P

rominent left-leaning leaders from across the world are convening in Barcelona this weekend in a coordinated effort to strengthen progressive alliances and push back against the growing influence of far-right movements globally.

The gatherings are spearheaded by Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who are co-hosting a series of high-level meetings bringing together political leaders, activists, and civil society representatives.

The initiative, dubbed the “Global Progressive Mobilization,” aims to rally support for multilateralism, democratic institutions, and coordinated action on issues such as climate change and social inequality. Organizers say the meetings will culminate in a joint declaration outlining shared priorities and strategies.

The summit comes amid shifting global dynamics, including policy changes under U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration’s cuts to humanitarian aid, military actions, and critical stance toward NATO have unsettled traditional alliances and prompted renewed debate over international cooperation.

Prominent leaders to attend

Several prominent leaders are expected to attend, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum’s visit marks the first trip by a Mexican president to Spain since 2018, following years of diplomatic tensions related to historical grievances over Spain’s colonial legacy.

A parallel event organized by Spain’s ruling Socialist Party is set to draw around 3,000 participants, including current and former heads of state, hundreds of mayors, trade unions, and grassroots organizations. The two-day gathering will focus on mobilizing support for progressive policies and strengthening political networks across borders.

The meetings also reflect concerns among left-wing leaders following the rise of far-right parties in recent years, particularly after gains in the 2024 European Parliament elections. Organizers describe the Barcelona summit as a response to that trend, aiming to demonstrate that alternative political pathways remain viable.

International cooperation is important

Speaking ahead of the event, Sánchez emphasized the importance of international cooperation among progressive forces. “It is important that progressive parties and governments unite to show that there is something beyond domestic politics,” he said during a recent visit to China, where he met President Xi Jinping to discuss closer ties.

The summit follows recent political developments in Europe, including the electoral defeat of Hungarian nationalist leader Viktor Orbán, which Sánchez has pointed to as evidence that far-right momentum can be challenged.

Organizers say the overarching goal is to present a unified front against what they describe as “extreme right-wing movements” and to reinforce commitments to democratic governance and international collaboration.

The Barcelona meetings are expected to conclude with a joint statement from participating leaders, outlining coordinated efforts to address global challenges and strengthen progressive political movements worldwide.

(Source: Reuters)

I

n early October, the ANO party won the Czech Republic’s parliamentary elections with the support of more than a third of the electorate. The Spolu Union, the largest party in the ruling center-right coalition, lost power after dropping 4.4 percent in the vote count compared to the previous elections. More importantly, the far-right ANO party’s first-place finish has created a political situation in which no coalition is possible without it.

Following the October 3–4, 2025 elections, discussions intensified regarding the ANO party and its leader, Andrej Babiš. In the Czech Republic, a member of the European Union, there is increasing speculation about a possible political reversal in the event of an ANO-led government due to the party’s stance on the EU. ANO chairman Andrej Babiš has begun indirect preliminary talks with the far-right parties Motoristé Sobě (Drivers’ Party) and SPD (Freedom and Direct Democracy) regarding the formation of a coalition or a minority government supported by these parties. However, both parties being discussed as potential coalition partners for ANO have drawn attention due to their far-right and racist statements.

The SPD’s opposition to the EU and the Drivers’ Party’s anti-EU stance have already raised doubts about the potential new coalition or minority government, despite the latter’s claims to the contrary. The most striking aspect of these doubts is the ANO party’s position. Prior to the 2024 European Parliament elections, ANO was part of the liberal ALDE group. However, after the 2024 elections, ANO joined the newly formed far-right, racist Patriots for Europe group. After meeting with the Czech president on November 3, 2025, the ANO party leader will most likely be tasked with forming a government and will begin negotiations to form a coalition or minority government with the two aforementioned parties. Europe’s first far-right, racist coalition or partnership now appears likely to be formed in the heart of Europe.

Fragmented and divided politics

Looking back at the period before the most recent elections, the differences in Czech politics become more apparent. The ANO party, which won the elections, does not have a long political history. Established in 2011, it held six ministerial posts in the Bohuslav Sobotka-led coalition government from 2013 to 2017. Under Babiš’s leadership, ANO became the leading party in the 2017 Czech Republic elections, winning nearly 30 percent of the vote. However, this also led to a political stalemate. Although ANO had previously been part of a center-right coalition with the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, no party was willing to form a coalition with it after the 2017 election.

Other political movements focused more on Babiš himself than on the ANO party. Despite these reactions, ANO formed a minority government with the external support of the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party. While receiving support from the far right in government, ANO also cooperated with the far-right SPD and the Communist Party in parliament. In mid-2018, however, ANO formed a coalition with the Social Democrats (CSSD) and established a minority government with external support from the Communist Party, which lasted until 2021.

Although ANO has been classified as an anti-EU party since its inception, it was part of the ALDE group, composed of European Liberals, in the European Parliament from 2014 to 2024. Following the most recent European Parliament elections, however, its inclusion in the newly formed Patriots for Europe group appears to be the main reason why a clear political assessment of this party—set to govern the Czech Republic in the coming period—remains difficult.

Another noteworthy point is Steve Bannon’s earlier involvement with extreme political movements in the country. He was one of the first to mention the Patriots across Europe. In 2018, Bannon traveled extensively throughout Europe, attempting to organize far-right political movements with high voter potential and broad appeal to large constituencies in various countries. Bannon served as a chief advisor during Trump’s first presidential term and stated at a conference that the future of Europe would lie with an elite group of European patriots. Prior to the 2019 European Parliament elections, Bannon organized programs and conferences with leading far-right political movements in Europe. Prague was one of the European capitals Bannon visited during this process.

Steve Bannon was received by then-Czech president Miloš Zeman in September 2018. Bannon shared his experiences from the U.S. elections with Zeman for the 2019 European Parliament elections. Petr Bystron, a member of the German Federal Parliament and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), accompanied Bannon on this visit.

It is also noteworthy that former Czech president Miloš Zeman has increasingly shifted to the right and embraced anti-immigrant and anti-Islam political views since leaving the Social Democratic Party (CSSD), which he once led.

Brussels tense and cautious

As the leader of a political movement shifting from liberal to conservative values, Andrej Babiš ran his campaign under the slogan “Czech Republic First,” employing a tactic similar to Trump’s “America First” motto. Babiš won the election by prioritizing the interests of Czech citizens in his political discourse, including cutting off support to Ukraine during previous government terms. He frequently stated that he would prioritize the social interests of his citizens and that their needs came first. He emphasized his determination to end the supply of ammunition to Ukraine via the Czech Republic.

Experts say that Babiš clearly changed his political stance after the 2024 European Parliament elections, adopting a pro-Russian position within the EU and becoming one of Russia’s “Trojan horses.” The Czech Republic’s vocal objections to EU policies—alongside Slovakia and Hungary within the Visegrad Group—have drawn attention. Previously viewed as a reliable partner for Brussels under Prime Minister Fiala, the Czech Republic is now under Babiš’s leadership.

The presence of the Drivers’ Party (Motoristé Sobě) and Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) within the Patriots for Europe group as potential coalition partners is causing concern in Brussels regarding the Czech Republic’s future direction. Both parties are anti-EU and pro-Russia in their rhetoric and oppose aid to Ukraine. Brussels is also concerned that the Czech Republic’s new government may drift further from the European path. Together with countries such as Slovakia and Hungary, it could contribute to the expansion of an anti-EU movement.

The Czech Republic: Where the roads cross

The Czech Republic is located in the heart of Europe and is a member state of strategic importance to the EU in every respect. The Gazela pipeline, which transports natural gas from the Nord Stream pipelines to southern Germany and other Central European countries, gives the country strategic importance for European energy security. During the Fiala government, efforts were made to reduce dependence on Russian gas by highlighting alternative LNG supplies from Qatar and the United States via Poland. However, the lack of serious initiatives in this regard has led to increased energy costs due to supply shortages or transportation challenges in this economically struggling country.

Furthermore, the governance of the Czech Republic—an important NATO member—is significant in terms of Europe’s energy and military security, as well as the new groupings emerging in the EU political arena. Although ANO leader Babiš has made pro-EU and pro-NATO statements, EU leaders in Brussels remain unconvinced.

The future of the far right in the European political arena

The victory of a party that founded the Patriots for Europe group—which includes Europe’s far-right and racist parties and was established after the 2024 European Parliament elections—in an important EU country is also significant for the future of the far right or populist right. It is concerning that a party that can be categorically described as populist and right-wing, yet appears liberal in its rhetoric, is turning to the far right for power and embracing far-right and racist political discourse. However, focusing specifically on the Czech Republic, the loss of votes by far-right and racist parties such as the SPD suggests that relatively moderate right-wing parties could rise to power in other countries by adopting the rhetoric of the far right.

Moreover, these new political developments indicate an increase in political movements within EU member states that prioritize national interests over European interests. The EU bureaucracy itself is partly responsible for this situation. For a long time, EU bureaucrats and leaders have failed to foster a cohesive European identity, which has become increasingly diluted. Negotiations over issues not inherently European or not directly related to Europe, coupled with the vilification of national leaders and politicians defending their countries’ national interests against the EU in recent years, have paved the way for far-right or right-wing populist political movements in national elections. This has contributed to a shift from the center-right to the political fringe. This is precisely what is happening in the Czech Republic.

Following the October 3–4, 2025 elections, the Czech Republic is approaching a political turning point. The country continues to experience polarization and political fragmentation in an environment where the balance of power has shifted to the far right. Ultimately, Andrej Babiš is the leader of the party that was elected. Whether or not the EU favors Babiš, it must engage with him politically. It is within the EU’s power to leverage this relationship to its advantage. Time will tell whether Babiš—whom President Pavel will task with forming a government on November 3, 2025—will be truly pro-European or whether he will distance himself from his European partners. This new situation is of vital importance to the stability of Central Europe and the EU.

(Originally published in Turkish by Kriter)

I

n a political shift that reflects a broader trend in Europe, Portugal’s centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) emerged victorious in Sunday’s general election, according to the party’s leader, Luis Montenegro. However, the path to forming a government remains uncertain, as Montenegro ruled out negotiations with the surging far-right Chega party, whose parliamentary representation quadrupled to at least 48 seats.

The rise of Chega has given the combined right a majority in the 230-seat legislature. This outcome signifies an unexpected move towards the far right in Portugal, a country that has historically been considered immune to the rise of right-wing populism in Europe. The election results echo a wider trend expected to manifest in gains for far-right parties across the continent in the upcoming European elections in June.

Pedro Nuno Santos, the leader of the left-leaning Socialist Party (PS), conceded defeat after a closely contested election. The PS, in power since 2015, secured the second position by a narrow margin. Montenegro, addressing supporters, emphasized that the AD had won the election and called for responsible actions by parties in the new parliament to fulfill the wishes of the Portuguese people.

A “negative alliance”

While Santos ruled out supporting the AD’s platform, which includes across-the-board tax cuts, Montenegro expressed hope that the PS and Chega would not form a “negative alliance” to thwart the desired government. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is yet to formally invite the AD leader to form a government, a step that Montenegro anticipates.

The AD, along with conservative allies in the Madeira region, won a total of at least 79 seats, surpassing the PS’s 77. Four seats were pending attribution after the final count of ballots from abroad.

The far-right Chega party campaigned on an anti-establishment platform, focusing on eliminating corruption and expressing concerns about what it perceives as “excessive” immigration. Chega’s leader, Andre Ventura, asserted that the election results demonstrated the Portuguese people’s desire for a government comprising the AD and Chega.

A severe housing crisis

Amid concerns of potential political instability, AD supporters voiced their expectations at the election night party. Paula Medeiros stated that there was “no doubt that instability will be constant.” The PS and the Social Democratic Party (PSD), leading the newly formed AD, have alternated in power since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974.

Key issues dominating the campaign included a severe housing crisis, low wages, healthcare challenges, and widespread corruption. Despite these challenges, Portugal, under Socialist leadership, achieved solid economic growth and budget surpluses, earning praise from Brussels and investors. The AD’s approach to fiscal prudence will be closely monitored as it navigates forming a government in this new political landscape.

Source: Reuters

A

new study has brought to light the pervasive nature of racism faced by Muslim men in Germany, with over 40% reporting experiences of racial discrimination in their daily lives. The findings, released on November 7, by the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (Dezim) in Berlin, indicate that 41.2% of Muslim men feel affected by racism.

The report underscores discrimination encounters in public offices and interactions with authorities, including the police. A notable 39% of Muslim men recounted more frequent experiences of discrimination within the police force, while a significant 51% reported adverse experiences when dealing with public offices and authorities.

Muslim women also face substantial discrimination, with 46% reporting similar experiences in offices and authorities. The figure drops to 25% when referring to interactions with the police.

Discrimination in Germany’s healthcare system

The study also highlighted discrimination in Germany’s healthcare system. Frank Kalter, the director of the Dezim Institute, noted that individuals who are racially characterized often receive inferior appointments and their grievances are less acknowledged.

This alarming revelation comes at a time when Germany’s government, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, is expressing concern over rising anti-Muslim racism in the aftermath of the recent Gaza war that began on October 7. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit stated that any attacks on Muslims, whether for religious reasons or otherwise, are “absolutely unacceptable.”

The nearly 5 million Muslims residing in Germany have an inherent right to protection, he asserted at a news conference in Berlin.

Last week, the Berlin-based Alliance Against Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate (CLAIM) warned of escalating anti-Muslim racism amidst the intensifying conflict between Israel and Palestine. Rima Hanano, head of CLAIM, emphasized the urgent need to address the uptick in anti-Muslim racism, which threatens social cohesion.

CLAIM has documented numerous instances of anti-Muslim threats, violence, and discrimination in a short span, including attacks on mosques. The organization highlighted that many incidents likely go unreported, particularly in the realm of online hate speech.

The NGO advocates for comprehensive measures to counter anti-Muslim racism and safeguard those affected. “It is imperative for our democracy and societal cohesion to actively combat anti-Muslim racism, antisemitism, and other misanthropic ideologies,” CLAIM asserts, emphasizing the immediate need for action.

The recent study and calls from advocacy groups serve as a stark reminder of the challenges facing Muslim communities in Germany and the importance of concerted efforts to foster an inclusive and equitable society.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Narendra Modi is roaring to the world that India is a worthy contender on the global scene. India has come to the fore with its massive economy, recent successes at the space front, potential megaproject linking India, the Middle East and Europe via rail and sea, and playing the role of a distanced ally towards to the competing world powers: the U.S. and China.

All eyes were on the G20 summit taking place in New Delhi this year, and Modi surely wanted to make a good impression. Schools and offices were shut, roads were blocked, and street vendors were removed. Even whole slums near the venue were covered in tarpaulin! Ironically, Modi’s speeches repeatedly described India as the world’s largest democracy and the ‘voice of the Global South’.

However, behind this sterilized facade lies discrimination, oppression, and erasure— on brand with the Hindu nationalism fueled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Numerous attacks on minority communities sweep through the country, including demolitions of Muslim houses, mosque and church attacks, grave desecrations and violent killings. Meanwhile, the government takes every step to define India as a Hindu nation.

In this month’s book bundle, we examine how Modi’s India both oppresses and suppresses its minority citizens. Through books that explain the political dynamics in India, the impact of state-sanctioned violence, and the silencing of critical voices, we observe how the world’s largest democracy goes wrong.

In the book Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, Christophe Jaffrelot delves into the intricate dynamics of Indian politics over the last two decades, with a particular focus on the rise of Hindu nationalism coupled with national-populism, largely attributed to Narendra Modi’s leadership. This confluence of factors has not only secured Modi’s electoral success, starting in Gujarat and extending to the entire country but has also transformed the very nature of democracy in India.

Jaffrelot’s work spotlights Modi’s ability to captivate a significant portion of the Indian populace by offering promises of development while simultaneously exploiting ethno-religious fault lines within the electorate. This national-populism is marked by Modi’s personalized political style, characterized by direct communication with voters through various channels, effectively saturating the public discourse.

To shed light on the consequences of this political shift, Jaffrelot conducts original interviews across India, revealing a troubling evolution toward what he terms an “ethnic democracy.” In this model, the majority community is equated with the nation, while religious minorities, specifically Muslims and Christians, find themselves relegated to the status of second-class citizens, vulnerable to harassment by ‘vigilante’ groups.

Furthermore, Jaffrelot elucidates how the political landscape in India has developed authoritarian tendencies for various reasons. In its quest for power not only at the national level but also in the states, the government has centralized authority at the expense of federalism, eroding the very institutions that once served as checks and balances, including India’s Supreme Court.

In sum, Modi’s India showcases a government, supported by popular mandate, stifles dissent and grows increasingly intolerant of ethnic and religious minorities. The book provides essential insights into politics, nationalism, and populism in contemporary India.

