Newsletter: Week 2, 2023
The Nationalist Internationale strikes in Brazil, male resentment proves an endemic destabilising force, and will boycotting cricket against Afghanistan shift the Taliban?
The Nationalist Internationale’s Anti-Democratic Turbulence
The invasion of the Brazilian Congress by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro was almost identical to that of the January 6 2021 insurrection in the United States that sought to overturn the election of President Joe Biden. This similar behaviour highlights the idea of a “Nationalist Internationale” – movements that are similar in their outlooks and inspired by each others actions – and often networked with one another.
Nationalism often gets mistaken for a belief in one country’s superiority over others, yet its primary impulse is domestic. It is obsessed with internal enemies who don’t conform to its perception of what the nation should be, and is hostile to institutions that protect laws and rules over emotional and mystical ideas.
The New York Times ran with the idea that it was “mass delusion” that fuelled the Brazilian insurrection. While this may be true, believing lies and propaganda requires fertile soil to take root, and suspicion of democratic outcomes are built on a suspicion of democracy itself.
When nationalist groups claim that an election was “rigged” they don’t mean this literally – even if they insist it is the truth. Instead, to them, legitimacy to govern is not based on democratic consent, but on an ideological fervour and a sense of identity. A belief that there is a narrow, un-evolving, idea of "the nation" that should have a veto over majority public opinion. And therefore institutions that do not conform to this sentiment are liable to physical attack.
What is occurring within the Nationalist Internationale is an inability to emotionally cope with a changing world. For these people change is perceived as chaos and instability. The irony being that the figures they support – and create violence in support of – like Trump and Bolsonaro, are not stabilising forces, but emotionally and political chaotic figures themselves. Collectively the Nationalist Internationale is projecting their own internal turbulence onto their societies, and actively creating the instability they fear.
Male Resentment and Social Instability
When thinking about political instability we need to recognise that this is a bottom up phenomenon, not a top down one. Figures like Trump and Bolsonaro – and Vladimir Putin – may exacerbate this instability, but their political ascendancies are due to being able to capitalise on existing sentiment. Much of their success is built upon the deep resentments and insecurities of the modern man, and his instinctive desire to dominate others.
Which is why a figure like Andrew Tate should not be considered a niche concern. His reach and influence with young men makes him an instability-generating machine. The Tates of the world breed the Putins. And wannabe Putins don’t need to be presidents to inflict great harm and suffering. We should not only see war or insurrections as our major political problems – the daily terrorism that many women and children face due to men of Tate’s worldview should be considered our most pressing concern. While individual abuse is awful in and of itself, the sentiment that drives it spirals up to resentment based politics and larger forms of violence.
There are some hard truths that we need to face as individual men, and as societies at large. There is a deep immaturity, insecurity and turbulence within masculinity. At present in the West there is a pronounced difficulty for men to emotionally cope with female advancement. This was initially identified as the “Nordic Paradox” – where countries with the highest level of gender equality had disproportionate levels of gender-based violence. Yet as Martha Gill has pointed out, even in countries with low levels of equality men are still mired in resentment towards women, and prone to acts of extraordinary violence against them.
As societies we tiptop around men’s attraction to violence. Fearing what will occur if we truly confront it. Those who are not taken in by the likes of Tate may still see his peacocking machismo as simply clownish and not worthy of concern. But millions of men find him compelling, and are fertilising masculine norms that see dominance and disrespect are the keys to men’s sense of self. This attitude affects us all.
Personally I have zero tolerance for these attitudes. It is incredibly easy to be a decent human being, and it is a minimum standard we should expect from one another. This is not beyond men’s capabilities, yet our social – and legal – structures are built around the instinctive belief that basic human decency is too much to ask of men. Yet this coddling of men has failed to improve their behaviour. We should therefore see the current “crisis of masculinity” as really a crisis of our own incredibly low expectations of men.
Boycotting The Taliban’s Gendered Apartheid
Due to the on-going appalling treatment of women by the Taliban, the Australian men’s cricket team have cancelled a forthcoming series of games against Afghanistan that were due to be held in the UAE. This highlights the question of whether sport legitimises governments that are responsible for gross human rights violations – and whether we are being selective about who we boycott (the football World Cup being an obvious case).
The advancement Afghanistan has made in cricket the past two decades has been extraordinary, and it is disappointing for their players to have an important series of games cancelled. Given that cricket is one of the few outlets of joy in Afghanistan at the moment there is an argument that a refusal to play Afghanistan punishes the public more than it does the Taliban.
This is complicated by the fact that the national team still represents the previous Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and plays under its flag, rather than the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and its flag. Most Afghanistan embassies throughout the world are still occupied by staff from the Islamic Republic, who use the resources of these embassies to oppose the Taliban. The Taliban doesn’t have the power to seize these embassies for themselves.
