A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, April 1, 2018
Neo-populist wave sweeps the West
Populist earthquake redraws Italy’s political landscape
Kumar David-March 31, 2018, 8:17 pm
"In
democracy, citizens first exercise the powers of sovereignty, and the
powers will be abased and afterwards lost if they are committed to an
unwieldly
multitude".
multitude".
(Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, Ch. II; Edward Gibbon)
For long I have described neo-populism as a 21st Century phenomenon both
in the capitalist West; and elsewhere as the progressive capitalism of
Modi or the semi-fascist peril of a return of Rajapaksa. If we use the
term neo-populism too widely for the far-right (Hungary’s immigrant
demonising Fidez, Austria’s FPO, Holland’s PVV and Germany’s AfD),
loonies like Trump, ‘Big Tent Centrists’ like Italy’s Five Star,
France’s Macron, and left populists like Spain’s Podemos, then we empty
the concept of content. Therefore, today I will confine myself to a
broad discourse and just one example.
I delineate modern neo-populism by three characteristics; ethnic or
nationalist extremism, cultural backwardness, and economic populism. If I
use the Rajapaksa undertaking to give it local context; it is
ethno-centrist (Sinhala-Buddhist), culturally regressive cum
anti-elitist (anti-modern cum anti-Western) and haphazardly
economic-populist. Two additional features worth mention in the local
case are great-leader besotted and home to corrupt politicos.
Though we identify great-leader infatuation and domicile of
corrupt-politicos as markers in the Rajapaksa case, these are not
universal in the West where neo-populists cannot, generically, be termed
corrupt. Ethno-centrism is universal; "no immigrants, blacks, Muslims";
"We are the people" (Germany); "Take back control (Brexit), "Make
America Great again", etc. The great leader feature though not universal
goes back well before Rajapaksa decided to ride again, to Il Deuce,
Mein Fuhrer and Peron. Trump-populism is pompous. The fading libido of
jaded lecher and convicted tax-fraudster Silvio Berlusconi, against whom
there are 20 trials still pending, has resurfaced. A pompous leader,
even if sordid, is a frequent but not universal adornment of populism’s
paraphernalia.
Ethno-centrism, anti-modernism, cultural backwardness, rejection of
internationalism, and anti-elitism, need some further comment. Fear of
waves of immigration - sudden large-scale ethnic mingling with those of a
different colour or faith and fear of cultural dilution - has been the
largest psychological factor driving masses of people into the arms of
the far-right in Europe. The simplistic left-liberal stance of open
borders, welcoming all men as citizens of the world, or the lesser
version of throwing borders open to all who are oppressed in their
homes, has proved infeasible. As the Danish labourer said to the
Australian aid-worker "Why don’t you take them to Australia?"
I despise brown skinned Lankan emigrants who gripe about discrimination
in the West but had no qualms in oppressing and disenfranchising
Upcountry Tamils as kalathonis, though they had been here for
generations. Still the truth is that racist and religious intolerance in
America and Europe, though nowhere near as bad as bigotry among my
compatriots, is the biggest single factor in the rise of neo-populism in
those countries. It is not only cultural differentiae; claims for
social services and housing, food-stamps and willingness of immigrants
to work for less worsens unemployment and erodes wages. Stories, true or
false, of Somalians collecting social-security in two or three
different places, Armenians taking over neighbourhoods and variations on
Donald Trump anti-Mexican bigotry is standard fare in the US. Vox
populi, vox dei, so, where there is strong public sentiment, immigration
limits are needed however squeamish liberals and left feel. Would the
liberals and the left rather have a neo-populist backlash?
This is a bitter retreat: a concession to cultural primitivism,
anti-modernism, religious mumbo-jumbo and prejudice. But it is an
unavoidable retreat. Fortunately, European and American neo-populisms
are not anti-Wi-Fi, do not preach that men can booze themselves silly
but women not permitted to buy a bottle of beer, or that halal meat is
infected with quotations from the Koran. For that you need the political
cave-men of the Joint Opposition, a constitution-violating president
and a bunch of looney BBS monks. We, of course, have all that.
Italy, one nation or two?
I will devote space to last month’s Italian general election to bring
into focus some features of exploding Twenty-first Century European
neo-populism. One should minimize names and numbers since details
obscure the big picture but it won’t be possible to do so altogether.
League: An alliance of the right-extremist Northern League (NL) of
Matteo Salvini and Berlusconi’s mainstream conservative Forza Italia
(FI). The driving ideology of this coalition is right neo-populism like
France’s National Front and Dutch, Austrian, German and other
excrescences. The alliance won 37% of the vote – the largest of any
group and secured 265(P)/137(S) seats – P for parliament S for senate.
