AUKUS nuclear submarine deal shows the world has changed

16 Sep 2021|Michael Shoebridge

Australia is going to build nuclear submarines as part of a new broader defence technology pact with the US and the UK. How much the world has changed since just April 2016.

Back then, Australia chose a conventional, diesel-powered submarine as its key undersea weapon, to be built in partnership with the French. A nuclear submarine was ruled out then because of the sensitivity of military nuclear technologies, the complexity and cost, and because we were told our strategic needs would be met by the diesel submarine.

The sensitivity, complexity and cost remain. What’s changed is our security environment. That’s summed up in three words: China under Xi.

Any doubts about the direction Xi Jinping is taking China were ended in Tiananmen Square on 1 July, when he doubled down on his vision that a great China is one that can use its power in the world however it deems fit, engaging in a great struggle against others who seek to make their own decisions.

And it’s more than China that has changed. In 2016, the UK government would almost certainly not have been seized with the urgency of sharing nuclear secrets with Australia and the US would only have done so with a huge amount of arm twisting, notably of submarine folk in the US Navy. We would have been regaled with stories about how the US and UK only share their nuclear defence technology with each other, under an agreement signed in 1958.

So, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison standing together (virtually) also signals a shift to a more robust deterrence of China by some of the world’s most powerful and activist democracies. That shift began to be obvious in June at the Cornwall meeting of the G7 group of nations, with Australia, India and South Korea along, but it’s been reinforced and accelerated today. This is the huge geostrategic news behind the announcement—and that will be understood in Beijing and the wider world.

There are many questions and issues to be resolved in the wake of today’s announcement. That’s why the three governments have set out an 18-month planning timeline for this challenging international enterprise.

The Australian government is crystal clear that when it comes to submarines, details, planning and implementation really matter. Since 2016, they’ve had the uncomfortable experience of the troubles, challenges and delays in Defence’s pursuit of the holy grail: a diesel-powered submarine with all the attributes of a nuclear one.

Our French partners will have some interesting discussions with our increasingly important and close strategic partners in Japan—because this is the second time it’s looked like we were building a submarine with a new partner, only to radically change course. The French will rightly note that they’ve spent six years trying to turn their nuclear Barracuda-class design into a diesel-powered version for us because we said we didn’t want a nuclear boat.

In an understatement, Naval Group has said the announcement is a ‘major disappointment’. Keeping any momentum in the French strategic partnership, which was taking on more weight through things like the new annual foreign and defence ministers’ forum first held just a few weeks ago, is going to be plain hard, but important given France’s global and regional roles.

But why a nuclear submarine? Put simply, it’s about range, stealth and power. A diesel submarine, even a ‘bleeding edge’ design for one, just doesn’t have the range or endurance to get from Australia to somewhere like the South China Sea or Malacca Strait and stay on station for long. A nuclear submarine does. A nuclear submarine is stealthier and harder to detect because it doesn’t have to run near the surface during a mission to recharge its batteries and it has the speed to get out of harm’s way if the risk of detection grows. And the nuclear power plant produces as much electricity as even the most power-hungry systems and sensors our future technologist can imagine will need.

The 18 months of joint work on all the complexities is essential. We’ve heard that Australia creating a civil nuclear industry isn’t part of this announcement and nor are nuclear weapons. Both things clarify what’s left to be done and at least don’t add enormous further complications—like becoming a nuclear-weapons state while maintaining strong commitments to non-proliferation of such devastating weapons.

Even with this, we’ll need every bit of the close partnership with UK and US institutions, companies and agencies that the three leaders have directed. As examples, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency currently monitors and regulates the visits of nuclear-powered warships, submarines and surface vessels, from partners like the US and UK to Australian ports. This is largely a matter of monitoring and environmental safety. But short visits by such vessels are quite different to basing, managing and maintaining nuclear reactors on Australian submarines.

Blistering onto the US nuclear submarine infrastructure, and building our own capacity and skills in parallel, will be Australia’s primary approach, and just like the one the UK has taken since 1958. That probably applies to things like the fuel—we’ll probably use the US and UK fuel cycles, including for the management and storage of reactor waste, rather than building our own onshore facilities for this.

The expenses will be eyewatering, but so were the costs of the Attack class—$90 billion at last count just to build the 12 submarines and more than that again to operate them. The advantage is Australia gets an enduringly powerful deterrent capability, and with it we can work even more closely with powerful partners to deter conflict. But it seems unlikely we’ll see the first Australian sub at least until the late-2030s—around the time the first French boat was to be delivered. So, pressure on the Collins-class submarines now in service will grow.

It’s hard to see Defence’s current submarine program management delivering this, given they were at the core of the decision to go down the Attack-class path. And it’s hard to see it being done out of a small part of the Defence department, given that a nuclear submarine is a national and international endeavour. The requirements for operating nuclear submarines extend far beyond the traditional expertise of Defence. Now more than ever we need to treat the national shipbuilding enterprise as a true national endeavour with leadership and organisation to match, rather than as a loosely confederated group of Defence projects managed from within the department.

The long-term nature of the AUKUS partnership is the strongest possible statement that the challenge we face from China is equally long-term—no changes of tone or even the shrewdest diplomacy is likely to change Xi’s instinctive path and mindset of struggle. Deterrence by a growing set of powerful nations just might.

AUTHOR

Michael Shoebridge is director of ASPI’s defence, strategy and national security program. A version of this article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald. Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images.

The Strategist (aspistrategist.org.au)

Australian nuclear subs will be banned from New Zealand waters: Ardern


Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Australian nuclear subs will be banned from New Zealand waters Mark Mitchell POOL/AFP/File

Wellington (AFP)

New Zealand will not lift a decades-long ban on nuclear-powered vessels entering its waters in the wake of key ally Australia's decision to develop a nuclear submarine fleet, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday.

Ardern said her Australian counterpart Scott Morrison had briefed her on Canberra's plan to develop nuclear-powered submarines with the help of the United States and Britain.

She described the deal as "primarily around technology and defence hardware", playing down implications for the so-called "Five Eyes" partnership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

"This arrangement in no way changes our security and intelligence ties with these three countries, as well as Canada," the New Zealand leader said in a statement.

But she also said New Zealand would maintain a ban on nuclear-powered vessels that dates back to 1985, meaning Wellington will not allow the prized naval asset being developed by Australia into its waters.

"New Zealand's position in relation to the prohibition of nuclear-powered vessels in our waters remains unchanged," Ardern said.

The ban was introduced in the wake of French nuclear testing in the Pacific and led to the US navy banning its warships from entering New Zealand ports for more than 30 years.

The destroyer USS Sampson visited in late 2016 but only after the then-prime minister John Key gave a special exemption, saying he was "100 percent confident" the vessel was not nuclear powered or carrying nuclear weapons.

Official US policy is to neither confirm nor deny whether its vessels are nuclear-capable.

