Post on 01-Oct-2018
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RESUM D’IDEES
Trump is the face of the crisis of civilisation. So make no mistake: the
emergence of our Trumpian moment has happened as a direct
consequence of the failures of previous governments to address these
crises systemically, which has only allowed them to worsen.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, “Donald Trump is not the problem – he‟s the symptom”,
Open Democracy, 20 de gener 2017.
Why is representative government rather than decision by one-shot
referendum the right way of dealing with issues? These are complex
questions and you need a whole lot of engagement. It isn’t that you have
elections once in four or five years and then democracy goes away and
you already decided everything in the election... there is a continuing
need to think and debate.
Amartya Sen, “Referendums are like opinion polls. Sometimes they‟re very wrong”,
The Observer, 22.01.17
Depuis trente ans, depuis le tournant reagano-thatchérien des années
1980, la globalisation financière et l’illusion de la fin de l’Histoire qui
évacua la politique du poste de commandement, l’équilibre est rompu.
L’individualisme colonise l’espace public. Les repères communs se
brouillent. C’est le triomphe du "moi je". Ces questions – pourquoi payer
des impôts ? Pourquoi aider les autres ? Pourquoi avoir un Code du
Travail contraignant ? Comment devenir millionnaire ? – l’emportent sur
des revendications égalitaires discréditées.
Raphaël Glucksmann, “Le trumpisme, maladie sénile de nos démocraties”, L’Obs,
22.01.17
Pour survivre à la crise, le libéralisme est tenté par l’adoption d’une
contestation de façade des régimes qui lui ont permis de s’installer. En
cherchant à agglomérer autour de sa candidature et de son discours
«contestataire» des groupes sociaux aux aspirations différentes,
Emmanuel Macron annonce en fait que nous approchons du stade
terminal de la crise de régime de la Ve République et de l’Union
européenne. Le cas Macron n’est pas isolé: en Europe apparaissent
d'autres mouvements qui allient adhésion au libéralisme et contestation
des régimes politiques en place. Il existe ainsi des exemples proches de
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celui incarné par Emmanuel Macron et qui répondent à la même
fonction. Ciudanados, en Espagne, est apparu comme une forme de
«Podemos de droite», dont la fonction était de renouveler un récit
d’adhésion au libéralisme. En Autriche, la percée du NEOS, petit parti
contestataire et social-libéral, n’est pas sans rappeler la ligne politique
d’Emmanuel Macron. Enfin, la tentative récente –et avortée– d’alliance
de Beppe Grillo avec le groupe libéral du Parlement européen témoigne
tant d’une volonté du M5S de se rendre acceptable aux yeux des élites
économiques italiennes que d’une réflexion libérale sur le
positionnement de cette famille dans un contexte de crise de régime qui
touche l’Union européenne.
Gaël Brustier, “Emmanuel Macron, le signe que nous approchons du stade terminal de
la crise de régime”, Slate.fr, 20.01.17
It’s not just western democracies that are shaken by the inauguration of
a crude bigot who has targeted women and religious and ethnic groups,
and said he could envisage using torture. Across the world, imprisoned
dissidents, repressed journalists, censored writers, hounded political
oppositions, stigmatised minorities are all set to lose out – and that’s
because defending them via international human rights architecture is
now going to become a great deal more difficult.
Natalie Nougayrède, “Human rights now face their gravest threat”, The Guardian,
23.01.17
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Trump is the face of the crisis of civilisation. So make no mistake: the
emergence of our Trumpian moment has happened as a direct
consequence of the failures of previous governments to address these
crises systemically, which has only allowed them to worsen.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, “Donald Trump is not the problem – he‟s the symptom”,
Open Democracy, 20 de gener 2017, https://www.opendemocracy.net/nafeez-
mosaddeq-ahmed/donald-trump-is-not-problem-he-s-symptom
Trump is what happens when you fail to understand our global problems in their
interconnected, systemic context.
The inauguration of Donald Trump is a historic day, not just for the United States, but
for human civilization.
But it is a mistake to believe that Trump is the problem who must be resisted. Trump is
not the problem. Trump is merely one symptom of a deeper systemic crisis. His
emergence signals a fundamental and accelerating shift within a global geopolitical and
domestic American political order which is breaking down.
In order to know how to best respond to the incoming Trump era, we must understand
how we arrived here.
The crisis of democracy
In 2014, a Princeton University study quantified just how badly US democracy is
broken. Using a database of 1,779 policy issues, the study found that when a majority of
Americans disagree with “economic elites” or “organised interests”, they “generally
lose.”
The authors noted that when average citizens and affluent classes want the same
policies from government, they usually get them. But when they disagree, the rich
almost always win out. The study did not, contrary to numerous headlines, define the
US as an oligarchy, but it did conclude that US democracy is in fact a system of
“economic elite domination”.
Since then, the study has generated extensive academic debate, including three studies
which have taken issue with these findings. However, the new studies do not contradict
the Princeton study‟s main verdict that the rich disproportionately dominate policy
decisions at the expense of those who are less well-off. And the Princeton study‟s
verdict was not even that novel – it built on and corroborated the previous findings of
numerous other political scientists studying political and economic inequalities in the
US.
Distrust and disillusionment
Trump was not part of the Washington political machinery, and it was this positioning
as an ostensible „outsider‟ even to the Republican Party that he used to his advantage.
But ironically, the biggest reason for his victory was the sheer lack of public credibility
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of the Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democrat voters simply didn‟t come out to
vote for her.
Even if they had, what would they be voting for? Clinton was the favoured candidate of
Wall Street, having received the most campaign donations from the US finance and
banking elite.
Trump‟s victory was a clear signal of both a deepening level of distrust with the
political establishment, and growing levels of apathy and disillusionment with the two-
party choice. The data suggests that many white working and middle class voters voted
for Trump because they believed he might be a genuine „outsider‟ to the DC
establishment; while many ethnic minority voters didn‟t turn up to vote.
But there is some alarming but inconclusive evidence that in 27 Republican-controlled
states, minority voters were systematically marginalised. An investigation last August
in Rolling Stone by Greg Palast, who has exposed vote fraud in previous US elections,
found that the Interstate Vote Registration Crosscheck Programme, run by Republicans,
appeared to overwhelmingly purge “young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American
voters” from Democrat constituencies.
Vote fraud or not, Trump‟s rise to power was enabled by an increasingly defunct two-
party democracy which has become more beholden to the power of an unaccountable
economic elite, and more distant from the majority of Americans.
