The United Nations lowered the U.S. ranking to #41 among nations in 2022 due to the extreme gap between the rich and the rest and women’s loss of reproductive freedom. Elsewhere the U.S. ranks as a “flawed democracy” because of its severely fractured society.  These ongoing societal failures feed a continuous decline in health, such that we now ranks 48^th among 200 countries in life expectancy, while having the largest number by far of billionaires and millionaires compared to other wealthy countries.  Corporate lobbies for the weapons industry, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, processed foods, etc. dictate our federal government’s priorities while 78% of US people live paycheck to paycheck.

Blessed is the Poor People’s Campaign: This national campaign in more than 45 states is organized around the needs and demands of the 140 million poor and low income Americans.  Its vision to restructure our society from the bottom up, recognizes “we must…deal with the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of health care, militarism and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism that blames the poor instead of the systems that cause poverty.”  Add sexism to that list of injustices.

Blessed is Fair Share Massachusetts, a coalition of labor unions and dozens of community and faith-based organizations that won passage of the Fair Share Amendment in 2022. The constitutional amendment has instituted a 4% surcharge on annual income over $1 million.  In 2024 the $1.8 billion accrued from the tax on millionaires provides free school meals; free community college; and funds to invest in roads, bridges, and public transit. 

In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which recognizes adequate housing as one cornerstone of the right to an adequate standard of living. All 27 European Union (EU) member states as well as Australia and South Africa institutionalized housing as a human right for their citizens while the United States has not.  In every state except Oregon and Wyoming, it can be illegal to be homeless, essentially casting blame on 650,000 adults and over 2 million children for their poverty-stricken homelessness

Blessed is Rosie’s Place, a model to our country of woman-centered humanism.  Much more than a shelter, it is a mecca and “a second chance for 12,000 poor and homeless women each year” in Boston.  Rosie’s Place was founded on Easter Sunday 1974 in an abandoned supermarket, as the first shelter for women in the country.  From providing meals and sanctuary from the streets, it grew into a multi-service community center that offers women emergency shelter and meals plus support and tools to rebuild their lives.  Rosie’s offers a food pantry, ESOL classes, legal assistance, wellness care, one-on-one support, housing and job search services, and community outreach.  Ninety percent of homeless women have suffered severe physical or sexual abuse at some time in their lives.

Blessed are the nearly 3000 domestic violence shelters and groups organized throughout the U.S. to provide temporary shelter and help women re-build their lives, offering legal assistance, counselling, educational opportunities and multi-services for their children.

“Beating the Blues,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

A recent Gallup Survey found that the U.S. ranks last among comparable nations in trust of their government and major institutions, including business leaders, journalists and reporters, the medical system, banks, public education and organized religion – a plunge from top of the list nearly 20 years ago.

Blessed is Hands Across the Hills, a blue-state red-state seven-year effort formed after Donald Trump’s 2016 election to bring together progressive residents in western Massachusetts and more conservative residents of rural eastern Kentucky, for conversations and sometimes intense dialogues about their political and cultural differences.  They disputed the idea, “that we are hopelessly divided, as a myth sold to us by politicians and mass media, to hide our nation’s all-too-real inequalities.”

Blessed are the peacemakers across dozens of federal agencies, including the military and in communities throughout the country who challenge, resist, resign and refuse orders in our flawed hyper-militaristic government. Since the US-enabled genocide in Gaza, more than 250 veterans and active-duty soldiers have become members, respectively, of About Face: Veterans Against the War,  Feds for Peace, Service in Dissent, and A New Policy PAC.  All have arisen from current and former federal employees aligned with the majority of Americans who want the Israeli-US war on Gaza (now expanded to Lebanon and the West Bank) to end through diplomacy.

Blessed are those of the people, for the people and by the people – beacons in a country sundered by militarism, rich privilege, origins in slavery and genocide of Native Americans, and persistent inequality of women.

The Labor Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, overturned a big Conservative majority of 80 seats in the Parliament achieved by Boris Johnson’s victory in December 2019, with an unprecedented majority of 412 Labor seats to the Conservative Party’s 121 seats, a gain of 211 seats by Labor and a loss of 250 seats by the Conservatives.

