Daily Archives: November 25, 2021

Targeting the AAP over its sop announcements ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections, state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Wednesday said that people won't fall prey to populist measures without the backing of a policy framework, defined budget allocations and implementation metrics.

He said true leaders do not give "lollipops" and instead focus on building the foundations of society and economy.

In the run-up to the Punjab polls, Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal has announced a slew of sops for different sections of society. On Monday, during a visit to Punjab, he promised that if the AAP is voted to power, its government will transfer Rs 1,000 per month into the account of every woman in the state and dubbed it the "world's biggest women empowerment" programme.

Earlier, he had promised up to 300 units of free electricity for each household, 24-hour power supply and free treatment and medicines at government hospitals.

Speaking to reporters in Amritsar, Sidhu took on Kejriwal for making tall promises to different sections, including the youth and women.

He said Kejriwal's financial assistance scheme for women and other promises will cost thousands of crores of rupees and exceed the state budget.

He said the AAP leader is giving "lollipops" to people.

Sidhu's comments came a day after Kejriwal praised the Congress leader for raising public welfare issues.

On various announcements made by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi for different sections, Sidhu said, "Whatever our chief minister has said... the party will back him and stand by him."

He said Channi has done in two months what former chief minister Amarinder Singh could not do in four-and-a-half years.

"His (Channi's) intent is right," the state Congress president said, adding that the chief minister has the party's backing.

Later, in a series of tweets, Sidhu said people won't "fall prey to populist schemes".

"UPA Govt formulated policies to transform India's society & economy. Today Punjab needs policy-based structural transformation of its economy. People won't fall prey to populist "schemes" without any backing of policy framework, defined budget allocations & implementation metrics," he said.

The Congress leader said populist schemes are a fast-paced reaction to popular demands, without any thought being given to governance and economy.

"History tells (that) populist measures only hurt people in the long run. True leaders will not give lollipops but will focus to build foundations of society and economy," he said.

"Credit games don't last, they put more baggage of debt and depressed economic growth onto the society. Punjab needs a policy-based redemption and soon every Punjabi will be wealthy and prosperous as we were in earlier times. Punjab model is only way forward!!," he added.

Sidhu, a former minister, said in 2017, he introduced the Punjab Entertainments Taxes Bill before the state cabinet "to end cable mafia to strengthen local operators".

He said he wanted to end the alleged monopoly of one operator, making it pay the due taxes to the government as "only then the benefit of cheaper connections can be transferred to people".

"Will bring solid "policy-based" Punjab model. Give redemption from monopolies formed by Badals, such as Cable mafia. SOPs will empty state-treasure and kill livelihoods but does nothing to truly uplift the poor and eradicate tyranny of Multiple Systems Operator...," he said.

The Punjab Assembly elections will be held early next year.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Sidhu hits out at AAP over poll sops, says people wont fall for populism - Business Standard

Protectionism and isolationism have been growing throughout the world, in what became known as the backlash against globalisation. Using newly assembled data for 23 industrialised, advanced democracies and global trade data,Italo Colantone, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Piero Stanig analyse voting behaviour and track trade policy interventions. Theywrite that international trade is not the only factor causing the upheaval. Society must manage the distributional consequences of structural change in a more inclusive way.

A lively discussion has flourished around the recent surge of populist parties across advanced democracies. One of the most salient phenomena related to the populist wave is the so-called globalisation backlash. In our recent CEP discussion paper, we characterise this phenomenon as the political shift of voters and parties in a protectionist and isolationist direction, with substantive implications on governments leaning and enacted policies. Globalisation emerges as a relevant driver of the backlash, by means of the distributional consequences entailed by rising trade exposure. Yet, the backlash is only partly determined by international trade. Other factors, such as technological change, immigration, crisis-driven fiscal austerity, as well as cultural concerns are found to play a similar role in driving the observed political shift. Borrowing from the medical literature, we describe this multi-causal nature of the phenomenon through the concept of comorbidity, by which different factors compound to generate the backlash.

