tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/democracy-futures-14603/articlesDemocracy Futures – The Conversation2018-12-04T03:07:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1070862018-12-04T03:07:07Z2018-12-04T03:07:07ZGetting to the heart of coal seam gas protests – it’s not just the technical risks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248610/original/file-20181204-23240-xaer7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Narrabri ‘Big Picture’ event in November 2015 brought together people from across the region in opposition to coal seam gas extraction..</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Selen Ercan</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Opposition to coal seam gas (CSG) in Australia is remarkable. CSG proposals – mostly affecting rural areas – have spawned hundreds of opposition groups across the country. Some are now household names, like <a href="https://www.lockthegate.org.au/about_us">Lock the Gate</a> and <a href="https://knitting-nannas.com/what.php">Knitting Nannas Against Gas</a> (KNAG). But there are also many others; small local groups without logos or official websites.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14742837.2018.1515624?af=R&journalCode=csms20">Our research</a> reveals all sorts of concerns motivate the opponents of CSG. But one factor, emotions – in particular how people “do” emotions – helps explain how people mobilise and unite in their opposition.</p>
<p>It’s fair to say the scale of this resistance has been a shock all round: to industry, to government, and even to organisers in the movement itself.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fracking-policies-are-wildly-inconsistent-across-australia-from-gung-ho-development-to-total-bans-108039">Fracking policies are wildly inconsistent across Australia, from gung-ho development to total bans</a>
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<p>One of the defining characteristics of the Australian anti-CSG movement is that it involves alliances between diverse kinds of people, such as rural residents (many of them farmers) and urban-based environmental organisers. These groups can be at odds with one another on other issues, for example land-clearing policy. But with CSG, they have found common ground. </p>
<p>There may be differences in terms of emphasis and specific concerns, but overall the movement has been very effective at building and maintaining a momentum of opposition to the CSG industry.</p>
<h2>CSG opposition in and around Narrabri</h2>
<p>We were interested in what it is that brings these diverse groups together. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14742837.2018.1515624?af=R&journalCode=csms20">Our research</a> focused on the movement opposing the <a href="https://narrabrigasproject.com.au/">Narrabri Gas Project</a> proposed for south of the town of Narrabri, 500km northwest of Sydney. </p>
<p>The project has been described as the “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/08/03/pilliga-protest-the-moment-200-farmers-and-nannas-tell-santos-t_a_23062445/">most-protested-against gas developments</a>” in New South Wales. SBS Television’s Insight series recently devoted <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/tvepisode/power-divide">a program</a> to this particular controversy.</p>
<p>Our research into CSG in and around Narrabri finds potential impacts on water and land are core issues that unite a broad range of people. Shared concerns also encompass questions of energy supply, climate change, procedural shortcomings and perceptions of government and industry collusion.</p>
<p>Yet there are also factors beyond these substantive issues that help to explain the strength of opposition to CSG in rural Australia. Our research suggests that emotions play a crucial role in building alliances and mobilising opponents of CSG.</p>
<p>Conversations with people involved in opposing the CSG proposal in and around Narrabri reveal the following key insights about the role of emotions.</p>
<h2>Joy – as well as anger – sustains a movement</h2>
<p>Anger is one of the most commonly expressed emotion by participants in the anti-CSG movement. People are angry about the possibility of having to face the negative impacts of the CSG industry. They are also angry at the government for not listening to community concerns. </p>
<p>Yet, while anger is a central sentiment in mobilising CSG opposition, it is the combination of anger with joy, especially the joy of social connection, that helps to sustain involvement. </p>
<p>Opposition to CSG is often integrated into people’s daily lives – like bringing the kids along to a highway protest. For many involved, anger and frustration at the industry and government are combined with the joy of coming together, “doing community” and employing a wide range of <a href="http://www.broadagenda.com.au/home/sisters-in-yarn/">creative acts of protest, such as those performed by the Knitting Nannas Against Gas</a>. </p>
<p>These activities bring together people with ideological differences and blur the distinctions between political and social identities. They also offer a space for participants to connect with one another in the face of “burnout” and other frustrations.</p>
<h2>Social obligations and ‘holding back’ help</h2>
<p>As Gabrielle Chan notes in her recent book, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/03/rusted-off-the-divide-between-canberra-and-the-neglected-class">Rusted Off</a>, human contact is very important in Australian rural communities. Similarly, we find that a key element of social life in Narrabri is about getting along with others. This feature of rural communities creates a significantly different context compared to environmental controversies elsewhere. </p>
<p>Being respectful in small rural communities often means being non-confrontational. In a small community, people rely on one another, often over multiple generations. You never know when you might need help from a neighbour. </p>
<p>Compared to big cities, it can be difficult to manage disagreements in small rural communities. This leads residents to “hold back” from confrontational communication styles, which contributes to sustaining relationships across different viewpoints. This has been critical in building alliances between people in the community.</p>
<h2>Don’t neglect people’s emotions</h2>
<p>The CSG debate can’t be fought on “the facts” alone. There is too much at stake for the community of Narrabri. Decisions that result in dramatic landscape changes – whether for wind farms, CSG wells or other energy infrastructure – are inherently emotional. Such changes can disrupt people’s sense of place or potentially threaten livelihoods.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246150/original/file-20181119-44268-ise6a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246150/original/file-20181119-44268-ise6a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246150/original/file-20181119-44268-ise6a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246150/original/file-20181119-44268-ise6a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246150/original/file-20181119-44268-ise6a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246150/original/file-20181119-44268-ise6a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246150/original/file-20181119-44268-ise6a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A banner at the Narrabri ‘Big Picture’ event in November 2015 is a reminder of the emotions involved in this controversy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Selen Ercan</span></span>
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<p>It’s not just emotional for those who oppose big energy infrastructure projects. Supporters of new projects are also worried about the future of their regions – as we’ve seen in Narrabri. Concerns include an over-reliance on existing industries and whether there will be enough jobs to keep young people in the area. </p>
<p>While people in the community are generally respectful of those who sit on the other side of the debate, there are still isolated incidents in which people’s concerns have been painted as “emotive” in a derogatory sense. Dismissing emotions in this way is not helpful in advancing the debate or bringing the community together. </p>
<p>It’s still uncertain whether the Narrabri Gas Project will proceed or not, and the strong opposition continues. Whichever side “wins”, there could be long-term effects on the social fabric of the region. </p>
<p>Some may feel a stronger connection to their community as a result of being actively engaged in the debate. Others may feel burnt out and concerned that their community has been so divided. </p>
<p>Such possible consequences are never given the attention they deserve in environmental impact statements or in other technical reports on CSG. Providing safe spaces for people to express the emotions that arise in response to large industrial projects is crucial for finding our way forward in an era of rapid energy change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107086/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hedda Ransan-Cooper received funding for this research from the Australian Research Council Grant DP150103615: ‘Realising Democracy Amid Communicative Plenty: A Deliberative Systems Approach’.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Selen A. Ercan received funding for this research from the Australian Research Council Grant no DP150103615, ‘Realising Democracy Amid Communicative Plenty: A Deliberative Systems Approach’. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sonya Duus received funding for this research from the Australian Research Council Grant no DP150103615, ‘Realising Democracy Amid Communicative Plenty: A Deliberative Systems Approach’. </span></em></p>While anger mobilises opposition to coal seam gas projects, it is also joy, especially the joy of social connection, that helps to sustain involvement.Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Research Fellow, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National UniversitySelen A. Ercan, Associate Professor of Politics, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis (IGPA), University of CanberraSonya Duus, Research Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1060492018-11-19T11:38:05Z2018-11-19T11:38:05ZLies, damn lies and post-truth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245549/original/file-20181114-194500-15qdygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump speaks to the media outside of the White House.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump/a685593769a14d5084fbe96c2ffd0db8/305/0">AP/Evan Vucci</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/campaign-stops/all-politicians-lie-some-lie-more-than-others.html">politicians lie</a>.</p>
<p>Or do they? </p>
<p>Even if we could find some isolated example of a politician who was scrupulously honest – <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/403945-former-president-jimmy-carter-trump-is">former President Jimmy Carter</a>, perhaps – the question is how to think about the rest of them. </p>
<p>And if most politicians lie, then why are some Americans so hard on President Donald Trump? </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/02/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.df1dbfb544fb">The Washington Post</a>, Trump has told 6,420 lies so far in his presidency. In the seven weeks leading up to the midterms, his rate increased to 30 per day. </p>
<p>That’s a lot, but isn’t this a difference in degree and not a difference in kind with other politicians?</p>
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<span class="caption">The Women’s March in Toronto, Canada, January 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/toronto-ontario-canada-january-20-2018-1005749914?src=hgt8fR9jX9ZR-icYo4iQFQ-1-2">Shutterstock/Louis.Roth</a></span>
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<p>From my perspective <a href="http://www.leemcintyrebooks.com/">as a philosopher who studies truth and belief</a>, it doesn’t seem so. And even if most politicians lie, that doesn’t make all lying equal. </p>
<p>Yet the difference in Trump’s prevarication seems to be found not in the quantity or enormity of his lies, but in the way that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/opinion/beyond-lying-donald-trumps-authoritarian-reality.html">Trump uses his lies in service</a> to a proto-authoritarian political ideology. </p>
<p>I recently wrote a book, titled “<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/post-truth">"Post-Truth,”</a> about what happens when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence. Looked at from this perspective, calling Trump a liar fails to capture his key strategic purpose.</p>
<p>Any amateur politician can engage in lying. Trump is engaging in “post-truth.”</p>
<h2>Beyond word of the year</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/press/news/2016/12/11/WOTY-16">Oxford English Dictionaries named “post-truth”</a> its word of the year in November 2016, right before the U.S. election. </p>
<p>Citing a 2,000 percent spike in usage – due to Brexit and the American presidential campaign – <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth">they defined post-truth</a> as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” </p>
<p>Ideology, in other words, takes precedence over reality.</p>
<p>When an individual believes their thoughts can influence reality, we call it “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/magical-thinking">magical thinking</a>” and might worry about their mental health. When a government official uses ideology to trump reality, it’s more like propaganda, and it puts us on the road to fascism. </p>
<p>As Yale philosopher <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/19/17847110/how-fascism-works-donald-trump-jason-stanley">Jason Stanley argues</a>, “The key thing is that fascist politics is about identifying enemies, appealing to the in-group (usually the majority group), and smashing truth and replacing it with power.”</p>
<p>Consider the example of Trump’s recent decision not to cancel two political rallies on the same day as the Pittsburgh massacre. <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/413644-trump-incorrectly-cites-stock-market-opening-day-after-9-11-to">He said that this was based on the fact</a> that the New York Stock Exchange was open the day after 9/11. </p>
<p>This isn’t true. The stock exchange stayed closed for six days after 9/11. </p>
<p>So was this a mistake? A lie? Trump didn’t seem to treat it so. In fact, he repeated the falsehood later in the same day. </p>
<p>When a politician gets caught in a lie, there’s usually a bit of sweat, perhaps some shame and the expectation of consequences. </p>
<p>Not for Trump. After many commentators pointed out to him that the stock exchange was in fact closed for several days after 9/11, he merely shrugged it off, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/28/no-president-trump-nyse-did-not-open-day-after-sept-attacks/?utm_term=.f648cb2beef1">never bothering to acknowledge – let alone correct – his error</a>. </p>
<p>Why would he do this?</p>
<h2>Ideology, post-truth and power</h2>
<p>The point of a lie is to convince someone that a falsehood is true. But the point of post-truth is domination. In my analysis, post-truth is an assertion of power. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/01/why-donald-trump-and-vladimir-putin-lie-and-why-they-are-so-good-it">As journalist Masha Gessen</a> and others have argued, when Trump lies he does so not to get someone to accept what he’s saying as true, but to show that he is powerful enough to say it. </p>
<p>He has asserted, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/10/14/trump-60-minutes-cbs-takeaways/1645388002/">“I’m the President and you’re not,”</a> as if such high political office comes with the prerogative of creating his own reality. This would explain why Trump doesn’t seem to care much if there is videotape or other evidence that contradicts him. When you’re the boss, what does that matter? </p>
<p>Should we be worried about this flight from mere lying to post-truth? </p>
<p>Even if all politicians lie, I believe that post-truth foreshadows something more sinister. In his powerful book <a href="http://timothysnyder.org/books/on-tyranny-tr">“On Tyranny,”</a> <a href="http://timothysnyder.org/">historian Timothy Snyder</a> writes that “post-truth is pre-fascism.” It is a tactic seen in “electoral dictatorships” – where a society retains the facade of voting without the institutions or trust to ensure that it is an actual democracy, like those in Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey.</p>
<p>In this, Trump is following the authoritarian playbook, characterized by leaders lying, the erosion of public institutions and the consolidation of power. You do not need to convince someone that you are telling the truth when you can simply assert your will over them and dominate their reality. </p>
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<header>Lee McIntyre is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/post-truth">Post-Truth</a></p>
<footer>MIT Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>MIT Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</span></em></p>Any amateur politician can engage in lying. President Donald Trump is going further than that. He’s engaging in ‘post-truth’.Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1067002018-11-14T01:24:18Z2018-11-14T01:24:18ZThere are many good ideas to tackle inequality – it’s time we acted on them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244975/original/file-20181112-38449-xrljj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Forida, who earns about 35 cents (AUD) an hour as a garment worker, subsists on watery rice when her family's money runs out so her son may eat better.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GMB Akash/Panos/OxfamAUS</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the final article in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">Reclaiming the Fair Go</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a> to mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/2018-joseph-stiglitz/">2018 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis caused by economic inequality and how we can break the cycle of power and greed to enable all peoples and the planet to flourish. The Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 15 (tickets <a href="https://www.stickytickets.com.au/spp/events?page=1">here</a>).</em></p>
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<p>Forida says that if she were paid a little more money, she could one day send her son to school. She could live happily; her family could live a better life.</p>
<p>Forida, 22, lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with her infant son and husband. They live in a dark compound built mostly of tin and wood with six other families and just one toilet. It floods and leaks when it rains, and beside the compound is a polluted pond that attracts mosquitoes.</p>
<p>Forida makes clothes bound for Australia as part of the global fashion industry. She earns about 35 cents (AUD) an hour.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-inequality-we-must-start-in-the-labour-market-105729">To tackle inequality, we must start in the labour market</a>
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<p>Forida’s story is not rare.</p>
<p>Oxfam did a <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2018-Davos-fact-sheets.pdf">comparison earlier this year</a> of the salaries of top CEOs of large Australian retail clothing brands and the earnings of the women, like Forida, who work in their supplier factories.</p>
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<span class="caption">Salary gap between CEOs and garment workers (click to enlarge).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://whatshemakes.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2018-Davos-fact-sheets.pdf">Sources: Annual reports for Wesfarmers, Premier Investments, Woolworths Holdings; Oxfam Australia (2017), What She Makes: Power and Poverty in the Fashion Industry.</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>We found that the workers’ wages have increased at a snail’s pace, while the CEOs’ pay has shot up by millions. Annual pay for the workers who make their clothes remains appallingly low.</p>
<p>As a case in point, one CEO in a top fashion company in Australia earns up to $2,500 an hour, including returns from shares and bonuses. A garment worker in Bangladesh like Forida should earn at least the legal minimum wage of A$0.39 an hour. At this rate, garment workers earning the minimum wage in Bangladesh would have to work more than 10,000 years to earn what a highly paid CEO in Australia makes in a year.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244978/original/file-20181112-35554-10d6xgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even after her pay increases, the garments Forida makes will still earn her only about half of what’s needed to live a decent life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GMB Akash/Panos/OxfamAUS</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>In December, a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-garments/bangladesh-raises-wages-for-garment-workers-idUSKCN1LT2UR">new minimum wage</a> – just over 60 cents AUD an hour – will apply to garment workers in Bangladesh. But even with this improvement, the women in these factories will still only earn about half of what they need to live a decent life – enough money for adequate housing and food, health and education for their families.</p>
<p>There is perhaps no starker example of global inequality.</p>
<p>Wealthy men – for it is mostly men – are at the top of global supply chains in which a mostly female workforce toils to bring in ever more revenue. The Australian fashion industry alone was <a href="http://whatshemakes.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Living-Wage-Media-Report_WEB.pdf">worth about A$27 billion</a> in 2016.</p>
<p>So when our leaders flatly <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-26/rba-says-inequality-getting-worse/8746594">deny the notion that inequality is growing</a> – that it is a real and serious problem that demands action – it is hard not to find this perspective jarring.</p>
<p>It’s certainly not the case for the many women and men at the bottom of Australian-owned global supply chains. </p>
<h2>Inequality is on the rise in Australia, too</h2>
<p>The evidence is strong that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/12/imf-says-australia-has-one-of-the-fastest-rising-income-inequality-rates">inequality is also on the rise in Australia</a>. If you read <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/inequality-report-is-areality-check-forlabor/news-story/1b631d7155f89ad4db583d9c54c5de2f">some accounts</a> of the recent Productivity Commission <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/rising-inequality">report on inequality</a>, you’d be forgiven for thinking inequality isn’t a problem Australia needs to tackle. </p>
<p>But that media coverage hasn’t focused on some of the key trends found in the report, which offers a rather more balanced view, as <a href="http://theconversation.com/dont-believe-what-they-say-about-inequality-some-of-us-are-worse-off-102332">Peter Whiteford</a> has clearly pointed out. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-believe-what-they-say-about-inequality-some-of-us-are-worse-off-102332">Don't believe what they say about inequality. Some of us are worse off</a>
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<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244700/original/file-20181109-74766-z9m4ju.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian wealth distribution in 2017 (click to enlarge).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://whatshemakes.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2018-Davos-fact-sheets.pdf">Source: Credit Suisse (2017), Global Wealth Report</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The commission’s report shows, for example, that inequality is a problem for people in lower-income brackets. It explores how generational inequality is entrenched in Australia – while many people move between income brackets over time, the richest and the poorest Australians don’t do this nearly as much. Poorer Australians are more likely to stay trapped in the bottom bracket while, at the top, wealth begets wealth.</p>
<p>And, as Gary Barrett and Stephen Whelan have shown in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fair-go-is-a-fading-dream-but-dont-write-it-off-105373">first article in this series</a>, income inequality remains a problem in Australia. So does wealth inequality. Today the <a href="https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/research/research-institute/global-wealth-report.html">wealthiest 1% of Australians own more than the poorest 70%</a> combined.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fair-go-is-a-fading-dream-but-dont-write-it-off-105373">The fair go is a fading dream, but don't write it off</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ACOSS_Poverty-in-Australia-Report_Web-Final.pdf">ACOSS Poverty in Australia 2018 report</a> includes data showing that one in eight adults and more than one in six children are living in poverty today. </p>
<p>At the same time, at the global level, organisations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been having an entirely different discussion: they know inequality is continuing to increase. Instead of arguing the reality, they’ve invested in researching and discussing solutions. And, while its own loan program still requires some change to be better aligned with fighting inequality, over the past few years, the IMF and others have been calling on governments to act.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uy0dKw7HMVA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The IMF warns that the increase in excessive inequality in most countries in the last 30 years is detrimental to growth, but it is not inevitable.</span></figcaption>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-rising-inequality-is-stalling-economies-by-crippling-demand-99075">How rising inequality is stalling economies by crippling demand</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Inequality worsens poverty and marginalisation – especially for those who already have less power than others. What Oxfam has seen around the globe is that rising inequality disproportionately impacts women, people of colour, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and LGBTIQ communities – and others who already face challenges when it comes to access to power.</p>
<p>Forida is one of millions of women who are trapped in poverty. They fuel a global economy that lines others’ pockets while they are unable to escape hardship, no matter how hard or how long they work. </p>
<p>That Forida’s home lacks facilities like safe, internal running water and is built beside a polluted pond is linked to this global challenge of rising inequality. Governments in developing countries like Bangladesh are being starved of funds. Of course, these governments also need to make the right choices and invest in health, education and infrastructure – essential things their communities need. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244976/original/file-20181112-39548-1eo6udo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forida’s home lacks facilities like safe, internal running water.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GMB Akash/Panos/OxfamAUS</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, the global estimate of the money ripped out of poor countries due to the tax-avoiding practices of wealthy firms sits at more than <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2017/11/five-steps-the-uk-government-should-take-to-end-tax-scandals">US$170 billion a year</a>. </p>
<p>This huge amount should rightfully be used to invest in safe water and sound infrastructure for women like Forida in developing countries around the world. These women bear the burden of the lack of investment. Forida looks after her family when they are sick from water-borne diseases and only eats watery rice so her son may eat better when they run out of money at the end of each month. </p>
<p>We must challenge the policies and practices that are fuelling inequality, or women like Forida will continue to be left behind. </p>
<h2>We know how to reduce inequality</h2>
<p>Engage with the ideas to tackle inequality: there are many. And they are good.
Organisations at the forefront of combating inequality, both in Australia and globally, have proposed a whole range of powerful solutions. It is time the government listens and engages. </p>
<p>In Australia, the <a href="https://www.acoss.org.au/raisetherate/">campaign to raise the rate of Newstart</a>, led by ACOSS, is gaining steam. It has the support of both former Prime Minister <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/freeze-has-gone-on-too-long-john-howard-calls-for-a-dole-increase-20180509-p4ze83.html">John Howard</a> and the <a href="http://www.bca.com.au/publications/submission-to-the-senate-inquiry-into-the-adequacy-of-the-allowance-payment-system-for-jobseekers-and-others">Business Council of Australia</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.au/what-we-do/indigenous-australia/close-the-gap/">Close the Gap campaign</a>, which Oxfam helped to launch over 10 years ago, has taken stock in 2018 and produced a range of recommendations for the government to close the Indigenous health gap. And a thorough, national consultation process has culminated in the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/UluruStatement">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a> and the legitimate call for an Indigenous voice to parliament. </p>
<p>Unions, NGOs and Australians from all walks of life are concerned about <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-unions-so-unhappy-an-economic-explanation-of-the-change-the-rules-campaign-105673">flat-lining wages</a>. They want to see cuts to penalty rates reversed – along with a raft of other changes to our industrial system to make it fairer. The union movement’s <a href="https://changetherules.org.au/">Change the Rules</a> campaign makes these calls resoundingly clear. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-unions-so-unhappy-an-economic-explanation-of-the-change-the-rules-campaign-105673">Why are unions so unhappy? An economic explanation of the Change the Rules campaign</a>
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<p>On a global level, Oxfam and civil society organisations have been calling on governments to act not only on rising inequality within their borders but also to help tackle it around the globe. </p>
<p>This means comprehensive action on business supply chains that skirt human rights – which includes paying poverty wages to women like Forida – through <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/business/pages/nationalactionplans.aspx">national action plans on business and human rights</a>. It also means acting to ensure the tax affairs of large businesses are public – right across the globe – to help stop money being hidden in tax havens and ripped out of both Australia and the developing countries that need this revenue.</p>
<p>The ideas being put forward from across Australia are legitimate. They deserve greater attention. It is time for our dialogue to be about action, rather than arguing whether inequality is a problem at all. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was co-authored by <a href="https://www.oxfam.org.au/what-we-do/about-us/our-people/our-executive-team/chief-executive-dr-helen-szoke/">Helen Szoke</a>, chief executive of Oxfam Australia.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Sydney Peace Foundation receives funding from the City of Sydney. Marianna Brungs is a board member of NCOSS (the NSW Council of Social Service). Oxfam Australia is an Impact Partner of the Sydney Peace Foundation to support Professor Joseph Stiglitz’s visit to Australia to accept the 2018 Sydney Peace Prize.
</span></em></p>We wear the evidence of extreme inequality – clothing made by workers in Bangladesh for 35 cents an hour. But we know how to reduce inequality – we just have to do it.Marianna Brungs, Director, Sydney Peace Foundation, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1059652018-11-08T22:59:58Z2018-11-08T22:59:58ZDon’t give up on politics. It’s where the fight for the fair go must be won<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243618/original/file-20181102-83629-1kvqfit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Governments have made a difference to inequality in the past, as Roosevelt's New Deal did in the 1930s, and could do so again if citizens acted to ensure their voices are heard. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Signing_Of_The_Social_Security_Act.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the third in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">Reclaiming the Fair Go</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a> to mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/2018-joseph-stiglitz/">2018 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis caused by economic inequality and on how we can break the cycle of power and greed to enable all peoples and the planet to flourish. The Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 15 (tickets <a href="https://www.stickytickets.com.au/spp/events?page=1">here</a>).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Deepening economic inequality is a scourge across most of the world’s democracies. For decades now, the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674504769">gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has been widening</a>. This has very real and very dangerous <a href="http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/107925/E92227.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">consequences for people’s mental and physical health and for the cohesion of our communities</a>. So why isn’t anything serious being done about it?</p>
<p>Reversing this trend, or at least ameliorating it, would not be difficult. Economists around the world have spent the last few years laying out some fairly straightforward policy solutions. These range from reform of the rules governing how pay is set in the big corporations to sustained investment in the foundational social services that everyone but the very richest relies upon, including public education, health and housing.</p>
<p>Despite this clarity, very few of these initiatives are being pursued in any of the developed democracies. Instead, political action remains focused on tax cuts that favour the wealthy or big business, on immigration restrictions that can hinder economic growth, and on public subsidies for a handful of old industries, even where there are environmental reasons to be transitioning away from them.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fair-go-is-a-fading-dream-but-dont-write-it-off-105373">The fair go is a fading dream, but don't write it off</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Why the inaction on inequality?</h2>
<p>The question that matters more than almost any other when it comes to inequality right now, then, is not whether it is a problem or how to resolve it, but what is it that’s holding us back from doing what we need to do?</p>
<p>The answer to this question cannot lie in an absence of practice, knowledge or understanding. Most countries successfully initiated inequality-tackling reforms in previous generations. And they often did so in far more pressing political and economic circumstances, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s or the immediate aftermath of the second world war.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243615/original/file-20181102-83657-12pmlsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Joseph Stiglitz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Stiglitz_05.jpg">Bengt Oberger/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Even where there is not previous experience to draw upon, politicians and their advisers can draw upon a host of more recent studies of the causes, consequences and potential responses to the rise of inequality. This includes the work of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize recipient, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality">Joseph Stiglitz</a>. There is no shortage of expertise for a new generation of egalitarian reformers to draw upon.</p>
<p>Nor does the answer lie in entrenched public unwillingness to tackle the problem. It is true that in the 1980s and 1990s, electorates the world over were often skittish about interventionist economic policy proposals. They favoured tax reductions over public service investment and were anxious about government’s efforts to “pick winners” in the economy.</p>
<p>But such anxiety has greatly lessened right now. Indeed, polling consistently suggests that even in countries without a sustained tradition of government action against inequality, a large <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/americas-surprising-views-on-income-inequality">public appetite now exists for measures to tackle it</a>. Such measures, stretching from sharp increases in minimum wages to the nationalisation of major public utilities, enjoy majority support in many democracies. </p>
<p>We have also witnessed electorates across the world take bold and risky decisions in their voting behaviour. This includes support for extremist political movements motivated partly by a desire fundamentally to shift away from the status quo.</p>
<h2>The problem lies with our politics</h2>
<p>If the problem does not lie in knowledge or public support, it must lie somewhere that does not currently get enough attention: in our processes of policymaking – in short, our politics.</p>
<p>Political life in the developed democracies has been radically transformed in the last few decades. Usually this is told in a storybook version, with an endless rise of openness and inclusivity. </p>
<p>In the early decades of the 20th century, this narrative goes, women and the poorest won the vote. In the middle of the century, trade unions and civil society organisations exerted increasing influence on national political decision-making. And as the century aged, other groups including LGBTQI action groups, minority and indigenous populations began to find some long-denied political influence.</p>
<p>But there is another, far darker story to tell. The last few decades have witnessed the rise of another way of doing politics. The anthropologist Janine Wedel brilliantly describes that way in <a href="http://janinewedel.info/unaccountable.html">Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security</a> (2014). </p>
<p>It is the world of the professional lobbyist, of the revolving door between global corporations and the highest levels of government, of uneasy relationships between public decision-making and private profit, and of the capture of elite thinking by norms and expectations that owe too much to the practices of the financial services sector.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Meet the New Influence Elites, a 2016 IPR Public Lecture by Professor Janine Wedel.</span></figcaption>
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<p>All of this has happened at the same time, of course, as a sharp decline in the organisations that used to do much to hold these tendencies back. Union membership has fallen rapidly in the advanced democracies, for instance. And formal mechanisms that guaranteed that governments had to explain their policy decisions to multiple stakeholders have been <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1447-ruling-the-void">eroded across the world</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-inequality-we-must-start-in-the-labour-market-105729">To tackle inequality, we must start in the labour market</a>
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<p>As a result, the salience of issues such as “what the public thinks” and “what the public needs” when it comes to the economy have been significantly eroded as well.</p>
<p>What all of this means is that economic decision-making increasingly responds to a narrower and narrower section of society. In such circumstances, it is no wonder that almost no concerted action has been taken to halt the rise of inequality.</p>
<h2>Fight for the fair go is political first</h2>
<p>What it also means, though, is that the action we need to restore the fair go cannot begin with the economy. It must instead begin with policymaking and politics.</p>
<p>We need to make sure the voices of those affected by inequality are genuinely heard and heeded. This commitment should run through everything we do: from supporting our local trade union to opening up scholarly resources to those people in need, from demanding action to rein in corporate lobbying and special access to generating exciting and innovative ideas for using new technologies to accentuate the voice of those without access to formal power.</p>
<p>These ideas are where our energy needs to be. If we want to see greater equality, we need to spend time working out precisely how our political life can become truly responsive. And then we must campaign to make those changes real.</p>
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<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">here</a>.</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-unions-so-unhappy-an-economic-explanation-of-the-change-the-rules-campaign-105673">Why are unions so unhappy? An economic explanation of the Change the Rules campaign</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Stears has received funding from the Leverhulme Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). </span></em></p>Governments’ lack of response to rising inequality is not a problem of knowledge or public support. The problem is that those whose needs are being ignored must find a way to make themselves heard.Marc Stears, Professor and Director, Sydney Policy Lab, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057292018-11-01T02:21:27Z2018-11-01T02:21:27ZTo tackle inequality, we must start in the labour market<p><em>This article is the second in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">Reclaiming the Fair Go</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a> to mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/2018-joseph-stiglitz/">2018 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis caused by economic inequality and on how we can break the cycle of power and greed to enable all peoples and the planet to flourish. The Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 15 (tickets <a href="https://www.stickytickets.com.au/spp/events?page=1">here</a>).</em></p>
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<p>Scientific understanding of the consequences of inequality has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Thanks to the pioneering work of scholars such as <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality">Joseph Stiglitz</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/sep/18/kate-pickett-richard-wilkinson-mental-wellbeing-inequality-the-spirit-level">Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson</a>, and <a href="https://www.tony-atkinson.com/new-book-inequality-what-can-be-done/">Tony Atkinson</a>, we know that persistent social and economic inequality exacts an enormous toll: on <a href="https://theconversation.com/social-determinants-how-class-and-wealth-affect-our-health-64442">mental and physical health</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-suburbs-are-being-short-changed-on-services-and-liveability-which-ones-and-whats-the-solution-83966">stability and efficiency of communities</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-rising-inequality-is-stalling-economies-by-crippling-demand-99075">macroeconomic performance</a>.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fair-go-is-a-fading-dream-but-dont-write-it-off-105373">The fair go is a fading dream, but don't write it off</a>
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<p>How, then, should this pervasive and multidimensional problem best be tackled? Statistically, we can measure income inequality at three different levels. And those levels provide a natural categorisation of the policies needed to combat it.</p>
<p>First, inequality can be measured in incomes received before government steps into the picture. This “market income” includes wages and salaries, income from personal investments, profits and dividends from businesses, and other sources. Inequality is highest for market income, and has <a href="https://stats.oecd.org/BrandedView.aspx?oecd_bv_id=socwel-data-en&doi=data-00654-en">grown notably</a> over the last generation.</p>
<p>Second, we measure inequality again after government has collected taxes and made transfer payments back to households. “Disposable income” thus reflects the cash redistribution arising from government fiscal and social policies. So long as income taxes are progressive and transfer programs (like unemployment benefits, child benefits and age pensions) are broadly accessible (or even targeted at lower-income households), inequality in disposable income is lower than for market income.</p>
<p>Finally, inequality in final living standards should consider the value of non-monetary public sector programs. Public services like education, health care, recreation and transportation do not put money into consumers’ pockets but they do enhance their standard of living. And the impact of these public goods and services is larger (relative to income) for lower-income households. Inequality in “final consumption” is therefore lower still than inequality in disposable income.</p>
<h2>Government matters in reducing inequality</h2>
