Class, Race and Power

Rob Urie

Since the onset of the Great Recession, a debate has persisted over creating what is described— depending on one’s premises, as either a trans-ideological working class movement or a red-brown alliance of socialists with fascists. ‘Socialist’ in this configuration is a classless movement that maps quite remarkably to the base of the Democratic Party. It is a mix of the right-thinking rich, the PMC and the slivers of working class and poor whose historical oppression threatens the rule of capital if not managed through social divisions and symbolic acts. Class here is a proxy for one’s social utility in a self-organized system of capitalist employment.

That this ‘classless’ politics follows four decades of resurgent capitalism, with the result that political and economic power are more concentrated now than at any time since the 1920s, would seem to add descriptive content to economic class as an analytical tool of the left. It (class) allows bourgeois whites to live in racially segregated neighborhoods, send their children to racially segregated schools, work in racially segregated employment, get racially segregated health care and shop in racially segregated stores while maintaining the moral clarity of opposing racism. Whatever the theoretical case for capitalism, ‘we’ aren’t all in this together.

Graph: the defining characteristic of resurgent capitalism since the 1970s has been the increasing concentration of income (above) and wealth. While ‘markets’ are cited by capitalist economists to explain this trend, specific government policies, protections, guarantees and bailouts place markets at the end of this process, not the beginning. Persistently higher incomes create persistently higher wealth, the source of political power in money based politics. Source: Emmanuel Saez, inequality.org.

Graph: the defining characteristic of resurgent capitalism since the 1970s has been the increasing concentration of income (above) and wealth. While ‘markets’ are cited by capitalist economists to explain this trend, specific government policies, protections, guarantees and bailouts place markets at the end of this process, not the beginning. Persistently higher incomes create persistently higher wealth, the source of political power in money based politics. Source: Emmanuel Saez, inequality.org.

This racial segregation without racism illustrates the peculiar nature of liberal politics where beliefs are posed as political facts and politic facts are a matter of ideological convenience. Black, male, youth are disproportionately, but not uniquely, subjected to police violence (graph below). In the liberal frame, and as has been predominant in media reports of the motives of protesters, it is this disproportion that is being objected to. As the leadership of Black Lives Matter and the protests more generally have both stated and implied, it is the fact of police violence that is at issue. In contrast, within the liberal frame of ‘privilege,’ having the police kill more white men and a lot more women of both races is just as logical a solution to disproportionality as ending police violence.

Approximately 5% of the human beings killed by the police in recent years were female, meaning that 95% were male. This ratio of 19:1 is many multiples of the racial disparity in police killings. One way to interpret the presentation of this fact is as diminishing the meaning of racial disparity. Another is as adding depth to the nature of police violence. Two recent papers (here and here) provide class analyses of mass incarceration to conclude that it is the poor who are on the receiving end of policing, arrest and incarceration. This relation of race to class does nothing to diminish the targeted horror of police violence.

Visceral objections to broadening the scope of political concern (race to class) are honestly come by through the seeming intractability of problems like police violence in poor neighborhoods, and less honestly through the redirection of political energy into officially-sanctioned channels for political gain. The New Democrats jettisoned the soft class politics of worker interests in favor of capitalist (trickle-down) solutions to class antagonisms. But class antagonisms haven’t gone away. Ultimately, shifting official focus to race redirects political energy, but it doesn’t pay the rent. And contested history (e.g. confederate statues) is occurring in a racially segregated present.

Graph: the racialized narrative of police violence targeting black, males is supported by well-sourced data. Complications include that men are targeted at a much higher multiple than women and the same is true of class— poor people are targeted by the police, not rich. None of this detracts from the righteous, and factually correct, claim that young, black, men are unjustly killed, arrested, and incarcerated. The liberal solution, ‘diversity,’ includes gender but excludes class. When applied to police violence, diversity as a political strategy leaves the rich untouched. Source: pnas.org.

The fact that racial segregation is enforced and maintained through economic segregation complicates the theory that racists cause racist outcomes. Neoliberalism has sharpened the class differences that create and define modern racial segregation. Through support for neoliberalism, the wealthy liberals who most abhor racism in the abstract are most responsible for its social manifestations like segregated neighborhoods and schools. One can assume that racism is the causal mechanism, but that points the finger at economic factors that don’t readily accommodate abstract motives.

This paradox flips the liberal script that racism defines the contours of racially differentiated outcomes. If racists provide the alleged motive, but anti-racists control the means, it is the means that are determinative. ‘Deplorables’ aren’t telling oligarchs, corporate executives, and the PMC what to do. They exist outside of official power. When it comes to policing, the ‘bottom-up’ view that racist cops set their own agenda is belied by the power and the legal immunity from prosecution they have been given. Localized policing and incarceration are given federal mandates through legislation like the 1994 Crime Bill.

Graph: the poor and working class, defined here as having family incomes $0 – $49,999, have higher relative representation by blacks, but larger absolute representation by whites. Given that nearly half of blacks are poor or working class, but less than a third of whites are, efforts to portray working class politics as the purview of racist whites 1) aren’t descriptively accurate and 2) sow divisions that obscure unified class interests. To the extent that poor and working class whites are racist, their class position assures that they don’t have the power to set political agendas. Source: census.gov.

The visceral fear of racist terror that is reported to haunt American blacks has little bearing on the social mechanisms of economic exclusion that are endemic to capitalism. Measures like economic mobility assume that it is equally distributed from poor to rich. In contrast, the idea of social reproduction illustrates how economic mobility can exist within static class relations. As the graph above illustrates, blacks are ‘over-represented’ amongst the poor and working class relative to whites. Around 1970, economic mobility ended for the bottom half of the income distribution, with rising economic mobility, as measured by rising real incomes, concentrated amongst the rich where only 5% of blacks exist.

