As I write this piece, the public discourse is filled with noise – both in support of and against the decry by Emmanuel Macron, the French President, that “Islam is in crisis”. In his latest interview with Al Jazeera, Macron underlines his intention to protect the “freedom of thought, speech, and drawing” without “taking sides”.

The reality stands, however, different from what he mentions – more than sixty mosques and religious centres have been closed, multiple arrests made and the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons projected on important public buildings.

The facts preceding these events provide the context – speeches by the French President which many say singled out Islam; the brutal murder of a school teacher, Samuel Paty, by a Muslim immigrant; multiple killings at a cathedral at Nice, again by a Muslim; multiple stabbing of Muslim women at Eiffel Tower in Paris, which largely went unnoticed from the media glare; large scale protests by Muslim throughout the world leading to economic boycott of French products; and Turkey and Pakistan publicly denouncing Macron’s statements.

These are indeed troubled times!

In the midst of all this I am reminded of a conversation with a friend many years ago. Upon finding me religiously inclined, he had asked, “Why are the Muslims so violent world-over?” He was an agnostic borne out of an inter-religious marriage between a Muslim and a Hindu. I asked if he had any Muslim friends and how many of them he had found violent. Having been friends with numerous Muslims since his childhood he remained silent to my question. His second query was even more interesting – “Why do Muslims not condemn the violence in the name of Islam?” I remember, I had replied, “For any condemnation to gain acceptance, the Muslim citizenry must be seen as the first victim of such radical discourse?”

The French situation is similar in many respects. Almost everyone is asking questions that are fundamental to the Muslim identity – why does Islam seem so inherently violent? Why are Muslims so sensitive about their faith? Why Muslims, in minority, cannot accommodate the cultural values of the majority? Is Islam actually in crisis? Do we need a state-regulated definition of Islam? Could there be a French Islam or a European version of Islam? The queries seem endless.

Can we navigate through this complex maze of questions? Can we find suitable answers? Yes, we can. But that would require us to – first, identify the Muslim citizenry as the victim of such discourse, much like the others; and second, to give Muslims the required spaces to forge dialogues, and help shape the public political discourse on these issues. In nutshell, these questions cannot be addressed by anyone else on behalf of the Muslim citizenry.

The discourse on political Islam is being forged in the name of Islam and in a manner which endangers the socio-political existence of the Muslim citizenry. It is our duty to not let this happen. The state must step in to enable capacities within the Muslim civic life that have the potential to foster such public engagements. In the end, the culture of dialogue and reconciliation towards finding solutions to the questions cannot but emanate from within the Muslim public psyche, and for that the Muslim psyche must be allowed to disown such rancour.

The Muslim public psyche is, however, in crisis today. The crisis is not because of any lack of capacity to forge public opinion, but due to the lack of proper representation to foster any public discourse.

Macron is not right when he says, “secularism never killed anyone”. The French secularism has constantly stabbed the Muslim public psyche in its heart while pushing the citizenry further away from any meaningful public engagement. 

Reviving Charlie Hebdo, and aligning it with French Laicite, is the latest example of such an onslaught. It has not merely normalized the radical Islam discourse in the public dialogue but also ended up classifying the entire Muslim population as potential suspect.

The road to exit seems a long drive from here.

The author is Senior Research Fellow at Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University. 

The post The Secular onslaught on the Muslim public psyche appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With heroism, comes citizenship. Thibault Camus/EPA

That Gassama deserves full recognition for this outstanding act of bravery is surely beyond question. His actions have been lauded around the world. But perhaps the greatest honour came from a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron, who presented Gassama with a medal in recognition of his “bravery and devotion”, a job with the Parisian fire brigade, and also with a promise: French citizenship.

Gassama received residency documents enabling him to remain in France legally, and was told he would be fast tracked to full citizenship.

For an undocumented migrant who risked his life crossing land and sea to reach France, only to find himself living in the shadows as a consequence of being “sans papiers”, or undocumented, citizenship is a highly prized status. It is the prism through which obligations between a state and a person are understood. Without citizenship, a state will likely refuse to recognise any obligation towards a person unless they can prove a special reason for why they should be treated as the exception – for example, because they are fleeing conflict or persecution.
 