Only five years ago, the Labor party led by Jeremy Corbyn suffered its biggest loss since 1935, while in this election the Conservative Party suffered the biggest defeat in its entire history. The election has completely changed Britain’s political landscape. The Conservative Party is a big vote-winning machine and regards itself as the natural party of government. It has ruled Britain for most of its recent history. As the result of winning this election, Keir Starmer has become the 58^th UK prime minister, but only the 7^th Labor prime minister. This shows the scale of the dominance of  British politics by the Conservative, and in the past by a few Liberal prime ministers.

This also shows the significance of the latest Labor victory. The scale of this victory was even bigger than Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory in 1983 when she won 397 seats to Labor’s 209 seats, or the former Labor landslide victory in 1997 under Tony Blair when Labor won 418 seats compared to the Conservative’s 165 seats, with a gain of 145 seats by Labor and the loss of 178 seats by the Conservatives.

A large number of prominent Conservative ministers have lost their seats and have been kicked out of the parliament. They include former Prime Minister Liz Truss, the House of Commons Leader Penny Mordant who was tipped as a future Tory leader, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg who was a former cabinet minister and the leader of the Commons, and 12 other cabinet ministers, including Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Chief Whip Simon Hart, and many other prominent Tories who have fallen by the wayside.

Contrary to US elections where campaigning goes on virtually for the second half of a presidential term, the latest British campaign only lasted six weeks. Elections were held from 7.00 in the morning to 10.00 at night on Thursday. The ballots were counted overnight and the results were announced by 09.00 in the morning. Rishi Sunak, the outgoing Conservative prime minister, conceded defeat at around 03.00 in the morning and in a gracious speech accepted responsibility and apologized for the election defeat, and congratulated Keir Starmer for his impressive victory.

Early in the morning, he and his family left their apartment in 10 Downing Street, went to see King Charles to submit his resignation, followed shortly by Keir Starmer who was invited by the king to form the new government. Starmer drove with his wife back to 10 Downing Street by mid-day and gave his first speech as prime minister in front of the famous black doors of his new residence.

The transfer of power in UK elections is among the fastest, smoothest and most orderly changes of governments in the world. The outgoing prime minister did not question the accuracy of the votes, did not try to overturn the election results and did not ask his deputy prime minister to subvert the will of the electorate. Within a 24-hour period, the election was held, results were announced, the former prime minister left office and the new one took over.

The new prime minister spent the afternoon finalizing the members of his government who will take part in the first cabinet meeting tomorrow morning. The first King’s Speech, which includes the policies of the new government will be delivered to the members of both Houses of Parliament on July 18^th.

Another important aspect of these elections was that, contrary to a number of European countries where we have seen a move to the extreme right, this election resulted in the triumph of a left-of-center party against a rightwing Conservative Party. In many recent elections in Hungary, Holland, Germany, Italy and recently in France we have seen big wins by far-right parties.

Sunak could have remained in power till next January but, encouraged by a fall in the inflation rate and a few favorable economic indicators, he called an early election hoping that Labor and the far-right Reform Party would be unprepared for it. His gamble resulted in the biggest loss for his party.

However, although on paper, Keir Starmer has achieved a remarkable victory, the future may not be as rosy as it seems at the moment. The country is facing a number of major economic problems, including low productivity, high interest rates resulting in high mortgages and high prices, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, long waiting lists for seeing a doctor or a dentist and unacceptable delays in hospital admissions, etc.

In his first speech outside Number 10 Downing Street, Starmer who had won with his slogan of “Change” referred to the public’s mistrust of politicians and said: “Change begins now … We said we would end the chaos, and we will, we said we would turn the page, and we have. Today, we start the next chapter, begin the work of change, the mission of national renewal and start to rebuild our country.” However, he admitted: “Changing a country is not like flicking a switch. And the world is now a more volatile place. This will take a while.”

The problem is that millions of people who have been suffering as the result of a long recession and who have pinned their hopes on rapid change under the new government may not be willing to wait too long for all the promises to be fulfilled.

LBC Video: “Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘warning’ for Keir Starmer” | LBC

The other problem is that although the number of seats that have been won may look very impressive on paper, the Labor victory has not been based on solid foundations. Labor may have come to dominate the parliament but it has won only 36% of the vote. The Conservatives won 23%, and Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party won some 17% of the vote. In other words, the combined number of votes cast for rightwing parties exceeds the numbere of votes cast for Labor. The vote has been a rejection of the Conservative Party and not necessarily an endorsement of the Labor Party.

