Monday, March 13, 2023

Large Numbers of Americans Want a Strong, Rough, Anti-democratic Leader


As scholars interested in how committed citizens are to democracy, we wanted to measure whether regular Americans want someone who will abide by democratic traditions and practices or dispense with them.

March 4, 2023 by The Conversation 


By Tarah Williams, Allegheny College; Andrew Bloeser, Allegheny College, and Brian Harward, Allegheny College

It might be comforting to think that American democracy has made it past the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. But our research shows that a wide range of the American people, of all political stripes, seek leaders who are fundamentally anti-democratic.

It’s true that many who participated in the insurrection are facing consequences, including prison time. Many candidates for state office who falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election lost their races. And the congressional committee investigating the insurrection voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal charges.

But more than 100 members of Congress who objected to the results of a free and fair election won their reelection campaigns. And at least seven people who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 have been elected to state legislatures and two have been elected to Congress.

As scholars interested in how committed citizens are to democracy, we wanted to measure whether regular Americans want someone who will abide by democratic traditions and practices or dispense with them.

Using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 respondents, we found that a large proportion of Americans are willing to support leaders who would violate democratic principles.

Statement: "The only way our country can solve its current problems is by supporting tough leaders who will crack down on those who undermine American values."
Strong Democrats
22%
37%
26%
16%
Not strong Democrats
15%
42%
33%
10%
Lean Dem
7%
42%
37%
14%
Independent
19%
43%
31%
7%
Lean Rep
27%
56%
15%
Not strong Republicans
26%
54%
17%
Strong Republicans
46%
44%
7%



Support for anti-democratic leaders

About two decades ago, an important study found that roughly 1 in 4 Americans supported leaders who are uncompromising and take decisive action. These people said they would also prefer nonelected experts to make decisions. Our study replicates this finding nearly 20 years later but sheds light on a troubling reason for this preference.

At the Allegheny College Center for Political Participation, we, with our former student Candaisy Crawford, asked people about their willingness to support leaders who promised to protect them by any means necessary, even if that meant violating expected standards of behavior in a democracy, a set of principles often called “democratic norms.” We developed these questions based on existing research about the strategies that leaders with anti-democratic tendencies use to build public support.

In Venezuela, for instance, democratic decline happened gradually. Early on, Venezuela’s former president Hugo Chavez was known for using nationalist language and calling opponents epithets like “rancid oligarchs” and “squealing pigs.” Later, he blacklisted those who sought his removal from office through a democratically conducted referendum. Eventually, he went further, arresting and exiling his political opponents.

These types of tactics have also been used in other nations, such as Turkey and Hungary, by leaders who rose to power through democratic elections.

In our study, we asked about behaviors that foreshadow the early stages of democratic decline. For example, we asked citizens whether they thought that “the only way our country can solve its current problems is by supporting tough leaders who will crack down on those who undermine American values.” We also asked about explicit violations of democratic principles, like shutting down news organizations and “bending the rules to get things done.”

By design, some of these questions allow citizens to use their own interpretations of actions like “crackdowns” and “bending the rules.” These types of practices can take a number of different specific forms, as the cases of Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary illustrate. Our aim was to determine whether citizens were inclined toward leaders who seek power by promising retribution toward some groups and benefits for others, because this rhetorical strategy is often a precursor to explicit violations of democratic institutions.

Likewise, the phrasing of our questions is designed to allow respondents to rely on their own ideas about the meaning of “American values,” and “people like you.” Our interest was in what people would enable leaders to do to protect their idea of America and the Americans with whom they identify.

We found that people who want this type of protective but anti-democratic style of leadership were by far the most inclined to want leaders who would take uncompromising, decisive action. These people did not merely want their side to win a political competition for power. They were literally willing to say they would “bend the rules” to do it, a clear violation of the democratic ideal that everyone must follow the same rules.

For each item, we found that at least a third of the people we polled agreed or strongly agreed with these subtle or explicit violations of democratic norms.