Which is why, of the 227 million eligible American voters, just a quarter voted for
Trump. Almost equally, around a quarter voted for Clinton. A tiny minority voted for
third party candidates like Jill Stein of the Green Party. And everyone else, fully 42% of
voters, just refused to vote.
The obsession with blaming Russia for the rise of Trump is therefore a convenient way
of „otherising‟ the problem. It helps us avoid admitting the far more fundamental role of
structural flaws in American democracy.
Flawed democracy, failing System
Those familiar with such structural flaws correctly anticipated the basic contours of the
Trumpian moment. The Nobel-Prize nominee and futurist professor Johan Galtung who
accurately forecasted the demise of the Soviet Union, also predicted the inexorable
decline of American global power. Along the way, he warned, the US would likely
undergo a shift toward fascism. In my recent interview with Galtung, he told me that
Trump appeared to epitomise this shift, and would probably accelerate America‟s
projected decline.
The rise of Trump represents a deeper trend that makes sense from a complex systems
perspective. In 2010, in my book A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How
to Save It, I argued that a nexus of escalating global crises – climate change, energy
depletion, food scarcity and economic instability – were driving a trajectory toward
escalating violent conflict, civil unrest and state-militarisation.
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In the same year, during the British national elections, I warned in my article “The
Global Weimar Phase”:
“Whatever government gets into power with this election… [t]he new government,
beholden to conventional wisdom, will be unable or unwilling to get to grips with the
root structural causes of the current convergence of crises facing this country, and the
world. This suggests that in 5-10 years, the entire mainstream party-political system in
this country, and many Western countries, will be completely discredited as crises
continue to escalate while mainstream policy solutions serve largely to contribute to
them, not ameliorate them. The collapse of the mainstream party-political system across
the liberal democratic heartlands could pave the way for the increasing legitimization
of far-right politics by the end of this decade.”
That assessment looks to have been borne out in some significant ways so far.
I have deepened the “Crisis of Civilization” model with a new scientific study, Failing
States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence, which finds that
global net energy decline is intensifying interlinked environmental and economic crises,
culminating in a heightened risk of states failing. The implications in relation to the
Trumpian moment are simple: human systems – social, political, geopolitical, cultural,
and so on – are becoming destabilised in the context of escalating Earth System
Disruption driven by dependence on fossil fuels. But the failure to understand this is
driving increasingly reactionary approaches that address only symptoms of this
destabilization.
Trump is what happens when you fail to understand our global problems in their
interconnected, systemic context. Rather than seeing the roots of our problems in the
deep structures of a system that is failing, we see only the symptoms, the fighting, the
terrorism, the chaos. And so we do more of the same to fix the problem: we exert
greater force, greater power; we hark back to the „good old days‟ when American was
an industrial power house; and we blame anyone who disagrees with us as an „Other‟
standing in the way of what‟s Making America Great Again.
But this is a truly narcissistic reaction that eclipses our own role in supporting a system
that incubates the problems we resent.
The elephant in the room
Among the biggest but currently invisible elephants in the room, comprising a root
cause of accelerating global system failure, is global net energy decline.
Don‟t be alarmed if you‟ve never really heard of this concept. It‟s not just Trump who is
in denial about it. So is Clinton. So was Obama. So is most of the incumbent fossil fuel-
centric energy industry.
Over the last century, the net value of the energy we are able to extract from our fossil
fuel resource base is inexorably declining. The scientific concept used to measure this
value is Energy Return on Investment (EROI), a calculation that compares the quantity
of energy one extracts from a resource, to the quantity of energy used to enable the
extraction.
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There was a time in the US, around the 1930s, when the EROI of oil was a monumental
100. This has steadily declined, with some fluctuation. By 1970, oil‟s EROI had
dropped to 30. Over the last three decades alone, the EROI of US oil has continued to
plummet by more than half, reaching around 10 or 11.
According to environmental scientist professor Charles Hall of the State University of
New York, who created the EROI measure, global net energy decline is the most
fundamental cause of global economic malaise. Because we need energy to produce and
consume, we need more energy to increase production and consumption, driving
economic growth. But if we‟re getting less energy over time, then we simply cannot
increase economic growth.
This has led to a number of devastating consequences. To maintain economic growth,
we are using ingenious debt mechanisms to finance new economic activity. The
expansion of global debt is now higher than 2007 pre-crash levels. We are escalating the
risk of another financial crisis in coming years, because the tepid growth we‟ve
managed to squeeze out of the economy so far is based on borrowing from an
energetically and environmentally unsustainable future.
As global net energy is declining, to keep the endless growth machine running, the
imperative to drill like crazy to get more energy out only deepens. So instead of scaling
back our exploitation of fossil fuels, we are accelerating it. As we are accelerating fossil
fuel exploitation, this is accelerating climate change. That in turn is driving more
extreme weather events like droughts, storms and floods, which is putting crops in
major food basket regions at increasing risk.
As climate and food instability ravages regions all over the world, this has fueled
government efforts to task their militaries with planning for how to deal with the rising
instabilities that would result as these processes weaken states, stoke civil unrest and
even inflame terrorism. And that escalating breakdown of regional states coincides
conveniently with a temptation to use military force to consolidate control of more
fossil fuel resources.
Trump is the face of the crisis of civilisation
So make no mistake: the emergence of our Trumpian moment has happened as a direct
consequence of the failures of previous governments to address these crises
systemically, which has only allowed them to worsen.
Although the policies of Obama were, compared to those suggested by Trump, far more
progressive, they were simply not sufficient to address the deep structures of system
failure. And so, despite those mixed efforts, crisis has continued to accelerate.
On energy and climate, whatever the merits of Obama‟s support for renewable energy
and robust environmental regulation, his split personality approach to climate change
was unable to avert us from a pathway toward dangerous levelsof carbon emissions.
While tackling pollution and carbon energy consumption at home, he
simultaneously pushed environmentally destructive fracking of unconventional fossil
fuels both at home and abroad, including offshore drilling. Clinton was not set to
dramatically shift away from these policies.
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The result is that at a time when we needed to dramatically shift away from a fossil fuel
resource base – whose net energy value has been haemorrhaging – to a more resilient
and sustainable energy system, we didn‟t. And so all our efforts to kick-start growth
have had little success. Instead, we have pumped so much new debt into the system, the
financial system remains vulnerable to another crisis.
Trump‟s proposal is to advance the fossil fuel component of Obama‟s approach –
intensifying fossil fuel exploitation beyond limits while ditching support for renewable
energy. In doing so, he will accelerate the pathway toward energy decline and economic
malaise. And while driving the car of civilisation into an economic wall, Trump hopes
to distract his predominantly white male support base by blaming everyone else: ethnic
minorities, Muslims, women and LGBTQ people.