Christophe Jaffrelot, Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2021) ISBN: 9780691206806, 656 pages

In Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities, Moyukh Chatterjee examines the haunting memory of the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat, India, where armed Hindu mobs unleashed brutal attacks on Muslims in broad daylight, resulting in a staggering death toll that shocked the nation. Chatterjee’s investigation goes beyond the horrific events themselves, aiming to dissect how such highly visible political violence against minority communities serves as a catalyst for profound transformations in the domains of law, public culture, and power dynamics.

Contrary to the expectation that exposing state-sanctioned anti-Muslim violence would lead to its suppression, Chatterjee argues that these incidents actually set the stage for a fundamental shift in India, pushing it toward a Hindu supremacist state. He contends that examining the responses of both the state and civil society to this violence offers crucial insights into the inherent features of modern democracy, where riots and pogroms become tools for molding a society defined by a vulnerable minority and a dominant majority.

Chatterjee’s exploration focuses on multiple facets, including courtroom procedures, police archives, legal activism, and mainstream media coverage. Through this multifaceted approach, he constructs a theory of violence as a form of governance, effectively engineering minority populations.

Composing Violence invites readers to grapple with the profound and unsettling implications of anti-Muslim violence in India. Chatterjee’s meticulous analysis paints a picture of how violence can shape the course of democracy, raising profound questions about the fragility of minority rights and the complex interplay between power and prejudice in contemporary societies.

Moyukh Chatterjee, Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities (Duke University Press, 2023) ISBN: 978-1-4780-1966-4, 184 pages

What happens to those who dare question the injustices of the Modi regime? The book How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? provides a piercing examination of the authoritarian regime under Narendra Modi in India, where the suppression of critical voices and the silencing of dissent have become central objectives for the ruling BJP party. Their ethno-nationalist aspiration of establishing an exclusively ‘Hindu’ India, involves targeting anyone who dares to voice questions or opposition.

Authors Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia present a unique perspective highlight the experiences of political prisoners. Their approach combines astute political and legal analysis with firsthand accounts, offering readers an in-depth exploration of the subtle acts of resistance that occur both within and beyond prison walls, involving not only the prisoners themselves but also their families. The narrative unravels a tale of institutional decay and the erosion of fundamental rights.

The book spotlights the stories of those who have been falsely accused of inciting the Bhima Koregaon violence, student leaders who have protested against the discriminatory citizenship law of 2020, and activists associated with the Pinjra Tod movement. By weaving together these voices, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? celebrates the remarkable bravery, unwavering humanity, and moral integrity of individuals who have been incarcerated for their unwavering solidarity with marginalized and oppressed communities.

In a world where the struggle for dissent and the preservation of civil liberties are ever more vital, this book serves as a powerful testament to the resilience of those who refuse to be silenced, while painting a vivid picture of the ongoing battle for justice and equality in India.

Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged?: Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (Pluto books, 2023) ISBN 9780745347981, 216 pages

F

ar-right and racist ideology in Europe has a deep-rooted history and has shown the ability to transform itself into a political movement through political parties. Due to the basic functions of political parties in pluralist democracies, namely representation, agenda setting, public relations, awareness raising, and aspirations to power, political party status is a tremendous tool for the social organization of far-right and racist movements.

Especially in recent years, far-right parties have experienced a serious upward trend in European politics and have strengthened their presence in all regions of the European geography. Far-right parties have gradually gained popular support in several European countries, especially in Germany, France, and Italy, and have achieved significant electoral success. They have thus succeeded in becoming integrated actors in European countries’ political institutions.

Political parties are an important instrument for the functioning of democracy. They represent different segments of society, formulate policies, and seek to reflect the will of the people through elections. The inability of left-wing, liberal, and conservative political parties to offer convincing alternative solutions to the electorates’ problems, and the fact that they are too fragmented and divided to form coalitions, is seen by far-right parties as a window of opportunity to gain power in the coming years.

Ideology of European far-right parties

Although the ideologies of far-right parties in different parts of Europe differ to some extent, they are based on common points and references. These can be defined under four headings:

– Nationalism and cultural identity: Far-right and racist parties emphasize nationalism and cultural identity, placing great importance on the superiority and interests of a country or nation. Far-right parties try to attract support by focusing on national pride, national values, and cultural identity. They usually seek to unite society under the guise of a “sense of belonging” by distinguishing between “us” and “them.”

– Authoritarianism and strong leadership: Strong authoritarian leaders influence their followers by advocating discriminatory and authoritarian policies. They try to exploit society’s security concerns by emphasizing issues such as safety, order, and harsh punishment. Authoritarian leadership is used by the far right to achieve its political goals and to govern society.

– Racism and anti-immigrant sentiment: Far-right parties adopt ideological elements such as racism and anti-immigrant sentiments and show discrimination and hostility towards other groups, while defending the superiority of their own ethnic or national group. Anti-immigrant sentiment is central to the policies of these parties and often includes harsh restrictions on immigrants, racial or cultural discrimination, and policies of ethnic cleansing.

– Populism: Far-right and racist parties often use populist rhetoric. Populism aims to mobilize support by exploiting people’s emotional and economic concerns. Far-right parties present simplistic messages and answers to appeal to broad sections of the population.

The ideologies of far-right parties are based on elements such as nationalism, authoritarianism, racism, and anti-immigrant sentiments. These ideologies can spread under the influence of factors such as social discontent, economic crises, cultural conflicts, and security concerns.

Following another devastating war in Europe, destruction and humanitarian disasters were omnipresent across the continent. The suffering caused by the war led to discontent and insecurity in society, and political instability and economic difficulties paved the way for the emergence of far-right parties. Meanwhile the banning of ideologies such as Fascism and Nazism caused some far-right groups to operate underground.

Thus, Europe’s dominant countries, especially Germany, did not accommodate far-right parties into their political systems and ensured that they remained marginalized for a long time. During this period, far-right parties transformed themselves in order to win votes in elections, taking into account local social developments and the cyclical variability of world politics.

Until the 1980s, neofascist political parties generally carried on the mission of the Fascist and Nazi parties of the past. Labor migration in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s led to an increase in the immigrant population. With the periodic economic crises since the 1990s, some segments of society have become concerned about immigrants and different cultures. Economic uncertainties such as rising unemployment, ever-worsening financial difficulties, and income inequality have led to anti-immigrant sentiments among the local populations.

Since the 2000s, there has been a new wave of migration to Europe and an increase in the foreign population on the continent due to terrorist attacks, economic problems, and the Arab Spring. Although far-right parties have not completely changed their neofascist formation so as to turn this dynamic into an opportunity, they have mobilized and expanded their existing support base by resorting to populist politics that rely on social discontent and concerns, anti-immigration sentiments, and xenophobia in order to reach large masses. Now, far-right parties have changed their guise and softened their neofascist and Nazi rhetoric in order to win the support of non-radicalized conservative masses. Islamophobia and anti-immigrant policies against “non-white” immigrants have increased their popularity and begun to win votes.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, far-right parties have undergone their second evolution. True to their racist and anti-immigrant agenda, they have declared war on the globalizing world. Globalization refers to worldwide economic, political, social, and cultural interaction and integration, including elements such as advances in communication and transport technologies, free trade and investment policies, and the strengthening of international institutions. Globalization also features drawbacks such as income inequality, social and cultural conflicts, environmental degradation, and inequitable distribution of resources. The main reasons why far-right parties oppose globalization are nationalism, concerns about the loss of national sovereignty, economic effects (loss of wealth), and the preservation of cultural identity. While globalization brings about economic and cultural change, some parts of society react to this change.

Far-right parties, which have become the self-proclaimed “protectors” of the masses that find themselves on the losing end of the new globalized world, aim to convince the isolated masses that there are easy solutions to their problems through populist discourses and by mobilizing their thoughts and emotions against a specific enemy. Far-right parties, with their hatred of Islam and immigrants, and their stance against globalization, have gained serious momentum with the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War.

The rise of far-right parties in Europe

The rise of far-right parties in Europe has attracted attention and concern in recent years. Understanding the factors behind this rise will help us to understand the popularity and influence of far-right parties. Factors such as migration, economic uncertainty, cultural concerns, emphasis on national identity, and political crises are important factors influencing the rise of the far right.

Migration is an important factor in the rise of extreme right-wing parties. The large waves of migration and the so-called refugee crises in Europe have raised security concerns and fears of cultural conflict in certain milieus. Far-right parties use the issue of migration to spread fear and anxiety among the population and advocate harsh and restrictive immigration policies.

Economic insecurity and social injustice are other factors that have increased the popularity of far-right parties. Problems such as economic recession, unemployment, and income inequality drive people towards far-right parties. In particular, the loss of people’s welfare due to the global economic devastation caused by the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War have led to the far right’s emphasis on economic nationalism and protectionist policies finding a response in society.

Cultural concerns in Europe and the emphasis on national identity can also be linked to the rise of far-right parties. The issues of cultural diversity and the protection of cultural values are an important concern for a significant part of society. By emphasizing national identity, far-right parties exploit cultural concerns and advocate cultural protectionism.

T

he young electorate and first-time voters seem to be shying away from voting centrist, socialist, or even green. The year 2023 could be a year of change as voting for a far-right party appears to be the new “cool” in Europe.

Profiling the young European electorate

Young people in Europe used to be very selective when it came to choosing which party to vote for. In 2019, young Europeans prioritized human rights and democracy, climate change, green energy, and sustainable development. These preferences led to the formation of coalitions between centrist and green blocs.

Accordingly, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy gained their big-tent governments thanks to young voters. These governments’ policies such as lax border controls, generous public spending on social inclusion, and social security were legitimized, reflecting the characteristics of the young European electorate.

However, recent polls in Germany and Austria have shown the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) in leading positions. Young Austrian and German voters seem to favor such far-right options. At the same time, 23% of young Italians helped the far-right Brotherhood of Italy secure the government in 2022. Nordic voters also had their moment of truth: 22% of young Swedes went to the polls to vote for a right-wing populist party.

Economic concerns leading young voters to the far right

The energy crisis in Europe was the first event to prompt a change in electoral preferences. As a consequence of European sanctions against Russia, gas prices rose drastically. By the last quarter of 2022, gas prices in Western Europe had risen by between 450% and 750%. European households started to struggle to cover the cost of the most crucial utilities. In 2022, the quarterly gas bill of an average Italian household cost up to 52,000 euros.

The economy has been the main drive for the shift to the far right. According to the European Policy Center, transformation processes related to economy, migration, and energy are setting the ground for the decline of mainstream parties. Right-wing populist leaders incorporate price changes in their political discourse. Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, asked his voters at a rally why young Europeans should pay the price of a pointless sanction against Russia when Russian oligarchs are not suffering.

But, it is unwise to think that economic hardship has led the youth directly to the far right. Right-wing parties often have cliques and factions within themselves. Even the most far-right AfD has a moderate faction, the Alternative Mitte (“Alternative Midpoint” in German), which prioritizes economic inequality over cultural issues. This moderate faction became the main attraction for young German voters, especially in the eastern provinces.

Young people in the east voiced their concerns over the lack of social infrastructure as they struggle to find work and are forced to move west. Recent polls confirm this view with 47% of AfD voters supporting their party only to protest against the ruling coalition on economic issues.

Greek youth feel forced to vote for right-wing popularism

Young voters seem to have a vivid memory of past events. In voting for the 2023 parliamentary elections, young Greeks remembered the catastrophic debt crisis: they harshly punished the centrist Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the socialist Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) for the crisis, while 33% of young Greeks rewarded the New Democracy party for its successful maneuvers in rescuing the country from the crisis. New Democracy’s promises of tax cuts also swayed young voters.

Did this very same electorate ignore New Democracy’s mistreatment of migrants? Just two weeks before the election, hundreds of migrants died in the Ionian Sea. Despite such tragedies, young voters broke a record by making New Democracy the strongest right-wing populist party in Europe with a solid 40% of national votes. Even those who belong to anarchist youth subgroups decided to vote for the party for financial stability.

The future of young far-right voters in Europe

Bill Clinton’s famous phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid,” managed to find its way into European politics. The economy has indeed played a role in shaping the preferences of Europe’s youth.  This can also be interpreted as good news: young voters are not ideologically attached to right-wing populism.

But poverty and war have put Europe’s youth between Scylla and Charybdis, making them have to choose between two evils: poverty and populism. The result has been that populism has been perceived as the lesser evil.

T

he politics surrounding guns in the United States is a deeply contentious issue that has long held a prominent place in the nation’s public discourse. Rooted in historical, cultural, and constitutional factors, the debate over gun rights and regulations has become an enduring hallmark of American politics. The sheer ubiquity of firearms, coupled with deeply ingrained beliefs about individual rights, self-defense, and the role of government, has created a complex landscape where passionate arguments clash and ideological battle lines are drawn.

In Merchants of the Right Jennifer Carlson delves into the multifaceted world of gun sellers, uncovering how their trade extends beyond the mere exchange of firearms. The book sheds light on a remarkable surge in gun purchases, which occurred amidst a confluence of extraordinary events: a once-in-a-century pandemic, widespread racial unrest, and a presidential election that shook the very foundations of American democracy. Carlson’s exploration of this phenomenon reveals how conservative political culture experienced a newfound spur, providing readers with a unique vantage point into the front lines of the ongoing culture war surrounding gun rights and an understanding of how guns became politicized.

Through extensive interviews with gun sellers across the United States, Carlson paints a vivid picture of the struggles faced by these merchants in navigating the complex intersection of guns and politics. The book reveals a frame breaking trend: While it is commonly assumed that the majority of gun owners lean conservative, new gun buyers are more likely to identify as liberal. The significant dilemma that gun sellers faced in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election was should they embrace these new liberal customers, potentially ushering in a new era of bipartisan engagement in the realm of guns, or should they solidify their position on gun politics as a conservative stronghold?

From the War on Terror to the far-right conspiracies, Islamophobia manifests in various forms. In today’s world, systemic Islamophobia continues to cast a long and dark shadow over the lives of Muslims across continents. Rooted in historical and contemporary contexts, this pervasive form of discrimination and prejudice has significant implications for individuals, communities, and societies at large.

Systemic Islamophobia operates within power structures, institutions, and cultural biases, perpetuating inequality, marginalization, and the violation of human rights. Implicitly and explicitly, Islamophobia is reinforced by various layers of society, including governments around the world.

While its manifestations may differ from one region to another, systemic Islamophobia shares commonalities across countries and societies. It operates as a product of historical legacies, geopolitical dynamics, cultural narratives, and power imbalances. It thrives in contexts where Muslims are viewed as the “Other,” perpetuating stereotypes, prejudices, and negative portrayals that undermine their rights, dignity, and societal inclusion.

The impact of systemic Islamophobia is far-reaching. Muslim individuals and communities face challenges in various domains of life, as the titles included in this Bundle will show. They experience heightened surveillance, racial profiling, and discriminatory legislation, hindering the realization of fundamental human rights and the pursuit of justice and equality. Furthermore, the interconnetedness of discrimination makes the issue even more pressing for all.

Recognizing and understanding systemic Islamophobia is essential for dismantling its deeply entrenched structures. It requires comprehensive analysis, dialogue, and collective action which this collection hopes to envoke.

The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, Race, and Islam delves into the complex and far-reaching consequences of the ‘War on Terror’ on global perceptions of Muslims. The book examines the intersection between Islamophobia, and various social, economic, and political factors that have shaped its prevalence.

The authors convincingly argue that the ‘War on Terror’ has not only intensified anti-Muslim racism but has also provided a framework that perpetuates a global Islamophobic narrative. By framing Muslims a perpetual enemy, this conflict has fostered a climate of fear and suspicion, fueling the growth of nativist and populist movements worldwide.

One of the book’s strengths lies in its comprehensive analysis of the different forms and manifestations of Islamophobia. Through an examination of localized histories, conflicts, and contemporary geopolitical realities, the authors map out the intricate ways in which Islamophobia has taken shape across the global North and South. This approach adds depth to the understanding of the diverse factors contributing to the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment.

The book offers a nuanced and comprehensive analysis of the connections between interpersonal and institutional racism. While highlighting the deeply rooted nature of Islamophobia, the book also sheds light on the activism and resistance that have emerged to confront this issue. By featuring narratives of individuals and groups challenging Islamophobia, the authors provide hope and inspiration for those seeking to combat this pervasive form of discrimination.

Naved Bakali and Farid Hafez, The rise of global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, race, and Islam (Manchester University Press 2022) ISBN: 978-1-5261-6175-8, 264 pages

Islamophobia in France: The Construction of the “Muslim Problem” presents a groundbreaking examination of the multifaceted nature of Islamophobia in the country. Authored by Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed, the book challenges the prevailing notion that Islamophobia arises solely from individual bias but rather that Islamophobia in France is deeply entrenched within existing structures of power and control.

The book sheds light on pivotal moments in French history that have contributed to the marginalization of Muslim communities. It highlights the 2004 ban on veils in schools, followed by the 2010 legislation that prohibited face-covering clothing in public spaces, primarily targeting women who wear burqas. President Emmanuel Macron’s public statements regarding the hijab’s compatibility with French ideals further illustrate the pervasive Islamophobia within the country. These cultural biases not only perpetuate discriminatory practices but also position the Muslim population as scapegoats for broader issues surrounding immigration in France.