Statement: "Political leaders must sometimes use rough language to criticize entire groups who refuse to work hard and contribute to our country."
Strong Democrats
11%
21%
31%
37%
Not strong Democrats
20%
48%
28%
Lean Dem
21%
38%
38%
Independent
28%
44%
23%
Lean Rep
11%
41%
40%
8%
Not strong Republicans
10%
38%
42%
10%
Strong Republicans
21%
46%
24%
10%
Statement: "To protect the interests of the people they represent, political leaders must sometimes attack the reputations of their political rivals."
Strong Democrats
10%
24%
34%
31%
Not strong Democrats
21%
48%
28%
Lean Dem
23%
41%
33%
Independent
26%
46%
24%
Lean Rep
33%
44%
20%
Not strong Republicans
27%
53%
16%
Strong Republicans
17%
35%
34%
14%
Statement: "If political leaders believe that a news organization is attempting to undermine American values, they should take action to shut down that news organization."
Strong Democrats
13%
20%
27%
41%
Not strong Democrats
6%
24%
41%
28%
Lean Dem
13%
39%
44%
Independent
10%
28%
43%
19%
Lean Rep
11%
26%
53%
11%
Not strong Republicans
13%
28%
45%
14%
Strong Republicans
29%
43%
20%
8%
Statement: "To protect the interests of people like you, political leaders must sometimes bend the rules to get things done."
Strong Democrats
8%
28%
33%
31%
Not strong Democrats
21%
52%
24%
Lean Dem
22%
42%
31%
Independent
25%
49%
23%
Lean Rep
36%
45%
15%
Not strong Republicans
35%
44%
18%
Strong Republicans
15%
34%
36%
15%

Across the political spectrum

Anti-democratic statements are embraced by members of both U.S. parties, but more commonly by Republicans.

For example, around 90% of Republicans would support tough leaders who crack down on groups that “undermine American values” – however the survey respondents define those values. More than half of Democrats take the same position. Perhaps even more notably, nearly half of citizens who strongly support the Republican Party and over a third of those who strongly support the Democratic Party endorse the view that it is acceptable to “bend the rules” for people like themselves to achieve political goals.

This echoes other research that has found Americans, on both sides of the political aisle, are willing to sacrifice democratic principles and practices if it means their political party wins elections.

An appetite for protection

The key to understanding these views, we believe, is a desire for protection.

Many Americans view those in the other party as existential threats to the country – and closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent too. All this coexists with growing evidence that more people are willing to support political violence under certain circumstances.

Many citizens prefer leaders who are willing to undermine democracy if it means protecting people like themselves from groups that threaten their values or status. Although most Americans do not subscribe to these beliefs, a substantial portion of the country does.

Leaders who actively promise anti-democratic action may come and go, but we fear the appetite of many Americans for such actions may always be a persistent threat.

Tarah Williams, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Allegheny College; Andrew Bloeser, Associate Professor of Political Science; Director, Center for Political Participation, Allegheny College, and Brian Harward, Professor of Political Science, Allegheny College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Myanmar Diaspora in US Calling for No-Fly Zone Over Myanmar

Khabarhub
March 4, 2023


Activists from eight states in the United States came to Washington to plea for a no-fly zone over Myanmar, Feb. 25, 2023. (Photo: KS Lait)

WASHINGTON: Burmese ethnic groups in the United States urged the Biden government to establish a no-fly zone over Myanmar and to impose jet fuel sanctions on the country’s military junta.

A group consisting of several different ethnic groups, Buddhist monks, and young activists from different states across the U.S. came to Washington recently to participate in a march on the White House. Activists demanded an end to the Myanmar junta’s airstrikes on its own citizens.

“We’re saying to the American people, and particularly to President [Joe] Biden, that the people of Burma [Myanmar] need help because every single day, the junta in Burma is killing our people through airstrikes,” said Peter Thawnghmung, president of the Chin Community of Indiana, a non-profit group based in Indianapolis.

Thawnghmung said the U.S. can help by urging Myanmar’s southeast Asia neighbors to establish a no-fly zone over the country.

