Government announces huge Obamacare premium rises for 2017

Kate Randall

Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, begins November 1, just a week before Election Day. US officials announced Monday that in 2017 insurers will hike the premiums for many health plans sold on ACA exchanges by an average of 25 percent.

The projected premium increases are of concern not only to those shopping for insurance coverage under Obamacare. They are part of a sea change in the US health care system, in which corporations and the government are increasingly burdening working families with rising health care costs while simultaneously working to ration care for the vast majority of Americans.

In a call with reporters on Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed the 25 percent average price hike for the second cheapest (“silver”) plans, which are used as the benchmark to determine government subsidies. The dramatic increase compares to an average 7.5 percent premium hike in 2016 and a 2 percent rise in 2015. Average monthly increases are estimated at anywhere from $50 to $300.

In addition to the ACA premium hikes, HHS announced that more than one in five consumers using the HealthCare.gov site would have only one insurer to choose from in 2017. This is mainly the result of the pullout of insurance giants UnitedHealthcare, Humana and Aetna from the ACA marketplace over the past year. The average number of insurance carriers available per US county in 2017 is projected at 2.9, down from 5.7 in 2016.

The premium hikes and dwindling plan choices are a direct function of Obamacare’s subordination to the multibillion-dollar private insurance industry. Under the ACA’s so-called individual mandate, individuals and families without insurance through their employer or a government-run program such as Medicare or Medicaid must purchase insurance or pay a tax penalty. Those who go without insurance next year could face tax penalties of $700 a person or more.

Rising premiums and huge deductibles are only part of the Obamacare story. Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a front-page lead article with the headline, “Next President Likely to Shape Health Law Fate: Changes Seen as Needed.” The article was a semi-official announcement that major changes would be imposed after the November 8 election, regardless of the outcome of the presidential race, to bolster the profits of insurance companies participating in the program.

Among the changes under consideration, according to the Times, are increasing taxpayer subsidies to insurance firms for “high-cost enrollees,” increasing tax penalties on individuals and families for not buying insurance, and curbing “abuse” of special enrollment periods by people who sign up for coverage after becoming sick.

The failure of Obamacare to attract a sufficient number of younger, healthier customers has resulted in a pool of less healthy enrollees who are more costly to insure. The private insurers, unwilling to accept any encroachment on their profits, have responded by requesting and receiving premium increases of 25 to 50 percent or more from state insurance commissions, or by pulling out of the ACA marketplace altogether.

HHS officials argue that consumers shopping on HealthCare.gov for 2017 should be able to find plans comparable in price to last year. But in general these are the least expensive “bronze” plans that come with deductibles in excess of $5,000 for an individual and other high out-of-pocket costs. In a further effort to cut costs, insurers are also offering an increasing number of plans with narrow networks of doctors and hospitals, as well as limited prescription drug coverage.

The Obama administration says that about 8 in 10 of the expected 11.4 million Obamacare enrollees in 2017 will qualify for government subsidies. The ACA exchanges have enrolled more than 80 percent of those with incomes below 150 percent of the (absurdly low) federal poverty level who are potentially eligible for subsidies. But another 5 to 7 million people who buy insurance on their own do not receive federal subsidies.

According to Avalere, a health policy consulting company, only about 17 percent of potential ACA customers with incomes from three to four times the poverty level ($35,640 to $47,520 for an individual) have enrolled. For many people in this income bracket and above—who are between jobs, self-employed, or retired but not yet eligible for Medicare—ACA insurance is unaffordable, with or without subsidies.

Using the estimator on HealthCare.gov for 2017 plans in Maricopa County, Arizona, a couple in their early 40s with two children under age 19 and a household income of $60,000 would receive a $1,451 monthly subsidy for the least expensive silver plan, bringing their estimated premium down to $313 a month. However, with a $10,500 annual family deductible and other out-of-pocket costs, estimated yearly costs would be $14,305, or nearly one-quarter of their household income.

Obamacare—with its soaring premiums, high out-of-pocket costs and dwindling networks and services—is serving as the model for employers across the country as they seek to shift more health care costs onto their workers.

Attacks on health care benefits have featured prominently in a series of recent contract disputes, including strikes by 4,800 nurses at Allina Health in Minnesota, a strike by 5,500 faculty and coaches at Pennsylvania’s 14 state-run universities, a strike at Harvard University by 700 dining service workers, and a walkout of Libbey Glass workers in Toledo, Ohio. In each case, employers have sought to drastically reduce health benefits and shift workers to inferior plans with burdensome out-of-pocket costs.

Obamacare is also the spearhead of a gathering attack on Medicare, the government health insurance program for 53 million American seniors and disabled people. Last year, President Obama signed into law a bipartisan bill revising the payment system for Medicare providers to reward doctors for cutting costs and penalize them if the volume and frequency of the health services they provide are deemed too high. Doctors will have a financial incentive to withhold more extensive tests and services from Medicare recipients.

President Obama spoke Thursday at Miami Dade College in Florida to tout the achievements of the ACA. While conceding the “growing pains” facing his signature domestic policy, he pointed to the ACA’s extension of health insurance to 20 million people, its prohibition on insurers denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions, and its guarantee of coverage for certain “essential” medical services.

He did not acknowledge that the ACA imposes no serious restraints on the insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms or hospital chains, and uses financial coercion to drive people to buy bare-bones plans with high out-of-pocket costs. Nor did he take note of the intensified assault on health benefits by employers, both private and public, across the US.

Obama boasted, “All told, about another 10 percent of the country now have coverage.” He was silent on the national scandal of 29 million Americans remaining uninsured.

With Election Day less than two weeks away, news of the premium hikes has forced a response from the presidential campaigns of both big-business parties. Republican Donald Trump proclaimed at a rally Monday night in Tampa, Florida, “It’s over for Obamacare.” He has called for the law’s repeal, not to replace it with a more progressive alternative, but to leave even more people without insurance. His stated health care agenda includes turning Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, into a voucher program.

While acknowledging that “premiums have gotten too high,” Democrat Hillary Clinton, a staunch defender of Obamacare, has called for providing a new tax credit of up to $5,000 to help people pay for premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Such a measure, as she well knows, stands virtually no chance of passage by Congress.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any intention of challenging the for-profit health care industry. The deepening attack on health care, exemplified by the projected 25 percent hike in Obamacare premiums, serves as a warning of the austerity agenda of the next administration, whichever party occupies the White House in January.

