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	Apocalypse or co-operation? by Jayati Ghosh Project Syndicate, Social Europe Journal   The perfect storm of Covid-19 and climate change, and resulting economic damage, will likely trigger much more social and political instability.   The apocalypse is now. That is the glaring message of the perfect storm of Covid-19 and climate change which has broken. The pandemic is unlikely to end for years, as the novel coronavirus mutates into increasingly transmissible, drug-resistant variants. And the climate catastrophe is no longer ‘impending’ but playing out in real time.   The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—whose assessments predate the extreme climate events of the past year—tells us that some drastic, adverse climatic changes are now irreversible.   These will affect every region, as the recent heatwaves, wildfires and floods demonstrate. They will also severely damage many natural species and adversely affect the possibilities for, and conditions of, human life.   Keeping future global warming to a manageable level (even if above the 2015 Paris climate agreement goal of 1.5C) will require a massive effort, involving sharp economic-policy reversals in every country. Major changes in the global legal and economic architecture will be essential.   For its part, the pandemic has devastated employment and livelihoods, pushing hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the developing world, into poverty and hunger.   The International Labour Organization’s World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2021 shows the extent of the damage in grinding detail. In 2020, the pandemic caused the loss of nearly 9 per cent of total global working hours, equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs.   This trend has continued in 2021, with working-hour losses equivalent to 140 million full-time jobs in the first quarter and 127 million jobs in the second quarter.   On current trends, projected employment growth will be insufficient to make up for these losses. So, even in 2022, total employment will be lower than in 2019 by the equivalent of at least 23 million full-time jobs.   This is despite relatively strong job growth in the United States, meaning that labour-market deterioration in other, mostly poorer, regions will be even sharper and more intense. Moreover, the ‘new’ jobs associated with recovery from the pandemic will be predominantly low-paying and poor quality.   Meanwhile, economic inequality between and within countries has reached levels that were unimaginable in the already extremely unequal pre-pandemic world.   While many people face substantial income losses, declining access to basic needs, acute deprivation and hunger, a tiny minority of the extremely wealthy and a few large corporations have grabbed even more income and wealth, thereby multiplying their assets.   Today’s new forms of conspicuous consumption—such as the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, recently spending $5.5 billion for a four-minute ride around suborbital space—are literally out of this world.   This amount could instead have funded the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) facility to provide vaccines to two billion people in poor countries, who are currently unlikely to get them in the next two years.   This state of affairs obviously cannot continue for long without major social tensions and civil unrest. Indeed, the perfect storm we are beginning to experience will soon include much more social and political instability. Rather than spurring a progressive and transformative agenda, this could descend into ethnic, racial and other forms of conflicts, violence and chaos.   This nightmarish scenario can still be averted with substantially increased international co-operation on a few key issues. On climate, governments could collectively declare that they will cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions more sharply in order to reach net zero in a decade, rather than several decades.   Rich countries with high legacy emissions should obviously make the deepest cuts and transfer green technologies to the developing world without conditions, enabling the latter also to decarbonise rapidly.   Funds for climate adaptation are now essential, and proposed global public investment can enable swift action on this.   To control the still-raging pandemic, it is imperative to redistribute available vaccine doses immediately and remove legal constraints on widening production through compulsory licences.   In addition, the pharmaceutical firms that benefited from large Covid-19 vaccine-development subsidies must share their technology with other producers to increase supply, as the World Health Organization Council on the Economics of Health for All has recommended.   Building resilient and decentralised manufacturing capacity, including in the public sector, will be vital to deal effectively with future pandemics and other health crises.   As for economic policy, global tax co-operation is a no-brainer. Simple rules that would make multinational companies pay the same rate of tax as purely domestic firms, and ensure that the revenues are shared fairly between countries, would reduce inequality and provide fiscally constrained developing economies with much-needed resources.   Likewise, an international sovereign-debt resolution mechanism would reduce many developing countries’ fiscal burdens, freeing up space for urgent spending.   Regulating highly mobile cross-border finance, reining in credit-rating agencies and introducing conditions that make finance respond to social needs also will require international regulatory co-operation.   Unfortunately, the current state of global politics means this necessary and feasible agenda is unlikely to be realised. Leaders of major countries have so far displayed a pathetic lack of ambition.   Instead, they have paid lip-service to these existential challenges, while remaining subservient to private capital and vested interests and all too willing to play to national and local galleries.   The attitude of G7 governments, which are more obsessed with China’s rise than with preserving our increasingly fragile world, has been especially depressing. Their Covid-19 vaccine nationalism is short-sighted and obscene, while their rigid attachment to intellectual-property rights allows private firms to restrict knowledge and production to maximise their profits. These stances have reduced trust and hampered international co-operation to tackle the pandemic.   Humanity still has a chance to step back from the brink. Will it do so, or will future species wonder why we chose to participate actively in our own destruction? Visit the related web page