<p>The importance of government programs in reducing inequality is starkly visible in this three-tiered framing. <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/rising-inequality/rising-inequality.pdf">In Australia, for example</a>, taxes and transfer payments reduce inequality by about one-third (comparing market to disposable income). And public services reduce inequality by another third (comparing final consumption to disposable income). This makes it especially important to reject calls to cut taxes (even taxes paid by working people) and the public programs that taxes fund.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-gets-what-who-pays-for-it-how-incomes-taxes-and-benefits-work-out-for-australians-98627">Who gets what? Who pays for it? How incomes, taxes and benefits work out for Australians</a>
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<p>In international terms, Australia’s fiscal policies do a relatively poor job of moderating inequality. This is mostly because taxes and public programs are <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/data/oecd-economic-outlook-statistics-and-projections_eo-data-en">small (relative to GDP) compared to other countries</a>, and hence have less redistributive effect (even though Australia’s income supports are <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-gets-what-who-pays-for-it-how-incomes-taxes-and-benefits-work-out-for-australians-98627">highly targeted at low-income residents</a>). </p>
<p>Australia therefore <a href="http://www.oecd.org/social/income-distribution-database.htm">ranks slightly worse in inequality in disposable income</a> (25th out of 36 OECD countries according to the Gini coefficient) than in market income (21st). Preserving and expanding taxes and income supports – like Newstart benefits, which have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/10/greens-will-push-for-75-newstart-increase-as-howard-weighs-in">languished in real terms for decades</a> – and expanding public services over time are essential for reducing Australia’s inequality.</p>
<p>However, the redistributive hand of government can only do so much to moderate the inequality that the so-called “market” produces, and reproduces. Government fiscal and social policies cannot single-handedly overcome a starting point that gets worse and worse over time.</p>
<h2>Labour market changes are driving up inequality</h2>
<p>For most households, labour income is the most important source of private income. Two related factors are undermining labour incomes and driving up inequality. </p>
<p>First, the share of total national income paid out in wages, salaries and superannuation has <a href="https://www.futurework.org.au/exploring_the_decline_in_the_labour_share_of_gdp">eroded dramatically</a> since the neoliberal economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. Wages are barely keeping up with inflation, let alone matching labour productivity growth. </p>
<p>The result is a steady fall in workers’ collective share of the pie. This <a href="https://www.futurework.org.au/record_low_labour_compensation_as_share_gdp">reached a postwar low in 2017</a>, as shown in Figure 1. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242645/original/file-20181029-7074-xqblsa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Figure 1. Labour compensation as a share of nominal GDP.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/theausinstitute/pages/1500/attachments/original/1497298286/Labour_Share_Hits_Record_Low.pdf?1497298286">Centre for Future Work</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>There has been an offsetting rise in the share of income going to business owners and investors. Not surprisingly, wealthy people own the largest portion of that wealth, so redistributing income from labour to capital increases inequality.</p>
<p>At the same time, the distribution of a shrinking slice among workers has <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12263">itself become more unequal</a>. This also reflects the erosion of Australia’s once-vaunted labour market institutions. These were deliberately set up in the postwar era to build a more equal, inclusive society (the “fair go”). Most important in this regard have been:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the <a href="https://www.actu.org.au/media/1033485/living-up-to-the-promise-of-harvester.pdf">erosion of minimum wages</a> relative to overall wage levels and labour productivity</p></li>
<li><p>the transformation of the award system, which once broadly supported overall wage growth, but now serves mostly as a “safety net” for low-wage workers</p></li>
<li><p>the rapid <a href="http://www.aierights.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Ron-McCallum-Debate-2018-discussion-paper.pdf">decline of collective bargaining</a> in the face of legal restrictions, employer hostility and falling union membership – only <a href="https://docs.jobs.gov.au/documents/historical-table-current">13% of private sector workers are covered by a current collective agreement</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The institutions that were designed to lift wages and make them more equal have been consciously dismantled. So it’s no surprise that only a shrinking minority of workers can now (thanks to particular skills or position in the economy) win wage increases of the sort most workers once took for granted. Others face low, stagnant and insecure incomes. </p>
<p><iframe id="tJ5vC" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tJ5vC/2/" height="500" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>This transformation in the labour market has been the fundamental driver of the growing gap so visible in our communities.</p>
<h2>So what needs to be done?</h2>
<p>Fixing this problem requires an ambitious, multidimensional effort to rebuild the policy levers of inclusive growth. Minimum wages should be high enough that anyone working full-time can escape poverty. Supplemental measures like penalty rates and casual loading should be strengthened, not eroded. The award system should again aim to support wage growth for all workers, not just those at the bottom.</p>
<p>Relaxing Australia’s unique and punitive <a href="https://www.alrc.gov.au/sites/default/files/subs/15._org_aier.pdf">restrictions on collective bargaining</a> and allowing workers to negotiate multi-firm or industry-wide agreements would also lift wages across the board. Instead of being vilified and persecuted, unions should be accepted and supported as an essential and constructive part of a normal labour market.</p>
<p>Unionists and social advocates are now <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/crunch-time-for-the-actu/news-story/2962e6f5add6fd31fa0589a77f6e5d72">forcefully prosecuting the argument</a> to “<a href="https://changetherules.org.au/">change the rules</a>” of Australia’s labour market. This will be one of the top issues in the run-up to the next federal election. And this debate is long overdue – because tackling inequality has to start in the labour market.</p>
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<p><em>You can find other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105729/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The author is a member of the Australian Services Union.</span></em></p>While government payments and programs go some way to reducing inequality, the transformation of the labour market and its institutions has cut workers’ share of the pie to historic lows.Jim Stanford, Economist and Director, Centre for Future Work, Australia Institute; Honorary Professor of Political Economy, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1037732018-10-25T04:32:26Z2018-10-25T04:32:26ZWorking to reclaim and rebuild our food systems from the ground up<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241747/original/file-20181022-105764-1o3h1om.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Through grassroots movements like La Via Campesina, farmers around the world are working to reassert the rights of local food producers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wdm/9246344183">Global Justice Now/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the ongoing <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p>One might be tempted to ask “what’s cooking?” as a slew of leading thinkers on food systems change converge on Australia.</p>
<p>Among those giving workshops, talks and town halls in cities throughout Australia this month are: <a href="https://foodfirst.org/team/eric-holt-gimenez/">Eric Holt-Giménez</a>, executive director of the <a href="https://foodfirst.org/">Food First</a> think-tank in Oakland, California, and author of <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/product/a_foodies_guide_to_capitalism/">A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism</a>; <a href="https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/michael-jahi-chappell">Jahi Chappell</a>, author of <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520293090/beginning-to-end-hunger">Beginning to End Hunger: Food and the Environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beyond</a>; Jonathan Latham, author of <a href="https://www.poisonpapers.org/">The Poison Papers</a>; Carey Gillam, author of <a href="https://islandpress.org/book/whitewash">Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science</a>; and food systems researchers <a href="https://foodsystems.lakeheadu.ca/charles-z-levkoe/">Charles Levkoe</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jose_Vivero_Pol">Jose L. Vivero Pol</a>. Devita Davison, co-founder of <a href="https://foodlabdetroit.com/who-we-are">FoodLab Detroit</a>, travelled here in 2017 to share how food entrepreneurs are breathing life back into her post-industrial city. </p>
<p>Brought to our shores by local advocates of food systems change, these thought leaders are sharing their knowledge and experiences of how we might reclaim a food system that has effectively been corporatised, to the great detriment of our health, our planet and our democracy.</p>
<p>Contrary to popular critique, our food system is not broken. As Holt-Giménez explains so eloquently in his book, it works perfectly well for Big Food. Multinational food, beverage, agri-business and retail corporations control global supply chains. But they don’t feed the world.</p>
<p>The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) <a href="http://www.fao.org/zhc/detail-events/en/c/270855/">reports</a> that family farms produce 80% of the world’s food in 2014. It’s mostly produced by women and girls who, ironically, are the most likely to be food-insecure.</p>
<p>Why? Largely due to poverty, made worse by flawed government policies and global mega-corporations that wield the power to destroy local food economies, ruin human health and annihilate biodiversity.</p>
<p>Four companies: <a href="https://qz.com/1297749/the-end-of-the-monsanto-brand-bayer-pharmaceuticals-is-dropping-the-name-monsanto/">Bayer-Monsanto</a>, <a href="https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/working-at-a-multinational_inside-syngenta--behind-the-complicated-image/44421906">ChemChina-Syngenta</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DowDuPont">DowDuPont</a> and <a href="https://www.basf.com/en.html">BASF</a> now <a href="https://www.gmwatch.org/en/component/content/article/10558-the-worlds-top-ten-seed-companies-who-owns-nature">control over 50% of the world’s commercial seeds</a>. These highly profitable businesses are enabled by a regulatory system that effectively <a href="https://afsa.org.au/blog/2018/10/02/the-fight-for-farmers-rights-to-seed/">criminalises the saving, exchange and sale of seeds by local farmers</a>. </p>
<p>In terms of health, nearly one in three people globally suffer from at least one form of malnutrition in the form of wasting, stunting, vitamin deficiency, diabetes or obesity in what has become known as the “<a href="https://www.who.int/nutrition/double-burden-malnutrition/en/">double burden</a>” of malnutrition.</p>
<p>How have we got here? As Holt-Giménez explains, the global capitalist economy that drives our food system has fostered overproduction of cheap, calorific food. In doing so it has transformed the relationship between capital and labour to create social exclusion, poverty and food insecurity.</p>
<p>In pockets of economic irrelevance in every country and city on Earth people are deprived of basic infrastructure and services, particularly if they are perceived to have no value in global flows of wealth and property.</p>
<h2>Hope of a turning point</h2>
<p>Holt-Giménez has hope, however, that we are reaching a critical juncture in capitalism, with the emergence of “food utopias” that prefigure radical, structural change.</p>
<p>At the October 17 event “<a href="https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/building-food-utopias-voice-power-and-agency.html">Building Food Utopias: Voice, Power and Agency</a>”, hosted by University of Sydney, he was joined by sustainable food systems advocate <a href="https://evaperroni.com/">Eva Perroni</a> and Joel Orchard, founder of <a href="http://www.futurefeeders.org/">Future Feeders</a>. It’s an organisation dedicated to creating peer-to-peer support networks for young farmers.</p>
<p>Given the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-07-07/whos-farming-australia-abs-agricultural-census-2015-16/8686750">average age of the Australian farmer is 56</a>, Orchard’s initiative is a vital step to ensure our future food security, particularly in conditions of high financial risk and land scarcity.</p>
<p>As a scientist working with farmers to improve the quality of milk, Orchard saw those same farmers pouring it down drains in a depressed market. His experience led him to become part of the counter-movement against industrial agriculture. </p>
<p>Now managing his own peri-urban plot in Mullumbimby, Orchard has co-founded the <a href="http://www.csanetworkausnz.org/">Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Network</a> Australia and New Zealand with Victorian grower Sally Ruljancich. It provides a platform for small-scale and agro-ecological farmers who need a strong voice in policymaking.</p>
<p>“Farming has historically been such an individual and isolating pursuit,” Orchard said. “It’s vital that we include the perspectives of farmers both at the policy and consumer education level.</p>
<p>"At the moment, many small-scale and agro-ecological farmers don’t have a say in the policies that make a difference to their working lives.”</p>
<p>The CSA Network joins a number of like-minded organisations including the <a href="https://afsa.org.au/">Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance</a> (AFSA). AFSA <a href="https://afsa.org.au/blog/2018/06/27/vicplanningreforms/">lobbied the Victorian government for planning system reforms</a> that now recognise small-scale pastured pig and poultry farms as low risk. This has effectively unshackled these farmers from their industrial counterparts in planning legislation.</p>
<p>At the <a href="https://afsa.org.au/blog/2018/09/30/food-sovereignty-convergence-in-canberra-14-16-october/">Food Sovereignty Convergence</a> in Canberra this month, AFSA <a href="https://afsa.org.au/blog/2018/10/18/declaration-from-the-2018-food-sovereignty-convergence/">amended its constitution</a> to be an explicitly farmer-led organisation, like its international allies <a href="https://viacampesina.org/en/">La Via Campesina</a> and the <a href="http://www.foodsovereignty.org/">International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty</a>.</p>
<p>“Putting the voice and decision-making power in the hands of small-scale agroecological farmers puts AFSA in alignment with the global food sovereignty movement – we’re here to radically transform the food system from the ground up,” said AFSA president and farmer Tammi Jonas.</p>
<h2>An underground insurgency</h2>
<p>These farmers are part of what Charles Massy, in his remarkable book <a href="https://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1445/Call%20of%20the%20Reed%20Warbler">Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth</a>, calls an “underground insurgency”. They are regenerating the land and revisioning market exchange. They represent an emergent thinking that manifests itself not only in care for the Earth but in genuine concern for the health of rural and urban eaters.</p>
<p>These networks are essential in the counter-movement against input-intensive, conventional modes of agriculture and the crippling effects of market concentration – including the “Colesworth” duopoly in Australia – that put the price squeeze on farmers.</p>
<p>According to Holt-Giménez, strengthening these social networks and institutions that promote the interests of small-scale, agroecological farmers is essential in our privatised food system. “It’s in policymakers’ best interest to strengthen them so that truly transformative and effective public policy is achieved.”</p>
<p>Information-sharing with international advocates is key to the transformation we need, but solutions also lie closer to home.</p>
<p>Indigenous Australians developed sophisticated ecosystem management. By “getting out of the way of Mother Nature” – or combining ecological literacy with lack of ego, as Massy puts it – First Nations people survived for more than 40,000 years. </p>
<p>Their innovation is now internationally recognised through initiatives like the <a href="http://aboriginalcarbonfund.com.au/">Aboriginal Carbon Fund</a>, which is building a sustainable Aboriginal carbon industry through peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing.</p>
<p>The voices of these local thought leaders must be included in policymaking.</p>
<p>Novel approaches to community engagement are needed to bring us all together on food-related issues. These include communities of practice, food policy councils, social enterprises and <a href="https://foodfirst.org/publication/food-policy-councils-lessons-learned/">solidarity economies</a>.</p>
<p>Many of these fledgling “utopias” are already incubating in rural towns and urban neighbourhoods.</p>
<p>One thing is clear. Separated more by time and capacity than ideological approach, groups and communities working for a better food system are mobilising across Australia. Our food system is ripe for repairing, reclaiming and revisioning.</p>
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<p><em>The author acknowledges and thanks: food activist and researcher <a href="https://evaperroni.com/">Eva Perroni</a>, organiser of Holt-Giménez’s visit to Australia; <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a>, <a href="https://sydney.edu.au/sydney-policy-lab/">Sydney Policy Lab</a> and <a href="https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas.html">Sydney Ideas</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alana Mann is a member of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance and receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for the Linkage Project FoodLab Sydney. </span></em></p>If the food movement’s goal is to reclaim a corporatised food system by ‘rebuilding the public sphere from the ground up’, what does this look like?Alana Mann, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communications, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1053732018-10-24T03:07:22Z2018-10-24T03:07:22ZThe fair go is a fading dream, but don’t write it off<p><em>This article is the first in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">Reclaiming the Fair Go</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a> to mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/2018-joseph-stiglitz/">2018 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis caused by economic inequality and on how we can break the cycle of power and greed to enable all peoples and the planet to flourish. The Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 15 (tickets <a href="https://www.stickytickets.com.au/spp/events?page=1">here</a>).</em></p>
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<p>In June 2017, Australia achieved a world record of sorts – <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/05/how-australia-broke-the-record-for-economic-growth">26 years of uninterrupted economic growth</a>. This was achieved with a mix of good luck and good management. The resources boom, prudent fiscal management and some difficult economic decisions guided Australia through the global financial crisis with an economy that continued to grow.</p>
<p>Throughout much of this period, Australia has experienced <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/chart-pack/factors-prod-labour-mkt.html">declining unemployment</a> and <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/wage-growth">growing wages</a>. On the surface this might suggest Australia is a “Goldilocks economy”, avoiding the boom and bust cycle.</p>
<p>However, beneath the veneer it is clear not all have shared in the prosperity generated over the past 27 years. We have seen an enduring rise in economic inequality over the past four decades. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-believe-what-they-say-about-inequality-some-of-us-are-worse-off-102332">Don't believe what they say about inequality. Some of us are worse off</a>
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<p>Since the late 1970s, there has been a clear and persistent increase in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-4932.12285">individual earnings</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-4932.12399">family income inequality</a>. Since the late 1980s, much of the gain in real income has been concentrated at the <a href="https://wid.world/country/australia/">very top of the distribution</a>. </p>
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<p>From an international perspective, Australia now ranks among the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/social/OECD2016-Income-Inequality-Update.pdf">more unequal of the OECD economies</a>.</p>
<h2>What has happened to pay packets?</h2>
<p>A good place to begin to understand how inequality has increased is by examining the labour market. Studies <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-4932.12285">based on Australian Bureau of Statistics</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12263">other data</a> sources show a significant increase in wage inequality across workers since the late 1970s. </p>
<p>A range of forces have driven this increase. These include technological change such as computerisation and developments in IT that have fundamentally altered business practices and organisational forms. This has delivered substantial wage gains for some high-skilled workers, while minimal wage growth for low-skilled workers has led to increasing polarisation.</p>
<p>Of course, one of the defining features of the Australian economy over the past three decades has been its internationalisation. Globalisation has exposed more jobs and workers to international competition. This has left some workers, especially the low-skilled, with relatively smaller pay packets.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-rising-inequality-is-stalling-economies-by-crippling-demand-99075">How rising inequality is stalling economies by crippling demand</a>
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<p>Many institutions are no longer recognisable from those that shaped Australia from the beginning of the 20th century. Unions and centralised wage bargaining traditionally played a pivotal role in protecting the lowest-paid workers’ wages.</p>
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<p>Together these forces have contributed to greater wage volatility. The result is that much of the recent gains in real wages have been concentrated toward the very top of the wage distribution.</p>
<h2>Families matter</h2>
<p>Families can help limit the impacts of the market forces generating inequality. By coordinating work, caring, spending and saving decisions, families can dampen the effects of market-generated volatility and inequality on economic well-being.</p>
<p>Indeed, the rise in earnings and income inequality across families is less pronounced than the inequality across individuals. Nonetheless, “assortative matching”, whereby individuals tend to partner with a similarly educated and skilled individual, has led to a growing gap between the resources of the “haves” and “have-nots”.</p>
<h2>The state’s helping hand</h2>
<p>As in other countries, there has been a general trend of the Australian state providing less social protection and so acting less as an “equaliser”. For the unemployed, the safety net offered by the Newstart program has been progressively diminished. Access to the Disability Support Pension is increasingly restrictive, and delayed access to the Age Pension means these programs have become less generous over time.</p>
<p>Beyond the labour market, changes to the tax codes have reduced the progressivity of the system.</p>
<p>In total, the broad direction of changes to the tax-transfer system in recent decades has been to reduce the equalising influence of the state.</p>
<h2>Intergenerational mobility</h2>
<p>The high level of economic inequality at a point in time cannot be readily dismissed as an artefact of a dynamic and mobile economy. Research has shown that Australia’s high level of economic inequality is also associated with <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12274">lower intergenerational mobility</a>.</p>
<p>Recent evidence based on longitudinal data indicates children’s earnings are strongly related to their parents’. From an international perspective, Australia is relatively immobile. This means the economic advantages and disadvantages we see today may persist over future generations.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-inequality-you-cant-change-that-lasts-a-lifetime-82153">The inequality you can't change that lasts a lifetime</a>
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<p>One may well ask: is Australia witnessing the end of the “fair go”?</p>
<h2>Is it all doom and gloom?</h2>
<p>Despite these developments, there is cause for some optimism. Sustained community pressure has led to policy reforms that improved equality. A <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12237">recent study</a> showed that the one-off 19.5% increase in the Age Pension for singles (7.9% for couples) recommended by the <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/about-the-department/publications-articles/corporate-publications/budget-and-additional-estimates-statements/pension-review-report">Harmer Review</a> significantly reduced poverty and inequality among the elderly.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201213/NDIS">introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme</a> in 2012 represents an important expansion of social protection, which may substantially reduce economic inequality.</p>
<p>Community reaction to the evidence presented at the ongoing <a href="https://financialservices.royalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx">Royal Commission</a> into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry has led to a commitment to increase the funding and powers of corporate regulators. </p>
<p>Similarly, the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-27/whats-in-the-gonski-report/4219508">Gonski Report</a> of 2012 refocused policy debate on school funding toward needs-based models.</p>
<p>These developments have been driven in part by strong community concerns and a recognition that those most in need have missed out on the prosperity generated by over a quarter of a century of uninterrupted economic growth. Together, they provide hope the fair go has not gone forever.</p>
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<p><em>You can find other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Garry Barrett receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Whelan has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.</span></em></p>This is the first article in a series, Reclaiming the Fair Go, to mark the awarding of the 2018 Sydney Peace Prize to Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz.Garry Barrett, Professor and Head of School, School of Economics, University of SydneyStephen Whelan, Associate Professor of Economics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900142018-05-28T04:42:22Z2018-05-28T04:42:22ZRewriting history in the People’s Republic of Amnesia and beyond<p><em>This article is part of the Revolutions and Counter Revolutions series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p>Buried at the end of <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/Xi_Jinping%27s_report_at_19th_CPC_National_Congress.pdf">the most important Chinese political speech</a> in a decade, President Xi Jinping’s 66-page address to the 19th party congress in November 2017, was one short line: “The Chinese Dream is a dream about history, the present, and the future.” Tired after <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2017-11/09/content_34307829.htm">71 ovations</a> over three-and-a-half hours, the audience may have missed this sentence. Yet it illuminates how history underpins President Xi’s “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-17/chinese-dreams-in-a-new-age-of-strongman-politics/9054708">Chinese Dream</a>” of national rejuvenation.</p>
<p>History plays an increasingly important legitimising role in China. As <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/sam-dastyari-and-the-thousands-of-years-of-chinese-history/">historian Antonia Finnane writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every country has its national myths, most of which are grounded in or derived from history; but in China, history alone is the bedrock. The People’s Republic doesn’t have a religion, and it doesn’t have a constitution – or at least, not one that counts. It no longer even has a revolutionary ideology. It just has history, lots of it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the Chinese Dream to be achieved, it is imperative – as the president himself has spelled out – to ensure people “<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-12/30/c_134965704.htm">have correct views on history</a>”. Certain episodes – the Chinese resistance to the Japanese in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Background_on_the_Sino-Japanese_War">1930s</a> and the second world war – can be remembered. Others, like the brutal 1989 crackdown in the streets leading up to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-remember-the-past-the-case-of-tiananmen-27478">Tiananmen Square</a> in Beijing, which has just been <a href="https://yp.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/109444/tiananmen-square-crackdown-and-1967-riots-be-left-out-hk-secondary">removed from the new secondary school history curriculum in Hong Kong</a>, must be forgotten.</p>
<h2>The enforcement of forgetting</h2>
<p>The French historian Ernest Renan said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Forgetting … is a crucial factor in the creation of the nation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contemporary China, it’s put into practice with surgical skill. Specific memories of events deemed sensitive by the state are not just forgotten, they are winnowed out and selectively deleted. The Communist Party has succeeded in hacking the collective memory.</p>
<p>National amnesia has become what Chinese writer Yan Lianke calls a “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/opinion/on-chinas-state-sponsored-amnesia.html">state-sponsored sport</a>”. And as Beijing’s global influence rises, its controlling instincts – to tame, to corral, to shape, to prune, to expurgate history and historical memory – are increasingly being exported to the world.</p>
<p>The first move was an attempt in August 2017 to bully Cambridge University Press into <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7c5e665c-8724-11e7-8bb1-5ba57d47eff7">removing online access</a> in China to 300 articles from the China Quarterly journal. These were pieces on topics deemed sensitive, such as the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen crackdown. </p>
<p>The publisher at first bowed to Chinese demands and only reversed its position after public backlash. But statements by the Journal of Asian Studies, Critical Asian Studies and Springer Nature indicate that this case is part of a <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2017/11/academics-condemn-new-wave-journal-censorship/">larger campaign</a>.</p>
<p>Chinese censorship has also made inroads into Western publishing houses. For instance, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2d195ffc-be2e-11e7-b8a3-38a6e068f464">Springer Nature</a>, which publishes Nature and Scientific American, deleted around 1,000 articles from its Chinese website, citing “local distribution laws”. In doing so, Western academic presses end up serving the CCP’s purpose by propagating only state-mandated “correct views of history” inside China, as if no alternatives exist.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218569/original/file-20180511-34038-ju5b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters injured in the 1989 crackdown begged the photographer ‘Tell the world!’ Today’s it’s a crime to commemorate the dead.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Kim Nygaard</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>China is also censoring its own archives, as work by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/08/23/Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/Tiffert-Peering_down_the_memory_hole_2017.pdf">Glenn Tiffert</a> has forensically uncovered. His comparison of electronic and paper versions of China’s legal journals found that in one journal <a href="https://chinachannel.org/2017/10/06/lrp-muzzling-academy/">87% of the page count</a> had been excised. </p>
<p>At home, Beijing’s tightening grip on history deigns not only what can be remembered, but also the manner in which it can be marked. In the case of the events of June 4 in Tiananmen Square, small-scale commemorations that once flew beneath the radar are now regularly punished, often through vague charges such as “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble”.</p>
<p>Every year, Chinese activist Chen Yunfei had paid his respects at the grave of Wu Guofeng, a 20-year-old student <a href="http://www.hrichina.org/en/testimony-wu-dingfu-and-song-xiuling-parents-wu-guofeng">who was shot and bayoneted to death</a> by troops in Beijing on June 4, 1989. In March 2017, Chen <a href="http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/veteran-03312017101824.html">was sentenced to four years in jail</a> for this simple act of remembrance. </p>
<p>Chen’s lawyer Sui Muiqing told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>June Fourth is a red line for the authorities that cannot be crossed. This was a very important reason. It was a catalyst for his arrest.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Last year, at least <a href="https://www.nchrd.org/2017/06/police-cover-up-of-suspicious-death-of-detained-ethnic-villager-government-crackdown-on-citizens-remembering-tiananmen/">16 people were detained</a> for public acts of commemoration. <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/06/tiananmen-anniversary-lays-bare-chinas-contradictory-history/">Four other activists face up to 15 years</a> in prison after being indicted for “inciting subversion of state power” for selling liquor with a label referencing June 4 and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man">Tank Man</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A lone man stops a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square the day after the military suppressed protests by force.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The paradox, of course, is that the harder the Communist Party <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/04/15/301433547/after-25-years-of-amnesia-remembering-a-forgotten-tiananmen">works to erase the memory of June 4</a>, the deeper its obsession with Tiananmen’s legacy becomes. As Madeleine Thien <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/044c6846-45e6-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One could say that no one remembers the Tiananmen massacre more faithfully, or with greater attentiveness, than the Chinese government.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The crime of rejecting the revolution</h2>
<p>An old term that came to prominence in the white terror after Tiananmen is also back in vogue: <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VHmxDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=rejecting+the+revolution+and+denying+historical+inevitability+of+socialism+china&source=bl&ots=r1kHt8DgqJ&sig=7UrCh0ZqnjGPO9i-Af7DUxR8kYE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX67Ku58jUAhUMP">historical nihilism</a>, or “rejecting the revolution and denying the historical inevitability of socialism”. In April this year, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/04/new-law-criminalizes-slander-of-historical-heroes/">a law was passed</a> that bans the slander of Communist Party heroes and revolutionary martyrs. Last week, prosecutors used this new law for the first time, against <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-martyr-lawsuit/china-makes-first-use-of-law-banning-defamation-of-national-heroes-idUSKCN1IN0J0">a man in Jiangsu province who used social media to criticise a fireman</a> who died during a rescue operation. </p>
<p>A precursor of these new laws went to trial in 2016 when writer Hong Zhenkuai <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-china-xi-jinpings-crackdown-extends-to-dissenting-versions-of-history-1470087445">questioned</a> elements of the patriotic war story, “The Five Heroes of Langya Mountain”. This recounts the self-sacrifice of a group of Chinese soldiers who threw themselves from a cliff to avoid capture. Hong questioned whether two of the soldiers may have simply slipped and fallen by mistake. </p>
<p>Hong was found guilty of libel and forced to make a public apology after the court <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/08/16/lost-appeal-court-orders-a-writer-to-apologize-over-wartime-story/">ruled</a> that he had damaged the solders’ “heroic image and spiritual value”. The court argued that Hong should not have disputed the validity of the well-known story precisely because it “constituted part of the collective memory of the Chinese nation”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Chinese writer Hong Zhenkuai, convicted by a court for challenging the war story Five Heroes of Langya Mountain, climbs a peak to defend his position.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Many mainland historians and activists warn that the charge of historical nihilism could be used to muzzle historical research, using the threat of lawsuits to shut down discussion and ensure that the authorities’ view of history remains the only one. </p>
<p>“They want to use falsified history as propagated by the authorities to replace real history for the people,” Sui Muqing said. “They want to erase real historical events that happened. That’s what so-called ‘historical nihilism’ means.”</p>
<p>Even literary works are being targeted as guilty of historical nihilism. The Chinese government has denounced <a href="http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1039029.shtml">Soft Burial</a>, a novel by Fang Fang about the excesses of the 1950s land reform movement, as a “<a href="https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/12/china-bans-soft-burial-award-winning-novel-deadly-consequences-land-reform/">poisonous weed</a>” and banned its sale. Fang Fang explains the title, <a href="https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/12/china-bans-soft-burial-award-winning-novel-deadly-consequences-land-reform/">writing</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When people die and their bodies are buried under the earth without the protection of coffins, this burial is called a ‘soft burial’; as for the living, when they seal off their past, cut off their roots, reject their memories, either consciously or subconsciously, their lives are soft buried in time. Once they are in a soft burial, their lives will be disconnected in amnesia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In today’s China, exhuming or even publicly remembering history – even events that happened within our lifetime, such as those of 1989 – is increasingly costly. Soft burial has become not just a reality, but a state of self-preservation.</p>
<p>“In the future, historical research will be impossible,” <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2017/03/13/china-set-to-tweak-civil-code-to-punish-revisions-of-martyr-lore/">warned Hong</a> in an open letter. He had previously worked as the chief editor of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37097832">Yanhuang Chunqiu</a>, a gutsy magazine that addresses Communist Party history. “If you point out the contradictions or holes in what they say, they can use the law to proclaim that you are guilty.” </p>
<p>President Xi has even published a book titled <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Textbook-Learning-Important-Expositions/dp/750982432X">History: the Best Textbook</a>. Yet only one version of history is acceptable: the Communist Party’s own.</p>
<h2>The global spread of China’s amnesia</h2>
<p>With China’s rise, it now finds itself in a position to amplify its version of history to a global audience. Following the 2017 meeting in Mar-a-Lago between Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, Trump <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2017/04/12/wsj-trump-interview-excerpts-china-north-korea-ex-im-bank-obamacare-bannon/">described</a> his conversation to The Wall Street Journal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He then went into the history of China and Korea. Not North Korea, Korea. And you know, you’re talking about thousands of years … and many wars. And Korea actually used to be part of China.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/04/19/trumps-claim-that-korea-actually-used-to-be-a-part-of-china/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cbe2d3fefc63">distorted reading</a> is in line with a growing body of nationalist thought in China.</p>
<p>Increasingly, Beijing is marshalling its own version of history to support its territorial claims overseas. This is the case, for instance, of the <a href="https://qz.com/705223/where-exactly-did-chinas-nine-dash-line-in-the-south-china-sea-come-from/">Nine-Dash Line</a>, which China says gives it a historical claim to virtually the entire South China Sea. China has <a href="http://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2095097/asean-powers-continue-arm-wrestle-over-chinas-nine-dash-line">refused</a> to accept the Hague-based international tribunal’s ruling that this claim has no legal basis. Disgraced Australian politician Sam Dastyari even echoed the “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-12/sam-dastyari-resignation-how-did-we-get-here/9249380">thousands of years of history</a>” line to back China’s refusal to abide by these rulings. </p>
<p>Recently, a <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/map-gives-china-new-tool-control-disputed-sea/4367264.html">map dating from 1951</a> has been uncovered. It is <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2141323/chinas-claims-south-china-sea-proposed-continuous-boundary-first">being used by researchers to propose new boundaries</a>, though it is not clear whether Beijing could adopt them. </p>
<p>China has also invoked history to legitimise its massive <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/lrHNZQcdLcDN2eTtmbC9cK/One-Belt-One-Road-has-no-basis-in-Chinas-history.html">One Belt One Road</a> international infrastructure scheme, despite <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/05/16/528611924/for-chinas-new-silk-road-ambitious-goals-and-more-than-a-few-challenges">critics</a> claiming that its premise relies on mythologised history.</p>
<p>The Chinese Communist Party is actively trying to export its version of the past beyond its borders. But these examples should serve as a warning. If Beijing is given a free pass on history, the international ramifications could come back to bite us in the years ahead.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Lousia Lim is the author of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-peoples-republic-of-amnesia-9780199347704?cc=au&lang=en&">The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited</a> (OUP 2014).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90014/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louisa Lim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For China, national amnesia has become a ‘state-sponsored sport’. Memories of events deemed sensitive by the state are not just forgotten, they are winnowed out and selectively deleted.Louisa Lim, Senior Lecturer in Audiovisual Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900132018-05-10T04:18:18Z2018-05-10T04:18:18ZReligious backlash loosens clerics’ grip on legacy of 1979 Iranian Revolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217429/original/file-20180503-153881-5t4i7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1979 Iranian revolution wasn't purely Islamic but the clerics, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, made it so to consolidate their power.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bocko-m/37792815212/">BockoPix/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the Revolutions and Counter Revolutions series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>With Iran’s ruling clergy already preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution">1979 Islamic Revolution</a>, it may be too late to question whether or not the revolution was in fact Islamic. What we can do, at least, is explore the revolution’s degree of Islamicness.</p>
<p>In Iran, like elsewhere in the world, often competing utopian political visions shaped the political landscape of the previous century. Marxism, nationalism and liberalism all played important roles in the 1979 revolution. Yet it was later branded “Islamic” with such insistence that this eventually became its sole adjective.</p>