This combination of factors meant that 1) the persistence of racial segregation since the onset of neoliberalism can be well explained by low economic mobility that left pre-existing racial segregation intact and 2) through class, poor and working class blacks share their economic circumstances with poor and working class whites, not with bourgeois liberals no matter what their racial sentiments might be. Whatever the intent, it was the sharpening of class divisions that hardened racial segregation in housing, education, and employment in recent decades.

Nothing written here reduces racism to anything less than its full social character. With the hardening of racial segregation through sharpened class distinctions, this full social character includes class relations that produce racially differentiated outcomes outside of racist intent. Socialists and anarchists battling working class racists and ‘fascists’ in the streets reinforces the neoliberal economic order quite straightforwardly. Doing so isn’t an attack on power, it is an attack for power. The causal mechanisms of neoliberal economic repression determine class. This is definitional. These are determined from above— by owners and bosses, not by workers.

Graph: From the 1940s on, white people have grown more tolerant of racial integration according to polling. After federally mandated programs of racial integration were tried in the 1960s and early 1970s, they were gradually abandoned in favor of ‘equality of opportunity.’ White people’s opinions continued to evolve, but racial integration was left unfinished. Today, most white people decry racism while living in racially segregated neighborhoods and sending their kids to racially segregated schools. Source: University of Illinois.

Consider, programs to end racial segregation in public schools like federally mandated school busing were most effectively countered by liberal politicians like Joe Biden at the behest of his bourgeois constituents. As with many such efforts, their arguments were economic and qualitative— they didn’t want to diminish the education of their children by busing them to the poorly funded schools to which poor and working class black and brown children were consigned. When asked (graph above), they support racial integration in the abstract. But when it comes to redistributing the political and economic power necessary to do so, they defer to the just distribution of capitalism. Lest this be less than evident, the flip side of meritocracy is that the poor ‘merit’ poverty.

By the early-mid 1990s, nearly 95% of whites polled (graph above) thought that public schools should be racially integrated— in the abstract. This triumph of liberalism resulted in the election of neoliberal politicians who told tales of diversity and inclusion that included race, gender, and the additional categories of modern identity politics. The rhetoric was redirected toward equality of opportunity, with the idea being that markets would produce a just distribution of economic outcomes. The conceptual problem with redistribution is that if the poor don’t deserve their lot— the premise behind social welfare programs, then neither do the rich. Merit either works or it doesn’t.

Over the last four decades of neoliberal ascendance, ‘deplorables’ and ‘fascists’ had no control over the economic forces that sharpened American class divisions. To the extent they were / are working class, they were on the losing end of these sharpened divisions, as were poor and working class blacks. The people who determined this trajectory and its broad contours are oligarchs, corporate executives, the PMC, and neoliberal politicians. The irony of perceiving and describing people as poor losers, and then assigning to them the power to determine four decades of broad economic outcomes, seems to have been lost.

The reason why this fight is worth having is that until political and economic power is redistributed downward, there is little possibility of resolving existing social tensions. Individual cops may or may not be racists. However, if they weren’t doing the bidding of the rich and powerful, they wouldn’t have jobs. And they definitely wouldn’t have immunity from prosecution for killing poor people. Forget about what rich people think for a minute. If, from the perspective of poor and working people, they don’t see themselves as deserving of being poor, then the rich don’t deserve to be rich. Again, this is definitional. It’s what the ‘system’ in economic system means.

There is plenty of evidence (links above) that economic segregation— class, has maintained and sharpened the system of racial segregation of prior decades. Even if people could be talked out of racial animus, poor people can’t afford a million dollar house and the rich and PMC won’t choose to live in poor neighborhoods with few social amenities, poor infrastructure and schools, and the social dysfunction that poverty entails. There is no way to end so-called systemic racism without redistributing political and economic power from those who have it to those who don’t. If you want to gauge the depth of ‘classless’ anti-racism, see how little economic and political power actually gets handed over. In this case, ‘nothing’ is just another word for a whole lot left to lose.

Since the onset of the Great Recession, a debate has persisted over creating what is described— depending on one’s premises, as either a trans-ideological working class movement or a red-brown alliance of socialists with fascists. ‘Socialist’ in this configuration is a classless movement that maps quite remarkably to the base of the Democratic Party. It is a mix of the right-thinking rich, the PMC and the slivers of working class and poor whose historical oppression threatens the rule of capital if not managed through social divisions and symbolic acts. Class here is a proxy for one’s social utility in a self-organized system of capitalist employment.

That this ‘classless’ politics follows four decades of resurgent capitalism, with the result that political and economic power are more concentrated now than at any time since the 1920s, would seem to add descriptive content to economic class as an analytical tool of the left. It (class) allows bourgeois whites to live in racially segregated neighborhoods, send their children to racially segregated schools, work in racially segregated employment, get racially segregated health care and shop in racially segregated stores while maintaining the moral clarity of opposing racism. Whatever the theoretical case for capitalism, ‘we’ aren’t all in this together.

Graph: the defining characteristic of resurgent capitalism since the 1970s has been the increasing concentration of income (above) and wealth. While ‘markets’ are cited by capitalist economists to explain this trend, specific government policies, protections, guarantees and bailouts place markets at the end of this process, not the beginning. Persistently higher incomes create persistently higher wealth, the source of political power in money based politics. Source: Emmanuel Saez, inequality.org.

This racial segregation without racism illustrates the peculiar nature of liberal politics where beliefs are posed as political facts and politic facts are a matter of ideological convenience. Black, male, youth are disproportionately, but not uniquely, subjected to police violence (graph below). In the liberal frame, and as has been predominant in media reports of the motives of protesters, it is this disproportion that is being objected to. As the leadership of Black Lives Matter and the protests more generally have both stated and implied, it is the fact of police violence that is at issue. In contrast, within the liberal frame of ‘privilege,’ having the police kill more white men and a lot more women of both races is just as logical a solution to disproportionality as ending police violence.