A move towards ‘earned’ citizenship

As such, it’s little surprise that Macron viewed citizenship as the ultimate reward for Gassama’s bravery. But the hypocrisy of this in a country with highly restrictive immigration laws hasn’t gone unnoticed. There are also precedents set for this within French law. Article 21-19 of the French civil code states that a person can be granted citizenship as a consequence of performing “exceptional services” for the nation, and has traditionally been applied in the case of Foreign Legion soldiers from other countries who fight for France.

Yet the case is also part of a wider international trend in which citizenship is conceptualised as a reward to be earned through good behaviour. In the context of heavily restrictive immigration laws in Western countries, rewarding migrants with citizenship has become a means through which the state defines the deserving future citizen from the undeserving non-citizen.

This trend can be seen in French citizenship law, whereby prospective citizens, barring some exclusions, are subject to a contract which requires them to prove, over a two-year period, that they deserve to stay. While this reflects the historical importance of the idea of citizenship as a contract between citizens and the state in France, it’s also novel in emphasising the duties of the citizen not only in citizenship itself but also in the process of becoming a citizen.

This trend can also be seen in the UK, where prospective citizens must pass the “Life in the UK” test. They must prove a certain level of English language skills and demonstrate qualities of good citizenship such as obeying the law and paying taxes through employment before they are granted naturalisation. And it also underpinned Barack Obama’s DREAMers scheme, under which undocumented children would be rewarded with citizenship if they attended university or served in the army for at least two years. These are but a handful of examples of a trend which is shaping access to the basic rights of citizenship in countries of high immigration around the world.

Rights at stake

But this trend is concerning. Citizenship once represented a set of rights to be demanded from the state as a form of emancipation, for example in the civil rights and suffrage movements. But increasingly this notion of citizenship is being replaced by citizenship as a reward for loyalty and obedience. It has, in countries such as the UK and the US, become a conditional reward that can be removed, with citizens at risk of being stripped of their rights and rendered stateless should they disobey the state. This means that citizenship status is increasingly hard to access and precarious, and a person’s basic civil, social and political rights are undermined as a result.

Gassama’s actions were near superhuman and they rightly earned him international recognition. He was also, rightly, granted basic citizenship rights in the country in which he resides. But citizenship rights shouldn’t be about being superhuman. Rather, we have to find another way of allocating basic rights to people simply by virtue of their humanity alone.
 

Katherine Tonkiss, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Policy, Aston University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Spiderman of Paris shows the superhuman demands placed on migrants to earn their citizenship appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Emmanuel Macron. Liewig Christian/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

At 8pm local time on Sunday 7 May, it was confirmed: Emmanuel Macron, leader of the year-old movement En marche! (Onward!) won the French presidential election with 66.1% of the vote, defeating Marine Le Pen, of the far-right Front National (FN). A collective sigh of relief passed through France, Europe and across the world.

But this election has been historic for several reasons – beating a far-right populist is only one of many. The two main governing parties in the fifth republic – the Socialist Party and centre-right Republican Party – were knocked out in the first round; it is the first time since 1969 that participation in the first round was higher than that of the second round (77.7% and 74.6% respectively); and, at 25.44%, the rate of abstention is at its highest since 1969.

25.44% amounts to around 12 million people, with a further 4.2 million who spoiled their ballot. Although the lowest turnout was registered in the French overseas territories and Corsica, the phenomenon was observed throughout the country.

An open-air abstention meet-up

On election day, under a gloomy purple-grey sky, I joined a group of around 40 people gathered at the Parc de la Villette, in the north-east of Paris.

With only a few more hours left to vote, this crowd was not rushing to the polling stations: the gathering, with the Facebook event title of “So what do we do now?”, was set up to encourage those who had chosen to abstain or spoil their ballots to come together and discuss what the future held. Most of the attendees were far-left activists, anti-fascists, some were supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate from the far-left La France Insoumise movement (roughly translating to "France Unbowed"), and others were members of the anarchist Black Bloc group.