US “pivot to Asia” in disarray

Peter Symonds

With the US presidential campaign entering its final days, there is mounting commentary in the American and international media arguing that the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” aimed at containing and subordinating China, is failing. Far from making any retreat from the region, Washington’s response will be to escalate its diplomatic intrigues and provocative military build-up in the Asia Pacific.

The abrupt turn towards China by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, exemplified by his state visit to Beijing last week, is undoubtedly a blow to US strategy in Asia. Financial Times foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman highlighted Duterte’s announcement in Beijing of a “separation” from the United States and a new special relationship with China, characterising the shift as “a significant strategic reverse.”

Since assuming office in June, Duterte has lashed out at President Obama as “the son of a whore,” called for the removal of US special forces from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, ended joint US-Philippine exercises in the South China Sea, and proposed a review of the country’s military basing agreement with the US. His decision to play down the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in favour of Manila and against Beijing’s territorial claims has disrupted US plans to exploit the decision to ramp up pressure on China in the South China Sea.

Rachman noted that the US was facing other reversals, with Thailand, an American ally, turning to China to purchase submarines, and Malaysia turning towards Beijing for support as Prime Minister Najib Razak attempts to fend off corruption allegations pushed in the West.

Writing in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian yesterday, foreign editor Greg Sheridan claimed that “Duterte’s dramatic pivot to China is the most serious setback to the US’s position in Southeast Asia since the fall of Saigon.” He declared that the shift gravely weakened the US alliance system in Asia, and he branded Obama’s foreign policy “a near total failure,” saying it had allowed China, Russia and Iran to “dangerously extend” their spheres of influence.

The Obama administration’s “pivot” is a comprehensive diplomatic, economic and military strategy aimed at ensuring American supremacy in Asia. US allies and partners throughout the region, however, have increasingly questioned Washington’s commitment to Asia, not least because its central economic initiative—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—is now in doubt in the face of opposition from the two US presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and legislators from both the Republican and Democratic parties.

The centrality of the TPP to the “pivot” was underscored last year by US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, who drew the connection between the economic pact and the Pentagon’s war planning, declaring that the deal was “as important to me as another aircraft carrier.” In August, Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, urged the US to stay engaged in Asia and warned that the TPP’s ratification was “a test for your credibility and seriousness of purpose.”

Concerns among the ruling elites in the Asia Pacific have only been compounded by the mounting signs of a profound political crisis in the United States, exemplified by the tawdry and debased spectacle of the US presidential election, and the lack of clarity surrounding the foreign policy of the next administration. As secretary of state, Clinton was the chief architect of the “pivot” and the proponent of a more militarist strategy against China. Among her speeches to Wall Street released by WikiLeaks was one in 2013 in which she declared: “We’re going to ring China with missile defence. We’re going to put more of our fleet in the area.”

Trump’s policy towards Asia is far from clear, but his “Make America Great” sloganeering suggests an even more aggressive stance towards China. Moreover, it is one in which Washington would insist that allies such as Japan and South Korea bear a heavier burden.

The uncertainties generated by the US election along with heightened geo-political tensions and a worsening global economic outlook are encouraging the ruling classes of the Asia Pacific to hedge their bets. The two central pillars of the US “pivot”—Japan and Australia—are both pursuing policies that are at odds with the US.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has just announced plans for settling Japan’s post-World War II dispute with Russia over the Kurile Islands in a bid to forge ties with a country increasingly branded in Washington as an “outlaw state.” Despite insistent pressure from the US, the Australian government has not agreed to mount a “freedom of navigation” operation to challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, reflecting an ongoing debate within the Australian ruling elite over the risks of confronting the country’s largest trading partner.

Washington’s foreign policy disarray in Asia flows from the insanity of its underlying aim—the impossible task of achieving global hegemony. Unable to dictate to the world economically, as demonstrated by the crisis surrounding the TPP, US imperialism is compelled to resort to increasingly reckless military provocations and interventions that threaten to plunge the globe into a conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

Even as Duterte was in China last week, the US navy sent a guided-missile destroyer to carry out a fourth “freedom of navigation” operation to provocatively challenge Chinese territorial claims in the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. The operation not only demonstrated Washington’s willingness to risk a naval clash with China, but signalled the entry of the US navy’s Third Fleet—with its 100 warships and four aircraft carriers—into the military build-up in the Western Pacific against China.

FSI Afghanistan: Limited Scope for Use

Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy

In the 2016 edition of the Fragile States Index (FSI) brought out by the Fund for Peace (FFP), Afghanistan is listed in ‘High Alert’, scoring 107.9 points. It is placed 28.3 points behind India ('Elevated Warning'); and 6.2 points behind Pakistan (also in the 'High Alert').

All these scores were based on an assessment made using values placed on various indicators: Demographic Pressures, Refugees and IDPs, Uneven Economic Development, Group Grievance, Human Flight & Brain Drain, Poverty & Economic Decline, State Legitimacy, Public Services, Human Rights & Rule of Law, Security Apparatus, Factionalized Elites, and External Intervention.

However, the points of reference used for identifying, calculating or determining the values to be placed against each indicator for each country for each year, are unclear. Perhaps this is the bane of standardised reports on matters that cannot be truly standardised. While superficially, the report gives a general idea of the status of fragility of each country, the purpose and the use of the report ends there. The absence of specifics in the final report, particularly regarding how the parameters were evaluated in the contexts of their relationships with each other, sticks out jarringly.

An individual who is less informed regarding issues such as fragility of countries would be given an impression of a reality that is not always quite what it appears as on the surface – and that is intellectual disservice, and, needless to say, defeats the purpose of undertaking the task itself. Moreover, bringing out standardised reports to illustrate the fragility of states becomes further complicated when conflict ridden states are assessed along with those who are not equally conflict ridden or who may or may not share similarities in contexts vis-à-vis the persistence of conflict.

In cases such as Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria, the situation on the ground has been known to change rapidly – and almost even on a daily basis. That the report in question which was published on 27 June 2016 is a collection of findings based on data collected between 01 January 2015 and 31 December 2015, means it does not entirely capture the current state-of-affairs in Afghanistan in a succinct manner, and is also outdated to an extent. Perhaps it is also because mere numbers and rankings can hardly ever deliver contextual explanation of complex situations beyond a certain point.