To document the globalisation backlash, we employ newly assembled data for 23 industrialised, advanced democracies, spanning Europe, North America, and Asia. The analysis covers the period 1980-2019. We start by providing descriptive evidence of the backlash in terms of voting behaviour. Specifically, Figure 1 displays the electorate location in terms of protectionism and isolationism. For each country, in each national election, this is obtained by combining two ingredients: (1) the vote share of each party; and (2) an ideology score, called Net Autarky, which reflects the stance of each party with respect to trade policy and multilateralism, based on party manifesto data. The electorate location is then computed as a weighted summation of party scores, using vote shares as weights. It is essentially the ideological centre of gravity (COG) of the electorate. The top panel reports all countries (grey lines) along with the cross-country average (dark line). The bottom panel highlights specific countries, such as the US, or groups of countries, such as southern, western, and northern Europe. Looking at the grand mean, there is a visible decline from the beginning of the 1980s until the early 1990s. This globalist wave is then followed by a protectionist shift from the mid-1990s onwards. Such a pattern is clearly detectable across most countries. The only exceptions seem to be Australia and New Zealand, which start from relatively high levels of net autarky, and display a decline in recent years. Very similar evidence is obtained when looking at the ideological location of legislatures and executives. This suggests that the shift in voting behaviour has been consequential for the composition of decision-making bodies.

Figure 1 Electorate location

A protectionist shift is also detectable in terms of trade policy developments. In this respect, there are many recent cases in point, ranging from Brexit to the US-China trade war and the stall of the WTO Appellate Body. More systematic evidence is shown in Figure 2, based on Global Trade Alert data, according to which protectionist trade policy interventions have been growing faster than liberalising ones from the financial crisis onwards. Yet, besides such dynamics, more trade-friendly developments can also be observed. For instance, the number of active regional trade agreements (RTAs), and especially free trade areas (FTAs), has kept growing even after the financial crisis. In parallel, average tariffs have kept declining over time. However, temporary protection measures such as anti-dumping and countervailing duties have been increasingly activated, and with rising ad-valorem rates, entailing stronger protectionist effects. Overall, the evolution of trade policy seems consistent with the political dynamics described above. The picture gets instead more nuanced as we look at individual attitudes. We do not find systematic evidence of a generalised worsening in public opinion with respect to globalisation. However, large minorities, and in some cases strong majorities, of survey respondents believe they are not actually benefiting from international trade (e.g., 39% in the US and 60% in Italy).

Figure 2 Rise in protectionist measures since the financial crisis

What are the drivers of the globalisation backlash? A large literature has developed in recent years around this broad research question, investigating both economic factors and cultural determinants. Several studies have emphasised the role of trade, focusing particularly on exposure to surging imports from China between the early 1990s and the financial crisis. Regions more exposed to the China shock, owing to their historical industrial specialisation, have been shown to be negatively affected in many ways, ranging from higher unemployment, lower labour force participation, increased use of disability and other transfer benefits, reduced wages, as well as lower provision of public goods and worsening health conditions. This phenomenon has had political repercussions as well, leading to rising support for protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist parties and candidates. The available evidence allows us to conclude that the globalisation backlash is thus endogenous to globalisation itself. However, other factors have been found to tilt electorates in similar ways. In particular, technological progress, by means of automation of production through robots, has been shown to generate distributional consequences that are akin to those of trade, leading to similar political responses. The same holds true for crisis-driven fiscal austerity as well as immigration, which acts both as a catalyst of structural economic grievances, and as a direct determinant of political backlash.

Conclusion

Overall, it seems that globalisation is at stake also due to reasons that are not strictly related to trade. The political sustainability of globalisationand arguably of the international liberal orderwill depend on how successful society will be at managing in a more inclusive way the distributional consequences of structural change.

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Note:The postgives the views of its authors,notthe positionUSAPP American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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Italo Colantone Bocconi UniversityItalo Colantone is an Associate Professor of economics at Bocconi University, Italy.

Gianmarco Ottaviano Bocconi UniversityGianmarco Ottaviano is Full Professor in the Department of Economics at Bocconi University, Italy. He is also affiliated with LSEs Centre for Economic Performance.

Piero Stanig Bocconi UniversityPiero Stanig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University.