Hajjat and Mohammed go beyond surface-level analysis to uncover the structural dimensions of Islamophobia in France. They argue that French elites strategically employ Islamophobia as a state technology to exert control and contest the presence of specific groups of postcolonial immigrants and their descendants. By exploring the data on Islamophobia and examining its functioning in contemporary French society, the authors paint a comprehensive portrait of the mechanisms through which Islamophobia operates.

Islamophobia in France is an English translation of Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed’s Islamophobie: Comment les e´lites franc¸aises fabriquent le “proble`me musulman.” and an essential contribution to the field, providing a nuanced and insightful examination of the systemic nature of Islamophobia and its consequences on Muslim communities in France.

Abdellali Hajjat and Marwan Mohammed, Islamophobia in France: The Construction of the “Muslim Problem” (University of Georgia Press, 2023) ISBN-10 0820363251, 306 pages

In The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims Khaled A. Beydoun presents an essential examination of Islamophobia from a legal and ground-up perspective. Drawing on his intellectual prowess and moral imperative, Beydoun presents a compelling analysis of the network of anti-Muslim campaigns unfolding worldwide and offers a comprehensive analysis of how Islamophobia is utilized by both democratic and authoritarian regimes to persecute Muslim populations.

The New Crusades does not shy away from challenging the established narratives. It delves into the role of the War on Terror in fueling and intensifying anti-Muslim campaigns around the world. Beydoun skillfully illustrates how Islamophobia operates as a unifying thread, perpetuating state and social bigotry and igniting hate-mongering from both liberal and right-wing factions. Through trenchant analysis and firsthand accounts from Muslims on the ground, the author brings to light the various manifestations of Islamophobia in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and beyond.

The book’s global perspective sets it apart, as Beydoun incorporates on-site experiences, interviews, and a diverse range of contexts. This approach enhances the authority of the narrative and makes it accessible and engaging for scholars, students, and the general public.

The New Crusades unravels the distinct systems of demonization and oppression that have emerged across the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Whether it is the imposition of hijab bans in France, state-sponsored hate speech and violence in India, or the existence of concentration camps in China, Beydoun examines how Islamophobia operates as a global phenomenon, perpetuating discrimination on multiple fronts.

The book powerfully reveals the unsettling reality that Islamophobia remains one of the few acceptable forms of hate in the world today. By exposing this truth, Beydoun calls attention to the urgent need for collective action against Islamophobia and its far-reaching consequences. By weaving together social science, law, and captivating narratives, the author highlights the pervasive impact of Islamophobia on Muslims across the globe.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims (University of California Press, 2023) ISBN: 9780520356306, 390 pages

In Fear of a Muslim Planet: Global Islamophobia in the New World Order Arsalan Iftikhar, a renowned American Muslim human rights lawyer, offers a comprehensive exploration of global Islamophobia. The book refers to the chilling reminder of the Christchurch massacre, where a white supremacist perpetrated a horrific act of violence against Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. Iftikhar draws attention to the manifesto left by the attacker, titled “The Great Replacement,” which espoused the belief that Muslims posed a threat and sought to replace white people. This incident serves as a starting point for exploring the dangerous legacy of this theory and its influence on extremist acts.

Iftikhar goes on to emphasize that the victims of the “Great Replacement” theory extend beyond Muslims alone. The tragic attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which targeted Jewish congregants, exemplifies the broader impact of this ideology including the infamous actions of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik.. The perpetrator’s anti-Semitic and Islamophobic motivations, fueled by anti-immigration sentiments, underline the interconnected nature of discrimination.

Throughout the book, Iftikhar critiques the presidency of Donald Trump, which he argues has contributed to the exacerbation of Islamophobia in America. He dissects Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, including his claim that “Islam hates us” and his call for a complete ban on Muslims entering the US. Iftikhar contends that Trump’s leadership has fueled the growth of Islamophobia.

The book goes beyond the United States and the Western world to shed light on global Islamophobia. Iftikhar highlights the genocidal levels of Islamophobia in countries like China and Myanmar, where Muslim communities face severe oppression. Additionally, he addresses the European focus on policing Muslim women’s hijab, exposing discriminatory policies that curtail religious freedom.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet: Global Islamophobia in the New World Order (Skyhorse Publishing, 2021) ISBN-13 978-1510761872, 288 pages

The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State offers a captivating and deeply personal exploration of the impact that two decades of policing and counterterrorism have had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain. Drawing from his own experiences, author Rizwaan Sabir takes readers on a compelling journey through British counterterrorism practices and the pervasive policing of Muslims.

Sabir’s narrative describes his wrongful arrest and detention on suspicion of terrorism. He recounts the distressing process of being unjustly made a target in the “war on terror.” With candor and vivid detail, he outlines the events leading up to his arrest, including being found in possession of the Al-Qaeda Training Manual, which he had downloaded for legitimate postgraduate research purposes. Sabir sheds light on the excruciating experience of being subjected to suspicion and surveillance solely based on his Muslim identity.

Throughout the book, Sabir recounts the harrowing aftermath of his arrest. He vividly describes the relentless monitoring and scrutiny he faced upon release from custody. This included frequent stop-and-search encounters, detentions at the border, surveillance by police and government departments, and an attempt by the UK military to recruit him into their psychological warfare unit. The author’s firsthand account provides a chilling insight into the intrusive and discriminatory practices endured by Muslims in the name of national security.

Sabir argues that the profound harm inflicted on individuals like him is not merely the result of government planning errors but rather a deliberate consequence of employing a counterinsurgency warfare approach to combat terrorism and police Muslim communities. Through his writing, Sabir advocates for and building networks of solidarity and support to challenge the injustices perpetuated by these policies and practices.

The Suspect serves as a powerful call to action, urging readers to recognize and resist the profound injustice faced by Muslims. By sharing his story, Sabir empowers readers to challenge the harmful narratives and practices that perpetuate the policing of Muslims.

Rizwaan Sabir, The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State (Pluto Press, 2022) ISBN: 9780745338484, 256 pages

T

he global ascent of the far right has become an alarming phenomenon, amplified by the distressing normalization of right-wing extremism. From the U.S. to countries across Europe, far right movements have branched out by displaying variation while retaining their core foundations of violence and hatred, and have adeptly aligned themselves with contemporary political issues, exploiting the expansive reach of online platforms to propagate their ideologies.

Right-wing terrorism has swiftly emerged as the rapidest growing and, in some cases, the most prominent domestic security menace, as underscored by the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee—not to mention the far right’s harmful everyday rhetoric towards migrants and people of color.

In the United States, the number of far right extremist attacks has surpassed other acts of terrorism. The reverberations of heinous incidents like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the Christchurch mosque shootings remain indelible reminders of the terror wrought by far right militants. From eco-fascists to white supremacists, this month’s book bundle encompasses various prominent and influential far-right movements.

By examining the complexities of far right ideologies, their metamorphosis over time, and the necessary measures to confront them, this collection presents an invaluable resource for comprehending and engaging with this pressing global concern.

In Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism, Daniel L. Byman presents a comprehensive analysis of the global white power movement, its appeal, and the imminent threat it poses. Byman’s authoritative account spans the movement’s evolution in the United States and worldwide, shedding light on its multifaceted nature.

Drawing from a wide array of sources, Byman dispels prevalent myths surrounding white power terrorism and exposes critical deficiencies in current policies. This negligence towards growing far-right terrorism has resulted in shocking acts of violence, corroding trust in democratic institutions. Byman emphasizes that mitigating this threat necessitates swift and resolute action from governments, treating white power terrorism with the same urgency as jihadist violence.

Byman highlights how white power terrorists exploit mainstream debates, amplifying polarization and yielding significant political impact, even if the death toll remains relatively low. Contrary to popular belief, the movement is not entrenched in a rigid ideology: it is dynamic, draws inspiration from global sources and leverages cutting-edge technologies, particularly social media.

While white power terrorists exhibit vulnerabilities, such as internal divisions, lackluster leadership, and attracting not only dangerous and deluded individuals but also the inept and criminal, their potential for harm remains potent.

Mitigating the dangers of right-wing terrorism entail measures such as robust law enforcement, international intelligence cooperation, stringent regulations imposed by technology companies, and other forceful interventions. Byman not only examines policy solutions but also synthesizes extensive scholarly research, making Spreading Hate essential reading for those concerned about an increasingly interconnected movement that in the years to come harbors the potential to escalate in perilousness.

Daniel Byman, Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2022) ISBN: 9780197537619, 288 pages

The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right delves into the connection between the climate crisis and the rise of the far right, examining their historical roots and contemporary manifestations. By exploring the far right’s evolving stance on the environment, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts reveal a shift in strategy as they come to recognize the impending crisis as an opportunity for resurgence, moving beyond climate denial to conspiracy.

Far right ecologism is brewing within online circles and manifesting as violence on the ground. The authors argue that ecofascism’s dangerous ideology, steeped in hatred is not the answer. Instead, a genuine commitment to climate justice is crucial to combat both the far right and the environmental challenges we face. A must-read for anyone interested in learning about the trend in right-wing extremism or advocating for climate justice, this book offers a powerful critique of emerging ecofascism.

Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right (Polity Press, 2022) ISBN: 978-1-509-54537-7, 160 pages

When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age is a timely and comprehensive exploration that delves into the manifestations of racism in the digital realm, shedding light on the emerging antiracist strategies deployed to combat it.

Rob Eschmann skillfully weaves together meticulous research and captivating personal anecdotes to uncover how racism thrives online, challenging the notion of a colorblind society. From viral videos capturing police violence against unarmed Black individuals to the exposure of racist messages and hurtful comments on social media platforms, online communication lays bare the workings of racism in our world.

In this thought-provoking study, Eschmann not only examines the impact of online racism on communities of color and society at large, but also uncovers the unexpected ways in which digital technologies facilitate innovative tools of everyday antiracist resistance.

By drawing from a vast array of data, including insightful interviews with students of color and meticulous analyses of millions of social media posts spanning a decade, Eschmann delves into the influence of online communication on face-to-face interactions.

When the Hood Comes Off underscores the internet’s potential as a powerful organizing tool, exposing the transformative power it holds. Furthermore, the book serves as a poignant reminder that online racism can serve as a profound wake-up call, prompting us to reflect on our own responses and actions.

In a world grappling with the implications of pervasive online racism, When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age invites readers to contemplate the crucial question of how we will collectively respond to this urgent challenge. Eschmann’s work is a vital contribution to the ongoing conversation surrounding racism and provides valuable insights into harnessing the potential of the digital landscape for meaningful antiracist efforts.

Rob Eschmann, When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age (University of California Press, 2023) ISBN: 9780520379749, 312 pages

Ukraine’s Azov Movement has emerged as one of the most audacious and perilous far-right movements worldwide. What are its core values and goals? From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right is groundbreaking as the first book to be written in English about Azov. Michael Colborne unveils the origins and rapid evolution of the movement, transforming from a militia composed of marginal far right individuals and football hooligans fighting against Russian-backed forces to a multifaceted social movement that has attracted global far-right admiration.

Colborne delves into the intricate mechanisms through which the Azov Movement emerged and adeptly exploits Ukraine’s fragmented social and political landscape, including the ongoing conflict following Russia’s invasion. From the Fires of War astutely reveals the movement’s grand ambitions and the threats it poses.

Michael Colborne, From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right (ibidem Press, 2022) ISBN: 9783838215082, 200 pages

In his compelling book When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies in the West,  David Keen delves into the profound impact of disasters that were once perceived as distant occurrences but are now striking at the heart of the prosperous West. With crises like global warming, migration challenges, threats to democracy, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the repercussions of the war in Ukraine converging, Western societies find themselves caught in a continuous state of fear and distraction.

Keen argues that these disasters should serve as a catalyst for reform, urging us to address the systemic issues that give rise to such catastrophes. However, he reveals how frequently they are exploited for political and economic gain, sidestepping the root causes.

The interplay of various crises, whether gradual or sudden, perpetuates a toxic political landscape that exacerbates the very problems it stems from and enforces a continuous state of crisis amongst society. Politicians often take advantage of the alarm to legitimize their contribution to the disaster-producing system by creating alternate realities and “lesser evil” arguments.

A troubling aspect is the tendency to vilify those striving to alleviate the emergencies or shed light on their underlying factors. Without amplifying alternative perspectives and voices, we risk being ensnared in a self-perpetuating cycle of emergency politics, hindering true resolution and manufacturing its own justification and legitimacy.

From the economy, politics, society and war to the environment, migration, and health, When Disasters Come Home highlights nine major high profile, six abrupt and three slow-burning disasters. Lastly, it also discusses the mass contemporary flight from reality as a disaster in and of itself.

Keen’s book offers a thought-provoking exploration of the complex dynamics between disasters, politics, and the imperative need for reform. Through his incisive analysis, he challenges readers to critically assess the interconnections and potential consequences of the current crisis-ridden world.

David Keen, When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies in the West (Polity Press, 2023) ISBN: 9781509550630, 288 pages

Written by Dilara Özer.

“L

eadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on Earth.” Nowadays, new terrorist groups have evolved into leaderless movements, yet we still see the traditional form of terrorist groups with organized leadership and hierarchy able not only to inflict immeasurable harm but also inspire the new generation of terrorist movements. Leadership is especially important when it comes to religious terrorist groups, whether it be Islamic terrorist groups or white Christian white nationalist groups.

In these groups, terrorist leaders are not just the leaders of their organizations; they are perceived by their followers as religious or spiritual leaders as well. Religious terrorist leaders are responsible for creating a group ideology and reconciling their group’s ideology with preexisting religious texts and teachings. Consequently, the leaders in religious terrorist groups tend to have an unparalleled influence on their organizations.

Terror in Transition: Leadership and Succession in Terrorist Organizations offers a rigorous theoretical perspective that extensively explores leadership and succession in terrorist groups throughout the period of their operation to track the opportunities that shape and maximize counterterrorism efforts. Drawing on extensive field research in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Pakistan, the book features detailed analysis of groups such as al-Shabaab, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda in Iraq/the Islamic State in Iraq, as well as the KKK.

What is the role of founding leaders in shaping terrorist organizations? What follows the loss of this formative leader? What kind of leader is the successor? In their groundbreaking analysis, Tricia L. Bacon, associate professor at American University’s School of Public Affairs, and Elizabeth Grimm, associate teaching professor in the Center for Security Studies, School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, demonstrate that founders establish the whys and hows of the group. The founder explains and frames the group’s mission, and determines and justifies how the group seeks to achieve its objectives. Later, successors operate from within that base.

Bacon and Grimm argue that how successors position themselves in terms of the founder shapes a terrorist group’s future course. They breakdown the different types of successors: will they be a caretaker, signaler, fixer, visionary, or figurehead? They also examine how and why different types of successors choose to pursue incremental or discontinuous change: Some successors possess family bonds that strengthen their claim to authority. Others are outsiders who seek to escalate the group’s level of violence, and others yet are handpicked long before the leader’s death or arrest. These successors can also hold different aims, ranging from purifying the mission to restoring the group’s public image.

Succession is a critical juncture: it may potentially threaten the very survival of the group. Instability surrounding succession can place a group at its most vulnerable and is the precise time to explore options to weaken or defeat it. Therefore, Terror in Transition: Leadership and Succession in Terrorist Organizations comes as a valuable source that provides actionable recommendations for policymakers and counterterrorism practitioners.

Tricia L. Bacon and Elizabeth Grimm, Terror in Transition: Leadership and Succession in Terrorist Organizations (Columbia University Press, 2022) ISBN: 9780231192255, 312 pages

The saying “Money makes the world go round” takes a more powerful meaning in a globalized capitalist economy. But what happens when the ones at the very top of the money chain are corrupted? In this month’s book bundle, we share with you three books that explore the influence of the rich and powerful, discuss how the world really goes round, and expose the staggering cases of how corruption hides itself often in plain sight with its effects rippling into the depth of systems, societies, and the lives of each one of us.

T

he COVID19 pandemic revealed to many an eye-opening trend of wealth centralization: the rich are getting richer, and governments around the world are hardly able to protect those who are most vulnerable from the detrimental economic and social effects of a crisis. Who is the culprit?

The New York Times‘s award-winning global economics journalist Peter S. Goodman presents a page-turning exposé of the global billionaire class, the “Davos Man,” and its hostile takeover of the world. Davos Man documents billionaires’ exploitation of the COVID19 pandemic, which turned “taxpayer-financed bailout packages into corporate welfare schemes.” This global billionaire class instrumentalized its power to conceal the truth by hiring lobbyists, PR managers, and journalists in media.

Furthermore, Goodman uncovers the concealed impacts of their oligarchic control reaching into every branch of society and modern life, from wages to housing, healthcare to everyday products and taxation. He argues that their systematic plunder ultimately destabilized democracy by widening wealth inequality, leaving governing systems vulnerable, and triggering the rise of anti-democratic nationalism. He provides the answer to the problem of wider context: how did the liberal democratic order become a breeding ground for the right-wing hate?