© 2021 AFP

Australia enters uncharted waters with nuclear sub plan

Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

Speaking at a virtual press conference with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) and US President Jow Biden, (right) Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (centre) announced his country was going nuclear 

Brendan SMIALOWSKI AFP


Sydney (AFP)

Australia's shock decision to acquire US nuclear-powered submarines and cruise missiles helps bind a faltering alliance with Washington, but risks severely worsening an already fractious relationship with China.

With no public debate and little warning, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday announced Australia was going nuclear.

Not developing nuclear weapons, but building a fleet of at least eight state-of-the-art nuclear-powered submarines with American and British help.

In one swoop Morrison ripped up several local political taboos -- chiefly a long-standing ban on nuclear power and ingrained caution about stoking military tensions with China.

"Until very recently -- perhaps until 12 hours ago" the idea would have been "fringe" according to Sam Roggeveen of Sydney's Lowy Institute, describing the ground shift felt Down Under.

The deal -- jointly announced with President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson -- gives Australia access to potent US military firepower refused even to close allies such as Israel.

It would allow Australia's military to travel, and strike targets, far from its coast.

Nuclear subs "are quieter, faster and have longer endurance, which will allow Australia to deploy its future submarines to Indo-Pacific locations for much longer periods of time", Ashley Townshend of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney told AFP.

Australia had sketched plans to dramatically tool up its military in 2020 as threats from China mounted and trust in the United States alliance waned after Donald Trump's mercurial presidency.

The deal gives Australia access to potent US military firepower refused even to close allies 

Jonathan Sunderman

 US NAVY/AFP/File

This agreement would seem to bind Australia to the US and Britain for decades to come.

It "may be the first of many, including the deployment of US long-range strategic strike weapons, including missiles and stealth bombers, to Australia", said Michael Sullivan, an international relations expert at Flinders University.

"Eventually," he said, that could also mean "the redeployment of some US forces to Northern Australia from US bases on Okinawa and Guam, which are increasingly vulnerable to Chinese military attack".

- Playing with the big kids -

But that close embrace and Australia's new capability put a middleweight power at the centre of growing tensions between heavyweights Washington and Beijing.

Not everyone believes that is a wise move.

Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating was scathing, saying the decision would lock Australia into "any military engagement by the United States against China" and reverse decades of engagement with Asian neighbours.

Some "240 years after we departed from Britain, we are back there with Boris Johnson, trying to find our security in Asia through London", he said.

In a series of secret phone calls ahead of the public announcement, Morrison tried to reassure regional allies from Singapore to Wellington that the decision was based on ensuring "security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific".

But it will have come as a shock to many Pacific capitals, who will have to work through the implications for weeks and years to come -- not least Beijing.

"This is a significant escalation," said Roggeveen. "It introduces a significant new military capability into the region."

"It's unlikely to be viewed as anything but a move against China," he said. "I won't be surprised if they don't take it well."

The new project also raises questions about Australia's long-standing ban on nuclear energy and is sure to fuel fierce debate at home and among nuclear-sceptic Pacific neighbours.

New Zealand quickly made clear the subs would not be permitted in its territorial waters.

Morrison said the next 18 months would include "an intense examination of what we need to do to exercise our nuclear stewardship responsibilities here in Australia".

Nuclear power has been highly controversial in Australia and Canberra formally banned the use of nuclear energy in 1998, though the country has rich deposits of uranium.

Morrison insisted Australia was "not seeking to establish nuclear weapons or establish a civil nuclear capability".

"And we will continue to meet all of our nuclear non-proliferation obligations," he added.

Adam Bandt, leader of the Greens party, described the nuclear-powered subs as "floating Chernobyls", telling AFP the decision risked a backlash from Australians.

"Australia is a middle power with a lot to lose if conflict escalates in our region," he said.

"Our prime minister is turning up the temperature and putting Australia right in the firing line."

© 2021 AFP

Australia to get nuclear subs in new US, British partnership

Issued on: 15/09/2021 - 

US President Joe Biden is set to announce a new alliance with Australia and Britain Brendan Smialowski AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

The United States will help Australia acquire nuclear powered submarines as part of a new Indo-Pacific strategic alliance also including Britain, a US official said Wednesday.

The announcement -- due to be made shortly in a video meeting by President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his British counterpart Boris Johnson -- could infuriate France, which has been negotiating a multi-billion-dollar sale of conventional submarines to Australia.

That deal will probably now be scrapped, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the three-way partnership, dubbed AUKUS, is a "historic" new piece in Washington's growing focus on the region, where China is challenging decades of US leadership and naval dominance.

What the Biden administration official called an alliance of "maritime democracies" will combine the three countries' forces on "cyber, AI -- particularly applied AI, quantum technologies and some undersea capabilities as well."

AUKUS' first initiative, however, will be "to support Australia's desire to acquire nuclear powered submarines," the official said, stressing this does not mean nuclear weapons.

"Australia does not seek and will not seek nuclear weapons. This is about nuclear powered submarines."

Technical and naval representatives from the three countries will spend the next 18 months deciding how to carry out Australia's upgrade.

The Biden administration official underlined repeatedly how "unique" the decision is, with Britain being the only other country the United States has ever helped to build a nuclear fleet.

"This technology is extremely sensitive," the official said. "We view this as a one-off."

- Stealth and interoperability -

Although the official would not directly name a rising China as the reason for the US move, the intentions of AUKUS are clear.

French President Emmanuel Macron (2nd L) and former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull (3rd L) stand on the deck of a Collins-class submarine in Sydney in May 2018 -- reports say that an expected security deal with the United States and Britain could derail Australia's plans to purchase French submarines 

Ludovico MARIN POOL/AFP/File

"It's meant to send a message of reassurance and a determination to maintain a strong deterrent stance into the 21st century," the official said.

Even if not carrying nuclear weapons, the new submarines will allow Australia to "play at a much higher level," the official said.

"Nuclear powered submarines really maintain superior characteristics of stealth, speed, maneuverability, survivability and really substantial endurance," the official said.

"You will see much deeper interoperability along our navies and our nuclear infrastructure," the official said. "This is a fundamental decision, fundamental. It binds Australia... and the United States and Great Britain for generations. This is the biggest strategic step that Australia's taken in generations."

- French deal in peril -

It was not immediately clear where the development leaves the AUS$90 billion (roughly $66 billion) French deal, which was personally backed by President Emmanuel Macron.

France's Naval Group agreed to build 12 conventional Attack Class subs, but the order is already years behind schedule, well over budget and has become tangled in Australian domestic politics.

As recently as June, Macron promised "full and complete" commitment to the deal. A top Australian defense official said around the same time, however, that Australia was actively considering alternatives.

Australian officials said then that the potential plan B was classified but indicated the issue had been taken more seriously in recent months and included submarines and other vessels.

The AUKUS announcement comes as Australia has been boosting defense spending in response to China's more assertive posture.