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The rise of populism in advanced economies: blame it on globalisation? - USAPP American Politics and Policy (blog)

Although some pundits and grifters may claim otherwise, theres nothing new about populism. It comes in waves, often but not always in response to sharp economic downturns, and is driven by outrage against the mistakes or misdeeds of political elites.

Sometimes that populist outrage is well-earned and its consequences beneficial. But at other times, the flames serve as little more than propulsion for demagogues seeking to become the new political elites in place of the old. George Orwell had their number. So did The Who, who invited listeners to meet the new boss same as the old boss.

If you go looking for clear definitions of the policy content of populism, youll come away disappointed. But theres a common rhetorical denominator: Populists tend to say things like the People have spoken even though they are actually in the minority and the People have done no such thing.

Its currently fashionable to denigrate right-wing populism, of the sort that produced the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Although Im no slave to fashion my closet is full of clothes older than my grown children I have repeatedly criticized such populist impulses myself, not only when expressed as conspiracy theories about stolen elections but also when directed against free trade, entitlement reform, and other causes that in my view cannot be abandoned by an American conservatism worthy of the name.

Today, however, I will focus on left-wing populism, of the sort that has produced its own violence and chaos but nowhere near the level of condemnation it deserves.

The riots of 2020 alone resulted in dozens of deaths and north of $1 billion in property damage. Of course, most people protesting the homicide of George Floyd were only expressing political views. They werent rioters. By refusing to maintain order, however, state and local governments allowed some protests to devolve into riots. It was a colossal error.

This manifest failure to enforce basic rules of conduct in public spaces had antecedents. Some happened right here in North Carolina. On Aug. 24, 2017, a mob led by anarchist and communist activists toppled the Confederate monument that once stood in front of Durhams old courthouse. Thanks to some combination of clumsiness and purposeful malfeasance by local law enforcement, no one was ever really held responsible for the crime.

Almost exactly one year later, another mob (including some of the same activists) tore down the Silent Sam statue on the Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina. Again, there were no serious consequences for those responsible. Again, the mob was rewarded by having the statue removed permanently rather than restored to its original location, as it should have been, until such time that it might be removed by proper authorities employing legal means.

As I wrote at the time, I was never sold on keeping those statues permanently in place. I dont think past generations get to decide in perpetuity what persons or images should populate campuses, courthouses, and other public spaces. Confederate monuments have a history of their own, one that at best mixes familial desire to honor fallen ancestors with Lost Cause mythology and white supremacy.

Should Silent Sam and comparable statues and memorials have been moved elsewhere or just dismantled? That was a legitimate question. It was not, however, answered by The People, but by a self-anointed few who figured theyd get away with it. They were right.

Most North Carolinians didnt agree. They opposed removing the Silent Sam statue, which was on state property. That remains the prevailing national sentiment about the larger issue, as far as I know. In a 2020 ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, only 43% of respondents favored removing statues honoring Confederate generals from public places.

Think the majority is wrong about this? Then persuade them otherwise. But dont take the law into your own hands and cloak yourself in populist claims that the People have spoken. They didnt.

John Hood is a Carolina Journal columnist.

More here:

John Hood: The People never spoke on statues - Greenville Daily Reflector

Although some pundits and grifters may claim otherwise, theres nothing new about populism. It comes in waves, often but not always in response to sharp economic downturns, and is driven by outrage against the mistakes or misdeeds of political elites.

Sometimes that populist outrage is well-earned and its consequences beneficial. At other times, though, the flames of populism serve as little more than propulsion for demagogues seeking to make themselves new political elites in place of the old ones. George Orwell had their number, which he counted as legs. So did The Who, who invited listeners to meet the new boss same as the old boss.

If you go looking for clear definitions of the policy content of populism, youll come away disappointed. But theres a common rhetorical denominator: populists tend to say things like the People have spoken even though they are actually in the minority and the People have done no such thing.

Its currently fashionable to denigrate right-wing populism, of the sort that produced the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Although Im no slave to fashion my closet is full of clothes older than my grown children I have repeatedly criticized such populist impulses myself, not only when expressed as conspiracy theories about stolen elections but also when directed against free trade, entitlement reform, and other causes that I feel cannot be abandoned by an American conservatism worthy of the name.

