Diari de les idees

Núm. 38

(23-27 de gener 2017)

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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.