It gained 138(P)/20(S) seats. Both NL and FI have their base in
prosperous northern Italy and are strongly anti-left and anti-immigrant.
Five Star Movement (M5S): Led my Luigi Di Maio (who has not so much as
run a bakery or sillara kadey before!) came out as the largest single
party securing 33% of the vote and 227(P)/112(S) seats. Its gains were
114 (P)/58 (S). Known as a Big Tent it is what in Sinhala we call an
achcharu. It has no particular ideology but its base is in poor Sicily
and less developed southern Italy. It is not rightist or racist. M5S’s
founder was stand-up comic Beppe Grillo whose motto is "va fa un culo".
(My Editor’s thick red-pencil often denies you access to delectable
profanities admixed with my rich profundities).
The rise of both NL and M5S is stunning. Imagine 70% of Italians voted
for populists! The two populist outfits won 20 million votes between
them; the Democratic Party secured only 7 million. Nobody apart from
these three did any better than Lanka’s snivelling sects, the JVP
included. Calling the JVP a trifle is harsh but deserved condemnation.
Democratic Party: Led by outgoing Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the DP is
Italy’s traditional social democratic centre. The once powerful Italian
Communist Party vanished into the shadows when the Soviet Union
disappeared but it was one of the four minor parties in the DP led
centre-left coalition which secured a mere 22% of the popular and
122(P)/60 (S) seats. It lost 227(P)/65(S) seats. Seat changes, up and
down, seem huge but unsurprising in a first-past-the-post system.Why the
electrifying rise of populism? What does the clash of two populisms
spell for Italy? The first question is easier. May I first blurt the
compulsory party line? "Global capitalism is bust; it evokes
hopelessness in the population". Let’s rub in the numbers: 70% voted for
populists – right neo-populists in the North, ‘Big Tent’ achcharu
populists in the South. Hope was the one commodity in short supply;
collapse of faith in establishment parties and traditional economics
drove millions to strange new places. Recall Trump’s base, Brexit and
Germany’s AfD surge? Emmanuel Macron is a less evil variant of the same
exasperation of the masses.
They said the global left was finished a decade ago; now liberalism too
is finished. Isn’t it time to build a defensive coalition on a
social-democratic programme (social equity and political democracy) and a
broad economic programme? Observe that both variants of Italian
populism paid little heed to Italy’s ailing economy, failing
competitiveness within Europe, and its giant debts.
Over in our neck of the woods Sinhalese and Tamils, and Buddhists and
Muslims gouge out each other’s eyes and tear out jugulars. In Italy
though they speak the same language, worship the same graven idols in
their churches and belt out the same Neapolitan golden oldies, the split
between industrialized north and deprived south is stark. It will
eventually threaten national unity. The stats are bleak: the economy of
the South shrank 7% in 2001-2016 but Italy as a whole grew by 1%;
700,000 people from the south emigrated north or abroad; youth
unemployment in the South is 45%. So, M5S swept nearly every FPP seat in
the South, but got almost nothing in the North; the League vice-versa.
The Leagues flat-tax (23%) proposal is rejected in the South as a gift
to rich Northerners and the M5S’s minimum wage demand finds little
support in the North. One nation united by a common language, faith and
culture; divided by economic inequality!
Neo-populism, a menagerie of strange bedfellows
Bet you can’t answer this one. Who said "(the) global power structure
has robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put
money in the hands of a handful of large companies and political
entities"? If you said Marx, Lenin or Castro you couldn’t be more wrong.
Actually, modern neo-populism has no ideology. Come on; grant that
Macron, Putin, Modi and Trump (whose only ideology is narcissism) have
no guiding creed in the sense of left vs right, socialism vs capitalism
or liberalism vs state. So, what fuels the common neo-populist surge?
Data for America alone answers the question. Millions are out in the
cold; 40 million live below the poverty line, add those just above,
those without hope and the ideologically ultra-right, and there you have
the Trump Base – the 30% ever faithful. In North and South Dakota,
Alabama and some other states nearly 40% live below the official poverty
line. Sustained inequality and iniquity of political-economy explain
the surge of Twenty-first Century neo-populism, as it does inter war
fascism.
Oh, and that quotation you got dead wrong; that was Donald Trump in
Davos in January 2018. In Davos, super-rich CEOs and Heads of grand
governments weep for the poor. And we deplete the ocean when we
overfish; and we destroy the earth when we ravage its climate; and we
foster neo-populism when we alienate the people. It would all be a
circus were it not so depressing.