Approximately 5% of the human beings killed by the police in recent years were female, meaning that 95% were male. This ratio of 19:1 is many multiples of the racial disparity in police killings. One way to interpret the presentation of this fact is as diminishing the meaning of racial disparity. Another is as adding depth to the nature of police violence. Two recent papers (here and here) provide class analyses of mass incarceration to conclude that it is the poor who are on the receiving end of policing, arrest and incarceration. This relation of race to class does nothing to diminish the targeted horror of police violence.

Visceral objections to broadening the scope of political concern (race to class) are honestly come by through the seeming intractability of problems like police violence in poor neighborhoods, and less honestly through the redirection of political energy into officially-sanctioned channels for political gain. The New Democrats jettisoned the soft class politics of worker interests in favor of capitalist (trickle-down) solutions to class antagonisms. But class antagonisms haven’t gone away. Ultimately, shifting official focus to race redirects political energy, but it doesn’t pay the rent. And contested history (e.g. confederate statues) is occurring in a racially segregated present.

Graph: the racialized narrative of police violence targeting black, males is supported by well-sourced data. Complications include that men are targeted at a much higher multiple than women and the same is true of class— poor people are targeted by the police, not rich. None of this detracts from the righteous, and factually correct, claim that young, black, men are unjustly killed, arrested, and incarcerated. The liberal solution, ‘diversity,’ includes gender but excludes class. When applied to police violence, diversity as a political strategy leaves the rich untouched. Source: pnas.org.

The fact that racial segregation is enforced and maintained through economic segregation complicates the theory that racists cause racist outcomes. Neoliberalism has sharpened the class differences that create and define modern racial segregation. Through support for neoliberalism, the wealthy liberals who most abhor racism in the abstract are most responsible for its social manifestations like segregated neighborhoods and schools. One can assume that racism is the causal mechanism, but that points the finger at economic factors that don’t readily accommodate abstract motives.

This paradox flips the liberal script that racism defines the contours of racially differentiated outcomes. If racists provide the alleged motive, but anti-racists control the means, it is the means that are determinative. ‘Deplorables’ aren’t telling oligarchs, corporate executives, and the PMC what to do. They exist outside of official power. When it comes to policing, the ‘bottom-up’ view that racist cops set their own agenda is belied by the power and the legal immunity from prosecution they have been given. Localized policing and incarceration are given federal mandates through legislation like the 1994 Crime Bill.

Graph: the poor and working class, defined here as having family incomes $0 – $49,999, have higher relative representation by blacks, but larger absolute representation by whites. Given that nearly half of blacks are poor or working class, but less than a third of whites are, efforts to portray working class politics as the purview of racist whites 1) aren’t descriptively accurate and 2) sow divisions that obscure unified class interests. To the extent that poor and working class whites are racist, their class position assures that they don’t have the power to set political agendas. Source: census.gov.

The visceral fear of racist terror that is reported to haunt American blacks has little bearing on the social mechanisms of economic exclusion that are endemic to capitalism. Measures like economic mobility assume that it is equally distributed from poor to rich. In contrast, the idea of social reproduction illustrates how economic mobility can exist within static class relations. As the graph above illustrates, blacks are ‘over-represented’ amongst the poor and working class relative to whites. Around 1970, economic mobility ended for the bottom half of the income distribution, with rising economic mobility, as measured by rising real incomes, concentrated amongst the rich where only 5% of blacks exist.

This combination of factors meant that 1) the persistence of racial segregation since the onset of neoliberalism can be well explained by low economic mobility that left pre-existing racial segregation intact and 2) through class, poor and working class blacks share their economic circumstances with poor and working class whites, not with bourgeois liberals no matter what their racial sentiments might be. Whatever the intent, it was the sharpening of class divisions that hardened racial segregation in housing, education, and employment in recent decades.

Nothing written here reduces racism to anything less than its full social character. With the hardening of racial segregation through sharpened class distinctions, this full social character includes class relations that produce racially differentiated outcomes outside of racist intent. Socialists and anarchists battling working class racists and ‘fascists’ in the streets reinforces the neoliberal economic order quite straightforwardly. Doing so isn’t an attack on power, it is an attack for power. The causal mechanisms of neoliberal economic repression determine class. This is definitional. These are determined from above— by owners and bosses, not by workers.

Graph: From the 1940s on, white people have grown more tolerant of racial integration according to polling. After federally mandated programs of racial integration were tried in the 1960s and early 1970s, they were gradually abandoned in favor of ‘equality of opportunity.’ White people’s opinions continued to evolve, but racial integration was left unfinished. Today, most white people decry racism while living in racially segregated neighborhoods and sending their kids to racially segregated schools. Source: University of Illinois.

Consider, programs to end racial segregation in public schools like federally mandated school busing were most effectively countered by liberal politicians like Joe Biden at the behest of his bourgeois constituents. As with many such efforts, their arguments were economic and qualitative— they didn’t want to diminish the education of their children by busing them to the poorly funded schools to which poor and working class black and brown children were consigned. When asked (graph above), they support racial integration in the abstract. But when it comes to redistributing the political and economic power necessary to do so, they defer to the just distribution of capitalism. Lest this be less than evident, the flip side of meritocracy is that the poor ‘merit’ poverty.

By the early-mid 1990s, nearly 95% of whites polled (graph above) thought that public schools should be racially integrated— in the abstract. This triumph of liberalism resulted in the election of neoliberal politicians who told tales of diversity and inclusion that included race, gender, and the additional categories of modern identity politics. The rhetoric was redirected toward equality of opportunity, with the idea being that markets would produce a just distribution of economic outcomes. The conceptual problem with redistribution is that if the poor don’t deserve their lot— the premise behind social welfare programs, then neither do the rich. Merit either works or it doesn’t.

Over the last four decades of neoliberal ascendance, ‘deplorables’ and ‘fascists’ had no control over the economic forces that sharpened American class divisions. To the extent they were / are working class, they were on the losing end of these sharpened divisions, as were poor and working class blacks. The people who determined this trajectory and its broad contours are oligarchs, corporate executives, the PMC, and neoliberal politicians. The irony of perceiving and describing people as poor losers, and then assigning to them the power to determine four decades of broad economic outcomes, seems to have been lost.