And in that regard, he is not as different to Obama and Clinton as some might like to
imagine. His secretary of state, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has come in for flack
for ties to Russia, such as helping the state oil company Rosnet secure access to Arctic
oil fields. Also under Tillerson‟s watch, Exxon made a unilateral oil deal with the
Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, undercutting the Iraqi central government; and
raised a private mercenary armyto defend oil fields controlled by the dictatorial
government of Chad.
Yet neither Obama nor Clinton are exactly strangers to Tillerson. In a 2013 State
Department roundtable, then secretary of state Clinton described “Iraq as a business
opportunity.” Exxon was specifically mentioned in the email, and participated in the
roundtable among 30 US companies, along with US and Iraqi government
representatives. Exxon has also donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Indeed, Obama had accelerated many of the policies that Trump wishes to build on.
Despite his belated and commendable rescinding of the discriminatory post-9/11
Muslim and Arab immigrant registry system (which in nearly a decade failed to yield a
single terrorism conviction), the Obama administration built up a formidable legal
infrastructure which extended some of the worst Bush-era policies: cracking down on
civil liberties, penalising whistleblowers, escalating surveillance, rehabilitating torture
and rendition, and expanding our silent drone wars against mostly helpless civilian
populations across seven countries to the tune of ten times more strikes than Bush.
So the Trumpian moment does not see a departure from the failed policies of previous
governments, but rather their radicalisation and consolidation.
Beyond resistance
Within this constellation of crises, there has arisen a strange opportunity. Trump and
the peculiar white supremacist network of social forces he is bringing to the fore, have
shocked even the Republican and Democrat political establishment. That establishment
is increasingly horrified by what it has spawned, and what it now wishes to disown.
Ironically, this crystallisation of American power is making „outsiders‟ of us all. As
Matt Taibi has pointed out so eloquently, the Trumpian moment has seen an astonishing
array of social movements brought together in horror at what Trump stands for: “From
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the ACLU to the Sierra Club to Everytown for Gun Safety, civil society is girding for
battle – reinforced by an unprecedented upwelling of activist support and donations.”
New ties of solidarity are emerging across the left and right of the political spectrum.
Constitutional conservatives and anti-Trump Republicans are finding themselves on the
same side as progressives.
There is a powerful lesson here. In the wake of Trump‟s victory, many of my American
friends and colleagues who lamented Clinton‟s failure see the future as essentially one-
track: we need to get the Democratic Party back in power in another four or eight years.
Yet this utter banality in our political imagination is precisely what allowed the
Trumpian moment to arise in the first-place – the abject deference to the inevitability of
working within a broken two-party structure, regardless of its subservience to narrow
vested interests, regardless of its accelerating distance from the American people.
The solution is not to react to Trump as if he, too, is the Other, but to recognise him as
little more than the Great Orange Face of regressive social forces that we all enabled,
forces tied to a global system that is no longer sustainable. That means raising the
stakes, and shooting to build something bigger, better and brighter than merely an „anti-
Trump‟ movement.
In the Trumpian moment, we must be neither Republicans, nor Democrats, left nor
right, conservative nor liberal. We are humans, together, not merely resisting a broken
system that is beyond fixing, but planting the seeds to build a new system as we travel
deeper into the post-carbon century. Yes, Trump is a psychotic blip in this great
transition. But he is also the culmination of a state of political psychosis which began
long before him, and which we‟ve all been part of.
So the question is no longer what we‟re against. The question is this: what are you
really standing for? And what are you going to do to build it?
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Why is representative government rather than decision by one-shot
referendum the right way of dealing with issues? These are complex
questions and you need a whole lot of engagement. It isn’t that you have
elections once in four or five years and then democracy goes away and
you already decided everything in the election... there is a continuing
need to think and debate.
Amartya Sen, “Referendums are like opinion polls. Sometimes they‟re very wrong”,
The Observer, 22.01.17. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/22/amartya-sen-
brexit-trump-press-freedom
Amartya Sen is one of the world‟s greatest living economists. Scarred by witnessing at
first hand the life-and-death choices confronting so many poor Hindus and Muslims,
especially women, during and then after the partition of India, Sen, who was born in
Manikganj (now in Bangladesh) in 1933, has insisted throughout his life that no good
society can excuse putting anyone in such a position. These inequalities are
insupportable whether they are in the developing or the developed world. Economics,
along with the mathematics and moral philosophy in which it is embedded, has a duty to
address these realities.
Conservatives cleverly argue that society is not an individual thing but a mass of
individuals who, because their values and preferences are impossible to aggregate,
cannot therefore make choices about what constitutes social good. Sen and others
counter this view and have developed a new system of thought rooted in the notion that
collective action can proactively promote human welfare. And that there are
intellectually robust concepts – despite the efforts of the right to prove that all public
action is self-defeating – to improve society and lower fundamental inequalities and
workable policies that flow from them.
Sen has garnered prizes and honours from all over the world – in particular the Nobel
prize for economics, which he won in 1998. The no less great economist John Maynard
Keynes once said that practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from
any intellectual influence are usually the slaves to some defunct academic scribbler. He
could have been referring to Sen, except for the fact that the 83-year-old is very much
not defunct. He can draw incredible crowds, as he did at a public lecture in Oxford last
week. Described by some as the Mother Teresa of economics, his ideas have done more
than those of any other intellectual to alleviate avoidable famines, and to frame the
shape of economic development priorities, which have become as much about health,
education, law, functioning democratic institutions and women‟s equality as the growth
of GDP. No country gets rich by oppressing, disfranchising and leaving ignorant half its
population, at worst leaving them to die. Hundreds of millions of people have a chance
to a life or live a life they have reason to value because of his ideas, without probably
knowing the name of the man who devised them.
The heart of his thinking is set out in a book first published in 1970 with the far from
funky title of Collective Choice and Social Welfare – but Sen disguises the iron in his
intellectual fist by avoiding fanfare. It is this book that he has chosen to revise and
update with 11 new chapters. The basic Sen theorems are restated, above all that with
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careful design it is possible – in theory and in practice – for societies to decide what
most people consider important to live a life well. He is famous for his view that it is
not enough to address people‟s needs and rights, but also their capabilities. Give people
the right to vote, of course: but also give them the capacity to read, to think, to have
access to freely disseminated ideas and the wherewithal to get to a polling station – and
make sure there are enough polling stations so they don‟t have to wait hours, or even
days, to cast their vote.
