Israel won that war and at least 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from the new Israel and became refugees in surrounding and other countries. That enforced diaspora, including their descendants, now numbers approximately 6 million registered refugees plus a further 2.5 million unregistered.

Of the Palestinians who remained in Israel, and their descendants, approximately 2 million live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, with a further 2.3 million in Gaza. Some Palestinians in the West Bank have Israeli citizenship while the majority have residency papers. Although many areas are officially designated as under administration by the independent Palestinian Authority, in reality, the entire West Bank is under Israeli military law.

Israel also won subsequent wars declared by a variety of Arab neighbors, in 1956, 1967 and 1973. Territorial gains for Israel included: part of Golan Heights (from Syria), part of Sinai (from Egypt, returned in a peace accord), Gaza (from Egypt, relinquished to autonomous Palestinian administration in another peace accord), and the West Bank and East Jerusalem (from Jordan).

In September 2024, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine and demanding it cease and desist. However, given Israel’s notorious decades-old contempt for the United Nations, and its ultimate rejection of all previous resolutions and internationally brokered attempts to secure Palestinian rights and nationhood (examples include the 1947 UN Resolution 181 (II), the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, and the two-state solution), it is highly unlikely that Israel will comply.

Over two decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never been more than equivocal about a two-state solution. Since 2015, he has rejected the idea and since 2023 has outright rejected any possibility of Palestinian statehood at all. By June 2024, despite Israel’s best efforts to deny Palestinians any claim to statehood, 146 out of the 193 nations of the UN had recognized Palestine as an independent state.

Intermittent Israeli military attacks and temporary occupation of large parts of Lebanon have also occurred on numerous occasions over decades. Many feared that the latest, from October 1 to November 26, 2024, ostensibly to eradicate Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, was also a “dry run” for an indefinite annexation of the southern half, if not the whole, of Lebanon.

Israel’s response to Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023

Hamas’s savage cross-border terror attack from inside Gaza on Israeli settlements on October 7, 2023 inevitably provoked a justifiable Israeli military response. Israel sought to capture or kill the perpetrators, and then to eliminate the terrorist organization. Varying official estimates from different sources agree that at least 1,139 were killed by the October 7 attack, plus some 3,400 wounded and 251 (75% Israelis) captured and taken into Gaza. Of those captured and held as hostages, many have been confirmed dead, 105 were released by negotiation, and 2 were released by Israeli special forces, leaving 97 plus 4 others from earlier Hamas abductions currently still in captivity. 

Israel’s steadfast rejection over decades of a two-state solution, coupled with its demonstrable disregard for mass civilian casualties in its war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, has perplexed and infuriated long-standing allies of Israel. The gross disproportionality of the Gazan casualty numbers and the fanatical destruction of almost all infrastructure belie Israel’s stated objectives and strongly suggest a deliberate mass punishment of the population, contrary to the laws of war. Israel rejects this evaluation.

However, the initial “search and destroy” Israeli mission to eradicate an estimated 30,000 armed Hamas operatives quickly turned into what looked like an indiscriminate assault against the entire population, using sophisticated weaponry and brutal tactics to destroy entire neighborhoods and life sustainability. That relentless daily assault has gone on for over a year, with no sign that the Israelis intend to stop. By mid-November 2024, over 43,000 Gazans (including some 11,500 women and 16,800 children) had been killed, according to their identity and death certificates held by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, plus at least 10,000 missing, presumed dead under rubble, and over 103,000 wounded. The UN Human Rights report of November 2024 confirms that 70% of deaths have been women and children.

Over the past 12 months, the Israelis have been accused of systematically blocking food, medical and other humanitarian supplies, carrying out targeted daily bombardment of hospitals, schools, residential areas, food depots and refugee camps (including so-called “safe places” designated by the Israelis themselves), and conducting repetitive enforced mass displacements of the population throughout Gaza. By the end of May 2024, the UN officially estimated that 1.7 million (or 75%) of the Gazan population had been internally displaced. That estimate had increased to 1.9 million (or 90% of the population) by early September 2024. 

In late October 2024, UN and WHO chiefs declared that “the entire population of north Gaza” was now at serious risk of death from starvation, privation and lack of health care, and castigated Israel’s “blatant disregard for basic humanity and the laws of war.” In May 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s recent conduct in Gaza was not genocidal (proto rather than actually achieved so far), but did state, quoting the Genocide Convention, that Israel “must immediately halt its military offensive” and warned against harming civilians. The International Criminal Court (ICC) followed this by seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity. These cast Israel’s political leaders and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as culpable villains. The arrest warrants were issued on November 21, 2024.

The Nation-State Law and land grabs

There are multiple well-documented reports of violent attacks and land grabs against Palestinians and other minorities (for example, Armenians) in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem by so-called “Israeli settlers.” These reflect the apparent determination of Netanyahu’s government and the judiciary to sanctify de facto ethnic cleansing and accelerate the practical implications of Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law. The latter stipulates that Israel is a Jewish state in which only Jews have full rights. Article 7 specifically prioritizes Jewish settlements as “a national value” and for which the state will “act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation,” i.e. ethno-religious segregation and usurpation of non-Jewish land as the desirable norm.

By mid-2024, some 380,000 Israeli settlers had already occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with a further 500,000 planned for the short term by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who denies that Palestinians are a nation or have ever had land rights. Former Israeli generals are advancing a similar plan for a settler takeover of Gaza after the Palestinian population has finally been removed.

More recently, Article 7 intent has been pursued through a new Israeli law banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating inside Israel, including Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel accused UNRWA of being infested with Hamas agents. Apart from removing the majority of international aid that would normally barely keep the Palestinian population fed, medicated and educated, the new law also has the effect of falsely declassifying Palestinians as UN refugees and removing any Israeli judicial recognition of their prior title rights to land the Israelis confiscated. 

Self-defense or neo-imperialism?

There is no question that Israel is surrounded by states that, to varying degrees, are hostile. Some of them also harbor anti-Israeli extremists who have engaged in terrorist attacks, both cross-border and inside Israel. The Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and the ongoing rocket barrages from Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon into Israel are high-profile examples. Some of these extremists call for the total annihilation of Israel and all Jews. The majority of neighboring Arab and Muslim states have, however, opted for a more “tolerated difference” approach whereby a modus vivendi has emerged, such as Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, UAE, Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even Lebanon. Others, such as Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen, have not.

In such a historically hostile and turbulent context, Israel has created an extensive, sophisticated and multi-faceted defense “fortress” to prevent, deter or neutralize any kind or scale of attack from any source, external or internal. Israel’s population is minuscule compared to hostile states in total and, even if including its full citizen reservist capacity, its numbers of military personnel are dwarfed by theirs. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that Israel’s weapon systems, firepower, electronic warfare capacity, sophisticated electronic surveillance and intelligence systems, espionage agencies, motivation and training are vastly superior.

With Israel’s small population and modest GDP, all this has only been possible as a result of decades of financial, political and defense systems support from the United States. According to Reuters (September 26, 2024), scheduled US military aid over the next 10 years to Israel comprises $35 billion for essential wartime defense plus a further $52 billion for air defense systems, At an annual average of $8.7 billion, the US aid to Palestinians pales in comparison, at a mere $300 million.

Many independent observers have become increasingly reluctant to accept Israel’s stated justifications for its relentless response to the October 7 massacre. Their Gaza campaign, Lebanon campaign and violent land grabs from non-Jews in the West Bank no longer appear to be just about Israel’s “right to exist,” “right to self-defense,” and “right to pursue implacable and murderous enemies.” The daily video footage of mass civilian carnage in the immediate aftermath of Israeli bombardments of all kinds in Gaza contradicts Israeli official denials.

Beyond Israel’s stated military objectives, the elephant in the room now exposed is that the Gaza campaign also appears to be part of an aggressive nationalist territorial expansion project (or land grab), involving cleansing the ground of all opposition (actual and potential), as well as Palestinian population masses and infrastructure. Israel’s apparent ulterior motives in Gaza surface in the following examples:

Extra land and commercial development

Groups of settlers have been setting up temporary camps along the Israeli side of the Gaza border, waiting for the IDF to confirm that it is safe for them to cross over and mark out their desired settlements. These settlers firmly believe that God, through a proclamation of Abraham, granted all Jews the unchallengeable jus divinum right to exclusively occupy the “whole land” of Israel. They assert that it stretches from the west bank of the River Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, as implied in the Bible (as in Genesis 15:18-21) and other ancient tracts.

A separate style of land grab in Gaza involves Israeli property developers, some of whom appear to have already moved in. Such developers are offering Israelis beachfront, new-build properties on Palestinian land, which employees wearing IDF military reservist apparel are now clearing of war-damaged, abandoned homes. According to one developer’s own promotional video, its employees are already erecting these new buildings.

Lawyers point out that all such land grabs are in breach of international law and may also constitute a war crime. In all such citizen actions, the Israeli perpetrators believe that, in addition to the claim of jus divinum, they can also now rely on Article 7 of the Nation-State Law 2018 to legitimize their conduct.

The Ben Gurion Canal Project

Originating in the 1960s, the Ben Gurion Canal Project centered on a plan to cut a deep-water canal from the Mediterranean, from Ashkelon near Gaza, into and across Israel and down to the port of Eilat and access to the Red Sea. This canal would thus bypass the Suez Canal and greatly reduce international shipping’s reliance on it. The plan’s bold vision might well have transformed Israel’s economy, but for some 50 years, it remained dormant, primarily because its unilateral implementation and annexation of Palestinian land would doubtless have inflamed the Arab world, rendered the canal vulnerable to Hamas attacks and sabotage, and probably provoked war again.

Over the past 20 years however, with the inexorable rise of militant ultra-Zionist groups in Israel and their increasing influence on government, serious discussion of the Canal Project has restarted. Some right-wing interests in Israel are now advocating that the route of the canal should go directly through central Gaza. The suspicion is that under the current wartime regime of Netanyahu, with several aggressive ultra-Zionists in his Cabinet, the Gaza campaign provides an ideal opportunity to clear central Gaza of all Palestinians under the guise of military necessity. This may partly explain the IDF’s extensive scorched earth actions in Gaza.

The “whole land” justification and its scope

Both the Ben Gurion Canal project and the annexation of Gaza for Israel’s economic growth are consistent with the Greater Israel concept and its operationalization as it has evolved over a century or more. Numerous papers and articles on the subject of annexation of Palestinian land, Greater Israel and “the whole land” have appeared over the past twenty years, for example: The Guardian (2009), the Rossing Center, Migration Policy (2023), The Week (2024).

Recent independent research (MEPEI 2024) notes that the acknowledged founder of Zionism in the 19th century, Theodor Herzl, recorded in his own diaries that Eretz Yisrael included not only the traditional Jewish areas within Palestine but also the Sinai, Egyptian Palestine, and Cyprus, with the totality stretching from “the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”.

This view is rooted in a dogmatic belief that around 2000 BC, Abraham declared that God had revealed to him that he had granted him and all his descendants the exclusive right to the “whole land” of Israel, as later loosely defined in various verses of the Book of Genesis in the Bible, the Judaic Torah and other related ancient tracts. Maps of the claimed Greater Israel show it encompassing not only the territories cited above, but also approximately 30% of Egypt, most of Iraq, a large area of Saudi Arabia, the whole of Kuwait (1,300 kilometers from Tel Aviv), Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, and parts of southern Turkey.

As noted above, Herzl clearly favored an extended geographical scope for the “whole land,” once a national Jewish homeland had been secured in Palestine. However, in his overtures to and negotiations with European leaders to seek support, such a subsequent “ultimate phase” appears to have gone unmentioned. The proposed homeland was presented as a benign, multi-ethnic, multi-religious polity with equal rights for all and in which none of the rights of the pre-existing Palestinians would be jeopardized.

Herzl’s colleague Chaim Weizmann very effectively championed the Zionist movement, before and after Herzl’s death in 1904. He successfully persuaded Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary during the onset of the British Mandate, to support the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The short Balfour Declaration crucially stated: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” Clearly, a coach-and-horses have been driven through that “understanding” long ago.

The erudite paper by Professor Chaim Gans in 2007 on historical rights to the “Land of Israel” distinguishes between historical rights and sovereignty, rights and “taking account of,” and between the concept and geography of the “whole land.” Others have argued that the “whole land” was always a spiritual concept that was never meant to be interpreted literally in objective, geographical terms.

Gans further notes the self-defining and self-serving nature of ultra-Zionists’ arguments, which are “valid only for those who believe them” and observes that “…they do not make the slightest attempt to provide moral or universally valid arguments, only reinforcing the prejudices of the already persuaded.” He continues that one nation’s extreme quest for self-determination may expunge another’s legitimate quest and may involve a criminal land grab. The jus divinum justification for wholesale repression, land grabs, massacres and expulsions presents as being holy, righteous and praiseworthy. However, many regard it as a primitive expression of assumed a priori ethno-religious superiority and selfish entitlement at the expense of “the others.”

Neo-imperialist motives?

Why is Israel’s Gaza campaign against an enemy that is vastly inferior in all respects (now extended to its Lebanon campaign) so relentless and ruthless over such a long period and over so much foreign territory? Why is their firepower targeted so heavily on the civilian population and civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals, schools, food supplies and utilities? 

The official Israeli justification is military necessity in the face of terror attacks. Yet, far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, such as Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Avigdor Lieberman and Amihai Eliyahu, have been pushing extreme nationalist Zionist justifications and policies way beyond national defense. On January 3, 2023, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich publicly expressed their desire to expel Palestinians from Gaza. The Times of Israel described the policies and stance of the ultra-Zionist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, to which Ben-Gvir and Eliyahu belong, as “neo-fascist.” 

Cabinet Minister Ben-Gvir, leader of the Otzma Yehudit Party, joined other senior far-right politicians from the Religious Zionism Party and the Likud Party at a Preparing to Settle Gaza Conference on October 21, 2024. While there, he restated that the Palestinian population of Gaza should be “encouraged” to leave Gaza forever. Likud MP May Golan opined that “taking territory” and re-establishing Jewish settlements in Gaza would be a lesson that “the Arabs” would never forget. The conference organizer Daniella Weiss advocated an ethnic cleansing of Gaza since the Palestinians had “lost their right to live” there. Weiss’s Nachala organization claimed so far to have already marshaled 700 settler families prepared to move into Gaza once the Palestinians had been removed.

Eliyahu said in an interview on November 5, 2023, that Israel should take back control of Gaza and move in Israeli settlers, a position he has since repeated, and said that the Palestinian population “can go to Ireland or deserts…the monsters in Gaza should find a solution themselves.” Asked if Israel should drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza to flatten it and kill all the inhabitants, he replied, “That is one of the options.” He further stated in January 2024 that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza (not just the Hamas militants) should be subject to painful retribution as a means to break their morale and destroy any thoughts of independence.

Nations threatened by the Greater Israel plan

Few citizens of the nine sovereign nations (excluding Palestine) are aware of the predatory threat of Israeli annexation. These nations include:

Syria

Although a frontline Arab state that fought Israel in the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars, Syria has tried to avoid any major confrontation with Israel for some years. Since 2011, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad had been largely preoccupied with a bloody civil war against pro-democracy groups, as well as an Islamic State (ISIS) insurgency from 2013 to 2017. Israel captured two-thirds of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war and it remains an occupied territory that is a de facto annexation by Israel. Since October 2024, Israel has launched a series of air strikes on Syria and reports surfaced of the IDF creating a fortified buffer zone within the separation corridor between the Israeli and Syrian-held areas of the Golan Heights. 

The sudden overthrow of the Assad regime in early December 2024 by a variety of Syrian opposition forces, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, introduces great uncertainty over Syria’s future governance and national security. The interim government has made clear that foreign military forces and their proxies in Syria must leave. 

Russia, Iran and Hezbollah appear to be complying, but the US and Israeli compliance intentions are unclear. Israel has, however, taken the opportunity to pre-emptively destroy much of Syria’s naval fleet and air force assets, and bomb military targets in and around the capital Damascus. IDF forces have also crossed the Golan Heights buffer zone and reached some 25 kilometers from Damascus to create a “sterile defense zone.” How temporary or limited this incursion will be remains to be seen.

The whole of Syria is marked on the Greater Israel map as being part of Eretz Yisrael.

Lebanon

In addition to its ongoing Gaza campaign, Israel opened up a new war front in Lebanon in October 2024 against Hezbollah. The military tactics employed by Israel during this invasion of Lebanon, including seemingly indiscriminate bombardment of Beirut and other population centers and short notice mass evacuation orders to hundreds of thousands of civilians, had all the hallmarks of their Gaza campaign. Despite a ceasefire agreed on November 26, 2024, is the Israeli seek-and-destroy self-defense operation against terror groups masking a much bigger long-term objective of depopulating much, if not all, of Lebanon so as to facilitate its annexation into Greater Israel? The whole of Lebanon is also marked on the Greater Israel map as being part of Eretz Yisrael.

Cyprus

Since the Republic of Cyprus was formed in 1960, it has had a cordial relationship with Israel. The two countries share common interests in many matters. Israeli tourists and wedding parties are common sights in the southern Greek Cypriot-controlled area where I lived for many years. Greek Cypriot police officers often receive training in Israel. Israeli gamblers frequent the numerous casinos in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).

In the past few years, both the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot areas have also enjoyed an influx of investment by mainland Turks, Russians, Lebanese, Iranians, Gulf Arabs and Israelis. In the Turkish Cypriot northern third of the island, Israeli investors have become predominant, especially large property developers and entrepreneurs attracted by the real estate boom. The TRNC has welcomed foreign direct investment with few restrictions and relaxed anti-money laundering controls. However, such investment has caused property price inflation to such an extent that ordinary Turkish Cypriots can no longer afford to buy even a modest home. Such economic distortion has resulted in the TRNC administration effecting legislation in September 2024 to restrict residential property purchases to TRNC and Turkish citizens only and to one per person.

Turkish Cypriots are also concerned that Israeli investors and landowners are becoming so embedded in the TRNC economy that there is a risk that some of them are, or could become, fifth-columnist agents for the Israeli government against Turkish Cypriot interests. Such concern received added piquancy when, in October 2024, President Erdogan of Turkey (TRNC’s political and financial guarantor) issued a stark warning about Israel’s alleged Greater Israel territorial ambitions against Turkey.

Israeli investment in the Greek Cypriot controlled southern Cyprus has seen involvement of fewer large Israeli property developers and entrepreneurs than in the TRNC area. This may reflect the much tighter EU regulation and anti-money laundering controls in the south. Smaller Israeli operators are in evidence in the south, plus a large number of individuals buying a property for their own use (such as a holiday home). Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in Israel, the number of individual Israelis and families buying or long-term renting properties in the south has rocketed, presumably as an “insurance” bolt-hole in case things go badly in Israel. Affluent Lebanese have also flooded the Greek Cypriot property market to escape the Israeli military onslaught.

As in the TRNC area, the rapid influx of large numbers of Israelis in 2024 has distorted the property market in the Greek Cypriot south to the extent that ordinary citizens can no longer afford to buy and traditional tourists from northern Europe can no longer easily find holiday properties to rent. However, unlike the TRNC administration, the Republic government in the south has yet to take any action on this.

Although Herzl included Cyprus as a potential Jewish homeland in his original scope of Greater Israel, he later dropped it in favor of Palestine. However, some ultra-Zionists today still regard Cyprus as being part of Eretz Yisrael.

Turkey

Turkey has had good relations with Israel since 1948. However, in recent years, Turkey’s President Erdogan has been increasingly critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and his anti-Israel rhetoric has become increasingly harsh. In early October 2024, Erdogan bluntly warned of Israel’s alleged long-term plan to annex parts of Anatolia into Eretz Yisrael. He also threatened to defend Lebanon militarily should Israel try to annex it. Certainly, any move by Israel to annex or even temporarily occupy north Lebanon or Syria would threaten Turkey’s national security.

It should be noted that Turkey has large and well-equipped armed forces, ranking 8th out of 145 countries in the Global Firepower review, and is the second largest military force in NATO after the US. Erdogan’s anti-Israel rhetoric and accusations have caused much discussion and debate.

Parts of Anatolia in south-eastern Turkey are marked on the Greater Israel map as being part of Eretz Yisrael.

Likely success of Israel’s expansionist plan

In a limited sense, some of the Greater Israel Plan’s objectives have already been achieved. Some territorial gains were made in previous wars, and subsequent imposition of Israeli laws, decrees and policies in the occupied Palestinian territories have dispossessed large numbers of remaining Palestinians. Israel’s military, administrative and armed settler actions against the Palestinian populations of Gaza and the occupied West Bank before and since October 7, 2023, and repeated statements by its government ministers about permanently removing all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, are consistent with the Plan and Article 7 of the Nation State Law.

There is, however, a need to consider:

1. The apparent existence of a Greater Israel Plan, which in its various elements is being openly promoted by ultra-Zionist Israeli government ministers and extremists.
2. The practical viability of executing the Plan beyond annexation of currently occupied territories, given Israel’s very small population and therefore inability to field long-term occupation personnel in other territories.
3. The current high level of support (risen from 39% in May 2024 to an estimated 45-60%) among the Israeli population for Netanyahu’s ruthless Gaza and Lebanon campaigns and his hard-line rejection of any ceasefire, two-state solution or other peace deal brokered by the international community, but which may collapse if the government fails to produce its promised concrete, permanent safety results for citizens.
4. Netanyahu’s steadfast and dismissive refusal to listen to US and other allies’ entreaties to agree to a two-state solution for Palestine.
5. Israel’s growing international isolation resulting from its intolerable treatment of the Palestinians and a determination even by friendly nations to make Israel accountable to international laws and standards.
6. Uncertainty over whether the US will continue its unswerving and undiluted financial and military support for Israel.
7. The Netanyahu regime increasingly imposing sanctions against “ordinary” Israeli Jews and news media who dare to challenge its apparent proto-genocide campaign in Gaza, or who call for a two-state solution and peace accord with the Palestinians, such as the attacks on Haaretz.

It is clear that the current Israeli regime ideologically supports the Greater Israel Plan, and several Cabinet Ministers are actively promoting its execution as far as the occupied Palestinian territories are concerned. Less clear is how Israel views Lebanon and whether its recent bombardment and invasion was limited to a short-term “search and destroy” mission against Hezbollah, or whether it will be later resurrected by more gung-ho IDF and ultra-Zionist leaders as an opportunity for a partial or total permanent annexation of Lebanon into Eretz Yisrael. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail.

Israel may be assumed to conduct desktop “war gaming” exercises covering all its known and likely enemies and even others within the 1,300-kilometer reach from Tel Aviv on the Greater Israel map and beyond, but actual military invasion of the vast majority is highly unlikely. Vast numbers of trained military personnel are required for “boots on the ground” invasions and then occupation, often against much resistance, and Israel’s tiny forces make most invasions not viable. Then there is the problem of supply lines, communications and control over great distances, the environment, and the weather. Napoleon learned the hard way, as did Hitler, in their respective invasions of Russia and retreats from Moscow.

Given Donald Trump’s unconditional support for Israel and his rhetoric encouraging their uninhibited military aggression against all enemies, his second US presidency heralds an even less restrained Israel. Territorial expansion à la Greater Israel is now more likely. Even the threat of a regime-change war with Iran (beyond the Greater Israel map), led by Israel as Washington’s “local Rottweilers,” may convert to action.

