Jacobin Magazine: The Straw Protester

The “paid protester” trope is a tired one that has been around almost as long as protesting itself. It typically serves two purposes: it delegitimizes the protests in the eyes of the supporters of those on the receiving end of the protests; and it plays into a comforting fantasy that reassures those same people that what they’re doing isn’t really being opposed by any significant share of the population — just people who are getting checks to do so. [...]

The “paid protester” attack is often used by those in power, typically authoritarians. Egyptian state television spread rumors during the anti-Mubarak uprising in Tahrir Square that a “foreign element” was paying protesters. When the Kremlin was rocked by massive anti-Putin, anti-corruption demonstrations the same year, Putin told reporters that he knew “that young people were paid for coming,” and claimed the others had been manipulated by foreign agents, including Hillary Clinton and the State Department. After Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt, Human Rights Watch reported that anti-Morsi protesters were accused of “being paid by opposition leaders,” a baseless charge that the new president repeated on television. [...]

That doesn’t mean that the concept of paid protesters is a total myth. There are plenty of examples of people being paid to demonstrate — except those paying tend to be many of these same authoritarian governments.

While Putin was complaining about students being paid to demonstrate against him, Time reported that it turned out he was paying people to make up the massive, adoring crowds at his inauguration, which millions of households watched on TV. And for all Putin’s complaints about foreign agents directing the protests against him, the Kremlin itself provides support to Russian emigres who pay protesters in the United States. Meanwhile, widespread reports uncovered that Mubarak paid Egypt’s rural poor to attack protesters and counter-demonstrate in Tahrir Square.

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Jacobin Magazine: Fascism by Another Name

The 2015 French local and regional elections marked not only the government’s defeat and the Left’s collapse, but also the National Front’s (FN) breakthrough. The far-right party didn’t win any regions, but when compared to 2010, it tripled its vote count in the first-round elections and even won new voters between the first and second rounds. Between these results and polling, many expect the FN to perform much better than in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election. [...]

On the one hand, some justifiably connect the far right’s rise to political and economic instability. Accordingly, Jacques Rancière depicts the FN as a “pure product of the Fifth Republic.” Others position it as a necessary side effect of neoliberalism. While this correctly places the fascist dynamic in the context of capitalism, it fails to capture its relative autonomy from capital’s immediate interests. [...]

Rather than fall into these traps, we should learn from historical studies of fascism and use their insights to shape our responses to the FN. When we do, we’ll see that we must reject not only the most violent expressions of xenophobia, but also the mainstream manifestations of racism that have overtaken French cultural and political life. Only by separating ourselves from both the far right and the extreme center can the Left defeat this rising threat. [...]

The illusion of a so-called transformation of the FN and of a “new FN” has met the party’s own narrative, popularized in recent years and according to which, since Marine Le Pen became the party’s main leader in 2011, the FN is no longer the far-right organization it used to be. This strategy, known as “de-demonization,” could not have been completed without help from journalists, policymakers (specifically Nicolas Sarkozy), and even some academics, all of whom legitimized her claims. Marine Le Pen’s takeover of the party and her open conflict with her father has then been taken as proof of the party’s fundamental transformation.

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Katoikos: Poor administration, lack of trust: The end of Five Star Movement?

The Five Star Movement, Movimento 5 Stelle or M5S, is arguably Italy’s most vocal anti-establishment party, pursuing the dream of the absolute popular sovereignty. An energetic and very successful project, over the last year it has suffered a number of setbacks, and its collapse might be near. [...]

According to M5S, true democracy can only be reached by replacing the traditional representative system with full popular sovereignty. Such direct democracy would take decisions on all matters.

In this process, “the Net” is fundamental, namely the allegedly well-informed citizens grouped under the massively popular Beppe Grillo’s Blog — it is the most visited blog in Italy and among the 10 most visited in the world — and other internet media affiliated with M5S, such as TzeTze, La Cosa, il Blog delle Stelle. These sites are owned, in fact, by Casaleggio Associati, the IT communication enterprise of M5S co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio. He was the mind behind the M5S blog system, as well as its direct-democracy and non-partisan ideology. [...]