Today, however, I will focus on left-wing populism, of the sort that has produced its own violence and chaos but nowhere near the level of condemnation it deserves.

The riots of 2020 alone resulted in dozens of deaths and north of $1 billion in property damage. Of course, most people protesting the homicide of George Floyd were only expressing political views. They werent rioters. By refusing to maintain order, however, state and local governments allowed some protests to devolve into riots. It was a colossal error.

This manifest failure to enforce basic rules of conduct in public spaces had antecedents. Some happened right here in North Carolina. On August 24, 2017, a mob led by anarchist and communist activists toppled the Confederate Monument that once stood in front of Durhams old courthouse. Thanks to some combination of clumsiness and purposeful malfeasance by local law enforcement, no one was ever held responsible for the crime.

Almost exactly one year later, another mob (including some of the same activists) tore down the Silent Sam statue on the Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina. Again, there were no serious consequences for those responsible. Again, the mob was rewarded by having the statue removed permanently rather than restored to its original location, as it should have been, until such time that it might be removed by proper authorities employing legal means.

As I wrote at the time, I was never sold on keeping those statues permanently in place. I dont think past generations get to decide in perpetuity what persons or images should populate campuses, courthouses, and other public spaces. Confederate monuments have a history of their own, one that at best mixes familial desire to honor fallen ancestors with Lost Cause mythology and white supremacy.

Should Silent Sam and comparable statues and memorials have been moved elsewhere, then, or just dismantled? That was a legitimate question. It was not, however, answered by The People. It was answered by a self-anointed few who figured theyd get away with it. They were right.

Most North Carolinians didnt agree. They opposed removing the Silent Sam statue, which was on state property. That remains the prevailing national sentiment about the larger issue, as far as I know. In a 2020 ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, only 43% of respondents favored removing statues honoring Confederate generals from public places.

Think the majority is wrong about this? Then persuade them otherwise. But dont take the law into your own hands and then cloak yourself in populist claims that the People have spoken. They never got to.

John Hood is a Carolina Journal columnist.

More here:

John Hood: The People never spoke on statues (copy) - Greenville Daily Reflector

This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Standing in front of the partial ruins of Romes Colosseum, Boris Johnson explained that a motive to tackle the climate crisis could be found in the fall of the Roman Empire. Then, as now, he argued, the collapse of civilization hinged on the weakness of its borders.

When the Roman Empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration the empire could no longer control its borders, people came in from the east and all over the place, the British prime minister said in an interview on the eve of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland. Civilization can go into reverse as well as forwards, as Johnson told it, with Romes fate offering grave warning as to what could happen if global heating is not restrained.

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This wrapping of ecological disaster with fears of rampant immigration is a narrative that has flourished in far-right fringe movements in Europe and the U.S. and is now spilling into the discourse of mainstream politics. Whatever his intent, Johnson was following a current of right-wing thought that has shifted from outright dismissal of climate change to using its impacts to fortify ideological, and often racist, battle lines. Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.

In the U.S., a lawsuit by the Republican attorney general of Arizona has demanded the building of a border wall to prevent migrants coming from Mexico as these people directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In Spain, Santiago Abascal, leader of the populist Vox Party, has called for a patriotic restoration of a green Spain, clean and prosperous.

In the U.K., the far-right British National Party has claimed to be the only true green party in the country due to its focus on migration. And in Germany, the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany has tweaked some of its earlier mockery of climate science with a platform that warns harsh climatic conditions in Africa and the Middle East will see a gigantic mass migration towards European countries, requiring toughened borders.

Meanwhile, Frances National Front, once a bastion of derisive climate denial, has founded a green wing called New Ecology, with Marine Le Pen, president of the party, vowing to create the worlds leading ecological civilization with a focus on locally grown foods.

Environmentalism (is) the natural child of patriotism, because its the natural child of rootedness, Le Pen said in 2019, adding that if youre a nomad, youre not an environmentalist. Those who are nomadic do not care about the environment; they have no homeland. Le Pens ally Herv Juvin, a National Rally MEP, is seen as an influential figure on the European right in promoting what he calls nationalistic green localism.