Morrison will join Biden again on September 24, this time in person, at a first White House gathering of the "Quad" diplomatic group -- Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

© 2021 AFP

Australia to get nuclear-powered submarines under new security pact with US, UK

Issued on: 15/09/2021 -


The United States, Britain and Australia said on Wednesday they would establish a security partnership for the Indo-Pacific that will involve helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines, as Chinese influence over the region grows.

Under the partnership, announced by President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the United States and Britain will provide Australia with the technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines.

In a three-way virtual announcement from each of their capitals, the leaders stressed Australia will not be fielding nuclear weapons but using nuclear propulsion systems for the vessels, to guard against future threats.

“We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” said Biden.

“We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead,” he said.it

Morrison said the submarines would be built in Adelaide in close cooperation with the United States and Britain.

“We will continue to meet all our nuclear non-proliferation obligations,” he said.

Johnson called it a momentous decision for Australia to acquire the technology. He said it would make the world safer.

Eyes on China

Washington and its allies are looking for ways to push back against China’s growing power and influence, particularly its military buildup, pressure on Taiwan and deployments in the contested South China Sea.

The three leaders did not mention China and senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of the announcement said the move was not aimed at countering Beijing.

China’s Washington embassy reacted, however, by saying that countries “should not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties.”

“In particular, they should shake off their Cold-War mentality and ideological prejudice,” it said.

James Clapper a former director of U.S. national intelligence, told CNN it was a bold step by Australia given its economy’s dependence on China, adding: “Clearly the Chinese will view this as provocative.”

Republican Senator Ben Sasse said the agreement “sends a clear message of strength to Chairman Xi.”

“I’ll always applaud concrete steps to counter Beijing and this is one of them,” he said.

A U.S. official briefing before the announcement said Biden had not mentioned the plans “in any specific terms” to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a call last Thursday, but did “underscore our determination to play a strong role in the Indo-Pacific.”it

U.S. officials said nuclear propulsion would allow the Australian navy to operate more quietly, for longer periods, and provide deterrence across the Indo-Pacific.

The officials said the partnership, dubbed AUKUS, would also involve cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence and quantum technology.

The partnership looks likely to end Australia’s negotiations with French shipbuilder Naval Group to build it a new submarine fleet worth $40 billion to replace its more than two-decades-old Collins submarines, Australian media reported.

Biden said the governments would now launch an 18-month consultation period, “to determine every element of this program, from workforce, to training requirements, to production timelines” and to ensure full compliance with non-proliferation commitments.

The pact should be a boon for the U.S. defense industry and among the firms that could benefit are General Dynamics Corp and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.

General Dynamics’ Electric Boat business does much of the design work for U.S. submarines, but critical subsystems such as electronics and nuclear power plants are made by BWX Technologies Inc.

Britain said the 18-month program would work out details as to what countries and companies would do what, with the aim for the first submarine to be delivered as quickly as possible.

U.S. officials did not give a time frame for when Australia would deploy a nuclear-powered submarine, or how many would be built. They said that since Australia does not have any nuclear infrastructure, it would require a sustained effort over years.

One-off techonology swap

One U.S. official said the announcement was the result of several months of engagements among respective military commands and political leaderships, during which Britain – which recently sent an aircraft carrier to Asia – had indicated it wanted to do more in the region.

“What we’ve heard in all those conversations is a desire for Great Britain to substantially step up its game in the Indo-Pacific,” the official said, noting its historical ties to Asia.

The U.S. official said Washington had shared nuclear propulsion technology only once before – with Britain in 1958 – and added: “This technology is extremely sensitive. This is frankly an exception to our policy in many respects, I do not anticipate that this will be undertaken in other circumstances going forward. We view this as a one-off.”

The move was being taken as part of “a larger constellation of steps” in the region, he said, including stronger bilateral partnerships with long-term allies Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, and stronger engagements with new partners like India and Vietnam.

The announcement comes just over a week before Biden is to host a first in-person meeting of leaders of the “Quad” group of countries – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – that Washington sees as a key means to stand up to China.

(REUTERS)

AUKUS: UK, US and Australia launch pact to counter China

US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched the AUKUS security partnership in a joint virtual appearance. It will supplement Quad and Asean

By Yashwant Raj I Edited by Amit Chanda
UPDATED ON SEP 16, 2021 

In a development termed historic and a game-changer, the US, the UK and Australia on Wednesday announced a trilateral security partnership called AUKUS that will enable Canberra to deploy nuclear-powered submarines in the Indo-Pacific in a major challenge to China and its claims in the region.

US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched the alliance in a joint virtual appearance.

The AUKUS pact will strive over the next 18 months to equip Australia with nuclear propulsion technology, which the United States has shared only with the United Kingdom under a decades-old arrangement put together in the face of the threat from the then Soviet Union.

Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines, when they deploy, will be armed with conventional weapons only and not nuclear weapons, the leaders said.

The leaders also made it clear that the new alliance does not and will not supersede or outrank existing arrangements in the Indo-Pacific region such as the Quad, which the US and Australia form with India and Japan, and Asean, and that it will compliment these groups and others.

China sees 'Cold War mentality' in U.S., British, Australia pact

“This is about investing in our greatest source of strength, our alliances and updating them to better meet the threats of today and tomorrow,” Joe Biden said. “It’s about connecting America’s existing allies and partners in new ways.”

He added: “The United States will also continue to work with Asean and the Quad … our five treaty allies and other close partners in the Indo-Pacific.”

TRILATERAL SECURITY PARTNERSHIP

Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, a member of the Quad and other multilateral groups in the region, also sought to convey continued salience of these formations for Australia. “The AUKUS will also enhance our contribution to our growing network of partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region: ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and the US); our Asean friends; our bilateral strategic partners, the Quad; Five Eyes (US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) countries; and, of course, our dear Pacific family.”

Right Now!

On the ideological and cultural diversity of current antisemitism

Flowers in front of the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen after a shooting in 2015.

 (Photo: Kim Bach - CC)

In May this year, the latest round of hostilities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict set in motion a wave of antisemitic attacks targeting Jews in Europe and the US. A closer look at these incidents demonstrates the ideological and cultural diversity of current Jew-hatred. In order to understand this diversity, a broader historical perspective is helpful.

Johannes Due Enstad

SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, 

NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
Thursday 16. September 2021 - 

May 2021: a wave of antisemitism

The outbreak of hostilities in Israel and Gaza was followed by attacks on Jews in Western European and North American cities, as well as a flurry of antisemitic messaging online.

To name but a few notable incidents: a London rabbi was pulled out of his car and hit in the head with a brick; a convoy of cars drove through a Jewish neighborhood in London with passengers waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic abuse through a megaphone; a Norwich synagogue was daubed with a swastika and 'Free Palestine'; a group of 180 people marched against a synagogue in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, shouting 'Scheiss-Jude' and waving Palestinian and Turkish flags; Jewish diners at a Los Angeles restaurant were assaulted by persons carrying Palestinian flags; a Jewish man wearing a kippah was violently assaulted on New York’s Times Square by men shouting antisemitic abuse; a kippah-wearing man was beaten kicked in the head, and cut in the face with a knife on the streets of Gothenburg, in broad daylight, by a group of men shouting antisemitic insults. A week later, he was once again insulted and spat after on the street, this time by someone the victim perceived as belonging to the far left.