Therefore the Afghanistan cricket team could have likewise become a symbol of resistance against the Taliban. Given the popularity of the sport in the country the Taliban tolerates it (for men at least) and even for a regime so hostile to the country’s own citizens it would think twice about trying to force the team to its will – knowing the public most likely care more for cricket than they do the Taliban.
This creates a point of weakness for the Taliban that can be exploited. The banning of South Africa from international cricket in 1970 was deemed an important pressure point on the Apartheid government. The suppression and persecution of women should be viewed no differently to that of ethnic groups. The Taliban has created a gendered Apartheid. The hope has to be that Afghan cricket fans focus their disappointment at missing out on international games on the Taliban, rather than on the countries that refuse to play them.
This Week’s Reading
Australia’s Population Dilemma
Grant Wyeth - The Diplomat
Last week the Australian government’s Centre for Population released its forecast for the next decade. From its current population of 25.7 million people, the country is expected to reach just short of 30 million by 2032. This projection is 1.2 million people lower than was forecast prior to the COVID-19 pandemic – with the pandemic disrupting regular migration flows to Australia, producing an irregular number of deaths, and leading to outward flows of migration due to Australia’s strict public health measures.
Australia is advantaged by its ability to grow its population through migration – and won’t suffer the perils of population decline – but the question remains whether this growth is sufficient for the challenges the country will face in the coming decade. Due to the advancement of other countries in the Indo-Pacific, Australia is a country in relative decline – inhibiting its ability to be influential within a region that is becoming increasingly complex, and potentially less stable.
Our Public Holidays Should Reflect Australia’s Multicultural Make-Up
Osmond Chiu - The Lowy Interpreter
“While Australians like to talk about how we are a successful multicultural country, this can often feel superficial, primarily focused on dance, dress and dining. Our institutions still feel very much monocultural, whether it be politics, business, the arts or the media. If Australia does not want to be seen internationally as remnants of British colonialism on the edge of Asia, that requires things to change.
Becoming a republic, changing Australia Day, learning Asian languages and improving culturally diverse representation are usually what spring to mind. But one practical and powerful yet simple thing we could do is make more culturally and religiously significant days public holidays.”
Robert Draper & Luke Broadwater - New York Times
“How many would ever read the document, and be convinced by the evidence it held, would be unknowable, but also beside the point. The Government Publishing Office is a hoary federal institution that was created by a congressional resolution in 1860 and began operation in 1861, after Lincoln’s inauguration and just before the country descended into civil war. It printed the Watergate White House transcripts in 1974 and the Sept. 11 Commission Report in 2004. Soon it would also place the Jan. 6 committee and its findings in the American historical record, as the lasting artefact of a congressional inquiry premised on the belief that if democracy was sacred, then so was the duty to investigate an attack on it. “The Congress had the highest obligation to conduct these hearings,” Judge Luttig would say of the committee’s efforts. “And the hearings themselves have been historic, and perhaps never to be replicated.”
Bolsonaro, Trump And Authoritarian Learning
Brian Klass - The Garden Of Forking Paths
“Authoritarian movements learn from one another. Populist demagogues and despots pay attention to their peers, because they share similar problems. To stay in power, they must muzzle or attack the press, neutralise judges and the rule of law, weaken or eliminate political opponents, rig or discredit elections, and find innovative strategies to cheat, lie, and steal. As a result, they have their political antennae tuned to regimes and politicians most similar to themselves, hoping to glean a bit of wisdom from another authoritarian playbook.”
What Does Xi Jinping Really Think?
Michael Sheridan – Engelsberg Ideas
“That craftsman is Wang Huning, a 67-year-old academic-turned-courtier who has parlayed his skills to ascend from a professorship at Fudan University in Shanghai to a seat on the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee, the supreme ruling body in China….
As servant to three leaders of China, a feat of survival matched by few, Wang may be an opportunist, but he has re-discovered a Soviet maxim: dullness is a weapon. It numbs the enemy and wearies the rival within. With ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ he has elevated the practice to statecraft. Millions of older Chinese would rather be bored than terrorised once again. There is a reassuring normality to the slabs of bureaucratese in the four volumes, interspersed with hymns to national rebirth and benevolent speeches to Young Pioneers.
Three things distinguish ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ from its immediate predecessors. First, it is indeed ‘civilisational,’ being proudly Chinese. Secondly, it stresses Marxism as a founding belief rather than just paying deference to the creed. Thirdly, it borrows the theory and practice of dictatorship from the late Joseph Stalin. As a manifesto for the new autocracy, it deserves to be taken very seriously indeed.”