Goodman not only provides a vividly written description of the realm of the ultra-rich but more importantly the realities of those who are dissipated by their appropriation all around the world including accounts from a blue-collar worker in Buenos Aires, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a doctor in Seattle during the COVID19 pandemic, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, and an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City. Davos Man is a must-read for those concerned about inequality, economic justice, the resilience of societies, democracy, and the great challenges of our time.

Peter S. Goodman, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (Custom House 2022) ISBN: 9780063078314, 472 pages

The anonymous leak of the Panama Papers in 2016 revealed millions of financial and legal documents that show how ultra-high-net-worth individuals hide their money using complex webs of offshore vehicles. How were these structures set and who plays a role?

Spiderweb Capitalism uncovers the shadow economy and the mechanics behind the illicit movement of wealth across borders through the invisible, complex networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers.

Sociologist Kimberly Kay Hoang traveled the globe to follow the money through a web-like supersystem and conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with these ultra-high-net-worth individuals, private wealth managers, fund managers, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, bankers, auditors, and other financial professionals to find an answer.

Hoang reveals the strategies behind spiderweb capitalism and examines the moral dilemmas of making money in legal, financial, and political gray zones as she traces the flow of capital from offshore funds in places like the Cayman Islands, Samoa, and Panama to special-purpose vehicles and holding companies in Singapore and Hong Kong and risky markets in Vietnam and Myanmar. How are these smaller markets interconnected in a broader system of global capitalism?

Spiderweb Capitalism sheds critical light on how global elites capitalize on risky frontier markets.  Hoang argues that spiderweb capitalism explains the rapid rise of foreign capital in risky markets with low levels of trust and cooperation. Economic growth in such markets is a consequence of tightly embedded relations between the economic elite and political elites that result in a variety of corruptions.

Contrary to the “economic mantra that development can only occur in economies with a strong rule of law,” Spiderweb Capitalism shows a paradox of global economic growth sustained through states where the line separating the legal from the corrupt is not always clear. Hoang’s research further reveals that old paradigms like First World/Third World and Global North/Global South are no longer useful for framing the global economy.

Spiderweb Capitalism is a unique and worthwhile read, not only uncovering the dynamics of a global system of corruption but also the sociological backgrounds of playing in the grey.

Kimberly Kay Hoang, Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets (Princeton University Press 2022) ISBN: 9780691229119, 288 pages

I

n Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy, activist Dr. Vandana Shiva compiles essays and articles from more than 20 authors and organizations to show how ruthless capitalistic exploitation branded as philanthropic altruism forges a direct path to global destruction. According to David Orr, philanthrocapitalists are those who “promise to solve hunger, disease, poverty, and a rapidly destabilizing climate often by selling us more of the same things that made them very rich,” which oftentimes ignores the root causes and inequities.

How do global capitalists wield philanthropy to monopolize and privatize land use, food production, and the public health sector effectively? Through various initiatives, suborganizations, development schemes, and funding mechanisms. The book points out that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s empire, in particular, is an intricate network of power and influence solidified by targeted and well-financed PR campaigns to shape public opinion in pursuit of profit and market expansion.

Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy criticizes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and similar organizations’ many privileged relationships with private companies, governments, and the World Health Organization that allow them exclusively to set the global agenda on health. The book argues that simplified solutions based on technical and scientific developments introduced by these organizations are often narrow in scope and remain insufficient in solving complex problems. Furthermore, they corrode the integrity of democratic institutions guised under a banner of future-oriented innovation.

Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy reveals the destructive power of overly capitalistic systems that enable mass human suffering and environmental catastrophe via the entanglement of private investment and public policy, and aims to bring forward democratic discussions about transparency, accountability, and inclusivity.

Vandana Shiva, Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: A Global Citizen’s Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture (Synergetic Press 2022) ISBN: 9780907791911, 240 pages

T

wo months after the collapse of Mario Draghi’s unity government, Giorgia Meloni, a far-right candidate, is set to become the first woman prime minister in Italy.

The roots of the Brothers of Italy— Giorgia Meloni’s party—in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), known to be the successor of Mussolini’s fascism, sparks debates about the implications of her leadership and policies.

Italy had no comparable de-Nazification process to Germany whereby the fascist parties were enforced to reform. The logo of Meloni’s party maintains the tricolor flame, perceived as the fire burning on Mussolini’s tomb; however, Meloni strongly rejects any fascist label.

As a teenager, she participated in the youth wing of Italy’s neo-fascist movement. In 2008, Meloni served as Italy’s youngest-ever minister. In 2012, she founded Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) as a right-wing, populist, and national-conservative political party. In the last election that took place in 2018, she won 4.4% of the votes.

On the Sunday snap elections, Brothers of Italy garnered around 26% of the votes. Her right-wing alliance with Matteo Salvini (Northern League) and Silvio Berlusconi (Forza Italia) gives the right a majority in parliament, claiming both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies with around 44% of the vote.

The lack of an electoral coalition between the center-left Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement in a disproportionate system allows them this majority. Meloni’s government is to form Italy’s most right-wing government since World War II.

Hard-line conservative policies

Meloni’s campaign ran on the preservation of Christian identity and the “traditional” family, and Italian patriotism under the slogan of “God, family and homeland.” In a rally of the Spanish far-right Vox party Meloni stated, “Yes, to the natural family, no to LGBT lobbies!”

Her views on abortion and migrants bring concerns to many. The leader has pledged to impose a naval block on Libya and push back “masses of illegal immigrants.” Her coalition partner Matteo Salvini closed migrant camps and blocked boats carrying migrants rescued from the Mediterranean from entering port when he was interior minister.

At the same rally in Spain, she continued, “No to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration… no to big international finance… no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!”

Meloni also vows to put Italians’ interests above everything in the EU. Some critics frame her prime ministry as a danger to the EU, often comparing her to Viktor Orbán of Hungary who is often in the headlines due to his quarrels with the EU.

However, it is important to note that Italy is dependent on EU funds which it has little interest in putting at risk, especially at a time of energy and living crises. Italy suffers one of the worst impacts of the pandemic and recession in Europe, and receives the heaviest portion of the EU recovery fund.

Meloni has supported Ukraine during the Russian invasion and stands for the sanctions against Russia in line with Italy’s Western allies. However, Salvini has maintained that sanctions against Russia should be reconsidered. Like many countries in Europe, Italy also is dependent on Russian energy.

Meloni has pledged tax cuts on energy and other essential items to curb economic issues, and has promised to introduce a flat tax for the self-employed and renegotiate Italy’s massive EU COVID19 recovery plan.

She also wants to end Italy’s ban on nuclear power. Meanwhile, her party seeks to up Italy’s birth rate with increased family allowances.

Lastly, the far-right leader wants to bring constitutional change and have Italy’s president elected by popular vote.

Brothers of Italy are mostly experienced in local government. At a particularly challenging time to ascend to government, the party has a lot to prove by tackling large-scale issues like the economy.

Written By Dilara Özer – ISTANBUL.

“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” To make things worse, the storms that French President Emmanuel Macron will face are not of only one kind. Whatever had not happened before in the history of the Fifth Republic has taken place in the second round of the French presidential elections.

For the first time, a president could not win the absolute majority in the parliament just two months after being elected; for the first time, no political bloc could achieve the absolute majority in the parliament; and for the first time, a far-right political party became the main opposition party on its own with the highest number of deputies in its history. President Macron, who wanted a strong and clear support for his second five-year term, is now facing an outcome beyond even the worst scenarios.

Undoubtedly, Marine Le Pen was the elections’ most successful name. Le Pen, who could not get enough deputies in the past elections even to form a group in the parliament, increased her party’s number of deputies 11 times and won 89 seats. In the second round of elections, the ultra-leftist party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was the rival of President Emmanuel Macron, who, for two consecutive elections, had run against the far-right party leader Le Pen for the Élysée Palace.

This led some commentators to argue that the far right was weakening, but it actually was not. Comments that the second-largest political power in the country had shifted from the far right to the far left within two months, and that the voters in France were acting on a very unpredictable ground were also not true.

In the second round of the 2017 presidential elections, Le Pen was behind Macron by 32 points. In the 2022 elections, again in the second round, the difference dropped to 17 points. The difference between Macron’s and Le Pen’s votes was only 4.69 percent in the first round of the 2022 election. However, the parties on the left united and formed a single bloc despite the rivalry among them, whereas far-right parties could not. If Marine Le Pen had been able to convince Eric Zemmour, who preferred to run independently, and bring him under her party’s umbrella, she could have found herself abreast with Ensemble (the bloc supporting Macron) and NUPES (the bloc supporting Mélenchon) in the first round.

Notorious for his hostility towards Muslims and immigrants and some anti-Semitic rhetoric, Jewish far-right Eric Zemmour was the most talked about name in the presidential elections. Zemmour received 4.25 percent of the votes in the first round and split Le Pen’s vote. No one could predict that Zemmour could get such a high score, while it was considered almost certain that Le Pen would increase the number of deputies of her party, which was founded 50 years ago by her father, with 18.66  percent of votes in the first round. In fact, Marine Le Pen would run in 208 of 577 constituencies, 88 more than the last election held five years ago.

The NUPES alliance, led by the former Marxist Mélenchon, won 131 seats, less than expected and did not please the left. Hopes were indeed higher for the NUPES alliance for the second round. The alliance’s score in the first round was celebrated in the left press with headlines such as “The Left Is Coming Back.” The right press saw headlines along the lines “Will Communism Come to the Country This Summer?” aiming to frighten undecided voters. However, Mélenchon’s party, Unsubmissive France, which one day was portrayed in the media as the dreadful shark in Spielberg’s 1975 movie Jaws, another day was a monster, and yet another a bogeyman, eventually won 72 seats—in 2017, it had only 17.

Eight months before the 2017 presidential elections, Macron had resigned from his position as minister of economy in the socialist government, and first won the presidential elections and then 308 seats in the second round of elections with his party, whose motto was “Neither right nor left, both right and left.” Five years later, his La République En Marche ! (Republic Forward), which changed its name to Renaissance, received only 170 seats in the election.

Macron could not reach the numbers of five years ago, even with the votes of a total of seven parties, large and small, united behind the bloc and entering the election together. The Ensemble, the alliance of political parties supporting Macron, won 245 seats and thus remained 44 seats short of an absolute majority.

Along with Macron’s unsatisfactory performance in the last five years, there were other reasons, of course, behind the election results such as the COVID19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the economic and social consequences of the war. However, the economic policies of President Macron and his government, which further widened the gap between the rich and those with a low income, and his Islamophobic rhetoric and legal regulations targeting Muslims that were actually unprecedented in Europe affected both election results.

Thus, while the far-right politics moved to a legitimate ground, Le Pen and the like, on the one hand, and those who took a hostile position against such policies, on the other, like the far-leftist Mélenchon, gained strength just for this reason by winning the votes of 70 percent of Muslims.

In the 2017 elections, the traditional right and left parties had weakened to a great extent against Macron’s brand-new party and were finally buried in the 2022 presidential elections. The socialist party, which had 30 seats in 2017, was able to get 26 seats, while the Republicans, which had 112 seats, could only get 61 deputies. The Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI), another right-wing party that entered the election with the Republicans, had 18 deputies last time, but could only get three this time. It deserves mentioning also that for the first time in its history, Paris will not have either a socialist or a republican deputy.

Another important result in the second round of elections was the indifference of the French people to the elections: a new record was set with 53.77 percent abstention and 7.67 percent protest votes. According to the detailed analyses of the election results by poll companies, although all parties were affected by this situation, the left was affected the most. It seems that indifference to the left bloc and sometimes the fact that there was no left bloc candidate in some electoral districts despite the risk of the far-right candidate being elected in the second round and no votes for the bloc supporting Macron all contributed to this new record.

Before his visit to Romania and Moldova, President Macron spoke recently in Orly and asked for an absolute majority in order not to add “French disorder to the world’s disorder.” There was no absolute majority in the elections, and even the Republicans, judging by the statements of their officials, do not want to cohabitate the same political space as Macron. As Élisabeth Borne, prime minister of France, said, the country is indeed in an “unprecedented state”!

On February 19, 2020, the right-wing extremist terrorist Tobias R. shot nine people with a migration background in a café in Hanau, Germany. The xenophobic attack targeted Muslims and showed that Germany has a serious problem with radical right-wing terror. The new German government declared that it wants to fight right-wing terror, and now, the question is how serious Germany is about this declaration.

Right-wing extremism is not a new phenomenon

Since the end of World War II, right-wing extremist ideas have been a taboo in Germany, and the aim has been to “de-Nazify” the German population. The strategy was to prevent a similar scenario to that which occurred between 1933 and 1945. Despite this, right-wing extremist political currents can still be found today. In addition to the minor parties NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) and Der Dritte Weg (The Third Path) or the right-wing extremist movements PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident) and Identitäre Bewegung (Identitarian movement), the AfD (Alternative for Germany) is a symbol of how strongly right-wing extremism is present at the political level in Germany.

The entry of the AfD into the German parliament in 2017 as the biggest opposition party and the re-election of the right-wing extremist party to parliament in 2021 show that right-wing extremism is not a temporary problem but one that has deeper roots.

Although right-wing extremist attacks were a problem for society as a whole in Germany, it was not until the reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990 that the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany (BKA) began to collect statistics for victims of right-wing extremist attacks. In 2002, the BKA introduced the system of definitions known as “Politically Motivated Crime” (PMK-System) in order to better record the number of victims. The system is considered inaccurate, and as a result the BKA’s victim figures differ from the victim figures of non-governmental organizations.

The federal government has been recording the number of victims of right-wing extremist attacks since 1990; as of September 2020, 109 victims have been registered. The newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau, Der Tagesspiegel, and Die Zeit, after a joint investigative research, recorded 187 victims for the same period; the Amadeu Antonio Foundation counts at least 213 victims.

Muslims are the main target

Since the reunification of Germany, Muslims have been the main target of right-wing extremist attacks. Between 1991 and 1993, there was an increase in racist attacks among the German population. At that time, the asylum debate was a very controversial issue, which is why asylum seekers were the main target of right-wing extremist attacks. The riots in Hoyerswerda (1991) and Rostock-Lichtenhagen (1992) were sensitive because the police, in particular, took a passive stance and even fuelled the mood against foreign citizens through populist statements.

Attack in Hanau – Insecurity grows for Muslims

On February 19, 2020, a right-wing extremist attack occurred in Hanau in which nine people with migration background were killed, six of them were Muslims. Politicians reacted to the attack with shock. Angela Merkel, chancellor at the time, said that racism is a poison and that such attacks were aimed at dividing society. The far-right party AfD did not make a clear statement and did not classify the attack as politically motivated or right-wing extremism, but as an act of a a lone wolf.

German public reacted with shock to the attack in Hanau shows that Germany does not realize the problem of right-wing extremism.

The fact that the general public reacted with shock to the attack in Hanau shows that Germany does not realize – or does not want to accept – the problem of right-wing extremism, especially against Muslims. The number of right-wing extremist attacks on Muslims and their religious institutions increases every year. In 2020, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) recorded 1,026 Islamophobic attacks, 103 of which were directed against mosques.

In 2010, the BMI recorded “only” 22 attacks on mosques. In 2022, armed attacks on mosques and Muslims continue. A desecration of 30 Muslim graves in Iserlohn, an arson attack on a mosque in Chemnitz, and an armed attack on praying Muslims in Halle are current examples of how Muslims in Germany have to live – namely, in fear of hate attacks because of their faith.

Federal government remains passive – until now?

Under Merkel, Germany did not always prioritize the problem of right-wing extremist attacks. The statements by former interior minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) that Islam does not belong in Germany, the book by Thilo Sarrazin (SPD) Germany Abolishes Itself (Deutschland schafft sich ab), and the xenophobic statements by Tübingen mayor Boris Palmer (Greens) show that Islamophobic ideas can be found in all political parties. With the murder of politician Walter Lübcke (CDU) in 2019, Germany was punished for its passivity: the district president of Kassel had spoken out in support of refugees and was subsequently killed by right-wing extremist Stephan Ernst.

The roots of right-wing extremism in Germany run deep. The AfD and other parties have members who hold xenophobic views. The new minister of the interior, Nancy Faeser (SPD), at least gave some hope of Islam being accepted in German politics and society when she stated, “Islam, of course, belongs in Germany.

However, the number of victims and attacks on mosques show that the tendency further excludes Muslims from society. If Germany wants to preserve a stable political environment and avoid further polarization in society, it must be more active. Otherwise, Otherwise, more German state officials could become victims of right-wing extremist terror along with countless other innocent civilians, as in the case of Walter Lübcke.

Tareq Alaows is one of the initiators of the Seebrücke (1) Initiative and a member of Flüchtlingsrat (2) Berlin. In February 2021, he launched his candidacy for the Green Party to represent Oberhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia. Although there was a public interest in his candidacy, he decided to withdraw due to threat calls that he received against him, and people close to him. Politics Today interviewed Tareq Alaows about his experience as a Syrian refugee in Germany and the political participation and representation of refugees in Germany.

