Jacobin Magazine: Donald’s Myths

Indeed, the hate now directed toward Donald Trump closely resembles the hatred many progressives felt for Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. Tricky Dick personified all the ills of the United States’ political culture: secrecy, lies, wars, and misuse of state power. Because liberals fully identified their political critique with one figure, they were left completely defenseless the day Nixon left office.

Personifying the problem blocked obvious and important questions: how did American political culture produce someone like Nixon? How did his administration reshape this culture? What would he leave behind? By failing to pose these questions, his opponents left the door open for the militarism, racism, and neoliberalism of our first B-list celebrity president, Ronald Reagan. [...]

Fact-checking does nothing to disabuse people of the myths that structure their worldviews, which are neither factual nor completely fictional. Myths play a central role in people’s moral orientation, because they reduce reality’s murky struggles into simplified stories of good and evil, greatness and failure. The failure of liberal moralizing to stop Trump has everything to do with the power of myths. [...]

His opponents could successfully debunk these myths, but his supporters won’t abandon a narrative that gives their world coherence without having another framework on hand. Unfortunately, liberal myths are either so weak or so close to Trump’s own story that they provided no alternative. [...]

The liberal refusal to recognize structural racism and diverging class interests has created space for Trumpism. Understanding this entails that we move the struggle against racism beyond diversity management and begin developing economic policies that genuinely benefit working-class people — not just those white working-class voters whom Trump mobilized, but also the white and non-white working-class people whom Hillary failed to mobilize, and the vast number of people who have been disenfranchised, never enfranchised, or simply chose not to vote.

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Vox: The abortion rate is at an all-time low — and better birth control is largely to thank

US women are having abortions at the lowest rate on record since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, according to a new report. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, the abortion rate has been steadily declining for decades. [...]

The abortion ratio — the proportion of abortions to live births — is also down to historic lows. In 1995, the abortion ratio was about 26 abortions for every 100 live births; in 2014, it was 18.8.

The abortion rate and the abortion ratio tell us different things. The abortion rate is a bigger-picture snapshot of how common abortion is among women every year, while the abortion ratio gives us a sense of how many women who get pregnant decide to stay pregnant. [...]

Abortion rates have been falling for three decades in the developed world, as Vox’s Sarah Kliff has explained. But in developing African, Asian, and Latin American countries, rates have either held steady or increased since the 1990s. That’s because women in developed countries, such as in Europe and North America, have much better access to higher-quality methods of birth control, and live in a culture that treats contraception as less of a taboo. [...]

To abortion rights supporters and most medical providers, lower abortion rates are good because they mean that women are having fewer unintended pregnancies. In this view, abortion isn’t inherently wrong, nor is it possible to get rid of entirely — even the best birth control methods fail sometimes, and health complications or fetal abnormalities mean that not every pregnancy can be carried to term. But it’s best for women if they can control their fertility from the outset with access to reliable, affordable birth control.

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Haaretz: It's Not Islam That Drives Young Europeans to Jihad, France's Top Terrorism Expert Explains

“An estimated 60 percent of those who espouse violent jihadism in Europe are second-generation Muslims who have lost their connection with their country of origin and have failed to integrate into Western societies,” Roy says. [...]

“Unlike second generations like Abedi’s, third generations are normally better integrated in the West and don’t account for more than 15 percent of homegrown jihadis,” Roy says. “Converts, who also have an approach to Islam decontextualized from any culture, account for about 25 percent of those who fall prey to violent fundamentalism.” [...]

With little if any understanding of religion or Islamic culture, young people like Abedi turn to terrorism out of a “suicidal instinct” and “a fascination for death,” Roy says. This key element is exemplified by the jihadi slogan first coined by Osama bin Laden: "We love death like you love life.”

“The large majority of Al-Qaida and Islamic State jihadis, including the Manchester attacker Abedi, commit suicide attacks not because it makes sense strategically from a military perspective or because it’s consistent with the Salafi creed,” Roy says. “These attacks don’t weaken the enemy significantly, and Islam condemns self-immolation as interference with God’s will. These kids seek death as an end-goal in itself.”

