…I thought maybe I was sailing pretty close to a godwin’s law-looking wind when I went with a mccarthy-grade comparison yesterday…but…it officially ain’t just me

Well before the Israel-Gaza war broke out, a new McCarthyism was already widespread on American college campuses. During the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 50s, about 100 professors were fired for supposed communist sympathies; according to Greg Lukianoff, co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, the number fired for their political beliefs – primarily for conservative or “anti-woke” positions on race and gender – over the past 10 years is almost double that.
[…]
The McCarthy era taught us that when campuses engage in ideologically motivated efforts to police student and faculty speech, those efforts not only backfire but severely damage the foundation on which academic communities are built.
[…]
It’s worth recalling that many of the “subversive” views that were the targets of McCarthy-era censorship on campuses around the country are not even mildly controversial today. In navigating today’s challenges, university administrators must hold fast to the values of learning and free expression that have made our academic institutions flourish, and avoid deploying the easy cudgel of censorship as an ill-fated shortcut to persuasion and mutual respect.

…but…it’s not exactly the same…which you’d think would be fairly self-evident

But there are important differences about this moment. Unlike the Second Red Scare, which was a particularly American phenomenon, the intensifying repression against Palestine advocacy isn’t limited to the US but is happening in Canada and across Europe as well. That’s because this hysteria is not a reaction to the debate on American college campuses but rather the product of a calculated and global transnational strategy backed by the Israeli government since 2015.
[…]
A range of so-called watchdog groups have long countered pro-Palestine activity on US college campuses with tactics including aggressive monitoring, blacklisting, and intimidation. These groups are often funded by philanthropic foundations that also support Islamophobic and rightwing groups that share broad goals of smearing Palestinian and Muslim students and professors as antisemites and terrorist sympathizers.

Since 7 October, this dynamic has reached disturbing new heights. The escalation has been compounded by the concurrent rise in antisemitic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric and violence on campuses and beyond, creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust that is fertile soil for an existing campaign of surveillance and harassment targeting Palestinians, Palestinian solidarity groups, and Jews critical of Zionism.

This fraught standoff has been long in the making. As early as the 1980s, prominent pro-Israel organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) were compiling “dossiers” on “anti-Israel” US college campuses and professors. The Israeli government and its supporters have, over the decades, pushed to label almost all criticism of Israel antisemitic. That project has been greatly accelerated by the flawed IHRA definition of antisemitism, which has impoverished our understanding of anti-Jewish prejudice by weighting it toward speech and action about Israel, and heightened the legal and professional risks of pro-Palestinian activism – especially on campuses.

But this chilling effect on higher education, and on free speech more broadly, is not just about Israel-Palestine and pro-Israel groups. It has also been enabled and expanded by a Republican party that is increasingly brazen in its assaults on higher ed. This, too, has been decades in the making, driven by Republicans’ assessment of college campuses as the frontline in the country’s culture wars. Their distrust has spurred outright censorship – banning certain topics in the classroom, for example – and attempts to defund certain programs and departments.

These efforts to use higher ed as a cudgel with which to impose a far-right worldview – or, rather, to excise whatever does not fit into that worldview – is a strategy long favored by authoritarians around the globe. That it should interface so seamlessly with a campaign to vilify critics of Israel – and that anti-Palestinian repression often serves as a model – should come as no surprise.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/13/israel-gaza-us-universities-free-speech

…to be honest…I’m not sure that levels of surprising seem like a great way to compare what might be something to write home about

With his armed forces still on the attack in Ukraine and a reelection campaign getting underway at home, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed his nation Thursday in a marathon news conference and call-in show for constituents where he quickly declared that the war will continue until Russia achieves its aims.

“Peace will come when we achieve our goals,” Putin said, specifying “de-Nazification” and “de-militarization” of Ukraine as his aims.

…godwin strikes again…surprising…well…not a lot of folks what with it being a reprise…but…swap out “nazi” for the make-fetch-happen hamas-ISIS compounding compound much favored by…a particular brand of firebrand…&…well…the parallel kind of speaks for itself, I’d imagine…for much the same set of reasons, even

Putin’s “Direct Line” call-in show allows ordinary Russians to ask the president to solve issues ranging from leaky plumbing to economic hardship, while the news conference presents a rare opportunity for invited journalists to put questions directly to the Russian leader.

Putin, who is completing his 24th year as Russia’s supreme political leader, has used the heavily staged events to lay out his vision for domestic and foreign policy and to preside with kingly aloofness as journalists vie for his attention and citizens supplicate him for assistance.

