeit partially. And the crime machine is well aware of this. And time is running out.
The USA is in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, and suffering terribly. On this day, July 24 2020, the country suffered over a thousand Covid-19 deaths in the past 24 hours. The USA has approximately 14 times the population of Australia, where I live, but has suffered more than 1000 times the number of Covid-19 deaths. It is a monumental tragedy, with hubris, indifference, blame-shifting and deceit at the highest government level, and heroism, frustration, exhaustion and determination at many state levels and especially at the level of critical and general healthcare. And there’s a presidential election in the offing, an election that the current incumbent is bound to lose. He hates losing and will never admit to losing, but there is more at stake for him now than for any other previous loss, and he knows this well.
Which brings us back to fascism. It has recently been tested, on a small scale, in Portland, and it’s being threatened elsewhere, but to be fair to the people of the USA, their civil disobedience, so disastrous for getting on top of Covid-19, is a very powerful weapon against fascism. It remains to be seen whether it will be powerful enough. The next few months will certainly absorb my attention, happily from a far-away place. I’m sure it’s going to be very very messy, but I’m also interested in 2021 in that country. How will it ensure that this never happens again? Serious reform needs to occur. Greater restrictions on presidential candidature must be applied. Not financial restrictions – wealth being apparently the only vetting criterion Americans seem to recognise. How is it that a person is allowed to become the leader of such a powerful and dominant country on the world stage without any of the kind of vetting that would be the sine qua non for the position of any mid-level CEO? Without any knowledge of the country’s history, its alliances, its laws, its domestic infrastructure and so forth? To rely entirely on the popular mandate for the filling of such a position is disastrous. This sounds like an anti-democratic statement, and to some extent it is. We don’t decide on our science by popular mandate, nor our judiciary, nor our fourth estate. We have different ways of assessing the value of these essential elements of our society, and necessarily so. The USA now suffers, via this presidency, for many failures. It fails to vet candidates for the highest office. It fails to provide any system of accountability for criminality while in office. It fails to ensure that the candidate with the greatest number of votes wins office. It fails to ensure its electoral system is secure from foreign and/or criminal interference. It permits its elected leader to select a swathe of unelected cronies without relevant experience to positions of high domestic and international significance. It permits its leader to engage in extreme nepotism. It fails in dealing with presidential emoluments. The current incumbent in the ‘white palace’ may not be able to spell fascism, but his instincts are fascist, as shown by his absolutist language, not necessarily the language of an adult, but neither is the language of most fascist leaders, who share the same brattish love of insult, thin-skinned intolerance of opposition, and lack of common humanity. These are precisely the psychological types who need to be vetted out of all political systems. This isn’t 20-20 hindsight. Vast numbers of people, in the USA and around the world, saw Trump as the mentally deficient liar and con-man he’s always been. It’s up to the USA to ensure that such a type can never rise to anything like this position of power and influence again. It requires far more than soul-searching.
Putin: a partial portrait of a ruthless barbarian
a portrait of the small-minded, vindictive, mass-murdering multi-billionaire petty thief as a youngster – who’d have thunk it?
As I lie here, I sense the distinct presence of the angel of death. It is still possible I’ll be able to evade him, but I fear my feet are no longer as fast as they used to be. I think the time has come to say a few words to the man responsible for my current condition.
You may be able to force me to stay quiet, but this silence will come at a price to you. You have now proved that you are exactly the ruthless barbarian your harshest critics made you out to be.
You have demonstrated that you have no respect for human life, liberty, or other values of civilisation.
You have shown that you do not deserve to hold your post, and you do not deserve the trust of civilised people.
You may be able to shut one man up, but the noise of protest all over the world will reverberate in your ears, Mr Putin, to the end of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to my beloved Russia and her people.
(Final words dictated by Alexander Litvinenko before his death by polonium poisoning, London, November 2006. A public inquiry concluded in January 2016 that Litvinenko’s murder was an FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) operation, that was probably personally approved by Vladimir Putin).
I seem to have always felt an extreme, visceral loathing for Vladimir Putin, or at least ever since the first reports about his behaviour and attitudes began percolating through to me, and in the following posts, at the risk of raising my blood pressure to dangerous levels, I’m going to examine why it is that with each little tidbit that comes my way I loathe him more.
Of course I know why in general terms. I’ve loathed bullies ever since I was a kid being bullied by parents, teachers and boys (and girls) who were bigger than me – which was almost everyone (I mean everyone was bigger than me, not that they were all bullies!). People seem to characterise me as a leftist, but I’ve never thought of myself that way. My politics springs above all else from anti-authoritarianism, though it doesn’t veer off into the kind of atomistic individualism known as ‘libertarianism’. We need each other, and it’s as a profoundly social species that we’ve achieved what we have on this planet – such as those achievements are. And our best achievements, I think, have been more scientific than political.
So, considering my greater focus on science in recent years, I surprised myself some months ago by buying a book on Putin from a second-hand stall at the market near my work. Even as I bought it I asked myself – why? Why make myself angry and outraged? Or was I wanting to indulge in that holier-than-thou feeling you can get from reading about a truly inferior being?
