The Way of the World

Neither seems to have an understanding of the interdependence between economic fairness and political tolerance.

Tisaranee Gunasekara-October 20, 2018, 7:45 pm 

A political heat wave is sweeping across the world. National-populism is on the march across the globe, threatening hard-won democratic gains. In country after country, people, fearful, disillusioned or enraged, are voting against their enlightened self-interests, electing leaders who would turn them from citizens to subjects.

The last time a similar situation prevailed was in the 1920’s and 1930’s. That first wave of national-populism was born of the First World War and gave birth to the Second World War.

A key characteristic of the interwar years was economic dysfunction, the Great Depression of 1929 and the not quite so famous depression of 1921-23. Economic pain and hopelessness drove individuals and nations to the edge of insanity and, often, beyond. Those countries with strong institutions averted disaster, and used the crisis as an opportunity to prune the system of some of its more egregious aspects – the American New Deal being the most outstanding case in point. Other countries, lacking in strong institutions, tried to fill the vacuum with strong leaders, opening the gates to the likes of Adolf Hitler.

Today we are living in an analogues time. A second great depression was avoided in 2009, but the means used to save entire economies from collapsing had a disastrous impact on millions of individual lives. Livelihoods and homes were lost; the fact that those who contributed most to the crisis, banks, insurance companies, hedge funds and other outposts of financial capital, got away scot-free provided kindling to the fire of popular discontent.

Many liberal-democratic leaders have worsened the situation by insisting on austerity, imposing belt-tightening on populaces and communities already stretched to breaking point, economically and psychologically. A pivotal lesson of the 1920’s and 1930’s, that economics of austerity breeds political discontent and societal instability, is all but forgotten. Increasingly democratic leaders appear disconnected from their people and out of touch with ordinary reality. Feeling sidelined by democratic leaders, and ignored by democratic institutions, large swathes of the electorate are turning to outsiders for salvation.

Democracy’s boast is that it is government for the people. But when economics, instead of delivering a liveable life causes in-your-face inequalities, democracy acquires the image of government not for people but against people. That is the hour of the strong leader, the one who promises to shake the foundations, drain the swamp and make countries great, always pointing to a utopian past as lodestar.

But like with any bargain, there is a price to be paid. The saviour demands impunity for himself/herself and his/her cohorts, and justifies that demand on the basis of his/her infallibility. Facts are degraded; lying becomes the norm; instinct is valued over both knowledge and experience. Democratic freedoms and basic rights are depicted as irrelevant at best and evils at worst, baggage we’d do well to be rid of, if we want to achieve our individual and national dreams. The universal is replaced with the particular; race, religion, tribe becomes the unit and the yardstick.

It is a siren song which worked in the past, and is working in the present. In Brazil, a former army captain who praises the country’s past military dictatorships is expected be voted as the country’s next president. Jair Bolsonaro is contemptuous of democratic freedoms and basic rights; he is a climate-change denier who has promised to open up the Brazilian Amazon for unlimited exploitation. Yet, he seems acceptable to an electorate disillusioned with democratic leaders of the left and the right.

Brazil’s transition from democratic success story to deadly failure holds important lessons to other embattled democracies, including right here at home. Had the Workers Party not gained a reputation for rampant corruption, had it focused on improving the lives of ordinary people instead of wasting enormous resources on showy projects (such as the Rio Olympics), Brazil’s trajectory might not have taken the turn it has. When democratic leaders renege on their core promises and turn their backs on their indispensable constituencies, they sow the seeds of authoritarianism. That was the lesson of the past, from Rome to Berlin. That is the lesson of the present, from Budapest to Colombo.

When past becomes another country

In his Reappraisals – Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, Tony Judt expresses serious concerns about "the place of recent history in an age of forgetting: the difficulty we seem to experience in making sense of the turbulent century that has just ended and in learning from it." The continuing relevance of that concern is proven on a daily basis, be it Jair Bolsonaro’s defence of military rule in Brazil or a senior Sinhala-Buddhist monk’s plea to Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to "become even a Hitler and develop the country."

In an age of forgetting, it is not just evils and failures that are disremembered. The success stories too are shoved into unvisited corners of our collective memory.

"In 1989, all governments, and especially all Foreign Ministries, in the world would have benefitted from a seminar on the peace settlements after the two world wars," wrote Eric Hobsbwam (The Age of Extremes). Nothing in recorded human history comes close to the disasters caused by the Second World War. The devastation was both extreme and global. Yet, the post-WWII decades turned out to be rather different from the post-WWI period.

The groundwork for that different future was laid before the war was over. It was internationalism that saved a world devastated by nationalism. As Tony Judt points out, "Thanks to early and effective intervention by the newly formed United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the occupying allied armies, large-scale epidemics of contagious diseases could be avoided..." (Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945). Other newly formed international entities like the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) joined in to deal with arguably the greatest immigration crisis in history.