Despite tension surrounding the elections, here the atmosphere was relaxed. A subversive version of a coconut shy stall was set up in one corner (ironically dubbed the “Game of the FN”) where participants won (or lost) points by knocking over cardboard boxes with the protagonists of this year’s election, including Le Pen (with “fascist hyena” scribbled under her photo), François Fillon (the candidate of the Republican party, and plagued by a corruption scandal), and of course Macron.

One of the older participants, with particularly good aim, managed to knock over the Le Pen box on his first shot, armed with a football. Amidst cheers, he chuckled: “it’s by kicking them that you get the fascists!”.

“Ni Le Pen, Ni Macron!”

Marius, a 25-year-old who lives and works in Marseille, came to Paris to participate in the gathering and the anti-capitalist protests. He told me that the first time he voted was in the presidential elections in 2012. Since then, he voted in the first round of the 2012 legislative elections but didn’t vote in the second round.

“I have since chosen not to vote,” he told me. “The 2012 presidential campaign was a struggle for me. We were encouraged to vote against Sarkozy, which I did, and it really annoyed me because I knew that Hollande would employ liberal [economic] policies.”

While Marius and his friends discussed their discontent with Hollande’s presidency, a Boycott 2017 activist – a group advocating for abstention or ballot spoiling – handed out leaflets branded with the now-popular slogan “Ni Le Pen, Ni Macron!” (“Neither Le Pen, nor Macron!”).

The leaflet begins: “When faced with the plague [Le Pen], the near unanimity of politicians give the order to vote for cholera [Macron], it’s the famous Front républicain.” It’s a succinct summary of the debate that raged amongst left-wing voters and politicians in the days leading up to the elections. It lists the initiatives and laws they had to “fight against”, including the “damned” loi Macron (Macron Law) and the loi travail (Law on Work), both of which attempted to reform the country’s economy and labour laws.

The former was drafted by him during his time as Hollande’s minister of the economy (from August 2014 to August 2016) and the latter was heavily influenced by his policies. The incumbent president is leaving office with a low approval rating – only 4% of the population are satisfied with his presidency, according to a poll published in October 2016. Macron has worked hard to dissociate himself from his predecessor’s record, but Hollande’s shadow will loom over him.

The Boycott 2017 leaflet finishes with “all the governments of the previous years have set the scene for the FN”. It cites the 2002 election which saw Jean-Marie Le Pen (Marine’s father), then-candidate of the FN, crushed by Jacques Chirac, the right-wing candidate of the Union pour un movement populaire(UMP, now les Républicains), with 82.2%. “As we can see the strategy of forming a barrage against fascism in the ballot box is not efficient against the FN which continues to gain ground,” it notes. Boycott 2017 concludes that “the only real strategy is the boycott of the elections.” As evidenced by the 25.44% abstention rate on Sunday, they were not alone in thinking that.

Anti-Marine Le Pen posters, by Canal Saint Martin. Credit: Bérengère Sim. All rights reserved.

In stark contrast to the 2002 election, when the shock of the FN’s presence in the second round and the fear of the party mobilised politicians and citizens to call for a strategic vote for Chirac, many have put Le Pen and Macron’s policies on a par. Phrases like “I will not choose between neoliberalism and lepenism” or “neither extreme right nor extreme finance” have echoed across social media and in gatherings, pointing to the banalisation of the FN’s far-right policies paired with the rejection of the current system, which many believe Macron embodies.

Mélenchon, who in 2002 immediately called on his supporters to vote for Chirac to block the far-right, refused to call on his voters to turn to Macron after the first round of the 2017 elections, perhaps implicitly encouraging his supporters to abstain or spoil their ballot – an “irresponsible” position, according to the socialist Julien Dray.

As promised at the beginning of Mélenchon’s movement, La France Insoumise, a consultation was organised so that “les insoumis” (the unbowed – Mélenchon’s supporters) could express their voting intentions for the second round. The majority, 36.12%, planned on spoiling their ballot; 34.83% announced they would vote for Macron; 29.05% claimed they would abstain.