Over the 47 years since the book‟s publication, as he acknowledges in our interview, his
ideas have deepened. One of the core concepts of economics, and in particular
conservative philosophers, is that individuals have immutable values and preferences:
that not only is economic woman rational in the way she behaves, but she has worked
out what she values, ranks and prefers before she interacts with the economic world.
One of the great conservative intellectual triumphs – the so-called impossibility theorem
– is to show that if this is true and there is no external authority enforcing choices on
people, it is algebraically impossible for individuals to arrive at a commonly agreed
decision that improves all their welfare. So much for liberal do-gooders! Their desire to
meddle, to tax, to spend will end up improving no one‟s lot.
Sen contests the entire argument. He shows that by relaxing some of the assumptions
behind the conservatives‟ proof of impossibility it is quite possible to do good. But
perhaps as important, people‟s preferences and values are not set in stone. Minds can
change. Argument is effective. The quality of information matters. Good collective
decision-making becomes even more feasible if it is possible to rally people, who may
have started out distrustful and suspicious of some proposition, to the cause. From
outlawing the death penalty to accepting the requirement to wear seatbelts, argument
has changed individuals‟ preferences – and social good has resulted.
Sen is in this respect a quintessential child of the Enlightenment. He believes
passionately in the public square, in discussion, in the capacity to change minds when
confronted by evidence, in society‟s capacity to develop ideas from below and then act
to improve the general lot. He, along with Keynes, is one of my most important
intellectual influences. Through him I have become even more convinced that
institutions such as a checked and balanced government, a free press that efficiently
disseminates trusted information, the impartial administration of justice, gender equality
and good schools and universities are not only great in themselves – but founding
blocks for economic growth and development.
In your writing over the decades, I observe an increasing conviction in the role of
argument and discussion in generating values to allow more commonality of
purpose. It seems to me that as you’ve got older you’ve become more convinced
that values are pliable and capable of improvement through debate and discussion
– more emphasised in today’s revised edition of the book than the original in 1970.
The centrality of argument has become much more important for me now because I‟ve
seen so many things go in a terrible direction because either arguments are not engaged
at all, or avoided, or are fouled up by fake news or fake information. For example,
Donald Trump‟s election was based on a large number of statements which were just
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not true. An alternative reality was created. People didn‟t quite know how to deal with a
reality star. Something went wrong there.
When it comes to Britain, if we take Brexit, I‟m still amazed how distorted the
argument was, with lots of information which was not true, for instance how much
money Britain would save which would now all go to the National Health Service. The
false arguments were not withdrawn until after the vote. I would have thought that cast
some doubt on the legitimacy of the vote itself, even if it had not been just a 2% margin.
A lot of doubt. I‟ve lived half my life in this country, and I find it very peculiar how the
Brits who were opposed to Brexit, how reconciled they now are to it. Now it‟s a
question of whether it‟s a soft Brexit or a hard Brexit. There‟s no question, they
concede, the British people voted for Brexit.
I think that statement is false.
It‟s not adequate to give a 52-48% vote on the basis of very defective argument and then
say that the British are convinced that they are not European and they don‟t want to be
in the European Union. And on top offer very little follow-up at a time when people
said that there should be a follow-up if there [was] a close margin. The present prime
minister was a Remainer. She has jumped with astonishing ease to the other camp.
It seems to indicate a kind of frivolity about what national preference really means and
that frivolity is pretty painful to me. My identity has a very strong British element in it
having been here for so long, but also in my college days cutting my intellectual teeth
here.
The frivolity of the interpretation of Brexit is worrying me, the lack of the
understanding of the complexity involved. It‟s not just a matter of European Union,
though I believe it would be very hard to maintain access to a European market, and
true European contact with the rest of the world: those difficult things are still to come.
But underlying that there is an issue of how Britain feels about being a part of a
European civilisation – our life is dominated by the European Enlightenment.
How would you have designed the referendum so it did not produce what you
believe to be a frivolous outcome?
I don‟t think a referendum is the way of dealing with it. Referendums are a bit like
public opinion polls – you do them, sometimes they‟re very wrong. I think the best
person to read on that is John Stuart Mill, namely his book Considerations on
Representative Government. Why is representative government rather than decision by
one-shot referendum the right way of dealing with issues? These are complex questions
and you need a whole lot of engagement. It isn‟t that you have elections once in four or
five years and then democracy goes away and you already decided everything in the
election... there is a continuing need to think and debate.
For example, austerity wasn‟t a part of proposed policy when Cameron won the election
but it came in. Now, in this case I believe he made a mistake in moving in that direction,
but he didn‟t make the mistake on grounds that it wasn‟t in the party platform. A
representative government gives you the freedom to think about taking into account
everything. In this case I believe he made a mistake. But on the other hand he didn‟t
make a mistake in thinking that since austerity was not OK‟d by the voters, it could not
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be allowed to be thought of. You are in a parliament, you have to think about it, these
are important issues to consider.
Referenda are a good way of catching the attention of people, but that has to be
followed up by really serious engagement in arguments in parliament and newspapers.
There‟s also the issue of bias of the media; there are certain types of argument that don‟t
get the kind of attention that they should get. But if we had had a vigorous public debate
inside and outside parliament and with each other and then arrived at some kind of a
conclusion in parliament, then that would be something which I would regard to be not
frivolous. But to do it out of a one-shot sudden decision?
One of the difficulties, apart from whether it’s appropriate to have a referendum
in a representative democracy, was that there was no obligation on the Leave
people to actually set out what they thought Leave meant.
Yes. So it wasn‟t quite clear what it was that got 52% of the vote. A vague decision to
leave the European Union conveyed only one thing – that we don‟t want to be with
Europe. And that, I believe, is almost wholly negative as a thought in the world in
which we live. We need the European voice in the world and a European voice in the
world is much stronger if Britain is part of that story. There are all kinds of atrocities
going on here, there, everywhere. There‟s also many ways in which Britain is very
dependent on Europe.
I think Europe has made a lot of mistakes, particularly on economic policy, and
austerity is one of them. I personally believe the euro was a big mistake too. You may
not agree on that but I do think that took away one of the instruments of adjustment that
the government has. Also, it didn‟t take into account the long-run problem [that] with
productivity in one area like Germany going much faster than another area like Portugal
or Greece, then the euro becomes increasingly a burden. None of this was thought
through. So I think they‟ve made a mistake, but of course the United Nations has made
a huge number of mistakes too. The question is whether you decide, therefore, since it
made mistakes, to give it up and simply say there‟s no need for the institution.
There was a reason why the European Union was wanted, just as there was a reason
why the United Nations was wanted. Those reasons have not gone away merely because
some bad decisions have been taken.