However, the 2016 FSI does attribute 9.9 points under External Intervention, 8.8 points under Factionalized Elites, 10 points under Security Apparatus, 8.7 under Human Rights and Rule of Law, and 9.1 under State Legitimacy categories. To a fair extent, these rankings can still hold true in the case of Afghanistan. Nonetheless, it still raises some questions such as: what all forms of external interventions were taken into consideration while assessing Afghanistan's External Intervention rank? Was it just the foreign assistance, or were covert actions by some countries to undermine security in Afghanistan also considered? If only one of these were taken into account, then the assessment would be incomplete. If both were taken into account, how were these two very different forms of interventions assessed? As regard to Rule of Law and Human Rights, the state of affairs requires to be assessed based on how much of it was brought about by the state and how much of it was brought about by non-state actors. This distinction is unclear in the rankings and in the text of the report, because Afghanistan was once completely under terrorist control and has moved forward to the current day status. Conversely, Pakistan, whose territory has never completely been under terrorist control, has deteriorated in many ways in that category. Yet, Afghanistan is ranked behind Pakistan in this category.

Moreover, the Afghanistan scored +5.6 in the 2016 FSI's assessment of Decade Trends, thus falling in 'Some Worsening'. But at present – politically, economically, and security-wise – the country is in a situation in which is far worse than what it was in 2006. ‘Some Worsening’ might not be an entirely appropriate term to describe the current situation in the country. Currently, according to reports, roughly 10 per cent of the country’s territory is not under the Afghan government control.

At present, in Afghanistan, political stability is a pipe dream; insecurity is at an all-time high; the army is extremely stretched, and experts have warned that the army runs a real risk of a collapse in a year if circumstances do not change; election and electoral reform related roadblocks and problems still persist; power brokers all over the country have begun align themselves; the geopolitics of this conflict has become further frustrated; the total outbound migration of Afghans was next only to those of Syrians; and governance is hostage to political tugs-of-war, retarding the pace of any attempt improve; criminal activities are witnessing a surge.

Overall, although the report shows that Afghanistan is in ‘High Alert’, the assessment is useful only to the extent that the readers are made aware that it is in that category – which too is an update nonetheless, but one that is of not much use. Lastly, the lack of clarity on the relationships between parameters (and related questions) make it difficult to use/quote the findings as compiled in the current form.

University of East Anglia Undergraduate Scholarships for International students 2017/18

Application Deadline: 1st June, 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): UK

Eligible Field of Study: All

About the Award: Each year, the University of East Anglia in UK awards over £1,000,000 of scholarships to support international students in their studies. The scholarship awards are made available by individual Schools of Study in the University. All international students (outside the European Union) are considered for a scholarship of between 10% and 50% of tuition fees. 

The scheme for 2017/2018 consists of Two prizes to be awarded to 50 students:

1. Vice Chancellor’s Prizes
2. International UG Prizes

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility: To be eligible for these scholarships candidate must:

• Be classified as an international (usually non-EU resident) applicant for fees purposes.  See our fees and funding page if you are unsure of your fee status.
• Hold a conditional or unconditional offer for year 1 of an undergraduate degree course starting at UEA in September 2017.
• Be independently funding your studies – i.e. students fully sponsored by organisations for their tuition fees are not eligible to apply (Students applying for or expecting to receive government loans are eligible to apply).
• Applicants to courses in Norwich Medical School are not eligible to apply.

Number of Awardees: 50

Value of Scholarship: 

• Vice Chancellor’s Prizes: 50% of tuition fee
• International UG Prizes: 25% of tuition fee

Duration of Scholarship: Complete duration of studies

How to Apply: Once you have an offer of a place from the University, please apply using the application form below.

You will then be assessed for all scholarships for which you are eligible. Please do not apply if youdo not have a conditional or unconditional offer from us.

Scholarship Application Form

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: University of East Anglia, UK

Important Notes: It is important to make an application as early as possible because they are considered as they are received. So apply early to make sure of the best chance of success.

Bournemouth University Vice-Chancellor Award for International Students 2017/18

Application Deadline: 31st of May 2017 | 

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: China, India, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, the USA or Vietnam

To be taken at (country): United Kingdom

Eligible Field of Study: Courses offered in the University

About the Award:  The BU Vice-Chancellor’s International Scholarship recognises academic excellence in candidates from any of the countries listed above. It is open to any students applying for a full-time postgraduate course with BU who achieves a high level of academic study in their undergraduate studies. In addition to candidates’ academic achievements, candidates will also need to showcase an outstanding personal profile through their personal statement in the application form. The scholarship is paid as a reduction in your tuition fee for the year (excluding any repeat units).

Type: Postgraduate (Masters) Degree

Eligibility: 

• Any international candidate from China, India, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, the USA or Vietnam who is studying a full-time taught postgraduate course at BU
• Candidate cannot receive this scholarship if they have applied for a distance learning course
• Candidate cannot be in receipt of any other BU scholarship

Number of Awardees: Ten(10)

Value of Scholarship: 50% fee reduction

Duration of Scholarship: Scholarships are awarded for the duration of course.

How to Apply: Candidates should fill this Application Form

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Bournemouth University, UK.

Important Notes: Candidates will be notified if they have been successful within one month of the closing date for applications. Scholarship can’t be formally approved until candidate holds an unconditional firm (UF) offer with Bournemouth University.

Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think

Ralph Nader

The following is excerpted from my new book Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think.

When I was a student at Princeton University I learned from my anthropology studies that the concentration of power in the hands of the few is common to all cultures, societies, nations, tribes, cities, towns, and villages. Even where the thirst for self-governance and democracy is strong (as was the case in New England towns before the American Revolution against King George III) wealthy Tories were there too. In Central and Western Massachusetts, the farmers used the term “the River Gods” to describe the rich merchants using the Connecticut River as a profitable trading route. These days, most people protesting for economic justice use the term “the One Percent” to describe the ultra-small group of people who wield enormous influence over our society today.

There is something about the differences in skill, determination, lineage, avarice, and pure luck that stratifies most people from the rulers who dominate them. In the political realm, the few become dominant because they hoard wealth and are driven to exercise power over others. When a small group of people rules a society the political system is considered an oligarchy; when only money and wealth determine how a society is controlled, the political system is a plutocracy.