<p>Most Iranians were religious, which positioned the clergy far ahead of any other political group in being able to mobilise the masses. The clergy benefited enormously from their highly effective religious network, which was both far reaching and fully under their control. By that time, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlavi_dynasty">the Pahlavi regime</a> had severely weakened the organising capacities of Iran’s other political groups.</p>
<h2>The consolidation of power</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217435/original/file-20180503-153895-5vf6on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After telling reporters and other revolutionary leaders ‘the religious dignitaries do not want to rule’ in 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini ensured the clerics’ rule was unchallenged once in power.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution#/media/File:Banisadr_Fallaci_Khomeini.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After claiming a dominant post-revolution position, the clergy under then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini exploited their irreproachable reputation and religious bond with the masses to eliminate their rivals and consolidate their power. They converted Iran’s religious networks into permanent political platforms.</p>
<p>Mosques and other religious spaces and occasions were at the forefront of their propaganda machinery. Mosques were also – and still are – used as polling stations during elections.</p>
<p>The ruling clergy coupled the term “Islamic” with the revolution, calling it a “<a href="https://foucaldien.net/articles/10.16995/lefou.2/">regime of truth</a>”, to use Foucault’s terminology. More importantly, they impeded the emergence of a non-religious alternative to their peculiar political system. Over the past 39 years, no secular political group has been able to mount a formidable challenge to the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Instead, other religious forces have challenged the ruling clergy. They have done so both on the level of practical politics and by way of introducing viable alternatives to the ideal of the Islamic state.</p>
<p>The impetus for Iran’s most significant periods of political unrest in recent decades can be traced to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Reformists">Islamic reformists</a>. Examples include the reformist movement from 1997 until 2005, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Green_Movement">the Green Movement</a>, which emerged after the disputed 2009 elections. </p>
<p>The Green Movement brought the regime to the brink of collapse, and its religious ties were undeniable. Its leaders, Mir Hussin Mousavi and Mehdi Karubi – who are still under house arrest – are both religious figures who have always aligned with the Islamists. The colour green is a religious symbol, hence the name of the movement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217438/original/file-20180503-153873-zijjqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The leaders of the Green Movement, whose supporters are pictured at rally in June 2009, are still under house arrest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iran_election_(2).jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A new politico-religious discourse is emerging that offers a viable alternative to the Islamic Republic. The Green Movement must still be understood within the broader “Islamist” school of thought, as it promotes a political role for religion. It is, however, unique in that it envisions this role as part of a democratic polity.</p>
<h2>Islam lacks a blueprint for government</h2>
<p>The reformist movement amounts to a direct backlash against the ideal of the Islamic state. It targets the foundational pillars of the <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0076.xml">Shiʿi</a> model of the state, which is based upon Khomeini’s doctrine of <a href="https://www.al-islam.org/shia-political-thought-ahmed-vaezi/what-wilayat-al-faqih"><em>wilāyat-i faqīh</em></a>. </p>
<p>The reformists intend to strip away the ruling clergy’s proclaimed religious legitimacy. They maintain that Islam does not specify a blueprint for political matters and explicitly avoids providing economic, political, or policy prescriptions. The Qurʾān and many Ḥadīths support the notion that humans have the capacity to determine appropriate solutions for their worldly problems. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217453/original/file-20180503-153873-7ditir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sign at a June 2009 rally in Paris, France, bears the motto used in the Green Movement protests in Iran.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/h_de_c/3629285854/">Hugo/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thus, reformists argue that Islam should be actualised in politics through the political contributions of believers rather than the political leadership of the clergy.</p>
<p>Islam does not stipulate a model political system. This makes it impossible to extract the notion of democratic government from Islamic teachings. </p>
<p>However, one could argue that democracy is an appropriate political system for the Muslim world, based on human reasoning. For example, <a href="https://en.kadivar.com/2011/11/13/wilayat-al-faqih-and-democracy/">Mohsen Kadivar</a> asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Democracy is the least erroneous approach to the politics of the world. (Please note that least erroneous does not mean perfect, or even error free.) Democracy is a product of reason, and the fact that it has first been put to use in the West does not preclude its utility in other cultures – reason extends beyond the geographical boundaries. One must adopt a correct approach, regardless of who came up with the idea.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Divine sovereignty and Sharīʿa</h2>
<p>The religious backlash has been particularly focused on refuting two interconnected claims that form the existential grounding of the Islamic state. These are the claims of divine sovereignty and the necessity of implementing Sharīʿa, or Islamic law. </p>
<p>Iran’s ruling clergy argue that the divine right to political leadership rests not only with the Prophet Mohammad and Shiʿi’s <a href="https://www.al-islam.org/tenets-islam-shaykh-tusi/imams-are-infallible">Infallible Imāms</a>, but also with <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Iran/Government-and-society#ref783953">Islamic jurists</a> in today’s world. According to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Islam-Revolution-Writings-Declarations-1941-1980/dp/0933782039">Khomeini</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>God has conferred upon government in the present age the same powers and authority that were held by the Most Noble Messenger and the Imāms, with respect to equipping and mobilising armies, appointing governors and officials, and levying taxes and expending them for the welfare of the Muslims. Now, however, it is no longer a question of a particular person; government devolves instead upon one who possesses the qualities of knowledge and justice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This assertion could be questioned on various levels. First and foremost, it offers a problematic reading of Islamic history. It ignores the reality that the Prophet Mohammad’s governance was a historical occurrence as opposed to a part of his divine mission. </p>
<p>In the same vein, many Iranian religious reformists repudiate the divine source of political authority, not only in the present, but also for the Prophet and Infallible Imāms. These interpretations of the revolution reject the possibility of claiming any sort of divinity in the political realm. This empowers believers to manage their political lives based on their collective rational reasoning.</p>
<p>The second major claim is that Islam is a political religion because Sharīʿa law encompasses important socio-political dimensions. Its proponents maintain that Sharīʿa ought to be implemented to its full extent, thus requiring political leadership by the clergy. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217454/original/file-20180503-153878-19csrq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once in government, Khomenei himself rationalised giving priority to political interests over religious considerations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roollah-khomeini.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was a founding maxim of Khomeini’s doctrine of <a href="https://www.al-islam.org/shia-political-thought-ahmed-vaezi/what-wilayat-al-faqih"><em>wilāyat-i faqīh</em></a>. But he revised this when he began running a modern state. </p>
<p>Soon after the revolution, Khomeini realised that implementing the many components of Sharīʿa would interfere with the basic tasks of government. In other words, he concluded that full compliance with Sharīʿa law would make it impossible for a state to effectively carry out its core functions and responsibilities. </p>
<p>His response to this predicament was to prioritise political interests over religious considerations. He went so far as to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Turban-Crown-Islamic-Revolution-Studies/dp/0195042581">declare</a> Sharīʿa as secondary to governing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A government in the form of the God-given, absolute mandate was the most important of the divine commandments and has priority over all derivative divine commandments … [it is] one of the primary commandments of Islam and has priority over all derivative commandments, even over prayer, fasting and pilgrimage to Mecca.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was conceptualised as a Shiʿi jurisprudential principle called <em>Fiqh al-maṣlaḥa</em> (expediency-based jurisprudence). It establishes that a state is regarded as Islamic if the head of state is a jurist, a <em>walī-yi faqīh</em>, regardless of whether the state enforces Sharīʿa and Islamic precepts.</p>
<h2>Open to the charge of exploiting Islam</h2>
<p>Expediency-based jurisprudence leaves the fate of Sharīʿa ordinances, and by extension the entire religion of Islam, to the “personal” understanding of the ruling jurist. Unsurprisingly, it has been challenged for exploiting religion. </p>
<p>Critics say that decisions based on a rational assessment of the circumstances should not be tagged as “Islamic”. Attaching a religious tag to decisions made by the absolute authority of one person, who is not immune to mistakes and failures, will render religion responsible for policy mistakes and failures.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the lived experience of the government born out of the 1979 revolution proved detrimental to Islam. It led to the disillusionment of some Islamists who wished to emancipate religion from the state. As such, reformist discourse failed to propose a tangible alternative to the model of the Islamic state. This, in turn, could partially explain the resilience of the Islamic state in Iran.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, we should not overlook the powerful role of religious backlash in disarming the ruling clergy and delegitimising the theological foundation of the Islamic state. It remains the most formidable challenge to Iran’s ruling clergy to date. </p>
<p>Still, the possibility of a major shift in the country’s political landscape is more complicated and depends on factors far beyond religion-state relations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90013/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Naser Ghobadzadeh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Reformists are calling for the emancipation of religion from a state that’s seen to exploit Islam for purposes of political power. This remains the most formidable challenge to Iran’s ruling clergy.Naser Ghobadzadeh, Senior lecturer, National School of Arts, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/944102018-05-02T04:30:35Z2018-05-02T04:30:35ZLegal precedent based on false beliefs proves hard to overturn<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215727/original/file-20180420-75123-1owk2e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">False beliefs about language and speech underlie legal precedents that allow jurors to be “assisted" by unreliable transcripts of forensic audio.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Everett Collection/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em></p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
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<p>Judges consider their profession to be among the most accountable of those whose opinions and actions shape our society. After all, every judicial decision is presented publicly, open to the scrutiny of critical colleagues ready to appeal to a higher court if any error is detected.</p>
<p>The outcome of a criminal appeal is life-changing for the appellant. But it also has significant ramifications for the rest of us. This is because opinions expressed by judges in appeal courts gain the status of legal authority, used as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent">precedents</a> to guide judgments in subsequent trials.</p>
<p>This development of the law has many advantages. By ensuring consistency in trial outcomes, it contributes to fairness in the justice system. It allows practices of law and law enforcement agencies to be standardised, in confidence that rulings about admission of evidence will be applied in similar ways in similar cases.</p>
<p>However, it does have disadvantages. One troubling example is provided by the development of practices for admitting <a href="http://forensictranscription.com.au/">covert recordings</a> as evidence in court.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dark-side-of-mondegreens-how-a-simple-mishearing-can-lead-to-wrongful-conviction-78466">The dark side of mondegreens: how a simple mishearing can lead to wrongful conviction</a>
</strong>
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<p>While lawyers may pounce on judges’ legal errors, <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-who-will-push-ahead-on-validating-forensic-science-disciplines-76198">errors of scientific fact are less likely to be detected</a>. Indeed, scientific errors in an appeal ruling are liable to be propagated under the mantle of legal authority <a href="http://netk.net.au/MOJHome.asp">from judgment to judgment down the years</a>. </p>
<p>This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the mantle of legal authority applies not just to the substantive decision that is the focus of the appeal, but to comments judges make in explaining their decision.</p>
<h2>What’s the problem with covert recordings?</h2>
<p>Covert recordings are conversations captured by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device">secret listening devices</a>. During the 1980s, increasing use of covert recordings in criminal trials raised a number of procedural problems for the law. One related to recordings featuring foreign languages. </p>
<p>It can be hard for a jury to follow examination and cross-examination of translators presenting competing opinions about speakers’ meanings. One judge decided to help by allowing translations to be provided in written form. </p>
<p>This may seem, from today’s perspective, like simple common sense. But it actually marked a significant departure from the long legal tradition that juries should hear all testimony orally. </p>
<p>That’s why the decision was appealed all the way to the High Court of Australia. It was ultimately upheld in a <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/HCA/1987/58.html">landmark judgment called <em>Butera</em></a>, back in 1987.</p>
<p>There is no reason to question the substantive decision in this particular 30-year-old case. What does raise concern is the commentary explaining the judges’ decision.</p>
<p>Among <a href="http://netk.net.au/Forensic/Forensic34.pdf">other anomalies</a>, the High Court judges called written translations “transcripts”. The effect of this is that their judgment has been taken to apply to English as well as non-English recordings. They also endorsed a range of emerging practices regarding who could create transcripts, and how they should be evaluated.</p>
<h2>What’s wrong with that?</h2>
<p>The judges in the <em>Butera</em> case, reasonably enough, based their comments on common knowledge shared by all educated people. The problem is, with language and speech, educated common knowledge includes many beliefs that linguistic science has shown to be false (collectively dubbed “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_linguistics">folk linguistics</a>”). </p>
<p>Some of the judges’ comments embodied these kinds of false beliefs. As a result, they created legal authority for a range of practices that <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/aafs-talk-14-feb-2018/">turn out to be highly problematic</a>. </p>
<p>These include, <a href="http://netk.net.au/Forensic/Forensic34.pdf">among others</a>, allowing juries listening to indistinct covert recordings to be “assisted” by a transcript prepared by detectives investigating the case. That may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but, like the practice of allowing <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-eyewitnesses-give-false-evidence-and-how-we-can-stop-them-67254">eye witnesses</a> to identify perpetrators, it has been shown to create <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/case-study">actual and potential injustice</a>. That’s because the power of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dark-side-of-mondegreens-how-a-simple-mishearing-can-lead-to-wrongful-conviction-78466">“priming” means errors in police transcripts are surprisingly unlikely to be detected</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covert-recordings-as-evidence-in-court-the-return-of-police-verballing-14072">Covert recordings as evidence in court: the return of police ‘verballing’?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Solution isn’t as obvious as it seems</h2>
<p>The solution might seem clear: inform the judiciary that there has been a misunderstanding and let them fix it up. Turns out, <a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-or-lies-overturning-wrongful-convictions-20430">it’s not that simple</a>. </p>
<p>The recommended fix is for a new appeal case to create a better precedent. Unfortunately, in the matter of transcripts, <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/two-new-papers/">it hasn’t worked like that</a>. </p>
<p>Some time ago, an appeal court found a detective’s transcript to be misleading, and quashed the conviction based on it. But that was seen as a mere aberration, so the judgment is not cited as a precedent. Legal authority for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/covert-recordings-as-evidence-in-court-the-return-of-police-verballing-14072">concept that detectives’ transcripts “assist” juries</a> remains undented. Indeed, that very detective still provides transcripts for juries, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00450618.2017.1340523">never questioned about his track record</a>.</p>
<p>So getting a new precedent is hard. And even if it happened, it wouldn’t be enough. After 30 years, practices based on <em>Butera</em> have become <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/two-new-papers/">entwined with other precedents and embedded in every corner of law and law enforcement</a>.</p>
<h2>Conflict or collaboration?</h2>
<p>For some, this story might evoke criticism of the law for denying scientific facts. But there’s a bit more to it.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/post-truth-politics-and-why-the-antidote-isnt-simply-fact-checking-and-truth-87364">Countering false beliefs isn’t just a matter of telling true facts</a>. To help the law avoid false beliefs about science, scientists need to avoid false beliefs about the law, which operates under <a href="http://dl4a.org/uploads/pdf/026376.pdf">conditions and constraints</a> very different from those of the laboratory. </p>
<p>That’s why Australian linguists have offered a <a href="https://forensictranscription.com.au/a-call-to-action/">Call to Action</a>, seeking dialogue and collaboration with the judiciary. Though the solution is not immediately clear to either party, together we can figure one out. </p>
<p>After all, <a href="https://theconversation.com/navigating-the-post-truth-debate-some-key-co-ordinates-77000">facts – true, false or otherwise – are embedded in language</a>. When it comes to sorting out problems involving language, collaboration between lawyers and linguists <a href="http://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/speeches/current-justices/frenchcj/frenchcj_29Aug2015.pdf">can create good results</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Fraser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Not all false beliefs arise from malicious misinformation. Some legal precedents rest on the status of everyday ‘common knowledge’, since shown to be false, but embedded in our law nonetheless.Helen Fraser, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900112018-04-26T03:22:27Z2018-04-26T03:22:27ZKidnapped democracy: how can citizens escape?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214688/original/file-20180413-560-1d698i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Contemporary politics is no longer able to resist the pressure of economic power.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Day_40_Occupy_Wall_Street_October_25_2011_Shankbone_13.JPG">David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview16">José Saramago’s parable Seeing</a> (2004) explores how irrationality and stupidity become manifest when political decision-making is taken “hostage” by financial powers. The Nobel Prize-winning author warns that contemporary politics is no longer able to resist the pressure of economic power. This is because we live in amputated and kidnapped democracies that no longer protect citizens’ interests.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, this concern has become much more generalised among citizens in recent years. Journalists, activists, politicians and economists have also intuitively employed the concept of “kidnapped democracy” to describe our political predicament. The term kidnap is clearly a useful metaphor for understanding the times and power relations in which we live, especially if we can spell out its meaning, its consequences, and the stakeholders (the kidnappers and the hostages) who intervene in the process. </p>
<p>Kidnapping implies that someone is being held against their will. At the mercy of the kidnapper, the hostage loses any capacity for action and free movement. So when democracy is kidnapped, its main institutions and basic structures – parliaments, political parties, trade unions, mass media and NGOs – are held hostage. </p>
<p>Of course, there are some differences between the kidnapping of people and the kidnapping of institutions, but both situations are complex and potentially violent. And both can produce repressed, complicit victims.</p>
<h2>Meet the hostages</h2>
<p>Separating the victims from the kidnappers is no easy task. There are plenty of kidnapped stakeholders and different types of kidnappers.</p>
<p>Parliaments, governments, political parties, trade unions, mass media and NGOs all play a basic role in the political system. Despite performing specific tasks, each is expected to serve citizens and respect the maximum plurality of possible interests, or at least try to do so. Unfortunately, all these institutions are becoming less legitimate, to varying degrees, in almost all democracies. </p>
<p>More and more people believe these democratic institutions exist only to serve a select minority, having lost their capacity to act and their freedom to mediate or represent plural interests meaningfully. </p>
<p>So have they been kidnapped? How did it happen? And what hidden causes and dynamics lie behind the capture? </p>
<p>Take, for example, the Greek government: can it really act freely? Can it represent its citizens or is it hostage to international powers and organisations that dictate its policies and destiny, to the great frustration of its citizens? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Greek citizens have been frustrated by the austerity policies of their government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/0742/4386566455">underclassrising.net/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/greeks-are-overworked-and-exhausted-from-the-debt-crisis-71589">Greeks are overworked and exhausted from the debt crisis</a>
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<p>While a seemingly extreme example, Greece is certainly not the only country that must confront such questions. Other European Union nations are similarly troubled. </p>
<p>When the Spanish Socialist government (PSOE), supported by what was then the Partido Popular opposition party, reformed the nation’s constitution in 2011, a budget stability principle was passed. This gave priority to repaying public debt within the state’s general budget. This measure was considered most controversial, and was unpopular among citizens precisely because it explicitly and exclusively addressed the need to satisfy financial markets. </p>
<p>Things are not so different when we look northwards. Even in the “powerful” and economically strong Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered such captivity. </p>
<p>At the beginning of 2010 and in the face of economic crisis, Merkel considered the need to redistribute certain costs, insisting that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/nov/22/germany-ireland-eurozone-bailout-crisis">creditors should also pay part of the costs</a>. However, this proposal swiftly changed when “the markets” reacted by slightly increasing interest rates on German public debt. The idea of redistributing, albeit minimally, the costs of the country’s economic hardships was rapidly ruled out. </p>
<p>Evidently, governments have tremendous difficulty acting freely. The financing of markets, globalisation and the formation of multi-party governments all come into play. Political parties have even contributed to their own captivity and loss of freedom by taking on large debts with banks in order to win elections. </p>
<p>Other basic pillars of the democratic system are losing the capacity to represent plural interests. Trade unions and their close links with media powers, along with their concentration and progressive takeover by international corporations, come to mind. </p>
<p>So do NGOs that depend on external financing from political and economic centres. Are they not increasingly becoming hostage to propertied powers and dynamics that prevent them from meeting their original purpose?</p>
<h2>Who are the kidnappers?</h2>
<p>The kidnappers themselves are many and diverse; they vary by country and the range of strategies they employ. It is remarkable that former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson has <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/">expressed his concern</a> about the power of well-established financial oligarchies, particularly in the US, to impose systematic policies that are self-serving. Such financial elites include multinationals, rating agencies and powerful pharmaceutical and weapons industries. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Something’s obviously wrong when even a former IMF chief economist voices concern about the power of financial oligarchies over policy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/guigui-lille/28270947186/">Guillaume Delebarre/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Of course, these stakeholders whose power goes well beyond the economic sphere to kidnap the space of politics are also prevalent in Europe, Latin America, Australia and many other “stable democracies”. The kidnappers resort to various strategies and tools, which range from providing finances and maintaining close connections with politicians to taking advantage of revolving doors and making implicit or explicit threats. </p>
<p>But their common objective is seen everywhere: to determine the destination of politics and to limit, or even strangle, the power of basic democratic structures that should otherwise grant citizens a voice. When the pillars of democracy are kidnapped, citizens become victims of the whole process.</p>
<h2>Stockholm syndrome</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Stockholm-syndrome">Stockholm syndrome</a> is a peculiar but well-known psychological reaction that sets in when hostages develop an affective link and positive feelings towards their kidnappers. It’s not a stretch to see this syndrome at work in our contemporary democracies. </p>
<p>How many voters, even those aware of their captivity, justify their kidnappers’ decisions? How many brush off austerity policies with a simple “it’s just what has to be done”? And how many economic and political leaders are paradoxically received as liberators of a population? </p>
<p>A significant part of the population, while certainly not the entire population, seems to be complacent about today’s kidnapped democracy. It is as if they have surrendered themselves emotionally and given themselves up to their captors. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pathologies-of-populism-82593">The pathologies of populism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>These kidnappers stay silent</h2>
<p>It’s worth noting the difference in the levels of silence (or noise) when people, as opposed to whole democracies, are kidnapped. In “classic” forms of kidnapping, the criminals themselves often contact the relatives and loved ones of their hostage to make demands. In doing so, they raise the alarm, which can also be raised by anyone who may have witnessed the kidnapping. </p>
<p>Something different takes place when a democracy is kidnapped. In this instance, the kidnappers intentionally keep quiet about what is happening. They do not want to draw attention to what they are doing. They make no calls and showcase no distressed victims, nor do they seek to attract media coverage to voice explicit demands. </p>
<p>The kidnappers’ power lies in their capacity to keep their control over institutions silent. To do so, the kidnappers must develop their influence as subtly as possible. They need citizens to perceive that all is normal and suppose that democracy works. Appearances must be reassuring enough that no-one fears the power that the kidnappers acquire, so that their control is not threatened, or at least not openly questioned.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The populist leaders of our times do not appear to offer much hope for an urgent renewal of democracy for the people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/32388615916/">Lorie Shaull/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How can citizens free themselves?</h2>
<p>Is there any way to free democracy and citizens from their stealthy, wealthy, elite captors? To date, the populists who promise us salvation do not appear to offer much hope for an urgent renewal of democracy for the people. </p>
<p>Yet some monitoring and accountability initiatives launched by civil society are finding ways to resist the silence, raise the alarm and break up the Stockholm syndrome. </p>
<p>Unveiling and demonstrating with evidence the extent to which our democracies have been kidnapped is necessary, not least to promote public reflection on the problem. But the key to renewal surely lies in new democratic mechanisms and forms of citizen participation that are capable of ending the concentrations of power that are kidnapping our democracies and victimising their citizens. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-spanish-political-laboratory-is-reconfiguring-democracy-74874">How the Spanish political laboratory is reconfiguring democracy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ramón A. Feenstra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The financial oligarchies differ from other kidnappers by being silent about their power over institutions and policies – they don’t want to alert anyone to what they have done.Ramón A. Feenstra, Lecturer of Moral Philosophy, Universitat Jaume ILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900122018-04-12T06:25:39Z2018-04-12T06:25:39ZFour years after the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine: key gains and losses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213504/original/file-20180406-125191-7dplxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Kyiv in February 2014, riot police line up opposite crosses marking the deaths of protesters. More than 10,000 people have been killed since the Euromaidan protests began in late 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/christiaantriebert/12463609595/in/photolist-jZnfUB-i1mbjK-idv9Y1-kWvs7R-j6DyHT-ocPJD3-jZo3dR-jre97p-kdQLEL-hPqoK7-hPqBTj-mWNK6i-kreaig-qiWpsX-iAFURD-oeERGD-ocTUEF-jZpVyq-nVqjLa-ocAAPk-i3Qz11-oeEUmB-nVpvPB-nVpciQ-nVp4kq-pCzCXF-nVqpka-n1oyjT-jzngP6-hVByrm-i2NpoU-iduZTB-pVPteh-pV9yuU-id9nZw-qpY33m-iduZNg-pV9xE7-i2z4Qy-jzoHG4-oYh6aP-k5wy3g-id9bxq-i5Fc3P-kkVXwe-ibiNCq-jKMKpD-i1noCR-kP6VKX-jZneNZ">Christiaan Triebert/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>On November 21 2013, massive protests under the European Union flag erupted in the central square of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/euromaidan-12978">Euromaidan</a> revolution demanded democratic values and decried the kleptocratic regime of the then president, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25182830">Viktor Yanukovych</a>. In the next three months, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_during_Euromaidan">a hundred activists were killed</a>, Russia annexed Crimea and supported breakaway forces in a war that tore apart eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Violence continues today. By late 2017, more than <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/UA/UAReport19th_EN.pdf">10,000 people had been killed</a> and an <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/euromaidan-protests-corruption-and-war-ukraine-migration-trends-and-ambitions">estimated 2 million forcibly displaced</a>. Nevertheless, the Euromaidan revolution has resulted in democratic and social gains, but also significant setbacks, for Ukraine.</p>
<h2>Four gains</h2>
<p><strong>1. The birth of civil society</strong></p>
<p>Euromaidan was the catalyst for the birth of civil society in Ukraine. Opinion polls suggest that, since the protests, Ukrainians have higher levels of patriotism and trust in each other, and are more optimistic about the nation’s future. The level of civic activity and desire to contribute to the nation’s development have increased.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://voxukraine.org/2016/08/31/pre-and-post-war-ukraine-ru/">October 2015</a>, 41% of Ukrainians reported being more willing to donate (12% were less willing), while 33% were more willing to protect their rights, freedoms and dignity (compared to 8% whose readiness declined). Furthermore, 22% were more willing to volunteer in the local community and 18% reported an increased willingness to join a civil society organisation. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://argumentua.com/stati/ukraina-itogi-revolyutsii-dostoinstva-kak-izmenilis-strana-i-narod">2012</a>, 23% of Ukrainians made donations, increasing to 41% in 2014 and 47% in 2015. This growth is significant given the impoverished conditions people faced around the country.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, these civic gains have failed to translate into real political activity. Low turnouts at elections (especially among 18 to 29-year-olds, the most active and educated citizens) and citizens voting according to populist television advertising or accepting “gifts” in exchange for “correct” voting are all reasons for the slow pace of progressive reform, and the even slower replacement of the political elite.</p>
<p><strong>2. The Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement</strong></p>
<p>On September 1 2017, the association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine, which was negotiated between 2007 and 2011 and signed in 2014, finally <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/eu-ukraine-association-agreement-goes-into-force-after-four-years-drama/28708426.html">entered into full force</a>. The agreement is seen within the country as the main tool for bringing Ukraine closer to the EU because it promotes stronger political ties and economic links, as well as respect for common European values.</p>
<p>The hope is that the agreement, including its Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), will provide a framework for modernising Ukraine’s trade relations and economic development by opening up markets and harmonising laws, standards and regulations with EU and international norms.</p>
<p>In August 2017, Ukrainian President <a href="https://www.unian.info/politics/2105024-juncker-ukraine-not-european-in-the-sense-of-european-union.html">Petro Poroshenko said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have only one road to follow – a wide Euro-Atlantic highway leading to membership in the European Union and NATO.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>3. Visa-free travel in the EU</strong></p>
<p>The EU lifted visa requirements for Ukrainians on June 11 2017. The move sparked joy among Ukrainians and raised their expectations for a better future in an aspiring EU member country. </p>
<p>All Ukrainian citizens with biometric passports can now enter the Schengen area without a visa for up to 90 days for tourism or business. However, they are not allowed to work in the EU.</p>
<p><strong>4. Reform program begins</strong></p>
<p>In the summer of 2016, long-awaited judicial reform began. Amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution on the judiciary and a few corresponding laws were adopted. However, it is too early to evaluate these changes.</p>
<p>Ukraine has also taken steps towards greater transparency to combat corruption. Government officials are now obliged to declare their assets and property. The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-corruption/ukrainians-shocked-as-politicians-declare-vast-wealth-idUSKBN12V1EN">results</a> have displayed a shocking concentration of wealth in one of the poorest countries in Europe. </p>
<p>Ukraine’s online procurement system, <a href="https://prozorro.gov.ua/en">ProZorro</a>, has already become a global brand, with the World Bank planning to adopt it for its Ukrainian projects.</p>
<p>Still, these efforts are only a small first step towards eliminating corruption. Education, energy and regional reforms are yet to take place. These will require serious financing and take a long time. </p>
<h2>Five losses</h2>
<p><strong>1. War</strong></p>
<p>Ukraine’s decision to pursue a “Western direction” caused a wave of social cleavages in cross-border, multi-ethnic southern and eastern Ukraine. The tensions resulted in the Russian annexation of Crimea and war around two Russian-backed breakaway provinces.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213507/original/file-20180406-125173-5gczt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Every day, thousands cross the line of contact, between areas controlled by Ukrainian government and separatist forces, to visit relatives and obtain basic goods and services.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/eu_echo/37864954792">EU Civil Protection & Humanitarian Aid Operation/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The war has touched every facet of social, economic and political life in the country. Here are some telling facts:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/UA/UAReport19th_EN.pdf">10,225</a> citizens had been killed as of August 15 2017</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.internal-displacement.org/europe-the-caucasus-and-central-asia/ukraine/figures-analysis/">1.4 million</a> people had been internally displaced by August 2015</p></li>
<li><p>Ukraine’s population is projected to <a href="https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/Files/Key_Findings_WPP_2015.pdf">shrink to 36 million</a> by 2050</p></li>
<li><p>emigration has <a href="http://www.e-ir.info/2017/05/01/moving-out-of-their-places-1991-2016-migration-of-ukrainians-to-australia/">increased</a> significantly in the last four years.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>2. Economic decline</strong></p>
<p>Due to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbass">war in the Donbass region</a> and the breakdown of relations with Russia, Ukraine’s largest trading partner, the economy shrank by 6.8% in 2014 and 10.4% in 2015, according to the <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-economy-contracted/26911697.html">state statistics service</a>. The National Bank of Ukraine stated a <a href="https://economics.unian.info/1182190-double-bottom-of-ukraines-economy.html">11.6% decline</a> in 2015, while the World Bank registered a <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/ukraine-economy-fall-gross-domestic-product-shrink-12-says-world-bank-2126818">12% shrinkage</a>.</p>
<p>In 2016, the economic <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ukraine/publication/ukraine-economic-update-fall-2016">collapse was halted</a> as GDP inched up 0.1% in the first quarter and 1.4% in the second. However, these marginal gains were short-lived, as the economy shrank again by 6.1% by April 2017. Even if the economy <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/04/10/ukraine-economic-update-spring-2018">now manages to sustain 3-4% annual growth</a>, it will take four to five years to return to 2013. </p>
<p><strong>3. Remaining corruption</strong> </p>
<p>Post-Euromaidan Ukraine has seen little change in state and institutional corruption. The several anti-corruption institutions created in the past four years are scattered and the country still lacks anti-corruption courts and effective preventive tools. Anti-corruption activists are still subject to <a href="https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/europe_and_central_asia_more_civil_engagement">prosecutions and attacks</a>. </p>
<p>Ukraine only managed to move up one point in the global <a href="https://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview">Corruption Perceptions Index</a> in 2016 and 2017, ranking 131 and 130 out of 176 and 180 nations respectively. </p>
<p>Disappointment with the government and poverty levels is growing. In 2016, only 9% of Ukrainians were satisfied with the president’s actions, with 70% dissatisfied. <strong>[<a href="https://tns-ua.com/news/uryad-verhovna-rada-ta-prezident-kim-nezadovoleni-ukrayintsi">LINK to poll</a>]</strong> Only 5% were satisfied with the government and 58% were not. And only 2% were satisfied with parliament’s performance, with 83% dissatisfied. </p>
<p><strong>4. Setbacks for freedom of speech and the free media</strong></p>
<p>With the war in eastern Ukraine came an information war between Ukraine and Russia. As a result, freedom of speech and the media in Ukraine has significantly deteriorated in the past four years, with unavoidable radicalisation on both sides of politics. </p>
<p>There is little media diversity, as just a few oligarchs control the top outlets. President Poroshenko, for instance, owns his own <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Kanal_(Ukraine)">television channel</a>. </p>
<p>Anti-government views are often deemed “pro-Russian”, effectively chilling freedom of expression. The intolerance of opposition media is violently visible. There have been protests and scandal over “pro-Russian views”, with <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37284528">broadcast studios being burnt</a>. </p>
<p>Dozens of journalists have been denied entry to Ukraine. Human Rights Watch has urged Ukraine to protect free media and drop its ban on Russian and Western journalists. </p>
<p><strong>5. A wary EU</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ukraine will definitely not be able to become a member of the EU in the next 20 to 25 years, and not of NATO either. <strong>– European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in March 2016</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>While Juncker did not explain why Ukraine would have to wait so long, <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-16-583_en.htm">his speech</a> was aimed at reassuring Dutch voters that the association agreement with Ukraine was not a step towards quick EU membership. </p>