Simply ignoring or disparaging the science isnt the effective political weapon it once was. We are seeing very, very little climate denialism in conversations on the right now, said Catherine Fieschi, a political analyst and founder of Counterpoint, who tracks trends in populist discourse. But in place of denial is a growing strain of environmental populism that has attempted to dovetail public alarm over the climate crisis with disdain for ruling elites, longing for a more traditional embrace of nature and kin and calls to banish immigrants behind strong borders.

Millions of people are already being displaced from their homes, predominately in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, due to disasters worsened by climate change such as flooding, storms and wildfires. In August, the United Nations said Madagascar was on the brink of the worlds first climate change famine.

The number of people uprooted around the world will balloon further, to as many as 1.2 billion by 2050 by some estimates, and while most will move within their own countries, many millions are expected to seek refuge across borders. This mass upending of lives is set to cause internal and external conflicts that the Pentagon, among others, has warned will escalate into violence.

The response to this trend on the right has led to what academics Joe Turner and Dan Bailey call ecobordering, where restrictions on immigration are seen as vital to protect the nativist stewardship of nature and where the ills of environmental destruction are laid upon those from developing countries, ignoring the far larger consumptive habits of wealthy nations. In an analysis of 22 far-right parties in Europe, the academics found this thinking is rife among right-wing parties and portrays effects as causes and further normalizes racist border practices and colonial amnesia within Europe.

Turner, an expert in politics and migration at the University of York, said the link between climate and migration is an easy logic for politicians such as Johnson as it plays into longstanding tropes on the right that overpopulation in poorer countries is a leading cause of environmental harm. More broadly, it is an attempt by the right to seize the initiative on environmental issues that have for so long been the preserve of centre-left parties and conservationists.

The far right in Europe has an anti-immigration platform, thats their bread and butter, so you can see it as an electoral tactic to start talking about green politics, Turner said, adding that migrants are being blamed in two ways first, for moving to countries with higher emissions and then adding to those emissions, as right-wing figures in Arizona have claimed; and secondly for supposedly bringing destructive, polluting habits with them from their countries of origin.

A mixture of this Malthusian and ethno-nationalist thinking is being distilled into political campaigning, as in a political pamphlet described in Turner and Baileys research paper from SVP, the largest party in Switzerlands federal assembly, which shows a city crowded by people and cars belching out pollution, with a tagline that translates to stop massive immigration. A separate campaign ad by SVP claims that one million migrants will result in thousands of miles of new roads and that anyone who wants to protect the environment in Switzerland must fight against mass immigration.

The far right depicts migrants as being essentially poor custodians of their own lands and then treating European nature badly as well, Turner said. So you get these headlines around asylum seekers eating swans, all these ridiculous scaremongering tactics. But they play into this idea that by stopping immigrants coming here, you are actually supporting a green project.

Experts are clear that the main instigators of the climate crisis are wealthy people in wealthy countries. The richest one per cent of the worlds population was responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, research has found, with people in the U.S. causing the highest level of per capita emissions in the world. Adding new arrivals to high-emitting countries doesnt radically ramp up these emissions at the same rate: a study by Utah State University found that immigrants are typically using less energy, driving less, and generating less waste than native-born Americans.

Still, the idea of personal sacrifice is hard for many to swallow. While there is strengthening acceptance of climate science among the public, and a restlessness that governments have done so little to constrain global heating, support for climate policies plummets when it comes to measures that involve the taxing of gasoline or other impositions. According to a research paper co-authored by Fieschi, this has led to a situation where detractors are taking up the language of freedom fighters.

We are seeing the growth of accusations of climate hysteria as a way for elites to exploit ordinary people, Fieschi said. The solutions that are talked about involve spending more money on deserving Americans and deserving Germans and so on, and less on refugees. Its yes, we will need to protect people, but lets protect our people.

This backlash is visible in protest movements such as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in France, which became the longest-running protest movement in the country since the Second World War by railing against, among other things, a carbon tax placed on fuel. Online, favoured targets such as Greta Thunberg or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been shown in memes as Nazis or devils intent on impoverishing western civilization through their supposedly radical ideas to combat climate change. Fieschi said the rights interaction with climate is far more than just about borders it is animating fears that personal freedoms are under attack from a cosseted, liberal elite.