From the standpoint of a democratic society, both oligarchy and plutocracy are inherently unjust and corrupt.

Of course there are variations in the degrees of authoritarianism and cruelty that each system exercises over the communities it relies upon for workers and wealth. Scholars have resorted to using phrases like “benign dictatorships” or “wise rulers” or “paternalistic hierarchies—” to describe lighter touches by those few who impose their rule over the many. Thomas Paine simply called them tyrannies. People, families, and communities can only take so much abuse before they rise up to resist. The job of the rulers is always to find that line and provide the lowest level of pay, security, housing, consumer protection, healthcare, and political access for society so that they can extract and hoard the greatest amount of wealth, power, and immunity from justice for themselves. In many ways, the majority of Americans live in a democracy of minimums, while the privileged few enjoy a plutocracy of maximums.

In a plutocracy, commercialism dominates far beyond the realm of economics and business; everything is for sale, and money is power. But in an authentic democracy, there must be commercial-free zones where the power of human rights, citizenship, community, equality, and justice are free from the corrupting influence of money. Our elections and our governments should be such commercial-free zones; our environment, air, and water should never fall under the control of corporations or private owners. Children should not be programmed by a huckstering economy where their vulnerable consciousness becomes the target of relentless corporate marketing and advertising.

American history demonstrates that whenever commerce dominates all aspects of national life, a host of ills and atrocities have not just festered and spread, but become normal—enslavement, land grabs, war, ethnic cleansing, serfdom, child labor, abusive working conditions, corrupt political systems, environmental contamination, and immunity from the law for the privileged few. History also shows that whenever there have been periods when enough of the country organizes and resists, we see movements of people and communities breaking through power. Progress is made. Rights are won. Education and literacy increase. Oppression is diminished. It was in this manner that people of conscience abolished the living nightmare imposed by the laws and whips of white enslavers. The nation moved closer to promises of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” expressed in the Declaration of Independence. We won more control over our work, our food, our land, our air, and our water. Women secured the right to vote. Civil rights were elevated and enforced. Public schools, improved environments, workplace collective bargaining, and consumer protections did not spontaneously evolve; they were won by people demanding them and breaking through power.

These moments of great progress are expressed in terms of new legislation, regulations, and judicial decisions that directly benefit the life, liberties, and pursuit of happiness of most Americans. From the abolition of slavery to the introduction of seat belts, great social gains have been achieved when people mobilize, organize, and resist the power of the few. The problem is that these liberating periods of humanitarian and civilizational progress are of shorter duration than the relentless commercial counterforces that discourage and disrupt social movements and their networks of support. Some commentators have used the bizarre term “justice fatigue” to describe the pullback that often occurs when communities of resistance are faced with increased surveillance, infiltration, harassment, and arrest. A more accurate term is repression.

Concentrated power in the hands of the few really should matter to you. It matters to you if you are denied fulltime gainful employment or paid poverty wages and there are no unions to defend your interests. It matters to you if you’re denied affordable health care. It matters to you if you’re gouged by the drug industry and your medication is outrageously expensive. It matters to you if it takes a long time to get to and from work due to lack of good public transit or packed highways. It matters to you if you and your children live in impoverished areas and have to breathe dirtier air and drink polluted water and live in housing that is neglected by your landlord. It matters to you if your children are receiving a substandard education in understaffed schools where they are being taught to obey rather than to question, think and imagine, especially in regards to the nature of power.

If you’re a little better off, it matters to you when your home is unfairly threatened with foreclosure. It matters to you when the nation is economically destabilized due to Wall Street’s crimes, and your retirement account evaporates overnight. It matters to you if you can’t pay off your large student loans, or if you can’t get out from under crushing credit-card debt or enormous medical bills due to being under-insured. It matters to you if you are constantly worried about the security of your job, or the costly care of your children and elderly parents.

“We live in a beautiful country,” writes historian Howard Zinn. “But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.”  To better assess what it specifically takes to do just that, it is important to understand how the people profiting from plutocratic forces strategically and regularly dominate old and new circumstances with powerful controlling processes.

The Tragedy in Yemen

Derek Royden

Imagine if the Islamic Republic of Iran, complaining that its regional rival Saudi Arabia was meddling in a neighbor’s politics for sectarian reasons, led a coalition to invade that country. As a result, after 18 months, at least 10,000 civilians had been killed or wounded, more than half the country’s people needed food aid and three million people had been displaced.

Sanctions would be leveled. Pundits would write agonized essays comparing the country to Nazi Germany. Sabers would be rattled. War would likely follow. However, when these roles are reversed and the Saudis and their Gulf allies are the aggressors, it’s a different story.

Why the double standard? Because the US is allied to the Saudi royals and the US was evicted from Iran. When a friend commits a war crime, excuses are made.

The numbers above are estimates made by the UN for the ongoing conflict in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia with significant help from the United States and Great Britain. The stated purpose of the intervention in the country is to fight Houthi forces from the north who are allied with former President Saleh.

The Houthis, most of whom are followers of the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam, took the country’s capital Sanaa on September 21st, 2014, forcing then-President Mansur Al-Hadi to flee, first to Aden and then on to Saudi Arabia. The argument made by the Saudis and their coalition partners, that the Houthis are Iranian proxies, is dubious at best but it’s being spread in western media as flat-out fact, allowing governments to turn a blind eye to the tragedy unfolding in the country.

Besides intelligence and targeting assistance provided to the Saudis in Yemen, since 2010 the US has sold $60 billion in arms to the country, an absolute monarchy with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Human rights groups have concluded that these weapons, including cluster munitions banned in most countries, have been used indiscriminately against civilian targets including markets, schools and hospitals.

Finally, after a year and a half of this, some in the US Congress found the political will to take a stand on this carnage. A bipartisan resolution in the US Senate co-sponsored by Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) was crafted to block a new deal supplying the Kingdom with a further $1.15 billion in arms. Although having the vote at all showed some progress on this issue, it was defeated by a vote of 71-27 on September 21st.

The American people have a moral responsibility to contact their representatives and demand they vote to end their government’s support of the illegal intervention in the poorest country in the Middle East. Those who don’t care about the country’s suffering need to remember it’s also an issue of national security as both Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Yemen’s newly established ISIS affiliate are growing in the chaos, something that should worry the whole world.

