Stimulus: a Facebook-based accusation to the effect that Ocasio-Cortez will come to resemble Castro and other socialist dictators.
Baloney.
The event in question appears to have been designed for partisan listening and not for open public discourse:
—— She said the journalist ban “was designed to protect + invite vulnerable populations to PUBLIC discourse: immigrants, victims of domestic abuse, and so on.”
“We indicated previously that the event would be closed to press,” she said. “Future ones are open.” ——
I think all political organizations have the prerogative to determine their meeting doors open or closed to facilitate policy planning and research. To amplify the decision to avoid the media circus and actually listen to the underserved or, in some ways, people with problems that are nonetheless a part of our communities seems to me execrable — but if that’s the way Fox wants to operate, well that says a lot about Fox News.
Additionally, with this town hall non-story: it was designed to protect + invite vulnerable populations to PUBLIC discourse: immigrants, victims of domestic abuse, and so on.
We indicated previously that the event would be closed to press. Future ones are open.
Dictators, not “isms”, have killed millions, and therefore having a look at the psychology of dictatorship — and the nature of disingenuous news personalities, lol, may be more helpful than the demonizing of a young American politician.
A large part of the world remains feudal and no more so than in communist and fascist circles. The truth is modern South Africa has managed to embarrass from office a kleptocrat in the communist style, Jacob Zuma, and have in place very much a successful capitalist and modern personality, Cyril Ramaphosa.
In some quarters, the political habits and ideas of the past persist in a changed world. We have some here in the U.S. even for whom the white right south is meant to rise again. Apparently, some portion of the black population within the ANC has settled into a bad case of Mugabeitis, an illness too well known in neighboring Zimbabwe and only recently, perhaps, brought under control by a junta plenty tired of the old despot.
My concern: that white and blacks choose not to mirror the worst glimpses of one another and consider forming to fight political regress together.
Despite my idealism and hopes, I know the situation is bad for white property owners and certainly crazy for the criminals marauding them.
The other argument proposed for why black people can’t be racist, namely that they have no power, is wearing very thin 24 years into our democracy. For one, there are many black people with a lot of power in every sense of the word and a good number of whites with virtually no power of any description.
But as happens often, we’re still borrowing this argument from American political culture where black people are still in the minority.
I have never witnessed a black person cursing white people because he/she believes being black is superior, even where the words used would sometimes suggest that.
“Reverse racism” is thus not racism in the real sense of the word, but it could be described as intolerance, hatred or vengefulness based on race.
LONDON — If Vicki Momberg had only unleashed a high-volume tirade at the South African police officers, video of it would have been of mere passing interest. But her repeated use of a racial slur — unfamiliar to most Americans, but explosive in South Africa — made her notorious, and led to demands to make her an example.
For years, we’ve watched and seen white South Africa’s false solidarity with black people and absence from involvement on issues affecting blacks. White South Africans expect black people to join movements when the issue in question affects white communities yet remain silent, retreating to leafy or non-impoverished suburbs, when blacks face prejudice, lack of economic access or service delivery. In January 2018, residents from the Thembelihle informal settlement, south of Johannesburg, took to the streets in a service delivery protest demanding housing.
The 1994 ideology of “sameness” that was introduced post-apartheid to bring peace to a much-wounded nation has begun to show cracks, a clear indication that this was, for the most part, a one-sided concord dependent on whose privilege matters most.
He is popularly known as the author of two sayings: (1) “If I am not for myself who is for me? And being for my own self, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?”[4] and (2) the expression of the ethic of reciprocity, or “Golden Rule“: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”[5]
American-based, humanist, and classically liberal and democratic BackChannels here adds just one more biker video:
BackChannels Frame
Feudal-Medieval Political Absolutism
v
Modern Democratic Checked and Distributed Power
Between “Active Measures” and America’s inherent internal tensions, citizens may feel channeled toward a fascistic Far Right new nationalism or a dippy Far Left socialist revival, but BackChannels reminds that there may be — there should be — a more grounded and spacious Middle American Way and some wish to rediscover and renew that more coherent nation.
BackChannels acknowledges the book in which it first encountered the term:
Soldatov, Andrei and Irena Borogan. The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. New York: Public Affairs, 2010.
However, this post is not going to be about powerful and self-enriching KGB/FSB spies and their bureaucracies.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán, and Donald J. Trump seem to this blogger more the “New Nobility” that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have had also in mind as he launched his revenge on the western world for the demise of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991 — a very good Christmas morning indeed for the United States of America and in the defunct godless realm then represented by the Kremlin a not very special day at all.
In the 26 years that have passed since that morning (for political purpose, it was over at noon), Russia and her leadership have had to think about what it has meant to be “Russian”.
“Old Vikings”?