Nigel Farage, a close friend and supporter of President Trump, was the leader of the far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009, and 2010 to 2016. He was also the main force behind Brexit who pushed for the referendum under former Prime Minister Cameron and who supported Boris Johnson to get it done. He stood unsuccessfully seven times to win a seat in the Parliament and succeeded yesterday in his eighth attempt.

Being disillusioned by the failure of Brexit to stop large numbers of migrants to Britain and to achieve what he called full political and economic independence from Europe, he formed the Reform UK party, and only during the election campaign he stood again for parliament.

His party which is way to the right of the Conservative Party won 17% of the vote, but due to the nature of the first past the post system of voting in Britain, it won only four seats in the parliament. Most former Conservative voters who were fed up with the party voted for Reform, resulting in big losses for the Conservative Party. Reform came in second place in 103 constituencies, set against only three during the last election in 2019, when a pact with Boris Johnson led it to hold off contesting Conservative-held seats.

Consequently, the big Labor win is more due to the hemorrhage from the Conservatives to Reform, rather than due to support for Labor. The Reform Party which devastated the Conservatives in this election has vowed to target Labor in the future and become the main opposition to Labor. This should ring alarm bells for the Labor Party, especially if the government cannot stem the tide of illegal immigration or if it tries to reach some agreements to cooperate with the EU.

While Reform poses a threat from the right, many people on the left of the Labor Party are also very worried about the center-right policies of the new Labor Party. Many leftwing labor supporters even regard Starmer a traitor who went along with a rightwing campaign against former Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Cornyn who advocated socialist policies and even opposed the possession of nuclear weapons and NATO membership had many supporters in the Labor Party, especially among younger members. He built Labor into the biggest political party in Europe.

However, he became the victim of an extensive campaign of vilification and was accused of anti-Semitism. The fact remains that, as in most Western countries, there are more antisemites in the extreme right groups than in socialist groups. However, the well-orchestrated campaign resulted in Corbyn’s defeat in the 2019 election, which was won by Boris Johnson. Although the Labor Party attracted many more members under Corbyn than before, the anti-Semitism campaign was very effective and led to his undoing.

It is interesting to note that Starmer got three million votes less in 2024 than Corbyn got in 2017 and half a million votes less than Corbyn got in 2019. However, due to the vagaries of the British voting system, Corbyn went to a crashing defeat, while Starmer won a landslide victory in 2024. After his defeat in 2019, Corbyn resigned as party leader and Starmer who had been appointed as EU negotiator by Corbyn was elected leader. He waged a relentless campaign of purging the Labor Party of alleged antisemites, and when Corbyn protested that the extent of antisemitism in the party had been exaggerated, Starmer expelled him from the party. In this election, Corbyn stood as an independent candidate in his constituency and won with a big manority.

All of this has alienated a considerable number of leftwing members of the Labor Party who have never forgiven Starmer for his alleged betrayal of his former boss. In a rare recent interview, Corbyn said that the pressure of the Israeli government on the Labor Party had been huge and this had led to his ouster. He said: “During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labor Party Committee, they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes? And I said No, I give no such undertaking. I will give no such agreement because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created the most incredible stress, and by the way I have been there on nine occasions in Israel, Palestine and the West Bank… So, was I surprised at this support for Israel? No, because the pressure of the Israeli government on the Labor Party is huge…”

So, although at the moment the Labor victory is sweet and the government will be able to do a great deal of good for the country, there are some clouds in the horizon which might become threatening in the future, especially if the new government is not able to resolve all the problems quickly and adequately.

But the comfortable majority of the center has experienced significant changes. Firstly, it has shrunk by around 20 parliamentarians out of the 720 that make up the parliament. Secondly, it has moved to the right. The Social Democrats experienced limited losses, Renew lost more than a fourth of its members, and the European People’s Party (EPP) won 13 seats. And thirdly, and more importantly, the idea that these three parties represent a solid center that will not reach agreements with the far-right belongs to the past.