“We’re here to plead with the government,” said Thawnghmung. “Please don’t ignore us. Help us. We need your help right away. Also, we ask you to influence other organizations like the U.N. to help impose a no-fly zone in the area. The U.S. is the country that can most help us to make this happen.”

Junta airstrikes

Myanmar Witness, a human rights group, recently reported the Myanmar military was increasing the air attacks with deadly results to try to crush stiff-armed resistance two years after it seized power.

According to the report, the number of airstrikes has been increasing since September, with 135 “airway incidents” from July to mid-December.

The rights group said, “As the Myanmar military struggles to exert control over areas of resistance, airstrikes have become a key part of their offensive.”

In a February press statement, Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia — also known as FORSEA — said, “The Myanmar coup leader Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing’s use of violent attacks from the air perfectly fits the definition of “domestic terrorism” developed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

FORSEA is a non-profit organization and was formed by Southeast Asian democrats and rights campaigners. The group also said, “The Myanmar junta has been deploying its Air Force fighter jets and gunship helicopters to deliberately strike ‘soft targets’ in the conflict regions of the country” after a February 2021 coup saw the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

A BBC analysis of data collected by ACLED, a non-governmental organization that monitors conflicts, shows at least 600 air attacks by the junta from February 2021 to January 2023.

Dilemma for the US

In a January interview with VOA, Derek Chollet, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said no-fly zones are “not something we are considering now. What we’re trying to find is a way that we can peacefully resolve the situation inside Burma.”

M Tu Aung, a leader of the American-Kachin community in the Washington metropolitan area, said protesters can put pressure on the U.S. to work with its allies.

“We have been asking the U.S. government and the international community including the U.N. for no-fly zones over Myanmar since 2021. There is still no pressure from the U.S. government side. Although it is unlikely to happen with China, but if the U.S. put pressure and cooperated with its close allies such as Thailand, Bangladesh and India, it would be much more effective,” M Tu Aung told VOA.

Solidarity with Myanmar people

The “multi-ethnic march” on February 25 was aimed at showing “the role of the ethnic groups who have been fighting for decades against the military dictatorship, and achieving a federal democratic system is very important. Also, it is to prove that all ethnic groups [in Myanmar] are united in this fight,” he said.

After gathering in front of the State Department and marching to the White House, the protesters then demonstrated in front of the military attache of the Myanmar junta on February 25. The crowd shouted, “End deadly air strikes in Myanmar,” and they sang revolutionary songs.

The protesters came from eight U.S. states, including neighboring Maryland and Virginia. Khin La May, a Burmese activist from Kentucky, told VOA, “We need to fulfill our duty to overthrow the military dictator in Myanmar. No matter how far away it is from my state, we were determined to participate in this important march here in D.C.”

She noted her appreciation for the inclusion of the Burma Act to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, saying she asked her U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell for its support.

The Burma Act, part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, broadens the U.S. government’s authority to impose sanctions against the post-coup regime and to aid Myanmar opposition and resistance groups, including ethnic armed groups. The authorized aid does not include arms.

Fifty-four organizations representing multiple ethnicities in Myanmar from around the U.S. recently wrote an open letter to the Biden administration asking it to impose sanctions on the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, a state-owned company that serves as one of the junta’s main sources of income.

VOA


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To increase exports, Pakistan must restructure its economic policies to benefit the many, not the few










The ongoing redistribution of resources from bottom to top must end. Policymakers must take immediate actions to uplift the folks at the bottom.
Published March 4, 2023

There seems to be a general ‘consensus’ among policymakers that the underlying cause of Pakistan’s economic woes is the poor performance of the export sector. In the midst of the ongoing politico-judicial crisis in Pakistan, the Pakistan Democratic Movement government has taken an initiative to start a bilateral discussion on trade with US officials.

Despite Pakistan’s shaky relationship with the US over the past few decades, the US remains the biggest single export market for Pakistani goods. As per 2020 estimates, around 17 per cent of Pakistan’s total exports are absorbed into the US market. Moreover, Pakistan has consistently run a trade surplus with the US since the mid 1990s.