However, it is not feasible for Israel (or any country with only 3 million combatants) to subdue — much less conquer, annex and control — surrounding territories whose antagonistic populations far exceed 150 million (and that’s excluding Iran’s 90 million). Nor can they rely on superior technology and weaponry to close the “strategic gap.” The US has still failed to grasp the latter weakness despite effectively losing in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to low-tech peasantry. Even if achieved, subjugation of the region, including regime change in Iran, would not and could not impose a Pax Americana/Pax Judaica on the region. It would simply alter the systemic topography of endless power struggles and conflict.

Finally, beware hubris. Most “grand plan” empires emanating from megalomaniacs and extremist zealots fail because these involve narcissistic delusions of grandeur, supreme power, invincibility, glory, and of righteousness, which do not recognize their own limitations and feet of clay.

[Will Sherriff edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The “Greater Israel” Plan Has a Colossal Reach appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Cypriot character

The 50-year intractability of the Cyprob shows a great deal about the character of Cypriots. Over the past 25 years, both sides have engaged in political posturing and rhetoric about achieving an enduring solution, and have participated in an endless series of UN-mediated talks and negotiations. Yet they have found every excuse imaginable to withdraw. Their defining characteristics are stubbornness and a compulsion to secure total partisan victory and globally recognized justice at all costs.

As my Cypriot lawyer once observed, “Ah, Alan-mou, you British are so sensible when you weigh up the pros and cons of taking legal action. All my Cypriot clients are hell bent on their day in court! They really do believe that venting their indignation in court will guarantee them a well-deserved just outcome for all the world to see. Regrettably, it is rarely so. Einai megalo diskolo [it’s a big problem]. They fail to recognize that the other party also has rights and maybe a good case and that compromises and trade-offs may be required. They refuse to accept that getting 80% of something is better than getting 100% of nothing.” So far, both sides in the Cyprob dispute have obtained the latter.

Despite such obstinacy, the hostility between them has markedly declined over the past 25 years. They have developed a healthy modus vivendi — an agreement for conflicting parties to coexist peacefully. GCs and TCs tend to regard themselves as Cypriots first and foremost, and value their shared heritage. Although they acknowledge a vague fealty to their respective ancestral origins — Greece and Turkey, respectively — Cypriots tend to trust their Cypriotness first. They back away from any perceived diktats or interference from the capitals of Athens or Ankara.

Official crossing points over the Green Line first opened up in 2003. There are now nine. The nearest to my house was in the next village of Pyla (Pile); it provides the most scenic rural route up to north Nicosia, then across the Pentadaktylos Mountains and down to Kyrenia (Girne) and its picturesque harbor surrounded by quayside restaurants. Looking down on Kyrenia from the north slopes of the Pentadaktylos is the village of Bellapais. Its name means “beautiful land” in its original Italian, and sure enough, it is home to an old abbey from the Venetian era. Bellapais (Beylerbeyi) was also the home of famous English author Lawrence Durrell, and the site where he wrote his acclaimed novel, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus.

Opposite the abbey is the Tree of Idleness corner. Legend suggests that countless writers and others who sat under a 200-year-old robinia tree here were overcome with a soporific lack of motivation. Today, the Tree of Idleness Restaurant is the legend’s legacy.

From my many visits, I can attest to the restaurant’s good food and hospitality. On one occasion, it was closed for a private party: the annual dinner and awards ceremony of a wrestling and martial arts society. Yet the maître d’ found a spare table and invited me in, provided I did not mind sharing the private party’s menu. Mind? Of course not! It was a wonderful evening with great cuisine, Kavaklidere red wine, Efes beer, raki and a cabaret, plus socializing with Turkish wrestlers!

Readers may have noticed that most Cypriot towns and villages have multiple names: one Greek, one Turkish and sometimes one English. The capital, known outside Cyprus by its English name of Nicosia, is Lefkosia to the GCs and Lefkosha to the TCs. The eastern city known as Famagusta in English is Ammochostos to the GCs and Gazimaguza to the TCs. Road signs may chop and change between all versions, which can confuse inexperienced foreigners.

Every day, many TCs travel across the Green Line to work or trade in the GC-controlled south. Meanwhile, GCs travel across to the TRNC area for leisure and to purchase cheap commodities. On weekends, GCs head up to Kyrenia in droves to gamble in the casinos there, which are more numerous and lightly controlled compared to the stricter regulation in the south.

Cyprus’s split population totals some 1.36 million. Approximately 933,500 people live in the Republic controlled by the GCs, which covers the southern two-thirds of the island. The rest dwell in the breakaway TC-controlled northern third. Additionally, the summer period from early April to late October sees another four million tourists temporarily swell the population by over 500,000 per month in the GC-controlled area alone. Foreign tourists also arrive in the TRNC via the Erjan (Tymbou) international airport near north Nicosia.

A culture of warmth and pleasure

Present-day Cypriots reflect their rich heritage, not only genetically, but culturally and linguistically. For example, the GCs in the Republic-controlled south still officially use Turkish terms and concepts from the Ottoman period. Some examples include the aforementioned mukhtar for the local mayor, donum for a measure of land and kochan or gotchan for a title deed.

There is a distinctly cosmopolitan feel about Cyprus, mainly owing to the broad spectrum of foreigners who are either residents, tourists or business visitors. Cypriots are relatively sophisticated and as up-to-date with technology, business and social trends as any developed European nation. Yet, paradoxically, the Cypriot culture is essentially that of a big village, with all the parochial characteristics that implies. The GCs even have a descriptive word for it: choriatiki, derived from the Greek word chorio (village). Everyone in a village seems to be somehow related to the next person and to others in neighboring villages or beyond. Foreigners often forget the close-knit familial links; many have incurred displeasure when they criticized a particular Cypriot, unaware that the listener is his/her relative.

Cypriots are highly sociable people. Strangers exchange greetings in the street, just like they did in my childhood village in England during the 1950s and 1960s. They enjoy being with people and talking a lot. They call each other mou, eg Alan-mou (“my Alan”) or fili mou (“my friend”), as a term of endearment. When sitting at a table chatting to someone, they touch the other person’s forearm as a sign of trust and affection.

To Cypriots, time is an elastic concept — ignoring timetables, schedules and deadlines a part of etiquette. After all, why rush and get stressed when having a chat and a metrio or sketo coffee in the kafeneon or taverna is much more pleasant? “Siga-siga!” (“Slow down!”) the GCs say, while the TCs invoke, “Yavash-yavash, rahatlamak!” (“Slow down, relax!”)

In Cyprus, a stop into the local taverna (coffee shop) for a half-hour of relaxation is a daily ritual for locals and expat foreigners alike. In the summer months, al fresco tables and chairs under awnings or umbrellas offer a welcome respite from the blazing sun and daily bustle. Every year, the country enjoys up to 340 days of sunshine and, in the June–September period, temperatures may reach 40–45 degrees Celsius (104–113 degrees Fahrenheit). When I lived there, it was almost a guarantee that I could sunbathe from the end of January to mid-November.

Cypriot friendliness and hospitality are legendary. In a GC establishment, friends, acquaintances and servers typically greet new arrivals, even strangers, with a welcoming “Kalimera, fili mou! Eistai kala?” (“Good day, my friend! Are you okay?”) This person may then reply, “Eimai kala, efcharisto poli,” (“I’m good, thanks a lot,”) or perhaps “Etzi-getzi” (“So-so”) or “Beninda-beninda” (“50/50”).

In TC establishments, the call would be, “Günaydin, hoshgel deniz! Iyi misin?” (“Good day, welcome! Are you okay?”). A positive response would be, “Tashaköl, ben iyiyim. Tchok mamnoun.” (“Thanks, I’m fine. Much obliged.”) If you are not feeling on top form, you might reply, “Shül-e bül-e, yari-yariya” (“So-so, 50/50”).

Incredible nightlife and weddings

Cypriots like to party but they tend to start late. Bouzoukias (tavernas with live bouzouki music, more of a nightspot than simply a taverna) rarely start to fill up before 9:30 PM. Spontaneous Greek dancing starts around 10:30 PM or once enough alcohol has been consumed. It may last for hours, going well beyond midnight.

The sound of a well-played bouzouki is spell-binding. Everyone is invited, even expected, to join in. One of the most enthralling dances is the mono dance, which involves a single dancer watched by gathered patrons. The irregular dance steps and moves are beyond description but take great skill to perform. I spent years trying to understand it. Then one day, a Cypriot confided that the mono dance’s other name is the “drunkard’s dance.” This name is spot-on!

Despite that nickname, it is rare to see Cypriots get drunk. Unlike some northern Europeans, they do not descend on hostelries to get rip-roaringly intoxicated. Locals do consume beer, but tend to imbibe more wine and the local zivania spirit — a beverage similar to the Italian grappa (a clear, grape-based alcohol similar to vodka). I can attest to the fact that zivania is not for the fainthearted. I can hold my own with tequila but getting inebriated on zivania once was enough for me!

The smoking of tobacco products is now officially banned in all enclosed bars, restaurants, tavernas, nightclubs and similar establishments throughout the Republic including TRNC-controlled areas. During the seven summer months (May–November), patrons can sit outside; smoking is widely allowed in such al fresco areas. As a cigar smoker, I welcome this dispensation. Police raids are very infrequent in villages, and some establishment owners may turn a blind eye to indoor smoking.

When it comes to parties, my wife and I agree that nothing competes with a full-on Greek wedding, especially a traditional “village wedding.” Typically, the whole village and beyond are invited to the reception. This can easily amount to 500–1,000 people and sometimes many more. When our mukhtar’s son married, the family had to hire a special stadium miles away that could accommodate the 2,500 guests and catering facilities.

Many weddings are held in special wedding halls. There is no dress code, so some guests wear tuxedos, others casual clothes and even work garb. I vividly recall a brawny male guest at one wedding who was in well-worn denim dungarees with his shirt sleeves rolled up, making him look like a farm worker who had just gotten off a tractor! He walked back from the buffet to his table carrying a piled-up plate of food in one hand and three large bottles of Keo beer between the fingers of his other hand. These celebrations attract all types! This behavior was totally acceptable, but still provided conversation for the other chattering guests. The “anything goes” nature of Greek wedding receptions is always wonderful.

Cypriot enterprise culture

Another Cypriot characteristic is business acumen and a high prevalence of entrepreneurship, from small to large businesses. Today, these are typically in the broad spectrum of tourism, including hotels, restaurants, bars and travel; real estate, including developers, contractors, sales agents and rental agents; retailers of all description, and agriculture. Professional, business and IT services, both within Cyprus and regionally, also flourish.

Cyprus has long been a location for registration of marine fleets from around the world. I got to know representatives from most of these sectors, including some high-profile individuals. Some became my good friends.

The enterprise ethos does, however, mask a more difficult characteristic of a minority of participants, whether private business people or public servants. While most Cypriots are law-abiding and try to conduct themselves with integrity, some are less scrupulous and adopt a “what can we get away with?” attitude. This comes at a cost to customers and clients, as well as society and the economy as a whole. These rogues believe that they are entitled to enrich themselves or gain unfair advantage by questionable if not unlawful means.

Such miscreants exist in every country, but in Cyprus they have developed fraud and corruption into an art form. Fraud is widely regarded not as a “real” crime, but as a game and battle of wits. Even government ministers and attorney generals have referred to it by the quaint, minimalizing term, “cheating.” This implies that even when vast sums of money have been defrauded, it is only a trivial matter — just a bit of naughtiness by lovable scallywags. Unfortunately, few are truly lovable, and this bad minority has a disproportionate impact on the country.

The social attitude towards fraud and corruption is summed up by the typical reaction Cypriots have when challenged on the subject: “Afti einai i Kypros. Stin Kypro, ola einai pithana” (“This is Cyprus. In Cyprus, anything is possible”), coupled with a shoulder shrug and a knowing look. They imply that a person’s objectives can still be reached using corruption if more honest attempts have failed.

When the Council of Europe’s Groupe d’États Contre la Corruption (GRECO) anti-corruption body initially reviewed Cyprus in 2005, its report found that senior government representatives were in flat denial that corruption even existed in Cyprus. Since then, successive GRECO reports, including the latest report (2023–2024), suggest that authorities have made some progress in combating corruption but still have some way to go.

Over the past 20 years, Cyprus has seen huge scandals involving fraud and corruption. One of the most pervasive and notorious was the Cyprus Property Fraud and Title Deeds Scandal. I wrote a whole section on it, including seven case studies, in my 2013 book, Corporate Risk and Governance. By 2008, over 30,000 properties fully purchased by an estimated 60,000 foreign buyers had not been issued with title deed transfers after five years. Mine took eight years to obtain, and some have taken over 30!

From 2007 to 2016, I contributed to the Cyprus Property Action Group (CPAG), led by Denis O’Hare and Nigel Howarth. This organization fought to bring justice to thousands of mainly foreign buyers of residential real estate in Cyprus who had been scammed. CPAG lobbied in Cyprus, the UK and in the European Parliament for changes to and enforcement of legislation concerning property purchases in the Republic of Cyprus.

Additionally, many buyers had lost their invested money to one of at least 12 categories of fraud perpetrated by developers, agents or lawyers, aided and abetted by corrupt officials. So many property fraud cases were reported to police that, by 2009, the Attorney General decreed that property fraud was no longer a criminal offense. Therefore, the police would no longer take reports from defrauded buyers who instead would have to raise their own cases in civil court.

Cyprus authorities, banks and lawyers often assert that Cyprus law closely follows English law, including property law. As I noted, “It is puzzling why property crime has been singled out for this dispensation. Why not also for murder, rape, robbery or blackmail? Why are long-winded civil cases forced on property victims before a criminal investigation is allowed, even when strong prima facie evidence of a crime exists? A perverse parody of English law appears to be acted out.”

The Cyprus Financial Crisis of 2013 escalated things. It involved the collapse of Marfin Laiki Bank, the country’s second-largest bank; the near collapse of the Bank of Cyprus, the country’s largest bank, and the near bankruptcy of the government. The crisis was precipitated largely by the property market debt bubble and financial mismanagement by the banks and government. In order to get an emergency bailout by the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF (dubbed The Troika), the government had to enforce stringent and radical change requirements for numerous practices. These included corporate governance, banking practice, due diligence, loan applicant background checks, non-performing and delinquent loans recovery, foreclosure and title deeds transfer.

Cyprus has made some advances. Title deeds issuance and transfer has seen process improvements, so its huge backlog has been reduced substantially. The policy of requiring a search certificate before transfer can proceed has reduced the level of hidden liens, earlier mortgages and encumbrances springing nasty surprises on innocent buyers. Nevertheless, Cyprus property expert Nigel Howarth agrees that unacceptable delays in title deed transfers still remain, as does the requirement for innocent buyers to pay for prior planning infringements. As he told me recently, “the ‘victim pays’ culture is embedded.” Corrupt practices involving state actors also continue to evolve.

Encouragingly, in 2014, a new Auditor General, Odysseas Michaelides, heralded a determination by authorities to clamp down on corporate and institutional fraud and corruption. As my December 2014 article for Financial Mirror reported, a whole bevy of individuals in public and private sector organizations suddenly found themselves charged with major crimes, convicted and receiving long jail sentences. There was then hope for justice in Cyprus after all.

Nevertheless, new cases have arisen. The most high profile one followed an Al Jazeera exposé in October 2020 of the Cyprus “passports for cash” scandal. This ongoing case eventually had eight indicted defendants, including former Transport Minister Marios Demetriades, awaiting trial in September 2024.

Michaelides’s anti-corruption success and personal style eventually became too much for the patricians of the Cyprus Establishment. In September 2024, he suddenly faced a barrage — or perhaps an orchestrated attack — of pious public criticism by politicians and state officials. They received backup from a Supreme Constitutional Court decision that he had abused his position, exceeded his authority and prejudiced due legal process by his media statements. Michaelides’s dismissal as Auditor General was publicly announced as a fait accompli. Moreover, the “passports for cash” trial suddenly “disappeared.” Recidivism and “sovereign corruption” are alive and well.

Cynics suggest the whole saga was engineered so the republic could slip back into its timeless, undisturbed, cozy and corrupt culture of yesteryear. This development does not bode well for Cyprus.

Shady characters, big and small

Among a Cyprus population of law-abiding citizens exists a minority cadre of what can best be described as shady characters. In addition to the white-collar crime proclivities described above, there are a few prominent gangsters running protection rackets, trafficking operations, money laundering and other well-honed criminal activities.

Arguably the most notorious gangster in recent times was Antonis Fanieros, who died in 2017. Tales of his activities became legendary. He seemed to revel in what he portrayed as a Robin Hood persona — he was “helping” ordinary citizens obtain some justice, as they allegedly could not rely on the police or courts to resolve their issues. His protection rackets around the city of Larnaca were well-known; several of my acquaintances who ran small businesses there paid up to avoid retribution.

I even met one of Fanieros’s enforcers. This man regularly visited one of my taverna haunts to check that nothing untoward was afoot. He was a pleasant, affable fellow who would sit at my table and chat. He was even a talented Greek dancer. But, I always watched my words and behavior, just in case!

Fanieros was so prominent that he tried to stand as a Member of Parliament. However, he failed to obtain the essential “good character” certificate from the police. Rather than landing a parliamentary position, he earned a public rebuke from the Police Chief for his audacity.

Even the innocent can sometimes fall foul of perceptions, as I once discovered at a wonderful mezedopoleon restaurant and nightspot in the village of Skarinou. The place was packed with Cypriots. I seemed to be the only anglos (Englishmen) in the place, but with my Cypriot friends around, I wasn’t at all nervous. The meze — a meal style consisting of small plates of various foods — served here was superb, the beer and wine were flowing and the live bouzoukia-style music had everyone in a good mood.

Once the meal was over, I noticed that some Cypriots at surrounding tables had lit cigarettes; this was customary. So, enjoying cigars as I do, I lit up a Cuban decimos cigar and started to puff contentedly. I became aware that several patrons at other tables were looking at me with slightly anxious expressions. Were cigars not allowed? Was I smoking in a non-smoking zone? What was the problem?

One of my companions explained: “It’s not the cigar that’s the problem. It’s you and the way you are smoking it. With several scars on your face and close-cropped hair, you look quite tough. And you hold your cigar like someone out of a gangster movie. They probably think you are one of the Limassol Russian mafioski [mafia member]. They are wondering why you’re here and if there’s going to be trouble.”

Me? I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I love Nisi-mou Afroditi too much.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post My Long Love Affair with Aphrodite’s Island appeared first on Fair Observer.

Although the report presents significant contemporary and anticipated future risk exposures, the general picture is not a recent development, as discussed by numerous previous authors, including Ian Glendon, Sharon Clarke, myself, and Ian Glendon and myself.

Paradoxes and deception

The unvarnished reality of 21st-century governance and social, political and economic order presents several paradoxes. For example: 

Authoritarianism and pseudo-democracy

Many governments proclaim that they are democratic, yet some exhibit deeply authoritarian and undemocratic policies, including repression of various groups and individuals (e.g., pseudo-democracies and quasi-dictatorships such as Russia). Some even revel in their notoriety as exponents of “illiberal democracy” (e.g., Hungarian President Viktor Orbàn).

Some democracy-abusers in the US are so extreme that they openly support a hostile foreign state (Russia), which Representative Michael R. Turner suggests repudiates their oath of allegiance. Critics have also censured the ultra-conservative media celebrity Tucker Carlson for his openly pro-Vladimir Putin stance.

Partisan freedoms, subjugation for others

Many political leaders and their supporters publicly espouse individual liberty. Yet, they mean to secure privileged freedoms only for themselves while denying these or even fundamental human rights to their opponents or groups they despise. For example, when Donald Trump was the US president, he notoriously “applied the primacy of inequality and the distinction between predators/winners like himself and victims/losers such as the poor and the vulnerable … Trump appeared to reject the very idea that principal functions of the judiciary exist to ensure that (a) no one, not even the President, is above the law, and (b) government does not abuse its position of power and resources against the human rights of anyone.”

Among a long list of human rights issues, poor access to health care, suppression of abortion rights and weak gun controls have dogged the US for years. In 2024, some 26 million US citizens (7.7%) still lack healthcare insurance. On many issues, powerful ideological partisan groups who dominate politics, legislatures and the media ensure they get what they want. In contrast, they deny the fundamental human rights of others.

Breaking laws and corrupting justice

Many governments, political leaders and their supporters publicly boast of their utmost commitment to the rule of law while flagrantly and persistently breaking domestic and international law. Examples are Israel in relation to Palestinian civilians and other minorities and the Hindu nationalist government in India in relation to the Muslim minority. 

Governments have failed to crack down on corporate and public sector lawbreakers in major scandals. For example, in the UK, the contaminated blood supplies scandal and the Post Office Horizon scandal—see later sections below.

Pathological lying as a modus operandi

Politicians may spin and massage the truth to their advantage while deflecting attention away from inconvenient or embarrassing facts. It is part of the non-articulated “contract” between them and the public. However, some politicians (and other public figures and corporate leaders) go beyond such relatively harmless custom and engage in blatant lying. With these, dishonesty is a facet of their personality, worldview and how they function generally. Individuals with anti-social traits like narcissism, sociopathy or compulsive dominance are likely to employ lies and deception as part of their manipulative cloak to persuade or coerce people to react in a certain way.

For a long time, Trump has had a long record of making numerous false statements. Among the tally are his false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and that he had won. His fibbing has not waned, and new “porkies” emerge weekly, if not daily.

False conspiracy theories, such as the QAnon phenomenon, have been another weapon of political deception and manipulation. Numerous radical-right politicians, public figures and media personalities engaged in disseminating and supporting such theories, frequently promoting them as unassailable facts. An outrageous example was the wild allegation that former First Lady Hillary Clinton had been prominent in an international pedophile ring run by Democrat politicos and centered on a pizzeria in Washington, DC, popular with children. 

Another serial promulgator of false accusations via the radical-right website Infowars, Alex Jones, was held liable for $1.4 billion in compensation to families of the Sandy Hook school gun massacre. Jones, a gun advocate, had disseminated egregiously false allegations about the motives and conduct of the parents, accusing them of being actors, not grieving parents, and alleging that the massacre itself was a fake.

Corporate abuse of employees and customers

Many organizations and companies boast on their websites and adverts that they treat their customers as their number one priority and their employees as their greatest asset, while in reality, they treat one or both categories with appalling contempt (e.g., numerous scandals in the US and UK). Government and official conspiracy are involved in some of the most egregious cases. On January 11, 2024, Fair Observer detailed the multi-decade Horizon scandal involving the UK Post Office and Fujitsu. I will discuss subsequent revelations below.

An underlying pathology

Such paradoxes speak to an underlying pathological psychology in governmental, political and corporate life. Ulrich Beck eloquently exposed such pathology in his famous book Risk Society. His description and analysis of such cases as the Vila Parisi conflagration and environmental catastrophe in Brazil in 1984 and responses to accidental radioactive fallout from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria in 1957 are sobering. The distortion of logic warps and twists reality so that up is down, black is white, bad is good, wrong is right, criminal is lawful, unsafe is safe, and extremism is benign. The mass poisoning of the environment and people by industrial pollution is “bad luck.” Unprovoked invasion of a peaceful neighboring state is not war but a “special military operation,” mass killing of civilians by combatants is “collateral damage,” and ethnic cleansing is “social relocation.” Such oxymoronic deception has become the stock-in-trade of pathological leaders of all kinds and their propaganda machinery. Doublespeak, edited by Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson, focuses on this phenomenon concerning the far right since 1945.