Probably not, since it took me a while to bring myself to start reading the book, entitled The man without a face: the unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin. It was written by an established journalist, Masha Gessen, and published in 2012. It’s a fast-paced page-turner, though necessarily convoluted given that Putin is the embodiment of KGB deviance and disinformation, and it’s reassuringly skeptical about its own findings given the incredibly murky and profoundly corrupt politics of post-Communist Russia – a mafioso-type situation for which Putin is almost single-handedly responsible.
My impressions: when Putin first became a prominent news figure out of Russia almost two decades ago, I knew nothing about him but I didn’t like what I heard and saw. He was clearly no eloquent reformer in the mold of Gorbachev; he looked cold and shifty and seemed inarticulate. From all I’d heard, Russia had become something of a basket case since the collapse of the USSR, and the transition to democracy was progressing slowly if at all. Insofar as I thought about the country at all, I recognised its Czarist history and its lack of any kinds of democratic institutions, but I couldn’t benefit from the knowledge gained from witnessing the mess of post-war ‘democratic’ Iraq and the largely failed Arab Spring. I imagined wrongly that Russia was a quasi-European nation whose sorry history would make its citizens leap at the chance of developing the sorts of democracies that had been so successful elsewhere. Putin hardly seemed the type to lead the democratic advance, but he was probably just a transitional figure. But when the bits and pieces of info started trickling in, I became – well, not so much alarmed as disgusted. After all, I lived worlds away and wasn’t directly affected by his exploits.
First, there were his KGB connections, and his apparent pride in them. Like most westerners I’d learned to think of the KGB as a kind of sick joke, a caricature of an evil spy agency. Any reasonably humane leader would surely have wiped the Russian slate clean of such an organisation, even if it weren’t guilty of half of what it was notorious for (which seemed to me unlikely).
Second was the apparent closing down of independent media outlets, together with the murder of journalists and other prominent persons critical of government. Elimination of ‘enemies’ seemed a high priority for this government, but I also got a sense of general criminality and corruption, so I couldn’t be sure of Putin’s culpability.
Thirdly, the Pussy Riot fiasco, which again I didn’t look into too deeply, but as an anti-authoritarian I was instinctively on their side. I felt that their over-the top antics were a natural reaction to the over-the top repression of the government, though clearly they were doomed to fail and suffer. It was probably for that reason that I didn’t follow events too closely. I had enough in my life to be depressed about. And by this time I was pretty convinced that Putin himself – Pussy Riot’s polar opposite – was the driving force behind much of the nastiness. And when I later learned that one of his favourite forms of recreation was hanging out with a bikie gang that specialised in bashing gays, the picture of a total scumbag and a walking advertisement for abortion was complete.
So now the very thought of Putin turns me, I’m afraid to admit, into a penis-hacking thug who wants to resurrect Vlad the Impaler and his delicious torture methods. Don’t blame me, blame my testosterone.
Of course, the real solution to Putin isn’t so simple or crass. It’s the creation of a civil, respectful society with institutions that promote its thriving. They include a free press, an independent judiciary, a comprehensive and accessible education system that promotes critical thinking and co-operation, and a system of democratic government that’s as open and participatory as practicable. People like Putin wouldn’t be able to thrive in such a society. More importantly, such a society wouldn’t often create people like him.
Of course there’s another good reason why we might need to focus critically on Putin and the Russia that shaped him and that he is shaping. He is the hero and role model of the current US President. Suddenly this genocidal, democracy-loathing multi-billionaire President of a failed state (oh, I’m talking about Putin, not Trump) has become more important to us all than he deserves to be.
One thing I knew almost nothing about was Chechnya (and nor have I paid much attention to Putin’s Ukrainian adventure, which occurred too recently to be included in Gessen’s book). Chechnya, I’ve just discovered, is a tiny landlocked region between the Caspian and the Black Seas. Fundamentally Islamic, it has been in conflict with its Russian or Soviet overlords for centuries; however, after the death of Stalin, who had many Chechens and other ethnic groups in the region forcibly removed from their homes, things were relatively calm. The collapse of the Soviet Union changed all that, and a war of independence broke out in 1990. By the mid-90s hostilities had subsided, but a second war broke out in 1999, at the time that Putin was consolidating his power. Putin’s response was typically ruthless, and by the end of 2000 the main Chechen city, Grozny, lay in ruins, with no attempt to discriminate between fighters and civilians. Extremely bullish and threatening statements made at the time and since have indicated that Putin is prepared to go to any lengths to maintain and if possible extend the borders of his mafia regime. Unfortunately for him, times have changed since the days of Genghis Khan, or even Hitler. I’ve little doubt that he would invade the Baltic states if it weren’t for their NATO affiliations (which Trump, Putin’s greatest fan, has been seeking to undermine), and he must surely be envious and frustrated in his ambitions by the rise of China. He will no doubt try to use his influence on the man-child in the White House to provide licence for murderous adventures on his western borders, though hopefully current revelations will put a stop to that. Meanwhile, have pity for anyone who flags an independent and principled view within Russia itself. And please, everyone, we should try, with international co-operation, to do everything in our power to bring this monster to justice.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/7-stories-of-putins-thuggish-behaviour-2013-6
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-russia-connection (interview with Anne Applebaum)
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-path-to-impeachment
Gessen, Masha. The man without a face. The unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin. Granta, 2012