In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST, a British charity and monitoring agency) recorded a total of 639 antisemitic incidents in May (a record high for a single month), including 34 violent assaults, 47 threats, and 520 cases classified as abusive behavior. The vast majority of cases involved language or symbolism related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Perpetrator backgrounds were quite diverse in terms of ethnicity: among the 241 cases where witnesses described the appearance of offenders, 46 percent were described as Arab/North African, 24 percent as white, 22 percent as South Asian, and 8 percent as black.

While we do not have detailed perpetrator descriptions in all cases, the general picture seems clear enough: far-right or white supremacist forms of antisemitism appear to have been a limited feature of the recent wave of incidents. While such elements were also observed, most incidents occurred in the context of pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist protest. Participation of Islamic extremist actors was also evident. Notably, global jihadist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda explicitly called on their followers to 'fight the Jews' wherever they could be found. These observations are consistent with data from two European-wide victimization surveys from 2012 and 2018, in which victims of antisemitic violence and harassment responded to questions about the identity of perpetrator(s).

Judging from these data, the events of May 2021, and also keeping in mind the deadly antisemitic attacks motivated by extreme-right ideology in recent years, current antisemitism is clearly characterized by a diversity of intolerance, ranging across ideological and ethno-cultural divides. In order to understand how this came to be, a brief historical sketch is necessary.

How antisemitism became 'right-wing'

To the extent that people tend to associate antisemitism with the far right, they have good historical reasons for doing so. Antisemitic ideology fundamentally shaped the worldview of Hitler and the National Socialists, motivating their attempt to murder all of the Jews under Nazi control. In the post-war era and until this day, denying the Holocaust and reproducing antisemitic myths has been a characteristic pursuit of right-wing extremists. The imperative to prevent a repetition of the civilizational breakdown set in motion by the Nazis – 'Never again!' – not only lies at the heart of central democratic institutions and values such as minority rights, but also motivates post-war and contemporary efforts to monitor, study, understand, and explain far-right ideology, politics, and violence. For these reasons, the far-right context of Jew-hatred certainly remains important. That said, antisemitism did not start out as a right-wing phenomenon, and it is not likely to end as one.

Antisemitism has a long history, with roots in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans. Before the 19th century, Jew-hatred was based on general outgroup hostility, religious prejudice, and economic factors (Jews were targeted because of their status as a middleman minority). It had nothing to do with the 'right' or 'left', concepts that had not yet been invented. This changed with the French Revolution, which both established the modern left-right divide and gave rise to a new form of antisemitism that grew out of the right-wing reaction to the Revolution in particular and to the unsettling effects of modernization in general.

From the speculations of early-19th-century royalists that Jews were secretly behind the French Revolution, to the international anti-Jewish congresses of the 1880s, to the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), and finally to Hitler’s relentless pursuit of antisemitic policy to its genocidal conclusion – there is no doubt that organized antisemitism in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries was primarily a right-wing phenomenon.

The 20th century diffusion

Beginning in the mid-20th century, however, the development of antisemitism became characterized by ideological and geographical diffusion. While antisemitism was discredited in mainstream democratic politics after Auschwitz, the beliefs lived on and found outlets not only in extreme-right subcultures, but also within the socialist Eastern Bloc and in the Arab world. The birth of Israel and the Jewish state’s continuing conflict with its Arab neighbors was a key contextual factor in these developments.

Even though the Soviet Union supported Israel in 1948, the Jewish state’s request that Soviet Jews be allowed to emigrate put an end to the warm relationship. Stalin, ever-fearful of divided loyalties among his subjects, denied the request and went on to launch an antisemitic campaign in late 1948, leading to the closure of Jewish cultural institutions across the country, executions of Jewish writers, and what appears to have been the beginning of a major purge that would involve large-scale deportations of Jews (the Doctors’ Plot). The campaign reverberated in other parts of the Eastern Bloc. In 1952, a show trial was staged in Czechoslovakia involving Jewish defendants forced to confess to conspiring with 'international Zionism' to undermine socialist governments. Antisemitic propaganda accompanied the trials, branding Jews as traitors and agents of enemy powers.

Soviet antisemitism after the Six-Day War

Following the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel defeated their Soviet-backed Arab foes, the Soviet regime renewed its propaganda efforts ostensibly targeting Zionism. While anti-Zionism is not equal to antisemitism, the two sets of beliefs can overlap. The Soviet case shows how. Just beneath the anti-Zionist surface, the propaganda reproduced classical antisemitic stereotypes, including caricatures of hook-nosed 'Zionists' depicted as perniciously cunning and deceitful, conspiring to dominate the world, exercising massive control over global media, opinion, and economy. The propaganda efforts, led by KGB officials, targeted Judaism as well, framing the religion as an inhumane doctrine teaching 'poisonous hatred for all peoples'. Some caricatures featured serpents and spiders marked with the Star of David, Der Stürmer-style, to symbolize the evil of 'the Zionists'.

The impact of this campaign, involving books and pamphlets printed in millions of copies and translated into several languages, has yet to be fully charted, but it may have influenced far-left discourse on Zionism and Israel in the West. Moreover, the Soviet campaign was partly responsible for the 1975 adoption of the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as a form of racism (the resolution was annulled in 1991). Historian Izabella Tabarovsky suggests that the propaganda effort served to '[empty] Zionism of its meaning as a national liberation movement of the Jewish people and [associate] it instead with racism, fascism, Nazism, genocide, imperialism, colonialism, militarism and apartheid' in the eyes of many on the left.

We should note, however, that the Soviets did not invent Western anti-colonialist hostility towards Israel. Rather, this view took shape within the European New Left that emerged in the 1960s. The New Left tended to see Israel as a European settler-colonialist enterprise, and the Palestinians as the victims of British and Zionist imperialism. For the New Left, Palestine thus became a major cause alongside Vietnam, Algeria, and South Africa. The Soviet campaign drew on this current, but also helped shape it, infusing it with anti-Zionist imagery that frequently expressed classical antisemitic tropes.

Antisemitism in the Arab world

Besides the Soviet Union, the Arab world was another key site of antisemitism’s diffusion in the 20th century. Modern antisemitism had found its way here in the late 19th century, at first through the writings of Arab Christians. As the conflict between Jewish immigrants and Arabs in Palestine escalated in the 1920s and 30s, Arab nationalist leaders began weaponizing antisemitic propaganda, including the notorious forgery known as 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', to mobilize against the Jews. Humiliating defeats against Israel in 1948 and 1967 led to a major uptick in anti-Zionist and antisemitic discourse in the Arab world, as well as waves of violent anti-Jewish persecution leading to the exodus of up to 900,000 Jews from Arab lands, most of whom settled in Israel.