The reason why this fight is worth having is that until political and economic power is redistributed downward, there is little possibility of resolving existing social tensions. Individual cops may or may not be racists. However, if they weren’t doing the bidding of the rich and powerful, they wouldn’t have jobs. And they definitely wouldn’t have immunity from prosecution for killing poor people. Forget about what rich people think for a minute. If, from the perspective of poor and working people, they don’t see themselves as deserving of being poor, then the rich don’t deserve to be rich. Again, this is definitional. It’s what the ‘system’ in economic system means.

There is plenty of evidence (links above) that economic segregation— class, has maintained and sharpened the system of racial segregation of prior decades. Even if people could be talked out of racial animus, poor people can’t afford a million dollar house and the rich and PMC won’t choose to live in poor neighborhoods with few social amenities, poor infrastructure and schools, and the social dysfunction that poverty entails. There is no way to end so-called systemic racism without redistributing political and economic power from those who have it to those who don’t. If you want to gauge the depth of ‘classless’ anti-racism, see how little economic and political power actually gets handed over. In this case, ‘nothing’ is just another word for a whole lot left to lose.

Killing Koalas: The Promise of Extinction Down Under

Binoy Kampmark

The British conservationist Gerald Durrell once remarked that the koala was “the most boring of animals”.  Its brain size, proportionally the smallest of any mammal, evolved to cope with its slow metabolism.  But the spectacle of these singed, toasted animals was a terrifyingly cruel one to behold.  As good stretches of Australia burned over the last bushfire season, the sheer scale and intensity of this otherwise regular occurrence suggested something beyond remedy.  Fires bring with them bold destruction and vigorous promise.  What is taken can be renewed.

That matter of renewal has been brought into question.  Environmental degradation, anthropogenic meddling and all around beastliness to country, has made Australia a titan of destructiveness.  In terms of mammals, its rate of extinction is grimly impressive, making it the leader in an inglorious pack.  As John Woinarski noted in 2018, “Over the last two hundred years at least 34 Australian mammal species and 29 birds have become extinct.”

A New South Wales Parliamentary committee has brought more bad tidings to further blot the copybook.  Published on June 30, 2020, Koala populations and the habitat in New South Wales suggests that the animal, in the absence of government intervention, is doomed to extinction by 2050.  The culprits of depredation have not changed, and the report reads like a doomsday call.

The list of findings would make bruising reading to even the most stone-hearted property developer. The casualties for this particular marsupial during the course of the recent bushfires is said to be 5,000.  A warning is issued that the current estimated number of 36,000 koalas in New South Wales following the 2019-2020 bushfires “is outdated and unreliable”.  Continuous logging of NSW native forests “has had cumulative impacts on koalas over many years because it has reduced the maturity, size and availability of preferred feed and roost trees.”  Climate change had also compounded “the severity and impact of other threats, such as drought and bushfires, on koala populations.”  Firmer interventions by the state government were needed to address population declines.

Existing policies on koala protection were also found to be deficient.  The NSW Koala Strategy fell “short of the NSW Chief Scientist’s recommendation of a whole-of-government koala strategy with the objective of stabilising and then increasing koala numbers.”  It did not “prioritise and resource the urgent need to protect koala habitat across all tenures.” A question mark remained on the issue of translocation as a viable strategy of coping with species preservation.

The committee makes 42 recommendations, some of them eminently sensible.  But sensibility requires action; and action demands will.  Such will, it was noted by committee members, does not seem present at the government level.  Cate Faehrmann, the committee chair and member of the Greens, was exasperated in her foreword, claiming frustration at hearing “from government witnesses that the policies and laws in place to protect koalas and their habitat are adequate.”

Saving such a species can only commence in earnest at the council, local government level.  One recommendation insists on giving the reins to community groups by means of additional funding and support “so that they can plant trees and regenerate bushland along koala and wildlife corridors and explore mechanisms to protect these corridors in-perpetuity.” More funding is suggested for local councils to develop conservation programs and “conducting mapping […] for comprehensive koala plans of management.”

Other recommendations will irk industry, including the recommendation that the NSW government visit the destructive impacts of logging “in all public native (non-plantation) forests in the context of enabling koala habitat to be identified and protected”.  The logging and deforestation lobbies will be particularly worried about recommendation 41, which suggests the creation of the Great Koala National Park, an idea first put forth by the National Parks Association of NSW in 2015.  That association can hardly be accused of lacking money sense: establishing such a park, they suggest, “could become a globally significant tourist attraction.”  (This would hardly help in arresting pervasive environmental fragmentation.) 175,000 hectares of public state forests would be added to the existing protected complement, creating a total of 315,000 hectares reserve.

This is of little comfort to such opponents of the scheme as the Australian Workers’ Union of NSW, an organisation not exactly known for its green tendencies.  The committee report duly notes the union’s view that the park would result in a “catastrophic destruction of regional economies and jobs”.  Assistant Secretary Paul Noack even went so far as to dismiss the effectiveness of such a venture. Forget parks, he suggested; focus on creating “koala protection areas”.

Noack need not be too bothered.  Inquiries of this sort always risk succumbing to reductive strategies and severe trimming. Then comes the matter of vacuous symbolism.  The koala draws the attention of the camera and the publicity minded bureaucrat, only to vanish from the policy discussion.  As the Australia Koala Foundation’s chief executive Deborah Tabart has remarked, “the koala has many powerful enemies”.

In September 2011, an Australian Senate inquiry named The Koala – saving our national icon covered similar ground the NSW parliamentary report does.  Good habitat mapping and the identification of “a standardised set of methodologies in estimating koala populations” were recommended; a national koala monitoring and evaluation program was suggested.  But the report lacks bite and desperation.  Committee members, for instance, remarked on “the complexity of this multifaceted issue”, often political code for inertia.  Koala populations might have been in sharp decline in the Mulga Lands of Queensland, but were healthy on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

Such tentative observations did little to discourage the devastating land clearing that continues its remorseless march in Queensland and NSW.  Regional forest arrangements made over the last two decades have also been found to be woefully inadequate in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Victoria.