Recent events are not helpful towards the Movement. Firstly, note the recent fuss about M5S’s switch from the Euroskeptic EFDD group in the European Parliament to the pro-Europe, liberal ALDE. Considering MS5’s philosophy, the proposal for this switch and the online voting (78% voted in favour of ALDE) are quite odd. It was not a good idea: ALDE rejected M5S’s self-candidacy to join its lines, while Farage’s EFDD imposed strict diktats on the Movement’s policies as a precondition for accepting it back into the Euroskeptic group. [...]

Secondly, the situation in Italy is similarly critical. Several politicians, including several parliamentarians and mayors across Italy, have been forced to quit because of online accusations and initiated judicial investigations against them. Mayor Virginia Raggi of Rome, a M5S member, has been experiencing a hard time over allegations of corruption in her administration, especially since last December, when her right-hand manager Raffaele Marra was arrested for illicit real-estate activities. Meanwhile, she nominated Renato Marra (Raffaele’s brother) to Rome’s Department of Tourism, a nomination she later withdrew.

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The Atlantic: Trump Kicks Off His 2020 Reelection Campaign on Saturday

For those of you not keeping score at home, that means Trump is hosting his first rally of the 2020 campaign just 29 days into his presidency.

The idea of a “permanent campaign” has been floating around American political circles since 1980, when Sidney Blumenthal used it as the title for a book. It was during the presidency of Bill Clinton, whom Blumenthal advised, that the idea really came into practice. Even by the standards of modern-day presidents, Clinton loved politicking, and his team held on to campaign methods once in the White House, famously calling on polling to help determine its course. Newt Gingrich helped Republicans capture the House in 1994, in part by adopting the same tactics. Each of Clinton’s successors has adopted the permanent-campaign mentality to some degree. [...]

Trump by contrast is planning a straightforward campaign-style rally on Saturday. It’s at an airport, in a swing state, and it’s being advertised through his campaign website. His press secretary even called it a campaign event. Making the event a campaign event rather than a speech might afford Trump greater flexibility in who he allows to attend and who he excludes. It means that the Trump campaign will likely pick up some of the travel tab, rather than taxpayers. But it might also grant Trump more leeway to make straightforwardly political arguments and attacks that it might be unseemly for a president to make at an official event—though Trump has shown such little regard for those unwritten rules that it’s hard to imagine he could be significantly more strident.

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The Guardian: Anti-Muslim hate groups nearly triple in US since last year, report finds

The number of organized anti-Muslim hate groups in America nearly tripled last year, from 34 to more than 100, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning non-profit that tracks extremist groups.

The center credited the “incendiary rhetoric” of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign with fueling the rise in anti-Muslim hate, along with anger over terror attacks like the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando last June. [...]

The new report found there are now more than 900 active hate groups across the US – from Ku Klux Klan chapters to neo-Nazi hubs to racist black separatist organizations – an uptick of less than 3% since 2015, according to the group’s annual count. This is slightly lower than the group’s all-time high count of 1,018 hate groups in 2011.

Trump’s meteoric rise in the past year electrified many of these racists and far-right extremists, the report concluded. At the same time, Trump’s campaign may have also drained energy from independent extremist rallies and gatherings, as far-right supporters chose instead to attend mainstream Trump rallies. The number of “in-person” extremist events declined in 2016, according to the report.

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VICE: Thierry Bornier’s Breathtaking Photos of China Will Stun You into Silence - Creators

Thierry Bornier is a French landscape photographer living in Yunnan, China. His photographs have been published by National Geographic and he has won numerous awards for his breathtaking aerials. But Bornier’s path to success was an unlikely one, one that began almost a decade ago on a one-year hiatus from his job as the CEO of a large fashion company in New York and Shanghai.

