Social Europe: Italy: First European Country In The Hand Of Populists?

A mix of contextual and of more political factors lies behind these results. According to the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s 2017 Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) on Italy the economic recovery started to take off under the Democratic Party-based governments of Matteo Renzi and Paolo Gentiloni, but people’s perceptions didn’t change much and are still dominated by the effects of the deep recession of the past years – fear of unemployment, experiences of business failures, and the tightening of living conditions. Naturally, the main governing parties suffer under such conditions, whereas opposition parties that are perceived as being far distant from the government enjoy voters’ goodwill. Thus, first and foremost the Five Star Movement and the League grew rather than Forza Italia which had headed the government three times between 1994 and 2008.

A second reason for the success of these two parties is the growing resentment in large strata of the population against the policies of the EU. Many people feel damaged by economic austerity on the one hand and resent the scant solidarity shown to Italy’s problems with immigration on the other. The Five Star Movement and the League have both shown very critical attitudes towards the EU – to the point of even suggesting a referendum on the Euro. [...]

If an alliance of the twin winners is rejected, both leaders have to court the centre of the parliament in order to build a majority. They have already given some signals in this direction. This means they will have to moderate some of their most radical positions. In particular, both will have to bargain with political forces that are more pro-European. We may expect therefore a government that would raise questions in Brussels but not refuse cooperation. It would be wise for EU authorities and other European leaders to encourage this process by paying more attention to the problems that Italy has been facing recently, not least because some were exacerbated by sub-par EU policies. 

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Jacobin Magazine: The French Left’s Long March to the Right

Today, the situation is different. In 2012, François Hollande was elected with exactly the same majority as François Mitterrand in 1981 (51.7 percent), and had an absolute majority of socialists in the National Assembly, a socialist majority in the Senate, control of every regional government in France but one (Alsace), a majority of departmental governments, big cities. Never in France’s history has a head of government of the Left held so many of the levers of national power. And what did he do with it? One of his ministers, Arnaud Montebourg, summarized it well: “When they voted for the socialists, the French people didn’t know they were voting for the program of the German right.” [...]

Corbyn and Sanders, but also Jean-Luc Mélenchon, are breaking with these ideas, reviving a social language that foregrounds the inegalitarian and environmentally destructive logic of the market. Their programs vary; sometimes, especially on foreign policy issues, Sanders concedes too much to his political allies, the Democrats, who’ve always been the loyal managers (and even the architects) of America’s imperial policies. But for now, Corbyn, Sanders, and Mélenchon are sticking to a line that rejects both Third Way liberalism and the lefty academic and postcolonial verbiage churned out in elite American institutions. Here I’m thinking of the obsession with “diversity” that, in celebrating all identities, often hardens and essentializes them — as long as the identities in question aren’t class identity defined by one’s relationship to capitalist production. [...]

So the bourgeoisie owning “a little bit of money and an apartment” became the favored constituency of a socialist movement born in the nineteenth century thanks to working-class trade unionism intended to unite the proletariat of all nations. DSK, charitably, doesn’t entirely forget the poor: he suggests “caring about them, helping them, training them to try to bring them into the middle layers.” But he suggests no longer “relying on them, because most of the time they don’t want to participate in political life, since they feel excluded.”

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Jacobin Magazine: Who Fights Colombia’s Wars?

Many nations employ some form of military service, but most are rarely engaged in conflict. Colombia, which has suffered from civil war almost continuously since 1948, is quite different. While the conflict has waxed and waned, with long periods of relative peace punctuated by peaks of violence, serving as an enlisted member of the nation’s military has never been a safe occupation. [...]

A 1993 law states that all Colombian men must “define” their military situation upon reaching the age of majority. This vague term hints at how the law applies differently to men of different classes. The vast majority of the middle and upper class pay to avoid serving. The poorest members of society, especially those from neglected rural areas, are those who are forced to fight because they are unable to pay these legalized bribes.