Q. Could you please briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your journey as a Syrian refugee to Germany?

I left Syria in July 2015. After traveling to Lesbos, Greece through Turkey, I took the Balkan route. I took most of the way to Germany from Athens on foot, and I finally arrived in the German city of Dortmund in September 2015. I had studied law back in Syria, and for more than five years now, I work as a jurist, who is engaged in providing legal aid for refugees during their asylum and residency processes in Germany. I am a political activist too and one of the initiators of the political movement called the Seebrücke. I am still a part of the coordination circle and serve as the press secretary.

Q. When and how have you become politically active in Germany?

Well, I haven’t become politically active ever since I arrived in Germany. I furthered my work in the humanitarian field, which I had started much earlier in Syria and continued here in Germany. But the central issue of my work was no longer human rights in Syria, but human rights in Germany. I took the cause for people, who came here as refugees.

I had no other choice than to become politically active. When I arrived here, I saw that our legal rights as refugees were not being properly applied in practice. I was detected in a military center in the middle of nowhere. When I wanted to buy something, I was supposed to walk five kilometers to the nearest supermarket. There were no buses or trains or any other means of transportation. After two months, I was transferred to Bochum. There, I was supposed to live in a basketball hall at a school with sixty other people. Families, men, women, children, all of us, were in one room, and we were not allowed to do anything that we wanted.

I lived in this situation, where we could not even enjoy our basic human rights for six months and I could not stand it anymore. I had to react to this situation and started an action. I organized the people in our accommodation and set a protest camp in front of the City Hall.

Q. Quite naturally, you demanded to live in dignity. How did German authorities react to this? What was your experience with the first protest?

We managed to make our demands heard thanks to our protest in front of the City Hall. Thereafter, we were organized under Refugee Strike Bochum and continued to be active in the negotiations. We observed the implementation process of our demands in regard to the asylum policy in Bochum in the following years. We started to have regular meetings with the City Hall. There, we did only talk about our problems, but also provided solutions. The administration in the city hall was responsible and saw that we, as refugees, were a part of the solution. In the end, we learned a lot from each other.

Q. To protect your basic rights and demands, you have democratically organized and taken a political role at the local level. But what has motivated you to take an active part at the federal level?

During my political activism at the local level, I recognized that everything I said reached the German politicians in my city better than what the German activists or the political parties in the opposition were saying. Because I was talking about my life and the very conditions that I was living in. I think they could not argue against it.

And I see that I am not an exception. I know thousands of refugees from different countries, as well as people from Germany, who are doing a great job here in uplifting the refugee voices and working to maintain the human rights for refugees.

I just have been lucky to have the media attention, which helped shed light on and bring solutions to the issues we -as refugees- encountered. But the question eventually transformed into how could we represent these persons, who have arrived in this society?

I was eventually transformed from being a normal person running for candidacy to a target of racism and hate speech. People who target me are not targeting me as Tareq Alaows but target a person of color with a refugee background, a person who showed the courage to claim his rights to be represented in the German parliament.

I just run for the elections, and this is a democratic right. At the end of the day, it will be German voters’ decision to elect or not to elect me. But the right-wing party viewed it differently. They were afraid of me being elected in a democratic way and they did everything to stop me.

Q. What did exactly happen, and you decided to withdraw your candidacy?

I was receiving hundreds of comments and messages on the internet, that said that they knew where I am living, where I am walking, and where I am eating, and I had to be careful. And I saw that most of the messages were written in the “we” form, and not in the “I” form. It was like groups in the background and not like single persons. There were two people in my team, who were deleting those racist comments and messages on social media and documenting things that are relevant for my safety for the police.

I just run for the elections, and this is a democratic right. It’s the German voters’ decision to elect or not to elect me. But the right-wing party viewed it differently.

Most of the messages were anonymous and we could not tell by whom they were sent, or which persons or groups were doing it, so, there was nothing we could do. For me, it was a very dangerous situation, and nobody could calculate consequences. I had to protect my family and people working with me. I had no guarantee for my safety. So, I had to withdraw my candidacy in the elections. But as a jurist and political activist, I still defend the basic human rights of refugees.

Q. What was the reaction of the Green Party, or of other political parties, to this incident?

Both the Green Party and other democratic parties learned something from this experience. The Green Party, of which I was a candidate, accepted my withdrawal from candidacy and drafted a document in order to avoid a possible future incident as such and to establish a mechanism to counsel and support victims of such racisms. I think every political party in Germany must start debates about racism in politics and work for developing awareness.

Q. Your experience, then, highlights that there are serious obstacles concerning the participation and representation of minorities in political life in Germany. How do you think it could be overcome?

This could be overcome only by empowering those people in politics, who are victims of racism and encouraging them to get involved in democratic processes. Because the only way to fight against racism in politics is to have more people with a refugee or a minority background in politics. We can talk about democracy if every group in our society, including the minorities and the newcomers, are represented. Otherwise, it is nothing but a mock debate. We need to have more democratic environments and dialogue between members of the host society and the newcomers.

We also need to work to create awareness among the youth via programs for young persons, immigrants, or non-immigrants and let them be involved in these political debates. Above all, we need to put it in a context; when we talk about refugees we talk about humans.

Importantly, all these debates and dialogues need to be translated to a legal basis. We need more clear and strict laws against racism and extremism both on online platforms and in real life. Racism is not an opinion, it is a criminal act, and we have to name it and fight against it.

Although I decided to cancel my candidacy for the German federal elections of 2021 and continue my work in the humanitarian field, I am optimistic that political parties in Germany have learned something from that experience.

The fabric of Italian politics has changed since February 2021. With the electoral triumph of Lega and Fratelli d’Italia, two far-right parties are taking the lead. Lega sits at the table of Mario Draghi’s government while Fratelli d’Italia takes a front-row seat in the opposition. At the same time, they use increased immigration to fuel the political debate in Italy.

Immigration in Italy over the years

Traditionally, migration in Italy consisted of Italians moving from the south to the north in search of better jobs and living conditions. However, this flow started to wind down in the 1970s. In its place, immigration from outside Italy started to increase in the 1980s and became noticeable in the 1990s with the enactment of the Martelli law (Law No. 39 of February 28, 1990). This law acknowledges Italy’s new “country of immigration” status. Since then, immigration increased further, and anti-immigration sentiments continued to proliferate.

“Needed but not welcome”

According to Maurizio Ambrosini, professor of sociology of migration at the University of Milan, the integration of immigrants in Italy is determined by the gap between the economic and the political-cultural paradigms. In Italian society, immigrants are “wanted but not welcome.” Economically, many regions welcome immigrants as a labor supply from which to draw.

Yet, Ambrosini adds, paradoxically, local and regional governmental institutions take measures, referred to as “local exclusion policies,” that intend to suppress migrants. These policies include cultural exclusion, such as banning the opportunity of mosques for Muslims; security exclusion, referring to local measures against irregular immigration; and economic exclusion, limiting the opening of economic activities run by immigrants (for example, running a kebab shop).

Although some of these policies have been defied by the National Office against Racial Discrimination, the situation remains essentially unchanged. Today, the far right in Italy keeps targeting immigrants and their rights while aiming to obscure them, and launching threats against them.

The 2015 “refugee crisis” and the rise of Lega and Fratelli d’Italia

Lega has been an outspoken anti-immigrant party since 1991. Initially, it held a strong stance against southern Italians. However, with immigration ramping up since the “refugee crisis”, the party drastically radicalized its political views on asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa. The far-right parties have used the increased migratory flows to shape their political agendas, blaming immigrants for all problems the country has had to cope with.

Since the 2019 European parliamentary elections, the support for Fratelli d’Italia has been growing at a regular pace. It gained popularity and support by pressing the European Union to leave the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, and favoring a naval blockade on North Africa to stop “illegal” immigration. Furthermore, Meloni does not want to grant Italian citizenship to children born in Italy to refugees and is an extreme advocate of Italy’s Christianity against “Islamization.” In her eyes, an ideal immigration system favors immigrants with a Christian background because they “integrate better.”

Salvini’s and Meloni’s discourse is effective. In 2019, the Pew Research Center noted that 55% of Italians had negative views towards Muslims.

And Meloni’s discourse expands internationally.

The relationship with like-minded parties across Europe is not only changing the fabric of Italian politics, but also of European politics.

In September 2020, Giorgia Meloni received a letter of endorsement from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The letter stated that “Italy needs a solid center-right that protects our Italian friends from the wave of immigration, that preserves the values of the traditional family and Christian culture and that helps to avoid economic collapse.” Then, in July 2021, Fratelli d’Italia and other Eurosceptic political parties united in the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR Party), and signed a declaration to protest against the EU’s political position on migration. Poland’s governing Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), France’s Rassemblement National, Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPO), Spain’s VOX, and Italy’s Lega were among some of the other parties to sign.

In this declaration, parties from different EU countries say that their alliance is “a tool of radical forces” trying to develop a European superstate based on traditional family values against mass immigration,” adding:

“We reaffirm our belief that the family is the bedrock of our nations. When Europe faces a serious demographic crisis with low birth rates and an aging population, developing family-friendly policies should be the response, not mass immigration. We are convinced that the sovereigns in Europe are and will remain the nations and the peoples of Europe.”

The message of this declaration, namely that immigrants are to blame for all that is wrong in Italy, speaks to a growing number of voters and puts the wind in the sails of the far right in the country. The relationship with like-minded parties across Europe is not only changing the fabric of Italian politics, but also of European politics. Let us hope that their moderate counterparts can change their course to safeguard European values around solidarity, human rights, and human dignity.

Mpanzu Bamenga was eight years old when in 1994, he fled from the Congo to the Netherlands with his mother and older brother. Today, he is a municipal councilor in the Dutch city of Eindhoven and a passionate advocate for human rights. In 2016, he was elected the “Political Talent of the Year” as a councilor in the city of Eindhoven. In 2018, Bamenga arrived at the airport of his Dutch hometown after having lectured on human rights in Italy. He was selected by the border police for a passport check as according to the officials his appearance matched the risk profile of a “Nigerian money smuggler.” Latife Özdemir of Politics Today interviewed Bamenga – you can read the full interview here.

---

Q. What is racial profiling, and should people worry about it?

Racial profiling is a forbidden form of discrimination by the government. Yes, it is something people should worry about because racial profiling comes from the idea that someone can be judged based on their skin color, ethnicity, or nationality instead of this person’s character. It is also against the fundamental right of being treated equally. It is against human rights. It threatens what we stand for and who we are as human beings.

Q. Not long ago, we were discussing racial profiling in the Unites States, but nowadays it seems that the issue also started to appear in the Netherlands as for example in the cases of Mitch Henriquez and the 17-year-old Rishi Chandrikasing, who was fatally shot by the police in 2012. Is racial profiling of Black people and citizens with an immigrant background becoming widespread in the Netherlands?

I think that racial profiling has always been there. To fight against something, you should first make it visible. It has always been hidden. It’s been brought to light – this is a step to fight against racial profiling. The first anti-discrimination bureaus in the Netherlands were opened 30 years ago. They basically started after situations of racism. It is widespread, not only in practice but also in policy. It is institutionalized in our society and to fight against it, we should address it. It is also part of implicit biases, and we act upon it, which is wrong because it can be contrary to one’s beliefs and values. But it is even worse if you act upon it and you are an official of the government.

Q. Do you think that the situation regarding racial profiling increased after events such as 9/11 for example?

I think that these kinds of events are used as a justification. For instance, now we have people coming from several countries, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. And now we are using it as a justification to say “We have to stop illegal migration, so how can we stop it if we are not able to control passports?” Well, ethnic profiling doesn’t mean that the border police can’t control passports – they can. But the question is “How do they do this?” Do they look at someone’s skin color and assume that this person must be from Syria, Afghanistan, or Africa? Or thinking that someone must be a money smuggler, a criminal, or a terrorist based on someone’s color? This is forbidden and against human rights.

Q. You experienced a racial profiling situation three years ago, how did you feel at the time?

It is very humiliating, and it also stigmatizes because it fits within the idea that the person who is stopped is a non-white person, so there must be, or there could be, something wrong. – It fits into stigmatization, which has consequences in society. For instance, when a young person wants to apply for an internship and the employee just looks at the name (Mohammed) and that person doesn’t even get the opportunity to present themselves or to get an internship at an organization.

This is a very big issue in the Netherlands. We have a lot of labor market and housing discrimination.

This is a very big issue in the Netherlands. We have a lot of labor market and housing discrimination. There are a lot of things going on here when it comes to the idea that when someone comes from a different country, this must be “wrong.” People are not judged by their character but by certain characteristics which you can’t change. It also shouldn’t matter what your religion or your skin color is. What they do is dehumanizing and humiliating if you are the victim.

Q. What are the legal mechanisms to face racial profiling?

When certain individuals have racially profiled a person, this person can file a complaint. This is a simple thing to do, one can go to court. After the complaint, one can go to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman must look into the situation. One can go to the police or the anti-discrimination bureau as well.

Q. What are your thoughts regarding the decision of the court in your case?

The decision was not what we expected. Even though we know racial profiling is instituted, it is still a shock to hear the judge basically mentioning that it is all fine for the border police to stop someone also based on his or her skin color. It is pretty shocking that the law justifies this.  Still, our legal system gives us the possibility to go to a higher court. Especially in this case, when we talk about a fundamental issue, it is crucial and necessary to go to a higher court.

We started a petition which says “My color doesn’t say anything about my Dutch citizenship.”

Q. The decision at the higher court will be in nine months. What are you going to do until then? Are you planning to raise more awareness or to carry out any other activities?

Yes, we started a petition which says “My color doesn’t say anything about my Dutch citizenship.” We hope that we will get support and as many people as possible will sign it. I am sure that we already achieved more awareness, and that more and more people will understand what it is about and why racial profiling should be forbidden in the Netherlands. I hope the court will decide that ethnicity can never be a part of profiling,when there is no concrete suspect.

Q. As the municipal councilor in Eindhoven, what do you think about the house of representatives’ stance when it comes to racial profiling? Some argue that it’s passive. Do you agree?

At this moment, the judgement is still in the courts’ hands so the parliament must be careful about how to intervene. Therefore, I understand that some members of the parliament are hesitant to act at this point. But at the same time, a legal procedure can take up to six years, while the government is the executive body and parliament the legislative body, they can change this discriminatory situation tomorrow if they want. They don’t need a court decision for that.

Q. Do you think that the profiling and surveillance of people will become a bigger issue in Western democracies?

As long as we don’t fight racial profiling, it could be. It is simply a stupid idea to stop someone according to their looks or ethnicity. I believe that more awareness seems to be important, and especially having a mixed environment in education. We should do more in the field of education.

Q. You said during a speech three years ago that you still believe in a world which is just, inclusive, and where everyone is treated equally. Is the gap between the current situation and the ideal widening? If yes, is there still hope to achieve the world you talk about?

Of course, I believe in it with all my heart. I’m very positive and I believe that we are making important steps, and that we are in a final moment to change the world for the better. I think it is important to mention the words of Martin Luther King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This means that even though you are in a good situation you should think and care about other events happening in the world.

According to a decision by the District Court of The Hague, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, which is the Dutch border police, can use ethnicity as a criterion for selecting citizens for checks at the border. As stated by the court, this does not constitute discrimination.

The case was brought against the government by several human rights organizations, NGOs such as Amnesty International, Controle Alt Delete, RADAR, and PILP-NJCM, and two citizens. These organizations were convinced that two citizens were singled out for checks by the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee officers because of the color of their skin. One of the persons, Mpanzu Bamenga was taken aside by the Marechaussee at the airport of Eindhoven in April 2018.

Mpanzu Bamenga, who is a municipal councilor of the social liberal political party D66, had just returned from Lampedusa, Italy, where he gave a lecture about institutional racism, human rights, and how to create a world in which all human rights are secured for all humans. After the councilor’s efforts to understand why he was taken aside and filing a complaint followed by a hearing, it seemed Bamenga had been arrested for being “well dressed,” “walking fast,” and having a “non-Dutch appearance.” According to the coalition that filed the lawsuit, this is a form of discrimination that violates human rights and Dutch law.

Dagmar Oudshoorn, director of Amnesty International Netherlands, stated the following about the court’s decision: “According to this ruling of the court, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee can continue with ethnic profiling. This is not only in violation of international human rights, but also of Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution.”

During border checks, the Marechaussee selects people based on their appearance, skin color, or ethnicity. These parameters determine whether someone, against whom there is no individual suspicion, is pulled aside. The Marechaussee also uses risk profiles that include ethnicity, such as in Bamenga’s case “men who walk fast, are well-dressed and who look ‘non-Dutch.’”

All in all, the ruling of the court means that ethnicity can remain part of the risk and selection profiles of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee – a decision that undoubtedly encourages discrimination.

Following the court’s decision, the anti-racism foundation Controle Alt Delete started a petition to denounce the assumption that Dutch nationality is linked to white skin color.