An amateur photographer, Bornier set out to travel across China on a personal quest to make images for a travel memoir. With neither professional goals nor aspirations tied to the trip, he was free to enjoy himself and explore the landscapes outside of the cities he often frequented for business. It was a trip that would alter the course of his life one photograph at a time. [...]

In Visions of China, Bornier’s main landscape series, he focuses on many different areas of China, but works most often in the rice terraces. He is so familiar with them that he knows the precise time of year and day for the perfect lighting to reveal the image in his imagination, or as he says “the image you see inside your soul.”

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Quartz: After fighting for 30 years, Taiwan’s gay rights crusader senses victory for marriage equality

In 1986, in the twilight of Taiwan’s four decades of martial law known as the White Terror, 28-year-old Chi Chia-wei did what for many was unthinkable: he came out publicly as gay. He spent 162 days in prison, released only after a lenient and ashamed judge pardoned him, with tears in his eyes.

During the 30-plus years since Chi challenged Taiwan’s then-authoritarian government, he has been a constant force pushing for societal—and legal—acceptance of his LGBTQ comrades. Now Taiwan’s constitutional court is preparing to review a lawsuit filed by Chi nearly two years ago, setting the stage for what could be a tipping point in the the push for marriage equality here. [...]

This is not the first time Taiwan’s courts have had to deal with Chi’s persistence. 16 years ago it ruled against Chi, who sought a constitutional review of Taiwan’s marriage laws so that he could marry his partner. The couple have been together since 1988. In 2015, Taiwan’s Supreme Court ruled against Chi once more.

This time around he is confident of victory, not in small part to the fact that the Taipei City government is also requesting a constitutional interpretation of Taiwan’s marriage laws, which he said was the impetus for the court taking up the case.

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Quartz: A photo series of a young woman in shorts is making Indians confront how lecherous and judgmental they can be

In a handful of still images, 19-year-old Priyanka Shah from Bangalore has captured the side glances and snarky remarks women—especially ones not clad in conservative clothing—face all the time. As part of a class titled “Photography as a 2D message” at the Srishti Institute of Art and Design Technology, Shah photographed her friend Aishwarya Suresh, also 19, in the outfit she feels most comfortable in: a t-shirt and shorts.

The two students went to public spaces like open roads, parks and markets, where Shah covertly shot people’s reactions to Suresh’s presence.

The pictures revealed how Indian women aren’t just battling lecherous stares and catcalls from men. They’re also spending their days surviving judgmental glares from the women around them. The two felt a lot of fear during their shoot and, Shah wrote, even danger at times.

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Bloomberg: How the Kremlin’s Disinformation Machine Is Targeting Europe

In Germany, the Kremlin’s global media operation is giving lavish coverage to populist far-right and leftist parties critical of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door immigration policy. In France, Macron’s sudden rise has undercut the candidacy of conservative François Fillon, a former prime minister who’s called for warmer relations with the Kremlin and an end to sanctions on Russia. Stories by Sputnik and RT have been largely sympathetic to Fillon, who’s been hurt by allegations that he gave his wife and children no-show government-paid jobs, and to Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front, stressing her pro-Russian and anti-European views. Both outlets have been harder on the pro-European Macron, suggesting that the former economy minister used his position to help foreign banks and companies. [...]

With 22 bureaus around the world and a staff of 1,000, RT has seen its budget jump from $30 million in 2005 to about $320 million this year, even as most other government spending has been slashed in a recession. Its current budget includes $20 million to start a French-language channel, expected to begin operating later this year, adding to its English, Spanish, German, and Arabic services. [...]

RT’s impact may be limited. The channel is “very polemical, ideological, and anti-Western, especially anti-American,” says Ellen Mickiewicz, a Duke University political science professor who’s studied RT. She says only about 1 percent of RT’s YouTube videos—which the company says have gotten more than 4 billion views—are political and that its TV audience is tiny. In Britain in January, RT had 0.05 percent of viewers, fewer than the Welsh-language Channel 4. So the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on RT can seem like “wasted money,” Mickiewicz says.

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