Prior to the conflagrations over the course of 2019 and 2020, the Australian Koala Foundation was already spreading the gloomy word that the koala population in Australia stood at 80,000, making them “functionally extinct”.  A species considered as such is gazing over the precipice, essentially irrelevant or ineffectual in their ecosystem, incapable of reproducing or simply inbreeding.  As Christine Hosking remarked in The Conversation in May 2019, “It’s hard to say exactly how many koalas are still remaining in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory, but they are highly vulnerable to threats including deforestation, disease and the effects of climate change.”

In November 2019, Natasha Daly penned a corrective in the National Geographic, amassing a range of qualifying opinions.  There had been “erroneous declarations that the animals have lost most of their habit and are ‘functionally extinct’ making the rounds in headlines and on social media, illustrating just how quickly misinformation can spread in times of crisis.”  Chris Johnson, professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Tasmania, wished to dampen such apocalyptic calls.  “Koala populations will continue to decline because of lots of interacting reasons, but we’re not at the point where one event can take them out.”  Diana Fisher of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland suggested that the species was “threatened in some parts of its range and not in others.”

Such views, in the aftermath of the latest round of lethal bushfires, must come across as a bit hair-splitting.  The vulnerability of the species has reached apocalyptic levels and human complacency, along with the usual crippling disregard shown through a lack of enforceable protections, might well prove to be the enemy of this animal.

Anti Terrorism Bill in Philippines and Shrinking Spaces for Democracy

Madhuresh Kumar

The Corona Pandemic and subsequent lockdown in Philippines has been used by the President Duterte to push for passage of Anti Terrorism Bill, an amendment to the Human Security Act 2007. The Bill, approved by the Senate on February 26 and by the House of Representative on June 3, is now waiting for approval from the President. The Bill has been criticized by Leni Robredo, country’s Vice-President, civil society members, national human rights commission, UN office of Human Rights Commission and many others. The Bill provides overarching definition of terrorists, terror activities, bestows overarching surveillance power, arrest without warrant, detention, long incarceration without judicial appeal, and takes away the power of judicial proceedings and hands it to the executive. It has raised widespread fears amongst the opposition parties, media, rights activists and raised concerns of its arbitrary use and abuse.

The passage of the Bill comes in the backdrop of rising attack on the media and recent arbitrary shutdown of the ABS-CBN, country’s largest and widest-reaching network by National Telecommunications Commission and conviction of Rappler executive editor Maria Ressa and their former staffer Reynaldo Santos Jr over cyber libel charges, for an article written in 2012. There are seven other charges pending over Maria Ressa and possibility of their trial under the new Anti Terrorism Law can’t be ruled out.

Activism is not Terrorism

“Activism is not Terrorism”, that’s the call given by the civil society opposing this law. Defying the “Community Quarantine” in order due to Covid pandemic, thousands of students, activists, and civil society groups took to streets opposing this draconian law. The community quarantine or lockdown measures started in mid March, amidst widespread confusion, and continues even now with the unlock phase starting from June 1. However, the cases have only continued to rise with 23,000 active cases and 1200 deaths. With the quarantine and shutting down of the public transport in Metro Manila and other cities, citizens and workers were stranded and unable to reach to their places of work or homes. The complete unpreparedness to provision for health crisis and unfolding economic crisis has only meant that millions of the Filipinos continue to face lack of food and work, turning it in to a humanitarian crisis.

However, the government has used this time to bring the Anti Terrorism Bill, in a clear attempt to intimidate the civil society and curb any resistance. The fragmented political opposition have been critical of it and blamed it as an attempt to divert attention from the ongoing crisis and prepare for the next stage of wars and campaigns which has been the hallmark of President Duterte’s term. The government’s response to the critiques of the Bill has been that only those who support terrorism and support terrorist are fearing this and others have nothing to worry.

War on Drugs and Continued Popularity

The term of the President Duterte has been fraught with controversies around his stated war on drug campaigns, giving free hand to security forces leading to an estimated 30,000 deaths, many not involved in drug trafficking, the worst affected have been the poor and those on the margins. The UN Human Rights Office estimates that between 2015 and 2019, at least 248 human rights defenders, legal professionals, journalists and trade unionists have been killed in relation to their work. The phenomenon of “red-tagging” – labelling individuals or groups (including human rights defenders and NGOs) as communists or terrorists – has posed a serious threat to civil society and freedom of expression. The report notes how in some cases those who have been red-tagged were subsequently killed. Death threats or sexually-charged comments in private messages or on social media is extremely common for dissenting voices.

President Duterte remains highly popular as witnessed in last year’s election for Senate where all the seats were won by his coalition Hugpong ng Pagbabago. He has faced international rebuke and condemnation for excesses committed during the war on drugsm but has shown least regard for it. In response to  a case filed against the President for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, Philippines has formally withdrawn from it. In past, former President’s after demitting office in Philippines have often faced jail terms and been put on trial for their action and perhaps that’s why, systematically, the effort has been to undermine institutions and attempts made to change the Constitution – introduce a federal system instead of the current Presidential style of government. Currently, there is a limitation of single term of 6 years for the President, but most likely his daughter, Sara Duterte, Governor of Davao, will be a front runner for the office. Something, which might shield him from further investigation post office.

Vilification of Philippines Civil Society

Philipines has a big and influential civil society, with deep roots in democratic traditions. It has a long history of guerrilla insurgency and the peasants movement against the exploitation of the oligarchy in 1960s; birth of democratic and rights organisations following the 1972 Martial Law and Marcos dictatorship; rise of constitutionalism following people power revolution in 1986 and Constitution of 1987; and 90s onwards evolution of rights based and issue specific NGOs. In addition, there is a vibrant climate justice movement, women’s movement, citizenship initiatives, farmers and peasants organisations, trade unions and so on. A 10 million strong diaspora is spread all over the world and has a huge influence over the society and politics both in the country. In the current situation, this diaspora has played an active political role and hence the attempt to change the citizenship laws too, under the garb of nationalism.