While antisemitism in the Arab world was secular and nationalist at first, the later growth of Islamism helped frame anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish hostility in religious terms. One notable result of this development was the 1988 founding charter of Hamas, which featured traditional Islamic Jew-hatred alongside explicit reference to the 'Protocols'.

Into the 21st century

With the eruption of the Second Intifada in 2000, the latest phase in the long history of antisemitism commenced. Monitoring agencies in Western Europe and North America recorded a sharp rise in incidents of antisemitic violence and harassment, especially in France, the UK, the US, and Canada. Since then, incident counts have fluctuated from year to year on a relatively high level, often peaking following flare-ups in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as the ones that occured last May.

The 21st century phase of antisemitism has not been without its share of far-right manifestations. However, the Soviet legacy of antisemitic anti-Zionism and the Arab and Islamic strains of the phenomenon, each with their own historical roots and circumstances, have come to shape the development in the past 20 years at least as much as the far-right variant. Knowledge about these legacies helps contextualize the events of last May, which revealed the ideological and ethno-cultural diversity of current antisemitism.

Johannes Due Enstad directs the project Comparing Histories of Antisemitism in Contemporary Europe (CHACE), funded by the Research Council of Norway.

About this blog:

Welcome to the “Right Now!” blog where you will find commentary, analysis and reflection by C-REX’s researchers and affiliates on topics related to contemporary far right politics, including party politics, subcultural trends, militancy, violence, and terrorism.

The Center for Research on Extremism, C-REX, is a cross-disciplinary center for the study of right-wing extremism, hate crime and political violence. It is a joint collaboration with five of the leading Norwegian institutions on extremism research, hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Oslo.

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Israeli Military Kills Recaptured Palestinian Prisoner



Palestinian Escapee Zakaria al-Zubaidi Suffers Brain Death from Extreme Torture by Israeli Police. | Photo: Twitter @MateCosido
Published 15 September 2021 

The death of al-Zubadi comes as nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will begin an indefinite hunger strike next Friday to demand an end to mistreatment, relocations and administrative detention policy, WAFA News reported.

One of the Palestinian prisoners, escaped from an Israeli jail, suffered brain death as a result of the torture he was subjected to during interrogations by the Hebrew military forces, following his recapture, local Palestinian media reported.

Palestinian Prisoners Plan Protests Against Israeli Repression

According to Yibril al-Zubaidi, brother of the Palestinian prisoner, Zakaria al-Zubaidi was declared brain-dead on Monday as a result of torture by Israeli military after his re-arrest, as reported by Palestinian media and social networks.

The death of al-Zubadi comes as nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will begin an indefinite hunger strike next Friday to demand an end to mistreatment, relocations and administrative detention policy, WAFA News reported.

Al-Zubaidi was one of six Palestinians who broke through the Israeli security system on Monday, September 6, to escape from a maximum security prison, and was beaten and tortured by Israeli security forces after being recaptured.

Palestinian prisoners said they will take gradual steps to protest the escalation of repressive measures by prison administrations against them after the escape of six prisoners from Gilboa prison last week, the Commission for Detainees and Former Detainees Affairs said in a statement.

The commission said the first group on hunger strike will include 1,380 prisoners from various prisons; 400 prisoners from Ramon Prison, 300 from Ofer Prison, 200 from Nafha Prison, 200 from Megiddo Prison, 100 from Gilboa Prison and 80 prisoners from Eshel Prison, 50 from Shatta Prison and 50 prisoners from Hadarim Prison.

New groups of prisoners will join the hunger strike next Tuesday, while 100 senior prisoners, including Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, will refrain from drinking water starting Friday.

The prisoners demand the Israeli prison administration to end the policy of repression, abuse and arbitrary transfers, the sentences imposed on hundreds of prisoners, release isolated prisoners to regular sections, and return detention conditions to what they were before September 5

.  

Israel surrenders to demands of Palestinian prisoners: hunger strike called off

September 16, 2021 - 10:18 AM News Code : 1180299 Source : Al Ahead News
Link: 

The Palestinian Prisoners Club announced on Wednesday morning that the Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger strike, which was supposed to begin on Friday.

hlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): The Palestinian Prisoners Club announced on Wednesday morning that the Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger strike, which was supposed to begin on Friday.

The club said in a statement that the "prisoners, in a unified and harmonious manner, decided to suspend the collective hunger strike, after their demands were met."

According to the statement, the “Israeli” authorities agreed to cancel the “collective punishments" imposed on the prisoners after six Palestinian prisoners succeeded in fleeing from Gilboa Prison last week.

The apartheid “Israeli” entity also reportedly agreed "to stop targeting prisoners affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ], the statement added, without providing further details.

Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, had said before that the first phase of the hunger strike would include 1,380 prisoners.

“The prisoners and detainees have decided to go on a hunger strike to improve their conditions,” Abu Bakr said in an interview with the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

“The prisoners’ demands in the upcoming strike aim to restore the situation to what it was before the recent punitive measures,” he explained, referring to the prison authority’s measures in the aftermath of the escape.

The prisoners added new demands, such as removing the glass separating them from visitors, and allowing families from the Gaza Strip to visit their jailed sons in the Zionist entity, the Palestinian official said.

Mystery of UN chief's death still murky after 60 years

Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

Hammarskjold (L) meets with the head of the State of Katanga Moise Tshombe in August 1961 AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

The mystery how the hugely courageous UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjold died 60 years ago has only thickened since his plane crashed in the African bush, killing all on board.

Was the Swede, who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, murdered by rebels and mercenaries working in cahoots with Western intelligence agencies and mining companies, or was pilot error to blame?

A long-running investigation by the British newspaper The Observer found that London and Washington had much to answer for.

And an award-winning 2019 documentary "Cold Case Hammarskjold" pointed the finger at a Belgian mercenary pilot with links to British intelligence.

- Tensions in Congo -

The tragedy happened on the night of September 17-18, 1961 as the UN's DC-6 Albertina aircraft took Hammarskjold and his team to Ndola in what was then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

He was headed there to negotiate a ceasefire with Moise Tshombe, leader of the secessionist Katanga state that was seeking to break from the former Belgian Congo after independence that June.

Dag Hammarskjöld arrives in Leopoldville (today's Kinshasa) on September 13, 1961 AFP/File

The Cold War was at its height and the dashing and dynamic Hammarskjold, the youngest person ever to lead the UN, was determined to defend the international body's independence from Washington and Moscow as well as the old colonial powers.

The trip was being closely monitored by the big powers all of whom had an eye on Katanga's vast mineral riches of copper, cobalt and uranium.

Mining consortiums fearing Congo's independence were bankrolling Tshombe's government which was also backed by Belgian colonists and European mercenaries.

- Human error? -

Hammarskjold's aircraft never arrived at its destination. At dawn calls to neighbouring airports all came back with the same answer: no radio contact had been made with the missing plane.