Fear Laundering: an Elaborate Psychological Diversion and Bid for Power

Hiroyuki Hamada

Fear is the key word for this presidential election.  There is the fear of the Republican candidate Donald Trump as we all know.  But I also think there is another fear. It’s the fear of accepting what this country has become.

Martin Luther King Jr. accurately described the US government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” As a result, he wasn’t only killed physically, but his legacy as an anti-imperial revolutionary was also put to death.  He was systematically demonized before the killing and his determination to confront the imperial war machine was subsumed (in effect whitewashed) by his  image as a great civil rights leader.  Many of his contemporaries, probably the most brilliant, insightful and humanistic people to emerge from the US, have been assassinated and imprisoned.

A half century later, the US wields over 1000 military bases across the globe while over half of the federal tax goes for military spending.  Currently it engages in eight wars.  It also surrounds nuclear armed Russia and China while aggressively provoking both nations economically and militarily.  There is no MLK or Malcolm X today, but there is the first black commander in chief who jokes about drone killings.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner is responsible for commanding the eight wars mentioned above.  The country of freedom, equality and liberty is number one in mass incarceration, police killings, and mass surveillance.  Perhaps this might be the worst time to wake up and realize that what the government has been doing is the complete opposite of what it’s been saying.

According to Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, such a shift in one’s world view causes fragmentation of the self, which leads to an extreme expression of anger and desperate efforts in protecting and defending the crumbling “reality”.

For some people this momentum of anger and fear seems to merge directly with anger against Donald Trump together with unconditional support for the de facto power of establishment: Hillary Clinton.  They can divert the overflowing anger toward Trump while rebuilding their crumbling world by standing with Clinton, dutifully demonizing the good old cold war enemy Russia, erroneously calling the WikiLeaks founder a rapist, affirming American exceptionalism with conviction, and so on.  It is truly surreal to witness people turning into Russia-hating-angry-Americans who believe that American style democracy is exceptional and the nation should be led by a trusted imperialist with a proven record of spreading “democracy” with undemocratic means. However, it might not be a complete mystery after all.

I wonder if this psychological narrative was considered when the Democratic Party strategists conspired to promote Donald Trump as an extreme right wing conservative, as a “piped piper” candidate who would play the evil candidate against the “lesser evil” candidate Hillary Clinton.

Take a look at a Clinton supporter’s wall. You will notice a few emotionally charged angles that are prominent, which are designed to elicit highly emotional responses while covering up Clinton’s patriarchal policies of colonialism, corporatism and militarism:

1/ Trump’s misogyny, which, of course, functions to elevate “feminist” Clinton while covering up her patriarchal policies of wars and socioeconomic restructuring for the interests of the Wall Street bankers.

2/ Openly Russophobic remarks coupled with an alleged Trump connection to Russia. The demonization of Russians and portraying the Russian government as an illegitimate entity serve to prepare people for continuing economic and military pressure against Russia.  This has been particularly concerning for all of us who have followed the movements of NATO forces encroaching on Russia. It is not Russia exhibiting aggression, but it has been the NATO forces, with 10 times more military spending, provoking nuclear armed Russia. This angle elicits a strong emotional response from people who have been long conditioned with anti-soviet, anti-Communist propaganda long after the fall of the Soviet Union and its communist governance.  It also must be noted that it is simply appalling that Clinton has not presented any evidence for her claim that the Russian government has intervened in the presidential election, while the US has been officially engaging in political intervention of Russia through its Russian Democracy Act.

4/ Trump’s  disrespectful remarks against US veterans. Highlighting Trump’s remarks about veterans elevates Clintons status as a potential military leader. I have been surprised that people, who I thought would be aware of the violent imperialism of the US hegemony, which has destroyed over 22 million lives across the globe while destroying domestic social programs and social safety nets, are so willing to go along with Clinton’s pro war position. Clinton has been literally in support of all the US colonial wars and continues to provoke Russia and China with aggressive remarks.

The US presidential election is a great tool of imperialism to turn good Americans into fervent nationalists dangerous to all humans on the planet.

I urgently ask readers to consider our predicament being trapped in this scheme devised to perpetuate the rule of the extreme minority with enormous wealth and power.

Appetite for Destruction: America’s War Against Itself

Robin Truth Goodman

Nobody better than Henry Giroux can piece together the history of the present and show the intersecting lines that course through our politics and culture. Giving us a new and vibrant twist on the current events that capture the headlines, Giroux’s new book America at War With Itself issues a dire warning about what he calls “these dark times,” but at the same time offers a set of actions that run counter, from pedagogical practices to social movements, Black Lives Matter, labor organizing, community building, civic education, historical memory, and cultural work – or, in his own words, “insurrectional democracy.”

Rather than understanding racism, violence, citizen surveillance, educational divestment, and rising corporate power as each a boxed-in set of events or singular issues, America at War With Itself  proves, insightfully, that all these forces of political culture combine and so, as a result, resistances can also unite around a common target, emphasizing the connections.

As he writes, “An expansive understanding… links the calls for a living wage and environmental justice to calls for access to quality health care and the elimination of the conditions fostering assaults by the state against people of color, immigrants, workers, and women” (260-261). With his characteristic inspirational turns of phrase, creative analyses, and intensity of critique, Giroux has written a must-read, hard-hitting book that turns our present inside-out, allowing us to see the terrifying workings of power and oppression while still identifying the faultlines of hope and possibility.

Giroux calls our contemporary nexus of power “authoritarianism,” a set of trends linked to neoliberalism – the strengthening of the corporate state, the end of the social contract, the depoliticization of democratic public spheres. Though he starts by reading “authoritarianism” in the figure of Donald Trump’s ascendency, he by no means resorts to the kind of facile, knee-jerk repetition of belated angst and shock exhibited in more mainstream commentary. He clearly understands “authoritarianism” in a deeper historical sense of growing militarism, commercialization (which he brilliantly calls “disimagination machines”), and the disappearance of independent spaces for public deliberation, leading to racism, ethnocentricism, xenophobia, an attack on youth, a culture of the spectacle, and a violent cult of strong-arm masculinity. Trump, Giroux says, is not the exception. Instead, he is the manifestation of a society “at war with itself.”