You’re also critical of the Republican primary process that threw up Donald
Trump.
For 17 primaries he did not have a majority of the voting Republican voters. By that
time there had been already many primaries in which several of the other candidates in a
one-to-one contest with Trump would have defeated him. If you had put every candidate
against every other, Trump would have been defeated by two or three of the people in
the early primaries. By the time the 18th came, people were pretty fed up with the
system and Trump was establishing his lead and he has shown certain ability to turn his
quite considerable political skills to good effect.
To get the best social choice you don‟t count only first preferences.
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Your point being that second and third preferences have validity alongside first
preferences and if you’re going to try to get to an outcome that reflects the best
indicator of opinion in aggregate that it can be, it needs to take into account second
and third preferences, and had that happened we wouldn’t have had Trump?
To put it another way, you have to take in, somehow, the unattractiveness of the last as
well as the attractiveness of the first candidate.
If you believe as you do that information and discussion about information is
fundamental and that can only take place in the public square, it then becomes
fundamental how the public square is constructed and who is the custodian of the
information that flows into the public square. So how do you do something that
does not offend the freedom of the press?
Freedom of press is extremely important. But it depends on ownership, it depends on
advertising, it depends on all kinds of things. It depends on readership also.
But isn’t the British press free?
I am not saying the British press is not free. But there is such a thing as the press doing
its job efficiently subject to it being free. The idea that there‟s only one model of
freedom of the press whereby ownership is divided the way it is, that would be a
mistake. Freedom of press is compatible with different styles of ownership. It would be
compatible with more of an obligation to fact-check. Which some people do.
There are plenty of ways in which the press could be made more efficient, more
conducive to public discussions without becoming unfree. So my point is not that press
freedom requires this change. My point is that you can make the press more efficient
and more an adequate vehicle for public discussion. Without becoming unfree.
Who should do that “making”?
We have to distinguish two different questions. We‟re not discussing what guarantees
the freedom of the press. The freedom of the press is basically non-interference. Am I
opposed to anyone who had the money to start a press? I‟m not. Because that‟s where I
would be against a free press.
What I‟m saying is that all of us have to examine how we could communicate better
with each other. It‟s not that there is a subaltern-major who is going to be in charge of
that and periodically goes around and tells the press what to do. It has to be like public
discussion in general. It has to be something, and these people have to take an interest.
Not only in expressing their own view but making sure that they actually give an
opportunity to listen to people who may be excluded by the papers for one reason or
another.
Of course, but I’m asking who should make a free press more efficient…
We have to make it, we have to. It‟s like saying who makes us not litter in the street. Or
who makes us follow certain rules of good behaviour. Not to insult disabled people on
the street…
14
But is it a public authority that stops the spitting in the street or is it an internal
voice in your head?
Not in your head. I think you may be in danger of underestimating the role that public
discussion plays. Think of the dynamics of it. There is some public discussion going on
right now and there can be more. I‟m saying it could be more.
And that doesn‟t really require any authority to do it. I‟m completely against
authoritarianism. If there‟s one thing the Soviet Union has taught us it is that unless you
actually look at political organisation more seriously you cannot get the social
organisation right. And the political organisation includes that non-interference in the
press. And that‟s what makes the press free. And I celebrate that.
The common currency at the moment is that liberalism is over. It’s a post-liberal
order. And that folk like you and me are in retreat. We’ve lost the argument and
we must reconcile ourselves to that…
It‟s not over. We are made of a complexity of values in which liberal values play a very
big part. And there‟s nothing that‟s happened which would make that go away. You get
a lot of kudos by attacking liberalism at this moment certainly. But I don‟t see that to be
a perpetual decline or indeed a big present decline.
15
Depuis trente ans, depuis le tournant reagano-thatchérien des années
1980, la globalisation financière et l’illusion de la fin de l’Histoire qui
évacua la politique du poste de commandement, l’équilibre est rompu.
L’individualisme colonise l’espace public. Les repères communs se
brouillent. C’est le triomphe du "moi je". Ces questions – pourquoi payer
des impôts ? Pourquoi aider les autres ? Pourquoi avoir un Code du
Travail contraignant ? Comment devenir millionnaire ? – l’emportent sur
des revendications égalitaires discréditées.
Raphaël Glucksmann, “Le trumpisme, maladie sénile de nos démocraties”, L’Obs,
22.01.17.
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/l-amerique-selon-trump/20170119.OBS4053/le-
trumpisme-maladie-senile-de-nos-democraties-par-raphael-glucksmann.html
Voilà, nous y sommes. Ni Matt Damon ni George Clooney ne sont sortis d‟un chapeau
hollywoodien pour inverser le cours de l‟Histoire. Le nouveau président des Etats-
Unis est bien un producteur de télé-réalité "attrapant les femmes par la chatte", se
targuant d‟être assez "malin" ("smart" est son grand mot) pour ne pas payer d‟impôts,
qualifiant les Mexicains de "violeurs", insultant des actrices sur Twitter, désirant
interdire l‟entrée de son pays aux musulmans ("smart thing to do"), commentant les
cycles menstruels des journalistes dont il n‟aime pas les questions, nommant son gendre
("super smart") pour résoudre l‟un des plus vieux conflits de la planète (Israël-
Palestine), admirant Poutine ("a smart guy") et exhortant au démantèlement de l‟Union
européenne...
Un cocktail détonnant de Silvio Berlusconi, Jean-Marie Le Pen et Cyril Hanouna aura
donc la main sur la première armée, la première économie, la première diplomatie de la
planète. Et son équipe, composée de généraux frustrés, de milliardaires décomplexés,
d‟idéologues réacs et de climato-sceptiques assumés, portera sur ses fort peu reluisantes
épaules une large part de notre destin commun.
Il ne sert à rien de dédramatiser une perspective aussi tragique. Les autruches peuvent
parler de la force des institutions ou du rôle du Sénat, nous avons le droit et même le
devoir d‟avoir peur. Mais, passé notre légitime stupeur, il n‟est sans doute pas
totalement vain de se demander ce que l‟élection d‟un tel homme à un tel poste veut dire
des logiques à l‟œuvre dans les démocraties occidentales. De quoi Donald Trump est-il,
pour nous tous, le nom ?
Un problème made in US ?
La tentation naturelle d‟élites européennes bien mises, bien éduquées, bien coiffées est
de détourner le regard, de se boucher le nez, de prendre un air hautain et d‟affirmer avec
morgue qu‟il s‟agit là d‟une spécificité américaine : "Regardez-le, regardez-nous :
qu‟avons-nous en commun ? Rien. C‟est – de toute évidence – un problème made in
US." Certainement. Tout comme le Brexit était une histoire exclusivement British ou les
diatribes de Viktor Orban, une question hongroise, la percée de Beppe Grillo, un
atavisme italien, les scores de Marine Le Pen, une affaire française...