After several hours searching, the debris of the Albertina along with 16 bodies, including Hammarskjold and one sole survivor, were found in a forest about 12 km (7.5 miles) from Ndola airport.

Debris of the plane crash on September 18, 1961 in which Dag Hammarskjöld died near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (today's Zambia) - AFP/File

Sergeant Harold Julian, an American serving as a UN security officer, was in a critical condition and he died days later, but he said there had been a strong explosion on board, followed by smaller blasts.

Rumours of sabotage were quickly denied and the initial investigations pointed to a pilot error as the cause.

- Plot to kill? -

The case was revived in the 1990s.

Two former UN representatives in Katanga said in 1992 they were "convinced" the crash had been caused by shots fired by two planes chartered by "European industrialists" who "controlled Katanga".

A fresh development came in 1998 when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up in South Africa to try the abuses committed under the apartheid regime.

It found documents implicating Pretoria, London and Washington in a plot to kill Hammarskjold code-named "How's Celeste?".

But the original documents unearthed by the commission have since disappeared and Britain's Foreign Office has denied the accusations.

- What's in the files? -

In 2015 after a report carried out by independent experts, the UN accepted the theory that the plane was shot down and said the investigation should continue.

Then-UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged member states to disclose any information they may have had.

This was an allusion to cockpit recordings and radio messages the US intelligence agency NSA is said to have had in 1961.

But in 2019 Moon said no further information had been received.

Heel-dragging by the US and UK has also been at the heart of the investigation carried out over several years by The Observer.

In 2019 the paper cited a report from Mohamed Chande Othman, a former chief justice of Tanzania appointed by the UN to review the case.

Britain and the US, Othman suggested, were dragging their heels despite likely holding "important undisclosed information".

The paper said the Belgian pilot suspected of shooting the plane down was not aware Hammarskjold was on board. He later confessed his part to a friend, who recorded the conservation.

French journalist Maurin Picard meanwhile concluded in his 2019 book that pro-Katangese foreign mercenaries were responsible.

The UN has extended its investigation and hopes for new leads are now pinned on the declassification of archives related to the case.

With Hammarskjold's family holding a ceremony in Sweden to mark the anniversary, his son Peder called on governments to finally come clean.

"Some countries in the UN investigation have not been forthcoming, such as Belgium and the US.

"We would welcome more openness, it has been a long time since his death."

Woodward revelations expose Democrats’ calls for “unity” with Republican coup plotters

Patrick Martin

WSWS.ORG

The revelations from Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa that General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took action to stop what US officials called “a right-wing coup” by former president Donald Trump has demonstrated how close the United States came to dictatorship and a potential war with China during Trump’s final days in office.

Milley told US military officials not to follow orders from Trump without Milley’s approval after Trump’s attempt to foment an insurrection, and he promised to warn Chinese military officials if Trump attempted to start a war. This reality has exposed the criminality of the Democrats’ constant calls for “unity” and “bipartisanship” with Trump’s co-conspirators in the Republican Party.

In this Jan. 6, 2021 photo, insurrections loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

On Wednesday, a spokesman for Milley confirmed one of the main revelations in Woodward and Costa’s new book, Peril, namely that Milley telephoned his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, commander of the People’s Liberation Army, on October 30, 2020, four days before the US presidential election, and then again on January 8, 2021, two days after the attack by a pro-Trump mob on the US Capitol.

CIA Director Gina Haspel warned Milley, according to the new book, “We are on our way to a right-wing coup.”

In keeping with the Democrats’ efforts to cover up the events of January 6, the Post and New York Times have buried their articles on the revelations on their front pages, and neither newspaper has published an editorial on the subject.

For his part, Biden said on Wednesday that he had “great confidence” in Milley, while avoiding any comment on the content of the revelations in Peril.

By contrast, the Republicans have launched a furious campaign against Milley. Republican Senator Ted Cruz, one of Trump’s co-conspirators, accused Milley of “undermining the commander in chief and pledging to our enemies to defy his own commander.” Senator Rand Paul demanded that Milley be court marshalled, while Trump himself accused Milley of treason.

According to dialogue published verbatim in the new book—obviously based on interviews with Milley or Pelosi, or both—Pelosi told Milley that “the Republicans have blood on their hands” for encouraging Trump to believe he could retain the presidency despite his loss in the election.

“But it is a sad state of affairs for our country that we’ve been taken over by a dictator who used force against another branch of government,” she continued. “And he’s still sitting there. He should have been arrested. He should have been arrested on the spot … He had a coup d’état against us so he can stay in office. There should be some way to remove him.”

In other words, the January 6 attack on Congress was not viewed by those in a position to know—the head of the US military and the leader of congressional Democrats—merely as a riotous excess by a pro-Trump crowd. They understood it and openly discussed it as a serious bid for power, an effort by Trump and his inner circle to block the certification of the election’s outcome and hijack the presidency: a political coup based on fascist violence.

The quotes from Pelosi are particularly revealing. She was speaking then, on January 8, only two days after her own life had been threatened and her staff had been compelled to barricade themselves into a conference room, whispering pleas for help on cellphones while the mob howled in the hallways outside. She therefore spoke bluntly and plainly of a “coup d’état” and a would-be “dictator” who posed an imminent threat.

Only a few days later, Pelosi would revert to the boilerplate and blather of capitalist politics, engaging in a series of parliamentary maneuvers—impeachment, which failed, followed by a resolution to establish an “independent commission” into January 6, which failed, followed by the appointment of a “select committee” to investigate the events, which has met exactly once.

The driving force of this cover-up has not been Pelosi, however prominent a role she has been given. The orders come from the White House, where President Biden has decreed a policy of bipartisan “unity” in Washington, seeking, as he said openly, to strengthen the Republican Party: in other words, to legitimize the party of coup-plotters.

In his inauguration speech, Biden did not even mention the events of January 6, much less the fact that the president had fomented an “insurrection.”

Biden’s policy is not just a matter of seeking Republican support for various pieces of legislation. That is only the pretext. His real concern is the stability of American capitalism, and the political system through which it has ruled for more than a century. Biden seeks to preserve the two-party system, even under conditions where the Republican Party has broken with democracy and is openly embracing the authoritarianism and fascistic politics of Trump.

Since the events of January 6, the Democrats have spent far more time and energy over the alleged transgressions of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo than responding to an unprecedented effort to overthrow the government and establish a right-wing dictatorship.

The new revelations in the Woodward book confirm everything the World Socialist Web Site has said about the January 6 coup attempt, and they shatter the efforts of various pseudo-left groups, ranging from the Democratic Socialists of America to the former opponent of the American surveillance state, Glenn Greenwald, to dismiss the events of that day as insignificant or mere political horseplay.

This was a serious attempt to overturn the election, and it failed only because the decisive centers of power in the military-intelligence apparatus judged the attempt to be poorly organized and unlikely to succeed. A democracy which depends on the sufferance of generals and CIA directors, however, is not a democracy at all, but a dictatorship in waiting.