Op-eds mushroomed in an attempt to convince those planning to abstain or spoil their ballots: José Bové, a French Green Party member of the European Parliament, exclaimed “I call, without any constraints, to vote for Macron” in the leftist French daily Libération; the writer Raphaël Glucksmann wrote a “Letter to a friend who refuses to choose”; with a few cross-Channel articles featuring in the mix, such as Hadley Freeman’s piece in The Guardian: “Le Pen is a far-right holocaust revisionist. Macron isn’t. Hard choice?”. Several abstentionists at the Villette were looking with disdain at Libération’s front page on the weekend of the vote: “DO WHAT YOU WANT BUT VOTE FOR MACRON”, with an article by Laurent Joffrin, director of the newspaper, titled “We do not just vote for ourselves”.

Marius admitted to me that he had felt pressure to vote: “the real question for me was whether or not, in the 2017 elections, I would be able to resist the pressure from my friends who wanted me to vote for their preferred candidate.” In France, during ‘civic education’ classes in middle school, children are taught that “voting is a right, and it is also a civic duty” (“voter est un droit, c’est aussi un devoir civique”), a phrase that is printed at the top of all electoral cards stamped at polling stations. During this class, teachers explain that voting is considered a moral obligation and the exercising of one’s right to elect their representatives. As a result, abstention is, to a certain extent, considered a dirty word.

The 25.44% that Macron cannot ignore

Did the numerous articles and the endorsements of Macron from politicians and public figures in France and abroad help? That’s difficult to say.

The president-elect will have to choose a prime minister; the legislative elections, with the first and second round being held on 11 and 18 June respectively, will determine whether he will govern with a majority or not.

Macron is inheriting a divided society. Given the many records broken in this presidential election, he cannot afford to ignore those who abstained as much as he cannot ignore those who voted for the FN.

During his speech at the Louvre, addressing his supporters after his victory, Macron acknowledged those who voted for him unenthusiastically, without adhering to his ideas or his programme, “to defend the republic”. He declared: “I understand that this does not mean I will have free rein.” He then turned to those who voted for the FN: “they expressed an anger, a desperation, and sometimes convictions. I respect them but I will do everything to make sure you never have reason again to vote for extremes again.”

Those who abstained or spoiled their ballots were absent from his speech.

As more people joined the crowd in the Villette, Marius clarified his position to me. “All those people who are shouting at me saying that because [I abstained], Le Pen will get 40% in this election, I say to them: I don’t care. I am involved in anti-fascist movements; I advocate for local issues where I live. For me, voting isn’t the most important act.”

One of his friends – a fellow abstentionist – nodded away enthusiastically. She added: “anyway, you can’t fight fascism every five years with a piece of paper.”

This article was first published on openDemocracy.net.

The post “You can’t fight fascism every five years with a piece of paper” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Emmanuel Macron, who will soon become eighth president of the Fifth French Republic. Christian Hartmann/Reuters

Macron’s decisive victory in this pivotal election for France and the European Union showed that the so-called French “Republican front” still holds. Millions of voters from the centre-left and centre-right, who supported other candidates in the first round of presidential voting two weeks ago, rallied around Macron in the run-off, preventing the extreme right from gaining power in France for the first time since the 1940s.

The election caps Macron’s meteoric and improbable rise in French politics. He was still relatively unknown when President François Hollande selected him to serve as economy minister three years ago. And when he announced his bid for the presidency last year, few experts gave him much of a chance.

Though Macron has an impressive pedigree, he has never held elective office. And he ran as a self-proclaimed outsider, unaffiliated with any of France’s mainstream parties.

Now, at just 39 years old, Macron will become the youngest French head of state since Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873), president of France’s Second Republic from 1848 to 1851.
 

Vote results

Macron captured 65% of the vote, performing most strongly in France’s big cities — Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, Toulouse and Nantes.
 

Macron was considered the favourite coming into the run-off, but some experts warned that low voter turnout could lead to a much closer race than many were predicting. After last Wednesday’s television debate between the two finalists, in which Le Pen was widely judged to have performed poorly, the French polling firm Ipsos reported that Macron’s lead over her had widened to 26 points, 63% to 37%.

Macron’s resounding victory also showed that last Friday’s leak of campaign documents and emails had little effect on the election’s outcome. Just before the ban on campaigning went into effect on Friday at midnight, the Macron campaign announced that it was the victim of a “massive, coordinated” hacking attack.