Even with those efforts, Western Europe might not have succeeded in evading past pitfalls had it not been for the Marshall Plan, a true game-changer. General George Marshall understood that the Cold War couldn’t be won without a stable and prosperous Western Europe. His aim was to give Europe a much needed blood transfusion at a critical moment. Marshall Plan’s "effectiveness was rooted in the freedom that it gave post-war European governments, torn between structural rebuilding and investing directly in their citizens, to avoid austerity measures and cutbacks that would have increased political instability and lowered the quality of daily life."i

The socialist challenge and the enormous popularity of the Soviet example were what made the victors of 1945 behave in a radically different way from the way they did in 1918. Capitalism was fortunate to have a set of leaders who understood that survival meant change, including borrowing liberally from the socio-economic arsenal of socialism. The statement, that "there is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand," attributed to such as ace Cold Warrior and anti-communist as General Lucius Clay, is indicative of Western leaders’ willingness to think outside the box, even to break the mould where necessary.

So the welfare state became the capitalist norm in the first world. Political leaders used economic measures to transform ordinary people from outsiders into stakeholders of the system, with something to lose. Western European welfare states succeeded in ensuring higher living and working conditions to their own working classes than what prevailed in the Eastern Bloc. As Eric Hobsbawm pointed out, "It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting result of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrow of capitalism, was to save its antagonist both in war and in peace – that is to say by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War..."ii

That history is now forgotten. And democracy’s failure of memory has resulted in an attitude to economics which is so dogmatic it seems almost religious. The post-war nexus between individual freedom and social justice lies sundered. This is evident, for instance, in the policies of German chancellor Angela Merkel or Lankan Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera. Both are political liberals. Neither seems to have an understanding of the interdependence between economic fairness and political tolerance. Ms. Merkel’s inability to comprehend the political ramifications of the social question is undermining the liberal order in Germany. Mr. Samaraweera’s inability to comprehend the political consequences of austerity is turning to be a key factor in the imminent Rajapaksa resurgence.

Who needs human rights?

So who needs human rights? The answer should be obvious – humans, especially those humans who lack economic wealth and political power.

Fear is one of the main arguments used to justify the voluntary abandonment of basic rights. Decent, law abiding people do not need basic rights, it is stated; these rights are needed by criminals and terrorists to escape the coils of justice. Therefore, it is concluded, to achieve personal safety and national security, voters and governments must abandon the notion that all humans have certain inalienable rights.

The horrendous case of Seya Sadewmini, the five year old girl who was taken away from her home, raped and murdered, serves as a reminder of how the absence of due process and basic rights would work in practice. Little Seya’s murder caused an outburst of public anger. A lynch-mob mentality came into being as the thirst for justice became a cry for vengeance. Anyone talking about the due process and the rights of the accused was depicted as siding with the murderers of an innocent child.

Pushed by a baying public to produce immediate results, the police arrested a thirty-something man and a seventeen year old schoolboy. According to Lankan law, the student was a minor, but his name, details and picture were flashed across the media. The police claimed that ‘phonographic material’ was found on the student’s laptop. This was taken as proof of his guilt. Then a third suspect was arrested; he ‘confessed’ to the crime, driving societal hysteria to new frenzies. The ‘confession’ was ‘leaked’ and given wide media publicity.

This was 2015, post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka. The practice of suspects dying under mysterious circumstances (suicide, shot while trying to escape, drowned while trying to escape) was no longer the rule. It happened – and still happens – but only as an exception. Without that change, one or all of the suspects would have died before the investigation was complete. The public thirst for vengeance would have been slaked with the mysterious deaths. The need for further investigations, including examining DNA evidence, would have evaporated. The case would have been closed.

And the real killer would have escaped.

Since this was 2015, the police investigations continued. The DNA evidence did not match with any of the three suspects. The matching DNA belonged to the brother of the fourth suspect, who had been arrested not for committing the crime, but for helping the ‘real killer’.

Since this was 2015, the three innocent men lived to be released by the courts. The real killer was convicted and given the death sentence.

The absence of due process and basic rights actually help real killers. Instead of spending time and effort on a proper investigation, all the police has to do is to arrest someone, anyone; he/she would be pronounced guilty by the public; the entire farce would end in the ultimate miscarriage of justice, an extra-judicial killing. The real criminal will be free to commit another crime.

But that is logic, reason. The age of national-populism is also the age of unreason, when extra-judicial killings and involuntary disappearances are hailed as a public good. So here we are, in the 21st century, refighting battles that were considered to be won in the 20th – for democracy, against injustice; and for accepting the axial relationship between the two.

In his comments on the lessons of 20th Century, Italian historian and anti-fascist fighter Leo Valiani said, "Our century demonstrates that the victory of the ideals of justice is equality is always ephemeral, but also that, if we manage to preserve liberty, we can always start all over again..."iii But what happens if liberty is lost, if democracy self-destructs through the incompetence, ignorance and sheer bumbling idiocy of democratic rulers?

i Winning the Peace – The Marshall Plan and America’s coming of age as a superpower – Nicolaus Mills

ii The Age of Extremes

iii Quoted in Hobshwam, Age of Extremes