	The Covid-19 pandemic and populist discontent by IPS Journal, Minority Rights Group, agencies   Dec. 2021   The revolt against reason, by Robert Misik.   The diagnosis of a ‘split’ in society is commonplace today — societies are shaken by discord and divisions are intensifying. The claims differ in details but on some basic assumptions, there is usually agreement.   First, there are increasingly testy disputes, largely along a traditional left-right axis but sometimes deviating from it. ‘Culture wars’ break out over gender issues, racism and anti-racism, immigration and who belongs to the ‘us’ — even lifestyles. Pundits talk about societies breaking into hostile ‘tribes’.   There is also a degree of unanimity in the analyses about alienation from the conventional political system — anger that ‘they are not interested in us at all’ — especially in underprivileged segments of the population, including the old working classes but also the marginalised lower middle class and the ‘underclass’.   Those who are victims of growing insecurity feel that they can no longer rely on solidarity: ‘You can’t count on anyone anymore.’ Many people say ‘I just look out for myself now’ in a depressed, negative individualism. These social milieux are then particularly appealing to right-wing populists and extremists who proclaim: ‘Yes, no one listens to you — but I am your voice.’   Representing the ‘left behind’   This is a particular challenge for progressive political parties: the social democrats, the Labour Party, the American Democrats, the vast majority of traditional labour and left-wing movements.   On the one hand, left-wing parties have a great deal of sympathy with popular revolts against ruling elites and systems of chronic injustice — indeed, for many decades of their existence, they were the bearers of them.   Yet, on the other hand, in the eyes of many who turn away in disappointment, they themselves are part of that detested ‘elite’. Even if they — the parties — see themselves as part of the solution, many of their potential voters see them as part of the problem.   This is by no means to say that the supporters of right-wing, anti-system parties are primarily part of a working-class that has become politically homeless — but they do also come from this group. Those who are under economic pressure, who struggle with job insecurity, who are confronted with stagnating wages and who generally see themselves as ‘losers’ of economic transformations easily feel politically unheard, no longer represented, disrespected and left behind as innocent victims of injustice.   I have analysed all this in my book The False Friends of the Ordinary People, including how right-wing populists appeal successfully to the traditional ‘values’ of the working classes.   The left-wing and progressive parties have, of course, already recognised the problem and are responding to it in a wide variety of ways: shifting to the left, managing a gradual course correction, or dissolving into hopeless debates about strategy.   The fact that the German social democrats went into the recent Bundestag election campaign with the slogan ‘Respect’ is due to this diagnosis, and at least it led to the SPD regaining first place and the chancellorship.   It is remarkable that, while different countries on different continents have strikingly different political cultures and traditions, these discourses and rhetorics are astonishingly similar.   The structural transformation of debate in the public sphere — through the internet, blogs, and ‘social media’ — of course contributes massively here and yet this is often dramatically underestimated.   Scepticism and conspiracy   These days, however, the diagnosis of ‘polarisation’ is being invoked almost daily in a specific context. That is the anti-virus regime, with the disputes over lockdowns, rejection of vaccination, denial of the pandemic or its danger and the rise of conspiracy theories. This, too, is global, but there are nonetheless notable national differences.   In the United States, opposition to measures to contain Covid-19 is a common slogan of the radical right under its front figure, the former president, Donald Trump. In other countries, this is less pronounced.   Scepticism and rejection of modern medicine — and thus of vaccination — also varies widely. Portugal has a vaccination rate of around 90 per cent and Denmark 87 per cent but, of the traditionally ‘western European’ countries, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have the lowest rates. They stagnated for a long time at just around 65 per cent.   These countries have far-right and right-wing populist parties mobilising against vaccination. The same groups which score points on the ‘culture war’ issues — claiming to be the voice of the common people, the ‘regular guy’ — are now saying: the elites, the government, want to poison you with a vaccine. They are establishing enforced vaccination, a ‘corona dictatorship’.   They are bought by Big Pharma, street mobsters of sinister world rulers. And they are exploiting an invented — or exaggerated — disease to destroy freedom and bully the common people.   