16
Ceux qui refusent a priori de se remettre en cause sauront toujours empiler les facteurs
locaux pour continuer à se sentir propres sur eux. Mais les autres, ceux qui peuvent
encore douter d‟eux-mêmes et du monde, constatent, dans les pas de Hamlet, qu‟"il y a
quelque chose de pourri au royaume" d‟Occident.
Malgré nos divergences notables, des deux côtés de l‟Atlantique se sont développés des
systèmes politiques, sociaux et économiques peu éloignés. On les appelle
communément des "démocraties libérales". Cette dénomination, qui se rapproche de
l‟oxymoron, reflète les contradictions qui ont longtemps assuré le dynamisme et la
viabilité de nos systèmes. Elles opposent dans un même cadre des logiques
"démocratiques" d‟inspiration holistique (le pouvoir au peuple, volonté générale
souveraine, primauté du bien commun…) à des logiques "libérales" ou individualistes
(droits inaliénables des individus, propriété privée…). Ces oppositions permanentes
produisent un équilibre instable propice au progrès, un dissensus créateur.
L’équilibre est rompu
Nos sociétés ressemblent ainsi à ce tableau du Caravage, "Saint Matthieu et l‟Ange". Ou
plutôt au tabouret bancal qui occupe le centre de l‟œuvre et soutient tant bien que mal le
vieil apôtre. Il bascule, dans un sens puis dans l‟autre, sans jamais tomber. Il est à
l‟image de nos sociétés évoluant sur une ligne de crête ténue entre tentation collectiviste
(le tout abolit les parties, la volonté du peuple nie les droits individuels, nous sombrons
en tyrannie) et tendances individualistes (les parties s‟émancipent du tout, le lien
civique se délite, l‟atomisation sociale s‟enclenche). La démocratie libérale, un entre-
deux, ne tient que lorsque les forces s‟équilibrent.
Or, depuis trente ans, depuis le tournant reagano-thatchérien des années 1980, la
globalisation financière et l‟illusion de la fin de l‟Histoire qui évacua la politique du
poste de commandement, l‟équilibre est rompu. L‟individualisme colonise l‟espace
public. Les repères communs se brouillent. C‟est le triomphe du "moi je". Ces questions
– pourquoi payer des impôts ? Pourquoi aider les autres ? Pourquoi avoir un Code du
Travail contraignant ? Comment devenir millionnaire ? Comment être Nabila ? –
l‟emportent sur des revendications égalitaires discréditées. Le tabouret tombe.
Et Narcisse, prophète de la jungle individualiste, l‟emporte en créant le buzz et en
flattant les peurs générées par l‟absence d‟horizon collectif. Son nom est Donald Trump.
Il dit, dans toutes les langues, la possibilité de la chute de nos tabourets démocratiques.
Et l‟urgence d‟un retour au commun.
17
Pour survivre à la crise, le libéralisme est tenté par l’adoption d’une
contestation de façade des régimes qui lui ont permis de s’installer. En
cherchant à agglomérer autour de sa candidature et de son discours
«contestataire» des groupes sociaux aux aspirations différentes,
Emmanuel Macron annonce en fait que nous approchons du stade
terminal de la crise de régime de la Ve République et de l’Union
européenne. Le cas Macron n’est pas isolé: en Europe apparaissent
d'autres mouvements qui allient adhésion au libéralisme et contestation
des régimes politiques en place. Il existe ainsi des exemples proches de
celui incarné par Emmanuel Macron et qui répondent à la même
fonction. Ciudanados, en Espagne, est apparu comme une forme de
«Podemos de droite», dont la fonction était de renouveler un récit
d’adhésion au libéralisme. En Autriche, la percée du NEOS, petit parti
contestataire et social-libéral, n’est pas sans rappeler la ligne politique
d’Emmanuel Macron. Enfin, la tentative récente –et avortée– d’alliance
de Beppe Grillo avec le groupe libéral du Parlement européen témoigne
tant d’une volonté du M5S de se rendre acceptable aux yeux des élites
économiques italiennes que d’une réflexion libérale sur le
positionnement de cette famille dans un contexte de crise de régime qui
touche l’Union européenne.
Gaël Brustier, “Emmanuel Macron, le signe que nous approchons du stade terminal de
la crise de régime”, Slate.fr, 20.01.17. http://www.slate.fr/story/134492/macron-
populisme-elites
Pour comprendre le candidat «En Marche», représentant d'une volonté d’adaptation
de la France au nouveau capitalisme de la part du groupe social le plus privilégié, il
faut faire un détour par le populisme.
Depuis la crise financière de 2007-2008, aucun récit légitimateur n‟est venu au secours
de l‟évolution du capitalisme. L‟inadéquation entre ce qu‟il devient et l‟imaginaire d‟un
nombre croissant de nos concitoyens est à la source de ce qui se définit comme une crise
organique: consubstantielles à cette dernière, la crise rampante de la Ve République et
celle de la social-démocratie ont sécrété le phénomène Emmanuel Macron, ultime
tentative de susciter le consentement d‟une société marquée par une double défiance, à
l‟égard de ses élites et envers le consensus portant les solutions économiques adoptées
au sein de l‟UE.
La «Révolution» d‟Emmanuel Macron en est bien une mais une «révolution passive»,
celle qui vise à faire surmonter au capitalisme ses propres difficultés et à faire adhérer
des groupes sociaux aux intérêts matériels divergents à une même vision de l‟avenir. Le
candidat «En Marche» apparaît comme l‟authentique intellectuel organique d‟une
France connectée à la globalisation, optimiste face à la mondialisation et à l‟évolution
du capitalisme.
18
Une France minoritaire
La France que représente à l‟origine Emmanuel Macron est minoritaire, et elle le sait.
Fort du potentiel restreint des 6% d‟électeurs sociaux-libéraux, le candidat n‟a donc
cessé de multiplier les gestes visant à élargir cette base, en subvertissant le clivage
gauche-droite et en adoptant une posture anti-système, contrepied total de ce qui fait son
identité politique personnelle mais seule clé de son succès politique. Oscillant entre
promotion du nouveau capitalisme et adhésion à l‟idéologie du «rassemblement
national», Macron tente ainsi de rassembler suffisamment d‟électeurs aux aspirations
variées autour de l‟idée de changement et de rupture avec le système politique actuel.