For example, referring to the Michigan emergency management’s diversion of water from the Flint River, leading to lead running through the taps of Flint’s citizens’ homes, Giroux angrily bemoans “a society that finds it more profitable to poison children than to give them a decent life” as well as “a society that chooses to incarcerate people rather than to educate them” (12). In other words, even as the United State pretends to concern itself with civilians as it bombards sites in Iraq and Syria, it is responsible for creating war-like conditions that threaten the well-being and safety of children within its own borders. Giroux does not see the events in Flint as isolated events. Instead, he understands them as part of a longer historical pattern, where financial elites disinvested from Flint, the EPA turned its back, and the Michigan state political authorities moved funds away from black cities and schools in order to shore up state budgets after an era of corporate flight, even before the water crisis. In this, the events in Flint parallel events in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where the Bush administration refused support for needed infrastructure even before the floods, as well as events in Ferguson, Missouri, where urban degradation and job loss were met with more policing, leading to the shooting of an unarmed black man, Michael Brown. Giroux interprets such incidents, additionally, as part of a war on youth that includes the coordinated attacks in Paris in 2015. Here, years of what he calls “soft war” – or repressive policies that deny agency to Muslim youth through humiliation, scapegoating, and intimidation — make it easier for ISIS to recruit young followers willing to shed blood in their name. For Giroux, because youth have a claim on the future, they open the imagination to futures that are different, and as such often find themselves the target of inordinate repression.

Giroux sees similar trends in the growth in gun violence and mass shootings, which he calls, following Guns N’ Roses, an “appetite for destruction.” Gun violence, remarks Giroux, is for the most part publically blamed on terrorists or on the mentally ill, even as statistically, a large preponderance of perpetrators fall into neither category. On the one hand, Giroux instead attributes mass shootings to the ability of the gun industry to control legislation through lobbying and thus avoid regulation. On the other hand, gun violence is the product of a massive disinformation machine that produces fears of people of color or of immigrants when insecurities are really the result of cuts in government supports for health care, schools, and communities. In such a setting, without democratic recourse, all politics, as Hannah Arendt warned against, gets reduced to violence.

In addition, Giroux remarks on a slew of cultural products, TV shows, Hollywood movies, news programs, and video games, that falsify information about the dangers we face while pleasuring and reveling in these violent events, producing “commercial pornographies of violence” (156) and normalizing its occurrences. “Representations of bodies in fear, panic, vulnerability, and pain,” Giroux elucidates, “increasingly override narratives of social justice; pure entertainment, as a return to the hyper-real, enshrines audio-visual representations of the gruesome, opening up a new phase in the contemporary use of images as mechanisms of social control, coercion, and psychological war” (177). Not only do corporate arms sellers profit as our cities enter into their crossfire, creating an increasing state demand for corporate surveillance systems, but media companies also draw substantial revenues by denying ethical considerations in the perpetuation of violence and generating images of deadly threats coming from everywhere, turning victims into monsters.

Giroux of course does not leave us in the throes of such an intolerable vision but rather makes us responsible agents in the formation of critical subjects and active citizens. For Giroux, learning to interpret the world is the first step towards intervening in it, and in intervening, changing it. “Educated hope,” he concludes, “believes that substantial changes for justice and a better future can only take place in collective struggle and that such change must begin by making power visible, connecting the dots, and confronting the conditions of injustice” (251). This is exactly what Giroux models in this book. In all, America at War With Itself is wide-ranging in its analyses of power without ever resorting to shallow cynicism; it is accessible and passionate while still delving meticulously and perceptively into the public concerns that are shaping our political identities of the present. Giroux continues as a visionary.

The Crisis Of European Integration And The Challenges For The Left

Panagiotis Sotiris

The elephant in the room is now visible to everyone. All the developments of the past years, from the extreme violence and cynicism of the “memoranda of understanding” imposed upon Greece to the decision of the British referendum in favour of Brexit, point to the same direction: the deep crisis of European Integration. It was supposed to be the most advanced example of economic and political integration and the first successful introduction of a single currency in such a broad area. It presented itself as a paragon of stability and human rights. Yet the reality is very different.

Faced with the global capitalist crisis of 2007-8 not only did the EU not find a means to react and protect European economies from the fall-out of the crisis, but the embedded austerity of the European project just made things worse. The global crisis was combined with the accentuated contradictions and structural inequality of the Eurozone to create a true recipe for destruction, leading to extreme social crisis in the European South and intensifying recession tendencies in the global economy.

Faced with the debt-crisis of most European countries, with Greece as the most notable case, the EU answered with increased indebtedness and using the debt crisis as the excuse for the biggest experiment in neoliberal social engineering of past decades, an attempt to dismantle social rights won with the struggles of decades.

Something Rotten at the Heart of Europe

Faced with an open legitimization crisis, exemplified in the fact that almost all democratic processes, in which the people actually had a say, were against further integration, the answer of European elites has been the insistence on ‘bureaucratic caesarism’, to use the phrase of Durand and Keucheyan. This was expressed in the most cynical manner in Jean-Claude Juncker’s infamous phrase “there is no democratic choice against the European treaties.”

Faced with increased American aggression and attempts toward a “New Cold War,” exemplified in aggressive geopolitical moves from the part of American imperialism, the EU has been even more immersed in the politics of “Euro-Atlanticism” such as sanctions against Russia.

Faced with the refugee crisis, the EU has opted for the murderous policies of “Fortress Europe,” making the tragedy even worse, with thousands of dead refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean showing the true and very ugly face of Europe.

Faced with the new conditions in Europe and the fact that important segments of the working classes in European countries are not of European origin, the answer of the EU and European governments has been a return to the darkest traditions of colonialism and racism, leading to the current wave of anti-immigrant, anti-refugee policies and the increasing ideological climate of intolerance, chauvinism and islamophobia.

And faced with the fact, obvious to everybody, that after a referendum the world’s fifth largest economy decided to leave the EU, the reaction has been a collective “burying of the head in the sand” instead of a facing up to the reality that “there is something rotten at the heart of Europe.”

All these attest to the deep crisis of the European project. However, at the same time we know very well the class forces that will continue to support it. Despite the fact that European policies have not managed to reverse austerity and the economic crisis, the bourgeoisies are happy with the neoliberal discipline imposed upon societies by means of the euro and rules of European economic governance. Even the bourgeoisies of the lesser developed countries accept these difficulties as the price to pay for the advantages of reduced labour cost, mass privatization, flexible labour and anti-union laws. European corporations, especially of the European centre take advantage of the unified market but also of the fact that they can invest in those countries that are being turned into “special economic zones,” without labour rights, social or environmental protection, Greece being the example that easily comes to mind.