“In the super-diverse Netherlands in 2021, skin color is not an indication of someone’s nationality,” says Controle Alt Delete on its website. In addition to people with a refugee background and people from the former colonies, the Netherlands also has several communities that settled in the country from various parts of the Mediterranean four generations ago.

“Pull your car over” is a common phrase frequently used towards colored, Muslim, or people with a non-Western migration background.

Pull your car over

“Pull your car over” is a common phrase frequently used towards colored, Muslim, or people with a non-Western migration background. In fact, however, the Netherlands is known for its multicultural society formed as a result of colonialism and colonialism-related migration. There are people here from all over the world that makes it hard, if not nearly impossible, to define “Dutchness” and associate it simply with skin color.

The postcolonial migration flows to the Netherlands from the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch Antilles, and Suriname, the labor migration from Turkey and North African countries, the arrival of refugees from Bosnia and the MENA region make it impossible to define Dutch identity with racial features.

Immigrants nowadays growingly fall victim to acts of over-scrutiny, discrimination, or hate crimes. According to a report published in 2020 by Bureau Beke, an independent agency that specializes in research and advice in the field of security issues and crime, only in Amsterdam, more than half of the residents have experienced ethnic profiling during contact with the police.

According to the report, significant differences occur between two subgroups. On the one hand, there are the citizens with a Dutch or Western migration background, and on the other, the citizens with a non-Western migration background. The second group gives a lower rating for the general way of being addressed by the police and their trust in police officers. According to the report, citizens with a non-Western background are significantly more likely to indicate they have had contact with the Amsterdam police up to 10 times within a period of six months.

When focusing on this “police contact” it appears that mostly citizens with a Dutch background are offered an explanation as to why the police stopped or checked them while such an explanation is less likely to be offered to citizens with a non-Western migration background.

The situation in Germany is no different. According to an answer from the Ministry of Interior in response to a parliamentary question by a German representative, the German police conducted ID checks 2,953,844 times without valid reason in 2015. Critics argue that most of these controls are arbitrary and skin color and ethnic background are the two main criteria behind them.

In addition, a survey was conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) on the number of people who have been stopped by the police in the last 12 months. According to responses, 25% of Turkish-origin Europeans had been stopped by the police, while only 11% of so-called native Germans responded positively.

Third-generation Turkish immigrants, born and raised in the Netherlands, also face racial profiling as it frequently occurs within their minority communities as well. It seems that Western European countries, where once multicultural society was a debated issue, are now struggling with “us” vs. “them” ideology.

By constantly keeping the criminality of “foreigners” or young citizens with an immigration background on the political agenda and in the media, and therefore in the public eye, the Other, the “non-Dutch looking” Other, is created and perceived as a threat. Institutions and authorities, with the police at the forefront of this discrimination, are motivated to believe that it is legitimate to monitor, scrutinize, and control people based on their religious difference, appearance, or skin color in order to protect “national security.” However, ironically and conversely, they are actually fabricating this imagined threat themselves.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is facing mass demonstrations across the country calling for him to step down, in the context of the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and growing allegations of corruption. “Bolsonaro has a knack for creating enemies out of his supporters,” Prof Anthony Pereira was quoted as saying recently, in the context of demonstrations in Brazil against the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

But will the protests be enough to bring Bolsonaro down, especially when the rift between the left wing and the right wing in Brazil remains so pronounced? COVID19 mismanagement might create a common ground, but only within the pandemic context as, behind the scenes, Bolsonaro and his supporters have benefited from his right-wing, neoliberal agenda.

Brazil has the highest COVID19 death toll in Latin America and the second highest globally, exacerbated by an absence of planning and complete disregard for the country’s collapsed healthcare system. It is not merely the inequalities inherent in Brazilian society which have influenced the collapse, but the government’s refusal to consider any measures other than a strategy to achieve herd immunity through infection, under the pretext of curbing people’s freedoms. While Europe is waking up to the complexities of curbed freedom of movement despite available vaccines due to countries pursuing different policies, in Brazil the people are facing a totally different scenario.

Brazil’s former health minister Luis Henrique Mandetta was fired by Bolsonaro after challenging his unscientific approach to the pandemic. With Bolsonaro disregarding health professionals’ advice, and playing a dangerous game regarding the availability of vaccines, which have reduced the death toll especially in the case of the elderly and the vulnerable, Brazilians are concerned about their wellbeing and the government’s refusal to provide for their health.

In March, Brazil sent a delegation to Israel to view the process of an experimental medication being developed for COVID19, with an adviser to Bolsonaro stating the visit would “yield partnerships that will make a difference in combating the health crisis and in the resumption of the Brazilian economy.” By May, Brazil was seeking deals to acquire surplus doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccine from the U.S. and U.K.

Brazilians are concerned about their wellbeing and the government’s refusal to provide for their health.

Since August 2020, Brazil engaged diplomatically with Russia to obtain the Sputnik V vaccine, which was later suspended by the country’s national health service, Anvisa, on account of alleged “lack of consistent and reliable data,” despite favorable reviews in the leading health journal, The Lancet. Reuters has recently reported the definite cancellation of a contract with Russia for 10 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine.

However, the coronavirus pandemic has forced a different sort of reckoning among Brazilians, although the process may be temporary until an outcome is achieved. Bolsonaro’s mishandling of the pandemic happened amid growing accusations of corruption. A poll in July revealed that 54 percent of Brazilians would support the impeachment of Bolsonaro, while 51 percent disapproved of him, indicating growing resentment since his tenure started in 2019.

The statistics reflect a possible turning to the left, which is not impossible especially with the return of former president Lula da Silva to the political scene. Polls indicate a probable win for Lula in the forthcoming presidential elections. and Bolsonaro has already accused the Supreme Court of favoring his opponent.

Given the rise of the left in Latin America – Chile is the most prevalent example at the moment of the right wing’s spectacular fall – Bolsonaro is guaranteed U.S. support for the time being. In July, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns met with Bolsonaro to discuss the political situation in Latin America, and the Brazilian leader specifically mentioned Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina in comments discussing the visit.

COVID19 might trigger more widespread displeasure among Brazilians, but the military, as well as Bolsonaro’s neoliberal policies favoring privatization are also a force to be reckoned with. For a definite shift to occur, the left will have to continue leading the mobilization struggle in Brazil, which would then encourage the already occurring decrease in support for Bolsonaro, who has exploited the masses for the interests of the privileged.

But there are indications that, across Brazil, a more profound reckoning might be happening. Just as in Chile, the rise in transport fares triggered a vast outcry against right-wing President Sebastian Pinera, resulting in drastic losses for the right-wing and the rewriting of a new constitution to replace that of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, Brazilians may want to reconnect politically with their past.

The burning down of the statue of Borba Gato by a group of demonstrators recently; a memorial which represents the colonial violence which ravaged Brazil’s indigenous people, is a case in point. The action was intended to ignite debate about Brazil’s past and the glorification of the colonizers, but the action itself was powerful enough to steer political thought towards opposing Bolsonaro’s dictatorship nostalgia.

Brazil lags behind in terms of dictatorship memory and justice, and despite not having the highest death toll when it comes to dictatorship victims, 50,000 people were imprisoned and 10,000 forced into exile. Bolsonaro’s government abused the democratic mandate to recreate dictatorship oppression. COVID19 may well be the moment for political change in Brazil, yet the pandemic must not obscure the reasons behind the Brazilian people’s dissent.

India’s ruling party – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – has not only been chipping away at the rights of religious minorities in the courts since taking power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, but also in the streets, where Muslims are faced with escalating threats from roaming Hindutva radicalized gangs.

The data shows that 90 percent of religious hate crimes in the previous decade occurred after Modi was sworn into office, and that an overwhelming majority of the victims were Muslims and perpetrators Hindus.

What we are witnessing today is the mass radicalization of a Hindu majority under a regime that has made no secret of its intent and desire to transform the country’s secular democracy into a tyrannical Hindu theocracy.

At the same time the Modi Government and BJP ruled states enact laws to make Muslims second class citizens, their most vociferous supporters are lynching Muslims, Dalits and other religious minorities with a perceived sense of total impunity.

And who could blame Hindu nationalists for thinking the Indian state had given them its explicit blessing to carry out dastardly deeds.

And who could blame Hindu nationalists for thinking the Indian state had given them its explicit blessing to carry out dastardly deeds, given the way in which Delhi Police officers so enthusiastically participated in the slaughter of 52 Muslims during the 2020 Delhi Riots?

A fact-finding report into the violence cited “instances of sexual harassment of Muslim women by the cops and also instances of police engaging in direct violence and abuse” during the riots that broke out in Northeast Delhi, after a former BJP leader urged his followers to attack anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters.

Victims of the violence, and their lawyers, have accused authorities of pressuring them to drop their respective cases and of sabotaging the investigation by carrying out raids of law firm offices to destroy evidence against Delhi Police.

On 23 May, police raided the home of 42-year-old Mohammed Aquil Qureshi in the state of Uttar Pradesh, after Hindu locals accused him of cow slaughter. According to his surviving wife and two daughters, the police tried extorting a bribe from Qureshi, before cracking him over the head with the butt of a gun and then throwing him to his death from the home’s terrace.

On 23 May, police raided the home of 42-year-old Mohammed Aquil Qureshi in the state of Uttar Pradesh, after Hindu locals accused him of cow slaughter.

What we are witnessing here is the radicalization of the country’s police departments by Hindu nationalist forces, a reality brought clearer into view by the recent upward surge in the deaths and torture of Muslims in police custody.

On 31 May, a 21-year-old Muslim man in Haryana was tortured to death in the custody of Haryana’s cybercrime police unit. The killers not only used anti-Muslim slurs against his family members but threatened violence against them should they file a report.

“If you file a complaint, I will make your entire family like Junaid’s state”, a police officer reportedly told the victim’s brothers, according to their mother.

Sadly, he wouldn’t be only Muslim murdered in police custody that day in Haryana.

Fifty-year-old Ayub Khan was tortured to death by police officer at Panipat’s Quila police station.

On 1 June, police in Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha are reported to have tortured six Muslim men in custody the “whole night,” after locals had falsely accused them of slaughtering an ox. One of the victims said the police boasted that even if they were to murder them, they would only be “transferred” as punishment.

A recent report into custodial torture and death across the world reveals that 1,731 people died in the custody of Indian security forces and correction officers in 2019, with most of the victims hailing from minority communities, particularly Muslims and Dalits.

The authors of the report also found that a majority of the deaths were caused by torture, and that the use of torture is “rampant” in India and meant to punish them or gather information or extract confessions.

Apart from most common methods of torture, such as punching, kicking and slapping, the study found that torture methods used by the police also included administering electric shocks, hammering iron nails into the torso, beating the soles of the feet, hanging detainees upside down and then hitting in private parts, stabbings with hand held tools, pouring petrol onto private parts, branding with hot iron rods, urinating into the mouth, inserting hard blunt object into anus and kicking pregnant women.

Astudy conducted by Dr. Noa Lavi in 2016, found Israeli youth to be “the most right-wing compared to countries in Western Europe.” A 2018 Israeli Democracy Institute survey showed that “approximately 64 percent of Israeli Jews aged 18-34 identify as right-wing, compared to 47 percent of those 35 and older.” Israeli Jewish radicalization did not start in the 21st century. Its antecedents are critical to understanding this moment. For more information, see here (link to other article above).

The underlying beliefs of the Israeli right-wing are: Territorial expansion into all of Eretz Yisrael (historic Palestine), prioritizing Jewish identity over democracy, focus on security and Israel’s existential threat, distrust of Palestinians and foreigners, and centrality of Nationalism/Patriotism.

Israeli Jews have been misled by being told repeatedly there was a ‘failed peace process’ without a Palestinian partner. Neither government officials nor educational institutions say that two decades of the Oslo process was never about peace, instead, entrenching Israeli control over more of historic Palestine. Israeli youth grew up during the Second Palestinian Intifada. Suicide bombings and missiles from Gaza were the vehicles that allowed Israel to justify itself as the victim.

Israelis were trained to believe Palestinians were terrorists and wanted to wipe Israel off the map, while Israel besieged and assaulted Gaza and occupation continued. Young Jewish Israelis have no contact with Palestinians unless in a military uniform as occupier or as illegal settlers: they live in different communities while the apartheid wall separates Israeli Jews (and other Palestinians) from Palestinians.

The Netanyahu Era 

Since 2009, Israeli Jewish youth only know Netanyahu as Prime Minister, and right-wing fascist leaders including Avigdor Lieberman, Naftali Bennet, and Ayelet Shaked. They have seen Netanyahu: expand settlements; illegally annex Palestinian lands; pass the nation-state law; neglect Palestinian communities; ignore organized crime; tell Palestinians in Israel to go live in the West Bank and Gaza; say that a coalition with Arab political parties “would be an existential threat to Israel”; incite violence toward Palestinians; condone police collaboration with Israeli Jewish settlers and other extremist groups attacking Palestinians in Israel; and again pursue a policy of intensified military aggression on Gaza with disregard for killing civilians.

Netanyahu’s right-wing government also advocates for: territorial expansion; Palestinian transfer; mowing down Gaza; stripping Palestinians of citizenship; passing half of the 65 discriminatory laws in Israel. These actions give settlers and nationalists justification for violence against Palestinians. Amos, a 17-year old Israeli, was quoted in 2019 saying: “killing Arabs is a religious duty.”

Under Netanyahu, Social justice demonstrations in 2011 demanded solutions to lack of housing, the rise in cost-of-living, corruption, and government accountability for social welfare. As African asylum seekers sought refuge, the government demonized and blamed them for societal ills, detaining and forcibly deporting them because of xenophobia and anti-black racism. Add to this, recent police provocations blocking the Damascus Gate during Ramadan, escorting Israeli settlers to the Temple Mount, and decades of forced displacement of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah and all over Palestine.

The Palestinian civil society’s call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions on Israel became a focus for the Netanyahu government after globally gaining traction. The government started funding public relations strategies, pouring resources into misinformation campaigns calling BDS antisemitic, banning its Jewish and non-Jewish supporters from Israel, and supporting the International Holocaust Remembrance definition of antisemitism to include critiques of Israel.

Settlements in Mixed Cities

In 2005, Gush Katif settlers in Gaza were removed. And the betrayed settlers founded new settlement projects in mixed cities all over Israel. In the last decade, the Israeli settler movement focused on creating a presence in mixed cities such as  Jaffa, Lyd, Ramle, and Acre, to keep land in Jewish hands and a Jewish majority,  cities ethnically cleansed of many Palestinian inhabitants in 1948. Settlers build West Bank-like settlement enclaves, where Palestinians are kept under surveillance and settlers are protected by police, showing no interest in coexistence.

Mobs/Lynchings/Incitement

Recent incidents show clearly this extremist violence. In Jerusalem, Lehava, a violent Israeli Jewish anti-miscegenation, anti-Arab organization, organized a demonstration at Damascus Gate during Ramadan chanting “Your village should be burnt down” and “Death to the Arabs.” Over 100 Palestinian were injured and others detained. Police used “stun grenades, tear gas and water cannons” against Palestinians. Besides police protection, a 2011 investigation exposed that the Israeli government had funded over half of Lehava’s budget. Lehava, Ateret Cohanim, Yad L’achim, and other extremist groups are sheltered from accountability for the violent crimes they commit and are funded from abroad.

In Bat Yam, fascism spread to the Mizrahi-majority city. Three Israeli Jews pulled Palestinian Said Musa of Ramle from his car and brutally beat him while being filmed by Israeli TV. Fascist groups also roamed Tiberius and Acre attacking Palestinians and their businesses.

Palestinian journalist Rami Younis of Lydd points to incitement by Israeli media to “shoot and kill Palestinians,” while also describing the Jewish mob attacks in Ramle and Lydd, with special unit police collaboration. Though there were curfews for residents in the mixed cities, the settlers were “escorted by Israeli police and allowed to roam free.” The groups marked Palestinian homes to attack later. The legal system also colludes with police and settler violence. Younis explains that only 2 of 162 indictments were brought against Jewish supremacists, while all others were against Palestinian protesters.

Tamr Nafar of Lydd, Palestinian rapper and activist, co-founder of DAM, speaks about Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in Lydd being “armed and protected by police”, while setting the context of structural inequality in mixed cities.

At the same time, West Bank Palestinians are detained and shot, and families are evicted from their homes. The aerial bombardment of Gaza over 11 days is evidence of the Israeli demonization of Palestinians there. Israel targeted civilians and media and health centers. Whole buildings collapsed in a matter of seconds, decimating entire families, and leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians without homes.

There are endless stories showing the web of connections between the Israeli government, police and military, settlers, and other extremist groups. To address the radicalization of youth, one must recognize that the majority of Israeli Jews accept this status quo. However, there are a minority of Israeli Jews calling for an end to apartheid and for decolonization.