Normally, the events take place annually and on separate dates. But in the tumultuous first year of the Ukraine invasion, after repeated battlefield setbacks and a messy military mobilization, Putin did not subject himself to such public exposure.

Last month, however, the Kremlin announced that it would hold the two events simultaneously “in a combined format.” One motive, given the election scheduled for March, appeared to be to showcase Putin’s fifth campaign for president, which he is expected to win easily because the Kremlin controls all major media outlets, has jailed opponents and has severely punished any anti-regime dissent.
[…]
Even for professed supporters of Putin, the news conference and call-in show highlight his authoritarian, strongman rule and, by contrast, the ineptitude of national, regional and local government institutions.
[…]
Russian authorities have cracked down widely on dissent, especially criticism of the war — driving most independent news outlets from the country and jailing political opposition figures who refused to flee.
[…]
Attendees passed through four security checkpoints and were given a list of 26 banned items, including Nazi paraphernalia, flags, disguises, aerosols, radioactive devices, toxic chemicals, household chemicals, narcotics, animals, drones, bicycles, food, and water bottles, as well as weapons, explosives and pyrotechnics — making clear the only fireworks should come from Putin.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/14/putin-news-conference-reelection-war/

…hold on…maybe I was too hasty about the lack of surprises…I mean…if you know it’s a sure bet the man is going to claim to be fighting nazis…why would you need to specify the audience be banned from bringing nazi paraphernalia…or fucking radioactive materials…that’s some takes-one-to-know-one shit right there…isn’t it?

As 2023 comes to an end, there is a growing sense of panic in Europe. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union has been preoccupied with integrating the country — widely seen as a geopolitical necessity — and with the internal reform required to make that possible. But over the course of this year, as the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive stalled, tensions among member states have increased.

As members have disagreed on issues such as climate policy and the war in Gaza, the unity around supporting Ukraine has shown signs of cracking, too. With no end to the war in sight, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has stepped up efforts to limit the bloc’s backing of Ukraine; the election of Robert Fico in Slovakia has given him another ally in the cause. In an even bigger shock last month, Geert Wilders’s far-right party became the biggest force in the Dutch parliament. Whether or not Mr. Wilders can form a government, his strong showing may lead to further disruption in Europe, on Ukraine and much else.

European elites are right to worry. But the focus on divisions within the bloc obscures a much more disturbing development taking place beneath the surface: a coming together of the center right and the far right, especially on questions around identity, immigration and Islam. With European parliamentary elections next year, this convergence is bringing into clearer view the possibility of something like a far-right European Union. Until recently, such a thing would have seemed unthinkable. Now it’s distinctly plausible.

For the past decade, European politics has widely been understood in terms of a binary opposition between liberalism and illiberalism. During the refugee crisis in 2015, for example, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Mr. Orban were seen as political opposites — she the figurehead of liberalism, he of illiberalism. Yet their parties, the center-right Christian Democrats and far-right Fidesz, were in the same grouping in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party. In other words, they were political allies. (Fidesz was suspended from the grouping in 2019 and finally quit in 2021.)

Since then, the convergence between the center right and the far right in Europe has gone further. The lesson that center-right parties drew from the rise of right-wing populism was that they needed to adopt some of its rhetoric and policies. Conversely, some far-right parties have become more moderate, albeit in a selective way. At a national level, parties from the two camps have governed together, both formally, as in Austria and Finland, and informally, as in Sweden.
[…]
The two, in fact, can agree on a lot — something that plays out most clearly in immigration policy. In contrast to its progressive image, the European Union has, like Donald Trump, sought to build a wall — in this case, in the Mediterranean — to stop migrants from arriving on its shores. Since 2014, more than 28,000 people have died there as they desperately tried to reach Europe. Human Rights Watch said earlier this year that the bloc’s policy could be summed up in three words: “Let them die.”

The European Union’s distinctive approach to migration depends on what might be called the offshoring of violence. Even as it has welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees, the bloc has paid authoritarian regimes in North African countries to stop migrants from sub-Saharan Africa from reaching Europe, often brutally. Through this grotesque form of outsourcing, the union can continue to insist that it stands for human rights, which is central to its self-image. In this project, the center right and far right are in lock step. In July, Ms. Meloni joined the head of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, and the Dutch prime minister to sign one such deal with Tunisia.