You see these quite obviously populist arguments in the U.S. and Europe that a corrupt elite, the media and government have no idea what ordinary peoples lives are like as they impose these stringent climate policies, said Fieschi, whose research has analyzed the climate conversation on the right taking place on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

This sort of online chatter has escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Fieschi said, and is being fed along a line of influence that begins with small, conspiratorial right-wing groups spreading messages that are then picked up by what she calls middle of the tail figures with thousands of followers, and then in turn disseminated by large influencers and into mainstream centre-right politics.

There are these conspiratorial accusations that COVID is a dry run for restrictions that governments want to impose with the climate emergency, that we need to fight for our freedoms on wearing masks and on all these climate rules, Fieschi said. There is a yearning for a pre-COVID life and a feeling climate policies will just cause more suffering.

Whats worrying, Fieschi continued, is that more reasonable parts of the right, mainstream conservatives and Republicans, are being drawn to this. They will say they dont deny climate change but then tap into these ideas. She said centre-right French politicians have started disparaging climate activists as miserabilists, while Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union who sought to succeed Angela Merkel, has said Germany should focus on its own industry and people in the face of cascading global crises.

The interplay between environmentalism and racism has some of its deepest roots in the U.S., where some of the conservation movements totemic figures of the past embraced views widely regarded as abhorrent today. Wilderness was something viewed in the 19th century as bound in rugged, and exclusively white, masculinity, and manifest destiny demanded the expansion of a secure frontier.

John Muir, known as the father of national parks in the U.S., described Native Americans as dirty and said they seemed to have no right place in the landscape. Madison Grant, a leading figure in the protection of the American bison and the establishment of Glacier National Park, was an avowed eugenicist who argued for inferior races to be placed into ghettoes and successfully lobbied for Ota Benga, a Congolese man, to be put on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. This focus on racial hierarchies would come to be adopted into the ideology of the Nazis themselves avowed conservationists.

There has been something of a reckoning of this troubling past in recent years a bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a Native American man and an African man is to be removed from the front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and at least one conservation group named after the slaveholder and anti-abolitionist John James Audubon is changing its name. But elsewhere, themes of harmful overpopulation have been picked up by a resurgent right from a liberal environmental movement that now largely demurs from the topic.

Republicans, aware that many of their own younger voters are turned off by the relentless climate denial as they see their futures wreathed in wildfire smoke and flood water, have sensed an opportunity. The right is reclaiming that older Malthusian population rhetoric and is using that as a cudgel in green terms rather than unpopular racist terms, said Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, an educational and research body.

Its weird that this has become a popular theme in the U.S. west because the west is sparsely populated and that hasnt slowed environmental destruction, he added. But this is about speaking to nativist fears, it isnt about doing anything to solve the problem.

The spearhead for modern nativism in the U.S. is, of course, Donald Trump who has, along with an often dismissive stance towards climate science itself, sought to portray migrants from Mexico and Central America as criminals and animals while vowing to restore clean air and water to deserving American citizens. If there is to be another iteration of a Trump presidency, or a successful campaign by one of his acolytes, the scientific denial may be dialled down somewhat while retaining the reflex nativism.

The Republican lawsuit in Arizona may be a prelude to an ecological reframing of Trumps fetish for border walls should the former president run again for office in 2024, with migrants again the target. We will see weird theories that will spread blame in all the wrong directions, Taylor said. More walls, more borders, more exclusion thats most likely the way we are heading.

A recasting of environmentalism in this way has already branched out in different forms throughout the U.S. right, spanning gun-toting preppers who view nature as a bastion to be defended from interlopers a back to the land ideology where you are an earner and provider, not a not soft-handed soy boy, as Taylor describes it to the vaguely mystic wellness practitioners who have risen to prominence by spreading false claims over the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

The latter group, Taylor said, includes those who have a fascination with organic farming, Viking culture, extreme conspiracy theories such as the QAnon fantasy and a rejection of science and reason in favour of discovering an authentic self. These disparate facets are all embodied, he said, in Jake Angeli, the so-called QAnon shaman who was among the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Angeli, who became famous for wearing horns and a bearskin headdress during the violent insurrection, was sentenced to 41 months in prison over his role in the riot. He gained media attention for refusing to eat the food served in jail because it was not organic.