On the campaign trail, Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President and main candidate of the EPP, announced that she would accept the votes of the far-right party Brothers of Italy to be re-elected in her position by the European Parliament, which cannot propose candidates but can turn them down. Brothers of Italy is the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Both von der Leyen and the leader of the EPP, her fellow countryman Manfred Weber, have been engaged in a long-running campaign to portray Meloni as a moderate leader. They have been relatively successful, partly because the EPP’s movement to the right has bridged the gap with the far-right. Before the European elections, the EPP approved a manifesto calling for tripling the staff of Frontex, the European border agency accused of multiple human rights violations. In a proposal that echoes Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Plan, the EPP also announced it wants to transfer asylum seekers in the EU to so-called “third safe countries”, where their asylum claims would be processed.  

Hans Kundnani, the author of the book “Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project” (a very recommendable work reviewed here for Informed Comment), provides a sharp analysis of this change. As he explains, “to understand the influence of the hard right on the EU, it is necessary to go beyond the raw numbers and to look at the way that it is shaping the agenda of the centre right. There has always been a way that the hard right could win without winning.”[1]

Two main reasons have turned Meloni’s Brothers of Italy into an attractive partner for the center-right, and none of them is related to the party’s supposed moderation. The first is that Brothers of Italy is the strongest political force in Italy, and Meloni’s 24 parliamentarians in Brussels will hold considerable leverage in a context where comfortable majorities will be difficult to assemble.

The second is that Meloni, contrary to other far-right leaders such as the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, subscribes to trans-Atlanticism and the continuation of military support for Ukraine. The recent publication of a video by an undercover journalist in which some leading members of Meloni’s party give fascist salutes should belie Meloni’s moderation, in case the politician’s self-declared admiration for Mussolini in her youth years was not sufficient.  But in an EU that is becoming increasingly militarized, support for NATO turns far-right politicians into moderate conservatives. This helps explain why von der Leyen’s European Commission is delaying the publication of a report on eroding press freedom in Italy.

Von der Leyen might eventually not need Brothers of Italy’s votes to stay as Commission President, especially if she convinces the European Greens to vote for her. But a new damn has been broken in the normalization of the far-right in Europe, and we can expect the EPP to vote more often together with the far-right in the coming parliament. At the same time, the EPP might use the threat of reaching out to the far-right to tone down proposals coming from its left on topics such as combating climate change.

In the European Parliament, the far-right is divided into two groups. The Conservatives and Reformists faction includes Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the Spanish party Vox, and the Polish Law and Justice, which was voted out of office in 2023 after causing major damage to the rule of law. Meanwhile, the Identity and Democracy faction includes Le Pen’s National Rally or Salvini’s Lega, the other far-right party in Italy’s ruling coalition.

The combination of the two far-right groups has increased its presence in the European Parliament by 23 seats. This figure, however, fails to capture the magnitude of their rise. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) finished second in a German-wide election for the first time in history and is sending 15 parliamentarians to Brussels. The AfD won the elections in eastern Germany and received the second most votes in the south of the country.

During the 2019-2024 period, the AfD parliamentarians belonged to the Identity and Democracy group until they were expelled shortly before the European elections. Le Pen had long sought to dissociate herself from the AfD because the German party hurt her efforts to present a supposedly moderated image. The trigger for the AfD’s expulsion was an interview by the AfD main candidate in the European elections, Maximilian Krah, with the newspaper La Repubblica. In the interview, Krah said that not all members of the SS, the Nazi elite group responsible for the concentration camps, could be considered criminals.

One of the biggest winners in the European elections was a party whose leader, Herbert Kickl, made very similar statements about the SS in 2010. Kickl leads the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), for which the European elections represented their first win in an Austria-wide election. They collected 25.4% of the votes, closely followed by the main center-right and center-left parties. Austria will celebrate national elections at the end of September, and the FPÖ is currently leading the polls.

Journalist Paul Lendvai’s recently published book “Austria Behind the Mask: Politics of a Nation since 1945” provides valuable insights to understand Austria’s recent history, and why the far-right might be able to appoint a chancellor in the Alpine country before the end of 2024. The FPÖ, founded in 1956, was first led by Anton Reinthaller and then, until 1978, by Friedrich Peter. They were both former SS officers.