According to a statement released by the campaign, the hack was “an attempt to destabilise the French presidential election” by sowing doubt and misinformation.

There is no firm evidence yet, but French officials suspect that the hackers have ties to Russian intelligence, and are the same group that was behind last year’s attack on the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems in the United States.
 

Ability to govern

Macron must now unite the country after one of the most divisive and polarising elections in recent French history. In his speech to supporters, he said that he understood the anxiety and the doubts that many Le Pen supporters expressed.

He must now also deliver on his reform agenda. But whether he will be able to do so depends on the outcome of the elections to the National Assembly, France’s lower and more powerful legislative chamber, which will take place in June.

Macron’s outsider status could be a liability there. Parliamentary elections in France have traditionally been dominated by centre-left and centre-right parties.

Because Macron launched his En Marche! movement just a year ago, the party currently holds no legislative seats. It is running candidates across the country, but many of them are young and inexperienced, and it remains unlikely that the party will capture the 289 seats needed for a parliamentary majority.

In France, the prime minister as head of government must reflect a parliamentary majority, meaning that she or he may come from a different party than the president. The French call this “cohabitation” and it has happened only three times since 1958.
Such a scenario would make it harder for Macron to propose and implement his reforms. President Hollande had a majority in parliament, but even so was unable to push through his agenda, and his approval rating sunk to record lows.

For now, polls are placing Macron’s movement as the frontrunner in June’s legislative elections. En Marche! is forecast to capture between 249 and 286 seats, centrist and conservative parties are projected to win between 200 and 212 seats, the Socialists 28 to 43 and Le Pen’s National Front 15 to 25.
 

Broader significance

Macron’s win is a clear victory for the European Union. Le Pen had vowed to leave the eurozone, exit Europe’s Schengen border-free travel area, and hold a referendum on France’s EU membership. Macron is a firm believer in the European project of economic and political integration, and has said repeatedly that France is stronger in a united Europe.

But while Europe may have dodged a bullet with Macron’s victory, anti-establishment populism still poses a serious threat to the EU; this was the National Front’s best showing yet in a presidential contest.

When Marine Le Pen’s father was trounced in the run-off against Jacques Chirac 15 years ago, he managed only 18% of the vote. Le Pen fille nearly doubled that total on May 7.
 

If Macron is unable to deliver on his political agenda — in particular, giving a boost to France’s anaemic economic growth and bringing down unemployment – voters may turn to candidates of the extreme right or the extreme left in the next presidential election. After all, in the first round of this year’s election, such candidates captured nearly 50% of the vote.

The election has exposed a deeply divided and polarised France. Macron’s win showed a country that is internationalist, outward looking, pro-EU and free market-oriented; Le Pen’s rise revealed one that is nationalist, protectionist, anti-EU and suspicious of outsiders.

These same fault lines can be seen across Western democracies today. Last year, they propelled Donald Trump to victory in the US presidential election, and compelled British voters to choose to leave the EU.

Macron’s mandate is uncertain. Many people voted for him in the second round not out of conviction but to ensure Le Pen’s defeat. Despite her attempts to “un-demonise” the National Front, many French people still see it as xenophobic and a threat to democracy.

Macron pulled off an incredible personal and political triumph on Sunday May 7. But now the real work begins – and everyone who believes in a strong and united Europe should hope for his success.
 

Richard Maher, Research Fellow, Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post A victory for Macron and for the European Union – now it’s time to unite a divided France appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Let’s hope that Donald Trump is the political version of syrup of ipecac.

The American system has been sick to its stomach for some time. Then along comes Donald Trump, America swallows him (hook, line, and sinker), and the system experiences gut-churning convulsions ever since. According to the most hopeful medical prognosis, America will eventually expel Trump from its system and feel so much better afterwards.

Reminder: The whole world is watching. How we deal with this president’s fundamentally anti-American policies will have tremendous international ramifications. In fact, the rest of the world is already dealing with the “Trump effect.”

After all, while Trump is our emetic, he’s the rest of the world’s smelling salts. Some key countries around the world are already coming to their senses about the threat of dangerous populists. The test cases will be France and Germany. But a progressive backlash appears to be building elsewhere as well.