<p>In April 2016, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93European_Union_Association_Agreement_referendum,_2016#Aftermath">61% of votes</a> in a Dutch referendum rejected the agreement (a 32% turnout was barely enough for the result to be valid), in a rebuke to their government and the EU establishment. The broad political, trade and defence treaty – already signed by the Dutch government and approved by all other EU nations, along with Ukraine – provisionally took effect in January 2016.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213506/original/file-20180406-125158-11hhsgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pro-EU rally attracted a huge crowd in Kyiv on November 24 2013, but membership now appears to be a long way off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mac_ivan/11038453663/in/photolist-i8uxQz-omWbzz-omWcxg-hPqXGB-hPqu5W-hSxZ1P-i8uMTd">Ivan Bandura/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A recent <a href="https://yes-ukraine.org/en/Yalta-annual-meeting/2017/polls">opinion poll</a> suggests that 58% Europeans support Ukraine joining NATO, and 48% support Ukraine joining the EU. But, in 2015, when the first such poll was held, a majority (55%) favoured Ukraine becoming an EU member. Today, the idea is best supported in Lithuania and Poland (68% and 67% respectively), and least supported in the Netherlands (27%). The level of support in France, Germany and the UK is less than half of the people polled. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/j4Yar_rLLS8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tracking the results of opinion polls on Ukraine joining the European Union.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Evidently, the post-Euromaidan government efforts failed to make the case in the West for Ukraine to gain EU membership. Whether the EU will admit Ukraine (and when) is a big question. Within Ukraine, plenty of work remains to be done to ensure the success of its ambitious plans for economic growth, modernisation and accelerated democratisation.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90012/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olga Oleinikova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For Ukrainians, the legacy of the Euromaidan revolution is decidedly mixed, and for the protesters who waved European Union flags EU membership now looks like a distant dream.Olga Oleinikova, Postdoctoral Research Fellow & Director of Ukraine Democracy Initiative, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900092018-03-29T20:55:52Z2018-03-29T20:55:52ZBreaking the shackles of the national mindset in a polarised world<p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Politics today is characterised by polarisation. To be able to choose between two clearly demarcated opposing positions has come to be perceived as truly “<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/wie-soziale-medien-deutschland-regieren-kolumne-a-1179722.html">having a choice</a>”. Reflection and compromise are seen as admitting weakness, defeat, and even a betrayal of one’s position.</p>
<p>From Donald Trump to Brexit, this polarised discourse is built on the distinction between “the national” and a threat from the outside. </p>
<p>What threatens “the nation-state [as] the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-speech/trumps-washington-foreign-policy-speech-idUSKCN0XO2ID">true foundation for happiness and harmony</a>” in Trump’s US is “the global”. It is personified in the “<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?424154-1/president-trump-holds-rally-melbourne-florida">global elite</a>” and “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/01/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord">foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense</a>”. </p>
<p>In the case of Brexit, it is the European Union and, more generally, “the powerful” against whom “the rest” had to “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/the-european-elite-forgot-that-democracy-is-the-one-thing-britai/">assert their rights</a>”. </p>
<p>What’s being invoked here is the idea that societies equal nation-states, neat containers that can be closed and so hold the possibility of retreat to “the inside”. </p>
<p>A lot of energy is invested in challenging this discourse and the political imagination that underpins it. Some criticism is on practical grounds (like showing why Trump’s “<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830405706255912960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.smh.com.au%2Fworld%2Fdonald-trump-vows-to-cut-cost-of-216-billion-wall-on-mexicos-border-20170212-guav8p.html">great border wall</a>” “<a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-wall-wont-work">won’t work</a>”) as well as normative grounds (such as demonstrating that nationalism is “<a href="https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2016/12/26/why-is-nationalism-dangerous/">dangerous”, “leads to internal fragmentation” and might foster “immoral, unlawful, or destructive” behaviour</a>). </p>
<p>More generally, under headings such as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-neo-nationalism-went-global-74095">How neo-nationalism went global</a>” and “<a href="https://sees.uq.edu.au/article/2017/03/trump-and-brexit-won%E2%80%99t-kill-globalisation-%E2%80%93-we%E2%80%99re-too-far">Trump and Brexit won’t kill globalisation – we’re too far in</a>”, we find much discussion of what the restyling of politics means for the world, the international order and the global market.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210714/original/file-20180316-104694-1onvwqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We struggle to conceive of our rights and interests as a society outside the framework of the nation-state.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dgeezer/27792525851/">diamond geezer/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet this critical engagement still does not adequately tackle what lies at the heart of our political imagination: the unquestioned presumption that societies are discrete units that exist in an international system and are under threat by “outside forces” such as globalisation or “Europeanisation”.</p>
<p>We have not properly dealt with the fact that this equation of society and the nation-state – and the dichotomy it represents between “the national” and some kind of “outside” – also runs through much of the criticism that aims to counter Trump et al’s rhetoric.</p>
<p>As is most obvious in debates about the potential “death of globalisation” or the “return of the nation-state”, even the critique of the current restyling of politics more often than not (inadvertently) reproduces this framing. We find ourselves producing (critical) knowledge from within the parameters of the very political imagination that we intend to understand, scrutinise and counter.</p>
<p>What is needed is a break with established, counterproductive parameters. This requires efforts to find a different, pre-analytic vision that enables us not just to see new things in the world but to see and explore a new world altogether. </p>
<h2>Another way of seeing the world</h2>
<p>Sociologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Beck">Ulrich Beck</a> provides the theoretical ground for such a vision. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jan/06/ulrich-beck">Beck</a> was probably best known for his widely cited 1986 book <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/risk-society/book203184">Risk Society</a> (<em>Risikogesellschaft</em>).</p>
<p>“Risk society” is often understood to be a concept that draws a dark, pessimistic picture of a world of increasing risks, threats and dangers. Beck is taken to be a risk scholar or theorist of risk. Neither of these understandings is fully accurate.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210726/original/file-20180316-104694-1qojrcm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ulrich Beck’s concern was that we live in a world different from the one in which we think.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beck.png#/media/File:Beck-St-Gallen-Symposium.png">International Students’ Committee/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beck’s use of the word risk in “risk society” is actually an attempt to deconstruct the idea of risk and question the usefulness of its application in sociopolitical contexts. The invented German word <em>Risikogesellschaft</em>, combining the words <em>Risiko</em> and <em>Gesellschaft</em>, is meant to signal that these two concepts are no longer adequate means<a href="https://www.br.de/mediathek/video/alpha-forum-ulrich-beck-soziologe-ludwig-maximilians-universitaet-muenchen-av:585d9f983e2f290012951e0f"> by which to grasp social reality</a>.</p>
<p>Beck’s wider social theory does not capture the decline of modern society but rather the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2004.00084.x/abstract">ambivalence</a> of today’s social reality.</p>
<p>Far from setting out to present a dark picture of the world, Beck was driven by optimism. He tried to escape the pessimism that he felt was shaping social theorisation by establishing the thesis that this pessimism is the flipside of the dogmatic use of established but inadequate concepts. </p>
<p>As Stephen Bronner <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10455759509358622">put it</a>, Beck’s main conviction was that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We live in a world … different from the one in which we think. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This brings us to the pre-analytic vision that Beck provides. The notion that societies are neat and contained nation-states, together with the narrative of modernity and progress, is one of the most powerful convictions in politics and the academy. </p>
<p>When held by political actors, Beck calls it a “national perspective” (<em>nationaler Blick</em>). In regard to the academy, he <a href="https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/cosmopolitan-outlook-how-european-project-can-be-saved">speaks of</a> “methodological nationalism”. </p>
<p>The “national reality” that follows from the “national perspective” and “methodological nationalism” is the reality in which we think, according to Beck, but not the one in which we live. </p>
<p>This view does not overlook or deny the relevance of the belief in “the national” or the reality of the power of nation-states. But it does set them into the context of an entirely different world by stepping out of the naturalised reality of the “national perspective” and “methodological nationalism”.</p>
<h2>The ‘cosmopolitised’ alternative</h2>
<p>This different world – the “<a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68703/">cosmopolitised world</a>” – is a social reality shaped by three aspects:</p>
<p>1) <strong>Cosmopolitisation</strong>. This term captures the enmeshment of lived realities, horizons of expectation and horizons of experience that takes place independently of national borders (again, without overlooking or denying the brutal reality of borders). This cosmopolitisation of societies is not a conscious and intended process triggered by ideals of “cosmopolitanism”, but a side effect of actions aimed at other ends.</p>
<p>A good example is Nigel Farage’s almost 20-year-long <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/4525/NIGEL_FARAGE_home.html">service in the European Parliament</a> as part of his exclusionary, national political project. To be successful with an exclusionary anti-EU doctrine, a seat in the European Parliament is necessary. This, however, inadvertently <a href="https://vimeo.com/136506290">fuels the reality of cosmopolitisation</a> and, as such, makes it “irreversible”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/136506290" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ulrich Beck speaks on the topic How the European Project Can Be Saved.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>2) <strong>Global risk.</strong> This is the second aspect that shapes the cosmopolitised reality in which we live. The term <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKiD5JLGIE">global risk</a> does not <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118442975.ch4/summary">refer to risk</a> as it is usually understood – that is, to the imagination of future calculable side effects (good or bad) of decisions/actions in the now. Rather, it refers to the potential consequences of distinct decisions. </p>
<p>These “<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026327692009001006?journalCode=tcsa">industrial techno-economic decisions and considerations of utility</a>” are grounded in modern institutions and principles, such as freedom, statehood, and market dependency. These have “peaceful origins in the centres of rationality and prosperity with the blessings of the guarantors of law and order”, as Beck puts it.</p>
<p>Crucially, they constitute the very <em>success</em> of modernisation, progress and advancement in scientific knowledge production – but, for instance, these achievements have led to the fact that humanity is faced with climate change. </p>
<p>Finally, the potential consequences of techno-industrial decisions, global risks, are to be seen as potentially producing non-knowledge (<em>Nichtwissen</em>) – that is, things that are unknowable.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PeKiD5JLGIE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ulrich Beck talks about living in and coping with world risk society.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Taking these points together, industrial, techno-economic decisions need to be thought of as potentially producing consequences that cannot be captured and calculated with the notion of risk as we know it. Therefore, such decisions cannot be grounded in a national container thinking. </p>
<p>Given the nature of global risks, the cosmopolitised reality entails a borderless necessity of co-operation (<em>Kooperationszwang</em>) and interrelated responsibility (<em>Verantwortungszusammenhang</em>).</p>
<p>In other words, it is a reality in which the “global other” is inevitably implicated in the decisions of other “global others”. This is so even if social actors are not aware of this or are caught up in the world of the “national perspective”/“methodological nationalism” – a world in which it seems perfectly possible to “externalise” undesired consequences to parts of the world <a href="https://lisa.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/externalisierungsgesellschaft">beyond national borders</a>.</p>
<p>3) <strong>Inherent uncertainty</strong>. The third aspect that shapes the cosmopolitised reality follows from the above point. It results from the ambivalence between contemporary horizons of expectations and experiences on the one hand and modern principles and institutions on the other. </p>
<p>Beck captures this in his take on the theory of <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2440">reflexive modernisation</a>, where basic modern principles (freedom, statehood, market dependency etc) and institutions (family, state etc) are radicalised in the process of modernisation itself. </p>
<p>This occurs because they are confronted with the side effects of modernisation (climate change and nuclear disasters etc), which, as suggested above, are not the dark side of modernisation but the products of its very success; they are consequences of intended behaviour. </p>
<p>As such, modernisation itself undermines its own institutions and principles, because of the side effects they generate.</p>
<p>Two points follow from the above vision of the world.</p>
<p>First, institutions that are imagined and designed from within the world of the “national perspective” or “methodological nationalism”, including national environmental departments, are not just ill equipped for dealing with the actual (as opposed to potential) consequences, such as climate change, of past techno-economic decisions, but also produce global risks. </p>
<p>Beck calls them <a href="http://www.zeit.de/2000/15/200015.beck_sennett_.xml">zombie institutions</a>; they seem to be alive but are actually dead – and yet they have a profound impact on our lives and planet.</p>
<p>Second, “the national” is always already the product of cosmopolitisation. Recent moves, such as Brexit and Make America Great Again, need to be seen not only as “the defensive impulses of those who <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745633986.html">think in nation-state categories</a>” in a cosmopolitised reality, but as the very product of cosmopolitisation. </p>
<p>At the same time, these moves are (inevitably and inadvertently) fuelling the reality of cosmopolitisation – be it through obsessive social-media engagements with issues, events and people around the world, or through serving in the European Parliament to achieve Brexit.</p>
<h2>Let’s get uncomfortable</h2>
<p>In a political environment shaped by polarisation and <a href="https://theconversation.com/navigating-the-post-truth-debate-some-key-co-ordinates-77000">post-truth discourse</a>, the question is not only what role there is for academic knowledge production, but what kind of academic knowledge is needed. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-robert-de-niro-theory-of-post-truth-are-you-talking-to-me-87606">recent Conversation article</a>, Colin Wight points to academia’s responsibility for the turn towards post-truth attitudes. He demands that academics “re-examine and reinvigorate the Enlightenment impulse” and “recover [their] commitment to objective truth” – understood “as something that exists but which no one possesses” – as the ground for claims to justice.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the concept of objective truth is moved into the dustbin of history there can be no lies. And if there are no lies there can be no justice, no rights and no wrongs, the issue is not that we all make […] universal truth claims; it is that in embracing epistemological positions that tend towards relativism, we have denied ourselves a secure ground on which to defend them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I would add that the academy also has an obligation to slow down, scrutinise and re-invent the pre-analytic visions on which analyses have been grounded “naturally” for so long and which have come to underlie and animate an explosive political reality. </p>
<p>Beck’s cosmopolitised vision is a promising starting point for such a reinvention. It not only <em>challenges</em> the either/or thinking that drives political imaginations today, but <em>replaces</em> the either/or with a “both/and” (“<em>sowohl-als-auch</em>”). That is, it provides a productive different starting point. It’s a pre-analytic vision with parameters that enable us to ask different questions.</p>
<p>Instead of spending energy asking if we are experiencing a “return of the nation-state” or where “the pendulum [that] <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c497caf2-205a-11e7-b7d3-163f5a7f229c">swings between globalisation and the nation state</a>” is located and, with that, reproducing an imagined world of oppositions, the task is to explore empirically the nature of the <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0967010616647859">cosmopolitised national</a> in particular and the cosmopolitised reality in general, with <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13669877.2017.1359203">their distinct dynamics and actors</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210737/original/file-20180316-104671-1fmbj09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sign of a cosmopolitised world?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/50451886@N00/2502594771/">Marco Bellucci/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>None of this is easy. The cosmopolitised world is an uncomfortable place in which to do research. It’s not just about seeing new things in the world from an established and secure vantage point, but rather setting out to explore a new world altogether – by starting somewhere different.</p>
<p>The new world is an uncomfortable place for scholars because it demands thinking beyond linearity. And, as Nina Degele <a href="http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783531169835">observes</a>, “serious social scientists do not like the idea of ‘both/and’ ”. </p>
<p>It’s uncomfortable because it requires us to invent – from within it – a completely new language to grasp it. It requires academic knowledge production that takes risks by being flexible, explorative, creative and, to some degree, provisional. </p>
<p>In his last <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745690211.html">“unfinished” book</a>, Beck uses the concept “metamorphosis” to deal with this challenge. As he <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0967010616647859">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the state of total change we try to think this change. This is difficult, hence, we cannot appear with full confidence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I believe, in the face of fierce polarisation, academic knowledge production needs to get uncomfortable to open up new horizons for imagining and acting in the world.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabine Selchow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The idea that societies equal nation-states, neat containers that can be closed off from outside threats, is powerful. The nationalist paradigm even has a hold over many critics of its politics.Sabine Selchow, Research Fellow, ARC Laureate Program in International History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873642018-03-23T02:47:14Z2018-03-23T02:47:14ZPost-truth politics and why the antidote isn’t simply ‘fact-checking’ and truth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198936/original/file-20171213-10621-1fs8079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump posts a link to his very own 'Real News Update' on Facebook.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/">Donald J. Trump/Facebook</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a>as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>It is also part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney.</em></p>
<p><em>This essay is much longer than most Conversation articles, so will take some time to read. Enjoy!</em></p>
<hr>
<p>We live in an unfinished revolutionary age of communicative abundance. Networked digital machines and information flows are slowly but surely shaping practically every institution in which we live our daily lives. </p>
<p>For the first time in history, thanks to built-in cheap microprocessors, these algorithmic devices and information systems integrate texts, sounds and images in compact, easily storable, reproducible and portable digital form. </p>
<p>Communicative abundance enables messages to be sent and received through multiple user points, in chosen time, real or delayed, within global networks that are affordable and accessible to billions of people.</p>
<p>My book <a href="http://www.johnkeane.net/portfolio_page/democracy-and-media-decadence/">Democracy and Media Decadence</a> probed the contours of this revolution. It showed why new information platforms, robust muckraking and cross-border publics are among the exciting social and political trends of our time. It proposed that the unfinished revolution is dogged by politically threatening contradictions and decadent counter-trends. The drift toward a world of “post-truth” politics is among these troubling trends.</p>
<p>What exactly is meant by the term post-truth? Paradoxically, post-truth is among the most-talked-about yet least-well-defined meme words of our time. Most observers in the English-speaking world cite the 2016 Word of the Year Oxford English Dictionaries <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016">entry</a>: post-truth is the public burial of “objective facts” by an avalanche of media “appeals to emotion and personal belief”.</p>
<p>In China and in the Spanish-speaking world, respectively, commonplace talk of <em>hòu zhēnxiāng</em> and <em>posverdad</em> pushes in this direction. The <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/wort-des-jahres-2016-postfaktisch-gekuert-a-1125124.html">popularity of the German <em>postfaktisch</em></a> (post-factual) usage captures much the same meaning. Selected as word of the year by the German language society Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS), it refers to the growing tendency of “political and social discussions” to be dominated by “emotions instead of facts”. </p>
<p>The GfdS adds:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ever greater sections of the population are ready to ignore facts, and even to accept obvious lies willingly. Not the claim to truth, but the expression of the ‘felt truth’ leads to success in the ‘post-factual age’.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Post-truth communication</h2>
<p>A catchword that has gone viral so quickly surely deserves careful attention and crisper definition, especially if we are not to be thrown off balance by a global phenomenon that sets out to do precisely that. </p>
<p>We can say that “post-truth” is not simply the opposite of truth, however that is defined; it is more complicated. It is better described as an omnibus term, a word for communication comprising a salmagundi or assemblage of different but interconnected phenomena. </p>
<p>Its troubling potency in public life flows from its hybrid qualities, its combination of different elements in ways that defy expectations and confuse its recipients.</p>
<p>Post-truth has recombinant qualities. For a start, it is a type of communication that includes old-fashioned lying, where speakers say things about themselves and their world that are at odds with impressions and convictions that they harbour in their mind’s eye. </p>
<p>Liars attempt alchemy: when someone tells lies they wilfully say things they “know” not to be true, for effect. An example is when Donald Trump claims there was never a <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/trumps-dubious-drought-claims/">drought in California</a>, or that during his inauguration the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-us-president-false-claims-inauguration-white-house-sean-spicer-kellyanen-conway-press-a7541171.html">weather cleared</a>, when actually light rain fell throughout his address.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fqIhkiaxRas?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The truth is it stopped immediately, it was amazing.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Post-truth also includes forms of public discourse commonly called bullshit. It comprises communication that displaces and nullifies concerns about veracity. Bullshit is hot air talk, verbal excrement that lacks nutrient. It is shooting off at the mouth, backed by the presumption that it is acceptable to others in the conversation.</p>
<p>Post-truth depends as well on buffoonery, bits and pieces of colourful communication designed to attract and distract public attention and to interrupt the background noise of conventional politics and public life. The bric-a-brac component of post-truth includes nonsense moments, jokes and boasting. It embraces clever quips, pedantry and wilful exaggerations (like Marine Le Pen’s description of the European Union as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/15/marine-le-pen-nigel-farage-britain-france-leave-eu-front-national">a huge prison</a>”).</p>
<p>There is plenty of rough speech. The contrast with the honey words and smiles of Bill Clinton, Felipe González, Tony Blair and other politicians from yesteryear is striking. The grotesquerie comes in abundance. Geert Wilders specialises in causing trouble, as when he dubs mosques “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/17/dutch-greenleft-party-populism-rightwing-jesse-klaver">palaces of hatred</a>”.</p>
<p>Disturbingly, there’s abundant talk of the importance of “truth”, by which is usually meant utterances whose veracity is self-confirming, thus proving that truth can attract rogues. There is dog-whistling. There is plain bad taste, as when a newly elected president enters the Houston Astrodome, crammed with traumatised homeless people who have narrowly survived a hurricane, and says: “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16222404/trump-crowd-hurricane-harvey-victims">Thanks for coming</a>.”</p>
<p>Hair-splitting and wilfully setting things aside are common. The Israeli consul-general in New York, Dani Dayan, does this well, but the genius of evasion is surely <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkY5seB0nFM">Zoltán Kovács</a>, the Orbán government’s spokesman. When subjected to forensic questioning by reporters about Hungary’s imprisonment and brutal maltreatment of refugees and operations by vigilante citizens’ “hunter patrol” border forces, he likes to say:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What you are trying to portray here is non-existent, a gross simplification. Next question. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And that’s that.</p>
<h2>Engineered silence</h2>
<p>The silencing is not incidental. Post-truth performances feed on their production of silence. They remind us, in the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aGn7zu22oloC&pg=PA77&dq=Man+and+people++stupendous+reality+that+is+language&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwie9rbb1bjZAhVFmZQKHZvaAs8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Man%20and%20people%20%20stupendous%20reality%20that%20is%20language&f=false">words of Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset</a>, that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the stupendous reality that is language cannot be understood unless we begin by observing that speech consists above all in silences.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The proponents of post-truth communication relish things unsaid. Their bluff and bluster is designed not only to attract public attention. </p>
<p>It simultaneously hides from public attention things (such as growing inequalities of wealth, the militarisation of democracy and the accelerating death of non-human species) that it doesn’t want others to notice, or that potentially arouse suspicions of the style and substance of post-truth politics. </p>
<p>This engendered silence is not just the aftermath or “leftover” of post-truth communication. Every moment of post-truth communication using words backed by signs and text is actively shaped by what is unsaid, or what is not sayable. </p>
<p>The communicative performances of the post-truth champions are thus the marginalia of silence: mere foam and waves on its deep waters. </p>
<p>That is why the current hyper-concentration of journalists and other public commentators on “breaking news” stories about “fake news”, “alternative facts” and missing “evidence” is so potentially misleading. </p>
<p>Their fetish of breaking news turns them unwittingly into the poodles of post-truth and its silence about things less immediate and less obvious, deeper institutional trends, “slower” events marked by punctuated rhythms.</p>
<h2>Vaudeville and gaslighting</h2>
<p>Treating post-truth as a species of pugnacious politics dressed in a coat of many colours, as a bricolage of lies, bullshit, buffoonery and silence, helps us grasp its vaudeville quality. </p>
<p>When thought of as a public performance led by a cast of politicians, journalists, public relations agencies, think tanks and other players, post-truth is an updated, state-of-the-art political equivalent of early 20th-century vaudeville performances. </p>
<p>Old-fashioned vaudeville featured strongmen and singers, dancers and drummers, minstrels and magicians, acrobats and athletes, comedians and circus animals. It was a show. Post-truth is equally a show. Directed against conventional styles of performance, it is an orchestrated public spectacle designed to invite and entertain millions of people.</p>
<p>But post-truth is much more than entertainment, or the “<a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/j6075/edit/boor.html">art of contrivance</a>” or the “<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/society-spectacle">dictatorship of illusion</a>” mediated by the production and passive consumption of commodities. </p>
<p>While the genealogy of post-truth is partly traceable to the world of corporate advertising and market-driven entertainment, it has thoroughly political qualities. In the hands of the powerful, or those bent on climbing the ladders of power over others, the post-truth phenomenon functions as a new weapon of political manipulation. </p>
<p>Post-truth is not only about winning votes, siding with friends, or dealing with political foes. It has more sinister effects. It is a gaslighting exercise.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198937/original/file-20171213-10594-16scxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Strange drama of a captive sweetheart!’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Drawn from George Cukor’s award-winning <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_(1944_film)">Gaslight</a>, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, the term gaslighting is here defined as a weapon of the will to power. It is the organised effort by public figures to mess with citizens’ identities, to deploy lies, bullshit, buffoonery and silence for the purpose of sowing seeds of doubt and confusion among subjects. </p>
<p>Gaslighting is typically a preferred tactic of narcissistic and aggressive personalities bent on doing whatever it takes to gain and maintain a position of advantage over others. </p>
<p>Their point is to disorient and destabilise people. They want to harness people’s self-doubts, ruin their capacity for seeing the world ironically, destroy their capacity for making judgements, in order to drive them durably into submission.</p>
<p>When (for instance) gaslighters say something, only later to say that they never said such a thing and that they would never have never dreamed of saying such a thing, their aim is gradually to turn citizens into mere playthings of power.</p>
<p>When that happens, the victims of gaslighting no longer trust their own judgements. They buy into the tactics of the manipulator. Not knowing what to believe, they give up, shrug their shoulders and fall by default under the spell of the gaslighter.</p>
<p>Consider the double act of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and his former right-hand gaslighter, Ernesto Abella, in the sequence of events triggered by the murder (in November 2016) of Rolando Espinosa, the elected mayor of Albuera, an island community some 575 kilometres from Manila. </p>
<p>When asked by journalists to explain what had happened, Duterte reportedly <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/war-on-drugs-philippine-president-duterte-warns-mayors-will-be-shot-20170112-gtpzsr.html">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He was killed in a very [questionable way], but I don’t care. The policemen said he resisted arrest. Then I will stick with the story of the police because [they are] under me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Espinosa was in fact shot in detention, inside a police cell.</p>
<p>Duterte continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I might go down in history as the butcher. It’s up to you. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And then: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since I have nothing to show, I just use extrajudicial killing. [That’s because] I have no credentials to boast about.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The intended meaning of these utterances (to put things mildly) was oracular, so mystifyingly opaque that they served as the cue for Abella to strut his stuff: to go on air and to say that this or that never happened, that Duterte never said what people heard him say, that Bisaya-speaking Duterte got lost in translation when speaking in Tagalog, to affirm at Malacañang press conferences that his intentions are good and that he is utterly sincere, whereas his enemies are wilful dissemblers, fools and toads. </p>
<p>Abella insisted he provided not “crumbs”, but “meat, deboned”. Armed with his favourite phrases, “let’s just say” and “let’s put it this way”, he described his job as “completing the sentences” of his leader, to “impart his true intentions”. </p>
<p>In this murder case, Abella <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/861267/abella-kill-order-just-dutertes-messaging-style">said</a>, “it is … a matter of the leadership style and the messaging style of the president”. He added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is his messaging style to underline his intention. He is serious about it [the drug menace]. However, it’s just meant to underline his seriousness in making sure that nobody is corrupt and involved in criminality.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What makes post-truth different from the past?</h2>
<p>The meandering rhetoric is designed to bewitch and beguile, which is why the critics of post-truth are sounding alarms and issuing stern warnings about the dangerous charms of the vaudeville show of political mendacity, nonsense, buffoonery and silence. </p>
<p>They emphasise that political lying and bad manners spiced with talk of “fake news” and “alternative facts” are sinister, a frontal challenge to the basic democratic norms of open and plural communication among citizens. </p>
<p>Complaints against post-truth are often robust, loud and couched in high moral tones. Post-truth is said to be the beginning of the end of politics as we’ve known it in existing democracies. </p>
<p>There is talk of an emergent “post-truth era”. More than a few critics warn that the spread of post-truth is the harbinger of a new “totalitarianism”. Others speak of populist dictatorship or “fascism-lite” government.</p>
<p>The descriptors are questionable, and display little understanding of the historical originality of the present drift towards government by gaslighting. Politics as the art of evasion, befuddlement and engineered public silence isn’t new. Lying in politics is an ancient art. Think of Plato’s noble lie, or Machiavelli’s recommendation that a successful prince must be “<a href="http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince18.htm">a great pretender and dissembler</a>”, or Harry Truman’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=F_m5LlaJvZcC&q=no-good+lying+bastard#v=snippet&q=no-good%20lying%20bastard&f=false">description of Richard Nixon</a> as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198938/original/file-20171213-10605-1sesgzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lying in politics isn’t new, but digital media decadence is.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Cizauskas/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some things don’t change. Still, there are several things that are unusual about the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/10/opinions/donald-trump-is-gaslighting-america-ghitis/">gaslighting</a> trends of our time. Each is bound up with the unfinished communications revolution.</p>
<p>The digital merging and melding of text, sound and image, the advent of cheap copying and the growing ease of networked information spreading across vast distances in real time are powerful drivers of post-truth decadence. </p>
<p>New techniques and tools of communication are its condition of possibility; they enable its production, rapid circulation and absorption into the body politics of democracies, and well beyond. </p>
<p>Think of photoshopped materials and mashups, web applications and pages that recycle content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. Trump’s first campaign <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/04/donald-trump/donald-trumps-first-tv-ad-shows-migrants-southern-/">advertisement</a> showed migrants allegedly crossing the Mexican border; in fact, it was an image of migrants crossing from Morocco to Melilla in North Africa. </p>
<p>Then consider impostor news sites (using URLs such as abc.com.co) and fantasy news sites, such as <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/the-strangest-fake-news-empire?utm_term=.cyXWR7EMr#.igVXGQ6WR">WTOE 5 News</a>, which created the “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Trump for President” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161115024211/http:/wtoe5news.com/us-election/pope-francis-shocks-world-endorses-donald-trump-for-president-releases-statement/">story</a>, built using such tools as <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/clone-zone-tricks-internet-users">Clone Zone</a> and <a href="https://nowthisnews.com/">NowThis</a>.</p>
<p>Ponder shareable made-up news platforms (<a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/">Macedonian teenagers</a> making money, Christian fundamentalists peddling the Spirit), meme launch pads (Twitter and Facebook) and parody accounts (<a href="https://www.theonion.com/">The Onion</a>, “America’s Finest News Source”). </p>
<p>There are also the devoted fanzine platforms that specialise in hailing heroes and trolling opponents, the platforms that sit for the first time in the White House press briefing room, platforms such as <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/">Gateway Pundit</a>, <a href="http://www.oann.com/">One American News Network</a>, <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/">Newsmax</a>, <a href="http://www.lifezette.com/">LifeZette</a> and the <a href="http://dailycaller.com/">Daily Caller</a>.</p>
<p>Some say none of this is new. From the outset, they insist, daily newspapers printed gossip, rumours and lies. <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.html">Orson Welles</a> proved that radio could produce scams. Television was a state weapon for mass-producing fabricated illusions; and so on. </p>
<p>But the sceptics underestimate the multiple ways in which, in matters of truth and post-truth, the communications revolution is marked by novel dynamics that are producing novel effects. </p>
<p>Most obviously, the digital communications revolution tends to undermine space-time barriers so that the raw material of lies, bullshit, buffoonery and silence produced by gaslighters develops long global legs. </p>
<p>Post-truth spreads; it knows no borders. So, for instance, many Muslims living in countries as far apart as Britain, Pakistan and Indonesia understand that they are among the targets of the project of attacking “fake news” and making America great again.</p>
<p>There’s something else that’s new: post-truth discourse penetrates so deeply into our daily lives that what is commonly called the private sphere ceases to be private. It’s no longer a safe haven or a zone of counter-balance, in the way (say) it functioned as the point of resistance against total power in the age of the typewriter or in George Orwell’s 1984, where Winston was still able to retreat to a corner table to scribble, out of sight of Big Brother. </p>
<p>The colonisation of daily life by the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-someone-watching-you-online-the-security-risks-of-the-internet-of-things-55701">Internet of Things</a>, digital robots that collect and spread information, guarantees that the geographic footprint of post-truth is vast and potentially total.</p>
<p>There’s yet another novelty of our period: the production and diffusion of post-truth communication by populist leaders, political parties and governments. The historical record shows that our times are no exception to the old rule that populism is a recurrent <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pathologies-of-populism-82593">autoimmune disease</a> of democracy. </p>
<p>The present-day political irruption of populism is fuelled by the institutional decay of electoral democracy, combined with growing public dissatisfaction with politicians, political parties and “politics”.</p>
<p>Reinforced by the failure of democratic institutions to respond effectively to anti-democratic challenges such as the growing influence of cross-border corporate power, worsening social inequality and the dark money poisoning of elections, the decadence is proving to be a lavish gift to leaders, parties and governments peddling the mantra of “the sovereign people”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198939/original/file-20171213-10605-9qk044.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary and oversized vaudeville character.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EU2017EE Estonian Presidency Follow/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Populist figures otherwise as different as Viktor Orbán, Norbert Hofer and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are oversized vaudeville characters. They are merchants of post-truth, exploiters of trust and confidence artists who take advantage of the communications revolution. </p>
<p>They stir up multimedia excitement by calling for a public revolt by millions of people who feel annoyed, powerless and no longer “held” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott">D.W. Winnicott</a>) in the arms of society: people who are so frustrated or humiliated that they are willing to lash out in support of demagogues promising them dignity and a better future.</p>
<p>Some people fall for the promises not because they “naturally” crave leaders, or yield to the inherited “<a href="https://thefunambulist.net/history/foucault-episode-2-do-not-become-emamored-of-power">fascism in us all</a>”. Among the strangest and most puzzling features of the post-truth phenomenon is the way it attracts people into voluntary servitude because it raises their hopes and expectations of betterment.</p>
<h2>Truth is the answer? Don’t believe it</h2>
<p>The most surprising long-term effect of communicative abundance and the spread of post-truth is arguably their reinforcement of the modern questioning and rejection of arrogant beliefs in truth. </p>
<p>The possibility that post-truth politics is party to the “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-farewell-to-truth/9780231153096">farewell to truth</a>” is poorly understood, especially by critics of post-truth, who invariably rally to the cause of what they casually call truth.</p>
<p>Although the term is usually left undefined, their attachment to truth helps explain why many academics, journalists and public commentators typically accuse the “postmodernism” of recent decades of being the unwitting accomplice or active foot servant of post-truth politics.</p>
<p>They are convinced that the “relativism” of the postmodernists unhelpfully adds to the confusion surrounding “truth” based on “evidence” and “facts”. What is now urgently needed, they say, is the recovery of truth.</p>
<p>But what is truth? Truth is the antidote to post-truth, they reply. It is observable. Truth is saying or writing or visualising, somehow depicting things that correspond to “reality”.</p>
<p>The champions of truth understood as adequation sometimes cite the Polish-American mathematician <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tarski-truth/">Alfred Tarski</a>, who famously put things this way: the proposition that “snow is white” (“p”) is true if and only if snow is white (“p is true if and only if p”). It’s seeing language as a conveyor belt, as a medium for recording a “reality” that is external to the observer. </p>