It was under the leadership of Jörg Haider in the 1990s that the FPÖ consolidated its results in successive parliamentary elections over the 20% mark. About Haider, Lendvai writes that he “catered to the shrinking group of old Nazis and the steadily growing group of radical xenophobes.”[2] In the Austrian parliament, for instance, Haider referred to Nazi extermination camps as “punishment camps”. In 1999, the FPÖ finished second in an election to the Austrian parliament for the first (and until now, only) time and entered the government as the junior partner of the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP). Haider stayed away from government positions to minimize the international anger against the new coalition. This did not prevent the EU from imposing temporary sanctions on Austria.

Such a strong response might have been counter-productive, as it contributed to the FPÖ self-portrayal as political outsiders, argues Lendvai. What is clear is that the irate EU reaction from 2000 was not repeated when the ÖVP and the FPÖ established a new coalition government in 2017. Under the coalition agreement, “the FPÖ succeeded in winning, among other things, such key portfolios as the interior, foreign and defence ministries, control over all secret services and the post of governor of the National Bank.”[3] The coalition collapsed after a corruption scandal was revealed in 2019 involving Heinz-Christian Strache, the FPÖ leader. This notwithstanding, a new coalition between the center-right and the far-right is a very real likelihood after this year’s election, and this time the FPÖ could be in the leading role.

The recent elections to the European Parliament, as well as the Austrian case, show that the far-right is not in a position to reach absolute majorities in proportional representation systems. This might be different in the French parliamentary elections that will start this weekend, where the two-round system in 577 constituencies could facilitate the achievement of a parliamentary majority for Le Pen’s National Rally.

The far-right has been increasingly normalized both discursively and in the coalition politics of center-right European parties. The EU sanctions against Austria in 2000 after the entry of the FPÖ into the Austrian government were perhaps a strategic mistake in the long-term, as Lendvai argues. Still, they were a manifestation of the feeling that an Austrian government including the FPÖ needed to be treated differently, that a red line should be drawn. When Meloni became Prime Minister of Italy in 2022, or when, last month, Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) managed to form a coalition government in the Netherlands, the red line drawn in 2000 was nowhere to be seen.

[1] Hans Kundnani, “Confronting the New Europe.” The New Statesman, June 11, 2024. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2024/06/confronting-the-new-europe.

[2] Paul Lendvai, “Austria Behind the Mask: Politics of a Nation since 1945” (London: Hurst & Co., 2023), p. 62.

[3] Ibid., p. 73.

—

Featured image by Marc Martorell Junyent.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Cesar A. Cruz

Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – To most people, comedy can be a source of entertainment, an enjoyment to remove us from our daily routine and everyday problems. For this reason, many comedians tend to avoid complicated topics and controversial issues so as not to offend any part of their audience and to broaden the scope of their reach and influence. Yet, there’s another breed of comedians, like the late great George Carlin, who reject safe comedy and believe that comedy and satire can and must challenge taboos. By using witty, clever jokes they delve into topics in ways that the classical politicians and journalists are unable to do. A lot of research believes that this brand of comedy has a lot of merit when it comes to navigating complex political situations, fighting injustices, or advancing social change in the world. Unsurprisingly then, the recent War in Gaza has become the subject of many comedians’ sets and punchlines for a myriad of reasons.

Comedy at its core is meant to be funny, that’s the one thing almost every person on the planet would agree to. Yet is that all that comedy is good for? A lot of researchers would disagree. Research by Sara Ödmark proposes that the main difference between comedians and journalists in news framing is that comedy tends to be more personal, emotional and understood at a societal level. These features in comedy create a space for the audience to feel heard and understood. Caty Borum Chattoo shares similar findings in her research where she argues that journalism institutions should take notes from comedians on how to make news accessible to their readers. While this may come as a shock to some, many people trust comedians’ input in serious matters such as political affairs. For instance, an old Pew research from 2007 revealed that “16% of Americans said they regularly watched The Daily Show or the Comedy Central spin-off, The Colbert Report”. Jon Stewart, who wouldn’t be identified as a classic journalist, is trusted by many Americans for his provoking and satirical takes on American and foreign affairs. Ödmark clarifies that comedians like Stewart occupy a position her research coined as a “comedic interlocutor: a satirist who uses humor, emotion, comedic metaphors, and analogies while addressing the audience to discuss serious topics”. A 2020 research by Rutgers goes into detail on how this form of comedy could become a force for social change through:

“Drawing attention, disarming audiences, lowering resistance to persuasion, breaking down social barriers and stimulating sharing and discussion…Comedy also can have broader cultural effects, shaping news coverage and social media discourse, providing visibility to alternative ideas and marginalized groups, and serving as a resource for collective action”. 