…coming back to this

…& I’ve gone on about the frothing insanity of the tories’ oxymoronic confabulation of a deterrent that relies on the lie that it’s a safe destination being “good enough for government work” but obvious enough that it’s not to…you know…be a deterrent…but…when you keep moving goalposts this much it’s sort of inevitable you’re going to wind up with some own goals…or…I guess…”own” goals if you’re that sort

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States made clear that Western support of Ukraine was rooted in a commitment to the rules-based international order that emerged after World War II. U.S. leaders and diplomats rooted their response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressions in the lessons learned from the horrors of the 20th century.
[…]
This point has been made again and again, particularly to countries in the Global South skeptical of choosing sides in another cold war: The United States’ support for Ukraine is rooted in values, not in power politics.

…well…at the very least at least a bit

The concessions being demanded include significantly increasing barriers to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, limiting the president’s ability to grant humanitarian parole and increasing deportations. Given the essential role of U.S. aid in Ukraine’s defense, some are tempted to take that deal. But such concessions would be a tragic mistake: They would not only condemn the many thousands of predominantly Latin American migrants and asylum seekers at our border to terrible fates — they would also undermine the very principles of the postwar international order the United States says Ukraine is fighting for.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/13/ukraine-aid-migrant-rights-immigration-policy/

…but then…if you’re inclined to view that sort of thing as a feature not a bug…& still consider yourself to be on the side of the angels…then you’d probably struggle to grasp the flaw in the claim that “I can’t be wrong if I’m on the side of the right”…& probably shouldn’t be trusted with anything more dangerous than blunt scissors…& need help tying your shoelaces…not to mention making sure they’re on the right feet given the way you struggle to tell left from right…but…congrats on remembering to breathe…I guess

That postwar order includes the right to migrate and seek asylum as much as it does the territorial integrity of states. The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights is clear: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” As illustrated by the tragic story of the St. Louis — which in 1939, carrying mostly Jewish refugees, was turned away by the United States, after which hundreds of its passengers were killed in the Holocaust — the refusal of democratic countries to harbor refugees constitutes a profound moral failure.

…profound…but not getting any less widespread by all indications

Beyond these negative impacts, tying harsher immigration policies with aid to Ukraine could weaken support for Ukraine within the United States and abroad.

U.S. support for Ukraine must be attentive to the perspectives and interests of the Global South, especially given the wedge the conflict in Gaza is already creating between the United States and nations in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. The negative optics of U.S. aid to Ukraine (and Israel) coming at the expense of Latin America would be unavoidable.
[…]
Trading asylum rights for weapons would also be unlikely to impress other Latin American governments, such as those of Colombia, Honduras, Chile and Brazil, that have been asked by the Biden administration to take in more migrants, even as the United States might now welcome fewer; many of these Latin American governments are already on the fence over Ukraine.

Key African states will also surely take note of the impact on Haitian migrants of any draconian shift in U.S. policy — especially Kenya, which has taken a direct security role in Haiti. The perception that refugees of color fleeing Ukraine were met with harsh treatment in Europe has already generated anger from institutions including the African Union.

It is also more important than ever to keep domestic constituencies engaged in supporting Ukraine, given growing Republican opposition. The congressional Progressive, Hispanic, Black and Asian Pacific American Caucuses have made clear their opposition to a deal that would trade migrant rights for Ukraine aid. Drawing a clear causal link between Ukraine aid and harsher treatment of migrants at the southern U.S. border would give oxygen to left-wing discomfort with U.S. support for Ukraine, which has already grown after the delivery to Ukraine of controversial cluster munitions.
[…]
Of course, making Democrats choose their political wound is what Republicans’ brinkmanship is all about. But for the sake of domestic unity, global opinion and the very real values that drive the United States’ commitment to Ukraine, this is a trap that those who support Ukraine must not fall into. Forcing Latin American migrants and asylum seekers to pay the price for a European war is bad policy and bad politics. True champions of Ukraine must reject this cruel deal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/13/ukraine-aid-migrant-rights-immigration-policy/

…it’s easy to get distracted…particularly by worst case scenarios

The little country to the east of Venezuela has only 800,000 inhabitants. Its armed forces are littler, with just 4,150 troops total. But what it lacks in military resources it makes up for in natural ones; the oil discovered off its coast eight years ago has turned Guyana into the world’s fastest-growing economy.

None of this was really on my radar, which was what made Chuck Lane’s column on the country so interesting. It’s an explainer of why Guyana very much is on Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s radar.