The following are fundamental characteristics of the pathology: 

• Reckless risk-taking by governments, politicians and corporations.
• Ruthlessness, repression and greed.
• Megalomania and political and ideological hegemony.
• The inversion of truth.
• Pseudo-democracy and the crushing of individual liberty.

Three selected cases

Case 1: Contaminated blood

Contaminated blood supplies in the UK infected over 30,000 people with HIV and/or Hepatitis C between 1970 and 1998. A long-term cover-up and a blanket of denial and disinformation contributed to at least 3,000 premature deaths, many of them avoidable. Hundreds of infected patients have still to be informed of the fact.

The recent official independent inquiry report (2,527 pages in seven volumes by retired High Court judge Sir Brian Langstaff) is a damning indictment of morally corrupted officials and clinicians and successive governments who were “more concerned about reputational damage than openness and honesty.” Doctors hid the exposure risks and even blood test results from patients, such as hemophiliacs, and experimented on some (e.g., children) without their knowledge or consent. Crucial records were deliberately destroyed to thwart unwelcome inquiries or investigations. Langstaff’s findings have finally vindicated the victims and their families, who “the Establishment” had long ignored, patronized, and gaslit.  This report is the first significant step in achieving belated justice for the victims.

Case 2: US gun control

The ultra-high incidence of gun-related deaths in the US has long been a source of dismay and disbelief throughout the rest of the world. The US incidence rate is not just marginally higher than in other developed countries but several times higher. For some years, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and other studies, the US incidence rate for all firearm deaths had remained consistently at between 10.0 and 11.0 per 100,000, but by 2022 had risen to 13.3. For 18 of the other 21 high-income countries compared by Grinshteyn and Hemenway in 2010, the rate was less than 2.0 per 100,000. For gun homicides, most of these countries had a rate more than 18 times lower than the US rate of 3.6 per 100,000. By 2019, the latter had risen to 4.38. US writers on this subject have noted that “the US is in a different world.”

Many of the firearm deaths involve accidents, personal and domestic disputes and robberies. However, the US is exceptional among developed countries for the high number of mass shootings by lone actors. Most of these mass shootings involve a relatively small number of deaths (3 to 6), but some are spectacular and involve dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries. In October 2017, a gunman killed 59 people and injured over 500 at the Las Vegas Mandalay Resort and Casino massacre. In June 2016, another shooter killed 49 people and wounded 58 at the Orlando nightclub. 

The name Columbine resonates as the most memorable school mass shooting (in 1999), but there have been others, such as Sandy Hook in 2012 and Nashville in March 2023. Mass shootings of all kinds increased sharply from 2018 onwards, including in 2023 in Lewiston in Maine and Monterey Park in California.

How can this unedifying claim to “US exceptionalism” in gun homicides be explained? Contributory causes include:

• The US is an inherently violent society, having high rates of homicide and assault even when firearms are not involved.
• Many citizens own firearms out of fear of attack and believe possessing a firearm might deter attack or enable a successful defense against attack.
• Citizens are willing to use firearms to settle disputes and scores, intimidate others or defend themselves.
• Law enforcement officers are uninhibited in the drawing of firearms as a preferred method of detaining suspects for all types of offenses and “if in doubt” the discharge of firearms to disable or kill suspects.
• US citizens have a right under the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment to bear arms and are encouraged to do so by politicians and other interests.
• Firearms are readily available to the public in a largely unrestricted manner (compared to other developed countries).

Numerous studies have shown that the major determining factor across the US (which also applies to other high-income countries) is gun availability (HICRC 2017; Hemenway and Miller 2000; Hepburn and Hemenway 2004; Miller et al. 2002, 2007; Webster and Vernick 2013).

Stringent gun controls and a vast reduction in gun availability may seem an obvious solution, one which other countries have deployed successfully. However, the US is a deeply polarized nation divided into roughly equal numbers of, on the one hand, Democrat voters and other liberals, and, on the other, Republican voters and other conservatives. As a crude generalization, the first group tends to support progressive social policies, including gun control. In contrast, the second group tends not to support such policies. Moreover, Republican politicians and powerful support groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) have weaponized the constitutional right “to bear arms” as a rallying political argument against any attempt to regulate that right.

Other objections to gun control include a denial that gun-related deaths are cause for major concern and a refutation of the suggestion that the level of gun ownership or gun availability has any causal link or strong association with firearm deaths or violent crime. Political, ideological, cultural or interest-related perceptual defenses or other cognitive biases drive denial and refutation. 

The gun lobby makes much in its arguments of individual liberty and the individual’s right to bear arms but says little or nothing about the most fundamental human right of all — the right to live. The unfettered availability of guns presents a direct and uninvited threat to the life of anyone unfortunate enough to encounter someone malevolent bearing a gun that they should not possess. In effect, their stated position on guns implies a belief that gun rights (which are not a fundamental human right but a sectoral interest right) are far more important than the human right to life enshrined in the UN Declaration of 1948. 

Unfortunately, over many decades, US federal and state governments and judiciaries have remained persuaded by gun lobbyists not to amend or remove the 2nd Amendment or to do anything substantive on gun control. The primitive fixation on 2nd Amendment rights places their thinking back to its inception in 1791. Then, personal safety threats were much more real and imminent, and there were no formalized law-and-order functions like today. The right to bear arms made good sense in that context, but not so today. Without fundamental ramping up of gun controls, policymakers will likely fail to deliver justice to victims of gun crime in the US soon, and we can expect more gun deaths and mass shootings. 

The attempted assassination of Trump on July 13, 2024, by a gunman armed with an assault rifle, which also killed one bystander and critically wounded two others, should refocus public attention on stringent controls. However, Trump himself has been a longstanding fervent member and supporter of the NRA and the absolute rights of the 2nd Amendment. It is doubtful that this near-death personal experience will cause him to now demand stringent gun controls. Rather, he is more likely to demand greater weaponry and tactical freedom for the police and close personal protection agents, while blaming his political opponents for encouraging attacks on him. He refuses to acknowledge any connection between gun availability and gun crime. To the rest of the world, the paradox of gun primacy so dominating an otherwise civilized society beggars belief.

Case 3: Post office Horizon scandal update

My Fair Observer article “Justice for All?” describes in some detail what has been cited as the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history. Over some 15 years (2000–2015), more than 900 sub-postmasters in small towns and villages across Britain fell victim to a defective and compromised online accounting system called Horizon, installed and operated on the Post Office’s behalf by Fujitsu. Almost immediately after the Horizon rollout at the end of 1999, unexplained accounting deficits were being reported. The Post Office blamed all such discrepancies on the individual sub-postmasters since both the Post Office and Fujitsu steadfastly asserted that Horizon was perfect and incapable of error. Moreover, by contract term, the Post Office held every sub-postmaster liable for such deficits and began a debt recovery program against them. Typically, alleged debts amounted to tens of thousands of pounds and sometimes in excess of £100,000 ($127,000). 

Beyond debt recovery, the Post Office also pursued criminal prosecutions against a large proportion of the accused sub-postmasters. Many were convicted and jailed based on the Post Office’s “incontrovertible” evidence that Horizon was perfect and could not be compromised. Facing financial ruin, loss of job and the stigma of a criminal conviction for theft and dishonesty, some committed suicide.

Over the first decade of this century, concern grew among sub-postmasters, lawyers, journalists and politicians that “something” was not only drastically wrong with Horizon software but also that it could be possible for Horizon or Post Office officials to access individual accounts remotely and alter the financial data. Both the Post Office and Fujitsu flatly denied these assertions. Nevertheless, by 2015, the House of Commons Business Committee forced the Post Office Chief Executive, Paula Vennells, to explain the growing furor and allegations of miscarriage of justice. She still insisted that Horizon was perfect and that there had been no false charges, false convictions or any other damage to sub-postmasters for which Horizon could be responsible.

In a series of trials between March 2017 and March 2019, 555 sub-postmasters sued the Post Office and won every case and every counter-appeal. The Post Office and Fujitsu witnesses came under savage criticism from judges. Since 2019, the initial compensation scheme totaling £57.5 million ($72 million) has been increased several times and could cost taxpayers over £1 billion ($1.27 billion). Since 2019, the number of individual claims has increased to over 900, owing to previously hidden cases. However, it has emerged that compensation scheme administrators have offered sums to claimants of typically less than 20% of their claims even though independent accountants have calculated these. Victims still have to fight for compensation that previously seemed assured and not subject to undue duress. Therefore, many victims have not received financial redress as part of a justice package.

A turning point in public awareness of the Horizon scandal was undoubtedly the screening over four nights in January 2024 of the highly acclaimed ITV docudrama Mr Bates versus The Post Office. The British public was horrified by the revelations, and the real-life Alan Bates, his fellow victims and his stalwart supporters, including several Members of Parliament such as James Arbuthnot, became national heroes overnight. Unsurprisingly, Post Office CEO Paula Vennells and her gaggle of senior executives, Horizon project people and fraud investigators became objects of public disgust and indignation, reflected in news media, social media commentary and pressure on politicians and the government to “do the right thing.” Certainly, King Charles felt sufficiently moved to recognize Bates’s selfless and courageous fight for justice over more than 20 years by appointing him a Knight of the Realm in June 2024. Arise, Sir Alan!

In May 2024, the government felt obliged (or embarrassed enough?) to fast-track legislation to overturn the convictions of all the sub-postmasters wrongly accused. This was a welcome, if long-delayed, step forward in the “package of justice.”

In addition, the government had already set up the independent Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry in September 2020, which became statutory in June 2021. The complexities of the scandal and the amount of evidence collected have inevitably drawn the inquiry out. Public examination of key witnesses has provided riveting viewing for TV audiences, especially since early 2024. 

Further revelations so far include:

• Both Paula Vennells and senior colleagues had known for years prior to 2015 that the Horizon software was flawed and that sub-postmasters Horizon accounts could be, and indeed were being, accessed remotely by Horizon personnel and that entries and account data were being altered unbeknownst to the sub-postmasters and without their authority. Covert audio recordings show that independent forensic accountants personally warned her and senior colleagues in July 2013 that Horizon was defective, that accounts could be remotely interfered with by Horizon personnel and that prosecutions were unjust. Nevertheless, under Vennells’ direction, they relentlessly continued prosecuting, knowing that such cases were false. Alan Bates referred to Post Office executives as “thugs in suits.”
• When the Post Office forced sub-postmasters to “pay back” alleged account shortfalls, the money went into a Post Office profits account. Since these payments resulted from a falsely concocted non-existent debt, they amounted to fraud by deception against the sub-postmasters and possibly involved menaces and intimidation. Put bluntly, the Post Office stole their money. These payments are now subject to a more comprehensive criminal investigation by police and the UK tax authorities.
• The size of the bonuses of Post Office personnel involved in the policy and direction of the investigation and false prosecution of sub-postmasters, as well as those undertaking such work, was related to the size of the “profits” account. Thus, they had a vested personal financial interest in prejudicial, if not malicious, pursuit of the victims.
• In July 2024, the Post Office still refused to acknowledge the innocence of a sub-postmaster despite the quashing of their conviction. When confronted with this repudiation in the official inquiry, former Post Office Chairman Tim Parker was unable to justify such victimization. One former government Business Secretary told the inquiry that Post Office executives were “corrupt,” while another repeated Bates’s description of “thugs in suits.”

It is evident that Vennells, in full knowledge of the truth, presided for years over a deliberate and malicious program to falsely prosecute and crush sub-postmasters without one iota of empathy, sympathy, remorse or guilt. Then, when the evidence became increasingly known outside the Post Office, she orchestrated an additional layer of denial and obfuscation over many more years. Even under robust questioning in the official inquiry in May 2024, she continued to deny, obfuscate and plead “no memory.” She even added bouts of tearful sobbing, but such performative attempts to portray herself as the victim cut little ice with onlookers. Media reports were savage, one describing her grilling as “divine retribution” and that “Ms. Vennells, for all her pretensions to godliness, was the opposite of the Good Samaritan, abandoning those in distress, and is now bent on saving her own skin.” (This alludes to her once being a part-time priest and even a candidate for the job of Bishop of London.)

How such a deeply flawed personality “displaying an incompetence of gargantuan scale” ever became CEO, let alone held onto the position for so long raises yet more awkward questions about corporate governance, staff selection and risk management at the Post Office.

The inquiry will likely not issue its final report for at least another year, thus delaying the criminal investigation into the scandal and any prosecutions. A dedicated national team of 80 police detectives nationwide will now identify and pursue suspects relating to fraud, perjury, perverting the course of justice and conspiracy. Thus, the complete “package of justice” remains elusive for the victims.

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is the Search for Justice Futile in Today’s Tyrannical Climate? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Risk is not just about numbers but is deeply bound up with individual psychology, group dynamics and cultural factors. Alan shares eye-opening examples, like the long-term risk aversion in job security contrasted with risk-taking in gambling prevalent in Eastern societies. He emphasizes the importance of understanding Eastern societies’ cultural norms and social dynamics in business settings. 

The discussion then takes a personal turn, highlighting how Alan’s approach to risk has influenced his personal life, contrasting his logical mindset with his artist wife’s different approach to risk. Alan also reflects on a childhood encounter with a Holocaust survivor, shaping his lifelong stance against authoritarianism.

For university students, Alan underscores the essence of curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge as the core purpose of higher education. He shares practical advice on embracing and learning from unpleasant realities.

Alan Waring’s extensive experience—from corporate audits in Europe to cultural change initiatives in China—provides a unique lens through which he views the world of risk. His perspectives are not just for risk professionals but for anyone wanting to navigate the complexities of our global society.

Tune in to this episode to gain valuable insights from Alan’s vast expertise and learn how to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of risk in both personal and professional realms.

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Risk, Curiosity and Authoritarianism: Alan Waring’s Global Insights appeared first on Fair Observer.

Am I a Londoner?

Since my “yoof” (youth) in the 1960s, I lived, studied and worked in London for nearly 40 years. Yet, even though I feel more attuned to London than any other place in Britain, I cannot honestly call myself a true Londoner. To acquire that distinction would require that I had been born and bred there — not necessarily in the East End “within the sound of Bow Bells” (an old phrase referring to the bells rung at the church of St Mary-le-Bow). That would make me a traditional Cockney. But no, at least somewhere within the 32 boroughs of Inner and Greater London or within the City of London, the smallest and oldest local authority right in the center of the metropolis.

Still, I can join in with fellow patrons in one of the traditional pubs (short for “public houses” or licensed drinking establishments) in singing “Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner” and other ditties (short, simple songs), especially if it’s backed by an old Joanna (piano). Or, I can join in traditional pub sports such as darts, dominoes, skittles or cribbage. Nowadays, one has to seek out such traditional nightspots, since most metropolitan pubs cater for fast-moving modernity and youth, and they eschew parochial signaling.

Nevertheless, the pub tradition doggedly remains. An old college professor once advised me that the role of the pub was not to get the patrons inebriated but rather to provide social affirmation. The sociologist Victor Turner referred to this phenomenon as “social liminality and communitas.” A pub is a congenial place for social cohesion — what the Germans would call Zusammenhalt — where patrons rub shoulders and engage with friends, acquaintances and complete strangers from all walks of life and hopefully leave feeling moderately uplifted. Long before psychiatrists and antidepressant medications, the publican and fellow patrons provided a ready sounding board for lay diagnosis, problem solving and support.

Then, there is the distinctive London lingo or patois, a diluted form of Pure Cockney with terms and rhyming slang such as “apples-and-pears” (stairs), “butcher’s” (short for “butcher’s hook,” meaning “look”), “cor-blimey” (may God blind me), “guv” (boss, governor), “geezer” (a man), “bloke” (a man), “wedge” (sizable bundle of banknotes), “sov” (£1, short for “sovereign,” a gold coin), “pony” (£25) and “monkey” (£500).

Given my name, Alan, how could I ever forget the expression “Don’t get your Alans in a twist”? Alan Whicker was a well-known BBC television journalist from the 1950s to 80s. Rhyming with Whicker are “knickers” (underpants). Since “getting one’s knickers in a twist” means getting unduly frustrated and annoyed as a result of one’s own actions failing to solve a minor problem, the Cockney expression’s meaning becomes all too clear.

No one today, except perhaps a few diehard Cockney “Pearly Kings and Queens,” stuffs their colloquial speech with such language like Dick Van Dyke did in the 1964 film Mary Poppins. Nonetheless, many Londoners of all social and educational strata do drop the odd Cockney expression into conversations for effect, usually to convey an emphasis, exasperation or absurdity.

In the past 50 years or so, London itself has continued to evolve and change, as it has done since at least the time of Roman Londinium. Encircled by the M25 motorway, the Greater London population is now somewhere between 10 million and 14.4 million, depending on boundary definitions, with a multi-ethnic polyglot character. Ever since Roman times, London has been a magnet for foreign immigrants of all kinds — invaders, traders, entrepreneurs, students, refugees and so on.

Moreover, starting in the 1960s, the population who work in London has continued to spread out across the surrounding Home Counties and beyond, often seeking more affordable housing. The government encouraged this migration as part of post-World War II reconstruction and development and to control urban sprawl. Eight “New Towns” were designated within a 50-mile radius of London alone to accommodate London’s population overspill, but many more existing towns have also continued to attract Londoners.

Nowadays, commuting 200 miles into London every day is not uncommon. A gradual modification of spoken English has also accompanied this population spread, so that within a 100-mile radius from Central London it has become “averaged out”; a mild Cockney-ish accent. Even in the posh spoken English of lawyers and university dons, one can often now detect the odd glottal stop or disappearing “T.”

This new spoken English is called Estuary English, alluding to its prevalence in the populations spread out across London and counties on both sides of the River Thames and the Thames Estuary. I am an exponent of the genre, although I do check myself when conversing with non-Estuary speakers. Pronouncing a final letter “L” as a “W” (e.g. we-w instead of well), or not enunciating a final “ow” (e.g. tomorrah instead of tomorrow), or omitting the letter “T” (e.g. be-uh instead of better) may convey laziness or poor education.

Feeling personally connected

In many ways, my own ancestry reflects the post-Roman history of London and Britain generally: a melange of Celtic, British, Norman, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon DNA. The surname Waring does not appear in British documents until after 1067; it first crops up as Warin, Warenger, Warrene and Guerri in the Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s infamous taxation register of all real estate and other property ownership, completed in 1086. Of ten Warins listed in the Domesday Book, none had owned properties in Britain before 1066, but by 1086, some owned dozens of properties.

Other Norman variants of Waring include Guerin, meaning guard or protector. The Normans themselves were of mixed descent from both Romano-Celts, Franks and seaborne invaders from North Germany, Denmark and Norway. The Waring name via the Normans may also be related to the German Wahrung, also meaning guard or protector.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, I worked as a Principal Officer at the Corporation of the City of London. This local authority was formed in the 12th century. It covered the original Londinium of the Roman era. The City further developed in Saxon times, and it successfully defended itself against Viking invaders, but not the Norman takeover of London in 1067. In 2006, the word Corporation was dropped from its branding and public-facing name, becoming just the City of London — but for me, it will always be the City Corporation.

My office was in the oldest part of the Guildhall over the ceremonial main entrance doors into the Guildhall proper, where the many state banquets are held. There are many guildhalls across Britain, the name likely stemming from the Saxon “gild” or “geld” (money) and the place (“hall”) where local taxes and dues were paid. But this Guildhall, originating in 1411, is the most famous and prestigious. My office window was the perfect reconnaissance point to observe all the comings and goings of staff, visitors and dignitaries as they crossed the Guildhall Yard below.

Down in the Guildhall vaults, the Museum of London (run by the Corporation at its own site at the junction of London Wall and Aldersgate Street) keeps City records from all the way back in Saxon times, including the original freedom charter that William the Conqueror granted the city elders in 1067. This was a way of buying their loyalty and deterring them from opposing his takeover after King Harold II lost Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Quirkiness and hidden talents

The City has retained its ancient legislature and administration (The City Aldermen, the Common Councillors, the Court of Common Council, the Town Clerk) and the over 100 ancient livery companies and trades guilds whose titles all start with “Worshipful Company of…” (examples include “Fishmongers”, “Haberdashers”, “Salters”, “Vintners”, “Wax Chandlers”, and “Tobacco Pipemakers and Tobacco Blenders”). Freemen of the City are entitled to join a livery company. By the way, since 1872, the term “freeman” has applied equally to men and women!

The livery companies elect the Aldermen, whereas the eligible resident and business population of the City elects the Common Councillors. The quaint livery companies, many of whose actual trades died out centuries ago, facilitate the interests of big business corporations and their bosses who operate in the so-called “Square Mile,” which is the nation’s financial hub. It’s all about power, privilege, contacts and doing business.

The term “alderman” in British administrative law evolved from Anglo-Saxon times and probably stems from the North Germanic term of “Æltermann” (elder), a term for a person recognized for their age and wisdom. It was still part of local authority structures throughout Britain when I was a boy, but largely disappeared as a result of local government streamlining in the 1960s — yet not in the City of London. Similarly, the chief executive of a local council, big or small, was the Town Clerk before they all became Chief Executives — but not in the City of London. These quaint historical relics remain unchanged.

The Corporation also has a surprisingly wide range of responsibilities. For example, it manages and maintains the Tower Bridge, operates several major iconic markets (such as Smithfield meat market and Billingsgate fish market), runs several elite schools including the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the two City of London Schools (one for boys, one for girls), manages “for the people of London” the whole of Epping Forest (an ancient hunting forest just inside the region of Essex) and curiously runs the Animal Quarantine Service at Heathrow Airport. It also provides and administers the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey and owns the freehold (the property and the land that it is built on) on vast tracts of prime commercial property across London.

A sense of history, continuity and loyalty

My own sense of history, continuity and loyalty to the Crown grew during my time in the City and was cemented by two particular privileges that I was granted. One was being allowed to see the original City freedom charter, a very rare honor. The other was being granted Freedom of the City, the honor that allows a person to call themselves a freeman. One archaic privilege of being a freeman was that, in past centuries, I could have run my sheep and livestock through the City streets and traded them at fairs and markets, all without paying any tithes or taxes. Most of these anachronistic privileges are long gone, and most contemporary privileges are more symbolic than practical.

The City Chamberlain (complete with fur stole and regalia!) officiates the Freedom investiture of an individual in his own court. The first recorded instance of this ceremony took place in 1237. During my own, I read out a special oath of allegiance to the monarch (then Queen Elizabeth II) from “the little red book” entitled Rules for the Conduct of Life (there are 36 of these rules). Although written in slightly archaic English, it is packed with both common sense and guidance on steering one’s life with honesty, integrity, honor and being ever mindful of one’s own limitations and the rights of others.

Perhaps it should be required reading for all politicians, corporate executives and public officials!

[Will Sherriff edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post London: Inhaling 2,000 Years of History and Culture appeared first on Fair Observer.

The espoused system of justice is an ideal, seeking to deliver fair and equitable treatment of individuals, encompassing equal rights, protections and opportunities. However, a lot will depend on the prevailing political ideology and system. Authoritarian states, like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others, often fail to uphold justice, despite their claims to the contrary. Individuals with dissenting views or minority identities in these nations may face repression, arrest, imprisonment and even judicial or extra-judicial execution.