Angeli, who previously attended a climate march to promote his conspiracy-laden YouTube channel and said he is in favour of cleansed ecosystems, has been described as an eco-fascist, a term that has also been applied to Patrick Crusius, the Dallas man accused of killing 23 people in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

In a document published online shortly before the shooting, Crusius wrote: The environment is getting worse by the year So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable. The shooting came just a few months after the terrorist massacre of 49 people in two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand, with the perpetrator describing himself as an eco-fascist unhappy about the birthrate of immigrants.

Such extreme, violent acts erupting from right-wing eco-populist beliefs are still rare but the alt-right has been adept at taking concerns and making them mainstream, said Taylor. It has fostered the idea that nature is a place of savage survival that brings us back to original society, that nature itself is fascist because there is no equality in nature. Thats what they believe.

Advocates for those fleeing climate-induced disasters hope there will be a shift in the other direction, with some advocating for a new international refugee framework. The UN convention on refugees does not recognize climate change, and its effects, as a reason for countries to provide shelter to refugees. An escalation in forced displacement from drought, floods and other calamities will put further onus on the need for reform. But opening up the convention for a revamp could see it wound back as much as it could be expanded, given the growing ascendancy of populism and authoritarianism in many countries.

The big players arent invested in changing any of the definitions around refugees in fact the U.S. and U.K. are making it even more difficult to claim asylum, said Turner. I think what youre going to see is internally displaced people increasing and the burden, as it already is, falling on neighbours in the Global South.

Ultimately, the extent of the suffering caused by global heating, and the increasingly severe responses required to deal with that, will help determine the reactionary response. While greater numbers of people will call for climate action, any restrictions imposed by governments will provide a sense of vindication to right-wingers warning of overreaching elites.

My sense is that we wont do enough to avoid others bearing the brunt of this, Fieschi said. Solidarity has its limits, after all. Sure, you want good things for the children of the world. But ultimately you will put your children first.

Research for this article was made possible with the support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Washington D.C.s Transatlantic Media Fellowship.

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The right uses the climate crisis to decry immigration - National Observer

Dr. Josef Schuster was elected President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in 2014 and re-elected for another four years in 2018. He recently described the German federal elections as an expression of living democracy while warning that the fight against right-wing populism and right-wing extremism must be continued and intensified.

In our meeting in Dr. Schusters home town of Wrzburg, I set out the Council of Europes established and strong policy of combatting antisemitism, recalling the Secretary Generals speech at the Malm International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism Remember-ReAct in October and ECRIs General Policy Recommendation on preventing and combating antisemitism.

We shared our concern about the rise of antisemitism online and offline in Germany and across Europe, noting in particular the violent antisemitic outbreaks in several European cities in May this year. These outbreaks of antisemitism are often attributed to the migration of refugees into Germany in 2015. However, Dr. Schuster recalled that similar violent outbreaks occurred in 2014, which underlines that the dangerous antisemitism cannot be blamed on the refugees alone.

We agreed on the vital importance to safeguard freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 9 ECHR) for the Jewish communities in Europe.

I assured Dr. Schuster that the fight against antisemitism in all its forms and the protection of Jewish life in Europe would continue to be a top priority for the Council of Europe.

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Meeting with Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany - Council of Europe

Nov 27th 2021

IF YOU WANT to understand how Asias view of the world order has changed, consider the remarks of Lee Hsien Loong, Singapores prime minister. Asked recently if China was rising and the United States was declining, he replied in a qualified way: If you take a long view, you really have to bet on America recovering from whatever things it does to itself. Across the region firms and politicians are adapting to a new geopolitical reality, as was evident at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore last week.

Designed to be more useful than Davos, less Utopian than COP26 and less wooden than Chinas Boao forum, the summit convenes some of the figures who built Sino-American links over the past decades, and bosses and investors responsible for over $20trn of market value. Amid hygienically controlled flesh-pressing, and relentless nasal swabbing, you could get a sense of the tensions between the worlds two biggest economies. It was clear that calls to divide them into two camps are wildly unrealistic.