Against Le Pen

Marine Le Pen is the smiling face of the new fascism.

She’s a twice-divorced Catholic who supports a woman’s right to choose. But she’s also a dangerous populist with virulently anti-immigrant, anti-multicultural, anti-EU views.

She’s more law-and-order than Rudy Giuliani. And her anti-globalization rants appeal to some on the left, which means that her National Front party is doing well in areas that once voted for the French Communists.

Marine Le Pen is also a front runner in the presidential race slated for later this spring. She leads her rivals in the latest polls with 27 percent. It’s enough to generate predictions of a Trump-like upset.

Until recently, her major challenge came from someone with views nearly as abhorrent as hers. Francois Fillon, the candidate of the conservative Republicans, was clearly hoping to steal votes from Le Pen, the New York Times reported, when he “positioned himself as a staunch defender of French values, vowing to restore authority, honor the Roman Catholic Church, and exert ‘strict administrative control’ over Islam.”

Yet the upright Fillon hasn’t turned out to be as scrupulous as he pretended. A scandal involving alleged payments to family members for parliamentary work has caused Fillon to slip considerably in the polls.

This would ordinarily represent an opportunity for the left. But the socialist and left parties haven’t been able to reconcile their differences and unite against the center-right and the National Front.

Which leaves independent politician Emmanuel Macron as the most appealing candidate who can go up against Le Pen. Macron isn’t an easy politician to pin down. He was the economy minister in Francois Hollande’s Socialist government, but he’s infuriated the more obdurate of the French left by embracing free trade, challenging union privileges, and speaking out against the 35-hour workweek (at least for younger workers). On the other hand, Macron is EU-friendly, pro-immigrant, a fan of Germany over Russia, and committed to the full progressive agenda on social issues.

Despite his establishment credentials, Macron is presenting himself as an outsider. He’s channeled Trump by railing against the elite — those who take advantage of their entrenched economic and political privileges — and he wants to shake up France with En Marche! movement. He’s also channeled Obama by emphasizing his own youth and dynamism.

Macron isn’t afraid to make waves. He took a hit in the polls recently when he argued that French colonial policy in Algeria amounted to a “crime against humanity” and refused to back down from implicating the French state in these acts.

However you define him politically — and he himself avoids labels — Macron is the best bet that French progressives have of defeating Le Pen in a second round of voting. As long as Le Pen doesn’t secure an outright majority in the first round, most of the French electorate will have an opportunity to gang up against the neo-fascist threat — just as they did when her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, made it to the second round in 2002.

Macron can also ensure that France doesn’t end up with Fillon’s only slightly less repugnant version of National Front politics (the equivalent of defeating Trump only to elect Ted Cruz).

Taking Back Germany

For Angela Merkel, it’s the best of times and the worst of times.

The rise of Donald Trump and the retreat of the United States from international affairs have placed Merkel and Germany at the moral center of the “West” because of their acceptance of refugees and non-acceptance of Vladimir Putin. Domestically, however, while Merkel’s immigration policies have infuriated the German right, the economic policies that have impoverished Greece and threatened the cohesion of the European Union have angered the German left. The Christian Democratic Party is consequently slumping at the polls.

Despite all the press that Franke Petry and her far-right Alternative fur Deutschland party have gotten in the Western press — including this almost admiring piece in The New Yorker — the anti-immigrant party only polls around 10 percent. The real beneficiary of the Trump victory in Germany has been Martin Schulz, the head of the Social Democratic Party. Schulz has effectively used the threat of nationalism and Trump-like politics to bring his party neck and neck with Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Writes Anthony Faiola in The Washington Post:

In a country that stands as a painful example of the disastrous effects of radical nationalism, Schulz is building a campaign in part around bold attacks on Trump. He has stopped well short of direct comparisons to Adolf Hitler, but Schulz recently mentioned Trump in the same speech in which he heralded his party’s resistance to the Nazis in the lead-up to World War II. 

Schulz is the former president of the European parliament, where he also served as a member for two decades. As such, Schulz has become the face of the new MEGA campaign: Make Europe Great Again. Having been active at the European level for so long, Schulz is also something of an outsider to domestic German politics. Like Trump, he prides himself on being self-taught. Unlike Trump, he actually reads books.