A Socialist Strategy

Therefore, it is more than obvious that the only possible progressive, radical, socialist answer is a strategy for exit from the euro and the EU. Some years ago, perhaps there was some excuse for those that still had illusions about the possibility to change the EU from within or to suggest plans for ‘another’ EU, with ‘another’ euro and ‘another’ ECB. After the crisis and in particular after the Greek experience, we all know that this is impossible. The EU cannot be reformed. It was never designed to be reformed. It was from the beginning an attempt toward safeguarding capitalist social relations and accumulation, by means of reduced sovereignty and the embedded neoliberalism of the euro. Therefore, the only left strategy is that of exit. Left Europeanism has been and still is the high point of the defeat of the Left in Europe, the most visible result of bourgeois ideological and political hegemony inside the Left.

Some people on the Left still say ‘yes, but what about the Far-Right?’ I will say it in very simple terms: the rise of the Far-Right with its ersatz“Euroscepticism” has been the result of the strategic deficits of the Left and its inability to be the leading political force in the struggle against the EU, ceding political and ideological space to the reactionary, xenophobic and deeply systemic forces of the Far Right, political forces who in reality actually support the EU. It was the Left that let a position, historically belonging to the Left, namely the refusal of European Integration, to be hijacked by the Far-Right. Moreover, if one wants to realize where does left Europeanism lead to, the answer is very simple: Tsipras. The limit of left Europeanism is capitulation to the EU, its austerity and capitalist restructuring.

So, what is important? The task we face is exactly to create a new relation of forces inside the European Left, in favour of a strategy of exit, by opening up the debate and coordinating all the forces that are in favour of ‘Left exit’, both at the national and at the European level.

And yes this is something that has to be done by political forces and movements that refer to the Left, that refer to the working class movement, that have an anticapitalist and anti-imperialist line, that have a socialist perspective, that want the exit to be part of a strategy for social emancipation, that want to create new “historical blocs” of the forces of labour, of knowledge and of culture under the hegemony of the working class.

Today, it would be a great error to say that we have to move beyond the distinction between Right and Left. No, the divide is active. Not, in the sense of ‘self-proclaimed’ identity, as parties like Syriza do, but in the sense of the actual divide between the working class and in general the subaltern classes and the capitalists. Saying that the Right-Left divide is irrelevant, only helps the Far Right which uses the same rhetoric. We must reclaim the very notion of the Left and make it again synonymous with struggle, justice and emancipation.

Popular Sovereignty

To do this we must say that yes sovereignty matters and that reduced sovereignty and transfer of authority from nation-states to transnational organizations such as the EU has been part of the capitalist and neoliberal attack upon societies. When we talk about sovereignty we talk about democracy. This why we must insist on the necessary reclaiming of popular sovereignty as a strategic goal of the Left. And popular sovereignty is not just simply about institutional arrangement, nor does it imply some naive belief in bourgeois parliamentarism. It has to do with democracy as ability of the subaltern to impose their collective will and change the course of history of a certain historical formation. Popular sovereignty in this sense has to do with power and the social bloc that exercises it.

European Integration is not the perverse form of a cosmopolitanism or internationalism; it is the actual nationalism of capital. The euro is the nationalism of capital. The recuperation of monetary sovereignty that represents a form of popular internationalism.

Popular sovereignty has nothing to do with nationalism or social-chauvinism. In contrast, we need to rethink the very notion of the people as the alliance and unity and common struggle of the subaltern, regardless of ethnicity or religion. This new conceptualization of the people can be much more inclusive in reality and is our answer to the reactionary investment of the Far Right upon imaginary “national identities” and myths of “common origin” and “blood.” Our conception of the people as a collective subject in struggle, as alliance in struggle, as unity along class lines and political strategies, can create new forms of belonging that have nothing to do with nationalism and racism but can actually offer societies a new and emancipatory form of unity and ‘coherence’.

To do this we also need to articulate the strategy for rupture with a transition program, as an alternative narrative for societies. We need to rethink the transition program as a strategy of reclaiming sovereignty and democratic control against the Eurozone, the EU and in general the systemic violence of internationalized capital, and at the same time as initiating a profound process of social transformation, based upon public ownership, self-management and democratic and participatory planning, as a process of experimentation, based upon the collective ingenuity of a people in struggle, in a radical and social horizon. Exiting the Euro and the EU should not be considered just a step toward a more favourable macro-economic condition; the pervasive effects of European Integration and their devastating results upon the productive base of society make a socialist orientation a necessity and not a luxury, in contrast to the traditional reformism and economism of the Left. In this sense, it is imperative to rethink socialism beyond both social-democracy and bureaucratic state socialism, that is to rethink it as a transition process, full of conflicts and struggles in order to expand the ‘traces of communism’ already emerging in collective aspirations and demands for a social organization freed of the rule of capital.

We need to go beyond any conception of the State as a neutral instrument. Contemporary capitalist states, especially within processes of integration such as the EU that are based upon ceding aspects of sovereignty, bear the marks of the most aggressive neoliberal strategies. A new form of radical left governance must begin with profound transformations of the state, by means of a Constituent Process, in order to facilitate new forms of democracy, worker’s control and restrictions upon the activities of capital. At the same time, it has to be based upon the strength of the autonomous movements that have to be independent of the State and always pressing for more radical changes. Otherwise, the neoliberal and capitalist logic already inscribed in the material configuration of the state and the institutional networks and decision processes inside it will take precedent.

Despite the tragic condition of the European Left, we need not despair. The new conjuncture with all the elements of the crisis of European Union creates new opportunities for a refoundation of the Left based upon the centrality of the rupture with the “European road.” We must seize this opportunity and work toward this target, beginning with coordinating all the radical left anti-EU, anti-euro forces in Europe.

Preventing Cultural Genocide With The Mother Tongue Policy In Eritrea

Thomas C. Mountain

The small east African nation of Eritrea has implemented the Mother Tongue policy nationwide to prevent cultural genocide within its nine different ethnic groups.

This is done by educating all children in tribal environments in their mother tongue until literacy at grade 5. By making sure that the ethnic minorities learn to read and write in their mother tongue the Eritrean Government is making sure that their culture survives as well for without ones language one cannot practice your culture.