Maduro has fulminated of late about invading and conquering the country’s Essequibo region, over which Venezuela has dormant but long-standing territorial claims. (The British carved it out in 1899.) Most experts say Maduro won’t invade, but as Chuck notes, experts have been wrong about surprise invasions plenty of times.

So what could push Venezuela to indeed invade? Chuck writes: “It’s a surprisingly long list.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/13/venezuela-guyana-trump-iowa-israel-gaza/

…but…scenarios being what they are

EU leaders hope to face down Viktor Orbán over Ukraine funds veto [Guardian]

Good COP, bad COP: what the COP28 agreement says and what it means [Guardian]

Migration is dominating Sunak’s premiership – but the pressure on Starmer may be even greater [Guardian]

…some denominators could stand to be less common

Look at the business of tackling the migration crisis in Europe, and you will find evidence not of some one-off failure to plan ahead, or a policy initiative gone wrong through unexpected circumstances. Rather, you face something akin to a complex crime scene where the damage, the ostensible “mistakes”, and the cover-ups have all been systematic. The perverse outcomes of the war on smuggling – including thousands of border deaths, escalating political brinkmanship and the professionalisation of the human smuggling business itself – are more than a blip or an anomaly. When policies persistently fail, we need to look not only at “what went wrong” but also at “what went right”– and at who is benefiting from the wreckage.

The habit of waging “war” on everything has spread from the early days of the war on communism and the war on drugs to “fights” against crime, terrorism, irregular migration and many more complex political problems. These wars never seem to be won and often have disastrous results, yet politicians continue to declare them. What keeps such disastrous interventions and policies ticking over? What renders them acceptable? Why do they get reinvented from one era to another? And why do we never seem to learn? Using our backgrounds in anthropology (Ruben Andersson) and history/sociology (David Keen), over recent years, we have sought to get to the bottom of these questions. Nowhere illustrates the failure of “the war on everything” approach better than the fight against migration.
[…]
Seeing this system in action, we developed an analysis of the political economy of war and of security operations such as deportation and border patrols – asking the old question “Cui bono” (Who gains?), as well as “In whose wider interests are the operations staged?” There was an intriguing, if disturbing, challenge of joining the dots between various disastrous interventions, from the wars on drugs and smugglers to the war on terror, where we had observed a very similar pattern. In a variety of war-like interventions, regional powers have been gaming ostensible attempts to eliminate a perceived threat, carving out impunity and making a profit. At the same time, pursuing these various wars and fights has routinely fuelled – or simply displaced – the problem. For a wide range of actors who claim to confront the perceived threat, things keep going wrong in the right way.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/14/weapons-of-mass-migration-how-states-exploit-the-failure-of-migration-policies

…but the climate being what it is…they look more likely to go the other way

I have spent my career working on climate change — not theoretically but in the trenches, crawling under trailers to insulate them under a federal government program to help low-income families conserve energy, building solar farms, capturing methane from coal mines, bolstering the climate movement through various nonprofit boards and crafting policy at the state and municipal levels. I served as a state regulator and an elected town councilman.

I have also spent 25 years in the field of corporate sustainability, trying to figure out how business might become a meaningful part of the climate solution. Over time, I came to understand that the ethic being applied — the idea that free markets can solve societal problems and that even a monstrosity like climate change can be fixed without regulation — was a ruse that I had bought into, realizing that fraud only late in the game.

This year, Earth’s average temperature bumped, briefly but ominously, to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average. Climate scientists have been telling us that 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is the threshold we should not exceed, but at this point, more and more experts are saying it is all but inevitable.

…& when the inevitable hoves into view generally some conclusions tend to be foregone

One “breakthrough” being lauded includes a purely voluntary commitment by fossil fuel companies to better capture methane, a potent greenhouse gas we absolutely must contain.

I know this issue intimately. The one man in America who fully understood the obscure problem of methane leaking from coal mines — Tom Vessels, a former oil and gas executive — partnered with me and others a decade ago to capture the gas to generate electricity. The project was a first in the nation, and while it was worthy of and received praise, it was also the only such project — because no federal policy existed to ensure the capture or mitigation of this super-warming agent.