Justice in war

In addition to issues of social justice and the array of law-and-order injustices, there is also the issue of justice in the area of armed conflict. A party engaging in war must demonstrate a just cause, justify that war is the last resort after exploring peaceful options, declare war through proper authority, act with good intentions, have a reasonable chance of success, and ensure that the means used align proportionately with the perceived threat and declared objective.

In addition, parties in armed conflict must take the utmost care to prioritize the safety of civilians and to apply humanitarian principles. For example: no deliberate murder or other atrocities against unarmed civilians; no taking of hostages or harming them; no collective punishments of civilians as proxy targets for enemy combatants; no indiscriminate use of bombs, rockets or weapons of mass destruction; no targeting of hospitals, schools, water, fuel and power supplies, food and medical supplies; no denial of safe passage out of combat zones for civilians and priority medical patients; no forced detention, displacement or expulsion of civilians; and no expropriation or theft of land or other assets of the civilian population, whether by state agencies, interest groups or individuals.

The law of war has four guiding principles or requirements:

1. Distinction: distinguish as far as possible between combatant targets and civilians.

2. Proportionality: prevent excessive loss of life or damage incidental to an attack, disproportionate to military advantage.

3. Military Necessity: target only existential and potential military threats.

4. Avoidance of Unnecessary Suffering: prioritize humanitarian criteria.

Regrettably, history shows that observation of the law of war regarding civilians is often more in breach. As Bård Drange suggests, victims may have a long struggle to obtain any justice. Combatants often disregard rules, sought to justify their actions and ignored potential war crime charges. Some even cynically argue that they scrupulously observe the four guiding principles despite compelling evidence to the contrary which they deny. Putin’s war on Ukraine and the Israel–Hamas war are contemporary examples.

Of the two identifiable parties to a dispute or conflict, is the position of one wholly just and the other’s position wholly unjust. In other words, is justice in war zero-sum? Sometimes such an unequivocal judgment may be warranted, but quite often both parties may reasonably claim to have suffered injustice at the hands of the other. Responsibilities, liabilities and evaluations under agreements, contracts, laws and norms guide judicial decisions, which might differ from public opinions, partisan stances or populist views.

Nevertheless, in some of the worst cases of injustice, a “zero-sum” argument is precisely what protagonists relentlessly assert. The party with more power typically vehemently asserts its exclusive rightfulness, portraying itself as a paragon of virtue and godliness. Simultaneously, they depict the other party as despicable, pathological liars, entirely untrustworthy and devoid of any redeeming qualities, creating a narrative that attempts to justify their own grievances while vilifying the opposition. Each party may develop an immutable view that justice can only be served by the total annihilation of the other, figuratively if not literally.

In high-stakes disputes, hyperbolic propaganda reigns. In today’s world of instant communication and social media, winning the propaganda battle often means claiming an exclusive right to justice, even if, impartially speaking, it is unfounded. 

Historical injustices

When we look retrospectively at historical injustices, we encounter at least two main problems:

1. Cognitive, emotional and motivational biasing. The”’truth” becomes distorted by knowledge limits, partiality, prejudice and purpose of the observer.

2. Causation, forensic accountability and attribution of blame for events, whether in the recent or more distant past. Whereas it is often relatively easy evidentially to attribute causation, partisan arguments are likely to creep into judgments on responsibility and blame.

Things become far murkier the further back in time one examines. Historical revisionism and retrospective rationalization are likely to play a part. Parties may well introduce degrees of fiction and exaggeration into their accounts of past or present situations or events in order to bolster their present claims for justice or to deny the claims of others.

The curse of slavery and ethnic subjugation was normalized for thousands of years by many nations. Many argue that assigning blame and seeking reparations from specific nations in contemporary times proves futile and unjustified, appearing more as an act of retribution than genuine justice. Historical regression has no bounds, and for those demanding reparation, who is to say how far back any alleged obligation should go?

For example: Should the UK make reparation claims against the Italian government for the subjugation, including slavery, of its native population for over 400 years by the Roman Empire? Similarly, should it claim against the French government for the Norman invasion and conquest, including quasi-enslavement of the English peasantry, from 1066 onwards?

Should multiple European countries lay claims against Morocco for the kidnapping and enslavement of their citizens in the 17th century by the Barbary pirates? What about all those peoples and countries conquered and subjugated by Spain for centuries in the Americas — aren’t they entitled to compensation? The absurdity speaks for itself.

Nevertheless, there are many unresolved injustices in more recent history that warrant serious attention. Health care inequalities, wrongful convictions, wrongful deportations, the Rohingya massacres in Myanmar, the opioid addiction crisis, the political curbing of judiciaries, war crimes in Ukraine — the list is endless.

From a wide spectrum of injustices, I will examine two topical ones. The two divergent cases illustrate some of the characteristics of injustice and the difficulties faced by victims in obtaining justice.

Case 1: The UK Post Office’s ongoing Horizon scandal

The Post Office Horizon scandal, lasting more than 20 years, has been described as “the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK legal history.” In addition to its own larger stations, the UK Post Office contracted with a substantial number, approximately 9,000, of small shopkeepers, particularly in small towns and villages, to provide postal services within their premises. These sub-postmasters are contractually liable for any accounting shortfall involving “carelessness or error”. 

In the late 1990s, the Post Office decided to convert its Horizon IT system for the payment of state pensions and benefits into a comprehensive service. Horizon went live in 2000, and within two months large, unexplained accounting variances were being reported at sub-Post Offices. The Post Office then invoked the contract clause for liability for deficits, asserting that “carelessness or error” on the part of the sub-postmaster was the only possible cause. 

The number of such cases escalated, with alleged deficits ranging from £1,000 ($1,227) to tens of thousands of pounds and, in one case, over £1 million ($1.227 million). Over the next few years, the Post Office racked up over 700 such alleged cases in which sub-postmasters were coerced into covering alleged deficits and typically were sacked from their Post Office roles. In some cases, the Post Office launched criminal prosecutions for such alleged offenses as theft, fraud and false accounting, and many sub-postmasters were convicted on the basis of “fool-proof Horizon” evidence and jailed and/or fined.

As the number of cases mounted, both the Post Office and its Horizon software provider Fujitsu steadfastly maintained that the software was “absolutely accurate and reliable” and that all the actions against sub-postmasters with shortfalls were fully justified. Nevertheless, by 2012, a growing number of MPs concluded that both the technical reliability of Horizon and the integrity of the Post Office’s and Fujitsu’s senior management were in question.

By 2015, the House of Commons business committee summoned the Post Office’s chief executive, Paula Vennells, to account for why her previous pledge to resolve the Horizon debacle had not been met. Richard Brooks and Nick Wallis reported that her claim to be running a “caring” business and having “no evidence” of any miscarriages of justice was met by “barely disguised derision” by committee members, one of whom described the Horizon affair as a “shambles”. The Post Office and Fujitsu continued to maintain their “paragons of virtue” position and to deny that Horizon was in any way faulty or responsible for the errors and the false charges, false convictions and all the damage to the lives of the sub-postmasters.

However, in March 2017, the High Court of Justice granted a group litigation order to 555 sub-postmasters to sue the Post Office. Over the next two years, in a series of trials and appeals to overturn judgments against them, the Post Office lost in every instance and came in for excoriating criticism by judges. In one judgment in March 2019, a judge described the Post Office as “aggressive,” attempting “to put the court in terrorem,” seeking to “obfuscate matters, and mislead me,” “obdurate” and guilty of “oppressive behavior.”

The judge found the contractual relationship to be unfair in its coercive disadvantage to sub-postmasters. The Post Office then attempted to have him removed for alleged bias and, when this failed, they lodged an appeal. The appellate judge rejected this appeal outright, describing the appellants’ arguments as “misconceived,” “fatally flawed,” “demonstrably wrong” and “without substance”. He stated that the appeal had been based “on the idea that the Post Office was entitled to treat [sub-postmasters] in capricious or arbitrary ways which would not be unfamiliar to a mid-Victorian factory owner.”

Evidence submitted by senior Fujitsu witnesses for the defense was systematically discredited and shown as false, revealing a “party line” conspiracy over many years to hide evidence of the fundamental flaws of the Horizon product that had led to the false charges and convictions. The courts noted that the two organizations had cheated the litigants and lied to them, and that the Post Office’s approach consisted in “bare assertions and denials that ignore what actually occurred … [and] amount[ed] to the 21st-century equivalent of maintaining the earth is flat.”

Following the judgments, the Post Office initially agreed to pay £57.75 million ($72 million) in the settlement, plus its own costs, with the then expected total to exceed £90 million ($110 million). Taxpayers footed the bill since the Post Office operates as a public entity.

Subsequently, hundreds of other victims sought compensation under related schemes, and in 2023 the government announced that each person wrongfully convicted would receive £600,000 ($785,000) from the government. However, overturned convictions (93 so far) are a minority, leaving hundreds of other victims denied full justice. Some have already died, some face destitution, and some have committed suicide attributed to the shame and hardship inflicted on them by wrongful conviction, imprisonment and fines. Justice delayed is justice denied.

In addition, sub-postmasters were authorized to pursue the Post Office for malicious prosecution. More recently, the chair of the Public Inquiry into the scandal cautioned senior officials from the Post Office and Fujitsu that their persistent delay in providing crucial documents might result in criminal sanctions against them. These include perverting the course of justice. Recently, another 50 sub-postmaster victims came forward and have been added to the police investigation into the Post Office for potential fraud and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Many people argue that key figures involved in creating and perpetuating the scandal over so many years should be prosecuted on indictment. The most prominent would be the disgraced former chief executive (and former priest), Paula Vennells, who sanctioned the long-term policy of prosecuting the sub-postmasters and contributed to the cover-up by deliberately misleading and not cooperating with a parliamentary committee over several years of their inquiry into Horizon.

Case 2: The Israeli–Palestinian conflict and territorial rights

If ever there were a case of national and individual injustice, the long-standing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and their respective rights must surely rank among the most thorny and intractable. I can only attempt to identify the essence of such an immensely complex problem and address the main injustices claimed by each party. Further, I will discuss the most fruitful prospect for a way out for both parties to obtain some justice and peaceful coexistence.

On October 7, 2023, armed Hamas terrorists from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza carried out a coordinated attack on Israel. Over 1,200 civilians were killed and some 240 were taken hostage. The sheer savagery of the Hamas attack shocked and enraged the world. People of all ages, from young children to the elderly and incapacitated, were killed, tortured and wounded in a frenzy of depravity.

In response, Israel launched a defensive campaign to root out and destroy the entire Hamas organization and military capacity in Gaza. At time of writing, the tragic toll on the Gazan civilians has reached at least 23,300 dead and a further 59,400 injured, along with an estimated 7,000 missing, according a January 10 Al Jazeera television broadcast citing Gaza’s health ministry. As the Israeli campaign continues, these numbers will certainly increase.

Israel insists that it has fully followed and respected the law of war and humanitarian requirements, especially the protection of civilians, despite the exceptionally high number of casualties. However, many independent observers, including UN bodies, the UN Secretary General and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warn that both Hamas on October 7 and Israel in its subsequent Gaza campaign appear to have committed war crimes. Indeed, some Israeli officials and others have asserted that there is no distinction between Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians, even babies and young children and have likened them all to non-humans who must be eliminated. Extremists such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah talk in similar terms about Israeli Jews.

Related Reading

A Genocide Expert Makes Sense of War Crimes in Gaza

The campaign so far has effectively destroyed most of the homes, buildings and infrastructure of the entire North and Central Gaza, including any means to sustain life such as fuel, water, power and food supplies. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), claiming that Hamas was hiding in tunnels underneath public buildings, have attacked hospitals. By December, only 9 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza were functioning, with the remainder teetering on closure for lack of fuel and power.

Nearly two million Gazans have been internally displaced. The IDF initially coerced the inhabitants of North Gaza under threat of bombardment to abandon their homes and flee to the relative safety of Central Gaza, and subsequently South Gaza.  In both cases, however, Israeli bombardments and ground attacks are the daily norm.

Millions of refugees are now packed into South Gaza. They lack adequate access to shelter, basic facilities, food, water or medical assistance. Prior to October 7, over 500 trucks per day carried essential supplies into Gaza over the Rafah Crossing from Egypt. Now, after no trucks for many weeks, that number is just 120 a day, adding to the unavoidable image of the IDF laying a siege and punitive bombardment to kill, wound, terrify and starve the surviving population into quiet submission. Israel vehemently denies this, insisting that it was all down to military necessity, that any civilian casualties and “inconvenience” are simply unavoidable collateral damage and that Hamas is fully to blame for all this.

Only with great reluctance and following sustained pressure from the US and other allies did Netanyahu finally agree to a short temporary ceasefire and a limited flow of essential supplies into Gaza. What comes next in the IDF campaign in Gaza can only be speculated. Once Hamas remnants in North Gaza had been greatly reduced, the IDF turned to relentlessly attacking Central and South Gaza, although it had previously designated the latter as a safe zone for refugees from Central and North Gaza. And to what end? What comes after? Political scientist John Mearsheimer questions Hamas termination as being their sole objective and suggests far uglier additional Israeli objectives. South Africa went further and laid charges at the International Court of Justice against Israel for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, such as Avigdor Lieberman, Amihai Eliyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, are pushing an extreme Zionist line. On January 3, 2023, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich publicly expressed their desire to expel Palestinians from Gaza. In their minds, only the elimination of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza will ensure freedom from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah attacks. The Times of Israel has described the policies and stance of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, to which Ben-Gvir and Eliyahu belong, as “neo-fascist” and likely to make Israel an international pariah. For the far right, a convenient by-product of Palestinian expulsion would be an Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) finally almost free of non-Jewish contamination — not only Palestinians but other Muslims as well as Christians and Druze.

Anyone doubting they have extreme views need only consider what Eliyahu said in an interview on Radio Kol Barama on November 5, 2023, which included taking back control of Gaza and moving in Israeli settlers, a position he has since repeated. On the Palestinian population, he said they “can go to Ireland or deserts….the monsters in Gaza should find a solution themselves.” When asked if Israel should drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza to flatten it and kill all the inhabitants, he replied “That is one of the options”. While possibly merely emotional venting, its pathological origin is unmistakable.

Potential expulsion of the Palestinian population into tent cities in Egypt’s Sinai Desert had already been considered in an Israeli cabinet concept document prior to the October 7 Hamas attack. Although subsequently played down by Netanyahu as only a “what if?” document, it indicates a predisposition to regard the Palestinian population as an unwanted and disposable nuisance without rights. It also indicates that Egypt would either be expected to comply readily or be coerced by threat or blackmail, all unlikely to succeed.

How did Israel and Palestine get to this point?

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has its roots in 1947, when the British administrative mandate from the League of Nations in 1922 ended. For 400 years under the Ottomans, the land of Palestine had been a patchwork of intermingled Palestinian and Jewish-owned land and communities, with Palestinians being the larger population. In 1922, census data showed Palestinian Muslims as 78%, Christians as 9.5% and Jews as 11.4% of the population. By 1944, the census data show Muslims as 61%, Christians as 7.8% and Jews as 30.4%. This is a reflection of immigration by Jews from other parts of the world as well as the birth of sabras, or indigenous Jews.

Jewish immigration into Palestine came in waves starting in 1881, encouraged by the Zionist movement. Zionism is a cultural-nationalist ideology that uses racial, religious and political ideas to further its aims, the primary one being to create a permanent Jewish homeland in Palestine. This home aims to promote aliyah (“going up”), urging the Jewish diaspora, scattered across centuries due to conflicts, expulsions and anti-Semitism, to return to their historical biblical and pre-biblical homeland of Eretz Yisrael. 

Chaim Weizmann, an esteemed scientist and influential early Zionist leader in Europe, effectively championed the Zionist movement. He successfully persuaded Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary during the onset of the British Mandate, to support the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Crucially, the short Balfour Declaration also stated: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

As mentioned earlier, Jewish immigration to Palestine surged until the conclusion of the British Mandate in 1947. This influx provoked increasing concern and discontent among Palestinians, who feared that the sheer volume of immigrant Jews and their land acquisitions could lead to the eventual domination of Palestine.

Following the British departure in 1947, a swift civil war ensued, resulting in the triumph of the Jewish population. This victory led to a mass departure of the majority of Palestinians — estimated at a minimum of 750,000 — across borders into Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, whether coerced or fleeing for safety. Much of their land was expropriated.

On May 14, 1948, the Jewish Agency in Palestine formally declared the creation of the State of Israel, which the Arabs call al Naqba (“the Catastrophe”). Both mass expulsions and voluntary departures of equally fearful Jews from Arab states that strongly objected to the creation of the Jewish state continued for years.

Israel emerged victorious in subsequent wars forced upon it by Arab states in 1967 and 1973, acquiring significant territories from the enemy nations. To date, Israel has steadfastly refused to allow the return of Palestinian refugees, now numbering 5.9 million, of whom the plurality are internally displaced in Gaza (26%) and the West Bank (15%), with the remainder in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Both Jewish and Palestinian roots in Palestine trace back several thousand years, encompassing the area delineated as the modern state of Israel, which includes Palestine. Thus, both ethnicities can claim a roughly equal general right to live in the same ancestral homeland under the principles of jus naturale (natural law), jus sanguinis (law of bloodlines), jus soli (law of birthplace) and jus gentium (law of nations). This equal coexistence was clearly intended by Balfour in his express wording about the rights “of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, i.e., no community could claim exclusive rights. An inclusionary multi-ethno-religious model with no exclusively Jewish land rights was also proposed by the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl.

In the 1990s and up to 2005, there was a hopeful phase marked by potential reconciliation, setting the stage for a two-state solution that acknowledged peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine, acknowledging their respective land rights. However, after 2005 this momentum took a sharp turn in the opposite direction. Modern Zionist ideology has increasingly adopted an uncompromising denial that Palestinians have any right to be in Eretz Yisrael and supporters have adopted a narrative of exclusionary nationalism. To bolster their claim of an exclusive Jewish right to exist in Israel, hard-line Zionists also include a justification of jus divinum (law of God), which asserts that God promised Abraham the land to the Jews alone. This steadfast nationalist assertion has underpinned Israeli government policy for years, particularly escalating under the authoritarian leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu and through the enactment of the 2018 Jewish Nation-State law.

One obvious problem facing the jus divinum argument is that, unlike other jus arguments, it is not testable against objective facts or data as it relies on beliefs and faith. It is self-serving. It requires everyone to accept that “the truth” regarding exclusive land rights is what today’s ultra-Zionists say it is.

Israelis and Palestinians both have entrenched positions on land rights whereby each regards the other as an unwelcome “cuckoo in the nest.” Does either side have a convincing case?

Professor Chaim Gans of Tel Aviv University has provided a detailed analysis and evaluation of Zionist justice and the right of return of Palestinians in which he concluded that both Israelis and Palestinians had substantive rightful claims to exist in the same territory. Of possible options to resolve this conflict, he concluded that territorial separation was the most likely to succeed and that he made this “as a factual prediction, not just a moral argument.”

Yet various attempts since the 1960s at a two-state solution failed, and it has been stagnant since 2007. Ironically, the Hamas attack on October 7 has spurred international clamor from the US, the G7 and other allies for a two-state solution being the only viable long-term option. Thus far, Netanyahu has totally rejected it, but it may be his only way of ensuring continued US support for Israel.

Justice for all?

That Hamas carried out a monstrous war crime on October 7 is beyond dispute, as is Israel’s absolute right to take defensive measures against further such attacks. However, the impassioned cries of Israeli victims’ families and loved ones, especially about the plight of hundreds of hostages taken by Hamas, have to compete with the shock-and-awe video portrayal day after day of all the carnage of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Israel’s friends and allies strongly support going after Hamas and its fellow travelers Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, all of whom they see as a hideous bunch of criminal psychopaths who must be eliminated. However, those same friends and allies are increasingly alarmed that Israel’s methodology is extremely reckless in relation to civilian casualties and infrastructure. Many observers question whether the emerging evidence simply supports the official Israeli line that its campaign methods are all necessary, proportionate and humanitarian. Does the Hamas war crime warrant other war crimes in response?

A large majority of American under-50s apparently does not think so, thus putting both President Joe Biden’s current staunch support and longer-term US policy on Israel in question, as well as the US’s international standing. Israel’s vast propaganda machinery seeking to control “the truth” and portray its might-is-right onslaught on the entire Palestinian civilian population of Gaza as being just, righteous, virtuous and civilized only plays well outside Israel to a limited and diminishing audience.

Nevertheless, an often-overlooked section of Israeli society abhors what is being done in their name. With the current raw emotions and clamor for vengeance against Hamas and proxy vengeance against Palestinian civilians, their voice is suppressed and unheard. Yet, when the current rage and vengeful blood-lust among both sides subsides (as it surely will), calm and constructive thinkers, trust-creators and peacemakers will be needed.

Both Israelis and Palestinians must redirect their focus from the past and look ahead to create a mutually beneficial new framework. If the British and Irish governments and the Irish Republican Army could reach an agreement in 1998, ending an almost century-long armed conflict and paving the way for a shared, democratic future for Northern Ireland’s communities, then there’s hope for a similar creative approach between Israelis and Palestinians — if they are both prepared to compromise in the spirit of 80% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

Terrorist groups such as Hamas and their destructive and murderous ideology can no longer have any license or sanctuary anywhere, least of all as self-imposed and unaccountable “protectors” of the Palestinian people. The tyranny of Hamas and similar groups must be dismantled. So too must the despotic authoritarian rule of Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet, accused of establishing an elective dictatorship in Israel. This includes allegations of suppressing judicial independence, endorsing unlawful and violent land seizures of Palestinians, Christians and other minorities by Israeli settlers and perpetuating oppression against Palestinians over many decades.

Will Israelis and Palestinians clear out their respective dystopian blackguards? Will they reject zero-sum? Will they have the strength of character, the moral backbone, the determination and a sufficient capacity to compromise and persevere?

Academics such as Prof. Gans and Prof. Mearsheimer, diplomats such as former Bosnian ambassador Emir Hadžikadunić, the US State Department and a consensus of world leaders and governments agree that a two-state solution is now the only viable way out for both parties. Without a just settlement, what is assured is perpetual conflict, bloodshed and misery for both.

[Madelyn Lambert edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Justice for All? Victims Are Ignored From Britain to Gaza appeared first on Fair Observer.

It is certainly not a valid, safe or foregone conclusion that all large companies will misbehave. So, what sets the bad ones apart? What characterizes those that cross over to the “dark side”? Why on Earth would they want to court disaster and jeopardize the company’s reputation and antagonize customers and propel them into the arms of competitors? 

Answering these questions requires an understanding of particular branches of psychology (e.g., social, organizational, clinical, consumer and abnormal) and contemporary corporate ownership.

The impact of toxic leadership

Corporations that engage in predatory behavior against customers do not do so spontaneously. Toxic leadership is at the root of the behavior. It occurs by deliberate design and systematic application over time as part of what are known as “revenue protection” models. 

Ironically, these models were supposed to protect the company against revenue loss from fraud and theft. Some companies use these models to “protect” revenue by dishonestly increasing it. They do this by grossly overcharging customers on their monthly direct debit billing, either with no advance notice or by mid-contract increases. To this, they may add punishing early exit penalties or fictitious charges which they refuse to reimburse. 