The nationalistic jingoism promoted by current regime has ensured that the society remains divided, touching the daily fabric of the politics too. President Duterte remains a divisive figure in Philippines as PM Modi in India, both having built an image of the strongmen and their brand of popular politics. His authoritarian tendencies has a complete grip but at the same time also has a ‘democratic’ acceptance, something born out of the disgust from the past regimes, which were marred in the corruption, nepotism and cronyism.

The vilification, arrest and detention of the opposition leader, current Senator, and former Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission and Justice Minister Leila de Lima on charges of collaborating with the drug mafia has not only been far fetched but also showcases the gross abuse of power. She remains extremely popular, continues to participate in Senate proceedings from the jail, writing and influencing opinions but has remained in jail for nearly three years now. False charges of being drug mafia, based on testimony of drug traffickers, she acted on during her term as Justice Minister, and corrupt police officials have not stood judicial scrutiny, but still Courts have failed to provide relief. She has now been denied visitation rights for more than a month on account of ongoing quarantine measures.

Need for Unified Struggle

The challenges ahead for Filipino civil society are many but they remain hopeful for a new politics to emerge from their struggles. One of the foremost thinkers and former member of parliament Walden Bello, however, says Duterte’s regime shouldn’t be called ‘popular’ but it should be termed as counter revolutionary and something which is different from the regimes like those of Victor Orban in Austria or other such strongmen in the North. He says that the situation demands aggressive defense of human rights, due process, and democratic rights that are under assault. But one cannot just be defensive, there must be an alternative to counter the seductive simplistic and dangerous visions of the far right. The opposition leader and jailed Senator Leila de Lima says that the liberal democracy has failed to live up to its promises for the masses and that disillusionment has given rise to these strongmen but unfortunately, any credible alternative is yet to be born and until then our efforts must continue to find an antidote to these dangerous people. She further cautions that the civil society will be making a big mistake if their continuance in power is reduced to the fact that people are manipulated, brainwashed or terrorized. Perhaps, there lies the answer for the way ahead to fight this rising authoritarianism in Philippines.

Mahatma Gandhi, Race and Caste

Ram Puniyani

During the course of agitation ‘Black lives matter’ some protestors defaced the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in US. Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of Indian Nation, has the unique distinction of leading the biggest ever mass movement in the World and leading the strong anti colonial movement. In this direction he contributed two major tools as the basis of the mass movements, the one of non violence and other of Satyagrah. He also stated that while making the policies what one should keep in mind is the last, weakest person in the society. His life, which he called as his message became the inspiration of many anti colonial, anti racial struggles in different parts of the World. He strongly supported the concept of equality in India, where eradication of caste also became one of the aims of his life.

All this comes to one’s mind as a section of people, writers and intellectuals are labeling him as racist and casteist, one who harmed the cause of dalits in India. Nothing can be farther from truth. These elements are not seeing the whole journey of the man but do the cherry picking from his early writings, when he was in the early phases of his work against prevalent injustices in the name of race and caste.

Earlier also his statue was uprooted in Ghana, where calling him racist, ‘Gandhi Must fall’, movement on the lines of ‘Rhodes must fall’ came up. Gandhi in no way can be put in the category of the likes of Rhodes and others whose central work revolved around enslaving the blacks. The warped understanding of Gandhi comes from focussing only on Gandhi’s early writings. Gandhi who began his campaign for the rights of Indians in South Africa, at times used derogatory terms against blacks. These terms were the one’s which were prevalent, introduced by colonial masters, words like ‘African Savages’. Gandhi while raising the voice for Indian working people in South Africa said that the colonialists are treating Indians like African savages.

There was another process which ran parallel to this one of taking up the cause of people of Indian origin in SA. Once he realized the plight of the blacks there, he started travelling in the third class to experience the hardships being faced by them and much later he stated that they deserve to be treated in a just manner. His overcoming of racial beliefs were best expressed in his sentence, “If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races commingle and produce a civilization that perhaps the world has not yet seen?”  (1908). His beliefs kept evolving and in 1942, in a letter to Roosevelt, he wrote, ““I venture to think that the Allied declaration that the Allies are fighting to make the world safe for freedom of the individual and for democracy sounds hollow so long as India and, for that matter, Africa are exploited by Great Britain and America has the Negro problem in her own home.”

The best response to accusations of Gandhi being a racist came from Nelson Mandela, who wrote, “All in all, “Gandhi must be forgiven those prejudices and judged in the context of the time and the circumstances.” Mandela recognized the crucial point that Gandhi’s views changed as he matured. He wrote, “We are looking here at the young Gandhi, still to become Mahatma.” And from Martin Luther King (Jr.) who was totally inspired by Gandhi in his anti racial struggles.

Caste is another of the phenomenon, which is tricky. Gandhi in early periods of his life talked of Varna Dharma based on work; he glorified the work of scavenging and also called dalits as Harijans. Many a dalit intellectuals and leaders hold Gandhi responsible for opposing the ‘separate electorate’ granted to SCs by McDonald Award. Gandhi saw this as a move to fragment the electorate on narrow lines as being against Indian nationalism and went on hunger strike. Due to this hunger strike Ambedkar agreed for the reserved constituency.

While many leaders-intellectuals see this as a betrayal by Gandhi, Ambedkar himself actually thanked Gandhi for giving a satisfactory solution by giving higher reservation to SCs in reserved constituency. And stated “I am grateful to Mahatma: He came to my rescue.” Bhagwan Das, a close follower of Ambedkar, independently quotes Ambedkar’s speech: “I think in all these negotiations, a large part of the credit must be attributed to Mahatma Gandhi himself. I must confess that I was surprised, immensely surprised, when I met Mahatma, that there was so much in common between him and me.”