Given its obvious madness, the astonishing thing is that a not insignificant part of their followers buy into all this craziness. Those who believe the whole radical nonsense are rather few. But a much larger group have doubts about medical science and are less willing to believe the experts than people who pontificate on the internet. What’s happening here?   There is evidently a massive loss of trust in the entire political system, so that many no longer believe anyone perceived in any way to be part of an imaginary ‘establishment’. How alienated and frustrated must they be if they simply don’t believe anything anymore and, on the contrary, are willing to take at face value what they read in some weird group on Telegram or WhatsApp?   Putting the pieces together   Rebellion has traditionally connoted emancipation. But this is a revolt against reason. Especially in the German-speaking countries, where enlightenment rationalism took less deep roots — romanticism with its anti-rationalism rather more — hostility to science is probably even more widespread than in other cultures.   The Nazi movement and its totalitarianism, too — with its penchant for the occult and the obscure as well as its contempt for reason — may have left deeper traces in this respect than one might think.   Progressive and left-wing parties have always been in the traditional stream of the enlightenment, acting as educational movements. But they too have seen simplifications and conspiratorial ideas among their followers: in 1890 Ferdinand Kronawetter described anti-Semitism as ‘the socialism of the stupid guys’ (der Socialismus der dummen Kerle).   Also, the environmental movement, considered by many to be ‘alternative’ and somehow a product of the rebellious ‘counter culture’ of the 1960s, has its questionable traditions. It upholds the ‘natural’ and the ‘feeling’, life in ‘balance with nature’, and has a scepticism of the rationality of science and technology. Natural healing methods, homoeopathy, alternative medicine, and obscurantism of all sorts are quite popular here and are opposed to ‘orthodox medicine’, which primarily wants to cram chemicals into people.   Anyhow, if we want to understand current, extremely weird and yet still unclear events, then we should start to bring these elements together. The alienation from the system of politics caused massive annoyance even before the pandemic and is now making the fight against the pandemic difficult. There is an exasperation with the system on the part of people who — often rightly — no longer feel represented or even noticed by it.   The popularity of right-wing populism and extremism is certainly a revolt with legitimate aspects but in perverse forms. The depth of this loss of trust is also evident in anti-rationalist revolts against management of the pandemic and even against medical science.   Those who fall into the clutches of such an ideology and an entire system of misinformation come to believe ever more absurd things. They remodel themselves, so to speak, and fall into a dynamic of self-radicalisation — which can very soon become truly dangerous.   http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy-and-society/the-revolt-against-reason-5588/ http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy-and-society/why-covid-19-misinformation-works-5542/ http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy-and-society/the-problem-of-political-despair-5573/   Feb. 2021   The Covid-19 pandemic and populist discontent, by Andre Krouwel.   The Netherlands is known worldwide for its ‘polder-democracy’, the deep social and political tradition of consultations with all stakeholders before policies are implemented, making opposition constructive and peaceful. So it was all the more surprising when, at the end of January 2021, riots broke out in eleven Dutch cities after the right-wing Rutte government introduced a curfew to curb high levels of Covid-19 infections in the Netherlands.   The first violence occurred in small religious communities like Urk, a traditional fisher-village in the East of the country. Due to a tight-knit community, large families, a manual-labour oriented economy with much social contact and their refusal to stop church gatherings, its population was hit hard by the pandemic. In particular young ‘Urkers’, known for less pious behaviour during weekends, set fire to the local Covid-testing facility and got into a fight with the police.   In smaller communities in the South – such as Stein, Limburg – intoxicated youngsters also found ‘Dutch courage’ and started to riot against the ‘dictatorship’. Larger cities, like Amsterdam, Eindhoven and Enschede, then followed suit. In the latter, even the local hospital was attacked and riot police had to came out in full force to enforce the curfew. How could it come to this?   Dutch populism   In recent decades, the cultural and economic fabric of Dutch ‘consensus-democracy’ has been unravelling under populist rhetoric that eroded trust in traditional institutions and authorities. Like other populists across Europe, Geert Wilders (Freedom Party, PVV) and his even more extremist populist brethren Thierry Baudet (Forum for Democracy, FvD) argue that preventive measures like a curfew ‘go against freedom’, which was ‘ignored’ by the ‘political cartel’ of government and constructive opposition parties.   On his Twitter account, Baudet fulminated that his party would continue to oppose this ‘absurd freedom-restricting measure’. Such anti-establishment messaging resonates well with the dark coalition of conspiracy believers, anti-vaxxers and the extreme-right that was forged during the corona pandemic.   This coalition peddles their disinformation on social media, creating a toxic mix of discontent and distrust that fuelled the violent protests. While the political right, and even more the extremist populists often portray themselves as the parties of ‘law and order’, they frequently and consistently undermine democratic and constitutional rules, legal authority and freedom of the press.   