Asia matters because of its size, with 36% of the worlds GDP, 31% of its stockmarket capitalisation, and 11% of the sales of S&P 500 firms. The region is likely to grow faster than the rest of the world. It is also where the struggle between America and China is played out overtly, with the two systems competing side by side. China dominates trade. Of the 20 major Asian economies, 15 have China as their largest goods-trading partner. Yet most countries also rely on America. In many cases it is their defence partner and the dollar is the currency in which most Asian trade and capital flows take place (in contrast to Europe, which has the euro).

The regions balancing act has got harder as America and China have turned inward, partly in response to the perceived shortcomings of freewheeling global capitalism. A widely held view is that Americas system of government has been permanently impaired by cronyism and populism. As a result its promises are taken less seriously. Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said America would launch a new Asian economic framework in 2022 (it has not joined CPTPP, a regional free-trade deal). Her proposal was greeted only politely, given the Biden administrations protectionism and the risk that Donald Trump wins the election in 2024.

China has also become unpredictable. Most executives and officials are sanguine about the crisis at Evergrande, a property firm. They believe that Chinas technocrats are in control and can avoid a systemic financial crisis. Many sympathise with Chinas antitrust crackdown on big tech. But there is deep unease at Xi Jinpings totalitarian impulses and his broader assault on business. Whereas before, well-connected foreigners would have been given reassurances by Chinas economic reformers in private meetings, now they have to make do with stilted video calls monitored by the Communist Party. Ties are fraying even within companies. One founder of an Asian firm with a Chinese parent company has not met the owners for two years. Few expect China to reopen its borders until after the Party Congress in late 2022, and even then only if the population has been re-jabbed with better vaccines.

One response to estrangement is separation. Americas Trumpian right and progressive left would like their country to be more self-sufficient, while Mr Xis dual-circulation campaign is aimed at producing more goods at home. There are some signs on the ground of Asias investment patterns shifting and becoming less centred on greater China. Indias biggest business, Tata Group, is investing in electric vehicles and battery production at home. On November 9th TSMC, the worlds largest semiconductor company, said it would build a new plant in Japan in co-operation with Sony. Most banks are wary of expanding in turbulent Hong Kong.

But the overall picture is still one of intense interdependency. China has 75% of global battery manufacturing capacity. Even after its new investments, TSMC will have over 80% of its plant in Taiwan, which China claims as its territory. The impossibility of Asia decoupling from China is brought home by a tech boss who reckons 80% of goods sold on South-East Asias booming e-commerce platforms are from the Middle Kingdom. Were multinational firms to spend as they are today, they would need 16 years to replace the cumulative stock of cross-border investment in Asia. Even if they could, few firms want to exit Chinas economy.

As you might expect, most firms want to be geopolitical hybrids that hedge their bets. Singapores firms lead the way. DBS Bank has a third of its deposits in dollars and is expanding in India and China. Temasek and GIC, two sovereign-wealth funds, have about a third of their combined assets in America and a fifth in China. SGX, the exchange, is integrated with Western markets but makes a fifth or so of its business from Chinese investors. American and Chinese firms are adopting Singapore-style dexterity. TikTok, an app owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm, has an army of staff in Singapore: the idea is to show that it is independent of the Chinese state. Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, has just visited Hong Kong and said he was not swayed by geopolitical winds: the bank has boosted its exposure to greater China by 9% since 2019, to $26.5bn. On November 24th he apologised for joking that the bank would outlast the Chinese Communist Party.

If the worst relations between China and America for decades have not prompted decoupling in Asia, what might? The confrontation could yet escalate but both sides seem keen to avoid that for now. Wang Qishan, Chinas vice-president, declared that isolation leads to backwardness. Regulatory and technological shifts could eventually end American dominance in finance and drag Asia more firmly into Chinas orbit. One boss reckons the opening of Chinas capital markets will ultimately be as consequential in finance as its membership of the World Trade Organisation in 2001 was for trade. But for now investors and firmsand Singaporean prime ministersface years of carefully straddling the divide.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "In the flesh"

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Decoupling is the last thing on business leaders minds - The Economist