As such Race and Caste are akin and United Nations debated it in 2009, on these lines. In both the cases Gandhi, the humanitarian par excellence, begins with terminologies and notions about caste and race which were prevalent at those times. With his deeper engagement with the issues of society, he gives a totally different meaning to the same. In matters of caste, he was deeply influenced and empathetic to Ambedkar, to the extent that he recommended that Ambedkar’s ‘Annihilation of caste’ be read by all.

While he dealt with race issue from the margins, in case of caste he went miles. His campaign for eradication of untouchablity had far reaching back up effect to Ambedkar’s initiatives. It was Gandhi’s disciple Nehru, who brought Ambedkar to the forefront of policy making by including him in the Cabinet. Nehru also entrusted him with drafting Uniform Civil Code and it was Gandhi himself who suggested that Ambedkar be made the Chief of drafting committee of Indian Constitution.

Only those who focus on Early Gandhi, Gandhi in the formative phase of his values and ideas, accuse him of being a castist or racist. He did overcome these narrow, parochial social norms and policies to dream of a fraternity, Indian and Global where caste and race are relegated to the backyard of human history.

Criminalising Journalism: Australia’s National Security Craze

Binoy Kampmark

There has been a lot of noise made in Australia about the need for broader protections when it comes to the fourth estate and the way it covers national security matters.  In a country lacking a backbone in terms of constitutional free speech, journalists are left at the mercy of authorities when it comes to exposing egregious abuses of power.  Consider, for instance, the exposure of war crimes committed by Australian forces via what has come to be known as the Afghan Files.

As Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, the two ABC journalists involved in putting together the file material wrote in July 2017, “Hundreds of pages of secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC give an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children.”

The material, published in seven parts, should not surprise students of war.  In the brutality of the Afghan conflict, the killing of civilians became a casual, cruel matter.  In September 2013, a man and his six-year-old child were killed during the raid on a house.  This incident, along with another involving the killing of a detainee who had allegedly attempted to seize the weapon of an Australian soldier whilst in his custody, formed part of an investigation by the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force.

In 2013, an Afghan man was slain by Australian troops while riding his motorcycle.  The female passenger was injured.  The report in question noted the increasingly parlous state of Afghan-Australian relations in light of such incidents, involving the wanton killing of civilians by special forces.  Much of this stemmed from the sloppiness of Australian military protocol on the battlefield, shown to be hopelessly, and lethally inadequate.  There nomenklatura of the defence establishment spoke to the need of only targeting Afghans “directly participating in hostilities”, a distinction that was lazily made if and when it was made at all.

These are but a few highlights that this cache of files revealed.  But at the core of these revelations was a failed pseudo-colonial mission that was ignoble, misguided and, for all the fanfare of salvation, a dismal failure.  It did little in terms of shoring up either Australian security or those of the Afghan population.  It failed in defeating the insurgent Taliban forces.  It had taken place on impulse, to assist a grieving US still licking its wounds after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  As with other empires, Afghanistan was reaffirmed as a graveyard for failed powers.  The Taliban, far from being defeated, showed their resoluteness and staying power.

The exposure of such defence documents should have sent policy makers and reformers into the corridors of the ADF.  Oakes and Clark deserved, at the very least, a modest acknowledgment of merit.  Instead, they and the ABC attracted the keen eye of the Australian Federal Police.  On June 5, 2019, AFP officers swanned in and cheerfully raided the offices of the national broadcaster in Sydney.  The home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst was also raided for reporting on a separate matter touching on a proposed expansion of surveillance powers held by the Australian Signals Directorate. Both raids were motivated by alleged breaches of official secrecy under the old version of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth).

These furnished the Australian public a chilling spectacle, and did something nothing else could have done: bring unity to a fractious field.  Journalists from Fairfax, News Corp and The Guardian Australia chorused in concern and consternation.  The Right to Know campaign was born, though remains, to date, an incipient venture.  In the words of the coalition, “You have a right to know what the government you elect are doing in your name.  But in Australia today, the media is prevented from informing you, people who speak out are penalised and journalism that shines a light on matters you deserve to know about is criminalised.”

The reason why the campaign has failed to yield rewards can be gathered by the continued investigation of Oakes and Clark and the mixed results of the campaign in the courts.  The ABC failed to invalidate the warrants executed to search their Sydney offices, with Federal Court Justice Wendy Abraham issuing a pointed reminder in February that the implied constitutional right to political subjects is not a personal right but one designed to restrict power.

Smethurst and News Corp did modestly better in the High Court on April 15, but only in terms of result.  In invalidating the search AFP search warrant, the judges found against the police purely on the basis of vague drafting.  The warrant in question failed “to identify any offence under section 79(3)[of the Crimes Act]” and substantially misstated “the nature of an offence arising under it.”  Had the warrant been prescribed with greater clarity, they would still have stood as valid exercises of state power.  Smethurst and her colleagues probably kept the champagne on ice.

In September 2019, Attorney-General Christian Porter issued a direction under the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Act requiring the Director of Public Prosecutions to seek the approval of the AG in instances where a journalist is to be prosecuted.  When it was issued, weak pronouncements were made that this was a warning to the AFP not to pursue the scribblers of the fourth estate.  Porter brandished his credentials as a democrat, arguing that a free press was significant “as a principle of democracy”.  Given Porter’s insistence on prosecuting former ASIS officer Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, for exposing a blatant wrong against a friendly country, such credentials can be dismissed as surplus baubles.

Little wonder, then, that the AFP has now confirmed submitting a brief of evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, acting on the July 11, 2017 referral received from the Chief of the Defence Force and then acting-secretary of defence.  Charges are recommended.  Oddly enough, the police have decided to single out Oakes and spare Clark.  Power, in the absence of restraint, is coldly arbitrary.