No Escape: Camp Survivor Describes Life Under House Arrest in Xinjiang
Tasnim Nazeer - The Diplomat
“Chinese authorities claim that the detention camps in Xinjiang, which Beijing describes as “vocational training centres” necessary to combat terrorism ideologies, have all been closed, and the “trainees” reintegrated into society. Zhumatai’s plight, however, drives home the bitter fact that release from the camps does not mean an end to suffering. Even after being released, former detainees continue to be closely surveilled and tracked for any activity that displeases the authorities. Like Zhumatai, many live in fear of being thrown back into the camps.”
One Year Of Karnataka’s War On Muslim Women’s Right To Learn
Johanna Deeksha – Scroll.in
“What pains me the most is that it is only recently that young Muslim women have started to get an education,” said Humaira Karkala, who has worked as an activist in Karnataka for over 20 years. She recalled that throughout her career, she had knocked on the doors of Muslim households to persuade families to allow their daughters to obtain a formal education. She added, “The daughters from these very same families called me up in tears after their colleges banned the hijab and asked me what they are supposed to do now.”
Jill Filipovic - Substack
“Social change on the scale that feminist movements demand is enormous, and in the grand scheme of history, it is nothing short of miraculous how much has been accomplished in just the last century. But of course, none of it happened because of a miracle. Every centimetre women have gained was clawed for by millions, who understood that they were fighting for their own rights, yes, but that the feminist project will not be achieved in their lifetime. They understood that changing the fundamentals of society — and little is as fundamental as what we expect of men and women — is generational work. One year is nothing. This work extends well beyond the horizon of each of our lives.”
It’s High Time to Prepare for Russia’s Collapse
Alexander J. Motyl - Foreign Policy
“Putin’s Russia suffers from a slew of mutually reinforcing tensions that have produced a state that is far more fragile than his braggadocio would suggest. They include military, moral, and economic defeat in the Ukraine war—but also the brittleness and ineffectiveness of Putin’s hyper-centralised political system; the collapse of his macho personality cult as he faces defeat, illness, and visible age; the gross mismanagement of Russia’s petrostate economy; the untrammelled corruption that penetrates all levels of society; and the vast ethnic and regional cleavages in the world’s last unreconstructed empire. Even though few may want Russia’s dissolution today, it’s not too difficult to imagine a scenario where growing political, economic, and social instability will, at some point, compel Russia’s constituent units to seek safety in independence.”
Michael Kimmage & Maria Lipman - Foreign Affairs
“Wartime Putinism is a reduced Putinism, and it would be impossible to describe today’s Russia (to Russians) as an ascendant power. It is, rather, an embattled power. This explains the frenzied media campaign to drum up support for the war, which masks the fact that Putin has committed Russia to a long cycle of stagnation. Isolation and sanctions will together contribute to Russia’s economic and technological decline. Nobody can say how long Putin can walk this dispiriting tightrope. Putin’s warpath does not lead from point A to point B but is a circuitous route that leads from point A back to point A. A fine-tuned method for avoiding failure, wartime Putinism has all the hallmarks of a dead end.”
The Threat Of A Lost Decade In Development
Martin Wolff - Financial Times
“By the end of 2024, gross domestic product levels in emerging and developing economies are forecast to be 6 per cent below those expected before the pandemic. The cumulative loss in GDP of these countries between 2020 and 2024 is forecast at 30 per cent of 2019 GDP. In fragile and conflict-affected areas, real incomes per head are expected to have fallen outright by 2024. If the global economy slows more than is now forecast, as a result of tight monetary policy and perhaps other shocks, these outcomes could easily be worse.
These losses, with all they mean for the plight of the world’s most vulnerable people, show the impact of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the rise in energy and food prices, the surge in inflation and the sharp tightening of monetary policy in high-income countries, especially the US, and consequent rise in the value of the dollar. An obvious danger now is that of waves of defaults in over-indebted developing countries. Taken together, these shocks will cause long-lasting effects, perhaps lost decades, in many vulnerable places.”
John Rapley – Foreign Affairs
“South Africa had begun the slide into a form of neo-medieval governance, whereby subordinate actors with their own resource bases take over some functions of the government, relieving pressure on it and thereby assisting it, but at the cost of its authority. Relatively few states collapse outright, and at present, South Africa seems unlikely to be among them. But the risk that it could sink into chronic strife amid economic stagnation looks real. The fundamental challenge remains. South Africa needs to revive its economy, and it needs to do so in a way that expands opportunity for all its citizenry much faster than has been the case since 1994. The post-pandemic boost to commodity prices may give the country a brief window to develop a new fiscal model, but the existing one has to go.”
This week’s playlist is themed female resistance