<p>Tough versions of the orthodoxy insist that evidence is evidence, reality is real and “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_fact">brute facts</a>” exist independently of anyone’s attitude toward them.</p>
<p>It’s not only philosophers who speak in this fashion. Journalists, lawyers, more than a few academics, plenty of environmental activists and data scientists are in the truth trade. </p>
<p>Believers in truth, a word that is usually left undefined, they have a habit of supposing that reality is all around them, out there, within arm’s reach or just beyond arm’s length, graspable and catchable through redescription, for instance in the form of data. </p>
<p>Such conceptions of “<a href="https://scienceobjectivity.weebly.com/max-weber-and-objectivity-in-the-social-sciences.html">objectivity</a>” fail to rethink the whole idea of truth as a necessary condition of ridding the world of post-truth decadence. Their failure to cast doubt simultaneously upon both post-truth and truth, to see them as partners rather than as opponents, ignores the need for a new geography and history of truth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198948/original/file-20171213-10602-1f3pzj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Truth comes at a price. But if you’re lucky it’s 60% off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The New York Times</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Truth varies through space and time</h2>
<p>The geography of truth highlights the spatial dimensions of truth-seeking and attempts to live the truth. What counts as truth varies from place to place. </p>
<p>The French Renaissance writer Montaigne famously said that what is truth on one side of the Pyrenees is falsehood on the other side. Foucault repeats the point in his account of the birth of truth-telling (<em>le dire vrai</em>) within clinics and prisons. </p>
<p>Scholarly studies of the way cities (Escuela de Salamanca, Chicago School of Economics, Copenhagen School) have shaped what counts as knowledge push in the same direction.</p>
<p>The geography of truth equally matters within any given society, at any given time. The Pitjantjatjara peoples of central Australia still today use a family of terms like <em>mula</em> and <em>mula-mulani</em> and <em>mulapa</em> to refer to a “true story” that is inscribed with both connotations of “a long time” and calls for agreement between story tellers and listeners. </p>
<p>When Pitjantjatjara peoples speak of truth, they understand they are engaged in efforts to convince others of the rightness of their tradition. They recognise what mainstream white society usually forgets: that truth and trust are twins. </p>
<p>A new geography of truth would also note that there are spaces of life that either have little or nothing to do with truth, or where references to truth are simply out of place (Bertolt Brecht once remarked that if someone stood up in front of a group of strikers and said 2+2=4 they would no doubt be jeered), or where telling the truth has dangerous consequences, as when a Rohingya father lies to a Myanmar army patrol hunting women to rape by telling them on his doorstep he has no daughters.</p>
<p>What counts as truth varies not only through space but also through time. Truth has a controversial history; truth has never straightforwardly been truth. There is a history of truth that shows that what counts as truth varies through time, but also (the corollary) that what is today taken as truth has not always been so. </p>
<p>Ancient Greek understandings of truth as <em>aletheia</em>, a difficult word variously translated as “disclosure” or “un-concealedness”, are evidently different than Christian understandings of “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6) and the imperative to tell the truth, shame the devil. </p>
<p>The early modern European period was marked by bitter struggles over the meaning of religious “truth”, calls for religious toleration and the deployment, by believers in truth, of such tactics of deception as occultism, the Catholic doctrine of mental reservation and Protestant casuistry. </p>
<p>The public controversies about truth among Christians encompassed Luther’s explosive, influential attack on popery as the sole interpreter of scripture in <a href="http://www.intratext.com/ixt/ENG0081/">An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate</a> (1520). They extended to <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195144945.001.0001/acprof-9780195144949">Lessing’s recommendation</a> that we should thank God that we don’t know the truth (“<em>Sage jeder, was ihm Wahrheit dünkt, und die Wahrheit selbst sei Gott empfohlen</em>” [“Let each person say what s/he deems truth, and let truth itself be commended unto God”]); and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-read-tocquevilles-democracy-in-america-40802">Tocqueville’s observation</a> that the modern democratic revolution powerfully calls into question so-called public truths about the “natural” inferiority of slaves and women.</p>
<h2>Democracy doubts both post-truth and ‘the truth’</h2>
<p>The public sense that truth claims are contestable and mutable interpretations is undoubtedly bolstered by the multi-media communications revolution, and by the advent of new forms of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-origins-of-monitory-democracy-9752">monitory democracy</a> featuring a plethora of mediated platforms where power is publicly interrogated and chastened.</p>
<p>Monitory democracy promotes the growth of public spaces where uncertainty, doubt, scepticism, irony and modesty in the face of arbitrary power are nurtured. </p>
<p>Wittgenstein’s recommendation that saying “I know” should be banned so that people would be required to say “I believe I know” makes good sense under these conditions. We could say that post-truth politics is the dark and messy side of an unfinished quantum shift in support of the pluralisation of people’s lived perceptions of the world.</p>
<p>Yes, talk of truth is not disappearing, or dead. Just as unbelievers continue to say “Lord help us” and “Jesus Christ”, and despite Copernicus people still speak of the setting sun, so the language of truth lives on in people’s lives.</p>
<p>Yet nowadays tropes like “<a href="http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/">We hold these truths to be self-evident</a>” arouse public suspicions. The truth is out that truth has many faces. </p>
<p>What counts as “truthful information” is less and less understood by wise citizens as “hard facts” or as indisputable “evidence” or as chunks of “reality” to be mined from television and radio programs, or from newspapers, digital platforms and “expert” authorities. </p>
<p>In the age of communicative abundance and monitory democracy, “reality” is multiple and mutable. “Reality”, including the lies and buffoonery and other forms of gaslighting peddled by the powerful, comes to be understood as always “reported reality”, as “reality” produced by some for others – in other words, as messages that are shaped and reshaped and reshaped again in the process of transmission and reception.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"881281755017355264"}"></div></p>
<p>This disenchantment of truth has everything to do with democracy. Considered as a universal norm liberated from metaphysical foundations, as a whole way of life committed to the defence of complex equality, freedom and difference, democracy in monitory form is the guardian of a plurality of lived interpretations of life. </p>
<p>The radical originality of monitory democracy is its defiant insistence that peoples’ lives are never simply given, that all things human are built on the shifting sands of space-time, and that no person or group, no matter how much “truth” or power they presently enjoy or want to claim, can be trusted permanently, in any given context, to govern other people’s lives.</p>
<p>Democracy is thus the best human weapon so far invented for guarding against the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow">illusions of certainty</a>” and breaking up truth-camouflaged monopolies of power, wherever they operate. Democracy is not a True and Right norm. Just the reverse: the norm of monitory democracy is aware of its own and others’ limits, knows that it doesn’t know everything, and understands that democracy has no meta-historical guarantees. That is why it does not suffer truth-telling dogmatists and fools gladly. </p>
<p>Democracy is a living reminder that truths are never self-evident, and that what counts as truth is a matter of interpretation. Recognising that in political life “<a href="https://idanlandau.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/arendt-truth-and-politics.pdf">truth has a despotic character</a>”, democracy stands for a world beyond truth and post-truth. </p>
<p>This is not because all women and men are “naturally” created equal. Rather, it’s because democracy supposes that no man or woman is good enough to claim they know the truth and to rule permanently over their fellows and the earthly habitats in which they dwell.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The theme of truth, post-truth and the unfinished communications revolution is further explored in a recently published thepaper.cn interview, <a href="http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1910750">The Revival of Truth Isn’t the Remedy for Post-Truth</a> (available only in Chinese).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane received funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>The best defence against post-truth politics is not ‘the truth’. Democracy should resist the political tyranny of claims to some immutable truth as a basis for governing the lives of others.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873632018-03-02T01:57:44Z2018-03-02T01:57:44ZConquered city, site of revolutions from above and below<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198504/original/file-20171211-27680-1khi9ec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On the streets of Petrograd on July 4, 1917, when troops of the provisional government opened fire on demonstrators. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Days#/media/File:19170704_Riot_on_Nevsky_prosp_Petrograd.jpg">Viktor Bulla/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a>as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Flowing across <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/12/pictures-from-an-inquisition/302838/">Victor Serge’s</a> documentary or witness novels, his political writings, his poetry, or his memoirs as a revolutionary is a sense of possibility rising up from the streets and of the political processes shaping the space of the city. Nowhere is this more evident than in <a href="https://www.nyrb.com/products/conquered-city?variant=1094929405">Conquered City</a>, set during the Russian Civil War (1919-1921) in the frontline city of Red Petrograd.</p>
<p>Written just before Serge’s years of captivity in Soviet Russia during Stalin’s purges, and completed in concise fragments that could be hastily sent abroad, Conquered City is a masterwork on the conquest of space.</p>
<p>Encircled by the White Army of General Nikolai Yudenich, Petrograd is on the brink of military defeat. The “endangered city” is threatened by starvation and the vast frozen expanse of winter, and torn between revolution and counter-revolution. Yet, Serge <a href="https://libcom.org/library/chapter-15">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This city at the very limit of this encircled land, this city prey to famine, at the very limit of the end, lives on with the carelessness of the living!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Petrograd repels these dangers and survives, but the rise of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror">Red Terror</a> is soon to purge the metropolis of its utopian traces. In 1917, the Special Commission (or Cheka) emerged, soon to be replaced by a permanent secret police, the State Political Directorate (or GPU), by 1921.</p>
<p>In the novel, Petrograd transmits collective memory and resistance prior to the torpor of counter-revolution. Long dark nights and frozen snows grip the urban landscape.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://libcom.org/library/chapter-one">This white, silent, weightless shroud stretched out to infinity in time and space</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The politics of space is expressed through order and disorder, stability and movement, which arise from the modernising revolution of urban society.</p>
<p>The reader is immersed in the former Horse Guards Street that has been renamed Frederick Alder Street and then converted into Barricades Street. There is the evocation of the Smolny Institute (headquarters of the October Revolution and one-time residence of Lenin) now surrounded by barbed wire. </p>
<p>The Trinity Bridge spanning the turbulence of the River Neva, leading to the local headquarters installed at the Peter-Paul Fortress, is represented, as well as the Tsar’s old citadel alongside the digging of trenches at the Field of Mars, the Winter Palace and the old Foreign Ministry building bent sharply toward Cantor’s Bridge.</p>
<p>The logic and conception of space are also raised to a more global level in two senses. First, the grid of urban space – buildings, monuments, large-scale urbanism and transport routes – is <a href="https://libcom.org/library/chapter-one">seen from the air</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Seen from high above, from the red-starred airplane circling overhead every morning, the Neva looked like a thin white snake darting two thin blue tongues into the desert from its open mouth.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198508/original/file-20171211-10977-1uuboqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of Petrograd (known previously and today as St Petersburg) in 1922.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the city that Leon Trotsky <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1919/military/ch135.htm">assessed in 1919</a> as essential to defend, if necessary, through the tactics of street fighting to combat the anti-Bolshevik White Army. </p>
<p>Trotsky outlined how the Red Army would occupy a central position and “operate along radial lines running from the centre to the periphery” of the city. Barbed-wire entanglements and barricades, with artillery and machine-gun installations, would be stationed in the streets.</p>
<p>Trotsky notes that “street battles do, of course, entail the risk of accidental victims and the destruction of cultural treasures”. Taking this up in <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/search?q=Revolution-in-Danger">Endangered City: Petrograd Year Two of the Revolution</a>, Serge notes that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… Petrograd, with its maze-like streets, its canals, its houses turned into fortresses or concealing ambushes, would be a death-trap for the small White Army.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Second, Petrograd is significant at the global level as part of the Marxist struggle for revolutionary internationalism, which stretched across the cityscapes of Europe – London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna – and beyond. Serge <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1932/conqcity/ch02.htm">describes</a> these as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Phantom capitals belonging to the past and to another world, which could only be glimpsed through the new prisms of this city: expected uprisings, outcomes always in suspense, dispatches, stunning as blows, from the Rosta wire services proclaiming endless crises, the collapse of old nations, thrilling upheavals.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Flames beneath the snow</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198507/original/file-20171211-10977-j2fqmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198507/original/file-20171211-10977-j2fqmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198507/original/file-20171211-10977-j2fqmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198507/original/file-20171211-10977-j2fqmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198507/original/file-20171211-10977-j2fqmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198507/original/file-20171211-10977-j2fqmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198507/original/file-20171211-10977-j2fqmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victor Serge’s writing explored the psychosis of absolute power.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Petrograd is therefore the city of urban revolution. Transformation and upheaval are written on its buildings and streets. But it is also the city where the death of counter-revolution is circling not just from without but also from within.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.nyrb.com/products/memoirs-of-a-revolutionary?variant=1094930205">Memoirs of a Revolutionary</a>, Serge articulated his clear-sighted distrust of the role of the Communist Party as the repository of truth.</p>
<p>“Totalitarianism is within us,” he wrote, not only as a result of the errors in sustaining the Special Commission in 1917, but also with an eye to the events to come. The suppression of the <a href="http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1921-2/kronstadt-uprising/">Kronstadt Rebellion</a> in 1921 was just around the historical corner.</p>
<p>The conquest of power established within the conquered city of Petrograd is therefore also a meditation on the psychosis of absolute power. In Conquered City, the Special Commission emerges as an emblem of the future degeneracy of the revolution. </p>
<p>On the Cheka, Serge <a href="https://libcom.org/library/chapter-4-2">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have conquered everything and everything has slipped out of our grasp. We have conquered bread, and there is famine. We have declared peace to a war-weary world, and war has moved into every house.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The work of the character Bobrov, one-time decipherer of codes in the Ministry of the Interior and now employed by the Special Commission, is <a href="https://libcom.org/library/chapter-13">described</a> thus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, as under the ancien régime, secret directives kept him free of all cares. The furnishings and arrangement of his office, in a building next to the Commission, had remained nearly identical for 25 years; he had personally seen to it that nothing changed when they were moved from the quarters of the Political Police.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Equally, a certain sense of fatalism is at the centre of two historians’ reflections within the novel. Professor Vadim Mikhailovich Lytaev <a href="https://libcom.org/library/chapter-10-0">says</a> in conversation with a fellow scholar:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Tsar] Peter’s Mount has got back into his stride. Russia is beginning her revolution again. After Peter, she drifts slowly back into her past again. The Tsars only borrow two things from the West: uniforms and money. </p>
<p>Behind their false front the old Russia subsists: superstitious, bent under the yoke, floating her huge rafts down the Volga with the same songs as in the 16th century, still dragging the wooden swing plough through the fields, building the same houses as a thousand years ago, getting drunk the same way … This old country is still there, deep down, under a thin layer of burning lava.</p>
<p>We are darkest Asia. We can only be pulled out of ourselves by an iron fist. Peter is the model and precursor of the Revolution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The riposte from his fellow scholar, Platon Nikolaevich, is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No, Vadim Mikhailovich; Peter, like the people in the Kremlin, is only an accident — perhaps a necessary one in the accomplishment of certain developments in the history of Russia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As articulated in his Memoirs of a Revolutionary, between historical and human factors, Serge is grappling with the “fatal stamp” of despotism that undermined the Russian Revolution. </p>
<p>In Conquered City, Comrades Xenia and Ryzhik characterise this tension between revolution and counter-revolution. Both work for the Special Commission, but while Xenia gets “<a href="https://libcom.org/library/chapter-20">two bullets in the belly</a>”, Ryzhik rises to become the new Commissar of the House of Detention.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198509/original/file-20171211-27714-5w7d6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After the tsarist modernisation from above, the Russian Revolution of 1917 was an experiment in modernisation from below.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_Revolution_of_1917.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="https://langurbansociology.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/berman_marshall_all_that_is_solid_melts_into_air_the_experience_of_modernity.pdf">All That is Solid Melts Into Air</a>, Marshall Berman details how the traditions of St Petersburg are distinctively modern, “growing out of the city’s existence as a symbol of modernity in the midst of backward society”. </p>
<p>Emerging out of a “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/st-petersburg-paris-of-the-north-or-city-of-bones-6096004.html-0">brutal but abortive modernisation from above</a>”, revolutionary Petrograd was one of an array of experiments in modernisation from below. For Berman, in the clash of these experiments of modernisation lie clues to some of the mysteries of urban space in alternative contexts of uneven development, as in Lagos, Brasilia, New Delhi or Mexico City today.</p>
<p>Yet what Conquered City is most successful in conveying is the process of urban revolution in Red Petrograd. As Serge pens in his poem, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=7xFXDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT6&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=snippet&q=City&f=false">City</a>, written as a paean to Petrograd:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>City, city, vast city,</p>
<p>vast, immobile city,</p>
<p>I know full well there are flames</p>
<p>devouring you beneath the snow.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The form and content of new structures, functions and organisations are therefore expressed through the politics of space in these reflections on Petrograd. </p>
<p>The strongest illustration of this in Conquered City is the articulation of what Henri Lefebvre would recognise as <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0631181776.html">differential space</a>: those contrasts, oppositions or juxtapositions that are in conflict with the attempt to enforce and impose homogenous space.</p>
<p>These conflicts over space are expressed within the urban fabric. It’s here the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggle becomes enacted in and beyond Conquered City.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Read earlier articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Morton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The physical and political space of cities can be shaped from above or below, but few have had more revolutionary changes, first under the tsars, then the communists, than St Petersburg.Adam Morton, Professor of Political Economy, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900102018-02-22T02:03:54Z2018-02-22T02:03:54ZCrimes of solidarity: liberté, égalité and France’s crisis of fraternité<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204502/original/file-20180202-123829-1jsq304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'I am a migrant' solidarity signs were displayed during the European Parliament debate on immigration and asylum in the Strasbourg plenary.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/european_parliament/16688394004/">European Parliament/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The French republican ideals of freedom and equality – indeed of all modern democracies – crystallised in the late 18th century. This was when revolutionary forces combined and fought to abolish two hallmarks of the <em>Ancien Régime</em>: absolutism (unrestricted government power) and privilege (aristocratic rights and status).</p>
<p>Freedom and equality are assumed to be reinforced, brought into harmony by the republic’s third principle – fraternity. Yet, while liberty relates to government, and equality to the law, fraternity is the domain of society. And as France today struggles with its changing social fabric, fraternity is in crisis.</p>
<p>To understand this, and importantly the growing dissidence of citizens who refuse a fraternalism that diminishes human solidarity, we need to spend a moment covering the workings of French republicanism.</p>
<p>The 1789 revolutionaries’ aim of destroying feudal privilege, and ultimately the monarchy, had its roots in republican “anti-particularism”. The concept endures in French democracy today to describe a political and social system opposed to any exclusive or special devotion to the interests of particular groups, whether based on ethnicity, religion or gender, to name but a few.</p>
<p>Anti-particularism is enacted through a variant of Enlightenment universalism that positions human nature as a “rational” universal that is capable of resisting cultural and historical differences. That is, reasoned deliberation would underpin France’s universal republican values: a secular public sphere, equality, freedom, and autonomy.</p>
<p>France’s republicanism laid further claim to universality by offering citizenship to all those willing to belong to the nation on the basis of their active participation as citizens. The “citizen” is defined solely through the notion of equal political rights and duties, and not, for example, through ethnic or territorial ties.</p>
<p>So, in France, the citizen is a purely political concept, and an abstract one, to comply with its demands of universalism. Abstract universalism establishes France as a political nation, through its body of equal citizens, whose aim is to integrate diverse populations. </p>
<p>In this way, abstract universalism functions to prevent particularism, or the division of the republic into individual and multiple identity groups. Their demands for recognition are seen as threatening republican unity and equality.</p>
<h2>Are some people more equal than others?</h2>
<p>A key challenge of equality, in establishing the public sphere as primarily one in which individual interests are subjugated to the common interest, is whether particular groups are able to recognise themselves, and are recognised, as belonging to a wider whole, as equitable contributors to common societal goals.</p>
<p>In post-revolutionary France, the obsession has always been with equality. <em>Laïcité</em>, its distinctive take on secularism, is an extended exercise in equality. </p>
<p><em>Laïcité</em> implies in its varying dimensions: freedom of conscience for all, thereby ensuring the republic’s commitment to individual autonomy; state neutrality toward religious difference to allow for the cohabitation of all religions in the name of equality; and the fostering of civic bonds and allegiance to a particular historical community, the republic’s public culture.</p>
<p>This third dimension, which <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/critical-republicanism-9780199550210?cc=au&lang=en&">Cécile Laborde</a> terms the “laic” civic bond, is what encourages feelings of republican fraternity. </p>
<p>Particularist nationalism rounds out, in a sense, France’s political culture and model of citizenship. But does a strong sense of <a href="https://theconversation.com/modis-polarising-populism-makes-a-fiction-of-a-secular-democratic-india-80605">national</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/everyday-makers-defy-populists-false-promise-to-embody-your-voice-78762">identity</a> not inspire feelings of suspicion towards the politics of diversity?</p>
<h2>The impossible and the ‘unassimilable’</h2>
<p>Historically, and to this day, it is not arbitrary groups that have been denied access to the public sphere, or deemed “unassimilable” – that is, incapable of becoming a part of the <em>res publica</em>. </p>
<p>Women, Jews, gays and more recently Muslims have all been <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/universalist-politics-and-its-crises/">excluded</a>, not as abstract citizens, but on the very basis of their difference. </p>
<p>In other words, the content of the abstraction continues to resurface. It’s a sign that not everyone’s particular identities – whether gendered, ethnic or religious and so on – can be so easily abstracted.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204528/original/file-20180202-162082-1atit5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not everyone’s particular identity can be so easily abstracted and assimilated by French republican ideology.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/khalidalbaih/5631903720">Khalid Albaih/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet, paradoxically, those excluded by French republican ideology and its politics are unable to petition the state for political recognition or inclusion on the basis of their difference. </p>
<p>Where recognition and rights have been achieved, excluded groups had to write themselves into the logic and reach of universalism. The women’s rights movement, for example, succeeded in erasing sexual difference from the list of categories that carried weight in French politics.</p>
<p>Likewise, the more recent success of the marriage equality movement wasn’t attributed to activists’ demands for “gay rights”. This would have been viewed as too particularistic or individualist – not republican enough. </p>
<p>Instead, equality was achieved by petitioning for <a href="https://theconversation.com/liberte-egalite-fraternite-france-and-the-gay-marriage-debate-14852"><em>mariage pour tous</em></a>, “marriage for all”. The language of republicanism was used to point out that a universal – the right to marriage – was not truly universal if it excluded certain groups. </p>
<p>All manner of activists have <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=11923">succeeded</a> in shattering the hypocrisy of formal equality by drawing attention to ways in which the French model creates “impossible subjects” who do not neatly fit into its republican categories.</p>
<p>Universalism holds within it a paradox: its need to be reconciled with the particularism of states, without which promises like <em>liberté</em>, <em>égalité</em> and <em>fraternité</em> could never be reality. </p>
<p>While these tensions and paradoxes are not isolated to the French case, France is often held up as the model (in Europe) for the political integration of culturally diverse populations. Yet its citizenship requirement that outsiders be “culturally fit” to fully integrate French values shows that certain ideas of a secular public sphere, or republican national identity, can result in speculation about the “unassimilable” nature of some populations.</p>
<p>What’s more, the French Republic has long sacralised human rights and the right to asylum in political and ideological presentations of itself. </p>
<p>In holding dear its image of a nation as simultaneously a strong supporter of societal and national sovereignty and a land of asylum, France is arguably the most glaring demonstration of the tension between the universal and the particular.</p>
<h2>Solidarity delinquents</h2>
<p>France actively pursues the criminalisation of its citizens for acts of solidarity and fraternity toward vulnerable refugees. At best this is puzzling. It is even more so when citizens refer to their civil disobedience as restaking a claim on the values upon which the republic was founded. </p>
<p>In their specific understanding of what it means to be French, fraternity and its modern equivalent, solidarity, are wedged between particularist politics of closure and ethical considerations of universal obligation. This has very real consequences for citizens and non-citizens alike.</p>
<p>On January 4, 2017, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/cedric-herrou-convicted-helping-refugees-border-170808082804597.html">Cédric Herrou</a>, a farmer from the Roya valley (a key crossing point for migrants into France from Italy), was placed on trial for helping some 200 asylum seekers to enter and pass through France. He had provided many of them with shelter, first in his home and later a disused railway building.</p>
<p>His initial penalty (a suspended fine of €3,000) was increased to a suspended four-month prison sentence after an appeal by the prosecution.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LyN6TxpjB90?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cédric Herrou is a farmer who defies French authorities by helping African refugees.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On October 17, 2016, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/01/23/good-samaritans-or-criminals-france-wrestles-with-fate-of-those-helping-migrants.html">Pierre-Alain Mannoni</a>, a 45-year-old geography professor at Nice University, was arrested while driving three badly injured Eritrean girls to seek medical attention. Following his acquittal, the prosecutor appealed and continued to press for a six-month suspended prison term. The appeals court imposed a suspended sentence of two months in September 2017.</p>
<p>In 2015, Education Without Borders Network volunteer <a href="https://www.humanite.fr/denis-lambert-un-juste-solidaire-des-sans-papiers-579512">Denis Lambert</a> was arrested for receiving direct “compensation”, in the form of domestic chores, while lodging a family of undocumented Armenians at his Perpignan home following their failed asylum claim.</p>
<p>French immigration law, the Code on the Entry and Sojourn of Foreigners and Right to Asylum (<a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do;jsessionid=1A9342280202A01546C2D310267E0825.tpdila19v_3?idSectionTA=LEGISCTA000006147789&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070158&dateTexte=20170731">CESEDA</a>) punishes persons found guilty of “assisting the entry, travel or undocumented stay” of irregular status foreigners. The offence carries a five-year prison sentence and €30,000 fine.</p>
<p>Since 2012, the law does exempt from prosecution anyone providing aid in the form of “legal advice, food, accommodation or medical care to ensure the foreigner with dignified and decent living conditions”, provided no benefit is received in return. On the other hand, transporting irregular foreigners and assisting their safe passage across or around border zones are punishable offences.</p>
<p>But the law operates on an ambiguity. Although intended to combat organised networks of illegal immigration (human trafficking and people smugglers), its wording lends itself to associating “disinterested” humanitarian assistance with the profit motives of human trafficking. </p>
<p>This has led to numerous arrests and prosecutions of French citizens who have received direct or indirect “benefits” or “compensation” for their humanitarian assistance of vulnerable people. The ongoing <a href="http://www.gisti.org/spip.php?article1399">intimidation, prosecutions and convictions</a> have sparked a collective movement of “<a href="http://www.delinquantssolidaires.org/">solidarity delinquency</a>”, or “<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/france-prosecuting-citizens-crimes-solidarity-170122064151841.html">crimes of solidarity</a>”. The movement asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If solidarity with foreigners is a crime, then we are all delinquents. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How did France come to this?</h2>
<p>How is it that universalist France punishes citizens for helping vulnerable refugees? One explanation is found in the way that France’s republican ideals meet state rationalities. </p>
<p>The state invokes universalism and secularism to reserve the right not simply to determine who can become a member of French society, but more generally to maintain a stronghold on symbolising Frenchness. And so the state defends the republic’s indivisibility, unity and social and moral order – no more so than when the nation perceives itself plagued by insecurity.</p>
<p>Themes of insecurity, national identity and immigration have <a href="https://theconversation.com/le-pen-vs-macron-after-an-acrimonious-debate-the-french-will-now-choose-their-next-president-76995">featured heavily in French election campaigns</a> since 2002. Asylum and immigration have become increasingly regulated and politicised within a security framework. This is because there is electoral capital in making both so central to anxieties about national identity, safety and order, and the public purse.</p>
<p>For <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271173">Didier Fassin</a>, insecurity takes three forms: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>public insecurity is used to legitimate stricter border policing and limits on immigration to secure the nation from external (terrorist) threats</p></li>
<li><p>identity insecurity, apparent in growing mistrust and hostility towards Islam, seeks to reinforce republican belonging and insists upon more secularism in the public sphere</p></li>
<li><p>social insecurity lies in the threat that unwelcome outsiders pose to the welfare and medical systems, as well as the nation’s capacity to provide citizens with jobs.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The “tough on crime”, securitarian approach to asylum, immigration and borders began in earnest under Interior Minister <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pasqua-in-new-war-on-immigrants-1398372.html">Charles Pasqua</a> in 1993. It gained momentum under <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/sarkozy-intensifies-anti-immigration-rhetoric/a-15703843">Nicolas Sarkozy</a> as interior minister from 2002 and president from 2007. </p>
<p>Sarkozy’s “<a href="http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-La_fr__n__sie_s__curitaire-9782707154323.html">securitarian frenzy</a>” and subsequent focus on immigration policy – which included prolonged detention, performance targets, deportations, high-tech police checks and surveillance – was intended to “fix” the issues of republican integration. It is perhaps better understood as the systemisation of a logic of suspicion toward all foreigners.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204532/original/file-20180202-162077-13a8f6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests did little to reverse the state’s ‘securitarian frenzy’ under the presidency of Nicholas Sarkozy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alainbachellier/257074889/">Alain Bachellier/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The significance of this reconfiguring of relations between citizens and foreigners is that the state’s desire to monopolise what it means to “be French” also brings about dissidence.</p>
<p>We see this in the collective movement of “solidarity delinquency” and in individual crimes of solidarity. Ethico-political acts of civil disobedience call attention to the inhospitable treatment of vulnerable refugees. Solidarity delinquents demand that, in extolling the virtues of fraternity, their public institutions act more hospitably toward refugees and asylum seekers. They also seek to overturn laws so that a minimum of their fellow humans’ fundamental interests can be met. </p>
<p>These acts are a democratic refusal of the blackmail of universals. They attempt to revive and recover a vanishing dimension of French values, namely solidarity and fraternity.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fraternity is one of the three pillars of the French Republic, but social solidarity is fraying as citizens are criminalised for acting on their beliefs in the human rights of asylum seekers.Abigail Taylor, PhD Researcher in Political Theory and Government, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873622018-02-15T01:12:26Z2018-02-15T01:12:26ZBe realistic – demand the impossible: the legacy of 1968<p><em>This article is the first of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The events of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html">May 1968</a> in Paris and then France more generally still resonate as a graphic illustration of the potential for relatively peaceful and wealthy societies to explode in spontaneous anger.</p>
<p>May 1968 was not an uprising against tyranny or manifest injustice of a kind that animated the civil rights movement. Starting out as a set of demonstrations against university reform, the French uprisings quickly gathered momentum in a manner that almost defies explanation. </p>
<p>Part student revolt, part disillusionment with various aspects of contemporary existence, part trade union opportunism and part extended street party, everyone’s account of why it “kicked off” seems to differ.</p>
<p>Assessing the legacy of ’68 is just as demanding as providing an explanation for why it happened at all. Little remains in the way of lasting institutional impressions. The uprising disappeared almost as quickly as it had erupted once the militarised police imposed order.</p>
<p>On the surface, then, though this brief and spontaneous episode marked the emergence of “<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/materialism-and-post-materialism/">post-materialist</a>” concerns amongst the young, it was of little consequence for contemporary purposes. Yet scratching beneath the surface of this Wikipedia-style narrative, it is possible and perhaps necessary to mount a more serious defence of the legacy of ’68. </p>
<p>Certain themes and tropes are very evident in today’s politics. Let’s start with some obvious pointers.</p>
<h2>The collapse of grand narratives</h2>
<p>1968 can be seen as the moment when the two dominant narratives on the left – social democracy and communism – were both called into question. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/money-capitalism-and-the-slow-death-of-social-democracy-58703">Social democracy</a> had dominated mainstream progressive discourse since the end of the 19th century. Now it was seen as irredeemably complicit in the maintenance of a status quo that seemed to consecrate a materialist, routine form of life offering very little to the young or to the political imagination.</p>
<p>Social democratic politics was held as “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SyIuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT15&lpg=PT15&dq=%22capitalism+with+a+human+face">capitalism with a human face</a>”. It accepted the necessity for the market order and so, as far as ’68 critics of capitalism were concerned, for exploitation, alienation and the division of society into pharaohs and slaves. </p>
<p>Social “democracy” reduces politics to an electoral spectacle, and our place within it to passive recipients of whatever it is a rotating set of elites deems to be in our best interests. The insurgents of 1968 searched for something more than a passive quiescent existence built around consumption.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YCtcD9CfMOI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The old left thought the new left was out of control – they had impossible dreams.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historically, the principal alternative to social democracy on the left had been communism, the militant ideology of Lenin and his followers. </p>
<p>But communism according to influential critics on the fringes of ’68 – such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Castoriadis">Cornelius Castoriadis</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard">Jean-Francois Lyotard</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lefort">Claude Lefort</a>, all members of the ultra-left <a href="https://libcom.org/library/socialisme-ou-barbarie-linden">Socialisme ou Barbarie</a> group – had ossified into a debased ideology guarded by a self-interested theocracy. It had gone from a vital credo of insurrection to a doctrine maintained and guarded by bureaucrats.</p>
<p>The communist vision of revolution – an industrial working class led by an intellectual class – was now an anachronism.</p>
<p>By 1968, the working class had given up on the dream of its own emancipation in favour of chatter around holiday pay, generous pensions and the trifles that made existing life more bearable. It had lost its heroic capabilities, settling instead for indolent acceptance of a comfortable “<a href="https://libcom.org/library/redefining-revolution-cornelius-castoriadis-paul-cardan-solidarity">air-conditioned</a>” existence.</p>
<p>So, calls against social democracy and communism exploded on the streets of Paris under joyously enigmatic slogans:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Be realistic: demand the impossible! Under the cobbles, the beach! It is forbidden to forbid!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘It is forbidden to forbid!’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Espencat/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, quite what it was that the demonstrators wanted was often difficult to discern. Much of the discourse of 1968 rotated around the idea of auto-gestion or self-management. But almost implicit in the idea was the rejection of normative ideals or frameworks of a kind that we associate with classical ideologies. </p>
<p>Also implicit was a rejection of the idea of the leading role of intellectuals in terms of that task of framing.</p>
<p>The net result was a politics of refusal – of social democracy, of communism, of capitalism, of elites, vanguards, intellectuals, and so on and so forth. But where, it could legitimately be asked, was affirmation?</p>