In his recent book “Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of Islamic State," Roy argues that about 70 percent of these young people have scant knowledge of Islam, and suggests they are “radical” before even choosing Islam. He dubs them “born again Muslims” who lead libertine lives before their sudden conversion to violent fundamentalism.

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Vox: Japan's rising right-wing nationalism | Border Dispatch #1

Like many nations, Japan is undergoing a surge in right-wing nationalism, the brand of nationism that is skeptical of globalization and outsiders. But while Japan's nationalism looks similar to other right-wing movements in the West, when you look under the surface, you see a totally different story. 

Vox: Want to save animal lives without going veg? Eat beef, not chicken.

Slate: The Architect of Marriage Equality on Why the Freedom to Marry Is Going Global

In addition, Taiwan has strived to solidify and establish its commitment to democratic values. Allowing the freedom to marry is part of the maturation of a democracy, a way of securing pluralism and the rule of law. We’ve seen that freedom-to-marry countries, like Spain and Argentina and Portugal, where leaders said, “This is not just about gay people, this is about our commitment to being a true constitutional republic.” Taiwan has also been on that journey and had that conversation. [...]

Absolutely. Some activists on the mainland have already said that the ruling is giving them more momentum and more to talk about. Obviously, China’s position is that it’s all one country—so now, from their point of view, the freedom to marry has come to China. Taiwan might take a different position, of course. Regardless, there’s no question that having the freedom to marry in Taiwan will energize advocates throughout China and have a major impact on the conversation there. [...]

We’re also doing a lot of work and conversation-building in countries as diverse as Japan, the Czech Republic, Chile, and other Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and South Korea. The conversation there isn’t as far along as it has been in Taiwan, but this decision is going to energize advocates in so many places around the world. We need to see advocates stepping up their work in Italy and Germany, too, and keep building toward the tipping point in Europe.

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Quartz: More people fled conflict in DR Congo than in Syria and Iraq last year

In 2016, around 922,000 people—the highest number of displaced people due to conflict recorded globally—fled their homes in DRC, according to data from the latest Global Report on Internal Displacement by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Much of the displacement in DRC is linked to the country’s political instability with president Joseph Kabila refusing to leave office after the end of his tenure last December. Political tensions were heightened much earlier as the elections, initially slated for November 2016, have now been postponed with the country’s budget minister saying the DRC cannot afford the $1.8 billion cost of the elections. [...]

While DRC saw the most displacement caused by conflict, globally, there were 6.9 million new internal displacements caused by conflict and violence in 2016. Significantly, Sub-Saharan Africa surpassed the Middle East to become the most affected region, despite Syria, Iraq and Yemen accounting for almost two million new displacements in 2016. Asides from the DRC, incidents across the continent have seen Africa become the most affected region. Nigeria, where a fight against Boko Haram continues across the northeast, and South Sudan, where a fragile peace pact has been broken are among worrying flash-points on the continent.

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The Economist: The triumph of Iran’s liberals

Defeat is growing familiar to the hardliners. The last time they won was in the parliamentary election of 2012, and that they owed to a mass boycott by reformists. This time the hardliners campaigned particularly hard because they sensed they were not only picking a president, but also, perhaps, the next supreme leader (a more powerful post). The incumbent, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 77. This presidential election may be his last. Formally, the Assembly of Experts selects a successor from among its 88 Muslim scholars. But the last time it did so, in 1989, it picked the then president. “The vote isn’t just about four years of presidency,” says a confidant of Mr Khamenei. “It’s about Iran’s future for 40 years.” Mr Khamenei is said to favour Mr Raisi as his successor; this will be harder to pull off following his drubbing. [...]

Can Mr Rouhani now fulfil his promises? Within hours of his victory, reformists whom the authorities had detained in the run-up to the election were released. His advisers also predict that he will appoint his first female minister, and perhaps even the Islamic Republic’s first-ever Sunni one. More radical change as well, they say, could be coming. Certainly, Mr Khamenei might have been happier had Mr Rouhani won by a less convincing margin.

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