The Social Democrats might not succeed in dislodging Merkel. But they’ll help keep the extremists out of power and may just manage to get enough votes to necessitate a grand coalition. With the European Union threatening to implode, such an example of trans-partisan governance at the heart of the continent could reassure those fed up with political polarization that compromise — and indeed, politics as we know it — can still thrive in modern democracies.

Less optimistic is the situation in the Netherlands, where the party of extremist Geert Wilders is leading the polls. Wilders, whose mother’s family came from Indonesia and whose wife is Hungarian, has built his career on anti-immigrant fanaticism. If he becomes prime minister, he’s promised to guide his country out of the EU, close borders to immigrants, and close all mosques: Trump on steroids.

The Dutch elections take place in mid-March. Even if Wilders wins a plurality of the votes, it’s not likely that he’ll be able to form a government. No other parties are willing to join hands with such a toxic politician. The Dutch might be crazy enough to vote for Wilders — but they’re not crazy enough to actually work with him.

Outside Europe

Closer to home, the Trump effect is providing the Mexican left with its greatest boost in years. Huge demonstrations have taken place around the country to protest the energy policies of Enrique Peña Nieto’s government and the immigration and trade policies of Donald Trump. Nieto’s popularity is embarrassingly low — 12 percent, lower even than Trump’s.

Veteran left politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the major benefactor of all this dissatisfaction. He’s a perpetual outsider to Mexico’s national politics. But, like Bernie Sanders, he acquired considerable experience as a mayor — of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005. “He ran a populist and popular administration which kept subway fares low, built elevated freeways and partnered with the billionaire Carlos Slim to restore the city’s historic center,” writes David Agren in The Guardian. “He also provided stipends to seniors and single mothers, initiatives initially denounced as populism but replicated by others including Peña Nieto.”

AMLO, as he is often called, is currently the presidential frontrunner, though elections won’t take place until July 2018. But he’s not holding his fire until then. “Enough of being passive,” AMLO said recently. “We should put a national emergency plan in place to face the damage and reverse the protectionist policies of Donald Trump.”

With Justin Trudeau in Canada and a possible leftist leader in Mexico, Donald Trump would be caught in a potential North American containment strategy. Perhaps, in a reversal of the Cold War dynamic, Europe would establish military bases in Montreal and Tijuana to make sure that the United States doesn’t overstep its bounds.

Further afield, South Korea will be holding an election this year after a decade of conservative rule. The current president, Park Geun-Hye, has popularity figures even lower than Nieto or Trump. She’s been embroiled in an impeachment process over corruption charges, her conservative party has changed its name to escape any associations with her reign, and no truly viable conservative candidate has emerged to extend the right’s hold on power. Ban Ki-Moon, the former UN general secretary, was briefly the Hail Mary candidate for conservatives before dropping out of the running.

The current front runner, Moon Jae-in, is an establishment progressive who used to work in the Roh Moo-Hyun administration. He would resurrect some of Roh’s policies such as a more balanced approach to the United States and China as well as some form of principled engagement with North Korea. But he’s not the only progressive alternative.

There’s also the mayor of Seongnam, Lee Jae-Myeong, who styles himself the Sanders of South Korea.

The election is officially scheduled for December, but if Park is impeached, the date would be moved up. No doubt many in the United States wish the South Korean electoral rules pertained here: impeachment followed by new elections. Impeachment is still an option, of course, but the prospect of President Pence isn’t reassuring.

In November, Donald Trump’s victory seemed to be part of a global rejection of liberal internationalism — from Russia to the UK to the Philippines. Certainly many in the Trump administration, most notably strategic advisor Steve Bannon, hope to use their newly acquired juice to help their compatriots, like Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, take power as well.

But threats have a marvelous mobilizing effect. Donald Trump may be an inspiration to some. For many others, however, Trump is a whiff of something evil-smelling that jolts progressive politics all over the world out of its swoon.

(This article was first published on Foreign Policy in Focus).
 

The post A Global Counter-Trump Movement Is Taking Shape appeared first on SabrangIndia.