The graph shows US-Pakistan trade flows from 1985-2000 in billions of US dollars — Data Source: US Census

From an international trade perspective, this is not surprising at all because the US is not only one of the largest consumer markets in the world, it is also a net importer.

Although Pakistan runs a trade surplus with the US, in reality, Pakistan’s export growth to the US is meagre when compared to peer-economies in the region. Bangladesh, for example, earned 54pc more revenue (in terms of US dollars) in 2020 from its exports to the US than Pakistan. There is, therefore much potential for Pakistan to increase exports to the US. But how?

Looking inwards first, outwards after

For starters, Pakistan must restructure its domestic political economy. Focusing solely on securing preferential access to the US markets will not yield the desired results without putting the house in order. Of course, the former can have a positive impact on exports, but at the current juncture, the main emphasis should be on the domestic front. Allow me to elaborate on this.

When we disaggregate trade flows between the US and Pakistan, we see an interesting picture. It may come as a surprise to many but Pakistan imports more agricultural products from the US than it exports to it.


The graph shows disaggregate agricultural trade flows between the US and Pakistan from 2014-2019 in billions of US Dollars — Data Source: US Census


This is partly tied to the prevailing structure of the political economy of land in Pakistan. That is, large agricultural farms in general and smaller farms in particular, have been squeezed by state policies. At the same time, real estate developers have been incentivised and allowed to extract super-rents in the form of gated housing societies.

In effect, this has at least two major negative ramifications. One, capital goes where the returns are high and easy. Consequently, there has been a continuous outflow of capital from agriculture and other productive sectors of the economy and an inflow into real estate.

Secondly, to keep up with the growing investor demand, real estate developers are moving towards the cities’ peripheries, which has also led to rapid transformation of agrarian land into gated housing enclaves across Pakistan. Not to mention, the urban-sprawl has negative environmental implications.

Read more: Real estate as an economic bogeyman

In essence, exports are a function of a country’s productive capacity. Pakistan’s lacklustre growth in exports is a mere symptom of a deeper economic problem — the economy’s inability to expand its productive capacity with the passage of time.

From an economic policy perspective, policymakers are asking the wrong question: how to increase exports? Instead, the more pressing and immediate question that they must address is: how to expand economic productive capacity?
De-concentrate the capital

The answer lies in the socio-institutional reallocation of resources from nonproductive to productive sectors of the economy. It is only possible by putting an end to cheap rents — super-rents extracted via gated housing enclaves, subsidised inputs to monopolistic/oligopolistic firms — which are distributed among a small number of economic actors, who have no incentive to innovate and compete in the export markets.

At the moment, the discussion on the economy is primarily framed in accounting terms on a short-term horizon — how to balance current and fiscal accounts. Economic policy making in Pakistan has been reduced to an accounting exercise. Current and fiscal account deficits are certainly important but twin deficits are symptoms of the underlying ‘political economy’ problem of Pakistan.

Pakistan’s current economic problems should be conceptualised in a holistic political economy framework. This is a necessary condition to envisage and implement effective long-term policy solutions to the country’s macroeconomic woes. By learning from the successful development experience of East Asian economies, it is clear that an effective reallocation of factor endowments is an important prerequisite to move out of the low-state equilibrium.

In other words, two things need to be done simultaneously on the policy front. One, the ongoing redistribution of resources from bottom to top must end. Two, in order to offset some of the negative socio-economic ramifications of the bottom to top redistribution, policymakers must take immediate actions to uplift the folks at the bottom so they can fully contribute and participate in the processes of economic development.

For example, revenue generated by the progressive taxation on unproductive sectors of the economy, such as real estate (assuming it is implemented effectively), should be used to invest in sectors such as education, vocational training, clean energy and public transport. This can improve the overall productivity of the economy.

Similarly, agrarian reforms are needed to protect small landholders from the onslaught of housing developers. Access to affordable institutional credit must be provided to every farmer. Both these steps can lead to improvements in agricultural output and uplift the historically marginalised segments of society.

On the other hand, urban land reforms are also needed, which would restrict the use of land, water, trees and other environmental resources for ‘conspicuous consumption’. This can be an effective policy tool to reallocate resources away from gated housing enclaves to productive sectors such as clean-energy, besides promoting ecological sustainability.