The events of January 6, and the subsequent cover-up, demonstrate that the defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to any section of the American ruling elite. This task must be taken up by the working class, through the building of a mass socialist movement.

An end to neo-Islamism in the Middle East?

Political changes in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey mean Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated parties are facing a crisis. A decade after the Arab Spring, insiders say it's time to reboot political Islam.

Tunisians demonstrate against local Islamist party, Ennahda

Last week, the party that previously held a majority in the Moroccan parliament suffered a crushing setback. In the country's federal elections last Wednesday, the Justice and Development Party lost 113 of the 125 seats it had won in the last election.

In previous ballots of 2016 and 2011, the party, commonly known as the PJD, ended up with a majority in the 395-seat assembly. But now the party, which is closely connected to the Muslim Brotherhood — a movement that centers Islam in its political and social work — retains just 13 seats.

"The party's drop reflects a popular public perception that Morocco's central bureaucracy aligned with the palace is better able to manage the economy, navigate crisis, and create job growth," said Michael Tanchum, of the Austrian Institute for Security Policy and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

The PJD's defeat comes at the same time as other Muslim Brotherhood-connected political parties, most of which also came to power in the region after the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, are facing setbacks — albeit in varying circumstances.

Powerless and doomed?

In Tunisia, the mainstream Islamist party, Ennahda, was pushed out of power after President Kais Saied suspended the country's parliament in July.

In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi won that country's first post-Arab Spring elections in 2012. But a coup by the Egyptian military in 2013 overthrew Morsi's government, and the incoming authoritarian leadership arrested and killed many members of the movement.

Thousands of exiled members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood took shelter in Turkey, Until relatively recently, they had been supported by the Turkish government, which significantly cooled diplomatic relations between Egypt and Turkey.

But early last year, that began to change, with Turkish authorities taking actions such as preventing Egyptian opposition satellite stations in the country from broadcasting criticism of the Egyptian regime.

This change of Turkish attitude stemmed from several factors, including a new United States government less engaged in the region, deterioration of Turkey's relationships with other Gulf Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and economic woes at home, analysts at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote in March this year.

A pro-Muslim Brotherhood protest in Istanbul with protestors holding pictures of ousted Egyptian leader Morsi

"It appears his [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's] first choice was to sacrifice the Muslim Brotherhood to pursue appeasement with Cairo and Riyadh […] in the hopes of securing new friends in the region," they concluded.
Long-term survival

These changes of fortune for Muslim Brotherhood-inspired groups has led to suggestions that the era of what has been described as neo-Islamism is now over.

However, many in the field dismiss this. After all, this isn't the first time the demise of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates has been mooted, they told DW.

Their demise "was predicted in the '50s, the '60s and the '70s," said Mohamed Daadaoui, a political science professor who specializes in North African politics at Oklahoma City University in the US.

"But they keep coming back. Islamists have a tremendous ability to reinvent and reenergize themselves. They may be in a moment of weakness right now — especially in Morocco, vis-a-vis the state — but they are not gone. And they are tremendously resilient."

At first, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Bana was largely apolitical

The Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni Muslim group first founded in 1928 by Egyptian teacher Hassan al-Banna. He believed Islam should underpin culture, social customs and also eventually, politics.

At its inception, the movement was one of opposition, both to the Egyptian administration of the time and the influence of British colonialism.
Different hierarchies

Although it began as more of an apolitical movement mostly concerned with charity and religious reform, the Muslim Brotherhood — often referred in Arabic as "Ikhwan," or simply "the Brothers" — has grown to be one of the world's most influential Islamist political movements.

It has inspired groups and political parties throughout the Middle East, including in Jordan, Bahrain, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Palestine and Algeria, among others. Some of these still link themselves explicitly to the original group; others do not.

Because these groups can mobilize such strong opposition, leaders of countries with autocratic governments fear the challenge they could present. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia all classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Yet, despite the Muslim Brotherhood's many ups and downs, it has never completely disappeared.

In previous elections, the PJD had dominated the Moroccan vote

This is at least in part due to the movement's "horizontal" rather than hierarchical structure, said Gillian Kennedy, a lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. She has studied the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its exiles in depth.
Administrative incompetence

She describes thousands of "small study groups" all around the world. "Each will have something like five to 15 members, almost always male," Kennedy explained to DW. "And these will have a special focus, like teaching or providing social care."

Some Brotherhood groups have come into financial trouble, even having to close down some media outlets, she continued. "But it would be almost impossible to destroy those networks," Kennedy said. "It's a strong ideology with deep cultural roots across the region."

Kennedy noted that most Muslim Brotherhood exiles now live in either Turkey, Qatar or the UK. Even though the Turkish government is no longer as overtly supportive of their communities there, the county's government still tolerates them, she added.

Kennedy believes the main problem neo-Islamist political parties are facing is that they haven't proven themselves particularly adept at running a country.

"They played the oppositional role for so long" and are "dependent on ideology," she explained. "Older Muslim Brothers would often just say, 'Islam is the solution.' But they didn't know how to govern," Kennedy said.

Supporters concede that even though these parties have been in power for eight or nine years, the same problems still exist, Kennedy noted.

Many Morrocans opposed their government's decision to normalize relations with Israel

Next generation

Being in the opposition, with neighborhood networks, Muslim Brotherhood-style organizations "were previously the parties of the people," Kennedy said. "But now they've become parties of the state."

"There's a disconnect," she points out.

Among the reasons the PJD performed so badly in elections last week is because it has, knowingly and under pressure from the Moroccan monarchy, gone along with unpopular state policies such as the normalization of ties with Israel.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates may be in the "political wilderness" for now, Kennedy said. But she describes this is a perhaps transitory moment, a time for self-reflection.

"There is a younger generation in those parties having quite different conversations, trying to come up with pragmatic policies on things like youth unemployment,  corruption, taxation and even climate change. 

And they're asking questions like: What is political Islam 2.0?"

Romania: The new mayor looking to clean up local politics

In the central Romanian city of Targu Mures, a former archaeologist and political newcomer is seeking to heal ethnic divisions and clean up corruption and mismanagement.


The mayor takes a look around a leisure park in Targu Mures

It's a sunny Monday morning and the mayor, Zoltan Soos, is in a good mood as he walks into the conference room. A few members of the planning team are already there and the rest arrive in dribs and drabs until all 15 are present. The key officials from the municipal administration greet each other warmly. No one is subservient, or kowtows to the city leader. And that's a big thing in Romania, where hierarchies and institutions are closely observed, especially when it comes to gestures and language.

The mayor talks in a collegial tone and comes across as consensual and team-oriented. And he has some good news. After weeks of acrimony, the municipal authorities have managed to pull out of a contract with a refuse disposal firm. The company had been overcharging and claiming that they had disposed of more garbage than was actually the case. Now, the city has a new refuse service provider and will save some €250,000 ($295,000) a year — the amount that its forerunner had falsely submitted in claims. "It is the end of the trash mafia," says the mayor resolutely.