While condemning the violence in Urk and elsewhere, Baudet and Wilders portrayed the entire political elite as a uniform cartel of ‘traitors of the real interests of the people’ and depicted practical and proven measures such as mask-wearing, shop closures and limits on social interaction as unacceptable restrictions on freedoms and the first step to a ‘dictatorship’.   While at other times the political right shouts loudest to have the police and even army strike down protests, they now portrayed the restoration of law and order by local authorities as authoritarian.   Meanwhile, Wilders and Baudet in particular have been sowing doubt about the seriousness of the pandemic or outright denied the deadliness of the virus circulating suggestions that ‘the statistics cannot be trusted’ and the government is deliberately destroying people’s livelihood.   Needless to say, the populists also blame mainstream media for ‘consciously exaggerating the seriousness of the pandemic’, just like the ‘lies they tell about the climate crisis’. The state and public broadcasters like the NOS are portrayed as ‘state propaganda machines’ rather than a free and critical press.   The Covid-19 pandemic and populist discontent   In a study on compliance with the measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus, my colleagues and I found a clear pattern of political orientations with the willingness to adhere to government regulations, trust in institutions and support for the policies to alleviate economic hardship. The more a Dutch person places her- or himself to the political right, the less likely they are to comply with the measures. While also on the extreme left there is opposition, the hard-core resistance to preventive measures and policies is found on the extreme conservative (and religious) right corner of the Dutch political spectrum.   People with more extremist right-wing and conservative orientations were more likely to think that the economic impact is too detrimental to justify policies aimed at reducing infection rates. In their opposition, extremists link deep-seated economic and political dissatisfaction to resentment against the pandemic measures. A (small) part of the population does not see these measures as a protection for others, but as a further restriction of rights and taking away of freedom. Thus, the Covid-19 pandemic flows seamlessly into populist discontent.   However, a deeper-lying cause for the rise in extremism, populism and polarisation in Western societies is found in economic and social tectonic shifts. Much of the anxieties and insecurities found among broad segments of society results from a power shift to a new, more multicultural generation. These young people are more tolerant towards multicultural society with more fluid and acquired identities.   At the same time, we see older generations – with more static and ascribed identities – experiencing feelings of the loss of status and power. Moreover, they fear there is no longer a solid floor and sense a profound loss of economic security and well-being – after decades of stagnant wages and pensions, cuts in healthcare and other social services.   This ‘squeezed class’ has become mentally trapped between the fear of a further economic collapse and that social progress is no longer possible for themselves and their children. Many of them link economic insecurity – reinforced by the pandemic – with negative attitudes towards (labour) immigrants and refugees. It is a more complex state of mind, but it all boils down to an experience of society and the distribution of wealth as unjust, which is reinforced by a small, puissant and rich upper stratum.   These lower and middle-class anxieties are politically expressed by extremist and populist anti-system movements such as those of Trump, Wilders and Baudet, who conjure up visions of a glorious past when the ‘white’ population was economically and culturally dominant.   Amplified by hysterical and deceitful social media messaging – including micro-targeting of susceptible groups – populists do not formulate actual policies or implement their ideas into practical steps towards helping their followers: their political project exists solely of a constant and ever deepening cultural war against the ‘globalists’, ‘socialists’ and ‘traitors of the real people’. Clearly, this is a recipe for a violent uprising.   While the uprising in the Netherlands contrast sharply to what happened in Washington – very few Dutch people own guns – the sentiments are strikingly similar. Importantly, the group size of hardened opponents of pandemic measures in the Netherlands is still quite small, but the mentality and mind-set that there a ‘war’ is raging and that ‘the country is going in the wrong direction’ is much more wide-spread. Once violent extreme right-wing groups get involved and start organising the angry mobs, as the one that forced its way into the American Capitol on 6 January, we will enter new stage of democratic decline.   * Andre Krouwel is Professor of Comparative Politics, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam   http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy/the-next-stage-of-dutch-populism-4963/ http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy-and-society/the-consequences-of-neoliberal-capitalism-in-eastern-europe-5401   May 2020   COVID-19 and Minorities: A Test for Our Humanity, by Joshua Castellino - Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International   The hold of the pandemic over people and economies across the world highlights two clear messages.   First, while the virus is potent, its ability to kill is weaponised by poor governance, yielding vastly different outcomes in similar circumstances. Egalitarian societies with the best candidate to govern (many women led) have fared better; societies where 'strongmen' seized power based on a rhetoric of fear, find themselves out of their depth in tackling issues that require skill and wisdom.   