In other words, the pathway to sustainable economic development, including export growth, requires a new economic deal between the state and citizens that can ensure that the fruits of economic development will improve the lives of ordinary Pakistanis.



Dr. Danish Khan is Assistant Professor of Economics & Co-Director of The Inequality, Poverty, Power & Social Justice Initiative at the Franklin & Marshall College, USA. Danish's research interests are political economy and economic development in Pakistan.
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Why is the Right Obsessed with Gramsci?










by Alberto Toscano

Over the past months, the culture warriors in charge of the Republican Party in the United States have intensified their legislative efforts to secure a white, nationalist Christian, and patriarchal order against a plurality of ideological threats. Having reversed the landmark for women’s rights that was Roe v Wade, they are focusing their energies on purging progressive perspectives (and factual histories) from American schooling. Implicitly concurring with the French philosopher Louis Althusser’s contention that education is the key “ideological state apparatus”, they have committed the formidable legal and financial resources of the US right to forbidding the teaching of any texts, authors or theories that cast critical light on a master narrative that enshrines 1776 as the unblemished origin of the land of the free.

There is a frantic but focused energy coursing through these efforts to expunge any challenge to what the black radical scholar Cedric J Robinson called the “forgeries of memory and meaning” that have historically shored up white nationalism in the US. The moral panics that have been promoted by the revanchist intelligentsia of the US right all have theory as their target. They operate by ascribing inordinate scope and sinister influence to frameworks originating in academic debates on race and gender, such as intersectionality, critical race theory (CRT), and queer theory. These are now believed to dominate corporate boardrooms, federal agencies, and education, from the pre-school to the professoriate.

Much of the legislative activity goes under the heading of divisive concepts: shorthand for the idea that any recognition and critical analysis of racism or gender discrimination is ipso facto discriminatory and corrosive of the common good. In establishing a chain of equivalence between racialised and gender-non-conforming others, on the one hand, and political, intellectual and economic elites on the other, these campaigns are a perfect vehicle for the right’s authoritarian insurgency. They perform populist outrage and channel prejudice, while posing no challenge whatsoever to social inequality and the concentration of wealth and power. As the social wage plummets, investing in psychological wages is a cost-saving measure like no other.

While the culture war playbook is remarkably consistent, down to the legal wording, it also generates a competitive arena, one in which Florida governor Ron DeSantis is successfully positioning himself to supplant Trump as the leader of a party committed to a strategy of ideological belligerence. Having promoted laws legalising motorists running over protestors (the “anti-riot” bill), turned deportation into spectacle by flying undocumented migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, and even adopted the defence of gas-burning stoves as a fulcrum for ressentiment against metropolitan elites, DeSantis has made his name inseparable from the watchword incorporated into his Stop-Woke law 

An administrative coup at the New College of Florida designed to morph it into a conservative bulwark; the purging of black critical thought, activism and history from advanced placement (AP) courses in African American Studies; and now a bill proposing to ban gender studies, critical race theory and intersectionality from all state-funded higher education institutions – DeSantis has built his brand on shifting the culture war from a war of position to a war of manoeuvre. This terminology, drawn from the writings of the 20th-century Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, is not alien to the DeSantis project. The principal intellectual agitator in the right’s witch hunt against CRT, Christopher Rufo – appointed by DeSantis to the governing board at New College – has repeatedly invoked the one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party.

As with other such mentions of the Sardinian Marxist by the right it evinces no direct acquaintance with his writings, and follows a schematic template: having recognised the inevitable defeat of communist revolution in the West and its lack of traction among the working classes, Gramsci, the author of the Prison Notebooks, forged a strategy of elite takeover of key cultural institutions (schools, media, entertainment, publishing) by what National Review writer Nate Hochman has called a “Gramscian vanguard” set on sapping Western Christian liberal-democratic civilisation from the inside. Though analogous to the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory – Jewish-German Marxist philosophers in exile undermining America by seeding sexual disorder and black revolution – Rufo’s variant seems to mute the anti-Semitic dog whistle and accord black thinkers greater, if nefarious agency. According to his conceit, critical race theory was the product of mainly black law professors (especially Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw) adopting a Gramscian strategy to undermine American values for the sake of a nihilist mix of racial identity politics and anti-capitalism.