Austria along with France are currently at the forefront of criminalizing Muslim civil society. The Documentation Center for Political Islam, established in July 2020, has released one of its projects, which has been met with fierce criticism. An “Islam Map” showing the addresses of 623 mosques and Muslim civil society institutions was presented and has created a large societal backlash in Austria.

The Documentation Center for Political Islam

Johann Gudenus of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ, Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs), who has since resigned due to his involvement in the Ibiza-gate, was the first to present the idea of a Documentation Center for Political Islam when his party was still in a coalition with the Christian democratic Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP, Österreichische Volkspartei) in 2018. After the Ibiza-gate put an abrupt end to the alliance, the project was now reintroduced and implemented by the ÖVP.

This time, however, the Greens are the ÖVP’s coalition partners. It did not help the Greens to water down the name somewhat in the government agreement and to rename the fund, which was highly subsidized by the state and thus exempt from parliamentary control, the “Austrian Fund for the Documentation of Religiously Motivated Political Extremism (Political Islam).” For what was in parenthesis and henceforth politically communicated applied: a documentation center for so-called political Islam.

The center has an annual budget of half a million euros and is designed to designate Muslim associations with which public authorities can and cannot cooperate – i.e., those which are blacklisted from public funding and space. It is part of the National Strategy for the Prevention of Extremism and Deradicalization, an internationally increasingly challenged concept.

After the project began its work in mid-2020, a first report was presented in December of the same year, which was scientifically very poor and essentially rehashed previously published rumors. But the goal had been achieved: Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had announced in November 2020 following the militant attack in downtown Vienna that he wanted to introduce a new criminal offense for “political Islam.” The Documentation Center could perfectly serve the purpose of identifying this “political Islam.”

But political Islam, for the Austrian government, was not militancy. Rather, it is imagined to pave the ground intellectually for militant action. Hence, political Islam is about thought. And one could add religious practice. Several legislations and political measures had been implemented in the past, linking the Hijab ban or the closure of mosques to the fight against political Islam. One was the ban of the hijab, another two were the closing of mosques. While all three measures have been repealed by the courts, the government still continues its fight against personal Muslim belief and organized Muslim communities.

Relaunch of the “Islam Map”?

The Documentation Center for Political Islam had its second press conference, where Minister for Integration, Susanne Raab, alongside Muslim theologian Mouhanad Khorchide from the University of Münster in Germany, political scientist Elham Manea, and Muslim theologian Ednan Aslan presented their latest findings. These scholars are known for their support of many anti-Muslim legislations implemented by the ÖVP under the leadership of Sebastian Kurz.

The “Islam Map” was originally launched in 2012 by Ednan Aslan and met only low-voiced critique. But the relaunch was different. While Aslan tried to convince the public that the Islam Map was no Islamism Map, the fact that the project was now financed and presented under its name meant that the 623 addresses were now potentially seen as a target by being linked to “political Islam.” And since the government has presented a bill to make political Islam a criminal offense, what are the implications of being on such a map?

Clearly, the addresses of individuals and institutions on this map have been made vulnerable. When the far-right Identitarian Movement started hanging signs with the words “Beware: Political Islam nearby” next to several mosques, a new dimension of this threat became clear. Very soon, criticism came from the European Council, the Conference of European Rabbis, the Austrian Bishops’ Conference, Muslim Youth Austria, and many others.

The rector of the University of Vienna requested the logo of the university be removed from the website and distanced the university from the project. While the Documentation Center for Political Islam took the map offline as a first reaction, its director said that the information will only be made public by logging in via an account.

Protecting Muslims against “political Islam”

The Minister for Integration reaffirmed that she does not want to stir up “general suspicion against Muslims.” And indeed, we should take her words seriously. Because for her, it seems, the Muslim associations and mosques do not represent the vast majority of Muslims. This is in line with a widespread narrative in continental European countries that follows a divide-and-rule politics by marginalizing organized Muslims and substituting their voices with state-funded and self-proclaimed “liberal” Muslim voices.

If the 623 sites of organized Islam according to Austrian Integration Minister Raab are not “the Muslims,” then she is indeed consistent in stigmatizing 623 Muslim institutions as potentially dangerous, while all the time pretending to save the Muslims. In a way, this is another episode in the recurrence of a colonial mindset that pretends to save the many good – read obedient – Muslims from the bad ones, i.e., those who claim their own agency.

What is needed

Currently, Austria’s political leadership sees Muslims as a walking danger that is criminalized with surveillance programs like this map, intimidated by raids, and problematized as a national security threat. This hawkish politics against the Muslim minority has to stop. Otherwise, the Muslim minority that makes around nine percent of the whole population, will be further estranged and the societal divide instigated by the government will create the ground for major conflicts.

The Chilean protests which started in October 2019, triggered by a rise in metro fares and expanding to demand an overhaul of the dictatorship constitution, eroded the veneer of a so-called prosperous country, if the World Bank were to be taken seriously. One of the fastest growing economies that thrives upon social inequalities, Chile’s restricted affluence can be traced back to the neoliberal experiment unleashed upon the country on September 11, 1973.

The US-backed coup which ousted socialist President Salvador Allende and backed dictator Augusto Pinochet, embarked upon a terrifying operation to rid the country of any left-wing mobilization. Torture, murder and disappearances of dictatorship opponents in over 1,200 detention and torture centers ushered in the neoliberal phase for Chile.

An essay penned by Orlando Letelier who was assassinated in the US by the Chilean’s National Intelligence Directorate (DINA),  illustrates how the “Chicago Boys” – a group of Chilean economists trained by Milton Friedman, were involved in the dictatorship coup and supplemented the repression with neoliberal policies. An economic plan for Chile that was funded by the CIA.

Closer to home, the US-backed Brazilian dictatorship also played a role in Chile’s destabilization. The US perceived Brazil under dictatorship rule as a strategic partner for the US in Latin America, to “try and prevent new Allendes and Castros and try where possible to reverse these trends.” Brazil also made a first bid to lead the US-funded Operation Condor in Latin America which resulted in the killing of at least 60,000 people – a plan that sought to purge the region of left-wing influence, failing to take the helm only due to opposition from other countries, including Chile and Argentina.

Decades later, Chile and Brazil are still plagued by their right-wing history of repression, re-enacted in democratically elected governments which rely upon military tactics for population control, particularly the indigenous communities, which stand as a final bulwark against the exploitation of land and resources.

The Chilean experience may be somewhat ahead in terms of collective memory and human rights, but the military still holds sway over government and society. The right-wing in Chile has, for example, lobbied for clemency with regard to dictatorship-era agents and torturers serving life sentences, while the military continues to hold their archives away from scrutiny, thus leaving many gaps in dictatorship narratives, particularly when it comes to the disappeared, which number over 3000 people who were buried in mass graves or disposed of in the ocean through the death flights.

US President Joe Biden has announced a multi-million dollar deal negotiation with Brazil, ostensibly to fight deforestation. Activists, however, have warned of the likelihood of the deal rewarding Bolsonaro to the contrary. In 2020, 40% of deforestation occurred in Brazil, spearheaded by the same environment minister Ricardo Salles who is negotiating the deal with the US.

It is likely that Brazil is looking for accomplices in deforestation rather than conservation, given that billions of untouched funds for the Amazon have been refused by Salles due to disagreements about conditions.

In a similar manner, the Chilean anti-terror legislation from the dictatorship era has been applied to the Mapuche people. The infamous Pinochet statement negating the existence of the Mapuche was not mere marginalization. It set the scene for agrarian industries in the Araucania region and a permanent loss of land even after the fall of the dictatorship, when ancestral Mapuche lands were exploited by multinational companies – forestry, mining and hydroelectric power.

One of Piñera’s electoral promises was the industrialization of the Araucania region and modifications to the anti-terror law, making it easier to prosecute Mapuche activists and thwart resistance for land reclamation and conservation.

The systematic targeting of the Mapuche, as well as environmental activists – the most prominent recent case being that of Camilo Catrillanca who was killed by a special squad known as the Commando Jungla – has led to increased state violence, with several activists being found dead in suspicious circumstances after Chile withdrew from the Escazu Agreement. A definitive confirmation of the Pinera government’s refusal to sign the agreement was communicated in 2020.

The result of such policies in both Brazil and Chile is the impoverishment of territory that is rich in resources, while at the same time exacerbating social inequalities. Chile’s transition to democracy, for example, and the election of center-left governments, did little in terms of policy to reverse Pinochet’s legacy.

Civilian mobilization since 2019 can be credited with the government’s relenting to public pressure and holding a referendum on whether the dictatorship constitution should be scrapped. The senate has agreed to postpone electing a constitutional assembly to rewrite the constitution due to an increase in coronavirus infections in Chile.

Currently, both Piñera and Bolsonaro are facing backlash in their respective countries, where mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic as well as social inequalities have risen to the helm. However, both countries are somewhat shielded by the normalization of their dictatorship history, where neoliberal profit was an incentive to gloss over human rights violations against civilians.

The regurgitated story of economic gain as a result of US-backed coups is not just part of a historical narrative that obliterates the story of the repressed. While intervention may not be the preferable political option, maintaining the status quo enforced through dictatorship violence has become a key feature of both right wing governments in Brazil and Chile.

The recent Swiss referendum to ban the wearing of the burka and niqab in public places follows similar decisions by the governments of France, Belgium, and Austria, reinforcing the mediatized perception of Muslims as the “difficult-to-integrate “other” in Europe.” This development converges with the state level institutionalization of anti-Muslim sentiment by the likes of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who wants to form a common front against “political Islam.”

An EU level policy idea already floated by French President Emmanuel Macron, who believes that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis today all over the world,” and the implication that the presence of Muslims in Europe are a threat to domestic security and the national identity.

The truth of course, is far more complex. European Muslims are well aware of the complex socio-political challenges before them and are increasingly challenging Islamophobic narratives as their communities grow and younger people become active agents of transformative social change. This has led to the emergence of various political leaders and social influencers who have become vocal public figures and are positively impacting their communities and wider societies. This can be seen in the rise  of assertive Muslim politicians in mainstream parties across Europe such as the Italian MP  Khalid Chaouki,  Mahinur Özdemir the first  hijab-wearing MP in Belgium and emergence of the DENK party in the Netherlands.

In Britain, despite facing various socio-economic inequalities, Muslims are an essential part of the U.K’s economic and cultural fabric.  Around 10,000 of National Health Service (NHS) doctors and nurses are Muslim; they were at the NHS front line during the Covid-19 crisis, and at forefront of community responses to the pandemic.

They have also made significant strides in mainstream politics at local and national governance level, with some achieving senior positions, such as the current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a former cabinet member of the Conservative government and the recently elected Leader of the Scottish Labor Party –Anas Sarwar. Muslim Leaders have also emerged from faith based NGOs such as the Muslim Council of Britain, which recently elected its first every  female leader,  Zara Mohammed,  while others lead think-tanks, such as Halima Begum, CEO of  the Runnymede Trust.

In the media, sports and cultural industries, the journalist Mehdi Hasan became internationally known as an anchor for Al-Jazeera English and is currently host of a NBC news program. The writings of Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik are among the sharpest commentaries of race, religion and politics and Nadiya Hussain, is a household name after winning the Great British Bake Off competition, and has hosted several TV programs for the BBC. Other British Muslims have reached the highest levels of their chosen fields in the world of sport like the long-distance runner ‘Mo’ Farah, a four-time  Olympic gold medalist,  Moin Ali, who has captained the English Cricket team and Amir Khan  a former Light-Welterweight world boxing champion.

Like other European states, Britain needed the post-war labor of immigrants from its former colonies, which resulted in a multiculturalist model that enables Muslims and other minorities to achieve a large degree of social mobility.

Though currently going through immensely turbulent times, the U.K is still viewed by outsiders with a degree of admiration for its historical achievements, continuing political influence on the world stage and soft power of its creative industries. Like other European states, Britain needed the post-war labor of immigrants from its former colonies, which resulted in a multiculturalist model that enables Muslims and other minorities to achieve a large degree of social mobility.

These advances are all the more noteworthy given the tough challenges that this faith group encountered and continues to experience today. Social polarization has reached levels not seen for decades, as forms of prejudice multiply –particularly racism and Islamophobia, which are rationalized in the name of freedom of speech.

The continued fallout from BREXIT, presence of refugees, growth of the far-right and unresolved anxieties about security have shaped a climate of suspicion towards ‘outsiders.’ Muslims are often the focus of mistrust and accused of being the “enemy within,” their faith incompatible with “British Values” and alleged to have a unique vulnerability to criminality and violence.

Before his election as leader, Anas Sarwar was subjected to racist slur from within the Labor party and another senior member withdrew her support for Sarwar after seeing a picture of his hijab-wearing wife.

Most of the leaders and influential figures highlighted here have struggled with racist and Islamophobic abuse on a regular basis. Some of shared on social media while others have faced institutional barriers and media attacks. A recent instance was when the leader of the Runnymede Trust was misrepresented by Conservative MPs in a Women and Equalities questions session in the House of Commons. Before his election as leader, Anas Sarwar was subjected to racist slur from within the Labor party and another senior member withdrew her support for Sarwar after seeing a picture of his hijab-wearing wife.

These and many other incidents vindicate the observation by Sayeeda Warsi over a decade ago, when she argued that prejudice against Muslims had “passed the dinner-table test.” Islamophobia and racism has quantifiably worsened in recent years to the point of being normalized in the media and political establishment.

Muslim journalists like Nesrine Malik regularly receive abusive emails and are trolled on their social media and Nadiya Hussain has often encountered racial and religious discrimination both on the street and within the industry that she works in. Furthermore, athletes like Moin Ali and Mo Farah have both complained about racism  they have experienced during their careers.

Representation in the elite levels of political power while symbolically encouraging, is not enough. Most of the politicians highlighted above downplay their faith so they don’t fall out of favor with their party leaders or alienate the voting public.  Other figures are only able to secure positions because their political values align with the party leadership.  This is illustrated in cases of former Conservative cabinet member  Sajid Javid, who denied the existence of Islamophobia, citing his own appointment as proof and  Munira Mirza –an advisor to Boris Johnson,  was selected  to lead the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, even though she believes institutional racism is a myth.

To shape a more amicable future, Western European governments would need to reset relationships with their Muslim citizens and conduct honest conversations that acknowledge failed policies and misperceptions. This looks highly unlikely given the converging political consensus that appears to be forming against Muslim political visibility.

European Muslims communities also need to do better and resolve their internal divisions and nurture infrastructures that help cultivate visionary leadership which can address the multidimensional challenges confronting their communities and wider societies. The increasing number of talented Muslims entering public life raises the possibility that this can become a reality.

Following the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques, on March 15, 2019, the Royal Commission of Inquiry took on an investigation to cast light on the dreadful incident in order to reduce the risk of future attacks to stand in solidarity with those who lost family members and the community as a whole. Nihan Duran interviewed Anjum Rahman, a founding member of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand, on the overall conditions of Muslim communities in New Zealand.

---

Q. The terrorist attacks in Christchurch shocked the world and caused deep sorrow. As a founding member of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand and as a member of the community that has suffered from the attacks, how do you evaluate the overall situation of the Muslim community in New Zealand?

New Zealand is generally a peaceful place and I think Muslims have so long felt comfortable and peaceful here. We are able to build our businesses, build mosques, pray, fast, wear hijabs – we can do all the activities that we wish. And generally, we can do them without too much interference. But there were undertones of discrimination, and we particularly felt it when there were incidents overseas, such as the September 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001, or the more recent attacks in France.

When things happen overseas, there is often a reaction against Muslims locally. So, from around 2015 and onwards, we could feel that there was an increase in the level of negativity, such as people yelling at you, not serving you well in a store, making unpleasant comments in the classroom. And we know that Muslim women are particularly targeted since they are more visible with their hijab.

Q. So, especially after 2015, one could foresee or perhaps expect a terrorist attack against Muslims, given the rise of social media where anti-Muslim sentiments spread instantly. Could you elaborate on this?

This is where the chapter in the life of the terrorist is quite important. Brenton Tarrant grew up in Australia. As is common in many terrorist profiles, there was family violence in his childhood and, in this case, Tarrant experienced violence from a partner of his mother to the extent that they had to seek legal protection against him.

Tarrant grew up in an environment where there was a lot of anti-Muslim talk in the media and in the political realm; he grew up during the John Howard years when there was a lot of negative commentary in the media against Muslims.

Consequently, in March 2017, we met with high-ranking officials and discussed the rise of white supremacy, far right extremism, and the neo-Nazi movement. We found that they were becoming more organized in New Zealand. We felt that they were more active but, of course, we are a community organization, so we couldn’t collect statistics or data as evidence. All that we could present were reports of incidents from Muslim women.

We also met with the Minister for the Secret Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau, which are the agencies that engage in intelligence gathering activities for counterterrorism. We told the Minister that we are concerned by events overseas and domestic, and that we wanted to be assured that the agencies are taking care of such a threat.

At that time, in March 2017, we were told not to worry, that it was only an overseas problem, and it was not a particular problem in New Zealand. Clearly in the Minister’s mind, it was not perceived as a threat.