Formed of conquest, contracting and expanding through the brutality of feudal wars, unable ever to police — mere civil policing — its territorial writs, Russia has been a state that has better known barbarism and the depths of inhumanity through violence (give a nod for the extra special dose brought by the Mongols) than civility through accommodation and trade. In that regard, the “Vory”, the once brutalized mafia within, may in their inglorious legend represent the pure expression of the heart of the state.
Backing the tyrant in Syria?
Invading a settled Ukraine and baldly lying to the world about its purpose?
Bombing hospitals?
Pursuing feudal absolute power — unquestionable ownership of persons as things — with the Assahola in Tehran?
All of the above: true.
So what good new things has Russia brought to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?
BREXIT: While Great Britain has been happy to pile on “Asian” labor, it has not been so happy with grooming gangs, suspect neighborhoods, and “Allahu Akbar” explosions, much less the impositions posed by the refugees of war in Syria. Response: the Newest Nationalism expressed in renewed insularity and refreshed Anglican pride.
While it’s good for a state to recall what it’s about, some among the most zealous should factor in how they have been played by Moscow.
Erdogan: Prime Minister, President, and now, apparently, President for Life has never encountered serious resistance for his taking apart what Mustafa Kemal Atatürk bequeathed in bureaucratic and military legacy. The empire’s back, baby, and dig the symbolic significance of the leaders new crib.
Impressed?
Dig this cool new statistic on press freedom in Erdogan’s new estate (italics added).
The 2018 index ranking marked Turkey’s 58 point-decrease over the past 13 years, lagging just behind Rwanda, Belarus and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nonetheless, the American President’s behavior, personal as well as political, has left him also, as with the Erdogan and Orban, associated with the terms “autocratic”, “narcissistic”, and “nationalist”. While it’s good to take pride in one’s nation and defend her interests with tough negotiations, it may not be so good for the head of a modern democratic state to promote the image of himself as a feudal lord, securing prizes for family and friends on the basis of loyalty, and doing out favors (“You all just got a lot richer”) to surrounding nobility.
President George W. Bush also made light of the “have and have mores”, but for Americans struggling with fixed retirements, healthcare premiums, perhaps the full suite of basic and complex costs of survival, and, for the young, jobs that fail to deliver even a modicum of financial independence and pride, much less security, the implied further reduction to peonage must sting.
As long as the terms are black v white / capitalism v communism-socialism, the conversation seems bound to be boxed in or circular as well as suffocated by events and personalities locked in the past and best left there as well. A better springboard would be to query the character and nature of potential political power as groomed today and whether “power” needs be responsible power.
I’ve tried this framing: “Feudal Political Absolutism v Democratic Checked and Distributed Power”.
It’s too much of a mouthful but fully observable in Syria, east v west “contests”, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the rifts of the Islamic Small Wars. All involve feudal personalities applying martial power to plowing forward into the more dismal regions of their own political pasts.
I’m a little lazy now and this summer believe I should be reading (on deck: Goldman’s Lord of the Flies, Brodie’s Thomas Jefferson), settling down, regathering myself for what beyond my 60+ years looks like a still daunting and frightening future for myself and tens of millions of Americans as well as the middle classes and the surviving and struggling of the nations worldwide. Time seems to have produced too many drowning in arms and drugs, directly related insecurity against depredation, general economic dissolution and isolation, and general political miasma and upheaval.
BackChannels credits Putin with turning Erdogan’s pretty little head back toward the feudal glory of the sultanate — or something like it — with the help of Turkish Stream, encouraging the family business in Hungary, and aiding with the election of the formerly more autocratic President (“Fake News”!) Trump in the United States (the French, better knowing what they’re about, didn’t quite go for his Marine Le Pen; Trump, BC presumes, has been tempered by having gotten himself into a job involving personalities as large as himself and powers greater than known in his organization — America’s democracy has not been overwhelmingly wowed or easily walked over). The popular perception of Putin may respond opposite the viewer’s interests: for old lefties, he’s the world’s greatest reactionary and using revived militarism and the Russian Orthodox Church to assuage bad feelings attending the insult of expanding financial hardship associated with related ambitions in Syria and Ukraine and, ultimately, the way the guy at the top gets his hooks into the best performing businesses.
Why not?
In Russia, there’s protest and resistance to Putin, but there is no competition for the power he has amassed and his ability to . . . rearrange the world along feudal lines.
And for “righties”, he’s still the go-to for “socialist” dictatorships like Assad’s.
Never mind that Assad via the KGB-style political theatrical “Assad v The Terrorists” has been building Syria down, enough so, and so desperately so, for Putin to permanently expand Russia’s military footprint in Hafez’s old sandbox.
After the one step backward into 19th Century and earlier Russian paternal authoritarianism, aristocracy, imperialism, and resurgent nationalism, one may wonder what may be the “two steps forward” if any are ever taken as needs must be: whether Putin likes it or not, the Russian Federation is, alas, multicultural and perhaps yearning — as Navalny might have it — for the liberal devilishness that are “rule of law” and “responsive and responsible governance”.
BackChannels 