Despite all their rhetoric about “the customer is our number one priority,” such companies do not want to retain customers unless they are of the kind prepared to continue being bilked. These perverse “revenue protection models” rely on faster revenue growth by forcing out or “churning” once-loyal but disillusioned customers and replacing them with more naïve new ones. This is the “cheat-and-churn” reality.

Nevertheless, such wayward boards will typically exude great public-facing piety, with beaming, friendly, confident trust-me faces and reassuring mission statements. Is the considerable gap between espousal and enactment merely the product of boardroom delusions or deliberate lying? What circumstances drive this behavior?

Tremendous changes have occurred in recent years in the ownership chains of many large corporations. Gone are the days when a sector comprising several independent and direct competitors fought to retain and expand their respective customer bases. Typically, large companies are now owned by even larger ones and perhaps ultimately by private equity funds that will place tough return-on-investment criteria on these companies. 

Ruthless profit extraction has become the de facto goal for executives. In addition, supposed competitors now typically take shareholding stakes in each other, changing competition into market symbiosis—meaning it matters much less which company or brand is leading at any given time. Companies expect customers to frequently “churn” or change from one provider to another, so companies feel they no longer have much stake in genuine customer care and retention. The move towards cheat-and-churn requires a controlling mind, typically the chief executive, probably colluding with boardroom colleagues. Corporate leaders, not middle or junior executives, determine strategy and revenue policy operations.

Organizational psychologist Professor Michael Walton has spent several decades studying the dynamics of toxic leadership and what happens when the bad conduct of senior individuals can no longer be explained away or trivialized as assertiveness or drive. He defined toxic leadership as “behavior which is exploitative, abusive, destructive and psychologically—and perhaps legalistically—corrupt and poisonous.”

This does not mean that such individuals outwardly present as demented, ranting bullies, although some do, e.g. Robert Maxwell, the owner of Mirror Group Newspapers who defrauded his company’s pension fund of some £460 million ($485 million) in the 1980s. They are more likely to present as engaging and charming personalities adept at convincing others that egregious conduct is fully justified to achieve revenue targets, shareholder and market expectations and, of course, director bonuses. Such motivations, patterns of thinking and behavior may normalize rapidly into a culture of amoral calculation.

Boardroom and executive psychopathy

Anti-Social Personality Disorders (ASPDs) come in many guises and degrees, ranging from mild and annoying to pathological and harmful. For example, narcissism appears frequently among leaders in corporate organizations.

Feeling essential and unique and claiming superior skills and attributes may benefit a corporate leader and the organization’s success. As psychiatrist Professor Jerrold Post noted, some narcissists learn to positively channel their creativity, self-belief and ego, such as Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group. Others, however, demonstrate a super-inflated ego, bombast and a tendency toward vengeful rage and malice against anyone suspected of outshining or challenging them. Former US President Donald Trump is a notorious example of such eggshell-ego narcissism, as profiled by Jerrold Post.

In business or politics, ill-informed and even reckless risk-taking is a frequent characteristic of toxic leaders whether in business or politics. The spectacular collapse of energy giant Enron in 2001 under the fraudulent direction of top executives Lay, Skilling and Fastow and the high-speed demise of Conservative leader Liz Truss in 2022 are examples of each. The compulsion to engage in high-stakes gambling with no concern about damaging the lives of thousands or even millions of people is characteristic of toxic leaders and indicative of possible pathological personality traits. Moreover, some toxic leaders may engage in criminal activity (as in the Enron case), so-called white-collar crime.

However, it would be false to either suggest or conclude that every CEO, board member or senior executive of every organization accused of atrocious conduct must be a psychopath or sociopath. So, although egregious personalities are indicated, what proportion of them are clinically diagnosable?

Among ASPDs, both categories, psychopathy and sociopathy, are under the general heading of psychopathy. Both display similar characteristics but differ primarily in origin. Psychopaths are regarded as products of a combination of genetic and social environmental factors, notably childhood and early adulthood experiences. Sociopaths, however, are deemed to be created solely by social environment and experiences, again mainly during childhood and early adulthood. Both disorders are difficult to treat, and prospects of a personality change for the better are not high.

Large-scale studies of CEOs and board directors by forensic psychologists Katarina Fritzon, Nathan Brooks and colleagues found that some 20% of subjects showed clinically raised levels of psychopathy. This contrasts with an expected level in the general population of some 3%. Why should there be such a higher concentration at the board level? 

One suggestion is that such personalities typically share a compulsive desire to dominate and wield predatory power over others, like staff, customers and suppliers. The attractiveness of the power of board positions may explain why clinically diagnosable psychopathic personalities are seven times more likely to be represented in boardrooms than in the population overall. An increased prevalence would also likely exist among ambitious lower executives compared to the general population.

Snakes-in-suits: what sets pathological individuals apart?

According to the APA, Hirstein and Kiehl and Buckholtz, pathological personalities are characterized by a combination of:

1. Causing harm to others with either no self-recognition of their harmfulness or not caring about it.

2. Lack of empathy for those harmed, although empathy may be feigned.

3. Lack of conscience, remorse or guilt about their harmful conduct.

4. A ruthless end-justifies-the-means and “what can I/we get away with?” attitude and behavior.

5. For psychopaths, an inability to form regular emotional or social bonds, although these may be faked. For sociopaths, a limited ability to form regular emotional or social bonds (for example, bonding with family and close friends but not more widely), although these may be faked.

While “spivs-in-suits” is a pejorative label commonly applied to corporate fraudsters and customer abusers, organizational psychologist Paul Babiak and forensic psychologist Robert Hare coined the label “snakes-in-suits” for corporate psychopaths and sociopaths. All too often, spivs-in-suits are also snakes-in-suits. To help identify individuals that have pathological personalities, various evaluation frameworks and checklists have been created. For example, Hare made a 20-item list of specific psychopathy indicators. The more indicators an individual signals, the more a psychopathy diagnosis becomes likely. Prominent signs in Hare’s checklist include:

— Showing a glib and superficial charm.

— Shallow and insincere emotions.

— Confidence trickery and manipulation.

— A propensity for pathological lying.

— Grandiose self-worth and narcissism.

— Scapegoating and blaming others for their own failings.

— Reacting to rejection badly and excessively.

However, applicable as such tools have become for psychiatrists and psychologists, they are not intended for use outside these professions or for amateur application. This caution reinforces the Goldwater Rule of not engaging in amateur “armchair diagnosis” of particular individuals. 

Nevertheless, it is defensible to examine specific organizations and their conduct and to consider to what extent they match the known characteristics of psychopathy. A different question is which, if any, of their senior personnel might suffer from one or more personality disorders. That question can only be definitively answered by clinically qualified individuals who have personally examined and interviewed the persons concerned.

Corporate abuse of customers in the UK

In March 2020, The Times published an editorial and a “name and shame” list of large UK companies allegedly guilty of deliberately blocking customers’ attempts to complain. They did so by removing company e-mail addresses from their websites, ceasing complaint handling by e-mail, forcing customers to engage with dysfunctional automated call centers, keeping customers on hold for two or three hours or more and failing to deliver or offer any redress. These are typically the same companies that boast about customers being their “number one priority.”

Regrettably, the number of such companies is so great as to make it impracticable to cite them all in this article. They cover all sectors: banks and financial services, supermarkets and large retailers, airlines and travel, healthcare, energy providers, phone/IT/Internet/social media and real estate.

For example, Britons’ domestic energy bills have more than doubled and in some cases trebled since early 2022 and are far higher than in other European countries. As far back as 1995, the then-CEO of British Gas, Cedric Brown, came under excoriating public attack in the media, in parliament and among institutional shareholders for his brazen attempt to inflate his remuneration to an obscene level. He was dubbed “Cedric The Pig” and, long before cryptocurrencies, a spoof currency of greed was named after him, “the Cedric.” The greed controversy still dogs BGas, in relation to its huge profits in 2023 during the UK cost-of-living crisis.

What is at play today is, perhaps, a 21st-century progression from the “unacceptable face of capitalism” complained of by British Prime Minister Edward Health in 1973 and the fat-cat conduct of corporate executives in the 1990s. The following dire case conveys the nature and scale of the contemporary problem.

EE Mobile—the cheat-and-churn supremos?

EE Mobile is one of the UK’s largest mobile phone and internet service providers, with upwards of 23 million mobile customers as at June 2023 out of a total EE customer base (including fixed line) of some 32 million cited in August 2023.

EE, formerly Everything Everywhere, was purchased by Altice using British Telecom (BT) in 2016 and is now the central part of BT Group’s Consumer Division. In 2023, Altice came under serious allegations against board members and senior executives relating to money laundering, fraud and corruption, with a number of formal investigations by authorities continuing in the US and Europe. Few people remember the original “Everything Everywhere” tag, while wags continue to assert that surely EE means “Exceptionally Egregious.”

Like many large companies, EE’s website portrays glowing profiles of its CEO Marc Allera and his top executive team of ten directors with a line-up of flattering “butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths” portrait photos. The CEO’s proclaimed mission includes language such as, “so our customers trust us,” “top priority to provide great customer experience” and “making sure we do the right thing.” 

Contrast these self-righteous virtues with all the overwhelmingly negative posts by aggrieved customers on Trustpilot. Of over 13,000 Trustpilot reviews of EE, 71% give the lowest 1-star rating, and only 20% provide the highest 5-star rating. The highest number of posts about EE complain about over-charging monthly bills, unilateral mid-contract increased charge rates, unfair contracts with high early exit penalties and slow responses from EE customer service or being fobbed off or ignored entirely. EE has had an alarming history of overcharging going back to 2017 and 2018.

Complaining customers being fobbed off is commonplace across retail service corporations and highlights the policy of many of them to deliberately deter and block customers’ attempts to obtain redress. Complaints by telephone get shunted into automated call center queues that often take hours to clear, even if the caller is not summarily cut off first. Online complaint forms typically receive evasive blandishments that fail to address the actual complaint. Complaint letters or e-mails to chief executives are usually passed to a customer service function to answer. As with online complaints, any response will likely comprise only evasion and blandishments. 

These “customer complaint resolution” functions are clearly under instruction to evade and deflect every complainant—whatever it takes to ensure that the company denies any mistake or wrongdoing and so “justifies” giving no redress. 

The curious position of EE’s mascot, Kevin Bacon

For years, Kevin Bacon, the Hollywood actor, has been the public face of EE. He is the star of TV advertisements that extol the wonders of EE’s mobile telephone and broadband services. Reportedly, Bacon has already received substantial fees for his EE work, well over £1 million ($1.3 million). Bacon cuts an engaging figure and is popular in the UK as a movie star, so it is understandable why EE should employ him as a celebrity endorser of their brand and services.

Customer complaints about EE on Trustpilot have included some unflattering reviews about Bacon’s association with the company. Whether he is aware of all the criticisms of EE and of the growing backlash is unclear. It appears EE has been rather crafty in making Bacon their public face or, perhaps more cynically, their fall guy. Since EE’s apparent anti-customer excesses have become such a national disgrace, aggrieved customers and the public now generally identify him as the only EE figurehead. Therefore, he is the ready target and lightning rod for their anger. He will likely pay the price in reputational damage, whereas EE refuses to recognize such damage.

Yet, according to a Deloitte 2014 survey, reputation accounted for more than 25% of a company’s market value. Unchecked reputation risk was the single most significant cause of revenue and brand value loss. Some 87% of global respondents saw reputation risk as their number one risk concern. The 2021 survey report from WTW reflected similar concerns. What Altice and other institutional investors in BT Group, EE’s immediate owner, think about EE’s conduct is unclear.

Should Kevin Bacon tolerate EE’s evident anti-customer conduct damaging his reputation and brand? A lot may depend on which he values most—his reputation or EE’s fees.

As customers have noted, EE’s alleged gross overcharging, unfair and punitive contracts and highly defensive responses to complaints appear not to be accidents but deliberate policy, without any evident conscience or remorse. EE executives’ glib, superficial charm and what-can-we-get-away-with ruthlessness appear to underpin a cheat-and-churn culture. Whether they are mere spivs-in-suits, or more dangerously also snakes-in-suits, is open to conjecture.

Countering corporate anti-customer excesses

Many corporations currently appear not to understand their purpose. A radical new paradigm, the “framework for the future of the corporation,” was proposed by the British Academy in 2018 to replace the present dysfunctional one:

Corporations were originally established with clear public purposes. It is only over the last half-century that corporate purpose has become equated solely with profit. This has been damaging to corporations’ role in society, trust in business and the impact that business has had on the environment, inequality and social cohesion. In addition, globalization and technological advances are exacerbating problems of regulatory lag.

Similarly, 181 CEOs of major US corporations at the US Business Roundtable also issued a joint statement in 2019 redefining the purpose of a corporation to focus on benefitting all stakeholders and not just shareholders. Business press articles have also favored the theme.

As Peter Bloom and Carl Rhodes have examined in depth, corporations, frequently authoritarian ones, have now taken over everyday life in many respects. The worldviews of many corporations still focus on profit, personal greed, personal gratification, predatory unilateral competition and a belief that the only stakeholders to be protected are themselves and corporate shareholders.

Other observers, such as Joan Donovan and Shoshana Zuboff, argue that the totality of online platforms, social media and mobile telephone services are already enabling pathological corporations to make millions of users addicted to their products and services. Artificial Intelligence (AI) software will simply accelerate the abuse. Zuboff asserts that through “surveillance capitalism” users, who already hand over vast amounts of personal data to such companies, will soon find that their behavior patterns will be monitored by remote AI software to not only predict a user’s general behavior but also to subliminally predict and manipulate specific responses of individual users for commercial gain. 

The new corporation paradigm inherently and explicitly rejects all characteristics of this kind of corporate authoritarianism, amoral calculation and malfeasance. Increasingly, shareholders will be expecting boards to adopt this model. This implicitly requires boards to curb, if not terminate, any director or CEO whose attitude and conduct smacks of the “old” paradigm. 

Organizational, professional and peer group strategies 

At an organizational level, several policies and strategies as part of corporate governance and risk management are available to counter authoritarian excesses. These would include such routine protections as:

— Separation of CEO and Chairman/President functions as two separate individuals to prevent a joint Chairman-CEO becoming too powerful, self-serving and beyond effective control if indulging in decisions and conduct damaging to the corporation.

— Appointment of fully independent non-executive directors to help steer executive directors away from potentially egregious or damaging decisions and conduct.

— Establishing an effective Board Risk Committee (separate from a Board Audit Committee) tasked with ensuring that the board address “all significant risks” to the business, including the organization’s own conduct.

— Requiring effective due diligence background checks (negative or positive vetting, as appropriate) on all staff appointments, staff promotions, contractor appointments, agent appointments, partnering and joint venture contracts, licensing agreements and proposed mergers or acquisitions.

— Requiring a psychological evaluation for all individuals subject to positive vetting as an integral part of due diligence. 

The requirements for an organization’s corporate governance and risk management are well established. Although the formal framework for corporate governance and risk management generally does work to prevent harmful conduct in corporations, there are numerous instances of failure. 

Such failures arise from defective formal frameworks and weak or toxic leadership. As Clive Smallman has laid out, the characteristics of positive versus toxic leadership are precise and well-known. Ensuring that only positive leaders are appointed is another crucial aspect of due diligence. This emphasizes the need for psychometric and psychological evaluation and searching for tell-tale signs of offensive attitudes and conduct.

How fast the new model corporation is adopted is likely to depend on several factors, including the enlightened self-interest of corporate leaders. This is especially so in the context of the fragile global economy of the post-Covid era, the policy positions and codes of ethics of professional and sector/trade bodies, and how rapidly the overall management of higher education are reoriented to reflect the new model. However, potential push-back by determined old-model diehards is highly likely.

Persuading corporate delinquents to change

The prospects for beneficial change in a delinquent corporation boil down to three main kinds of persuasion:

— Moral argument or enlightened self-interest.

— Judicial and non-judicial punishments.

— Market forces and risk management failures.

While all three kinds of persuasion may operate in any particular case, the moral argument or enlightened self-interest is least likely to be successful in hard-bitten old-model organizations.

Cheat-and-churn rogues are, by nature, “chancers” who think they are untouchable and invincible. Therefore, they are unlikely to acknowledge the argument and believe they can evade market forces as well as criminal prosecution, civil lawsuits and adverse publicity. Their feelings of superiority and entitlement to steal customers’ money may convince them they can get away with it.

The modern corporate spivs-in-suits are analogous to medieval robber barons. Customers, investors and markets may increasingly treat a company run by such spivs as a lost cause, and, ultimately, the business may fail. To lift the iconic slur against US President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon at the time of his downfall in the 1970s, “Would you ever buy a used car from any of these people?”
[Lane Gibson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Spivs-in-Suits: Corporate Greed and Customer Abuse in “Rip-Off” Britain appeared first on Fair Observer.

Should such activists, in that period and now, be termed “fringe Conservatives,” “ultra-Conservatives,” “radical right,” or “hard right”? The authors prefer “radical right,” since it encompasses the gamut of all such rebels.

Origins of the Neo-Right in the Brexit Debate

In those years, shrill advocacy for the Brexit concept quickly emerged. Tory Members of Parliament (MPs) had founded the European Research Group (ERG) in 1993 to counter, if not eliminate, EU influence on Britain. During the coalition years, the ERG, along with its supporters in business, the media and radical-right advocacy bodies, placed intense pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a referendum on Brexit. In 2013, Cameron agreed to offer the electorate a non-binding referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EU. Since, out of some 355 Conservative MPs, the ERG’s membership and subscribers in total are never thought to have exceeded 60, the outsize influence demonstrated by their success is evident. The ERG tail has continued to wag the party dog, or try to, ever since.

Campaigning both for and against Brexit was robust. However, the overall pro-Brexit campaign was on the whole better organized, better funded, and used far more advanced digital, online and social media methods to persuade voters. Crucially, it was also far more ruthless, employing blatantly alarmist “fake facts.” The official Vote Leave campaign also applied large-scale data mining techniques similar to those later used by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in the US. This was done under the direction of Dominic Cummings, whom Cameron once reportedly referred to as “a career psychopath” (see later). The 2016 vote delivered a small but clear majority preference to leave the EU.

While Brexit arguably had lofty objectives, its implementation and subsequent realities have witnessed missed targets and major long-term economic damage.

Radical-Right takeover of the Conservative Party

Since 2016, the Brexiteer/ERG agenda has morphed into a generalized radical-right agenda. The insurgents not only espouse uncontrolled free market economic priorities and harbor a revulsion for the EU, but also gleefully and noisily assert a right-wing authoritarian stance on law-and-order issues. They display an unmistakable animus against the welfare state, benefit claimants, those suffering from social and economic deprivation, immigrants, asylum seekers, ethnic and religious minorities, and victims of human rights abuses and other injustices.

Such proclivities, which pander to populist reactionary sympathies, have more in common with those of far-right parties and groups outside the Conservative Party—such as Reform UK, Reclaim, Far Right For Britain, the British National Party, the English Defence League, Britain First and other fringe groups—than with traditional party values.

Although it is somewhat less extreme, this conversion of the traditional Conservative Party is analogous to the radical-right takeover of the US Republican Party over a similar time frame. The “new” Conservative Party of the 2020s is thus Conservative in name only. Disturbingly, much of the electorate is unlikely to be aware of this radical change from its One Nation heritage.

The authors were both One Nation Conservative supporters for over 30 years until the scale of the Brexit debacle and the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Johnson administration became clear in 2019. There is substantive evidence of a concerted and sustained effort by Britain’s ruling Conservative Party since 2019 to impose permanent, illiberal, radical-right governance on the nation. Some of the top-down subversion and coercion (such as proroguing Parliament in 2019) is done openly, as if were perfectly normal and morally acceptable, while other examples involve long-term stealth against the public interest. Although One Nation Conservative MPs still exist, their numbers and influence have been all but obliterated by the dominance of the ERG, its derivatives and its fellow travelers. 

Case 1: Imposing Costly Private Healthcare

As we reported in detail last year in Fair Observer, deliberate underfunding of the state National Health Service (NHS) and social care system over 13 years has brought these services into not just a state of chronic dysfunctionality but also virtual collapse. While publicly appearing to champion the NHS, in reality the long-term Conservative policy is to have free market private provision become the only viable alternative in the vast majority of cases. Their ideological imperative appears to be to place the delivery of such services under the primary control of private companies and to ensure that, in effect, state provision withers on the vine.

UK’s NHS is Broken: Is Private Medicine the Answer?

The NHS and private provision have had a long and largely successful symbiosis since the 1980s, with the primacy of NHS provision assured by state funding paid for by patients via general taxation and National Insurance. Private provision contracted to the NHS has been a vital contributor. However, with the Health and Care Act 2022, the government appears to be pressing ahead with their new “healthcare salvation” model to replace the current NHS model with a direct pathway for private care companies, many of them foreign-based, to access NHS funds. Far from salvation, the impact is likely to be catastrophic for the level and amount of healthcare the NHS can provide, since NHS post-Covid recovery money and other funds will be diverted to boost the preferential use of private care. 

Until now, the limit has always been that private care providers had to be awarded an NHS subcontract in order to access funds for clinical procedures. However, recent reports indicate that NHS patients are now being given a direct choice of where to obtain their clinical procedures: either private hospitals (with weeks to wait) or NHS hospitals with months or even years to wait. This choice decision is now taken at the Integrated Care Board (ICB) level, much lower down the managerial hierarchy than previously and apparently without regard to budgetary limits and fair distribution of funds.

Whilst this sounds like good news for patients, the cost differential between private and NHS is huge, and some ICBs have already spent their annual budget as a result of this new relaxation. The NHS patients budget—worth about £200 billion (around $250 billion) per year and funded by tax monies and National Insurance contributions—is now unprotected and vulnerable to profiteering by private corporations. Ultimately, the public will pay the price out of their own pockets via additional taxation and private medical insurance premiums. Speed of provision is likely to improve for those who can access it. However, the new system does not guarantee that private clinical provision itself will be superior to NHS provision, nor does it guarantee that affluent patients or those with private medical insurance will not be given preferential treatment. 

The Tories have more or less acknowledged that the high likelihood of electoral defeat in 2024, their long-term rundown of the NHS, their drawn-out reluctance to reach a negotiated pay and conditions settlement with exasperated NHS staff, and an accelerated policy push for private healthcare have all merged into what some argue is a deliberate “scorched earth” mess to hand over to an incoming opposition government.

Case 2: Flagrant Attacks on the Judiciary, Civil Service, and Human Rights

The law is under attack by the radical right, which is trampling over the public interest and human rights. For example, in 2019 the Conservative government tried to prorogue (temporarily close) Parliament for five weeks to facilitate executive processes without scrutiny. The Supreme Court unanimously held that this action was unlawful, as it would have prevented Parliament from supervising the executive. Since then, the Conservative government has vowed to put a stop to what it regards as “judicial interference” in its governing activities.

Determined to push through its political agenda unhindered by judicial scrutiny, the Tories are proceeding in 2023 with legislation to (1) automatically and rapidly deport asylum seekers while denying their access to legal representation or appeal, contrary to international law and UN Convention (more specifically, to deport them to Rwanda—a destination with a highly dubious human rights record—if they cannot be returned rapidly to their country of origin or last known country), and (2) curb the powers of the Supreme Court and the judiciary to intervene in this or other controversies. The Public Order Act 2023, for example, changes the fundamental right to public protest to one of limited freedom, with police making preemptive arrests on suspicion of a protester’s intent.