Cette stratégie discursive peut lui assurer un nombre suffisant d‟électeurs désireux de
rompre avec le duopole PS-LR, même si elle est fragile. Son électorat apparaît en effet
comme un syncrétisme, pas encore comme une synthèse. L‟ancien ministre de
l‟Économie, scribe appliqué de la commission Attali, chantre de la modernisation de
notre pays, bénéficie en tir croisé d‟un investissement politique des élites sur sa
personne et d‟un fort sentiment de défiance d‟un nombre important de nos concitoyens à
l‟égard des institutions et des partis.
«Capitalisme californien»
Dans une élection à deux tours, où le FN est considéré comme déjà présent au second
(peut-être à tort), la qualification au second tour vaut quasiment élection. Reste qu‟il ne
s‟agit pas d‟un jeu électoral lié à une simple ambition personnelle: Emmanuel Macron a
une fonction et est chargé d‟une mission.
Sa mission est de développer un récit qui fasse adhérer les Français au projet
d‟adaptation de notre pays au nouveau capitalisme. Ce récit développé par l‟ancien
ministre de l‟Économie mêle dénonciation des «blocages» et optimisme devant les
opportunités que procurerait un libéralisme total, à la fois social ou sociétal et
économique (Macron sait qu‟on ne dirige pas une société seulement par l‟état d‟urgence
et la coercition et, en plusieurs occasions, a suggéré une divergence d‟appréciation sur
ce point avec l‟exercice gouvernemental de Manuel Valls). Ce libéralisme peine
néanmoins à dire son nom dans un pays historiquement rétif à ces thèses et, comme
toujours en France, est porté par des hauts fonctionnaires adeptes du marché. Pour la
première fois, les élites techniciennes du Parti socialiste, acquises historiquement depuis
les années 80 à la mondialisation néolibérale, se présentent devant les électeurs: voilà un
acquis important pour le débat démocratique.
Il y a bien, avec la candidature Macron, une claire volonté de la France privilégiée, celle
que le Cevipof a identifiée, de (re)devenir un groupe social dirigeant dans le pays. Le
candidat cherche à susciter le consentement des Français à une entreprise d‟adaptation à
ce que l‟on peut définir, à l‟instar du journaliste économique Jean-Michel Quatrepoint,
comme le «capitalisme californien», fait de glorification de l‟individualisme et de
capitalisme numérique type GAFA. Cela suppose une prise de distance avec ceux qui
sont identifiés comme les responsables de la situation de notre pays: les dirigeants des
partis politiques de la Ve République. «En marche!» est un peu le Nuit Debout des
traders, ce qui suppose de passer par des alliances avec d‟autres groupes sociaux plus
19
nombreux en voix dans les urnes (chez les seniors, désormais à l‟abris des vicissitudes
du monde du travail, ou chez les cadres et professions libérales, dans une France qui,
sans être privilégiée, ne s‟estime pas victime de la plongée du pays dans la globalisation
et l‟intégration européenne).
Son combat ne se situe ainsi désormais plus au niveau de la compétence économique ou
des «propositions» mais à celui de l‟unification d‟aspirations contradictoires et diffuses
dans la société. Il se situe au niveau de la superstructure et de la quête d‟une nouvelle
hégémonie culturelle, qui passe par la contestation des élites du pouvoir par… ces
mêmes élites. En témoignent les ralliements de personnalités appartenant au «cercle de
la raison» (de Jean Pisani-Ferry à Jean-Marie Cavada, pour les exemples les plus
récents).
Le candidat de la «crise de régime»
Emmanuel Macron est ainsi le candidat de la «crise de régime». La défiance d‟un
nombre important de groupes sociaux (La Manif pour tous comme Nuit Debout en sont
des démonstrations éclatantes) à l‟égard du régime politique de la Ve République est la
preuve d‟une crise politique rampante qui frappe notre pays, crise que François
Hollande n‟a pas su affronter. Le destin de la présidence Hollande ne s‟explique
vraiment que si l‟on prend en compte cette dimension déterminante qui fait de la vision
du monde et de la société la clé du destin politique du pays.
L‟expérience Macron suppose donc la réussite du transformisme qu‟il porte: il s‟agit de
convertir des groupes sociaux à un gigantesque plan de sauvetage idéologique à la fois
de la Ve République, de son mariage avec l‟intégration européenne et du capitalisme à la
sauce californienne. Cela n‟a rien d‟aisé mais peut assurer une qualification au second
tour de la présidentielle, d‟autant que la droite semble offrir quelques opportunités à sa
candidature.
L‟élection à deux tours implique un certain degré de tactique politique pour agglomérer
suffisamment d‟électeurs pour se qualifier au second tour. Dans cette perspective, il
s‟agit de ne pas mésestimer les quelques handicaps de la candidature Fillon, qui ne
parvient pas à résoudre la lente crise existentielle de la droite française et la coupe de
l‟électorat populaire, peu acquis au néolibéralisme de l‟ancien Premier ministre. La
«droite d‟après» n‟étant pas née, celle de la Ve République semble agoniser sous nos
yeux: c‟est une chance de reprise au rabais d‟un créneau laissé vacant, celui du centre-
droit libéral et européen.
L‟effet de la primaire de droite a en effet été de propulser un candidat incarnant à
merveille la «droite de masse», celle qui défila pour «l‟école libre» en 1984 et contre le
«mariage pour tous» en 2013, une droite qui n‟est pas frontiste, au sein de laquelle les
catholiques conservateurs sont très actifs mais qui peut peiner, par l‟intransigeance de
son candidat, à susciter l‟adhésion d‟autres segments de la droite française et donc
plonger dans les difficultés. Il existe donc un centre-droit libéral pour lequel la ligne de
François Fillon apparaît trop dur.
20
Intellectuel organique du nouveau capitalisme
Le cas Macron n‟est pas isolé: en Europe apparaissent d'autres mouvements qui allient
adhésion au libéralisme et contestation des régimes politiques en place. Il existe ainsi
des exemples proches de celui incarné par Emmanuel Macron et qui répondent à la
même fonction. Ciudanados, en Espagne, est apparu comme une forme de «Podemos de
droite», dont la fonction était de renouveler un récit d‟adhésion au libéralisme. En
Autriche, la percée du NEOS, petit parti contestataire et social-libéral, n‟est pas sans
rappeler la ligne politique d‟Emmanuel Macron. Enfin, la tentative récente –et avortée–
d‟alliance de Beppe Grillo avec le groupe libéral du Parlement européen témoigne tant
d‟une volonté du M5S de se rendre acceptable aux yeux des élites économiques
italiennes que d‟une réflexion libérale sur le positionnement de cette famille dans un
contexte de crise de régime qui touche l‟Union européenne.