Q. In line with your last remark, what drew my attention in the report is that the Commission admits on page 15 that “the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service had concentrated its scarce counter-terrorism resources on the threat of Islamist extremist terrorism.” Do you think that this contributed to the attack on the Christchurch mosques not being properly foreseen?

Yes, what we see in the report is that the state agencies were focusing on “Islamist extremism.” Due to their overseas partnerships, they received intelligence mostly about one particular type of extremism. As New Zealand is a small country, they didn’t have tools for complicated intelligence activities, at least not until 2018.

But what is disappointing in the report is that intelligence services were not looking for far-right extremist or white supremacist threats. Consequently, there was nobody to be held accountable before the incident happened.

Why do we have security and intelligence services if they are unable to prevent attacks like this? We believe that if they had been vigilant to different types of extremisms in the country, they would have stood a chance to prevent the Christchurch attack. We are deeply disappointed with this finding in the report.

Q. How well do you think the findings in the report expose the dreadful incident? Do you believe the new measures are sufficient to tackle the existing challenges and help reduce the risk of future attacks?

The report’s time scope is very limited. We do not have an inquiry by the Australian government on the terrorist Brenton Tarrant’s life and the stages of his radicalization. We know that by January 2017, his sister had concerns for his mental health.

We know that in December 2018, a couple of months before the terrorist attack, his mother came to visit him in New Zealand and she had significant concerns about him, with regards to his views and his state of mind. These examples show the stages of radicalization. If he had got the appropriate help at that time, maybe something could have been different.

The bigger question is how we prevent people from going down this path of extreme hate

The report states that there are many people making similar hateful comments so there is nothing that makes a person like him special. However, the number of hateful comments was so high. I don’t know how the government monitors hate speech.

It is clear that such a high level of hate speech and threats did not alarm the government agencies. But we need to stop people going down that track. So, the bigger question is how we prevent people from going down this path of extreme hate.

Q. What about the role of biases in impeding your efforts to warn the government for a potential upcoming threat?

When we spoke to high-level state officials in 2017, they did not take our experiences into account. And I think this is somehow linked to their biased view that Muslim women are “weak” and “submissive.” They just did not take us seriously and this needs to change.

Yes, we are still able to speak to the government, to speak to ministers or civil servants, and express ourselves in the media. Also, when the report came out, we had the opportunity to share our views and to speak clearly about the things that we were unhappy with. And I think, for me, as a Muslim, our duty is to make the effort. You are there to make sure that they are accountable to your community.

Q. In the report, it is frequently stated that New Zealand is home to Muslim communities and that Muslims should feel safe there. How do you feel today as a Muslim woman in New Zealand?

Despite everything, I do not think I would live anywhere else. New Zealand is still one of the safest countries. The response by the country to the attacks was overwhelmingly positive.

Every mosque in the country had thousands of visitors, people kept coming, brought gifts, flowers, and as if they were our neighbors and friends, they sincerely asked what they could do or how they could support us.

Yes, all the concerns that I addressed are still there. There are people who are being radicalized, going down the path of hate in social media. The systemic and institutional discrimination is still there. But for me, this is my country, and this is my home. I do not belong anywhere else.

Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), the erudite Italian philosopher, noted that the distinction between ideological right and left lies “in the different attitudes that both sides automatically assume towards the idea of inequality.”

Latin America is a region with the highest inequality gap – even higher than Sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, in the report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), dated December 2019, the richest 10% in Latin America owns 37% of the total wealth, while the poorest 40% owns a mere 13%.

According to the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics Joseph Stiglitz this gap is a legacy of the region’s colonial past. At the same time, history has usually placed corrupt leaders in power.

But how can a place like Latin America with such shameful indicators and a notorious legacy of violence and social turmoil experience a surge in the arrival to power of regimes identified as ultraright? Of regimes whose purpose is to defend the privileges of a small portion of the society at the expense of the majority. It seems that the colonial mentality never really left the Andes.

Slightly more than 13 years ago, in November 2007, at the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, the President of Colombia Álvaro Uribe, the icon of the continent’s right-wing politics, was the summit’s black sheep when seen alongside his counterparts from Chile (Michelle Bachelet), Brazil (Lula da Silva), Venezuela (Hugo Chávez), Argentina (Cristina Fernández), Ecuador (Rafael Correa), and a handful of other Latin American presidents from the left.

Today, if a picture at the same summit were to be taken, it would be very different. Even though countries like Argentina and recently Bolivia have seen a comeback to power of leftist leaders, nations like Colombia, Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay keep moving towards the right.

In countries like Venezuela, Mexico, and Bolivia, where left governments steer the wheel of their democracies, right-wing supporters are in constant watch for any opportunity to seize power in the next elections.

The right-wing Venezuelan opposition seems confident of the support of the hawkish U.S. establishment and doesn’t even consider that a democratic path to regain power is necessary as several pleas have been made for a U.S. military intervention to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.

The right-wing Venezuelan opposition seems confident of the support of the hawkish U.S. establishment and doesn’t even consider that a democratic path to regain power is necessary.

According to some thinkers, Latin America is conceptualized as “America’s Backyard.” As the United States’ empire faces increasing challenges as a dominant superpower as a result of the rise of China, Russia, and smaller regional powers in Asia, Africa, and Europe that are stepping up their influence worldwide, Latin America seems to be turning into an “Alamo” of U.S. foreign diplomacy.

Right-wing regimes in Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, and Honduras have some common values with Republicans in Washington, where the Evangelical voters matter the most. Jair Bolsonaro was elected with nearly 58 million votes as the president of Brazil, the most populous country in Latin America.

Evangelical voters, which constitute 30% of Brazil’s population, support the most radical right-wing parties and proved a goldmine for Bolsonaro’s victory.

Evangelical voters are having an ever-growing influence on Central American countries as well. Forty percent of voters in Guatemala, the most populated country in the subcontinent with more than 17 million people, are evangelical Christians; in Honduras, evangelicals account for 32% of voters, in El Salvador 31%, and in Costa Rica around 25%. El Salvador, one of the countries with higher immigration rates from the Middle East and whose president Nayib Bukele is a descendant of Palestinian immigrants, is very obedient to what Washington dictates.

Evangelical voters are having an ever-growing influence on Central American countries as well. Forty percent of voters in Guatemala, the most populated country in the subcontinent with more than 17 million people, are evangelical Christian.

Bukele, who considers himself “not religious” as he stated once on social media, relied on the evangelical vote to win the presidential elections. Bukele even had close contact with Trump’s evangelical pastors and one of his first visits to a foreign country after his inauguration was to Israel, a time-honored tradition of every U.S. president.

Guatemala’s president, Jimmy Morales, a declared Christian Zionist, moved his country’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018. Morales stepped down from the presidency of Guatemala last January 14, 2020, when the elected Alejandro Giammatei, an ultra-conservative politician assumed power after winning the election with 58% of the votes.

But the growing influence of evangelical Zionists is not the only drive for the establishment and solidification of far-right regimes in Latin America. Colombia’s turbulent political past is perpetuated by the current president, Iván Duque, who follows in the tradition of right-wing leaders who claim that “Colombia will become another Venezuela,” if a leftist government is elected.

Even though some voices in the Colombian political spectrum consider Juan Manuel Santos, a former president and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a leftist, he undoubtedly belongs to the traditional establishment.

Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerrilla fighter in the 1970s and 1980s, lost the 2018 presidential elections by nearly two million votes to a candidate most of the country calls “Uribe’s candidate” – a reference to the controversial former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, who was known to be a close ally of the U.S. and an advocate of neoliberalism and ultraright politics.

Gustavo Petro, proposing a more liberal agenda in the social, environmental, and economic fronts, will probably run again next year, but his past as a militant of a revolutionary guerrilla scares a big portion of Colombia’s population. This fear is exacerbated by the pro-right media in the country, which depicts him as a “new Chávez” or a “communist thug.” As Colombians have fresh memories from the 50-year-long internal conflict with Marxist guerrillas, this profile is not appealing.

Despite cases like Cuba, with 60 years of resistance against the U.S. sanctions, Venezuela and its more than two-decade-long legacy of Chávez, and the strong growing liberal movements in Chile, Argentina, and Mexico, the shadow of old-fashioned colonialism in new clothes is being cast over the region’s shores and mountains more strongly than ever. Operation Condor seems to have found plenty of loyal allies among the people of Latin America.

Islamophobia is on the rise everywhere in Europe, and politicians increasingly play with Islamophobic sentiments for political gains. Following the discernibly hostile rhetoric of French President Emmanuel Macron against the Muslim communities in France, Faruk Yaslicimen and Nihan Duran interviewed French sociologist Raphael Liogier, professor at Sciences Po Aix (Institut d’Études Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence) and visiting scholar at Colombia University, on the history and current state of Islamophobia in France.

---

Q. French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent rhetoric and acts targeting Muslims have aroused a lot of controversy not only in France but also in the global public. Where are we now with the eminent rise of Islamophobia?

Islamophobia emerged in the 20th century in Europe, but the very nature of this Islamophobia has changed over the last decade. It is not a change only in intensity, it is a change in the very nature of what Islamophobia is now. Today, we don’t have Islamophobia, but Islamo-paranoia in France.

Because when you are in a paranoid state, it is very different. You think there is a plot, you presume that there is an intention. The very presumption justifies the action. Because whatever the reaction could be of the Muslim community, we always think that they are constantly at war with us. That is the reason why it would be more accurate to call it Islamo-paranoia rather than Islamophobia.

Q. You talk extensively about the transformation from Islamophobia to Islamo-paranoia. Can you date this back to a certain sequence of events or time? When did it start and how did we get here?

It is a collective paranoia, which is borne out of a narcissistic wound. This means that you think you are losing something narcissistically, you are losing the image of yourself, the image you want to show to others, to the rest of the world.

It is very important for everybody, but it is even more important for Western Europeans because they are used to the idea of being at the center of the world, and this created some kind of a complex; again, I am using the psychological metaphor. And, anti-Islamism, which exists in some parts of the world is directly fed, even constructed, through this complex.

Europe was like the center of the world and what we see throughout the 20th and 21st centuries is the loss of this centrality. The first was the military loss at the beginning of the 20th century.

We [Europeans] lost centrality to the United States of America. But still, until 2003, we had something, we kept our symbolic preeminence, meaning that Europe was still supposed to be the land of human rights, or some kind of moral power.

But in 2003, something incredible happened. The U.S. decided to go to war with Iraq without European powers for the first time. They did not even ask them. And when they talked to them, they talked to them as if they were a colony, not a real ally.

That was the moment when there was some kind of a reversal in the European conscience in general, that created the feeling of being surrounded by enemies. And if you look at it precisely, you can see that all the political parties, which we call the new populist parties were either founded or developed this very year of 2003. All across Europe, these new political parties were anti-Muslim. They all have the same program.

Q. Can you give some examples of these?

The French Front National, for example. It already existed. But from 2003 onward, it changed its ideology completely. Before it was recognized more as an anti-Semite far-right party, but now it turned to an anti-Muslim party. What is more interesting is that this party had an anti-laicity stance before 2003, and after 2003, it became a guardian of laicity, completely the opposite. In the meantime, laicity changed its meaning.

Before 2003, laicity meant the freedom of expression in the public space. Well, laicity stands for that, right? It doesn’t stand to prevent people from expressing their religion; it is to allow people to express their beliefs and opinions.

That is the reason why we have the neutrality. Not at all the neutrality of people, but of the state. However, from 2003 onwards, we changed its interpretation. It was not only the neutrality of the state, but also the neutrality of people, which is very different.

So, we changed completely. In 2004, you can see the act of parliament to prevent the scarf, the simple scarf, in public schools in France. Similar acts reflect the picture all over Europe; and there is something strange with the laicity in France. It is becoming the object of our narcissistic anxiety.

The target is now Muslims. Why? Because Muslims have a peculiar definition in our minds: enemies of the Christian culture, and enemies of modernity and progress.

We are losing something, but we do not know what specifically we are losing and therefore, we need to find a target. And the target is Muslims. Why? Because Muslims have a peculiar definition in our minds: enemies of the Christian culture on the one hand, and enemies of modernity and progress on the other. Thus, you can mobilize masses, both from the right Christian conservative electorates and from the left progressivist electorates.

Q. This is where a deep sense of antagonism in the French society emerges, right?

This is related to the other argument that Muslims see themselves as Muslim first, hence, they value their citizenship less than their Muslim identity. Sometimes on the radio during prime-time shows or in widely read magazines, Muslims are depicted as people who think deep inside that they are Muslims first, and French second.

I remember I watched a film, where they go to a depo in a “secret” place. I myself went to this kind of place with my students and it is no secret. So, in the film, the camera is showing shadowy scenes and there are people with beards, face veils, and headscarves everywhere – quite a scene! And while we watch this on TV, a person in the film says, “If the French law prevents me from practicing my religion, I will not obey.”

Aha! A tremendous scandal against the French republic, and people who are watching immediately react “Look at that! It is awful. If a French law will prevent him from practicing his religion, he will not obey and therefore, he is betraying the republic,” or “He is against the republic.”

Religion is the most intimate thing in our lives, so I find it completely crazy to say “oh, they betray the country” just because they say they choose their faith over a political system. I think it is quite the opposite. And now we are coming to what is happening now.

If one day, the French state, the republic, enacts that people cannot practice their religion freely, and that I cannot practice my religion in the public space, I won’t have any problem with disobeying this law, because it means this state is not a republic anymore.

Due to our imagination of who a Muslim is supposed to be, we are “able” to create a sense of unity. So, we know against whom we can fight. This happened after 2003 in the very structure of the discourses we use.

We presume that Muslims have a plan for France. In such a paranoid state of mind, you’re allowed to do anything to protect yourself. You can react and be violent because whatever you do will always be less violent than what they plan behind closed doors.

Q. Do you think this is a strategic move for the upcoming election?

I know, because I know Macron’s advisors and I talk to them. I examined his program in detail before he was elected. And it was almost symmetrically the opposite of what he is doing now. He just believes in the economy. And I think he wanted sincerely to change the economy in France step by step. And suddenly an identity crisis has popped up on his way.

Following the terrorist attack in Paris in October 2019, he changed his discourse, because he knows well that waging a tight war against terrorism can give him the chance to unite larger numbers of people behind him.

At first, he did not pay attention to mosques or to the questions of the veil and all that. He left it to the other members of his government. But it seems that his political advisors convinced him that if he wanted to win the election, he could not carry on the way he used to, and thus Macron took the issue at hand. He knows that the majority of the French population is concerned with these issues, so, he tries to anticipate what they would expect from him.

Q. You say that there is a recent change in the discourse and the overall attitude of President Macron regarding the Muslim community in France. How does this resonate with the French public?

The problem is that the French public is completely immersed in this paranoia. There is some kind of a theater, a tragic one. In the scenario, there are different roles and functions for different actors. You have these populists, saying “the real” French people are in danger. These real and good citizens are in danger. And, in front of them, you invent, “the fake” people, the enemy, the Muslims.

You are either a hero or a betrayer. You cannot be both. It is impossible. Macron was about to become a betrayer. Now, he wants to become the hero again.

So, we found the enemy, right? Now, you need to have heroes. Then, journalists as well as politicians have to choose their sides, whether they are with the “real people” or they are with the “fake” ones. So, you are either the hero or the betrayer. You cannot be both. It is impossible. And Macron was about to become a betrayer. Now, he wants to become the hero again, because otherwise, they will think he is with the “enemy.”

And so, to answer your question precisely, what is preoccupying me is not Macron because he is just a politician. He knows, and he is right, that he cannot be elected if he carries on not caring about the collective anxiety of losing French identity, because he will be perceived as a betrayer and will not be elected because the majority of the French people consider themselves as the “real people” in danger by the “fake people.” I am sorry to say that, but that is the case.

Q. The division seems so deep. Do you think there is a way to overcome these problems? How can France start to debate this from the right angle?

The first thing we should do is to stop talking all the time about Islam. Because when we comment on Islam, we are discussing Islam per se, and not the Muslim people. But we are just manifesting our own complexes. So, this is the first thing.

Secondly, to ease our socio-psychological tensions, we should stop looking for a reason outside and we need to have public debates to address this very complex issue. We should accept that we are not at the center of the world anymore. We feel weak, but we pretend to be strong externally.

By doing that, we are spending our energy in an extremely useless way and not even addressing the real problems of what is happening here and now. It is pointless. So, what are we scared of? We are scared of our own shadow.

Raphael Liogier is a professor at Sciences Po Aix (Institut d’Études Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence), visiting scholar at Colombia University, and the author of numerous books. Among them are The Myth of Islamization: Essay on a Collective Obsession (2012, Turkish edition is published by Epos in 2012), and The War of Civilization Will Not Take Place: Coexistence and Violence in the XXI Century (2016, Spanish edition, 2017; Arabic edition, 2018). His research focuses on identity, religious identities, collective identities, identity reactions including populism, and how people deal with identity by excluding the identity of others.