Historically destroying peoples mother tongue is the means used to carry out a policy of cultural genocide with many thousands of dialects having disappeared during the western colonial and neo colonial era. Today many of the languages that remain are threatened by the children of these ethnic groups not being literate in their mother tongue which will almost inevitably lead to the loss of their identity, their language and their culture.

It hasnt been easy for Eritrea, hammered by global warming droughts and economically disadvantaged due to western inflicted sanctions and embargoes and with 9 tribes with 9 languages, some of which have never had a written language, the challenge of implementing the Mother Tongue policy for all our tribes has been hard work.

It has been well over a decade now that the policy has become the practice nationwide and the next generation of Eritrean youth from all our 9 tribes are literate in their mother tongue, a policy the whole world needs to adopt.

Manipulating Uprisings: Hungary 1956

Binoy Kampmark

“Nobody foresaw it.  Nobody was ready for it – neither in Budapest, Moscow, Washington or anywhere else.” – Ralph Walter, Radio Free Europe executive, RFE, Oct 22, 2006

Magic, and tragic years, tend to fill the calendar of commemoration for central European patriots. There are religious intercessions; guiding symbols; omens.  Then there are the calamities, the crushing battles that empty entire classes and countries.

For Hungary, a country ever dreamy and mournful about such events, there are two notable disasters of rollicking value. There is Mohács 1526, where a good deal of the country’s aristocratic elite fell before the relentless Ottoman advance.  The event effectively gave the Hapsburgs the ascendency to the west, assuming the role of defender against the Turkish advance into Europe.

Then there is 1956, where the invaders assumed the form of Soviet tanks and a hundred thousand troops, precipitating the 200,000 refugees and the execution of then premier Imre Nagy two years later.  The turning point came on November 1, 1956.  Nagy decided that Hungary would exit the Warsaw Pact, declaring itself neutral.

The crushing force of the subsequent Soviet invasion traumatised the communist movement in Western Europe, stripping the ranks of various party branches while hardening others who felt that ideology needed tanks to back its strictures against the waverers. Behind the Iron Curtain, it was a warning to dissidents to play it by ear – and a resolutely acute one at that.

It also brought revolution into homes.  “Hungary 1956,” the late historian Eric Hobsbawm reminds us, “was the first insurrection brought directly into Western homes by journalists, broadcasters and cameramen, who flooded across the briefly breached Iron Curtain from Austria.”

As with any such historical events, more tends to be made of less.  The initial protests were hardly premised on a back breaking revolution.  Inspired by anti-Soviet protests in Poland, thousands of students marched through Budapest sporting the famous “Sixteen Points” on October 23.

Central to these demands was a freeing up of Hungary from its labouring satellite status, entailing the withdrawal of Soviet troops, freer foreign policy, and free elections.  Then came the greater numbers, posing a direct challenge to the authority of the first secretary Ernő Gerő, the enthusiastic removal of Stalin’s statue, and fire from nerve wracked secret police.

As Charles Gati’s Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revoltsuggests, “relatively few Hungarians actually fought against Soviet rule, and their ultimate aim was to reform the system, not to abolish it.”

Nor was there anything systematic or steely about the organisation of the protest.  Hungary’s doomed Imre Nagy was not as skilful as he might have been, despite showing courage before the proceedings arrayed against him.  If history takes place on a moving train, this particular one proved wobbly and uncertain.

Caught between the absolute aims of the fighters, and reassuring Moscow that their disruption might be kept minimal, Nagy failed to do both, a symptom of what Hobsbawm termed “heroic victimisation”.  Much of this had to do with the fact that the Hungarian Communist Party, by that point, was in tatters.

Misinformation and mishandling, in short, was everywhere.  Assertions that the Soviet leadership were compulsively “trigger happy” are dismissed by Gati.  There were concessions sought; there was a hope for a solution more reminiscent of Yugoslavia or Poland.  But it becomes increasingly hard to avoid the sense that historical actors, once unleashed, have no sense of what can happen next. Folly tends to be a default outcome.

The other story was the interplay of the other side of the now thick curtain, which had only been momentarily pierced by the de-Stalinising rhetoric of Nikita Khrushchev.  Many of the Hungarian students laboured under some presumption that Western intervention in some guise, marshalled with US support, would take place.  Such outlets as Radio Free Europe fed the manna of presumed freedom to the “student movement”, as it was termed.

This was aided by the counter-revolutionary rhetoric of rollback, encouraged by initial US Cold War administrations keen to arrest, and repel Soviet influence. Like some radical mystique, Soviet rule was meant to melt into to the background before the idea of a popular uprising.

But the eyes of then US President Dwight D. Eisenhower were glued to another spectacle: that of the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt after the nationalisation of Suez by the Nasser regime.  The pretext for gradualism was set, with neither superpower too eager to place the other in direct line of potential nuclear conflict.

Such a train of events also supply current regimes with counterfeit political currency.  Acts become unvarnished in their heroism.  The government of Viktor Orbán has tended to be greedy in that regard, using historical shibboleths as readily as slogans.

The chance of commemorating 1956 after six decades was always going to be impossible.  “People who love their freedom,” he said on Sunday, “must save Brussels from Sovietization, from people who want to tell us who we should live with in our countries.” Russian tanks had been replaced by Muslim immigrants and Brussels.

The opposition party Egyutt (Together) begged to differ, with several members attempting to interrupt this display of self-love.  Hundreds of whistles and red cards were distributed to assist heckling and disruption.

According to the party’s vice president, Péter Juhász, “Viktor Orbán’s policies are exactly the kind Hungarians rebelled against in 1956.” While 1956 saw a revolt against the Soviet bloc’s Stalinist chill, with its glacial response, Juhász saw Orbán as getting all too warm with Moscow – literally, with the decision to permit Russian construction of nuclear reactors in Paks.  “Back then, Hungarians stood up to Soviet domination, while today Orbán has committed Hungary to Russia for decades.”

Orbán’s dog whistle world is set in hard blocs of culture and civilization, usually what he considers the better ones against the worst.  The refugee debate in Hungary took that turn when Orbán decided that foreboding fences rather than processing centres provided better solutions.  Besides, he insisted, Hungary was taking the lead again – this time against resurgent Ottomans and Islam. That’s historical Hungary for you: a self-touted figure part vanguard, and always, part heroic victim.