<p>Those engaged in the uprising were clear about what they were against; they were less clear in terms of what they were actually for in concrete, institutional terms. Auto-gestion was a difficult term to operationalise. It still is.</p>
<p>So, 1968 represents the end of grand narratives in politics. It was an uprising against something; less for something else. </p>
<p>The sense of ’68 as a refusal lives on in contemporary politics. We don’t have a redemptive ideology to place our hopes on. We don’t believe the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/everyday-makers-defy-populists-false-promise-to-embody-your-voice-78762">experts</a>”. We don’t think there’s a formula for collective planetary happiness. We have individualised politics to the point where refusal is a first, and quite often last, resort.</p>
<p>Lyotard famously described this “incredulity” towards metanarratives as “<a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-postmodern-condition">the postmodern condition</a>”. The result was a kind of political paganism, a politics of the faithless, of those who move from one campaign against injustice to another, only without any certainty that there is another way of life, model or system that could, in a sense, “cure” the ills of modernity.</p>
<h2>The end of the party</h2>
<p>Related to the collapse of dominant narratives was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/european-movements-could-mark-the-end-of-representative-politics-42369">collapse in faith in organisational politics</a>, more familiarly the political party, the dominant form of collective mobilisation since the 19th century. </p>
<p>The party could not, as per Marxist teaching, represent the interests of the working class. Nor could it evade the kind of bureaucratic ossification outlined most famously by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Parties_(book)">Robert Michels</a> and <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/381-critique-of-dialectical-reason-2-volume-set">Jean-Paul Sartre</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps the idea of a permanent or standing organisation of any kind was the problem. 1968 therefore marked the embrace of what later became known as “horizontal” forms of organisation in the search for a kind of being together that celebrated all manner of differences and, at the same time, provided the basis for collective action.</p>
<p>The rejection of inherited organisational politics in 1968 has been felt very clearly in more recent times. Established in 2001, the World Social Forum went as far as banning participation by political parties and their representatives. Parties, it was claimed, contaminated “dialogue” and, hampered by considerations of loyalty or affiliation, prevented the free flow of opinion. </p>
<p>Later, high-profile initiatives such as <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/horizontalism-and-the-occupy-movements">Occupy Wall Street</a> and Spain’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/postcard-from-spain-where-now-for-the-quiet-revolution-43779">#15M</a> also made clear their distance from the inheritance of left progressive politics and, in particular, the “vertical” politics of parties and formalised mechanisms of representation.</p>
<h2>Living with(out) capitalism</h2>
<p>1968 unleashed a wave of “post-materialist” energies directed at capitalism. Capitalism became the object of anger less because it was failing in some distinct fashion, but more because it was succeeding, or more accurately it was succeeding in creating subjects, ourselves, who needed capitalism and who wanted capitalism to succeed.</p>
<p>The consumer age was dawning after the austerity of the post-war years. This meant putting the desiring subject, rather than the producer, at the centre of the system of reproduction. Hitherto radical analyses of capitalism had concentrated on the experience of the producer or worker.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graffiti in a classroom at the University of Lyon that appeared during a student occupation of parts of the campus in May 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Garrigues/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many found their origin in Marx’s pungent critique of capitalism in works such as the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm">1844 Paris manuscripts</a>. These described the alienating properties of capitalist production in almost poetic terms. </p>
<p>But what lurked in these earlier works was an appreciation of the way in which we as consumers were ensnared by the logic of capitalist reproduction through the fetish properties of commodities themselves.</p>
<p>It was this latter aspect that became such a prominent feature of the critiques of capitalism that both inspired and were in turn inspired by 1968. They found their ultimate expression in the work of <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-mcquinn-raoul-vaneigem-the-other-situationist">The Situationists</a>, notably via Guy Debord and Raoul Vaniegem. They describe contemporary capitalism as engaging with us at the subliminal level through the manipulation of desire via advertising and the saturation of the visual and aesthetic field with “affirmative” messages designed to encourage further consumption.</p>
<p>Many involved in 1968 turn to psychoanalysis to explain how it was that capitalism appeared so adept at creating followers in the midst of its own inhumanity. Work such as Deleuze and Guattari’s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/305132/anti-oedipus-by-gilles-deleuze-and-felix-guattari/9780143105824/">Anti-Oedipus</a> and Lyotard’s <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=20853">Libidinal Economy</a> looked for the key to unlocking a joyful subject beneath the cramped subject of consumerist desire.</p>
<p>These critiques reflect and in some cases inspired the approach adopted by many of those taking part in the events of 1968. One of the legacies of the uprisings was the rich use of slogans, posters, films and cartoons to engage the senses.</p>
<p>Out of 1968 came a distinct political strategy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-the-fantasy-of-natural-law-60778"><em>detournement</em></a>, in today’s lingo “jamming” or “hacking”. The idea here is to take images of an everyday kind, such as those appearing in advertising, and in some way distort them so they produce an opposite effect – while at the same time reminding us of the chilling manipulation of desire that lies beneath.</p>
<p>The idea is to create a meme that reminds us of the fetish quality of everyday existence and the instrumentalisation of our world in the search for profit. By overturning the integrity of the image or the words we remind ourselves of the contingency of social arrangements, of hierarchies and the mode of exploitation.</p>
<p>This strategy has become a powerful source of inspiration for today’s anti-establishment resistances, from the glossy pages of <a href="https://adbusters.org/">Adbusters</a>, through to the humorous “liberation” of billboards, guerrilla gardening, critical mass and other seemingly spontaneous “laboratories of insurrection”. </p>
<p>Today’s activists feed off and are inspired by the legacy of 1968’s suspicion that the only way to overcome capitalism is to challenge the spectacle of elite domination in the visual field, at the level of affect, and in the very constitution of our subjectivity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adbusters today practises the distinctly 1968 strategy of <em>detournement</em> as a form of resistance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PBS NewsHour/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Activists are aware of the mediated nature of contemporary existence and therefore of the power of images, sounds and experiences passing through the circuits of the capitalist life world. </p>
<p>A politics that does not engage us at the level of our emotions, our desires and our deeper needs cannot hope to produce that sense of connection to a wider purpose that is the starting point for mobilisation.</p>
<h2>What’s left of 1968’s left?</h2>
<p>1968 did not lead to an overturning of French capitalism, of the domination of elites, or the structures of inequality. Far from it.</p>
<p>But the legacy of 1968 runs deep in terms of how a good part of the left “assemblage” sees its task and goes about seeking to accomplish it. </p>
<p>1968 represents the inauguration of a politics of refusal: refusal to be incorporated into dominant narratives; refusal to conform to a logic of political mobilisation that has been practised for over three centuries; refusal to deploy the organisational forms so familiar from previous models of collective action.</p>
<p>1968 represented a freeing up of politics from the congealed, stodgy and unimaginative understandings that had so dogged the emergence of an oppositional politics after the second world war. It unleashed a wave of joyous experimentation, evanescent and spontaneous efforts to challenge the dull routine of the repetitious lives that had been constructed in and through advanced capitalism.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘No to the bureaucracy’: street art from the 1968 revolts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IISG/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rejection of political inheritance and the embrace of a more fluid and experimental style of politics is not without its own pitfalls, challenges and critics. One can almost hear the <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/07/the-power-of-nonsense">Zizeks</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-left-wing-populism-55869">Mouffes</a> intoning against forms of politics that dispensed with the militant collectivism associated with the Leninist tradition in particular.</p>
<p>Where is the institutionalisation, or rendering permanent the demands of this assemblage? Where is the attempt to create the necessary counter-hegemonic structure that will provide a genuine force to challenge the state, the ruling class and the repressive apparatus? Where is the desire for seeing through a program designed to ameliorate the conditions of the least well off?</p>
<p>There is a certain obvious way in which this stony-faced realism misses the point. This is that the linearity of politics, the sense of a common collective endeavour undertaken by a mass of like-minded citizens toward a common goal, is precisely what was challenged in 1968. </p>
<p>Those who took to the streets didn’t know what they wanted; they just knew what they were against – routine, elites, boredom, mortgages, certainty. They wanted to construct something new together, but they didn’t have the tools or the vocabularies to do that in the brief window of opportunity that presented itself.</p>
<p>John Holloway gets close to this atmosphere when he notes that politics often starts from “<a href="https://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/readings/Holloway_Change_the_World.pdf">a scream</a>”. 1968 was a scream, an alarm bell going off, a red light flashing. It told us that the certainties that had sustained the post-war order – the promise of more jobs, more stuff to buy, happier and more contended lives – was not enough. It was not exciting, interesting, fulfilling.</p>
<p>But nor was the narrative of emancipation “enough”. It didn’t engage. It too was hostage to a set of expectations that a generation fed on austerity had enough of hearing: the heroism of the working class locked in its cycle of repetitious labour, greasy hands and greasier chips.</p>
<p>1968 was the scream of the “post-materialists”: those in search of colour in a black-and-white world. May 1968 did not change the world, but it made us look differently at the world we have and the world being created. It made us think that maybe – beneath the cobbles – there is another world.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in this series as they are published <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87362/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Tormey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The protesters who took to the streets of Paris didn’t know what they wanted: they just knew what they were against. But they did make us think that maybe there is another, better world.Simon Tormey, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/884832018-02-07T01:25:15Z2018-02-07T01:25:15ZIf democracy is failing, why do so many lay claim to it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198452/original/file-20171211-27693-1vrfm3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2014 Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong against 'Chinese-style democracy' laid bare democracy's contested meanings.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/studiokanu/15327905238/">Studio Incendo/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>These comments on the global fate of democracy, the last in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">Is Democracy Dead or Alive?</a> series, are gathered by <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/democratic-theory-overview.xml">Democratic Theory</a> and co-published by The Conversation with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. Several of these comments will feature as full-length articles in a special issue of Democratic Theory.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>A higher ideal, despite failures along the way</h2>
<p><strong>Patricia Roberts-Miller, University of Texas-Austin</strong></p>
<p>Democracy is always being pronounced dead by those who are trying to kill it. Perhaps because it has tended toward ambitious claims of its origins and possibilities, democracy is held to higher and often different standards from other models of governance. </p>
<p>Democracy certainly has its instances of disastrous decisions – from supporting the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition">Sicilian Expedition</a> to our current problem of citizens wanting lower taxes and more expensive services. </p>
<p>In this regard, however, it’s no different from any other form of government: oligarchy, monarchy, fascism and rule by the market all have their disastrous wars, unwise economic policies, and even outright genocides.</p>
<p>Many critics argue that democracy is an inherently flawed system because “the citizenry” is not actually very good at making decisions. And, granted, the empirical research does show that voters tend to make decisions largely on the basis of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/the-dynamics-of-voters-leftright-identification-the-role-of-economic-and-cultural-attitudes/E7F5CD30B213A59C1FAEFF75F3C56CCF">identification</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CHuLCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=%22voting%22+AND+%22short-term%22+AND+%22election%22+OR+%22elections%22&ots=kuS1LIFkVV&sig=3F3fuqL3Cx0IuL5a4Vd6Z8g9b44">short-term gain</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=61ZeDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=patricia+roberts-miller&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">politicians’ charisma</a>, and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=W6MY-TobYjcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=factional+politics&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">factionalism</a>. </p>
<p>Voters are prone to such cognitive biases as <a href="https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/94/False-Dilemma">false binaries</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic">availability heuristic</a>, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201012/in-groups-out-groups-and-the-psychology-crowds">in-group</a> favouritism, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias">confirmation bias</a>, <a href="https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/just-world-hypothesis/">just world hypothesis</a>, <a href="http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/decision-making/naive-realism/">naïve realism</a>, and others. In other words, citizens are only human.</p>
<p>And that is ultimately the point. Humans are prone to cognitive biases. There is no governmental system immune to bad decisions, no set of experts with the judgement of angels, because human government is necessarily one run by humans. </p>
<p>Democracies rarely live up to the ideals of democracy, and so democracy remains an aspiration, but it is a normative one, in which our inevitable failure inspires us to try better.</p>
<h2>Basic values survive disappointment</h2>
<p><strong>Xavier Marquez, Victoria University of Wellington</strong></p>
<p>News of democracy’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. Academic measures show at worst small declines in the level of democracy in the world <a href="http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/artisanal-democracy-data-quick-and-easy.html">in the last decade</a>. </p>
<p>The constitutional documents of <a href="http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-age-of-democracy.html">almost every country</a> proclaim their democratic character, and few governments wish to be thought undemocratic. Peoples throughout the world <a href="http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2015/06/what-do-people-think-of-democracy.html">demand democracy</a>, and pro-democracy feeling is high even in the most unlikely places.</p>
<p>With some very minor exceptions, as historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dunn_(political_theorist)">John Dunn</a> has noted, the word “democracy” has come to symbolise the only legitimate political system in most languages. </p>
<p>Yet, despite its apparent triumph, democracy’s meaning remains disputed and disappointments with its reality are keenly felt. </p>
<p>The standard view of liberal democracy, with its emphasis on electoral institutions, checks and balances and individual rights, has been challenged both by illiberal populists, claiming to speak more clearly on behalf of “The People”, and by conceptions of technocratic management reinvigorated by the apparent successes of a Chinese model that still officially wishes to be called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_China">the people’s democratic dictatorship</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Under Xi Jinping, China now has a day to celebrate a constitution that sets down the principle of ‘the people’s democratic dictatorship’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hleung/2208600327/">HKmPUA/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The contemporary high esteem for the vague idea of democracy and surprisingly low esteem for actually existing democracies suggests the source of the problem. Since the basic values of democracy – equality, freedom and consent, among others – have often been in conflict with existing hierarchies of power, prestige and knowledge, it is no wonder that existing democracies so often produce disappointment. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, democracy’s values are also alluring; it is telling that today few who wish to condemn the failures of democracy do so in the name of anything other than democracy.</p>
<h2>Governing ourselves is hard work</h2>
<p><strong>Sor-hoon Tan, National University of Singapore</strong></p>
<p>Democracy has never been the “only game in town”, just better than others in terms of offering ordinary citizens more chance or hope of having some say in the decisions that affect them. </p>
<p>No country has ever lived up to the ideal of the people truly governing themselves. Attempts to realise this ideal could only be measured by different degrees to which ordinary citizens have influenced political outcomes and achieved self-government in their daily lives.</p>
<p>It is not democracy, but rather the imperfect mechanisms for achieving it that are failing in the face of today’s challenges. Instead of jettisoning one ideology (which is unfortunately what democracy has come to mean for many) for other more dangerous alternatives, it is up to every one of us to realise that, for self-preservation, we must try even harder to find some way to prevent others from dictating how the world and our lives will turn out. </p>
<p>We need <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CIVBDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=%22sor+hoon+tan%22+AND+%22democracy%22&ots=JLiwoEImiC&sig=jNffsZCAzVkvaBoStziu3DP8Wl4">more, not less, democracy</a>. But democracy cannot be forced on another, nor can it be handed over as a free gift. Unless people want and are willing to put in the effort to govern themselves, democracy has no hope.</p>
<h2>At risk of losing its meaning</h2>
<p><strong>James Wong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology</strong></p>
<p>Recently, Rana Mitter <a href="http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2102330/mystery-chinas-eagerness-own-term-democracy">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>China is now in position to redefine democracy for the region, taking ownership and reshaping the term in its own, more authoritarian image. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>If Mitter is correct, the real issue seems to be not so much about the dying of democracy but whether the world will accept China’s redefinition of democracy with fewer liberal elements.</p>
<p>China is sceptical of liberal democracy as it cannot guarantee political stability and harmony. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Przeworski">Adam Przeworski’s</a> famous definition of democracy as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Mfjv6snK0-EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=democracy+and+the+market&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">institutionalised uncertainty</a> is what China seeks to avoid. </p>
<p>At the core of so-called “Chinese-style democracy”, such an institutionalised possibility of unforeseen outcomes is not embraced. People, or at least leaders, want to know not only what is possible, but also what will happen. This explains why China is keen on restricting domains for certain assurance of outcomes – from the list of candidates screened for elections to the varieties of opinions censored in everyday life.</p>
<p>Does this redefinition make democracy a sham? To a large extent, yes. How popular is it going to be? It’s hard to say. But if people are so frustrated by the outrageous outcomes of democratic uncertainty, some may be tempted by the seemingly more assured alternatives. </p>
<p>What we need to recognise is that these alternatives come in the name of democracy and not authoritarianism. </p>
<p>In the future, we might not witness the death of democracy but rather the discursive struggles over its different definitions and redefinitions, over its mutation into something different.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping both espouse their own versions of democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">President of Russia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where do democrats find common ground?</h2>
<p><strong>Camille Bedock, Université Libre de Bruxelles</strong></p>
<p>Talking about the “crisis of democracy” is consubstantial with democracy itself. Representative democracy in particular, as <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/bernard-manin.html">Bernard Manin</a> argues, is built on elections that are simultaneously aristocratic and democratic, egalitarian and inegalitarian. </p>
<p>As such, pessimism about representative democracy has always existed. What is new is the renewed intellectual and political controversy about what democracy is and what it should achieve. This is creating a sense of emergency to “reform” democracy.</p>
<p>Around the second world war, the dominant Western definition of democracy, embodied for instance by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter">Josef Schumpeter</a>, was fairly monolithic: democracy revolved around elections, which are organised to choose between political parties alternating in power, with relatively uninformed and deferent citizens. </p>
<p>Today the picture is blurrier: traditionally dominant parties in so-called consolidated democracies are paddling in troubled waters. Some are at risk of disappearing altogether. </p>
<p>Elections are less and less seen as the cornerstone of democracy. Instead we are seeing the multiplication of groups challenging representation and proposing mechanisms that attempt to go beyond elections.</p>
<p>Citizens also no longer share a unified, uncritical and enthusiastic vision of democracy. A <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/fora95&div=86&g_sent=1&collection=journals">substantial share of them</a> actually show little commitment to the democratic regimen. </p>
<p>Concurrently, multiple and often contradictory versions of democracy have come to the forefront in public and intellectual debates: participatory democracy, stealth democracy, advocacy democracy, direct democracy, output-oriented democracy, deliberative democracy, and so on. </p>
<p>A huge question remains unanswered: can traditional “representative” democracy be <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=70nADgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22camille+bedock%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">combined with new forms of democracy</a> without creating more ambiguity about what democracy actually is?</p>
<h2>Crisis is also an opportunity to revitalise</h2>
<p><strong>Sabeel Rahman, Brooklyn Law School</strong></p>
<p>Democracy in the US is in the midst of a crisis, but perhaps not in the way that many might think. Our current democratic crisis is both worse and better than it may seem. </p>
<p>The crisis of American democracy is not so much one of a blatant collapse into open authoritarianism; rather, the crisis arises from a deeper, in some ways more systemic, failure.</p>
<p>Democracy as a moral ideal <a href="http://www.ksabeelrahman.com/democracy-against-domination">involves two dimensions</a>: the negative value of anti-domination – resisting the concentration of arbitrary power, in individual private or public actors, or in diffuse systems like the market itself – and the positive value of agency – expanding our collective capacities for self-government. Along both of these dimensions, modern democracy is in crisis.</p>
<p>Our democracies have failed to protect their communities from the problem of domination, whether in the form of concentrated private power from too-big-to-fail finance or new corporate titans, or in the form of the diffused inequities of contemporary capitalism and subordination of different communities.</p>
<p>At the same time, however, crises are moments of reinvention. The economic and political upheavals of the current moment offer a very real opportunity to reinvent and renew democracy’s promise.</p>
<p>It is out of such moments of crisis that radically democratising movements and institutional transformations in US history have taken place: <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/us/35b.asp">Radical Reconstruction</a> following the Civil War; the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/New-Deal">New Deal</a> following the Great Depression; the civil rights movement following <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow</a>. </p>
<p>Such revitalisation is not a foregone conclusion. But a wide range of social movements are leading the charge for a more inclusive, equitable, multiracial democratic order. Whether we can achieve this remains to be seen.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read parts 1 and 2 of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-has-a-future-if-we-rethink-and-remake-it-88239">here</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/which-democracy-what-exactly-are-we-supposed-to-nurture-88482">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabeel Rahman is an Assistant Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. In addition to his academic work, he has worked as a consultant and advisor for a variety of projects relating to democracy reform, inequality, and economic policy for philanthropic foundations and think tanks, including the Hewlett Foundation, the Democracy Fund, New America, and the Roosevelt Institute. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camille Bedock, James K. Wong, Patricia Roberts-Miller, Sor-hoon Tan, and Xavier Marquez do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Uncertainty is built into democracy, but we are seeing more talk of crisis and more attempts at redefinition. So where does this leave citizens who want to have a meaningful say in how they live?Camille Bedock, Chargée de recherche, CNRS, Université de BordeauxJames K. Wong, Research Assistant Professor in Social Science and Public Policy, Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyPatricia Roberts-Miller, Professor of Rhetoric, The University of Texas at AustinSabeel Rahman, Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law SchoolSor-hoon Tan, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, National University of SingaporeXavier Marquez, Senior Lecturer, Political Science, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/884822018-02-02T02:49:44Z2018-02-02T02:49:44ZIs Democracy Dead or Alive? What democracy exactly are we supposed to nurture?<p><em>These comments on the global fate of democracy, the second part of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">Is Democracy Dead or Alive?</a>, are gathered by <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/democratic-theory-overview.xml">Democratic Theory</a> and co-published with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. Several of these comments will feature as full-length articles in a special issue of Democratic Theory.</em></p>
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<h2>Imagine a new form of popular sovereignty</h2>
<p><strong>Eva Cherniavsky, University of Washington</strong></p>
<p>If we cannot imagine a future for democracy after the break-up of its historic marriage to capitalism, then I suppose we should declare it dead. But I prefer to think that capitalism’s spurning of democracy offers a context for instituting new forms of democratic governance.</p>
<p>The institutions of the modern democratic state have always stood for the interests of proprietors, upholding formal rights (equality of opportunity) over material equity (equality of condition). </p>
<p>The revolutions that threw off monarchical and colonial rule in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were, with very few exceptions, bourgeois revolutions. The state’s obligation to the collective interest of the people thus finds a limit in its competing and contradictory obligation to the protection of private property.</p>
<p>From this vantage point, the corporate takeover and decimation of existing democratic institutions may free us to conceive and cultivate more radically democratic organisations that centre on the welfare of peoples, rather than individuals.</p>
<p>Movements such as Occupy Wall Street clearly tend in this direction, experimenting with radical, participatory democracy in the belly of the beast.</p>
<p>On the model of Occupy, radical democracy entails the creation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lamborn_Wilson">myriad autonomous zones</a>, whether temporary or semi-permanent. </p>
<p>As ethnonationalism and authoritarianism flourish in the ruins of capitalist democracy, it remains to be seen if the Left can reimagine itself, no longer as a dissident force, hostile or marginal to the institutions of capitalist democracy, but rather as a force for institutionalisation, elaborating new forms and practices of <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ywfvCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=neocitizenship&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">popular sovereignty</a> at the local, regional and planetary scale.</p>
<h2>Democracy expresses itself in many ways</h2>
<p><strong>Jean-Paul Gagnon, University of Canberra</strong></p>
<p>When someone says “democracy is dead” they aren’t critiquing democracy itself. They’re critiquing a specific expression of it, usually the representative kind. To conflate democracy with but one of its expressions is dangerous because this dismisses <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/2234-Expressions-of-Democracy.pdf">more than 2,000</a> of its other expressions. </p>
<p>Some, like deliberative democracy, are normative projects in part destined to improve the representative institutions that most of us are familiar with. </p>
<p>Others, like <a href="http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/08/23/there-are-at-least-2234-expressions-of-democracy-and-the-less-common-versions-can-teach-us-a-lot/">Waldorf democracy</a>, where “waiters and financiers, telephone girls and captains of industry, coatroom clerks and merchant princes [sit] side by side” at dinner, are historical expressions that can help us find new purchase on some of today’s more enduring problems such as class division.</p>
<p>There are also expressions of democracy in action: <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=cN8YDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22kabuki+democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">kabuki democracy and karaoke democracy</a> are used to explain modern Japanese politics; <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=eKIVVsIqmjQC&q=%22garbage+democracy%22&dq=%22garbage+democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">garbage democracy</a> captures Fidel Castro’s opinion of representation in the US; and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=9rxdQUCY6Z4C&pg=PA30&dq=%22sleepy+democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">somnolent democracy</a> is used to describe countries with docile citizens. </p>
<p>These expressions help us make sense of the democracies we live in – think in particular of unwieldy democracy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greening-of-democracy-7182">green democracy</a> and corrupt democracy.</p>
<p>So, it doesn’t make sense to say “democracy is dead”, because democracy doesn’t mean just one thing. As we come to know each of democracy’s expressions better, and make sense of them collectively, it’s my wager that this will lead to more inclusion, equality, self-rule, autonomy, fairness and non-violence within our states, between our states, and in our lives.</p>
<h2>Enemies within exploit ideology of democracy</h2>
<p><strong>Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University</strong></p>
<p>The ideology of democracy has <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3HbzAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22nadia+urbinati%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">disfigured democracy</a> and is one of the reasons for its weakness today. </p>
<p>Contemporary democracy is at the centre of this paradox: as a political system, democracy enjoys an undisputed global hegemony so that even constitutional “reforms” that curtail civil liberties and contradict the spirit of political openness are made in the name of democracy as more genuine affirmations of democracy’s values. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-venezuela-democracy-20170801-story.html">Venezuela</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-is-on-the-brink-in-hungary-so-why-is-no-one-talking-about-it-82163">Hungary</a> offer prime examples of this.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">As well as fighting for the basics, Venezuelans are fighting to hang on to Venezuela’s 60-year-old democracy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Particularly after the Cold War, the ideology of democracy has found itself in a situation of planetary solitude. The paradox is that no other names today are available to give legitimacy to political enterprises that are not easily rendered as democratic in the constitutional and representative mode in which democracy is valued. </p>
<p>So we witness the coinage of oxymoronic terms, like authoritarian democracy, technocratic democracy and meritocratic democracy, among others.</p>
<p>One of the effects of this paradox is that political orders named as democratic are not only in contrast with democracy but are moreover primed to cast doubt on the value of democracy. How can we value political equality when our democracies promote <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-antiegalitarian-mutation/9780231169844">technocracy or national-populism</a>? </p>
<p>Not to have names to name these transformations of democratic governments is a problem because it contributes to delegitimising democracy. The ideology of democracy obfuscates political reality and leaves us with no argument against adversaries of democracy from within.</p>
<p>This is the cultural and political context in which a new form of representative government is today primed to emerge within the democratic nest, thus changing democracy from within, silently and inadvertently.</p>
<h2>A problem of shallow cultural foundations</h2>
<p><strong>Youngho Cho, Sogang University</strong></p>
<p>Democracy is still a dominant force this century. No government or political leader literally opposes democracy and openly attempts to break it down. Indeed, they instrumentally use democracy to legitimise their own rule and governance. </p>
<p>Democracy has, in this sense, absolute power over its alternatives, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama">Francis Fukuyama</a> declared more than two decades ago.</p>
<p>So why is democracy dysfunctional in spite of its <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1065912914532721">global and universal appeal</a> among leaders and ordinary people? One reason is that leaders manipulate the meanings of democracy and people misunderstand it. People do not understand democracy as its scholars do.</p>
<p>Moreover, a large proportion of Asians do not conceive democracy as most Westerners do. When thinking about democracy, many Chinese people imagine economic development, the domestic and regional dominance of Han China and social order. </p>
<p>Certainly, the rule of law, limited government, civil liberties, political rights and press freedom do not matter much in mass conceptions of democracy in certain corners of the world.</p>
<p>Even in advanced countries, when strong leaders such as Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen speak about democracy, they emphasise dominance and the rule of the majority and try to take minority rights away. We may be living in an era of democratic dominance for the first time in history, but its practices are not necessarily liberal or democratic. </p>
<p>Lamentably, democracy’s cultural foundation is shallow. We need more education about democracy and popular engagement with its diverse forms.</p>
<h2>Where is the evidence for claims of doom?</h2>
<p><strong>Dawn Brancati, Columbia University</strong></p>
<p>Dramatic claims that democracy is in peril around the world or, worse yet, that it is already dead, make great headlines. They may even be valuable in motivating governments and individuals to be vigilant against threats to democracy around the world. </p>
<p>However, there isn’t sufficient empirical evidence to support these claims.</p>
<p>Statements about democracy’s recession are often based on a few anecdotal, but salient, cases of where democracy has been genuinely curtailed, and do not take into account the number of cases where democracy has remained strong or has advanced in recent years. </p>
<p>These statements are also often about aspects of political systems that are important, but not about democracy per se. Claims that democracy is on the decline have been made based on bureaucratic incompetency, corruption, government criticism of the media, and so forth.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"832708293516632065"}"></div></p>
<p>Many democracy indices exist that can discern trends over time, but there are no indices that identify or measure all aspects of political systems, that define open and competitive elections, and that are needed, therefore, to make conclusions about which aspects of democracy are on the decline and which are on the rise around the world. </p>
<p>Such comprehensive data would make for a much less titillating view about the state of democracy in the world, but it would be a more accurate and responsible one.</p>
<h2>Democracy as equality</h2>
<p><strong>Clare Woodford, University of Brighton</strong></p>
<p>For too long political thought has muddled democracy – the enactment of the equality of all – with representative regimes we call democratic but which are in actual fact always oligarchic. </p>
<p>The equality of the people cannot be institutionalised. This does not mean that some forms of institutionalisation would not be more disposed towards democracy than others.</p>
<p>It seems pertinent to question the relationship between democracy and the regimes that go by its name. But the focus of such questioning must surely be the manner and extent to which any regime creates and supports (or represses and undermines) the ongoing conditions for democracy rather than simply institutionalising and entrenching one form of equality over others such that it becomes stale and oppressive.</p>
<p>A debate over whether democracy is dead or alive may only work to discipline the demos in an ill-fated attempt to defend it. But the very emergence of this debate highlights the urgency with which we must attend to the ways in which emancipation has become entangled with and subverted by domination through institutionalisation. </p>
<p>To misrecognise democracy is to place more barriers in its way. As long as things could be other than they are democracy is always possible. Regardless of how long it is suppressed or lies dormant, and to the perpetual chagrin of its opponents, democracy can never die.</p>
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<p><em>You can read the rest of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Democracy takes many forms, some of them democracy in name only. Confusion and misappropriation complicate the public struggle for the democracy to come, but this challenge is always unending.Jean-Paul Gagnon, Assistant Professor in Politics, University of CanberraClare Woodford, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of BrightonDawn Brancati, Visiting Scholar, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia UniversityEva Cherniavsky, Andrew Hilen Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of WashingtonNadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory, Columbia UniversityYoungho Cho, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Sogang UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882392018-01-17T02:33:55Z2018-01-17T02:33:55ZIs Democracy Dead or Alive? Democracy has a future, if we rethink and remake it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198445/original/file-20171211-27719-ni5dcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While some are declaring that democracy has had its day, others see this as a time to develop more truly democratic ways of living.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/leopoldcollection/masterpieces/41">Gustav Klimt, Death and Life, 1910</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>These comments on the global fate of democracy, the first in a three-part series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">Is Democracy Dead or Alive?</a>, are gathered by <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/democratic-theory-overview.xml">Democratic Theory</a> and co-published by The Conversation with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. Several of these comments will feature as full-length articles in a special issue of Democratic Theory.</em></p>
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<p>Consider Brexit, the election of US President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-on-the-verge-of-democide-as-referendum-looms-74621">referendum</a>, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s policy of <a href="https://theconversation.com/philippines-cannot-build-a-nation-over-the-bodies-of-100-000-dead-in-dutertes-war-on-drugs-64053">state-sanctioned murder</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hungary-cracks-down-on-foreign-funding-dealing-a-harsh-blow-to-ngos-and-to-european-democracy-77185">Hungary’s</a> drift towards a new authoritarianism.</p>
<p>“Democracy is dead,” say the disheartened. “It’s time to bury democracy,” <a href="http://www.arabnews.com/node/1085336/world">pounds</a> one Tunisian pro-Sharia party. “Democracy has fallen, we need a new game in town,” argue Vladimir Putin’s populist and Xi Jinping’s neo-authoritarian allies.</p>
<p>These mantras, circulated widely through social media, have ricocheted around the world and were felt perhaps most viscerally in 2017. It was a year full of political events that, in hindsight, look like a string of assaults against democratic ways of living.</p>
<p>Is democracy dying, or perhaps already dead? Is it really time to eulogise democracy, or are we rather on the cusp of a new phase in its long and varied life? <strong>– Jean-Paul Gagnon, University of Canberra</strong></p>
<h2>Anguish about democracy attests to its value</h2>
<p><strong>Alice el-Wakil, University of Zurich</strong></p>
<p>It has become common that under half of the citizenry votes in most Western democracies, that anti-democratic politicians get elected, and that elected authorities are accused of failing to protect citizens’ interests.</p>
<p>Corruption and nepotism are making comebacks and inequalities of all sorts are on the rise. At this time it is legitimate to ask whether democracy is breaking apart. </p>
<p>However, this worrisome situation should not transform us into sceptics about democracy. The outcry against the problems mentioned above shows that the public notices and criticises political shortcomings to realise democratic ideals – that there is something about democracy worth mobilising for.</p>