Even among those who serve, there is legalized discrimination. Soldiers who have finished high school are assigned to non-combat zones and formerly had to serve only one year. Those who have not finished high school, usually from the poorest and most neglected places in the country, must serve between eighteen months and two years, usually in the most dangerous parts of Colombia. Because of this, the vast majority of those killed in the conflict — soldiers, guerrillas, and civilians — are among the poorest people in Colombia. [...]

In the 2014 election campaign, Santos seemingly recognized the unpopularity of military service. He claimed that, should the peace process prove successful, it would be abolished. There is now no sign of this happening. In fact, the period of service for those who have not graduated will be increased, with all such soldiers now serving for two years.

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Al Jazeera: Rethinking Islamophobia

The narrow racial framing of Muslim identity, deeply embedded in the American imagination and still potent today, not only converges with the rising tide of anti-Muslim animus we now understand and know as Islamophobia - but indeed, an integral part of it. Islamophobia in the United States is, in great part, a racial project, spawned by a master discourse that drove European supremacy and today powered by popular views and state policy seeking to safeguard its domestic progeny, white supremacy.

Race and racism are central to any understanding of Islamophobia, as brilliantly examined by sociology scholar and author Erik Love, and they configure in myriad ways with the advancement of the aggregate enterprise of Islamophobia in the United States, and beyond its borders. While racism is central, there is more at play - Islamophobia is anchored in an Orientalist underbelly that precedes the creation of the formative American racial enterprise and its modern form, and a protracted War on Terror that extends it through formal law and policy.  [...]

Structural Islamophobia, the second dimension, is the fear and suspicion of Muslims on the part of government institutions. This fear and suspicion are manifested and enforced through the enactment of and advancements of laws, policy, programming, or formal pronouncements by state agents. Laws like the US PATRIOT Act or Countering Violent Extremism, the vile anti-Muslim rhetoric of President Trump and the campaigns of state congressmen to pass anti-Sharia legislation distinctly and diversely illustrate structural Islamophobia. Structural Islamophobia has been openly extended by statesman on the Right, including Presidents George W. Bush and Trump, but also democrats like President Barrack Obama, who established counter-radicalisation policing as his signature counterterror policy. Unlike private Islamophobia, structural Islamophobic policy and positions are just as often driven by rational motives as they are irrational, strategically deployed to carry forward specific domestic and international state objectives.

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The Conversation: The Vatican, the exorcists and the return of the Devil in a time of enchantment

With a population of around 60 million, this means the Devil is apparently active in one of every 120 Italians. That’s a lot of demoniacs and a lot of demons – at least some 500,000 of them if they’re not multi-tasking. [...]

Why the sudden increase in possession by the Devil? Palilla attributes it to an increase in practices that “open the door to the Devil” – such as people seeking out wizards and fortune tellers, reading tarot cards, and generally dabbling in magic and the occult. [...]

All this seems rather odd coming out of a Vatican under the reign of the apparently “modern” Pope Francis. Yet, while the pope is socially progressive, he is theologically quite conservative. The Devil is a real person, “armed with dark powers”, he declared in a television interview in December 2017. [...]

In the golden age of demonic possession from 1500 to 1700, demoniacs and exorcists multiplied. It was difficult to tell then, as now, whether the increase in exorcists was a consequence of the increase in the possessed, or vice versa. Possession was undoubtedly very contagious. [...]

This re-emergence of the Devil in popular Western culture is part of a new engagement with an enchanted world. Popular culture has embraced a realm of preternatural beings both good and evil – vampires and fairies, witches and wizards, werewolves and wraiths, shape-shifters and superheroes, succubi and incubi, elves and aliens, hobbits and the denizens of Hogwarts, not to mention zombies.

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The Conversation: Servant or partner? The role of expertise and knowledge in democracy

The first reason is because of the threat of the “scientisation” of politics. Too much expert input can narrow the scope of democratic discussion, because scientific analysis and technical planning take prominence in setting agendas and determining social choices.  [...]

The second reason is that experts can endanger democratic civility because of information asymmetry. Experts can persuade other experts and non-experts. But non-experts struggle to persuade experts, leaving ordinary citizens susceptible to being the losers in the game of scientising politics.