For fossil fuel companies, committing to containing methane leaking from their pipelines and wellheads is a way for those businesses to appear beneficent while continuing to traffic in oil and gas. It is that very trafficking that causes the leakage that must be regulated, even as scientists tell us the essential action required to control warming is to stop burning coal, oil and gas.
[…]
In the missives I’ve seen from COP28, there are bad ideas pitched as magical solutions, such as the Rube Goldberg-like plan that John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, doubled down on. According to the investigative outlet The Lever, which reported on a leaked memo outlining discussion issues for the conference, the U.S. plan was to build “on existing voluntary carbon market standards for the international carbon market, as opposed to establishing a new robust framework with stringent standards.” This approach is undermining the United Nations’ effort to solidify an internationally regulated carbon market.
[…]
But that proposed [full fossil fuels] phaseout rattled the conference hosts in Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s leading oil producers. It is ramping up oil production. The idea was quickly scuttled. The head of the OPEC cartel called on its members to reject any plan that would threaten the production and sale of oil, gas and coal. And it was no idle threat: All 198 participating nations must consent to any agreement. So much for what the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said would be a major benchmark of success for the summit.

Let’s be real, though. The summit’s proposals for voluntary commitments — on methane, on renewables, on phasing out fossil fuels — were theater. Imagine if in the 1960s Americans had responded to the civil rights movement not with legislation but with calls to please treat one another nicely.

That is one of the reasons that when I read optimistically pithy social media posts from colleagues visiting a petrostate hosting a climate conference led by an oil executive, I begin to feel the creeping tendrils of despair. The climate problem is complex and enormous, and the progress to rein it in has been slow. Meanwhile, carbon emissions continue to rise in what is expected to be the hottest year in recorded history.

What It Really Takes to Fix a Monstrosity Like Climate Change [NYT]

…&…by what I’m sure is a complete & total coincidence into which only a fool would read anything of consequence…part of that complex & enormous problem would be the complex movements of enormous amounts of people…which there’s a word for…it’s on the tip of my tongue…but…maybe you’d rather there weren’t tongues involved & prefer the short version

ChatGPT to summarize Politico and Business Insider articles in ‘first of its kind’ deal [Guardian]

…only…if nothing happens in a vacuum

Will the hard right really sweep Europe in 2024? If it does, here’s what could happen [Guardian]

…& we have lines to toe round after round

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/23/in-an-attempt-to-claim-vindictive-prosecution-trump-confesses-biden-hasnt-interfered-like-he-has/

…even if…or especially if…appearances can be deceptive

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/28/donald-trump-confesses-he-cant-distinguish-his-own-influence-ops-from-that-of-a-russian-spy/

…I’m not sure even the devil you know is necessarily the lesser evil

The blurring of boundaries between the center right and the far right is not always as easy to spot as it is in the United States. Partly that’s because the process, taking place in the complex world of the bloc, is subtle. But it is also because of a simplified view of the far right as nationalists, which makes them seem incompatible with a post-national project like the European Union. Yet today’s far right speaks not only on behalf of the nation but also on behalf of Europe. It has a civilizational vision of a white, Christian Europe that is menaced by outsiders, especially Muslims.

Such thinking is behind the hardening of migration policy. But it is also influencing Europe in a deeper way: The union has increasingly come to see itself as defending an imperiled European civilization, particularly in its foreign policy. During the past decade, as the bloc has seen itself as surrounded by threats, not least from Russia, there have been endless debates about “strategic autonomy,” “European sovereignty” and a “geopolitical Europe.” But figures like President Emmanuel Macron of France have also begun to frame international politics as a clash of civilizations, in which a strong, united Europe must defend itself.

In this respect, Mr. Macron is not so far from far-right figures like Mr. Wilders who talk in terms of a threatened European civilization. His electoral success in the Netherlands could be a prelude, many fear, to a major rightward shift in the European parliamentary elections next June. That would give the far right substantial power to shape the next commission even more than the current one — both directly, with the possibility of far-right figures in top positions, and indirectly, with their concerns channeled by the center right.

Supporters of the bloc tend to see European unity as an end in itself — or to assume that a more powerful European Union, long idealized as a civilizing force in international politics, would automatically benefit the whole world. But as the union unites around defending a threatened European civilization and rejecting nonwhite immigration, we need to think again about whether it truly is a force for good.

Europe May Be Headed for Something Unthinkable [NYT]

…hmm…a federation of united states…otherwise known as an entity that can behave like a single country when it suits it but has the weight of a continent to throw about…yeah…I feel like maybe there was a famous experiment along those lines…somewhere…wonder how that’s going?

This Is Why We Vote: Women Are Not Yet Full Citizens [emptywheel.net – but not in fact by that worthy]

…well…I guess I’ll be god damned…assuming I’m wrong about the after-life…but…at least maybe god knows…so I might get some god damned answers to all these god damned questions…or at least to find out what judas made of the idea there’s always a silver lining?