<p>Hence, as certain existing democratic regimes risk being perverted, we should use this critical moment to reinvent and expand democracy.</p>
<p>In most parts of the world, democracy has so far only taken the form of a specific kind of institutional arrangement, namely electoral representative democracy. It relies on a valuable but limited set of institutions, which preserves an <a href="http://www.the-college-reporter.com/2017/03/05/yale-theorist-helene-landemore-promotes-open-democracy-democratic-experimentation/">exclusionary bias</a> and a fundamental suspicion of citizens’ capacity to make political decisions. </p>
<p>The current challenges to this specific set of institutions should encourage us to acknowledge alternative, emerging practices of democratic participation and to create and experiment with complementary institutions. </p>
<p>Referendum procedures, new forms of representation, or assemblies of citizens are examples of the innovations we should consider to <a href="http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/4/1/dt040101.xml">revivify</a> democratic systems. Be it only because democracy enables us to publicly, legitimately and continuously question its value and to peacefully propose new ways of realising it.</p>
<h2>Don’t look to the powerful for answers</h2>
<p><strong>Anna Szolucha, University of Bergen</strong></p>
<p>The democratic impulse rarely originates in the corridors of power. Certain political elites may have a knack for exploiting right-wing populist and nationalist narratives to rewrite history and give a semblance of democratic legitimacy to the “corporate state”, but they are hardly effective when it comes to promoting popular concerns about freedom, justice, equality and social dialogue.</p>
<p>Normally, democracy is fought for and won by <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VgkxDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22anna+szolucha%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">ceaseless struggles and popular resistances</a>. </p>
<p>During the wave of pro-democratic protests that recently swept through the world, protesters in the West were critical of the liberal representative model of democracy, growing inequalities, and the influence of business on politics.</p>
<p>It’s clear there is a need to rethink democracy. The solution, however, is not to revamp the old model but to defend and simultaneously revisit the idea of democracy. We need to do so in such a way that it fosters equality, freedom and a sense that ordinary citizens have a greater influence on politics – virtues that the liberal representative version has failed to deliver.</p>
<p>The task of rethinking democracy is pressing because we are witnessing arrogant and aggressive attempts by political elites to appropriate democratic language to expand their own powers. </p>
<p>Despite massive protests and opposition to their policies, they call on “<a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures-populism-43503">The People</a>” to offer more undemocratic solutions to real or imagined problems. They curtail freedom, centralise control, divide society, destroy the climate and institutionalise their privilege in the process.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The more than 13.4 million files in the Paradise Papers revealed the workings of the tax haven industry.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The rethinking and remaking of democracy is going to take effort and perseverance, but the continuing resistance shows that now is definitely not the time to announce the death of democracy because it never belonged to those who seem to be killing it in the first place.</p>
<h2>Three keys to democratic values</h2>
<p><strong>Nancy Rosenblum, Harvard University</strong></p>
<p>Authoritarian power grabs – those grim assaults on constitutional democracy – demand political and legal resistance. Illiberal populism – those episodic rejections of the terms of political representation – demand the rehabilitation of hollowed-out parties.</p>
<p>Authoritarianism is the business of predators: the cynical exploitation of the democratic weaknesses of the moment. Populism is expressive anger: a reaction against conditions of the moment felt to be threatening and out of control. Both are caused by democracy’s own political demons.</p>
<p>We don’t need to relitigate democracy, but we do need a full-throated affirmation of its value, which comes in three different keys.</p>
<p>The aspirational key: democracy is a system of political representation rooted in the moral ground of the equal value of all the governed. No constitutional arrangement is democratic without aspirational commitment to civil and political equality in the form of civil and political rights. No bad faith “illiberal democracy” makes that commitment.</p>
<p>The outcome key: over time and in the face of vicissitudes and ineptitude, democracy aims at general wellbeing more consistently and competently than other forms of government. Democracy is the only self-correcting system. Democracies have recessions, depressions and fumbling responses to crises. They do not have famines.</p>
<p>The defence against tyranny key: civil society is the bulwark against arbitrary and total power. Only democracy cultivates freedom of association and its product: the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vnjqCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22nancy+rosenblum%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">groups, associations, networks and political parties</a> that fuel unendingly contested democratic politics and that make trouble.</p>
<h2>Our best check on elite tyranny</h2>
<p><strong>David Teegarden, University at Buffalo – State University of New York</strong></p>
<p>Democratic governance provides the best practical check on elite domination. The citizenry has numerical superiority in every state. Unfortunately, elites (wealth, military, religious) know how to atomise and render them effectively powerless: thus the persistence of narrow oligarchy and autocracy throughout recorded history.</p>
<p>However, democratic institutions such as elections, the law and the free press, along with their ideals of political equality and individual freedom, can facilitate citizens’ efforts to co-ordinate their actions, draw upon their collective strength and force their elite competitors to agree to some sort of co-operative relationship. </p>
<p>In a functioning democracy, everybody – even billionaires, generals and bishops – must obey laws made by and enforced by all citizens.</p>
<p>It is certainly true that democratic governance often breeds contentious public discourse. It can lead to terrible, even disastrous outcomes from time to time. But it is far better to endure those things than to endure the horror of being forced to bow down publicly to <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=GY6GAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=death+to+tyrants&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">an oppressive tyrant</a> with no realistic hope of betterment either for yourself or for your children.</p>
<h2>Solutions start with a constructive critique</h2>
<p><strong>Peter Wilkin, Brunel University</strong></p>
<p>Representative democracy has always been regarded as problematic by <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=RWLNDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22peter+wilkin%22+AND+%22democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">those who have sought to replace it</a> with authoritarian rule. Today many of these authoritarian trends have gained new voice and increasingly anti-democratic forces can be found.</p>
<p>But we can’t conflate all challenges to representative democracy as being the same. We can distinguish between those social forces that draw inspiration from the radical right – such as <a href="https://blogs.crikey.com.au/worldisnotenough/2017/03/03/macedonia-debates-country/">ethnonationalism</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/europe/europe-neo-fascist-revival-slovakia.html">neo-fascism</a>, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/henry-giroux-joan-pedro-cara-ana/henry-giroux-public-intellectual-on-menace-of-trump-and-new-authori">militarism</a> – and those that can be seen as a novel continuation of the libertarian socialist tradition – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street">Occupy</a>, <a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/08/economist-explains-15">Black Lives Matter</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/kurds-rojava-syria-isis-iraq-assad/505037/">Rojava</a>.</p>
<p>The radical right is intolerant, aggressive and wants to capture the state for authoritarian ends and to nationalise capitalism. </p>
<p>By contrast, the libertarian socialist tradition is an attempt to extend democracy into areas like the economy (for example the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/new-zealand-plan-to-give-everyone-a-citizens-wage-and-scrap-benefits-a6932136.html">citizen’s wage</a>, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/universal-basic-income-is-a-neoliberal-plot-to-make-you-poorer/">universal income</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy">worker control of industry</a>). Libertarian socialists also attempt to reconfigure centralised state power and restore decision-making to communities.</p>
<p>Both movements are responding to the same conditions: the polarising impact of capitalism on social life (inequality, insecurity, poverty) and the failure of representative democracy to offer solutions to these problems. </p>
<p>Such solutions are simpler for the radical right, which has no commitment to democracy or civil liberties. The radical right wants to impose order upon society by any means, including violence and intimidation.</p>
<p>For movements inspired by the libertarian socialist aspiration to deepen, enrich and extend democracy, finding solutions is much harder. The means to be used are seen as fundamental to the society that will emerge. </p>
<p>As a result, violence, fear, propaganda and other powerful anti-democratic tools are eschewed in favour of education and organising communities through dialogue and negotiation.</p>
<h2>Overcome short-termism for democratic renewal</h2>
<p><strong>Graham Smith, University of Westminster</strong></p>
<p>In privileging the present over long-term sustainability, contemporary democracies have failed to deal effectively with climate change. But this does not mean, <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/ev/2015/00000024/00000003/art00006">as some suggest</a>, that we require a more authoritarian solution. Rather, we need to understand the sources of short-termism and think more creatively about our democratic institutions and practices.</p>
<p>The sources of short-termism are multiple and mutually reinforcing. These include: short electoral cycles that incentivise limited party-political horizons; vested interests that benefit from current political and economic arrangements; our psychological preference for immediate gratification; an economic system that privileges carbon-based consumption; and unborn generations who are unable to defend their interests.</p>
<p>These examples could be seen as a litany of despair. Or they could be recognised as a new set of challenges on which to base democratic renewal. </p>
<p>The potential contours for a reinvigorated long-term democracy are beginning to emerge. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=8FPFBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT78&dq=%22graham+smith%22+AND+%22future+generations%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">Imaginative and practical democratic innovation</a> already includes: institutional experimentation such as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YfW4DQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA117&dq=%22future+generations%22+AND+%22democracy%22&ots=snBzcUcH6_&sig=a9thNf8CVzAx0cSjWdxcvDkrjkA">independent offices for future generations</a> that scrutinise the decision-making of other public bodies; new rights and forms of public participation designed to orientate citizens towards consideration of future generations; and co-operatives and other forms of collective corporate governance that prioritise sustainability over immediate economic return.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leading policymakers, business leaders and civil society activists gathered in 2017 for the first UN Global Festival of Ideas for Sustainable Development.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Global Festival of Action/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Time to get serious about citizenship education</h2>
<p><strong>Ryusaku Yamada, Soka University</strong></p>
<p>Civil society, voluntary associations, active citizenship, social capital – these were the rosy keywords often used in discussions of radical democracy at the end of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Now, nearly 20 years later, we are seeing that people’s active participation can be negative, driven by emotional populist movements. Social capital is not always strong enough to empower people who are alienated and excluded from decision-making. Civil society is often uncivil.</p>
<p>History tells us that the so-called democratic political system does not guarantee the improvement of democratic society. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Mannheim">Karl Mannheim</a>, for example, who analysed mass society in the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humaff.2016.26.issue-2/humaff-2016-0011/humaff-2016-0011.xml">age of fascism</a>, worried about an irrational democracy of emotions. </p>
<p>Mannheim was an advocate of social education (a concept similar to citizenship education today), which is meant to make the attitudes and behaviours of both common people and elites more democratic.</p>
<p>Although some might doubt the efficacy of such an education for the democratisation of society, it hasn’t in any serious way been tried before. As the old saying goes: we won’t know if it’ll work until we try. </p>
<p>For Mannheim and some of his contemporaries like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey">John Dewey</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot">T.S. Eliot</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandie_Lindsay,_1st_Baron_Lindsay_of_Birker">A.D. Lindsay</a>, democracy is not only a political system but also a way of life. Citizenship education is not only a matter of school education but also of people’s social practice in their everyday lives. </p>
<p>Far from saying “democracy is dying”, we need to say that “now is the time for democracy to be lived”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Read parts 2 and 3 of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryusaku Yamada receives funding from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice el-Wakil, Anna Szolucha, David A. Teegarden, Graham Smith, Nancy L. Rosenblum, and Peter Wilkin do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is it really time to eulogise democracy, or are we rather on the cusp of a new phase in its long and varied life?Alice el-Wakil, PhD Researcher, University of ZurichAnna Szolucha, Research Fellow, Polish Institute of Advanced Studies, Polish Academy of SciencesDavid A. Teegarden, Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Classics, University at BuffaloGraham Smith, Professor of Politics, University of WestminsterNancy L. Rosenblum, Senator Joseph Clark Research Professor on Ethics in Politics and Government, Harvard UniversityPeter Wilkin, Reader In Communications Media & Cultural Studies, Brunel University LondonRyusaku Yamada, Professor of Political Theory, Soka UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882382017-12-05T19:16:10Z2017-12-05T19:16:10ZTen things Australia can do to be a human rights hero<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196846/original/file-20171129-28913-14q42ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1946%2C3591%2C1639&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Effective leadership requires leading by example, but Australia’s human rights record has drawn increasing criticism at home and abroad. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/froge/24865242966/in/album-72157664247376242/">Andrew Hill/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Sunday is Human Rights Day. December 10 marks 69 years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> on December 10, 1948. With the 70th anniversary coming up in 2018, the UN has launched <a href="http://www.standup4humanrights.org/en/">Stand Up 4 Human Rights</a>, a year-long campaign to bring the ideals of the declaration closer to reality. </p>
<p>As a leader in the <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/australia-and-universal-declaration-human-rights">framing of the UN declaration</a> and one of the world’s oldest democracies, Australia prides itself on its commitment to democracy and human rights. The Australian government has an excellent opportunity to show leadership in promoting these values at home and abroad when it takes up a seat on the UN Human Rights Council from 2018. </p>
<p>In this role, Australia has <a href="http://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/international-organisations/Pages/australias-membership-unhrc-2018-2020.aspx">pledged</a> to be “an international human rights leader” and to advance human rights with “active, practical advocacy, sensitivity and fairness, and a willingness to speak out against human rights violations and abuses”.</p>
<p>However, effective leadership requires leading by example, and Australia’s human rights record has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/nov/10/un-countries-line-up-to-criticise-australias-human-rights-record">drawn increasing criticism in recent years</a>. </p>
<h2>What can we do to strengthen our human rights framework?</h2>
<p>We recently brought together Australian human rights scholars to answer this question. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjhu20/23/2?nav=tocList&">Our collection</a> of articles in the Australian Journal of Human Rights, entitled <em>Vanguard or laggard? Democracy and human rights in Australia</em>, details the relationship between democracy and human rights, and provides a roadmap for improving Australia’s democratic and human rights record.</p>
<p>Democracy should generate protection for human rights through accountability mechanisms that work across three axes:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>horizontal accountability</strong> refers to the role of the judiciary and integrity institutions such as the ombudsman and human rights commission</p></li>
<li><p><strong>vertical accountability</strong> refers to elections and the participatory role of citizens</p></li>
<li><p><strong>diagonal accountability</strong> denotes the role of free speech, media and civil society organisations in holding governments to account.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There is no clear-cut nexus between Australian democracy and human rights across these areas of accountability. And the conditions necessary for each form of accountability to operate successfully are not as strong as is generally assumed. </p>
<p>Accountability mechanisms are often overshadowed by parliamentary supremacy in our version of Westminster democracy. This leaves many citizens vulnerable to rights infringements.</p>
<p>A core weakness in Australia’s vertical accountability is the lack of an entrenched or statutory bill of rights. This leaves the executive and legislature with primary control over human rights determinations. </p>
<p>Voters decide who these legislators are and can change them at elections if they are unhappy with their decisions on rights issues. History suggests voters have indeed punished governments that fail to act on majority rights concerns. </p>
<p>However, protection for minority rights, and the rights of <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-just-black-matter-australias-indifference-to-aboriginal-lives-and-land-85168">Indigenous Australians</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-trump-ups-the-ante-executive-powers-should-worry-australians-too-78763">refugees</a> in particular, do not attract sufficient support at the ballot box. Not surprisingly, government policies reflect this electoral reality.</p>
<p>Without a bill of rights, minorities and others whose rights are threatened also have limited capacity to trigger horizontal accountability mechanisms for protection. Aside from some exceptional rulings, such as the High Court’s <a href="http://lawgovpol.com/implied-rights-constitution/">implied rights determinations</a>, Australian judges have generally been reluctant to read the law broadly to incorporate rights. </p>
<p>Further, the Australian Human Rights Commission has a limited mandate. It is also <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/revealed-abbott-government-tried-to-remove-gillian-triggs-as-head-of-the-australian-human-rights-commission-20150213-13du7s.html">vulnerable</a> to <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/australian-human-rights-commission-president-gillian-triggs-criticises-federal-government-cuts-to-her-budget/news-story/d8b102a9467516415cf62e20aa4afb80">funding cuts</a> and <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/section-18c-attorney-general-george-brandis-slams-human-rights-commission/news-story/0fffc094d7d444809d27bb1dffd71cc8">political attacks</a> when government perceives the commission to have overstepped its mark. These deficiencies have become more obvious in recent years with the rise of the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/07/how-australia-just-became-a-national-security-state/?utm_term=.d663c3376feb">security state</a>”.</p>
<p>Diagonal accountability mechanisms, including a free press and civil society, have been able to flourish in Australia. Even so, there are major limitations to their ability to pursue rights concerns. We have seen increasing media concentration, funding cuts to public broadcasters and the extension of <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/opinion/2017/2/3/we-must-protest-restrictions-on-our-right-to-protest">legislative restrictions</a> on civil society.</p>
<p>Such developments reduce the potential for these democratic actors to bring problems to light and inform governments and voters about rights issues.</p>
<p>Unless or until Australians decide to support greater rights protections, whether through constitutional or legislative action, these problems are likely to remain. </p>
<p>Fixing these problems is important. This is not only because human rights are important in themselves, but also because democracy requires a basic level of respect for human rights to function properly.</p>
<h2>Ten things Australia can do to protect rights</h2>
<p>With Australia becoming a member of the UN Human Rights Council, it is more important than ever that we get our own house in order, if we want to be a model for good democratic practice underpinned by a strong human rights framework.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196854/original/file-20171129-28862-fi5miy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196854/original/file-20171129-28862-fi5miy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196854/original/file-20171129-28862-fi5miy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196854/original/file-20171129-28862-fi5miy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196854/original/file-20171129-28862-fi5miy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196854/original/file-20171129-28862-fi5miy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196854/original/file-20171129-28862-fi5miy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Having secured a seat at the UN Human Rights Council, Australia needs to get its own house in order.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UN Geneva/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here’s a start: these ten broad steps are eminently doable. While not covering all the gaps, these will get us a long way toward more robust human rights protection in Australia.</p>
<p><strong>1. Adopt a bill of rights</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>A bill of rights will increase the capacity of minorities and others whose rights are threatened to seek protection from the courts, if and when parliament fails to do so.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>2. Protect freedom of speech</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Reverse funding cuts to public media outlets.</p></li>
<li><p>Achieve a better balance between security laws and freedom of speech by adding public interest disclosure protections to national security laws.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>3. Protect the rule of law and integrity institutions</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Strengthen the independence of integrity institutions such as statutory officeholders (information commissioners, human rights commissioners). This includes mandating transparent, arm’s length and merit-based selection criteria for appointments to these offices. Stronger statutory guarantees of adequate funding are also needed.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>4. Protect the right to vote</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Strengthen our compulsory voting laws because of their beneficial (yet generally unrecognised) effects on human rights protection, particularly their demonstrated capacity to protect rights such as equality before the law, freedom from discrimination and equal voting power.</p></li>
<li><p>Continue to support electoral commissions in their efforts to achieve universal or near-universal electoral participation.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>5. Protect freedom of association</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Support the flourishing of civil society organisations by removing restrictive protest laws.</p></li>
<li><p>Ensure a fair and nonpartisan regulatory framework for funding civil society organisations.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>6. Strengthen rights protections for Indigenous Australians</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Dismantle the intellectual and legal framework that creates barriers to recognising and respecting Indigenous Australians.</p></li>
<li><p>Be open to Indigenous perspectives and realities and make a genuine effort to right historical wrongs.</p></li>
<li><p>Strengthen racial discrimination laws to prevent the abuse of the special measures provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act to the detriment of Indigenous Australians.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196856/original/file-20171129-28866-1sjqw92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196856/original/file-20171129-28866-1sjqw92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196856/original/file-20171129-28866-1sjqw92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196856/original/file-20171129-28866-1sjqw92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196856/original/file-20171129-28866-1sjqw92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196856/original/file-20171129-28866-1sjqw92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196856/original/file-20171129-28866-1sjqw92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia must not forget that seeking asylum is a human right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Takver/flick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>7. Strengthen rights protections for asylum seekers</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Uphold human right obligations that are owed to asylum seekers on the presumption that they may well be genuine refugees (as the 1951 Convention on Refugees that Australia has signed requires). This includes closing all offshore processing and detention centres.</p></li>
<li><p>Promote the human rights of all migrants and their families as Australia’s representatives have promised at UN meetings such as the <a href="http://refugeesmigrants.un.org/refugees-compact">Global Compact for Refugees and Migrants</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>8. Strengthen rights protections for women</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Improve women’s social and economic rights to enable them to participate fully and equally in Australian society. This includes closing the gender pay gap, increasing access to affordable child care and tackling the poverty facing disadvantaged women including single mothers, Indigenous women, older women, women and girls with disabilities, and women facing domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace and community.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>9. Strengthen rights protections for poor Australians</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Implement a policy framework to better uphold our international commitments to protect the economic and social rights of vulnerable Australians. This includes acting on housing affordability and homelessness, protecting vulnerable workers, reducing unemployment and underemployment, and increasing support for the poorest households.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>10. Implement marriage equality</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Honour the outcome of the Marriage Law Postal Survey by legalising marriage equality.</li>
</ul>
<p>Happy Human Rights Day everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carolien van Ham receives funding from the Australian Research Council's DECRA funding scheme (project number RG142911, project name DE150101692). The views expressed in this article are the views of the author, based on the author's research, and in no way represent the views of the ARC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Hill receives funding from the Australian Research Council. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and in no way represent the views of the ARC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Chappell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from the European Researcg Council. The views expressed in this article belong to the authors and no way represent the views of the ARC. </span></em></p>On Human Rights Day, and with Australia set to take up a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, here’s a must-do list for this country to become a credible advocate for human rights.Carolien van Ham, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, UNSW SydneyLisa Hill, Professor of Politics, University of AdelaideLouise Chappell, Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute, Professor Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/876062017-11-16T22:26:42Z2017-11-16T22:26:42ZA Robert De Niro Theory of Post-Truth: ‘Are you talking to me?’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194971/original/file-20171116-17112-19pygv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro's character, Travis Bickle, inhabits his own crazy paradigm, yet ultimately events frame him as a hero in the eyes of others too.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxoczOXRi4">YouTube </a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em></p>
<p><em>Over two days from November 20, the Post-Truth Initiative will host a series of events, including an evening <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/aec_events/sydney-ideas-truth-evidence-and-reason-who-can-we-believe/">question and answer session</a> on the 20th with invited guests from around the world. The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Many of the commentaries on post-truth have attempted to locate the sources of it. Where does post-truth discourse come from, and who is responsible for producing it?</p>
<p>Looked at this way, post-truth will never be found. It does not exist there. There is nothing new about politicians and the powerful telling lies, spinning, producing propaganda, dissembling, or bullshitting. Machiavellianism became a common term of political discourse precisely because it embodies Machiavelli’s belief that all leaders might, at some point, need to lie.</p>
<p>Lying is not an aberration in politics. Political theorist <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strauss-leo/">Leo Strauss</a>, developing a concept first outlined by Plato, coined the term “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie#Leo_Strauss">noble lie</a>” to refer to an untruth knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or advance an agenda.</p>
<p>Questions about the agents of post-truth, and attempts to locate the sources of political bullshit, are just not grasping what is new and specific about post-truth. If we look for post-truth in the realm of the production of disinformation, we will not find it. This is why so many are sceptical that the concept of post-truth represents anything new. Not all haystacks contain needles.</p>
<p>So where is post-truth located, and how did we get here? Post-truth resides not in the realm of the production, but in the realm of reception. If lies, dissembling, spinning, propaganda and the creation of bullshit have always been part and parcel of politics, then what has changed is how publics respond to them. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth">Oxford Dictionary definition</a> of post-truth makes this clear; post-truth refers to “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.</p>
<h2>The problem with ‘objective facts’</h2>
<p>While this definition captures the essence of the problem, most academics, particularly those working in the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS), will immediately identify one glaring problem with it. This is the concept of “objective facts”. Anyone with an awareness of the work of Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, or Ludwig Wittgenstein will know that facts are always contestable. </p>
<p>If they weren’t, public debate on complex policy issues would be easy. We could simply identify the objective facts and build policy on them.</p>
<p>Facts are social constructions. If there were no humans, no human societies and no human languages, there would be no facts. Facts are a particular kind of socially constructed entity. </p>
<p>Facts express a relationship between what we claim and what exists. We construct facts to convey information about the world. </p>
<p>But this does not mean we can just make up any facts we please. What makes something a fact is that it captures some features of the world to which it refers. The validity of our facts is dependent, in part, on their relationship to the world they describe. Something that fails accurately to describe something, or some state of affairs, is not a fact.</p>
<h2>Enter ‘alternative facts’…</h2>
<p>What about “alternative facts”? The idea is not as far-fetched as it seems. Kuhn’s <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/484164a">The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</a> is one of the most influential academic texts on the history of science. Kuhn’s concept of paradigms has seeped into public debate. But Kuhn’s notion of scientific “progress” occurring through a change in paradigm not only legitimates alternative facts it depends on them. </p>
<p>Each paradigm, according to Kuhn, has its own facts. Facts in one paradigm are not recognised as facts by adherents of alternative paradigms. Kuhn went so far as to argue that scientists from different paradigms lived in different worlds.</p>
<p>Facts, Kuhn argued, are always relative to the overarching paradigm. As such, Donald Trump and his supporters might claim to be simply occupying a different paradigm. </p>
<p>One can derive a similar position from Foucault’s notion of regimes of truth. Truth, according to Foucault, is relative to the regime in which it is embedded. And regimes of truth differ across time and place.</p>
<p>Or one can approach this via Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games”: unless one understands the rules of the game one is unable to take part. Transposed into contemporary political debate, the left and right each have their own paradigm, regime, truth, or language game.</p>
<p>Even if we do not accept Kuhn’s notion of paradigms, Kellyanne Conway could have meant, as she later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/03/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts-mistake-oscars">tried to claim</a>, that the Trump administration simply had a different perspective on the status of the facts, and a differing view of what facts matter. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VSrEEDQgFc8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kellyanne Conway explains that White House press secretary Sean Spicer offered “alternative facts”.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Admitting the role of academia</h2>
<p>Again, most academics will recognise the validity of this idea. There are always multiple perspectives on complex issues. The facts, as we constantly remind our students, don’t speak for themselves. Which facts are relevant, and what to make of them, is always a matter of interpretation.</p>
<p>Thus, post-truth finds intellectual legitimation in the necessary and critical approach to the construction of knowledge that is taken as a given in academia. Academics necessarily, and rightly, take a sceptical attitude to all truth claims. </p>
<p>We encourage students to express their opinion. We teach them that alternative views are to be valued. Nietzschean perspectivism is the default position of most academics, and we are loath to reach definitive conclusions particularly in ethical and political matters. Indeed, the University of Sydney now implores students to “<a href="https://twitter.com/sjw_nonsense/status/906155654154412032">unlearn truth</a>”.</p>
<p>This idea is not as outrageous as it might sound, although taken literally the consequences of “unlearning truth”, as we are discovering with post-truth politics, could be disastrous. But understood another way, “unlearning truth” is entirely consistent with an Enlightenment ethos.</p>
<p>Kant’s call to arms in the service of Enlightenment was <em>Sapere Aude</em>; dare to know. This was a call for humanity to overthrow its reliance on the church, the monarchy and other sources of authority as providing the secure grounds for knowledge claims. Take nothing at face value, and reason for oneself.</p>
<p>The Enlightenment also promoted the idea of inalienable human rights possessed by every individual and revived the ancient Greek concept of democracy; one person one vote; everyone has their say on political matters. In this context, it is possible to view post-truth discourse as the radicalisation of the Enlightenment. Specifically, in the realm of knowledge production, it is the democratisation of epistemology.</p>
<p>While democracy might be a political principle worth defending, there is a tension between it and the democratisation of epistemology. Democracy needs a population sufficiently well educated to be able to sift through the arguments and reach informed judgements.</p>
<p>This was the great hope of Enlightenment liberalism, particularly in relation to the provision of education. Increased access to education would bring progress and peace. A highly educated populace would make democracy function better.</p>
<h2>Confronting the post-truth paradox</h2>
<p>Despite the fact that by any standards Western populations are better educated than in Kant’s time, we seem to be regressing rather than progressing in terms of democratic practice. This is the post-truth paradox. The more educated societies have become, the more dysfunctional democracy seems to be. The supposed positive link between democracy, education and knowledge appears to be broken.</p>
<p>How can we explain this paradox, and can we do anything about it? Although many have been quick to blame postmodernism for the emergence of post-truth, the problem is much broader than that and infects most of the humanities, arts and social sciences. Postmodernism is only the most radical version of the idea that we should value, and allow a voice to, all opinions. </p>
<p>The political impulse behind this is admirable. Few academics are so arrogant to claim that they possess the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Allowing others, particularly marginalised others, to express “their truth” is seen as progressive.</p>
<p>Although many academics will not embrace the extremes of postmodernism, the ethos behind that approach is understandable to most. This explains why what seems to many outside of the academy to be a lunatic fringe has become so influential within the academy. Foucault, for example, is one of the most <a href="https://philosophyinatimeoferror.com/2016/07/05/most-cited-philosophers-and-others/">cited authors in HASS subjects</a>.</p>
<p>To be clear, I am not arguing that Trump and others in his administration have read the likes of Kuhn, Foucault and Wittgenstein. The problem is worse than that. It is a structural issue. </p>
<p>Increased access to education has suffused these ideas throughout the social field. Few people who have attended universities in HASS subjects in the last 30 years could have escaped exposure to these ideas. The incipient relativism that is the logical endpoint of them is now deeply ingrained in Western societies.</p>
<p>Of course, academics are not the only source of post-truth. But in an important way, they have contributed to it. When measuring our impact on society we only have two options. Either we have some impact, or we do not. </p>
<p>For some time now, those working in HASS subjects have been concerned to demonstrate how their research and teaching matters in practical ways to society. There is a logic to this, as governments increasingly seek to validate funding for HASS subjects on the basis of their supposed <a href="http://www.arc.gov.au/research-impact-principles-and-framework">impact</a> on society.</p>
<p>As the supposed guardians of truth, knowledge and the commitment to science, universities cannot have it both ways. If academics make a difference and publics no longer seem to care about facts, truth and reason, then we cannot be absolved of all responsibility for this situation. Indeed, if we do deny our responsibility, we as good as admit that have we little impact on society.</p>
<h2>What can we do about this?</h2>
<p>If universities are the social institutions whose function is to produce and protect knowledge and truth, and if those same institutions are, in part, the source of post-truth, what can we do about it?</p>
<p>First we need to recover our intellectual nerve. We need to situate critical approaches to the production of knowledge in context. We need to go beyond simply introducing students to critique and explore with them the validity of arguments. We need to be prepared to say that some perspectives are better than others, and explain why.</p>
<p>An embracing of multiple perspectives should not lead us to conclude that all perspectives are equally valid. And if they are not all equally valid we need sound epistemological reasons to choose one over the other. In short, we need to re-examine and reinvigorate the Enlightenment impulse.</p>
<p>Second, we need to recover our commitment to objective truth. George Orwell has been much cited as a prescient figure in understanding post-truth. Orwell believed: “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” </p>
<p>Yet the concept of “objective truth” has not merely faded out of the world; it has been sent into exile. Few academics embrace the concept today.</p>
<p>This well-founded scepticism towards “objective truth” comes from the confusion between an ontological belief in the existence of objective truth, and an epistemological claim to know it. The two are not synonymous. We can retain our critical stance to epistemological claims about objective truth only by insisting on its status as something that exists but which no one possesses.</p>
<p>As Orwell knew only too well, if the concept of objective truth is moved into the dustbin of history there can be no lies. And if there are no lies there can be no justice, no rights and no wrongs. The concept of “objective truth” is what makes claims about social justice possible.</p>
<p>The irony, of course, is that most academics will claim to be doing just this. After all, most academics will have no problem in declaring climate change to be human-produced, that women remain disadvantaged in many areas of life, that poverty is real, and that racism is founded on false beliefs.</p>
<p>The issue is not that we all make these universal truth claims; it is that in embracing epistemological positions that tend towards relativism, we have denied ourselves a secure ground on which to defend them. In which case, these truth claims appear as nothing other than opinions, perspectives, or expressions of the identity we most value. And if academics cannot ground their truth claims on something other than opinions, perspectives or identity, then how can we expect anyone else to do so?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Wight does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Orwell knew only too well, if the concept of objective truth is moved into the dustbin of history there can be no lies. And if there are no lies there can be no justice, no rights and no wrongs.Colin Wight, Professor of International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/866872017-11-16T02:15:39Z2017-11-16T02:15:39ZWar and democracy – who decides?<p>In March 2003, the Howard government involved Australia in an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-report-john-prescott-says-tony-blair-led-uk-into-illegal-war-in-iraq-a7129106.html">illegal military invasion of Iraq</a>. The consequences of that war continue to be devastating for the people of Iraq and the wider Middle East. The prime minister was able to opt for invasion because in Australia the sovereign power to take the gravest decision, the commitment of the Australian Defence Force to international armed conflict, rests with the executive – in practice, often the PM alone – rather than with parliament.</p>