In June 2023, the Parliamentary Privileges Committee (with a majority of Conservative MP members) found that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately lied on several occasions to Parliament—a cardinal sin—and to the Committee. He was disingenuous in his evidence to the Committee by denying that he had many times broken COVID social distancing rules: the so-called Partygate Scandal. The report was scathing in its conclusions. Johnson, adopting a blusteringly Trump-like response, made wild and derogatory allegations about the Committee and individual members, making himself look more like a spoiled, self-absorbed brat than a former prime minister.

The parliamentary vote on the report resulted in a huge majority in favor of its acceptance (354 to 7), with House Leader Penny Mordaunt the only Cabinet minister attending. With dignity and clarity, she justified clearly why the report should be accepted. Many now hope that Johnson’s humiliation may signal an end to his style-over-substance brand of politics in Britain. After years of his buffoonery, charm and dishonesty, the public wants grown-ups as political leaders.

The Cabinet also sought to block certain judicial investigations by Baroness Heather Carol Hallett, a retired Court of Appeal judge. Hallett serves as the chair of the Cabinet’s own official Partygate inquiry into Johnson’s possibly unlawful social distancing conduct and subsequent lying to Parliament. In addition, the government has sought to impose a Cabinet override on the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Parliament) to prevent objections and protective modifications to its illegal Migration Bill. Subjugation of and contempt for the judiciary, as well as Parliament, has become a cause célèbre for this radical-right regime.

Since 2019, Tory government ministers and MPs have frequently attacked their own civil servants, variously accusing them of disloyalty, laziness and obstruction both of government policies and of the ministers’ determination to reform the Civil Service. For example, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Cabinet Office Minister and unashamed champion of the radical right, referred to Foreign Office officials as “pampered panjandrums” who “prefer to idle away their hours.” Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab also blamed his enforced resignation for bullying on an alleged conspiracy by civil servants.

Conservative anger has been directed at what ministers have called “The Blob,” whereby they assert that senior civil servants have closed ranks to obstruct the government’s agenda, even accusing them of supporting political opposition parties. What this government wants is to make civil servants its executive subordinates, to be its absolute obedient drones, rather than fulfill their traditional role as “honest brokers” and “devil’s advocates” trying to ensure that draft policies and legislation are lawful, feasible and as low-risk as possible, while steering ministers safely towards implementing their policies.

Unlike in some other countries, British civil servants are not political appointees. They are state employees whose work and posts normally transcend each change of political administration and thereby help to ensure governmental continuity and stability. Their overriding allegiance is to the Crown (i.e., the constitutional head of state) and not to any particular political administration; they are to remain politically neutral in their work for ministers of the day. Authoritarian Tories refuse to acknowledge this inconvenient subtlety and seem determined to remove it permanently.

Case 3: Cancelling of Inconvenient Expert Opinion

The Conservative government’s Cabinet Office has been accused of operating a political blacklist introduced in 2022 against acknowledged subject experts whom the Cabinet Office believes do not share the government’s views.

The government is now vetting such specialists by, among other things, screening their posts over the past 3-5 years on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for “criticism of government officials or policy.” Such selective politicization and removal of inconvenient expert information and advice may result in the failure of decision-makers failing to improve their work. As a Times leader comment noted, these rules “are scandalously vague and flimsy” and “were never debated in Parliament nor publicly announced.”

The former Cabinet Office Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg is credited with introducing the new rules, with the Times article headlined “Rees-Mogg’s Blacklist is Positively Soviet.” Others liken it to the US McCarthyist political blacklists of the late 1940s and 1950s: “Are you, or have you ever been, disrespectful to British Conservative Party policy or personnel?”

Case 4: National Impoverishment Caused by Tory Recklessness

Demands for pay raises in the UK public sector have risen on an unprecedented scale since 2022, with workers inflamed by domestic energy bills rising by 200% or more and double-digit annual percentage cost of living increases. Some basic foodstuff prices too have more than doubled since early 2022.

NHS doctors are fighting for a 30-35% increase just to neutralize the claimed fall in their salary value over the past decade. Nurses, ambulance drivers and ancillary staff, schoolteachers, and many other sectors have similarly high wage demands with similar justifications. The Royal College of Nursing, the UK’s largest nursing union, is on strike for the first time in its 100-year history. Large-scale strikes have escalated in the face of the government’s various offers typically capped at some 5-7%.

Government ministers are accused of demanding that public sector workers should, in effect, personally subsidize government coffers, and learn to budget and manage their meager personal finances better. One radical-right Tory MP (formerly of the Labour Party!) and Deputy Party Chairman, Lee Anderson, has even scoffed at the reality of significant numbers of public sector workers now reliant on food banks and charities and suggested that they could easily feed themselves on 30p (or 38¢) per day! Even some armed forces personnel are reportedly using food banks.

Another ERG luminary, Liz Truss, the shortest-lived British Prime Minister in history (44 days in 2022), disgraced and forced to resign by her catastrophic “growth by corporate tax cuts” policy that nearly collapsed the British pound, believes that poor people would somehow benefit quickly from the “trickle-down effect” of corporate tax cuts. Neither she nor her successor Rishi Sunak has ever publicly acknowledged that her ignorance of basic national economics and her ideologically driven certitudes recklessly damaged the immediate and long-term wealth and prosperity of the entire population. Emergency corrective measures alone are estimated to have cost taxpayers over £30 billion ($38 billion).

Reckless endangerment, resulting from ignorance, incompetence, self-interest above national interest, and breathtakingly naïve ideological certitudes, has been the overriding hallmark of the past 13 years of Conservative rule.

A Collapse of Moral Standards in Public Life

There has been widespread evasion by Tory MPs and ministers of ethical standards in public life, established as a formal code by the Wicks Committee in 2001. The current government has been beset by a culture of sleaze similar to that which engulfed the Tory government in the 1990s, when the term “Tories-and-sleaze” became a national catchphrase. The following examples illustrate the breadth of the scandals since 2019 alone: 

— Owen Patterson, former Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland: improper paid lobbying of government on behalf of a
food company; forced to resign).

— Nadhim Zahawi, former Conservative Party Chairman: evasion of
millions of pounds in tax liabilities; forced to resign
chairmanship and from government.

— Baroness Mone, Conservative Peer: alleged receipt into
offshore accounts of £29 million ($37 million) in bribes for
facilitating a contract for major COVID-related supplies with
commercial supplier PPE Medpro; forced to suspend herself
from House of Lords; under investigation by National Crime
Agency.

— Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister: multiple scandals e.g., (1) an
£800,000 ($1 million) loan guarantee for himself while Prime
Minister, facilitated by Richard Sharp, shortly before Johnson
recommended him for the BBC Chairman post (Sharp failed to
declare to the BBC a conflict of interest and resigned his BBC
chairmanship); (2) controversy over the scale of costs for internal
redecoration of the 10 Downing Street prime ministerial
residence and the source of funds to pay for it; (3) the Partygate
scandal involving multiple staff parties hosted or attended by
Johnson at Downing Street contrary to strict Covid protection
rules, and then whether he lied to or misled Parliament about
this.

— Scott Benton: accused of paid lobbying of ministers on behalf of
the gambling industry and leaking confidential information.

Other Tory MPs have been accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault or rape, including some convictions and jail sentences: Charlie Elphicke, Julian Knight, Andrew Griffiths, Christopher Pincher and David Warburton, and Imran Khan.

A catalog of bullying cases has included Tory ministers (e.g., Gavin Williamson, Dominic Raab) mistreating civil servants, as confirmed by independent inquiries and forced resignations. Such “right of abuse” prerogatives are positively feudal. This bullying trait even extended to particular ministerial advisers, most notably Dominic Cummings, who was appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as his Chief of Staff. The rise of Cummings is profiled by Parker. Waring’s profile describes Cummings as someone who has undoubted intellectual skills but also presents as “a hyper-authoritarian, driven, fixated, intellectual narcissist … a great believer in himself, his ideas, and his self-certified superior intelligence and … very disparaging of those he considers intellectual weaklings or who might attenuate or interfere with his mission.” It should be noted that Cummings was neither an elected MP nor a civil service employee, but rather a contracted consultant. Nevertheless, Cummings adopted a forceful, and by all accounts overbearing and contemptuous, stance towards Cabinet Office staffers, civil servants in ministries and, indeed, MPs and even Cabinet ministers. 

Cummings clearly held many in terrorem and apparently was not averse to physical violence, such as the reported attack in 1999 on a former senior official of the Confederation of British Industry. As the leading adviser to Prime Minister Johnson, he created a major scandal by appearing to flagrantly ignore Covid protection rules that applied to every citizen and to which he himself contributed as Cabinet adviser. The scandal went from bad to worse as Cummings not only refused to apologize but brazenly argued in effect that he had been a paragon of virtue and had done nothing wrong. The court of British public opinion rejected such obvious sophistry. The damage to public trust and confidence was evident via a huge slump for the Conservatives in the polls. Eventually, after further misconduct, Johnson decided that Cummings had to go.

Boris “BoJo” Johnson, who took over as Prime Minister in 2019, was very much a political opportunist rather than a radical-right zealot. Reliant on buffoonery, photo-op flim-flam and the chutzpah that charmed many people, policy and strategy were never Johnson’s strong points. So, he left to Cummings such matters as “Get Brexit Done,” radical subjugation of the civil service and removal of independent judicial scrutiny of government. To many, it appeared as if Cummings was PM and Johnson was his lapdog.

Cummings did not go quietly in November 2020. True to form, he quickly launched into an ongoing vituperative onslaught against Johnson via online blogs and social media. Cummings’ powerful position is gone, but he remains an isolated and embittered radical-right fanatic.

Radical-Right Fellow Travellers

Some on the radical right exist within the Conservative Party (e.g., the ERG), while others operate externally in a variety of more hard-line nationalist parties and far-right entities, e.g., Reform UK, Reclaim, Britain First, Patriotic Alternative, and Far Right For Britain. Some radical-right supporters and agitators transcend the distinction between the Conservative Party and far-right nationalist organizations. The National Conservatism (NC) organization, for example, enjoys vocal support from Conservative Party Cabinet Members and MPs, particularly ERG members, as well as supporters of Reform UK and other parties. NC is in revolt against what it regards as a weak Conservative government, its neo-liberal economic and global markets policies, its “soft” immigration policies, and other “liberal” social policies. Three current or former Cabinet Ministers (Braverman, Gove and Rees-Mogg) spoke at the NC’s two-day conference in May 2023.

The NC identifies closely with the US-based Edmund Burke Foundation, which strongly backs the Republican Party and big business. This foundation exudes authoritarian nationalism, right-wing moralizing certitudes and white Christian supremacy. Its high-profile radical- and far-right nationalist supporters include Giorgia Meloni, the Italian premier, Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian premier, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News presenter—all of whom have attained notoriety for their harsh and uncompromising “illiberal democracy” comments. 

A number of senior Tories (e.g., MPs Lee Anderson, Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Marco Longhi) have been variously linked to such far-right organizations as the anti-Islam group Turning Point UK. Other Tory MPs also alleged to have far-right sympathies include Bob Blackman, Nadine Dorries, and Dehenna Davison. 

The fanatical Lee Anderson, MP, has an abrasive and insulting style, e.g., his conduct towards the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in a parliamentary select committee hearing, and his dismissive let-them-eat-cake rhetoric towards impoverished public sector workers. Home Secretary Suella Braverman with her florid rhetoric has led the anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, anti-woke “culture war.” There is some irony in the fact that her jibes about “woke political correctness” are themselves a truth-is-what-we-say-it-is expression of political correctness. By constantly blaming all Britain’s problems on a so-called woke culture (i.e., seemingly anyone who dares disagree with her radical ideas and policies), she is in effect blaming the 56.4% of the electorate who did not vote Tory at the last General Election. Sneering and jeering at voters is a bold tactic indeed!

Populist anxieties about thousands of asylum seekers entering the UK by boat have led to such spine-chilling rhetoric as “let them drown” or “send them to Rwanda”—shades of the infamous Madagascar plan, perhaps? Few would disagree that there is indeed a control problem and that organized human trafficking criminals continue to challenge and thwart UK authorities’ efforts to stop them. However, the “solution” proposed by Suella Braverman and her predecessor Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to the problem of cross-Channel small-boat asylum seekers is grotesque: treating them as if they were a priori criminals, locking them up without trial or access to lawyers or the courts, and then swiftly deporting them to Rwanda in Central Africa with no right of appeal and a permanent UK expulsion order against them. These two Home Secretaries have proclaimed loudly that such treatment is inherently humane and compassionate, and that it is compliant with international law and the UN Convention on asylum, despite the UNHCR bluntly challenging that assertion.

Their grinning faces and glinting eyes when advocating the “Rwanda solution” have betrayed a lack of empathy or remorse and an unmistakable glee, almost as if they actually enjoy inflicting as much harm and distress as possible on unfortunate souls. Understandably, puzzled observers wonder if these particular ministers may be suffering from some form of pathological personality disorder.

Mass Political Brainwashing via Internet and Social Media

Some social media outlets have been criticized as being detrimental to democracy.  According to Ronald Deibert, “The world of social media is more conducive to extreme, emotionally charged, and divisive types of content than it is to calm, principled considerations of competing or complex narratives.” Mari K. Eder points to failures of the Fourth Estate that have allowed outrage to be disguised as news, contributed to citizen apathy in confronting falsehoods and engendered further distrust in democratic institutions.

However, as Ethan Zuckerman notes, social media presents the opportunity to inform more people, amplify voices and allow for an array of diverse voices to speak. Social media has allowed vast new sectors of society, especially young people, to be engaged politically.

Politicians of all persuasions are using social media, whether via written statements or, more commonly, direct-to-camera, talking-heads or controlled interviews. These are infrequently shared by other outlets; while they address a choir of faithful supporters and an echo chamber of fellow travelers, such content and messages avoid refutation by others. Among UK parties, the Conservative Party has become relatively expert in this kind of use of social media to garner electoral support.

All such attempts at mass indoctrination and manipulation, in essence, are merely following the acknowledged father of such principles, the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. His strategy was to propagate false reality and false assertions by engaging the mass German public unwittingly in the process via radio, cinema, newspapers, public meetings, rallies and cultural organizations. He was enthusiastic about the deliberate use of lies for political objectives. The end-justifies-the-means character of the past few years of Tory government is eerily similar. Goebbels would probably have been ecstatic about the way these latter-day disciples put the latest technology to use. Regrettably, opposition parties, notably Labour, are also rapidly moving towards using similar methods.

The Damage is Ongoing

The latest Corruption Perceptions International Index report shows that the UK fell to its lowest-ever position in 2022. The report observes that this sharp fall reflects a recent decline in standards in government and insufficient controls on the abuse of public office.

With its sleaze and corruption and its reckless endangerment of the economy and healthcare, the extant radical Conservative government has imposed an increasingly harsh, intolerant and authoritarian regime on the population and on democratic institutions such as the independent judiciary. Unchecked, such conduct is bound to accelerate. Liberal democracy, already becoming illiberal, will drift into authoritarian diktat. Government propaganda and public brainwashing, seeking to normalize its dreadful abuses, grow apace.

The strident dogma and stealthy maneuverings of Conservative leaders, and the overall radical-right caucus demanding permanent radical-right governance, have already laid the groundwork for what would effectively be a coup establishing an elective dictatorship. The plot appears to be underway, whether the Conservative government and party remain intact and under radical-right domination or the party is rent asunder by infighting and joins the motley bunch of radical- and far-right fringe parties that are already vying for supremacy.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Elective Dictatorship: The Plot by Britain’s Radical Conservatives appeared first on Fair Observer.

All this mutually beneficial bonhomie came to an abrupt end with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration on 23 February 2022 of a so-called “special military operation” against Ukraine, which turned out to be an attempt to annex at least part, if not the whole, of Ukraine into Russia. At best, Ukraine as a sovereign territory would be a reduced rump, at worst its existence as an independent sovereign state would cease. Although Putin has had to make major revisions in the face of military setbacks and stiff Ukrainian resistance, his overall expansionist vision of crushing Ukraine to the point of non-viability as an independent nation remains intact. His military annihilation of Ukraine will just take longer and will involve ruthless deployment of more powerful weapons of near-mass destruction against urban centers. In addition, widespread terror tactics and atrocities against the civilian population, as authenticated by the UN, the International Criminal Court and other official investigators will almost certainly continue. Murder, rape and looting have been characteristic and apparently tolerated by Russian military commanders and political leaders. War crimes trials of individual perpetrators and the chains of command above them seem inevitable, even if such trials may often be in absentia and convicted individuals may evade apprehension and punishment for considerable periods of time.

Russian Antecedents

Putin’s stated arguments for the “special operation” against Ukraine entail several assertions and justifications. For example, he considers that historically, Ukraine was always part of Russia and has no right to independent sovereignty which, in any event, only came about as a result of Russian mistakes during the late Soviet period and the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.

Putin also claims that the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation threatens Russia’s national security, because of its close ties with the EU and its stated potential membership of NATO. He adds the accusation that Ukraine is infested with fascists and Nazis, especially in the government, the organs of state, and the armed forces, and that this presents both an overall existential threat of aggression against Russia and actual mistreatment of ethnic Russians who are present in large numbers in the local population of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

History will judge whether these assertions in the form of threats that inspire fear are genuinely felt, or are simply fake hyperbole to somehow justify a preemptive conquest of a smaller non-aggressive neighbor. Nevertheless, Putin does have a track record of broadly similar invasions since coming to power in 2000: Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, Eastern Ukraine in 2014. He also carried out mass destruction bombardments of towns and cities and terrorization of civilians in Chechnya (e.g. Grozny 1999-2000) and Syria (e.g. Aleppo 2015-2016). 

Moreover, Putin has copied a lot of earlier Russian leaders’ terror tactics from Afghanistan (1979-1989) and from Stalin’s advance westwards through Eastern Europe and into the Third Reich against Hitler in 1944 and 1945. There is a long history of Russian leaders using rape, murder and looting as weapons of war to terrorize and subdue civilian populations. Anyone doubting the facts should read William Shirer’s chilling history ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’, and Antony Beevor’s The Fall of Berlin 1945, both of which chronicle the savage depravity inflicted by Soviet troops on the German population and other nationalities as they swept towards Berlin and beyond. An estimated more than 1 million females of all ages were raped in Berlin alone. When challenged by Allied leaders to stop this atrocity, Stalin refused.

Creating a Nazi-Free Greater Russia

In summary, Putin’s stated argument is that Ukraine has no right to exist as a sovereign nation, that Ukrainians are really unentitled occupiers of territory that was always Russian and they should be grateful to be considered Russian vassals. Putin himself may not see the issue in racial terms, but when evaluated in conjunction with the overtly racist exhortations of one of his ideological gurus, the far-right polemicist  Alexandr Dugin, it begins to  sounds remarkably like Hitler’s Untermenschen and Lebensraum justifications for invading all lands to the east of Germany and for subjugating or expelling their native populations. Hitler annexed Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938 on the pretext of protecting the Sudeten Germans, and invaded Poland in 1939 on the pretext of saving ethnic Germans in Danzig (Gdansk), Stettin (Szczecin) and elsewhere, but with the ulterior motive of vastly extending the Third Reich. Similarly, the Russians have already announced that beyond Ukraine they intend to ‘protect’ militarily the Trans-Dniester Russians within Moldova, yet another pretext for extending Greater Russia. Further pretexts for invasions may well involve the sizable ethnic Russian populations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Fascists and far-right groups exist in all countries but, despite Putin’s insistence, there is no convincing evidence that they have any dominant or pivotal influence on government or society in present-day Ukraine. Indeed, it is ironic that far-right and neo-Nazi groups have flourished inside Russia under Putin’s rule. The Fair Observer article by Atul Singh and Glen Carle – prior to the Ukraine invasion – details the extensive backdrop to Putin’s worldview. For example, Putin claims to be a fervent anti-Nazi yet is known to have been heavily influenced by Alexandr Dugin, the far-right Russian ultra-nationalist ideologue, whose books e.g. The Fourth Political Theory (2012) and The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset (2021) include both rabidly racist rants that many would judge as neo-Nazi and exhortations for Russia to annex vast territories to the south and west. Putin appears to have heeded Dugin. He was also well disposed towards the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) party. In 2019, Zhirinovsky’s LDPR hosted a special roundtable session in Moscow of far-right and neo-Nazi political delegations from across the globe and held in the Russian State Duma. Such a conference in the Duma would have required Kremlin approval and authorization.

Global Response and Russian Reality

As the civilized world recoiled in horror and revulsion at the relentless bombardment of cities and the atrocities by Russian forces across the northern, eastern and southern areas of Ukraine, an overwhelming vote at the UN General Assembly confirmed global condemnation of Russia. Putin, his Kremlin henchmen, his military commanders, and his troops on the ground are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Increasingly severe sanctions continue to be applied to Russia, which are likely to endure possibly for years to come. Even pro-Putin oligarchs say that Putin’s Ukraine adventure has already set the Russian economy back to its 1990 level, and continued sanctions may set it back further.

Nevertheless, recent polls show that two-thirds or more of Russians back Putin’s Ukraine policy. Some may be brainwashed, but others are likely to hold pre-existing beliefs of Russian superiority and entitlement. This  situation is little different to the German population’s adulation of Hitler and pride in supposed German national superiority that lasted from the early 1930s and well into 1944, when major military reversals began to deflate popular confidence in the Fuehrer. In Russia’s case, it may be that its global isolation and economic decline over the coming years, resulting from Putin’s Ukraine and Greater Russia projects, will deflate his stature among Russians.

Putin’s boast of a Russian national rebirth and new economic miracle, while happily cut off from the West inside a new Iron Curtain, sounds like delusional bravado. Most Western brands and major corporations have already quit Russia indefinitely and, as 2022 progresses, sales of Russian gas to European countries will fall dramatically, further crippling the Russian economy. The embargo of Russian oil cargoes on the London insurance market will virtually stop Russian oil supplies to foreign customers by sea, thus adding to Putin’s woes. Modern Russians will hate a return to Soviet-era empty supermarkets, long queues for basic goods, high prices, a subsistence lifestyle, poor quality apparel, few luxury goods, and limited foreign travel.

Putin himself, at age 70, is likely to remain in power for some time by virtue of his totalitarian methods and his ‘removal’ of potential political challengers. He will never accept accountability for his Greater Russia invasions. International isolation and sanctions will therefore remain in place. When he finally leaves office, there is no guarantee that a new Russian president would be any better than him and maybe even worse. Russia’s pariah status may well last for decades, unless and until a ‘clean skin’ regime takes over in the Kremlin. After World War II, it took at least 50 years, including an Allies-imposed denazification program, before the “all Germans are Nazis” perception outside Germany had waned. Any de-Putinization program would have to be driven from within and would take decades against much opposition from vested interests.