The final say on whether such charges will be laid resides with Porter, and we have every reason to be troubled by a discretion that is executive, political and non-judicial.  Oakes sees the higher principle at stake.  “Whether or not we are ever charged or convicted over our stories, the most important thing is that those who broke our laws and the laws of armed conflict are held to account.”

The 21st Century’s Time Of The Great Plague; A Long Overdue Cleansing And Purification Of The World

Jerome Irwin

To this writer’s mind wherever one is at anywhere in the world – given the yet unknown first, second, third, fourth or however more waves of Covid-19 are yet to come, with no vaccine in sight, for perhaps another 18 months or more, if ever, one literally must continue as if they daily are taking one’s life into their own hands. Each time they step out of their front door, whether they’re teenagers, 20-something’s or 40-50-60 or more something’s, before every human decides where to go, what to do or who to see, they better know exactly what they’re facing. The reality at hand isn’t just some cartoon character Chicken Little screaming “The Sky is Falling!” or alarmist prediction by some “Doomsday Prophet” warning, “The End is Nigh Near!”

The fact is that We of This Living Time – are not only under a mortal threat, immersed as we are within the 21st century’s Time of the Great Plague, but we are also witnesses to and participants of one of the greatest opportunities of the modern era to carry out a long awaited, much-overdue, cleansing and purification of the racist, sexist, oligarchical, colonial world as it has been lived by humanity for centuries, especially since the discovery of the New World and for so many more centuries-longer before in the Old World. This God-sent time is a golden opportunity for the Human Race to once-and-for-all create a true New World Order with an entirely new projected future in mind. But Will it?

Probably not given the world’s ugly, wretched track record not only over the millennia but more recently the way in which the current Great Plague has highlighted and underscored the world’s decadently-corrupt political-economic-financial systems of government that have demonstrated an inability to address many long-standing, unaddressed, pressing planetary realities raised by such world movements as: Occupy Wall Street; Extinction Rebellion; Fridays For Future International; Black Lives Matter; Paris Accord; 350.org; Universal Health Care; Equal Rights for Women, and; host of others. But Hope Always Springs Eternal!

Yet, more immediate, simpler, everyday questions staring the world in the face are what daily decisions must be made to: do some safe retail shopping in a local mall; dine in a public restaurant, whether indoors or outdoors; drink and party at some local bar or nightclub; go for a walk or bicycle along a nature trail or public pathway heavily frequented by others. So far, tragically, the unsafe, reckless health risks being taken by humans encountered everywhere during these dangerous COVID times are manifold.

Too many humans, especially teenagers and 20 to 30-something’s, still possess far too much of the cockiness and arrogance of youth, that doesn’t yet fear its mortality, or sees itself as immune and impregnable to the Great Plague that sweeps among us. They still remain too blasé, careless, irresponsible, selfish, inconsiderate, or simply too indifferent, to choose not to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE’s) for the sake of themselves or others. They refuse or are unable to see the absolute duty and responsibility they have, as a citizen of Planet Earth, to protect the sanctity of all life around them.

Yet a large part of the blame and fault clearly rests squarely on the backs of their elders, and world leaders like President Donald Trump, Jair Bolsanaro, Vladimir Putin, XI Jinping, Rodrigo Duterte and host of other lesser leaders who have demonstrated what is nothing less than corrupt criminal acts by all those who show a total disregard, irresponsibility and utter unwillingness to accept the sacred responsibility their office demands of them to set an appropriate example for all who would follow their lead. Because of an over-riding desire to perpetually feather their own political or financial nests, they’ve completely shirked their sacred responsibility to take such simple actions as model responsible behavior by wearing the requisite PPE’s that are called for. They continue to fail miserably in their failure to convene, in every country, an assemblage of all their elected political figures, leading scientists, futurologists, philosophers and wise elders to gather together to create concerted, well-thought-out plans of action on a local, state and federal level. The world’s leaders also have failed to call together similar assemblages of  major world political-scientific- health-philosophical-spiritual-futuriology experts and visionaries, far beyond the scope and powers of organizations like of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), to implement what might be called a U. N. Time of the Plague Council, whose sole function is to address, honestly and forthrightly, the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic and redefine a New World Order of sweeping proportions, driven not by economic concerns but  non-economic, natural aspects of human life.

No matter where one goes in the world in 2020 this widespread flagrant disregard for the need for such assemblages of wise men and women, the consequent, widespread on-going transmissions of the COVID-19 virus, are reflected by repeated mandated lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that almost as soon as they’re put into place, rescinded, incrementally lifted,   re-they must be instated because of the mounting percentages of indiscriminate shoppers: in the malls; on the streets, in every department or grocery store, restaurant, bar, nightclub or business establishment fails to wear the recommended  PPE equipment (Face Masks and surgical gloves) or similarly chooses not to observe suggested safe social distancing practices.

The madness of human nature’s basic inability and failure in self-preservation can be witnessed in every city, town or hamlet in the world by watching the way humans, whether in the most fashionable, richest, elegant, most health-conscious communities or poorest, shabbiest, unwholesome neighborhoods ply up and down crowded streets and boulevards, walk in and out of poorly-spaced restaurants, board and off-load crowded public transit buses, trains and planes without the necessary PPE protections or safe social distancing being observed.

To extrapolate what the dire results such realities suggest will inevitably happen in the short and long term, doesn’t require a rocket scientist to determine the disastrous consequences unless and until something markedly changes. As the world attempts to return to the normal way things once were it will simply continue to disintegrate into ever more woefully dismal states during and beyond this Time of the Great Plague. A return back to normal will only serve as a prelude to even more sweeping and disastrous crises or plagues still to come – whether they be of a biological, political, economic, financial, corporate or spiritual nature.

The flagrant defiance thus far shown by a Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, Bolsanaro, Duterte and all their lesser examples of piss-poor weak and indecisive world leaders, incapable of enacting the much-needed major reforms, and radical transformations now required at all levels of human life to create a truly New World Order, will only continue to perpetuate humanity’s basic callousness towards the preservation of its own species and natural progression of life as creation so intends it.