Nationalism and Corruption

Targu Mures in the Transylvanian region of central Romania has 130,000 residents. To its Hungarian minority it is known as Marosvasarhely. Despite its modest size and lack of economic importance, Targu Mures is one of the country's most symbolically charged cities. In March 1990, just a few months after the fall of the Ceausescu dictatorship, it was the scene of clashes between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Hungarians. The conflict, which was provoked by Romanian nationalists and apparatchiks from the former communist regime, came close to descending into civil war. Over many years controversy continued to dog the city in the form of disputes centered around Romania's politices towards its ethnic minorities. For two decades, Targu Mures was run by a dyed-in-the-wool Romanian nationalist and one of the country's most corrupt mayors. The city was riven with division.

A year ago, this all changed. On September 27, 2020, voters elected Zoltan Soos as mayor. The 47-year-old does not belong to any party. He is an archeologist by profession and used to run the local museum. Soos would never have gone into politics, if it had not been for the problems besetting his home town for decades — from ethnic division to corruption and mismanagement.

The mayor inspects a new swimming pool that is under construction

A rejection of the political establishment

Soos is an ethnic Hungarian and his win was a sensation in Romania. If the vote had run along strictly ethnic lines, he would have never been elected In Targu Mures, only 42 percent of residents are ethnic Hungarians. But he stood on a platform that was anti-nationalist, non-ethnic, anti-corruption and pro-environmentalist, and he was the first mayoral candidate in the city's history to explicitly run a bilingual, bi-ethnic campaign. This convinced many ethnic Romanians to vote for him. That is all the more remarkable as many of the country's politicians still continue to stir up prejudice against the ethnic Hungarian minority.

Zoltan Soos represents a trend in urban Romania. More and more city dwellers are electing independent mayors standing on platforms of transparency and good government, who pledge to fight against corruption and for sustainable solutions for infrastructure and environmental problems. In this part of the world, it's a trend seen not only in Romania: In many cities in central and southeastern Europe, including Prague, Budapest, Zagreb and Sarajevo, people have had enough of ethnicism, the lack of political accountability, corruption, environmental pollution and the dearth of prospects. As a result, more and more mayors are being elected who are not part of the political establishment and who the voters hope will actually provide solutions to their problems.

"People want to see results"

Zoltan Soos is, admittedly, not completely new to local politics in Targu Mures. He was a councillor there for a while and he only narrowly lost the mayoral election in 2016. But, nonetheless, why is a man who completed a doctorate about medieval mendicants and is a specialist on 13th-century Transylvanian castles prepared to enter the cut-throat world of modern Romanian politics? Soos laughs at the question. "Maybe I got it from my grandfather," he says. "He was deputy mayor here in the 1950s and taught me local patriotism." Then he continues in a more serious tone: "I am not drawn to politics per se. I was spurred on by my sense of injustice. In the last 20 years, the city authorities performed very poorly and were extremely corrupt. I didn't just want to criticize that, but also to change it."

A huge task. The former mayor, Dorin Florea, changed party four times in the course of his career and established a very extensive network of cronies that was used to plunder the local authority's finances. The head of the social services department in the city hall tells us, for example, how a private company linked to those at the top organized a food bank for needy pensioners and used it as an front to pocket money from the authority's social funds. However, Soos also stresses that the past cannot always be used as an excuse. "After a year, we can't keep saying how corrupt everything was in the past," he says. "People want to see results."

Mayor Zoltan Soos aims to overhaul the local authorities in Targu Mures

Bloated administrative apparatus

The mayor and his team already have something to show for their work. As well as switching the refuse disposal service company, they have embarked on the digitalization of the city authorities and a redesign of the dilapidated public transport system. There are plans to renew the bus fleet step by step with environmentally friendly natural gas-powered vehicles. The environment plays a big role in Zoltan Soos's program in general. He wants to create more green spaces and parks in Targu Mures. And he wants to set up a solar farm on the city limits.

Nevertheless, one of the mayor's most important aims is reforming the structure of the city administration. Local authorities in Romania are notorious for their armies of staff compared to other European Union states. But Targu Mures is extreme even for Romania. Until recently, the authority was the city's biggest employer — another result of two decades of corruption. Approximately 1,300 staff were on its books, roughly 2% of the city's working-age population — a record in Romania. "We had more than 100 departmental heads and directors alone," said Zoltan Soos. "Many of them were, themselves, unable to explain themselves exactly what they did. We have now started sacking people and, in the long run, we aim to at least halve the number of staff."
"Black March"

Yet the mayor's most important project is tearing down — what has seemed up to now — the almost insurmountable wall between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Hungarians in Targu Mures. As a 16-year-old, Soos himself lived through the events known as "Black March." He recalls how the bloody ethnic clashes in the city in 1990 disturbed him, and adds that he was convinced then, as he is now, that the two ethnic groups did not really hate one another, but had been instrumentalized.

Im March 1990, Romanian nationalists and members of Ceausescu's Securitate, secret service agents still active at the time, had stirred up unrest against Hungary and its ostensibly separatist plans among ethnic Romanians living in and around Targu Mures. Apparatchiks from the toppled regime were seeking legitimation. Five people died and hundreds were wounded, some severely, during the violent clashes, during which police and army, in part, just sat back and did nothing. For a short time, Romania came close to descending into civil war, a fate that was to become reality in neighboring Yugoslavia.
A thousand years of shared history

Nowadays, Soos can talk about "Black March" with a certain degree of composure. He says that people still fail to sufficiently stress that it was not, at heart, an ethnic conflict, but was stage-managed by the former Securitate. "In general, it is important that we are not just familiar with the conflicts of the past, but also the good times, the times that we lived side by side," says the mayor. "Our shared history in Transylvania is a thousand years old and it consists almost entirely of community and coexistence."

Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship was characterized by nationalist megalomania

It's a rather rose-tinted image, which is probably intended as a political message more than anything else. Ethnic Romanians were long marginalized in the Transylvanian region. However, the tables were turned after the region became part of a new Greater Romania in 1920 under the Treaty of Trianon. Ethnic minorities, in particular ethnic Hungarians, became very much second-class citizens under Ceausescu's dictatorship with its nationalist megalomania. The toppling of the regime has not led to a fundamental overhaul. Nationalism remains deeply rooted in Romania's political culture. That is one reason why many ethnic Hungarians from the Transylvanian region still feel alienated from the Romanian state and have come, in the meantime, to identify more closely with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He, in turn, uses ethnocentric rhetoric and supports ethnic Hungarian minorities with billions of euros.

Multicultural example

Zoltan Soos is only prepared to make a tongue-in-cheek comment about Orban: "His viewpoints are very distinctive," he says laughing. The mayor prefers to speak about how he feels. "I feel very at ease in Romania and in Targu Mures and, as an ethnic Hungarian, I have never experienced any discrimination personally. This is also my home."

Then he asks if he can add one more thing: "My team and I would like Targu Mures to become an example of successful coexistence and multiculturalism."