Meanwhile, Putin dismisses foreign reactions as being inconsequential – that somehow his fake news and propaganda will bamboozle and convince Western populations of the justness of his Greater Russia project and the essential purity of his ideology, the goodness and humanity of his armed forces, and the benevolence of his governance inside Russia and its conquered territories. He does not recognize the old public relations witticism that no matter how hard one tries to polish horse manure, it remains horse manure. He has created the mother of all image-and-credibility disasters for himself and for Russia. He imagines that his fake news and propaganda narrative, which either dupes the Russian population or reinforces their ultra-nationalist beliefs and prejudices, will also be successful outside Russia. The strict state control of the media he enjoys in Russia is rare outside his country, and the immediacy of smartphone videos and social media demolishes his attempts to cast Russian atrocities as humanitarian work. Putin really does believe that, despite its economy about to implode, its declining population, and its pariah status, Russia is destined to thrive and enjoy greater and greater glories in its own little domain ‘beyond the Pale’, disconnected from the normal international world. He craves to be another Peter the Great, yet history may remember him only as Vlad the Mad-and-Bad or Putin the Psycho.

Dilemma for Russian Investment and Tourism Destinations

Despite a reputation for often being stern and straight-faced, and not caring about what foreigners think of them, in reality Russians typically very much want to be liked. They want to be respected and even feared, but also liked. However,  in the wake of Putin’s disastrous Ukraine adventure in which the quest for Russian hegemony has been exposed in all its ghastly manifestations, the rather narcissistic mix of Putin’s personal desires has now set Russians at odds with how the outside world actually sees them. The stigma, international pariah status and sanctions now affect all Russians to some degree. Foreign doors remain closed, and access and inclusion are denied. 

Two areas immediately impacted are Russian overseas investment and Russian tourists. The former has been hit by international sanctions against Russian companies, and individual oligarchs and executives. Sanctions also cover foreign travel, financial transactions, money movements, and tax status. Russian tourists in Western countries are now scarce, owing to travel sanctions. For Russians who have become used to foreign holidays and being ‘liked’ by their hosts, the new situation is both a shock and an indignation. However, the loss of Russians also impacts foreign destinations.

With EU sanctions against Russia and its client state Belarus, most foreign destinations are forced to adjust to a ‘new normal’ in which huge numbers of Russian tourists have disappeared suddenly and possibly permanently. Cyprus, for example, has lost typically over 750,000 Russian tourists (782,000 in 2019), some 20% of its total annual figure. It would be tempting for such countries to fantasize that this is just a temporary setback and that Russian tourists, settlers and business people will soon be flooding back. For Russians, the ‘Skolko zim, skolko lyet?’ greeting between old friends – literally how many winters, how many summers [since we last met]? – may well be answered ‘a lifetime’s worth’ in relation to foreign destinations.

For a start, the incomes and savings of most Russians will be vastly depleted in hard currency terms for years to come. For them, foreign travel and holidays abroad will become unaffordable. Even Russia-friendly Turkey might eventually prove too expensive for Russian tourists. Even in the most optimistic scenario where sanctions are lifted, Russians recover from their financial losses and Russian tourists return to foreign destinations in 10-15 years, is it a certainty that they will be welcomed unequivocally? For the Russians, the opportunity to travel again might be joyous, but their hosts might have mixed feelings about their return. These hosts might find it hard to forget the imagery of Russian aggression and atrocities in Ukraine. Will increased revenue warm their hearts for returning Russians?

As Dr. Anton Shekhovtsov, the director of the Vienna-based Centre for Democratic Integrity, noted recently, “history will judge mercilessly” the Western countries that fail to support Ukraine. This will also apply to those who in any way deny, ignore, downplay or trivialize Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially if their motive is to secure revenues from Russian customers while Russia has not relinquished Ukrainian sovereign territory or paid war reparations to Ukraine.

Consider also human nature in tourist economies. Imagine Western tourists finding themselves in the same place as Russian tourists. How will they know that the latter had not been involved in or still support the atrocities in Ukraine? If only to shield their children from unwelcome contact, the former may well boycott the offending venues hosting Russian tourists, if not the entire country itself. 

Of course, some – perhaps many – Russians may be perfectly innocent and, in an ideal world, people would not rush to such sweeping negative judgements. But, in the real world, that is precisely what they do. It took 50 years after World War II for Germans not to be automatically cast as Nazis by far too many around the world. All the great contributions of Russia to civilization in all spheres are now unfairly relegated by many to the dustbin of history. This is one of Putin’s unintended legacies: the false perception that all Russians are hideous thugs and war criminals. Moreover, those in the West who may seek a too rapid rehabilitation of Russian tourists and visitors may be accused of sympathy, if not support, for Russian war crimes. A fast and easy way back for Russia from its current pariah image predicament is hard to envisage. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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A Descent into the ‘Win At All Costs’ Dark Side

Well before the 21^st century, a steady-state tradition had built up in democracies whereby freedom of speech was often passionate, but nevertheless generally respectful, even when opponents evoked vehement disagreement. Such popular periodicals as Private Eye, Le Canard Enchainé and Charlie Hebdo continue the tradition of satirically speaking truth to power, as do many newspapers, while academics continue to expound their theories and opinions in a variety of academic channels, and sometimes in the popular press. While often controversial, vigorous, and even barbed – and whether impartial or partisan, measured or polemical – the essence of this tradition has been the principle of engaging, debating, analyzing, weighing, informing, and coexisting.  This is all in the public interest, so as to develop and promulgate the most powerful arguments rather than the arguments of the most powerful.

This social contract of normative behavior started to break down noticeably towards the end of the first decade of this century, coinciding with the rise of social media. It has degenerated to such an extent that by now this civil standard is regarded by a significant minority as a contemptible relic that must be abandoned. Increasingly, respect for opposing world-views and opinions has been jettisoned in favor of a shrill determination to crush anyone whose ideas challenge one’s own preconceptions. 

The arguments of the most overbearing and ‘shouty’ now swamp the most powerful arguments with their disproportionate noise and impact. In essence, it is a bullying and bellicose ‘win at all costs’ approach, which might have been taken out of an imaginary ‘Megalomanic Dictator’s Guide to Advancement and Self-Preservation’. According to Ukrainian academic, Anton Shekhovtsov, the claim that Putin is a real – and arguably fascist – dictator is a case in point. Individuals and groups at all levels in society may display remarkably similar characteristics to Putin’s ruthless determination to dominate others with little or no concern about the resulting harm. As Ignazio Silone’s 1930s semi-autobiographies Fontamara and The Seed Beneath the Snow chronicling survival in a fascist society reveal, ‘fascism’ – both in the popular sense of overbearing nastiness and as a political ideology – is characterized in daily life by such mundane personality flaws as envy, greed, vanity, resentment,  inadequacy, entitlement, sociopathy, criminality etc.

The following cases exemplify the new intolerance, including the much abused ‘weaponisation’ of the terms ‘fascist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ by countervailing interests.

Case A: Extreme Commentators and Agitators

The extreme statements by Donald Trump during his 2016-2020 US presidency are infamous. Trump was an avid user of his Twitter social media account and had few qualms about issuing personal rants in undiplomatic – and certainly un-presidential – language against a wide range of individuals and groups that he decried. These included senior US politicians, government officials, judges, war heroes, foreign politicians and heads of state, as well as journalists, film stars, sportspersons, and celebrities, but also Mexicans, Muslims, Iranians, disabled persons, refugees and many other objects of his disdain. 

In Trump’s narcissistic world-view, there is a dichotomy between winners/predators like himself and losers/victims who deserve all their problems and suffering and who, moreover, may be dismissed as unpatriotic, “socialist” (i.e. crypto-communist) agitators. To him, a loser is anyone lacking his personality and world-view or daring to challenge or criticize his ideas or policies, even constructively. Such Trumpian abuses have been widely discussed, for example by Roger Paxman, Kevern Verney, and Alan Waring in The New Authoritarianism Vol 1 and Denis Fischbacher-Smith, Clive Smallman, Antony Vass, and Alan Waring in Vol 3. As Smallman noted, such “toxic leadership is not ‘luck of the draw’”.

Trump’s combative style has helped to polarize political debate in the US and encourage partisan non-cooperation between the Republican (GOP) and Democratic parties. This has continued into the subsequent Biden administration. Moreover, Trump’s attitude and conduct (most notoriously his ‘dog-whistle’ priming of a radical-right mob to attack the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021) gave a further green light to an expanding group of radical-right GOP Congress members. 

A growing caucus of such GOP politicians– including Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Ron Johnson, Ron Paul, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene –has done so, to the extent that the GOP is no longer seen as a ‘one-nation’ conservative party. Instead, it has become a populist radical-right (and potentially far-right) party in which mainstream Republican politicians are increasingly intimidated and marginalized by their more outspokenly extreme colleagues. The cases of Kinzinger and Cheney are especially instructive here.

Trump (an outspoken fan of Putin and his aggressive nationalism, with a notable ambivalence towards his Ukraine invasion) and his GOP allies have been joined in their intolerant statements by a bandwagon of like-minded fringe political commentators and agitators. They have been adept at using their media spaces to vilify naysayers and stridently promulgate radical-right opinions – even extreme ones – as well as absurd conspiracy theories (such as QAnon). Among these are Ann Coulter, Alex Jones and, at Fox News, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

Until recently, the gigantic and belligerent radical-right megaphone system in the US has not been mirrored by anything similar on the radical left.

Case B: Cancel Culture in Higher Education

In recent years, there has been a trend for some university students to demand that their lecturers must not include any content that these students may find objectionable, and that university authorities should ban lecturers or speakers whose intellectual views they may not like . Students taking part in such ‘cancel culture’ have become known derisively as ‘snowflakes’. In some instances, protests have turned violent.

Student cancel culture runs counter to the primary purpose of university education, which traditionally aimed at developing constructively critical analysis rather than prejudicial rejection. Indeed, experiencing intellectual challenge and discomfort is a necessary part of university education as a means of developing understanding and sharpening evaluative skills. 

In considering how to shape academic freedom, especially in the digital age, we have seen undue pressure applied to individual academics who have published opinion pieces causing offense to some readers. Noting that an opinion is typically a subjective and biased view of an issue –even when given by an acknowledged expert, since no one’s world-view is value-free or experience-free– researcher Jaime da Silva warned: “Pressure-induced retractions of opinions not only stifle academic debate, they also send the message that opinions need to be moderated and standardized to meet a publishing market that is being increasingly driven by legal parameters, political correctness, as well as business and commercial values rather than academic ones.” Yangyang Cheng writing for The Atlantic also highlights concomitant business, commercial and, occasionally, political pressures. Da Silva continued, noting that “the way things are said, tone, and the sensitivity of those that might be affected are given greater weight than the message itself. By cherry-picking parts of the message that detractors or critics might disagree with, the original message may be drowned out by the noise of the objectors.” The requirement for universities to show proper integrity and firmness against such pressures has never been more urgent.

Case C: Counter-Extremist ‘Cancelled’ for Not Being Anti-Fascist Enough

A stout rejection of fascism could be assumed to be a sine qua non for any member of a body comprising doctoral and post-doctoral fellows dedicated to the analysis of the radical right and countering any associated extremism. Indeed, one such body that for years had been proud of such credentials was what I shall call the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Research Group (hereafter RWARG), a pseudonym used here to save any possible embarrassment. All members were required to contribute non-peer reviewed opinion pieces regularly to the RWARG’s flagship online blog. One such member, Dr. Smith (another pseudonym), had been doing so for some years without controversy when unexpectedly his latest article received a blitz of vituperative reaction online from some fellow members.

Their ire had been provoked, it seems, by his observation that whereas most attention was deservedly focused on the radical right, and the latter’s propensity for the use of threats and even violence to achieve their aims, some radical-left supporters were also now advocating similar tactics against the far right. Although he referenced some specific US examples of violent actions, and articles implying, if not specifically advocating, violence from so-called ‘Antifa’ groups, the RWARG’s online blog editorial policy did not require opinion-piece authors to meet the standards of a double-blind peer reviewed academic paper in order to justify every statement. After all, as da Silva observed, an expressed opinion is typically “a subjective and biased view of an issue”, and blog articles are intended to provoke thought rather than necessarily to inform impartially or, indeed, comprehensively. Moreover, this example validates da Silva’s observation that “the sensitivity of those that might be affected [is] given greater weight than the message itself.”

The thrust of Dr. Smith’s piece was thus to challenge the notion that it is ever acceptable to use or advocate violence as a political policy, strategy or tactic, and cited the well-worn heuristic that ‘violence begets violence’. He was debunking the sophistry that it is morally acceptable for anti-fascists (of any hue) to resort to violent tactics, whether reactive or pre-emptive, against radical-right extremists simply because the latter may have a violent predisposition.

The hysterical reaction to Dr. Smith’s piece was orchestrated by a cabal of members and like-minded academics who went on the offensive first by circulating a strident denunciation of the author,signed by over twenty individuals and demanding a radical reorganization “to prevent far-right members from joining and subverting the organization”. After each signatory’s name, the designation “anti-fascist” was added, presumably for the avoidance of doubt. 

The cabal then hastily organized an online fellows’ conference in order to discuss Dr. Smith and his article, as well as to present demands for an overhaul of the RWARG’s editorial policy and a radical reform of the Group. Their apparent objective was to (a) prevent any further opinion pieces criticizing anti-fascist aggression, (b) prevent anyone gaining membership whose views did not fully meet the cabal’s concepts of fascism and anti-fascism, and (c) expel any member who transgressed the cabal’s new criteria. Partisan censorship of articles that offended the cabal had now become a high risk.

To this author – an attendee of the online meeting – the exercise resembled a Stalinist show trial. Apparently, Dr. Smith was neither invited to attend nor informed that he was, in effect, ‘on trial’. Not only was his offending article canceled but so too was his membership.

A further circular from the cabal continued the professional and character assassination of Dr. Smith. However, it also vilified Professor Jones (another pseudonym), the co-founding Director of RWARG, accusing him of complicity in Dr. Smith’s ‘crime’ for defending the rights of members to hold different viewpoints, as well as attacking his personality and character. Unsurprisingly, the Director and a number of members resigned. This cabal thus achieved a successful insurgent coup led by self-righteous and self-validating ‘anti-fascist’ zealots. Although continuing to proclaim its ‘broad church’ membership, the new RWARG would only be tolerating those closely allied to the new illiberal orthodoxy. Those with a liberal or centrist abhorrence of fascism would not be welcome since, like Dr. Smith and Prof. Jones, they would no longer be considered anti-fascist enough.

For the new RWARG elite, ‘fascist’ is primarily an all-embracing term for anyone in the radical-right spectrum outside and to the right of mainstream conservatism, whether or not a true, revolutionary, fascist as traditionally defined. However, their use of the term now apparently also encompasses liberals, centrists and mainstream conservatives. To them, a ‘fascist’ is anyone who is not 100% ‘anti-fascist’ by their standards i.e. not as anti-fascist as the RWARG cabal claims to be. Such widespread overuse and misuse of the ‘fascist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ labels has devalued them to near junk status, whether used by academics-turned-frustrated-anti-fascist-warriors or by audacious hegemons such as Putin using fascist tactics against his enemies while accusing them of being the real fascists. 

Conclusion

Politics and the media share with academia an overriding responsibility to identify and promulgate the most powerful arguments, not those of the most overbearing and ruthless. Nor should counter-extremism be hijacked either by zealots or by those more interested in their self-promotion, intellectual vanity, or performative feelings of superiority. Regrettably, this standard is being increasingly ignored by those who should know better.

Politicization and ruthless pursuit of intolerant ideology are replacing civil dialogue, precluding any engagement with or understanding of other world-views. Audiences are subjected to unsolicited rants and intimidating toxic messaging, while individuals singled out as ideological enemies are treated to aggressive ‘wilding’. Subversive ‘freedom of speech’ defenses are thereby exposed as little more than an excuse by zealots to obliterate other people’s freedom of expression.The ugly tactics of some extreme politicians, activists, commentators and ‘snowflake’ students, as well as some self-styled anti-extremists, all reveal an essential illiberalism and a corrupted spirit. The relentless outpouring of vile invective against anyone expressing a contrary opinion is indicative of a deep-seated paranoia and possibly some level of personality disorder. While there is no magic antidote to all this wickedness, sociologist and democracy activist Moshe ben Asher suggests as an essential starting point the radical revitalization of democracy (especially in the US) through popular assemblies. Moreover, there is a desperate need for greater humanity and mindfulness in our dealings with others, friends and adversaries alike.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Charismatic Leadership and the Far Right

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There is no persuasive argument to suggest that this model will not apply to 21^st-century superpowers. On the one hand, the MAGA bluster and noisy and intimidating rhetoric and associated violence that have typified the US radical right in recent years — especially since Donald Trump’s election in 2016 — could be regarded simply as the radical right being themselves (conforming to stereotypes). On the other hand, it also suggests fear-based defensive posturing at the dawning realization that US exceptionalism is not guaranteed amidst the inexorable rise of China.

As US global power declines, will radical-right assertions and objectives based on assumptions of US exceptionalism look increasingly absurd and unachievable? Will a wounded and inherently paranoid radical right become even more reactionary and dangerous? Is an ineffectual Republican Party, the “sick man” of American politics, a prime target for a radical-right coup?

The US Exceptionalism Belief

According to researcher Hilde Eliassen Restad — and discussed by this author in “The New Authoritarianism: A Risk Analysis of the Alt-Right Phenomenon” — the concept of US exceptionalism that has existed since WWII encompasses three essential elements. First, the United States is both different to and better than the rest of the world, not just Europe and the “Old World.” Second, the US enjoys a unique role in world history as the prime leader of nations. Third, it is the only nation in history that has thwarted, and will continue to thwart, the laws of history in its rise to power, which will never decline.

These elements underscore a belief that US superiority and superpower status are warranted and inevitable in every respect. This supremacist belief is embedded in US radical-right ideology. The US exceptionalism thesis does not allow the US to accept a primus inter pares role in relation to Russia and China, for example. Trump’s radical-right version of US exceptionalism involved slogans such as “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” the rejection of diverse and allegedly un-American ideas such as multilateralism and universal health care, the repudiation of ethnoreligious equality in favor of white Christian nationalism, and unilateral actions against other countries. Such action included military strikes against Iranian and Syrian targets, sanctions on Iran, Syria, Russia and China, and ethnoreligious discrimination against citizens of Muslim-majority countries.

Perhaps the most salient element of the US exceptionalism doctrine, as projected by the Trump administration, was that of infinite, undiminished, dominant US power literally forever. However, such a doctrine defies the laws of history, which assume a population ecology model of nation-states in which nations grow, mature and eventually decline. As this author has previously pointed out, implicit in this model is the life-cycle concept and the inevitability of eventual decline. In 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe applied the concept in their study of US history and its likely future in the 21^st century.

Nevertheless, Trump and the US radical right believe that the US will always be the dominant global power and that no other nation will ever overtake and replace it. Increasingly, this faith-based belief is being challenged by China on all main parameters — economic, military, political, science and technology — and by Trump’s abject mismanagement and absent leadership during the COVID-19 crisis.

In particular, Trump’s anti-Chinese rhetoric and various attempts to challenge an expansionist China clearly demonstrate US anxiety that its perceived exceptional mantle is not guaranteed. Under the Trump administration, the US banned Huawei 5G technology over what it perceived as a national security threat. Washington has also sent naval forces to the Far East to challenge Beijing’s claim to large tracts of the South China Sea, including islands under the sovereignty of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam

Exceptionalism vs. Military and Diplomatic Failures

Both the veracity and validity of US exceptionalism have also been challenged by military and diplomatic failures. For example, the inevitable collapse of the Iranian regime and/or its compliance with US demands never materialized. This is despite the aggressive bombast of Trump and his courtiers, the imposition of additional US sanctions on Iran, the withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018, the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020 by a US drone strike and bellicose statements implying an impending war.

US failures in foreign policy toward the Middle East are encapsulated in a 2020 report for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The report argues that US assumptions about its exceptional status and entitlement to dictate a “new world order,” which includes its domination of the region, are both misguided and not fit for purpose. “Preventing hostile hegemony in the Middle East does not mean the United States must play the role of hegemon itself,” the report states.

The report advocates a new holistic paradigm based on regional security and multilateral relations, in which US bilateral relations with countries in the Middle East are determined by regional security, rather than the latter being a constant casualty of individual bilateral interests. US foreign policy in the Middle East has failed to achieve its purpose. Diplomatically and militarily, the US was pushed out of Syria and marginalized by Russian and Iranian alliances with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. Under Trump, Washington could not force Iran to capitulate to its nuclear and other demands. In Yemen, the US-backed Saudi military offensive against the Houthis rebels was unsuccessful. Finally, a US attempt to introduce an imposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would have negated UN resolutions on Palestinian nationhood went nowhere.

The formal opening of diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel in August 2020 is a positive development and one likely to benefit US foreign policy assumptions to some extent. Yet it also underscores the likelihood that the UAE sees mutual defense advantages against Iran as more important than its support for the Palestinians. However, popular support for such a position among Arab nations is not guaranteed, and such negativity may prove troublesome for Arab governments. In addition, the apparent enthusiasm for better relations with Israel may mask an overriding fear in the UAE and Saudi Arabia that without Israeli involvement, the US may embark on a strategic military withdrawal from the region, which would make them vulnerable to any Iranian machinations.

A Prognosis

These collective failures also indicate that US supremacy and purported exceptionalism are in decline. Those countries that have relied heavily on American supremacy for support and protection — whether diplomatic, military, economic or psychological — against enemies or predatory regimes may have to consider new security-and-defense policies and arrangements in the medium to long term. This applies not just in relation to the Middle East, but also to Southeast Asia that faces Chinese expansionism and European members of NATO that endured repeated threats by Trump about reduced funding for the alliance and even American withdrawal. However, the Biden administration is likely to herald a return to traditional US support for NATO, at least in the short term. Yet the prospect of some future radical-right presidency may see a return to a review of American support for NATO.

Nevertheless, the US decline will be a long-drawn-out process throughout the 21^st century, rather than a rapid collapse. The capacity of the US to try to maintain its superpower status should not be underestimated. There will be moments of temporary rally and some periods of hardly noticeable decline, but overall, the downward trend will be inescapable. No nation can defy the laws of history and their underlying life-cycle and population ecology models. While “forever” is a long, long time, in historical terms, nations have a more limited term. Whether, as other declining imperial and quasi-imperial nations have done over the millennia, the US will learn to adapt and find a new role in an evolving world order remains to be seen.

Over the rest of this century, the US radical right are likely to continue with their egregious ideology and activities. On the one hand, they are likely to be in denial about the US decline. Yet on the other, they will probably take advantage where they can by offering themselves as the nation’s only viable savior from, or antidote to, such decline. Ominously, like a terrified dangerous animal trying to avoid being caged and subdued, the radical right are also increasingly likely to engage inside the US in ever more audacious and violent behavior designed to scare and cow moderates or challengers and even to subjugate mainstream political parties and representative democracy.

Expect to see, for example, the GOP turned from a mainstream, one-nation, conservative party into a nakedly authoritarian radical-right party akin to the AfD in Germany, Fidesz in Hungary and other populist far-right parties — all courtesy of Trump and his Republican fifth columnists in Congress. Expect to also see an increase in online and social media attacks as well as physical violence against radical-right targets, whether political, institutional, ethnoreligious minorities or other vulnerable groups. The violent insurrection on Capitol Hill in January, and other radical-right plots to abduct or even murder prominent politicians and officials, is part of the “new normal.”