Second, how you experience the virus remains an accident of birth. While proximity to power and wealth is no guarantee against contagion, the flow of information, remedies and facilities generate different outcomes than for those far from sites of power.   We know the virus will kill many, disproportionally affecting the vulnerable, and societies have been alert to this, ensuring extra protection for the elderly, and those with underlying health conditions. But this is not the only kind of vulnerability that exists.   The last few years have seen our political space filled with the politics of division and hate. The formula is straightforward: find someone different, turn the majority against them, claim the levers of power, access the wealth beyond.   Leaders who trade on division and hate are not new they blight our goriest history pages. Their traction now is driven by two interrelated challenges: exceeding planetary boundaries creating grave existential uncertainties while increasing mechanization and depriving people of livelihoods.   The result is an angry mass unsure of how to survive, easily goaded into hate by powerful interests that generate narratives that speak to their anger and control their actions.   If these interests had solutions to climate change and job creation, the hate may be deemed a necessary, if unsavoury collateral. But they seek control for its own sake, making the most of the 'good times' while they last, not investing in long-term visions seeking to reorient societies to combat new realities.   This politics of hate, creating an us and them stands blatantly exposed by Coronavirus. Entrenched ossified structural discrimination has kept certain communities within our societies beyond the reach of rights.   They may not have shelters to stay home in; may not be able to access life-saving information to prevent spread; may not live in places where social distancing is possible and often live in subsistence conditions where lock-downs will kill them from hunger before the virus.   If exposed to contagion, they face another set of problems: lack of facilities for isolation; desperate imperatives to keep working to feed themselves and dependents; knowledge they will be sent to the back of the queue (if let into it at all) as overstretched health systems prioritize us over them, all driven by hate that has become endemic to societies, permeating mass consciousness.   At Minority Rights Group we have been working hard since the commencement of the pandemic. Our 160 partners globally represent the form of vulnerability I am referring to. They are out of preventative messaging loops due to media reach or language barriers, live in conditions that will not secure containment, are dependent on eking out subsistence from collapsing economies, and are terrified about relying on health systems that will discriminate against them.   Our activists around the world, who in 'normal times' see themselves fighting for system change to ensure the rights and dignity of everyone, irrespective of the accident of their birth, are now striving to pivot programmes to safeguard against the spread of the virus to vulnerable communities.   But there is room for many more to step in and help in generating the collaborative approach our governments seem incapable of articulating.   German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called it right when he said this virus was a test of our humanity. Coming through it while leaving no one behind is the only route to success, even if this goes against the grain of recent hate politics.   Those leading the health response including the WHO need to listen to minority experiences in designing appropriate preventative guidance.   Telling communities in cramped environments to 'socially distance' is akin to sending out advice about restricting use of private swimming pools: irrelevant if you do not have one.   Generating bespoke guidance incorporating national health authorities, ensuring they administer services without prejudice and cater to different needs, is key to the salience of any advice, utility and adherence, but also in mitigation and eradication efforts.   Organisations such as the World Food Programme and the Red Cross/Red Crescent need to locate vulnerable groups and ensure they feature in their humanitarian efforts.   Governments need to safeguard against stigmatization, pay heed to vulnerability in directing health authorities and emergency services to their side, and ensure that health coverage is not dependent on individual status.   For many this is a material change from the usual blame game, the hollowness of which emphasizes the poverty of skill. Make no mistake, the death toll caused by this virus will come down to governance decisions. If left festering among scapegoated vulnerable communities, its presence will be prolonged creating systemic economic and social breakdown.   It is equally imperative to sensitise the public to document discrimination against vulnerable groups, so organisations can react swiftly, and spread word about this form of vulnerability so we can collectively protect communities in the short term and become conscious of how steadily we have been programmed to fail this test of humanity.   Beyond COVID-19 we must make our voices count in building inclusive societies where narrow identity confines will not determine our collective achievements, and where hate politics is identified as an anachronistic ideology that will not serve us in our collective hour of need when faced with these kinds of crises.   http://minorityrights.org/2020/05/14/covid-test-for-humanity/ http://www.cesr.org/confronting-covid-how-civil-society-responding-across-countries-minority-rights http://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide   * UN Guidance note on countering Covid 19 related Hate Speech: http://bit.ly/2M1hgDs Visit the related web page
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