<p>Since 2014, further military deployments have taken place in Iraq. The bombing of Syria continues. Several months ago, the prime minister announced <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-11/australia-would-enter-conflict-with-north-korea/8796586">unqualified support</a> in principle for the United States in possible military action against North Korea.</p>
<p>All these developments reinforce the dangers typically associated with secretive small-group decision-making. Closed decision-making breeds hubris; and hubris, the friend of folly and recklessness, often results in disasters. All are a curse for democracy. That is why the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>, in partnership with <a href="http://www.warpowersreform.org.au/">Australians for War Powers Reform</a>, convened a public forum on the subject of the urgent need for war powers reform.</p>
<p>Held on the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/events/war-democracy-decides/">International Day of Peace</a>, September 21, <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/events/war-democracy-decides/">War and Democracy – Who Decides?</a> featured contributions from <a href="https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/humanities/paul-barratt">Paul Barratt AO</a>, president of Australians for War Powers Reform and former secretary of the Department of Defence; <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/about/commissioners/former-president-professor-gillian-triggs">Professor Gillian Triggs</a>, former president of the Australian Human Rights Commission (see her video below); and lawyer and activist <a href="http://kellietranter.com/">Kellie Tranter</a>, whose edited contribution follows.</p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>When governments kill in large numbers they always do so for a good reason. We must be on guard against that. <strong>– Howard Zinn</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lawyer and human rights activist Kellie Tranter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lindy Baker/Sydney Democracy Network</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian politicians talk about ending terrorism but they make decisions that carelessly or inadvertently stir the pot and radicalise people. This then reinforces the dominant <a href="https://theconversation.com/by-framing-secular-society-as-a-christian-creation-hansons-revival-goes-beyond-simple-racism-67707">public narrative</a> and makes military incursions superficially acceptable. Unfortunately, vigorous debate in Australia is encouraged only within the limits imposed by “<a href="https://chomsky.info/20070405/">unstated doctrinal orthodoxy</a>”, particularly in relation to foreign policy.</p>
<p>Not only are the people who control what we know determining our future, the government secrecy surrounding Australia’s historical record deliberately obfuscates our understanding of what is going on right now. Symptomatic is the way the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has recently been <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/adf-tracking-civilian-deaths-in-syria-iraq-is-airstrikes/8354064">found</a> to be one of the least transparent military coalition members in Syria. The ADF won’t reveal “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/adf-tracking-civilian-deaths-in-syria-iraq-is-airstrikes/8354064">where they bomb, when they bomb or what they bomb</a>”.</p>
<p>Syria’s recent history reads like a contemporary illustration of Chris Clark’s conclusion in <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061146657/the-sleepwalkers">Sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914</a>. The period analysed in that book shows that great powers had more than one enemy, and that executive decision-making was chaotic. </p>
<p>War was a consequence of decisions made in many places, with their effect being cumulative and interactive. These decisions were made by a gallery of actors who otherwise shared a fundamentally similar political culture.</p>
<p>On September 9 2015, Australia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Gillian Bird, <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">wrote</a> to the UN Security Council president claiming that Article 51 of the UN Charter recognises the inherent right of states to act in individual or collective self-defence when an armed attack occurs against a UN member state. States must be able to act in self-defence when the government of the state where the threat is located is unwilling or unable to prevent attacks originating from its territory. Bird alleged that the Syrian government had, by its failure to constrain attacks upon Iraqi territory originating from ISIS bases within Syria, demonstrated that it was unwilling or unable to prevent those attacks.</p>
<h2>Unauthorised and uninvited</h2>
<p>The Australian government was not questioned about how Syria was unwilling or unable to prevent those attacks. It was not asked how airstrikes would affect the Syrian population and infrastructure. </p>
<p>There was no link between ISIS, a non-state actor, and Syria. ISIS was not acting under instructions from, or the direction or control of, the Syrian government. Western governments made no attempt to work with the morally disgraceful Assad regime to actually enable it to prevent attacks emanating from its territory (and indeed Australia didn’t recognise the legitimacy of the regime).</p>
<p>Moreover, the Syrian government didn’t invite us to carry out airstrikes in Syria, and there was no UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of force. Neither the Australian government nor the opposition provided a clear explanation about why in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4292452.htm">August</a> 2015 there was no clear legal basis for Australian involvement in Syria, but by <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4309513.htm">September</a> 2015 there was. </p>
<p>There was no rational discussion about our strategic ends. There was certainly no <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">mention</a> of the fact that in 2014 we already had embedded ADF personnel in Florida contributing to operations against ISIS in Syria.</p>
<p>There was, however, a <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">letter</a>, dated September 17 2015, from the Syrian government to the Security Council. The mainstream media did not report it, but the letter was referred to in documents I received following FOI requests. The letter disputed Australia’s unwilling and unable claims and pointed out that the Syrian Arab Army had, over four years, been fighting ISIS, the <a href="https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/listedterroristorganisations/pages/jabhatal-nusra.aspx">al-Nusrah Front</a> and other groups being supported by Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Western states. </p>
<p>The letter called on others to co-ordinate with Syria. It said the international coalition led by the US had yet to achieve anything tangible in its war on terrorist organisations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UN Security Council powers failed to alleviate the suffering of civilians as the conflict in Syria intensified.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russian Ministry of Defence</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Syrian government had a point, particularly since US President Barack Obama had already told VICE News (on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOnKM2a7Nok">camera</a>) that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ISIS is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion in 2003, which is an example of unintended consequences.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Failing Syria</h2>
<p>What was omitted from the political and public discourse in the lead-up to Australia’s decision to become involved in Syria was the fact that Syria had experienced a severe <a href="https://theconversation.com/food-security-how-drought-and-rising-prices-led-to-conflict-in-syria-71539">drought</a> between 2007 and 2010. The drought spurred as many as 1.5 million people to migrate from the countryside into the cities, creating significant social and economic tensions. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq">2012</a> the UK’s MI6 co-operated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to Syrian rebels after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. That same year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/west-ignored-russian-offer-in-2012-to-have-syrias-assad-step-aside">Russia proposed</a> that Assad could step down as part of a peace deal. The US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator would fall that they ignored the proposal. </p>
<p>By this stage, the UN human rights commissioner had already <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2013/jan/02/syria-violence-closes-aleppo-airport-live">confirmed</a> 60,000 Syrian fatalities between March 2011 and November 2012. The current <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/03/13/the-human-toll-of-syrias-bloody-conflict-numbers-in-the-hundred_a_21884907/">estimate</a> is almost half a million deaths.</p>
<p>In September 2014 the US Congress <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/19/us-weapons-to-syria-repeats-historical-mistake">determined</a> that the US$500 million CIA program to arm Syrian rebels had failed. Arms had been ending up in the hands of the al-Nusra Front, and Jordanian intelligence officers were selling arms on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/middleeast/cia-arms-for-syrian-rebels-supplied-black-market-officials-say.html?mcubz=0">black market</a>. </p>
<p>The following month, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/politics/cia-study-says-arming-rebels-seldom-works.html">reported</a> that a CIA report had concluded that “many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict”. The report came a month after Australia had delivered weapons to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and a month before our successful <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/Operations/Okra/2014Stats.asp">delivery</a> of 18,000kg of crated weapons from Albania to Erbil in Iraq.</p>
<p>On March 21 2015, international aid agencies and human rights groups released the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/worldtoday/failing-syria-report-says-aid-has-not-improved-for/6307778">Failing Syria</a> report. This found that UN Security Council powers had failed to alleviate the suffering of civilians as the conflict intensified. </p>
<p>Two months later, the International Crisis Group released its own <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/islamic-state-kurdish-militias-icg-report/27018967.html">report</a> warning that military aid had been given without an underlying strategy, which would prolong the battle with ISIS and inflame other local conflicts between intra-Kurdish rivals. The report noted that the US-led coalition had remained silent about Kurdish land grabs in disputed territories.</p>
<p>In May this year, Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/us-military-admits-failures-to-monitor-over-1-billion-worth-of-arms-transfers/">urged</a> the US and other countries to stop arms transfers that could fuel atrocities. This followed confirmation by a US Defence Department audit that the army had failed to monitor over US$1 billion worth of arms and other military equipment transfers to Kuwait and Iraq, which have ended up in the hands of ISIS.</p>
<h2>A show for the domestic audience</h2>
<p>In August 2015 <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-pushed-for-us-request-to-join-syrian-air-strikes-20150825-gj7kfh.html">rumours</a> began to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-in-talks-to-expand-bombing-raids-against-islamic-state-into-syria-20150813-giy3fb.html">circulate</a> that the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, had pushed for the US request to join airstrikes in Syria. Only five days before the bipartisan decision was made, Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-numbers/">reported</a> that 220,000 people had been killed in Syria. Another 12.8 million needed humanitarian assistance and 50% of the population was displaced.</p>
<p>Still, at a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/taxpayers-have-spent-15-billion-to-fund-overseas-military-missions-since-1999/news-story/45c74b73f3d0da74abb70f3050e6430f">reported</a> cost of A$500 million a year for our air war against ISIS, and regardless of international law, we were first in with the US, beating our British counterparts who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/02/cameron-drops-plans-commons-vote-airstrikes-isis-syria">delayed</a> plans for a parliamentary vote. A number of military strategists were of the view that Australia’s involvement was a show for the domestic audience.</p>
<p>The irony, of course, is that six days after the decision to conduct airstrikes in Syria, we had a new prime minister. Shortly after that a document titled “ADF Operations in the Middle East” was produced in response to my FOI <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">request</a>. It confirmed that “the prospects for a political or military solution are poor”.</p>
<p>The word “poor” seems highly inadequate. In order to supply arms to Syrian rebels, the <a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/the-pentagon-is-spending-2-billion-on-soviet-style-arms-for-syrian-rebels">Pentagon</a> relies on an army of contractors from military giants to firms linked to organised crime. Saudi Arabia (a Western ally) and Qatar are <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/">providing</a> clandestine financial and logistical support to ISIS, while Iran and Russia support Assad. Turkey is fighting the Kurds and the US-supported opposition groups, but is fighting with Russia against ISIS.</p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-raqqah-drones-20170808-story.html">drone</a> strikes and bombs being dropped by the US, Belgium, Jordan, Netherlands, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, France, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Israel, Denmark and Australia. There is disturbing evidence of the al-Nusra Front’s <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/17/how-the-islamic-state-seized-a-chemical-weapons-stockpile/">access</a> to sarin gas. And to top it off, a Bulgarian journalist recently <a href="https://trud.bg/350-diplomatic-flights-carry-weapons-for-terrorists/">uncovered</a> Azerbaijan Silk Way Airlines offering diplomatic flights to private companies and arms manufacturers from the US, Balkans and Israel and the militaries of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and US Special Operations Command to ship weapons around the world, including to Syria, without regulation.</p>
<h2>Hidden agendas lead to humanitarian disaster</h2>
<p>Our politicians continue to support the US, an ally that has historically forsaken the exploration of peaceful means and diplomatic solutions in favour of force and aggression. Under the pretext of responding “with decency and with force” to humanitarian concerns and the responsibility to protect civilians, Australia extended airstrikes into Syria.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Confirming he is considering airstrikes in Syria, Tony Abbott tells parliament Australia will respond ‘with decency and with force’.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Decency? Every war is a war on children when armed conflicts kill and maim more <a href="https://www.unicef.org/graca/summry.htm">children</a> than soldiers. Perversely, more soldiers die from <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/11/30/more-australian-soldiers-lost-suicide-fighting-afghanistan-war">suicide</a> and peacetime incidents than war. </p>
<p>And then there’s the matter of secrecy. On January 6 2017, I issued an FOI request to the Defence Department for copies of documents confirming or specifying the dates, locations and outcomes (numbers of military and civilian casualties) of airstrikes by Australian forces in Syria. On January 20 2017, I <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/adf-tracking-civilian-deaths-in-syria-iraq-is-airstrikes/8354064">received</a> an email simply confirming that “the Department does not specifically collect authoritative (and therefore accurate) data on enemy and/or civilian casualties in either Iraq or Syria and certainly does not track such statistics”.</p>
<p>For all the political protestations about concern for civilian lives, we are not even trying to count our victims. To date, we have only claimed responsibility for the deaths of Syrian soldiers in airstrikes in September 2016.</p>
<p>This year, as if Australia wasn’t already an aircraft carrier for the US, the government <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-selling-military-equipment-to-saudi-arabia-during-brutal-yemen-conflict-20170324-gv5k7o.html">decided</a> to sell military equipment to Saudi Arabia. Overnight, Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne became a dedicated arms salesman, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/defence-industry-minister-christopher-pyne-wants-australia-to-become-major-arms-exporter-20170715-gxbv4m.html">announcing</a> that he wanted Australia to become a major arms exporter on a par with Britain, France and Germany, and to use exports to cement relationships with countries in volatile regions such as the Middle East.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Then US Defence Secretary Ash Carter greets Marise Payne and Christopher Pyne at the Pentagon in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amber I. Smith/US Defence Department</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Perpetual war has devastated the Middle East. Others rightly <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/467883075935/shadow-world">argue</a> that a government that devotes the bulk of its budget to arms manufacturing implicitly makes a moral decision that militarism is more important than the creation of well-being for the population.</p>
<p>The difficulty is that Australians still aren’t told the truth about why we became involved in Syria. Those decisions seem to have been made in furtherance of unstated international coalition agendas rather than on open and objective assessments of their merit. This state of affairs is made profoundly worse by the fact that the decision to go to war was an executive decision, not a decision made democratically after full and open parliamentary debate based on the best objective information available.</p>
<p>We are fighting a difficult battle for transparency in these disturbingly Orwellian times, but the battle can and should be waged for as long as we have the will and the means to do so. Our best weapons are an accurate historical and geopolitical perspective and truth. </p>
<p>When it comes to war, our government needs to be more transparent and to open up decision-making on whether to become involved. Politicians and military personnel must be accountable for the human consequences of what they perpetrate in our name. It is our collective responsibility to do what we can to hold them to account.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Gillian Triggs at the Sydney Democracy Network and the Australians for War Powers Reforms public forum.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86687/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The wars in Syria and Iraq are products of secretive decision-making by the executive. Their disastrous consequences are evidence of the need for war powers reform.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/840572017-11-06T19:22:19Z2017-11-06T19:22:19ZIn the ‘fearless city’, Barcelona residents take charge<p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p>Almost every global city has a similar dynamic – a battle between the finance capital that seeks to make money from the city and the needs of the residents who seek to make the city their home. </p>
<p>Rarely do we see residents successfully push back against the power of finance capital. But for those wanting to know how this can be done, look to Barcelona. </p>
<p>I conducted face-to-face research in Barcelona and this story features in the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/episode-1-making-the-impossible-possible/id1202828001?i=1000393176140&mt=2">first episode</a> of my new podcast series, ChangeMakers.</p>
<p>The 2008 global financial crisis was devastating for Spain. It had experienced a housing bubble, and the financial crisis turned quickly into a housing crisis.</p>
<p>In Spain, your sense of self is closely connected to owning a home. Franco created opportunities for people to own a home as a strategy to avoid revolution. Since the transition, parties on both sides have encouraged home ownership.</p>
<p>When the housing crisis came, the “Spanish Dream” came unstuck. Rising unemployment left many families unable to pay their mortgages and facing eviction.</p>
<p>Previously, if you were unable to pay your mortgage you sold your house. Now no-one wanted to buy those houses. People soon discovered how strict the foreclosure rules were – a little-known law allowed banks to evict if an owner defaulted on one mortgage payment. By 2017, half-a-million people had been evicted from their homes.</p>
<p>Enter the PAH, <em>Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca</em> – “platform for people affected by mortgages”. In 2009 a small group of housing activists and progressive academics came together to contemplate what could be done. They set up an organisation to enable people to deal with this situation collectively.</p>
<p>The PAH ambitiously planned to disrupt this eviction crisis. But this wasn’t an easy task. About 50 people attended the first meeting in February 2009.</p>
<p>In the first year, according to co-founder Lucia Gonzalez, the group first needed to provide a space where people could grieve for what was happening to them – and to shift from thinking they were a failure for potentially losing their house to recognising it was a problem created by bigger social forces.</p>
<p>The PAH also realised they couldn’t fix people’s housing issues one by one. The problem was way too big. Instead, they needed to create spaces where people could teach each other how to solve their own problems. </p>
<p>They held Monday-night assemblies where people who were more experienced with housing issues helped those who were newly subject to evictions. Through working together, people came to realise the source of their problems was public policy. And to solve their own problem, and the broader policy problem, they had to work together.</p>
<h2>Discovering the power of the public</h2>
<p>Then <a href="https://theconversation.com/postcard-from-spain-where-now-for-the-quiet-revolution-43779">15M happened</a>. Frustrated by what was happening to Spanish society, the <em>Indignados</em> – literally “the angry ones” – protested in their millions across Spain. The movement occupied Barcelona’s Plaza de Cataluna on and off for weeks. </p>
<p>15M – named after the day it started, May 15, 2011 – was a decentralised movement. As professor Joan Subirats from the Autonomous University of Barcelona told me in July, “there is no address [for 15M], there is no phone number”. It was a mass mobilisation, organised primarily using digital tools. In many ways it was a dramatic contrast to the intensive face-to-face organising work of the PAH.</p>
<p>15M lived in the town squares, and soon the PAH took advantage of those spaces. As Gonzalez told me, 15M “was a perfect storm”. The changemakers were able to connect the PAH’s deep organising work with the 15M mobilisation to grow their housing movement. </p>
<p>Carlos Macias joined the PAH around this time – he was invited to help “stop an eviction” where dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people would stand in front of threatened premises, risking arrest. The movement had come a long way once people lost their sense of shame and fear. Everyday people were prepared to take part in high-risk non-violent civil disobedience, and every time they won (and they won many times) they became emboldened changemakers.</p>
<p>But the housing policies that were the source of the problem had to be changed. To do this, they petitioned the federal government run by the conservative Popular Party to create a law to restrict the ability of banks to evict people who defaulted. They needed 500,000 signatures; they got 1.5 million. And much of the energy for collecting those signatures came from the mobilisations in the square.</p>
<p>They took the petition to Madrid and at the hearings one PAH leader, Ada Colau, famously accused a representative of the banks of being a criminal. It symbolised the crisis and propelled the PAH to national attention. </p>
<p>Colau became a symbol of the people fighting finance capital. The PAH, a community organisation, became the opposition in Spain, not just an opposition party but an opposition to the entire political class.</p>
<p>The PAH was unable to pass its legislation. The PAH then took a similar proposal to the Catalonian parliament. And there they succeeded. For a time evictions stopped, banks had to forgive the debts, finance capital was constrained. </p>
<p>And then the federal government appealed to the constitutional court and suspended the state law. They had lost again.</p>
<h2>Taking on politicians at their own game</h2>
<p>For some at the PAH, this became breaking point. For Colau and Gonzalez, they had tried every strategy they could imagine and it wasn’t enough. They began to think the unthinkable – should they create a political party?</p>
<p>These activists were the most unlikely politicians. They had openly talked about politicians as sell-outs or losers. For them politicians were either so centrist that they failed to represent the residents or so ideological that they failed to get elected. </p>
<p>Their frustration was that although, as Gonzalez said, “we had this big power in the street, the institutions were closed”. They debated among each other: could they build a party that was the political arm of the streets?</p>
<p>So they established a party. Barcelona en Comu was a coalition of five similar urban political parties in the city. Colau was the candidate for the mayor and a network of activists, several from the PAH, were candidates for the council. </p>
<p>The short story is they won. They won the most seats and Colau is now the mayor. It was a brutal battle, captured well in the film <a href="http://www.alcaldessa.com/en/">Alcaldessa</a>. </p>
<p>The team were seasoned organisers who used many of the strategies pioneered with the PAH. Yet the pressures of getting elected versus speaking your values, the pressure from the media, the patriarchal nature of the electoral machine in Barcelona and the all-consuming nature of party politics all featured in the battle.</p>
<h2>So what are the lessons from Barcelona?</h2>
<p>The legislative climate in Barcelona has undergone a radical shift. Banks and big companies like Airbnb have been fined, the process of evictions is slower and more consultative, and the city is building public housing. </p>
<p>There is a desire to locate the government with the experiences of the people. Colau conducts listening campaigns with residents, where she sits and hears residents’ concerns every other Friday. She <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/episode-1-making-the-impossible-possible/id1202828001?i=1000393176140&mt=2/">has said</a> to Gonzalez (who is now in the national parliament):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If it wasn’t for this (these listening sessions) I would be lost.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But others note that change isn’t happening fast enough. As Macias notes, Colau promised 80,000 new public homes when she came to power but there are just 3,000 as of October 2017.</p>
<p>He emphasises that political parties can’t be the answer. Without the deep face- to-face organising work of the PAH and the mobilising work of many Barcelona social movements, any party, including Barcelona en Comu, could become detached from the people.</p>
<p>Barcelona’s story is that radical urban politics are possible. Especially in a crisis, representative strategies like forming new political parties perhaps are a strategic choice for urban movements. Barcelona is one of many places around the world where this is happening. </p>
<p>At the <a href="http://fearlesscities.com/">Fearless Cities</a> conference in Barcelona in June 2017, hundreds of city councils and social movement activists came together to explore the connection between electoralism and activism.</p>
<p>But it is unwise to presume that an urban political party can work on its own. No politician is above the pressures in public life that constrain and minimise radical action, as Colau’s record of delivering public housing shows.</p>
<p>If residents are to take over the city, multiple sites of social change are needed. This includes new political forces and potentially new political parties. There is also a need for organisations that work deeply in communities, like the PAH, dealing with crisis and connecting new leaders to political action – what I would call “organising strategies”. </p>
<p>And there is also a need for mass mobilisation, as we saw with 15M, where people from across social sectors and causes come together to advance a people-centred vision for the city.</p>
<p>But, helpfully, Barcelona provides inspiration for new political strategies in Australia. With our housing bubble, our inflated prices, with people excluded from the housing market, we may one day experience a crash. The organising strategies used in Barcelona may then become frighteningly relevant. </p>
<p>Even without a doomsday analysis, it is interesting to contemplate that perhaps new political parties – urban parties dealing with the urban politics of housing, transport and jobs – could be an innovative way of dealing with our own political malaise.</p>
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<p><em>You can listen to the first Changemakers podcast <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/episode-1-making-the-impossible-possible/id1202828001?i=1000393176140&mt=2">here</a> and find other episodes <a href="https://www.podcastone.com.au/program?action=viewProgram&programID=8031">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Tattersall is the host of the ChangeMakers Podcast, which tells stories about people trying to change the world. She is also a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Sydney as part of the Organising the 21st Century City Project funded by the Halloran Trust. Previously she co-founded GetUp!, founded the Sydney Alliance and authored ‘Power in Coalition’.
</span></em></p>We rarely see residents of a city successfully push back in defence of their needs against the power of finance capital, which seeks to make money from the city. But Barcelona shows it can be done.Amanda Tattersall, Post Doctoral Fellow, School of Geoscience & Host, ChangeMakers, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/855872017-10-31T23:36:02Z2017-10-31T23:36:02ZThe backlash against Black Lives Matter is just more evidence of injustice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190314/original/file-20171016-27711-11yyiep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mural in memory of Alton Sterling, who was shot several times at close range by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 5, 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mural_of_Alton_Sterling_at_the_Triple_S_Food_Mart_in_North_Baton_Rouge.jpg">W. Clarke/Wikipedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the last in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">Black Lives Matter Everywhere</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a>. To mark the presentation of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">2017 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has re-ignited a global conversation about racism. The prize will be presented on November 2 (<a href="https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/events/22459">tickets here</a>).</em></p>
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<p>In White-dominated societies, nearly any demand for equality by people of colour is met by a backlash couched in terms of White victimhood. This has been as true for Black Lives Matter as it was for the civil rights movement. </p>
<p>Just as Black Lives Matter went global, so did the backlash.</p>
<p>One popular (and self-serving) theory holds that White identity politics is merely a response to movements like Black Lives Matter. But this gets the story backwards. Black Lives Matter is a response to White supremacy. The anger harnessed by figures like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani is the anger of White privilege forced to defend itself.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter">All Lives Matter</a>” and “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lives_Matter">Blue Lives Matter</a>” are two of the most prominent rhetorical manifestations of the backlash. Both played major roles in the media coverage of and political response to Black Lives Matter.</p>
<h2>All Lives Matter</h2>
<p>The hashtag and slogan “All Lives Matter” is a declaration of “colourblindness”, which Ian Haney-Lopez <a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/01/20/how_conservatives_hijacked_colorblindness_and_set_civil_rights_back_decades/">describes</a> as “the dominant etiquette around race” today. As is so often the case when it comes to race, liberal rhetoric serves conservative ends.</p>
<p>“All Lives Matter” erases a long past and present of systemic inequality in the US. It represents a refusal to acknowledge that the state does not value all lives in the same way. It reduces the problem of racism to individual prejudice and casts African-Americans as aggressors against a colourblind post-civil rights order in which White people no longer “see race”.</p>
<p>This kind of rhetoric is hardly new, as we learn from Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s book <a href="https://sociology.duke.edu/books/bonvilla-silva-racism-without-racists">Racism Without Racists</a>. It is the most up-to-date articulation of how most White people view racism (as a rare, archaic and unfortunate psychological disposition) as opposed to how most people of colour see it (as institutionalised and systemic). </p>
<p>Under the White understanding, talking about systemic racism is itself racist, because it conjures into existence “racial divides” that are invisible to Whites who believe themselves to be free of prejudice.</p>
<p>There is no better example of this than Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is a famous proponent of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/21/it-looks-like-rudy-giuliani-convinced-donald-trump-that-stop-and-frisk-actually-works/?utm_term=.1c2954c21a11">“stop and frisk”</a> policing and a longtime master of backlash politics. He <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/rudy-giuliani-black-lives-matter-inherently-racist/index.html">told CNN</a> Black Lives Matter is “inherently racist” because “it divides us … All lives matter: White lives, Black lives, all lives.” </p>
<p>Giuliani went on to say:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black Lives Matter never protests when every 14 hours someone is killed in Chicago, probably 70-80% of the time by a Black person. Where are they then? Where are they when a young Black child is killed?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This argument is a popular one in backlash politics. It holds that Black Lives Matter only cares about Black life when White people are responsible for taking it, thus ignoring and displacing Black responsibility for violence in Black communities. </p>
<p>In November 2015, Donald Trump <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/23/donald-trump/trump-tweet-blacks-white-homicide-victims/">tweeted an infographic</a> purporting to show that Blacks were responsible for 97% of murders of Blacks and 82% of murders of Whites. Both “statistics” are wrong, the latter monstrously so: African-Americans accounted for about 15% of murders of Whites, <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2014.xls">according to FBI data</a>.</p>
<p>This twisted tribal accounting deliberately obscures Black Lives Matter’s critique of violence, inequality and failings at all levels of the criminal justice system. Like the slogan “All Lives Matter”, it is a way of changing the subject. </p>
<p>It also exposes the myths of colourblind rhetoric. Many White people are more than happy to “see colour” when assigning blame for Black deaths, and to treat that as the end of the issue.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4--cG8h52Ps?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Like many White people, Donald Trump is only happy to ‘see colour’ when assigning blame to the black community.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“All Lives Matter” has not always served as the powerful rebuke of Black Lives Matter that the backlash intends. One strategy by online activists has been to refuse to acknowledge the disingenuous binary of “Black” and “all”.</p>
<p>Nikita Carney <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0160597616643868">notes in a study</a> of the #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hashtags that some Black Twitter users simply used both when calling for protests against police violence, effectively disarming the dishonest critique implied by All Lives Matter.</p>
<p>Alicia Garza, one of the creators of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, <a href="http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/">explained</a> in 2014 how Black lives mattering is a precondition for all lives mattering:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that Black lives, which are seen as without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide-reaching and transformative for society as a whole. </p>
<p>When we are able to end the hyper-criminalisation and sexualisation of Black people and end the poverty, control and surveillance of Black people, every single person in this world has a better shot at getting and staying free. When Black people get free, everybody gets free.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Blue Lives Matter</h2>
<p>While campaigning for the presidency in late 2015, <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/262897-trump-i-will-mandate-death-penalty-for-killing-police-officers">Trump said</a> that if elected he would use an executive order to make the death penalty mandatory for anyone who killed a police officer. The US president has no such authority, but Trump was attuned to the politics of the backlash.</p>
<p>The idea of a Black Lives Matter-inspired “<a href="https://www.manhattan-institute.org/waroncops">war on cops</a>” plays a powerful role in the backlash imagination. In 2014 and 2016, there were three ambush murders of multiple officers in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/two-police-officers-shot-in-their-patrol-car-in-brooklyn.html">New York</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Baton_Rouge_police_officers">Baton Rouge</a> and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/dallas-police-shooting-day-two-five-officers-killed-in-ambush-at-protest-over-police-violence-20160708-gq1zs7.html">Dallas</a>. Each was committed by a different lone gunman who sought revenge against police for their violence against Black communities.</p>
<p>These atrocities received blanket media coverage and became a major theme of the 2016 Republican National Convention. <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/rnc-2016-night-one-blue-lives-matter-police-rudy-giuliani-david-clarke">Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke</a> opened his speech by declaring that “blue lives matter”, blaming Black Lives Matter for “the collapse of social order”. </p>
<p>Giuliani, speaking shortly afterwards, claimed that most Americans do not feel safe and “they fear for our police officers who are being targeted”.</p>
<p>In Australia, The Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Devine <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi_ktudzJnXAhWHnZQKHTiwD6MQFggmMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailytelegraph.com.au%2Frendezview%2Fa-black-cop-killed-an-australian-white-woman-how-does-that-fit-the-black-lives-matter-narrative%2Fnews-story%2Fae104aff0d76409b83648a7121938e11&usg=AOvVaw3yQ9YB7XnHrUJZ4t_bXRtF">blamed</a> Black Lives Matter for the killing of an unarmed Australian woman in Minnesota by a police officer in July this year. </p>
<p>Devine claimed police were “more prone to make tragic mistakes” because they felt under siege following a “wave of ambushes and assassinations” incited by Black Lives Matter. She also asserted, baselessly, that “their entire movement is built on a lie” and that “Black Americans are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops”. </p>
<p>In fact, it is estimated police killed more than four times as many Black Americans last year as the other way round. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/29/police-killed-2016-average">There is no evidence</a> of a resurgent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/opinion/why-there-is-no-war-on-the-police.html">“war on police”</a>. </p>
<p>In 2016, 64 officers were shot dead, a much-remarked jump from 41 in 2015. But this remains within the average range of police deaths for the last ten years, which itself represents a steep drop from previous decades. An average of 115 were murdered each year <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297">in the 1970s</a>, when the population was two-thirds what it is now. So far in 2017, 36 officers have been <a href="https://www.odmp.org/search/year">shot dead</a>.</p>
<p>It is far harder to say whether killings by police are rising or falling, because no reliable data have been kept until recently. Thousands of law enforcement agencies participate in the FBI’s annual <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/">Uniform Crime Report</a>, but <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/dec/03/marc-morial/are-deaths-police-shootings-highest-20-years/">according to Politifact</a> “just a small fraction of them willingly provide data on deadly force and justifiable homicides within their departments”. </p>
<p>This has led to recent data collection efforts by <a href="https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/">NGOs</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/">media outlets</a>, but without trustworthy numbers from previous years to allow for historical comparison. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings">“The Counted”</a>, a project by The Guardian, found police killed 1,093 people in 2016, 266 of them African-American.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Lives Matter draws attention not just to police violence, but to the many deep imbalances in how the state values human life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antrell Williams/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nonetheless, the Blue Lives Matter backlash has borne fruit. According to a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/blue-black-lives-matter-police-bills-states_us_58b61488e4b0780bac2e31b8">Huffington Post report</a>, 33 “Blue Lives Matter” bills have been introduced in 14 states in 2017, following 15 such bills in 2016. The purpose of these bills is to extend hate crime protections to members of law enforcement, thus increasing penalties for crimes committed against them. </p>
<p>Most of these bills have failed, but they have become law in <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/26/us/louisiana-blue-lives-matter-law/index.html">Louisiana</a> and <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/22/bevin-signs-contentious-blue-lives-matter-law/99514820/">Kentucky</a>. A similar bill went into the committee stage in <a href="http://www.wltx.com/news/local/proposed-bill-could-increase-penalties-for-crimes-against-police/405204115">South Carolina</a>, which doesn’t have a hate crimes statute and which automatically puts the death penalty on the table for the murder of police officers.</p>
<p>Such laws are profoundly unnecessary, which is why most don’t become laws. Penalties in all 50 states are already more severe for crimes committed against law enforcement officers.</p>
<p>However, Blue Lives Matter bills serve a political purpose. They suggest that members of racial minorities are somehow more “protected” than police officers, who are the real victims. </p>
<p>When Louisiana’s law was signed, a Blue Lives Matter national spokesman <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/26/us/louisiana-blue-lives-matter-law/index.html">said</a> it was “important symbolically because it advises there is a value to the lives of police officers”.</p>
<p>Bestowing the status of a victim class on police is a grotesque distortion of reality and a symptom of structural violence. Police do a dangerous job, but there has never been any question that their lives matter. Criminal justice is never pursued more vigorously than when a police officer is killed.</p>
<p>Slain police officers deserve to be mourned. But those slain by police officers deserve at least to be counted. Black Lives Matter draws attention not just to police violence, but to the many deep imbalances in how the state values human life.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Neither the spurious ‘facts’ about killings of police nor the supposedly ‘colour-blind’ logic of the backlash against Black Lives Matter hold up under scrutiny. Instead, they confirm its point.David Smith, Senior Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy, Academic Director of the US Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.