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Nevertheless, systems science has always recognized that reductionism also has an important role in conceptualization, theory development, methodology, analysis, problem elicitation and design of practical interventions. However, that role is meant to be a controlled and targeted one, to be used judiciously only when appropriate to a particular topic or juncture within a larger and more holistic strategy, and not to be used as the exclusive quick-fix approach to all problem-solving.

When Emotion Trumps Dispassionate Politics

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Regrettably, there is abundant evidence that radical-right leaders, ideologues, politicians, administrations, opinion-formers and others have an overwhelming tendency to promulgate, often dogmatically and even ruthlessly, simple analyses and solutions to complex real-world issues. Unsurprisingly, these rarely work and often make things far worse.

The radical right exhibits reductionist thinking and narratives in two main ways. First, it trivializes or minimizes the nature and impact of particular risks — and sometimes maximizing them — contrary to known science or factual evidence. Second, it over-simplifies specific problems or issues, or invents false and unscientific cause-effect explanations for them. The apparent motives for why the radical right engages in such egregious manipulation and fakery center on four processes, which it believes will bring its cause political and populist benefits.

Authoritarian Revisionism

The radical right indulges in the erasure from its narrative of inconvenient or unwelcome facts from the accepted knowledge base of history and science. For example, protagonists pretend that the vast body of knowledge on the complexity of problems and issues —relating to society, science, economics, health, social reforms, human rights, foreign relations and governance in general, as developed over the past half-century — is either irrelevant, is fake science or never even existed. The radical-right policies, narratives and actions of the Trump administration provide stark in extremis examples of such revisionism on many fronts and in various forms.

The radical right seeks to regress to the simple truths and values of an imaginary past world of the 1960s and earlier, when relatively simple mechanistic, biological or economic “explanations” provided a comforting illusion of order, certainty, neatly-stacked problems and solutions, and simplistic salvation models and “programs” for correcting deviations from the dogma and assertions of what constitutes the correct normative order. Henry Mintzberg’s critique of the fallacy of predetermination and other reductionist fallacies, along with Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat and Bert Spector’s critique of the poor predictability of non-holistic programmatic change, have no currency in the radical-right world since these expose its inherent flaws.

Examples of radical-right salvation cure-alls range from Donald Trump’s Mexican border wall and Viktor Orban’s anti-Muslim border controls, to the palingenetic ultranationalist ethno-religious and political cleansing demanded by the extreme right, to the radical-right advocacy of, or sympathy with, discredited eugenics theories of inferiority of certain races. As allegedly inferior races will be an unacceptable drain on society and the economy, eugenics advocates argue that they should be “dealt with,” echoing the Nazi racial purity laws and Eugen Fischer’s infamous Aktion T4 extermination program in Hitler’s Germany.

For example, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to apologize for or dismiss a policy adviser who suggested publicly that discriminatory policies based on eugenics were warranted.

Complexity theory regards real-world problems and issues as “messes”— systems of problems that defy resolution simply by picking off component problems one by one or even in groups, because in doing so, the “mess” simply adapts itself and survives in a modified and unresolved form. Messes require the systemic whole to be tackled — holistically. Despite the overwhelming trend over the past 45 years among governments, policy research groups and the academia toward adopting holistic approaches, the radical right has persisted with its reductionist and revisionist world view. For example, some of the radical right seriously argues for the reintroduction of minimalist social, employment and environmental policies similar to those of the Victorian times, as well as the wholesale removal of protective legislation for workers. 

Nevertheless, because radical-right propaganda overall offers a seductive salvation model, as the 21^st century has progressed, radical-right salvation ideas have gained widespread populist support among weary and fearful societies demanding “solutions.” Moreover, there has also been a resurgence of reductionist theories and arguments in some areas of academia, such as recent scientific papers that airbrush out the body of knowledge on complexity and advocate rehashed reductionist theories on scientific management and salvationist programmatic change models from the 1960s.

Manipulation of Risk Perceptions

US President Donald Trump’s persistent official policy is to deny that climate change exists or, if it does, then it is neither caused by human activity nor a major threat to the world. That policy implies a belief that there is no systemic cause and effect relationship between human activity, global warming and climate change, and extreme weather events. Therefore, no special preventative measures or contingency planning are required, and the existing emergency response provisions are adequate since extreme weather events will remain rare, unpredictable and non-catastrophic. In radical-right terms, the “problem” and its risks are thereby reduced to zero, as they do not exist.

As another example, in radical-right terms, measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) are reduced to a set of allegedly relatively minor health threats whereas (quoting discredited quack science from a struck-off physician) MMR vaccine is falsely cited as a major cause of autism in children. The underlying justification appears to emanate from the radical right’s fear of removal of the freedom of parental choice coupled with a belief that scientists who support vaccination — the vast majority, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), etc. — are part of a left-wing conspiracy to undermine conservative governance and the economy.

Radical-right supporters are heavily represented in the anti-vax movement, which includes Trump. In February 2020, he contradicted the CDC and the WHO on the seriousness of the coronavirus threat, dismissing the scale of the threat as a “hoax” and claiming that his media enemies were using false coronavirus stories as a weapon to undermine him politically. Subsequently, Trump has persistently sought to talk down the COVID-19 threat to public health and has strongly advocated the removal of lockdown restrictions before it is safe to do so — apparently on economic grounds, a belief that health experts were exaggerating the risks and to avoid damage to his reelection chances.

At the same time, while the radical right artificially deflates some risks, it inflates others. For example, Trump has persistently inflated the incidence and risk of violent criminality among immigrants (whether legal or illegal) from Mexico, contrary to the known facts. He has also similarly falsely inflated the risk of terrorism from Muslim immigrants and visitors to the US.

Confirmation Bias in Propaganda

The radical right exhibits a strong preference for any evidence, opinion or assertion which it believes strengthens its case. While not unique in seeking to present its best case, the radical right stands out in the relentless and aggressive way it disseminates its propaganda via all media formats, but especially online and social media. Radical-right leaders, politicians, ideologues, opinion formers, commentators and sympathetic journalists selectively include in their narratives only those items and assertions that tend to confirm and support radical-right objectives and, conversely, exclude any material that contradicts or challenges radical-right ideology or that casts the radical right in a poor light.

Thus, for example, the recent sudden increases in MMR cases (including deaths) officially attributed to anti-vax campaigns supported by the radical right will be ignored, while stories of populist support for the anti-vax position will receive favorable publicity. Stories of the heroism of firefighters and emergency workers in the conflagrations in California and Australia will dominate the narratives of radical-right administrations and their supporters, while climate change (if mentioned at all) will be vehemently denied as a primary causal factor in the fires.

Viktor Orban will boast of a huge success in his Hungary-for-Hungarians-only policy in the way his massive border fencing and strict controls have stopped the alleged Muslim takeover of the country while ignoring the fact that historically, Hungary has only ever had a minuscule Muslim population — a classic false proposition to evoke fear in the native population followed by their relief when the (non-existent) threat is neutralized. If the non-existent Muslim hordes have not entered the country, then populists believe that Orban’s policy was clearly correct and effective.

Mendacity and Amoral Calculation

Radical-right leaders and supporters persistently lie in order to advance their political ideology, persuade the public of their righteousness and to cover up their own bad conduct. For example, according to The Washington Post, as of October 14, 2019, President Trump had made 13,435 false or misleading statements since taking office. By December 10, 2019, that number had risen to 15,413, according to The Washington Monthly.

While it may be anticipated that all politicians stretch the truth to their advantage, and some brazenly lie from time to time, the scale of Trump’s mendacity is exceptional and unprecedented. Trump, his administration and the radical-right establishment have turned amoral calculation, lying and dissemination of false facts and fake news into a central plank of official policy rather than using it as an ad hoc convenience.

Radical-right reductionism has played well to a populist audience looking for some kind of salvation from perceived problems and threats. The radical right has been skillful in weaving into its narrative artful rhetoric and imagery concerning problems and threats that are in some cases real but mixed up with far more that are exaggerated or invented.

Playing on populist fears, the radical right then proposes itself and its policies as the only salvation. This populist support, based on psychological dependence, may work for a time if the promise of salvation seems plausible and realistic. However, ultimately, support is likely to wane as enacted radical-right policies fail in the face of real-world complexity.

*[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right is a partner institution of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can the Radical Right’s Reductionist Narrative Withstand Real-World Complexity? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Much of the rhetoric about Iran emanating from Donald Trump’s team throughout 2016 was cast in the negative terms typically used by the so-called alt-right. This is unsurprising, since Trump’s senior supporters and campaign leaders included such alt-right champions as Steve Bannon, former editor of the right-wing Breitbart News, retired Lt. General Mike Flynn, who is renowned for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, Senators Mike Pompeo and Dan Coats, both of whom have taken an unashamedly anti-Iran stance and, last but not least, retired General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who is reported to hold a long-standing grudge against Iran.

All five were formally appointed to President Trump’s top team on his inauguration in January 2017, although Flynn was forced to resign in February following a major protocol scandal involving his communications with the Russian government. In addition, there are others with hard-line anti-Iran commitments in the president’s entourage — for example John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, and Sebastian Gorka, his national security adviser.

From such antecedents, it is reasonable to infer that the new US administration is likely to be far more aggressive toward Iran than has been the case for the past decade. At this early stage, it is not certain what form this anti-Iranian policy will take. However, it may be assumed that, in line with Trump’s public statements, the Trump administration will try to cancel or disrupt the locus standi of the Iran nuclear non-proliferation deal signed on in July 2015 between Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany and the European Union and implemented in January 2016.

In addition, existing US sanctions against Iran are likely to be continued, if not added to, and indeed an Iranian ballistic missile test prompted a set of additional US sanctions on February 3, 2017, accompanied by anti-Iranian statements by Trump and several of his top team. Beyond all this, and given the rhetoric thus far from the Trump administration, the possibility of US military action against Iran is now much greater, although still doubtful.

Terrorism in the Alt-Right World View

World view refers to a complex set of perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, values and motivations that characterize how an individual or a group of people interpret the world and their own existence. Such characteristic biases predict the stance likely to be taken on a particular topic and the likely behavior.

The alt-right world view is one in which the US in all respects is threatened by outsiders manifested, for example, by Glenn Beck’s 2015 book on what he asserts is the Islamic threat or Trump’s executive order of 27 January 2017 banning US visas for visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries and his subsequent justification on the grounds of preventing terrorist attacks inside the US.

This model is essentially one of a disease analogue in which the US is surrounded by pathogens, where the only safe response is to adopt the precautionary principle of total eradication of the threats if possible or, if not, to apply aggressive control treatments.

A preferred total knockout, zero-sum approach has its attractions and meets populist expectations. However, even in the biological world, total eradication of a particular disease is extremely difficult. In the complex socio-political world of international relations, which involves infinitely more unpredictable variables, expecting to eradicate threats bound up in other people’s beliefs and ideologies is wishful thinking.

Nevertheless, even with all its difficulties, the author argues that eradication may well be the only practical primary strategy for some specific threats such as extreme ideological terrorism. Many such terrorists are psychopaths who, by definition, inflict harm on others without conscience or remorse. Many of them are criminal psychopaths who use a warped pseudo-religious ideological cloak to indulge in mass murder, torture, rape, theft and ethnic cleansing.

With ISIS, al-Qaeda and their associated groups, for example, such psychopaths by definition are not amenable to persuasion, negotiation or any appeal to humanity. They are immutable, fixated, relentless and irredeemable. Containment is not viable. Destruction of their operational capacity and financing, coupled with their capture or death, may be the only realistic response.

Iran in the Alt-Right World-View

Whereas the all stick and no carrot approach to ISIS, al-Qaeda and their extremist fellow travelers (who falsely claim to be acting for and on behalf of Islam) may be valid, it does not make sense if and when applied undifferentiated to all others who comprise the vast majority of Muslims. This is where the alt-right world-view on Iran is inappropriate.

It may come as a surprise to some of the alt-right to learn that the Iranian regime views ISIS, al-Qaeda and the Taliban with abhorrence, primarily because they reject not only the Shia branch of Islam practiced in Iran but also the Iranian modernistic view of Islam which embraces industrialization, science and technology, universal education and universal health care as well as formally encouraging female emancipation (up to a point).

These extremist terrorist groups regard the Iranian model as anathema, as they want to regress to the laws and mores of the 13th century. That partly explains why Iran is backing anti-ISIS groups in Iraq and Syria and supporting the Afghan government. The mutual hatred goes back to the period of Taliban control in Afghanistan, when in August 1998 10 Iranian diplomats and a journalist kidnapped by the Taliban in Mazar-e Sharif were murdered in cold blood. This nearly provoked a major Iranian military invasion that was in the end called off, perhaps because Iran did not want to get sucked into the Afghan quagmire.

Alt-right negative assumptions about and pejorative characteristics of Iran appear to lie in inaccurate knowledge. Although anti-Iran rhetoric is legion in the United States, examples in the UK include the vituperative nonsense voiced by the former UK justice secretary, Michael Gove, in his Times column of December 2, 2016. To be sure, there is good reason to be concerned about many aspects of the Iranian regime, such as its support for Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, various religious fatwas inciting murder of named individuals, human rights issues and, of course, the nuclear issue.

However, to suggest or imply that the Iranian regime is just a bunch of psychopaths like ISIS is preposterous. Ignorance and prejudice about the Other, whether in Washington or Tehran, has been around a long time and, in a risk profile of Iran in Managing Risk published in 1998, I described it as “mutually assured paranoia.”

Dr. Ali Ansari, a leading Iran expert, put it well in his 2006 book Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East: The paranoid xenophobia and crisis culture that has characterized parts of the Iranian regime for years is little different to that which has long existed in parts of the US government, the neocons of the Bush administration and now the alt-right. In many respects, they are mirror images of each other.

Beware of selective prejudice and hypocrisy. For example, if it is US policy to have good relations with, if not give active support to, regimes in countries with poor records on human rights and extra-territorial aggression, such as Turkey and Russia, why is Iran treated so differently?

Arguably, Iran’s limited military forays abroad since the Iran-Iraq War have all been in legitimate defense of its national security. Iran fears encirclement by hostile regimes or those acting as proxies for Western hegemony (as they see it). As the lead nation of the minority Shia Muslims in the region, they fear being overrun by the majority Sunni Muslim regimes, notably Saudi Arabia, which partly explains Iran’s support for the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen against Saudi domination.

From an Iranian perspective, its support for Assad in Syria and the Houthis in Yemen is necessary for its own long-term sovereign defense. The Middle East is Iran’s backyard and it wants to keep out undesirables (as it sees them), just as the US forced Russian missiles out of Cuba in the 1960s and maintains a healthy vigilance against hostile regimes in Central and South America.

While the Iran oil embargo under UN sanctions was pursued publicly with much fanfare by successive US administrations, covertly it has been a very different story. Well-placed sources have reported privately for some years that American companies were prominent in the largely successful oil sanctions-busting by Iran. A reasonable question is why those companies and senior executives involved have not been prosecuted by the US authorities. It would be incredible to suggest that the US government did not know about it. Is this hypocrisy, just plain realpolitik, or both?

The apparent double standards toward the Iran oil sanctions predate the recent rise of the alt-right. So too did the double standards toward the UN embargo on arms sales to Iran, in which in the mid-1980s the US authorized covert arms sales to Iran as a means primarily to covertly fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The plan involved using Israel as the go-between cut-out to physically supply the arms to Iran via intermediaries for payment and then get resupplied by the US. After the scandal broke, a number of senior US government officials were prosecuted and several were convicted, but punishments were lenient and the convictions were subsequently either overturned or pardoned.

Terrorism or What?

There is some factual evidence of Iranian terrorism, such as fatwa-inspired overseas attacks following the Salman Rushdie affair and the political assassination of dissident Iranian-Kurdish leaders in Germany in 1997, as well as plenty of other allegations. Was the invasion of the US Embassy in Tehran by a revolutionary student mob in 1979, and the holding of US hostages for 444 days, an act of terrorism?

President Jimmy Carter described it as such. Part of the revolutionaries’ anti-American justification (as they saw it) no doubt stemmed from the CIA’s successfully directed coup in 1953 against the democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, which Britain supported through MI6 and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (part of BP). The US became tagged as shetan-e bozorg (The Great Satan), while the UK was tagged shetan-e kuchik (The Little Satan). Iranian memories are long and unforgiving, both on this matter and on the fact that the US backed Saddam Hussein to the hilt when he attacked Iran in 1980 and throughout the 8-year Iran-Iraq War.

In July 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an unarmed Iran Air civilian airliner on a routine scheduled flight from Shiraz to Dubai, with the loss of all 290 passengers and crew. According to the sobering detailed account by Ansari, human error, poor training and panic among the Vincennes crew resulted in the airbus being mistaken for a threatening aircraft.

President Ronald Reagan awarded the Vincennes captain a distinguished service medal. The US government paid compensation at local cost of living rate but refused to accept responsibility. Iran has accepted that the shooting down was not deliberate and has not treated this incident as an act of US state terrorism. However, it is hardly likely to forgive the refusal to accept responsibility, much less the lauding of the Vincennes captain and crew.

These various examples are presented not as indicating any form of moral equivalence but to indicate that regimes of all kinds everywhere frequently do reprehensible things. There are no complete saints and complete sinners in this world.

Iran-Israel Relations

The well publicized war of words between successive governments in Iran and Israel has lasted for decades. The Israeli position is that Iran is the arch-sponsor of state terrorism, while Iran accuses Israel of inhumanity and depraved indifference to its treatment of the Palestinians.

However, it is simply untrue to state that the Iranian regime as a whole wants to wipe Israel off the map. The anti-Israeli rhetoric to that effect of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no more representative of the Iranian regime and society than is President Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican rhetoric representative of the United States. Whereas the general population in Iran may dislike the Israeli regime for its anti-Palestinian excesses that does not translate into a visceral hatred of Israelis or Jews in general.

For example, at a mundane level, the songs “White Dove” and “All My Joys” by Iranian-born Israeli popstar Rita are as popular in Tehran as in Tel Aviv. The small Jewish population numbering some 20,000 are guaranteed a parliamentary seat under the constitution. Jewish-owned businesses, kosher restaurants and synagogues function freely, none of which squares with popular Western prejudice.

The hardliners certainly tend not to want rapprochement with the West but only a minority of them are extremist in the way that the alt-right rhetoric suggests. I have personally witnessed and experienced in Iran the duality within the regime, which seems to have established a steady-state coexistence.

More intriguing are reported but unverified covert trade and technology deals (long after the Iran Contra era) between Israel and Iran. Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu is reported recently as softening his outright opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, following intelligence reports citing recognized benefits for compliance monitoring. Up to 1979, Iran and Israel were close allies.

An eventual Iran-Israel rapprochement? While perhaps unlikely at present, never say never.

The Weakness of the Alt-Right World View 

The examples above suggest that far from being a simple conflict between those who the alt-right might assert to be 100% good guys — the US — and those deemed to be 100% bad guys — Iran —what emerges is far more complex. Loathing of the Other comes from fear — the fear of domination or of losing dominant power, fear of threats (real or imagined), fear of cultural annihilation or creeping cultural takeover and so on. Fear of the Other is fueled by ignorance about the Other.

The problem with the alt-right analysis of Iran is that it does not exhibit any real knowledge or expertise on the subject. Rather, as with Michael Gove’s Times article last December, it suggests a remote armchair amateur analysis based on prejudice and received wisdom by individuals who have never actually been there. My personal knowledge of Iran over the past 45 years enables me to offer some challenges to alt-right assumptions and interpretations.

An important salient fact is that the Iranian regime is not monolithic but comprises two competing factions — the hardliners and the modernists — a situation that has existed since at least the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. There is, in effect, not one regime but two, constantly jockeying for ascendancy.

The hardliners certainly tend not to want rapprochement with the West but only a minority of them are extremist in the way that the alt-right rhetoric suggests. I have personally witnessed and experienced in Iran the duality within the regime, which seems to have established a steady-state coexistence. Hardliners control one set of ministries, the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the armed forces, while modernists control other ministries and functions.

While the modernists and the majority population want change and rapprochement with the West, few want another revolution, given the bloodshed of the one in 1979. The majority population are also fiercely patriotic and they will rally to the flag at any sniff of externally sponsored uprising.

Hawks in the new Trump administration would be ill-advised to contemplate underwriting a Bay of Pigs-style invasion or a Najaf-style uprising. All in the region remember how in February 1991 the US via radio broadcasts provoked the Najaf and Karbala uprisings in Iraq and then sat back, refused to support them with arms and supplies and allowed Saddam Hussein to massacre them unchecked.

The alt-right analysis also fails to address cogently why Iran is engaging in multiple conflicts within the Middle East, which implies simply that it’s because the Iranians are evil, terrorist expansionists.

There are three main reasons for their stance in the past 25 years. First, defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity and bitter memories of the CIA/MI6-sponsored coup in 1953, and then the 1980 invasion by Iraq fully backed by the West. Second, fear of encirclement by hostile regimes or proxies of hostile Western regimes. Third, resurgent nationalism.

Iran was the regional power for 2,500 years. It now seeks to re-establish itself as the “natural” power-holder and wielder in the Middle East, acting as a stabilizing buffer between the chaos of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and domination of the Gulf states by Saudi Arabia. Developing good trade and diplomatic relations with Turkey, Russia, China, India and the Central Asian republics helps cement the role. President Vladimir Putin has long recognized Iran’s beneficial stabilizing role in Russia’s southern backyard.

The Iranian fear and mistrust of the West should not be underestimated. While the people are overwhelmingly friendly toward Western visitors, they still harbor deeply-held beliefs that the US and Britain in particular are always up to no good. I have heard many times the assertion Kar-e inglis hast! — It’s the work of the British! — when something awful has happened in Iran.

There was even a long-running humorous TV soap entitled My Dear Uncle Napoleon based on this metaphor. Iranian officials used to mock, albeit it with good humor, the author’s name: “Ah, Dr. Waring, you’re not coming to wage war on us, are you?” The British are still seen, wrongly I believe, as the perennial cunning foxes, always scheming to Iran’s detriment.

Resigning to the Status Quo

Today, there is little evidence of any popular hatred in Iran toward either the British or the Americans, but more a mood of resignation to the status quo and incomprehension of the alt-right’s anti-Muslim and anti-Iran stance. The marg bar Amrika (death to America) mural on Karim Khan Zand Avenue is but a faded irrelevance to most Tehranis. The long-closed US embassy on Dr. Moffateh Avenue looks forlorn but apparently officially protected, save for some falafel hawkers who rather bizarrely have commandeered a side entrance. Trump and his team are dismissed as a mystifying parody of presidential conduct and good governance.

In relations with Iran, greater understanding, emotional intelligence and communication are needed rather than an aggressive, zero-sum knockout approach. A Western-style efficiency-based rectilinear thinking in dealing with Iran needs to change to the more helical, long-term Iranian approach to negotiation and problem solving. If they regard Iran as an adversary, Western governments should really know their adversary, not just think that they do.

Rather than simply bludgeoning presumed enemies, it may be better to put one’s self in their shoes, to understand their perspective and reasoning while not necessarily agreeing with it or accepting it. The EU’s Critical Dialogue policy toward Iran, for example, has been productive, but of course anything with the EU tag is likely to be dismissed by alt-right prejudice.

Perhaps if the bust of Sir Winston Churchill in the Oval Office could come alive, it would quote from his 1939 speech and say: “Remember Donald, jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: leminuit

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