Pour survivre à la crise, le libéralisme est tenté par l‟adoption d‟une contestation de
façade des régimes qui lui ont permis de s‟installer. En cherchant à agglomérer autour
de sa candidature et de son discours «contestataire» des groupes sociaux aux aspirations
différentes, Emmanuel Macron annonce en fait que nous approchons du stade terminal
de la crise de régime de la Ve République et de l‟Union européenne.
21
It’s not just western democracies that are shaken by the inauguration of
a crude bigot who has targeted women and religious and ethnic groups,
and said he could envisage using torture. Across the world, imprisoned
dissidents, repressed journalists, censored writers, hounded political
oppositions, stigmatised minorities are all set to lose out – and that’s
because defending them via international human rights architecture is
now going to become a great deal more difficult.
Natalie Nougayrède, “Human rights now face their gravest threat”, The Guardian,
23.01.17, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/23/human-rights-
threat-trumpism-white-house
Remember the 1990s? Anyone who cares about human rights must now recall the era
with a knot in their stomach. Compared with what‟s happening today, that decade feels
like a lost era of Enlightenment. Donald Trump‟s installation in the White House is not
just a threat to global alliances, international trade or even fact-based discussion – it
risks unleashing a tsunami that could sweep away the human rights movement as it has
so far existed.
It‟s not just western democracies that are shaken by the inauguration of a crude bigot
who has targeted women and religious and ethnic groups, and said he could envisage
using torture. Across the world, imprisoned dissidents, repressed journalists, censored
writers, hounded political oppositions, stigmatised minorities are all set to lose out – and
that‟s because defending them via international human rights architecture is now going
to become a great deal more difficult.
If the US is led by someone who so overtly despises the notions of fundamental rights
and human dignity, then the leverage human rights organisations can muster becomes
ever weaker. Remembering the 1990s is painful in comparison because that‟s when,
after the end of the cold war and because of the outrage that followed the horrors of
Bosnia and Rwanda, great strides were made towards creating new instruments
designed to uphold human rights. Consider the achievements: the international criminal
court (launched in 2002), and the principle of “responsibility to protect” (adopted in the
UN in 2005), which says that a state‟s sovereignty stops when it is unable to prevent or
end mass crimes on its territory. The backlash against such progress will have
consequences for people‟s lives across the globe.
Of course, the US has hardly been an infallible defender of human rights. Nor perhaps
can one man in the White House single-handedly dismantle a body of international law
and conventions accumulated over decades. We know the US record, or the west‟s more
broadly for that matter, is far from ideal. The list of recent moral and strategic failings is
long – from CIA torture and renditions post 9/11 (the same web of decisions that gave
us Guantánamo) to the badly misnamed “collateral damage” of wars and drone strikes,
not to mention the complicity of cooperating with autocratic regimes and the failure to
end the disaster in Syria.
22
Europe has done dismally also, including in its treatment of refugees and with its anti-
terrorism laws. And when western pressure has been put on China and Russia, it‟s been
mostly because of their international behaviour, not because of the way they mistreat
their own citizens.
But the difference now, with Trump, is twofold. First, the very words “human rights”
are likely to disappear altogether from the official vocabulary that western diplomacy is
meant, in principle, to rest upon. That veneer is likely to peel off. The spirit and
philosophy of human rights, which no democracy can afford to openly trample without
betraying its very essence, may become a thing of the past. Second, we are confronted
with a situation where authoritarian leaders are empowered not as a result of coups or
abuse, but as a result of free and democratic elections. In Europe, in India, in Turkey
and now in the US, autocratic populists are on a roll not because they have illegally
forced themselves on whole populations but because voters have chosen to support
them. Centuries ago, Étienne de La Boétie wrote that “all servitude is voluntary” –
perhaps he‟s worth reading again today.
Look at the historical backdrop. For a long time, defending human rights was an
embryonic and fragmented endeavour. The League of Nations (the UN‟s short-lived
ancestor, founded in 1920) only enshrined the protection of certain categories of people,
for instance national minorities. It was the shock born of the atrocities of the second
world war that launched a crusade for human rights – with the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights as its centrepiece. Many more texts were to follow,
including the 1987 UN convention against torture. But it‟s in the 1990s that major
progress was made.
China‟s rise and Russia‟s resurgence have, since then, been great challenges, not least
because their governments have worked within the UN and other institutions to upend
human rights principles, if not disembowel them. Russia‟s intervention in Syria can
even be read as a brutal inversion of the notion of “responsibility to protect”: military
action designed not to stop large-scale atrocities, but to commit them (the attempt to
empty eastern Aleppo of its population through refugee flows or mass slaughter). Yet
western failures have also severely dented the human rights message.
In his inaugural speech, Trump said: “we do not seek to impose our way of life on
anyone” and “it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first”. Some may
applaud, judging that the way the US has thrown its weight around in the world has had
a largely negative impact, but be sure human rights violators everywhere will feel they
have now been handed an entirely free hand, because there was no reference whatsoever
made to universal values.
The US remains the sole superpower and it has had a historical role in forging UN
principles. This is why the arrival in the White House of a blatant racist, demagogue and
would-be dictator such as Trump represents the biggest possible blow to everything that
has been achieved in the realm of international human rights since the late 1940s. It
doesn‟t help that when Trump lashes out at the EU, he undermines not just the
organisation but the values it is meant to uphold. Likewise, when Europeans applaud Xi
Jinping in Davos, they help cast a dark shadow over the sanctity of human rights. No
wonder human rights campaigners have been frantically sounding alarm bells.
23
But here‟s the bright side: there is opportunity in crisis. It‟s true, no one can now expect
the US to strengthen or even salvage the international criminal court, whose mission is
to fight impunity (the very reason why some dictators want to get rid of it). Autocrats
everywhere will be able to point to Trump and say: “why pick on me?” A Hillary
Clinton presidency would have been a boon, or at least an encouragement, for the
human rights struggle. The Trump presidency will on the contrary put those rights to an
unprecedented test.
Anna Neistat, at Amnesty International, describes it as “the greatest threat but also
greatest opportunity for the human rights movement, because the advent of Trump
means the end of a certain complacency. Talking to the like-minded simply isn‟t
enough, we need to convince the majorities” who elect populists. “It‟s a critical,
historical moment,” she added.
And therein lies the hope. It‟s just possible that, as it contemplates an abyss, the human
rights movement will find the energy for unexpected breakthroughs. The 1990s are well
behind us. Now starts an era of resistance to Trumpism and its affiliates.