 3/4/2023


Alberto Toscano teaches at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and is also co-director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London. His books Terms of Disorder: Keywords for an Interregnum (Seagull Books) and Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (Verso) will be published this year.

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Amazon's monopoly power opposed by businesses relying on the online retailer to sell goods

Small and large entities are preparing to push for the US government to pare back e-commerce company's hold over the online shopping ecosystem

Antitrust advocates have launched a coalition of sellers to push back 

against Amazon's policies. 



Bloomberg
Mar 03, 2023

Businesses that rely on Amazon.com, the world's biggest e-commerce company, to sell their goods are beginning to band together against the e-commerce retail behemoth.

A trio of well-connected antitrust advocates on Thursday launched the Responsible Online Commerce Coalition, which represents a group of small businesses and large brands that will push for the US government to pare back Amazon’s power over the online shopping ecosystem.

“We believe Amazon has been given a pass to a large extent,” said Damien Geradin, one of the advocates spearheading the coalition. He’s a founding partner with Geradin Partners, an antitrust law firm that specialises in opposing large tech companies and other corporations.

The group will help solidify political power among companies that have struggled due to Amazon’s actions, proponents say

Amanda Lewis, a coalition co-founder and former staffer with the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, said that the Responsible Online Commerce Coalition will work to bring its stories directly to policymakers overseeing the tech companies.

“I found that policymakers were moved much more by a small business owner telling their story than five touches from an Amazon lobbyist,” said Ms Lewis, who helped to lead the House Judiciary Committee’s work on Amazon during its 16-month investigation of some of the largest tech companies.

An Amazon representative did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Both Mr Geradin and Ms Lewis met while advising the Coalition for App Fairness, a group focused on mobilising small app developers against Apple's policies. They concluded that it would be useful to have a similar coalition focused on Amazon.

The group is not yet publicly announcing names or numbers of members, but organisers say several companies have already committed to joining — from a large publicly traded company to small third-party sellers. Many companies fear retaliation from Amazon, they say.

“Due to Amazon’s monopoly power over sellers on their platform, they can arbitrarily suspend sellers, raise or change fees, and give themselves access to information and tools that are unavailable to entrepreneurs across the country,” said Democratic Representative David Cicilline, of Rhode Island, former head of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee in the last Congress.

“I applaud the creation of a coalition of sellers to push back on these policies.”











Workers strike at the Amazon fulfilment centre in Coventry. Bloomberg

Mr Geradin, Ms Lewis and the third co-founder Tom Smith, of Geradin Partners, acknowledge they’re out-gunned compared to the tech companies, which spend hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying and have an expansive network of trade groups in Washington.

The coalition founders hope to collect fees from companies based on their size, meaning smaller companies will pay less while larger firms, particularly the biggest brands, can give more.

The e-commerce coalition’s creation comes as governments around the world are considering cracking down on Amazon.

The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating Amazon’s potentially anti-competitive behaviour. The EU is working on implementing the Digital Markets Act, antitrust legislation aimed at reining in the business practices of “gatekeeper” tech companies including Amazon, Apple, Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms.

The UK is mulling a similar regime for the tech industry.

The group will advocate for competitive pricing for seller commissions, limiting the amount of counterfeit products circulating online, offering sellers the freedom to offer their products at a discount and ensuring search results are fair and non-discriminatory.

Garrett Ventry, former chief of staff for Colorado Republican Representative Ken Buck and lobbyist for the Coalition for App Fairness, said he saw during his time on the Hill a need for “a group that’s focused on Amazon’s growing harms, especially when Amazon is rapidly acquiring other companies and rapidly continuing to expand into other areas”.

Amazon opens its largest delivery station in Abu Dhabi
Updated: March 03, 2023, 9:00 p.m.
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