The third reason is that experts disproportionately define what counts as reality for political purposes. Examples include the nature of hazards, the capacity of machines, and the relevant consensus about a technical question upon which political discussion might be grounded. This expert influence over “the real” is a source of power in democracies, and all power should be held accountable.  [...]

If you imagine experts as collectively comprising a loosely structured, independent institution within democracies, then a strict servant role advises us to sustain a separation between expertise as an institution and democracy as a forum for citizen deliberation. So, the servant role supports the anti-pluralism of populism.

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Politico: MEPs on Selmayrgate: It ‘destroys’ EU credibility

During a plenary debate in Strasbourg on his rapid route to the powerful position of secretary-general, representatives from every political corner — left and right, federalist and Euroskeptic — lined up to admonish the Commission for a maneuver that to many looked like a bare-faced stitch-up. [...]

“What better to give grist to the mill of the Euroskeptics,” said Françoise Grossetête of the European People’s Party, Selmayr’s own political group. “This discredits an institution that we know is made up mainly of very talented professional people.”

The Parliament can’t remove Selmayr from his office but it can add fuel to a controversy that started three weeks ago when his surprise promotion was presented to the commissioners — who promptly waved it through with apparently little scrutiny.

For Selmayr and his patron Jean-Claude Juncker, the action in Strasbourg adds an unwelcome extra dimension to criticism that has been building in Brussels and beyond. Euroskeptics in the U.K. have pointed out the affair confirms their perception of the EU institutions as an old boys’ club while the Hungarian government has blasted the Commission over its double standards and “preaching” about the rule of law. [...]

Prior to the debate, MEPs voted unanimously to give the Budgetary Control Committee the task of investigating the procedure of Selmayr’s appointment and on the basis of the committee’s work, they agreed to vote on a resolution at a plenary later this year.

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Haaretz: Trump's Abrupt New Romance With Kim Leaves Netanyahu Hurting, and Stranded

That’s because although Trump’s sudden announcement of a summit with Kim Jong Un was as much a tribute to the U.S. president’s lack of impulse control as anything he ever may have done with "adult film actress" Stormy Daniels, it could ultimately lead in directions that could make it harder for Trump to go as hard as Bibi would like him to against the Iran nuclear deal. 

After all, if Trump reaches an agreement with Kim to limit his nuclear program it is likely to provoke difficult comparisons with the Iran deal, one that it is very likely to be less onerous, rigorous or well-thought out than the P5+1 agreement with Tehran. [...]

Further, should Trump invest his "brand" in a North Korea deal, he will be committed to defending the deal and the optics around it. He will have to sell it to consummately skeptical audiences, by falling back on his familiar "Obama deal bad, Trump deal good" logic.

That might well make it tough to pull out of the Iran deal unilaterally, as Trump has threatened to do. A recent report indicated that if Trump's demands for far more than cosmetic changes are not met, the U.S. would withdraw from the deal.

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Slate: Why It’s Surprising to Hear Putin Blaming Jews for Election Meddling

Even Vladimir Putin’s staunchest opponents generally concede that whatever else the Russian president may be, he’s not an anti-Semite. Some of Putin’s closest confidants have been Jews, including his judo coach and surrogate father, and his childhood friends the Rotenberg brothers—now, not coincidentally, two of Russia’s richest men. He has supported Jewish institutions, including personally donating to the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. He has also personally intervened in cases of anti-Semitic discrimination. This may seem like a low bar, but given Russia’s history, these are welcome gestures.

So it was jarring to hear the president seem to lapse into old-fashioned anti-Semitism in an interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly. Asked about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Putin said of the perpetrators, “Maybe they’re not even Russians, but Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked.” This seemingly implies not only that Jews may have been behind the meddling, but that Russian citizens who are Jews (or Ukrainians or Tatars—a long marginalized Muslim minority group) are not really Russian. [...]

Of course, it’s also worth noting that Putin made the remark not in the Russian media, but in an interview with an American outlet. Given that evidence that Russia has sought to exploit ethnic and racial divisions in the United States and other countries, Putin’s comments may have been directed less at his own base than at Donald Trump’s.

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