Zeteo Video: “Bassem Youssef and Mehdi Hasan on Gaza: “If you’re going to kill me, I’m allowed to scream.”

So, if comedy can be such a force of change, how has it been employed in the war in Gaza? 

For starters, comedy can be a strong therapeutic tool to process feelings and emotions for both the comedian and the audience. This is true for many Palestinian comedians who found solace in their comedy. Palestinian comedian Sammy Obeid explained in an interview with CBC how talking about the conflict not only can help bring the Palestinian narrative to light but is also a way for him to process his emotions, “I get to say things that maybe haven’t been said before … and helping people come to those realizations with me also feels cathartic,” This sentiment is shared by his fellow Palestinian comedian Mohammed “Mo” Amer whose comedy has been focused mostly on his Palestinian heritage, through his Netflix specials such as “The Vagabond” and “Mohammed in Texas,” and his comedy series “Mo”. Amer believes that comedy can help foster understanding and can assist in humanizing Palestinians, especially for Western audience. Yet, he also acknowledges the strength of comedy for comedians to process their own feelings stating that “Comedy has been what saved me.” Hence, through comedy, these comedians found an outlet to channel their grievances and let other people, who may not have a proper way to do so, feel heard and understood.

While comedy can be a great outlet for grief and processing our emotions, other comedians believe in its power as a tool for social criticism. A notable example of such potency can be seen in the Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef. A heart surgeon-turned-political comedian, Youssef came into the limelight through his satirical show “Al Bernameg”. In format, Youssef’s show mirrored the Daily Show with Jon Stewart garnering him the nickname ‘Egypt’s Jon Stewart’. His main focus was the criticism of Egyptian politics and politicians through satire. This premise, while highly successful, landed him in hot water with the government and he had to flee from his country. These days, Youssef decided to aim his satirical talent at the war in Gaza, attending different interviews prepared with satirical, witty, and often exaggerated answers to the hosts’ talking points. 

His two interviews with Piers Morgan remain two of the best examples of how comedy can be phenomenally successful in delivering poignant criticism and in making people listen to alternative perspectives. Through his dark humor, both interviews attempt to dismantle the Israeli points of view by exposing their illogic and by humanizing and shedding light on the Palestinian perspective. For instance, to expose the Israeli’s overuse of the human shield argument, Youssef jokes with an uncomfortable Piers Morgan about how hard it is to kill his Palestinian wife:

“You know those Palestinians, they’re very dramatic: ‘Ahh, Israelis killing us!’ But they never die. … They are … very difficult people to kill. I know because I’m married to one. I tried many times — couldn’t kill her… I tried to get to her, but she uses our kids as human shields; I can never take her out.” 

This joke is funny but also uncomfortable because of how embedded it is in truth. Yet, this is only one example of many that Youssef employs to expose the fallacies of the Western media but also to highlight the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israeli propaganda. As Noor Nooman puts it, Youssef’s humor “isn’t intended to make us laugh. It is intended to make us feel agony and to provoke people who blithely mouth Western talking points about Palestinians to question their assumptions”.

The best comedians are master storytellers, they create a space for their jokes that is both immersed in reality and exaggeration. An ability that, when appropriately used, can render the audience defenseless against their own misconceptions and assumptions. Akin to the jesters of the past, comedians hold immense power to oppose the injustices of our leaders and to expose the lies and hypocrisies of those in charge. 

(The Conversation) – A new conceptual tool is required to fully understand the most recent rhetorical strategies of far-right activists and politicians, including former U.S. President Donald Trump. This is precisely what the concept of “intersectionality of hate” aims to do.

Analysts and academics have been talking about the intersectionality of hate for several years now. In doing so, they draw on the notion of intersectionality developed by African-American law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to designate a reality shaped by sexism, racism, classism and other categories (there are some 30 in all).

Crenshaw points out that African-American women have always been aware of this complex reality. Mary Church Terrell, a Black suffragist, declared around 1920 that “a white woman has only one handicap to overcome, that of sex. I have two: sex and race.”

While researching anti-feminism and discourses of men’s victimhood related to a so-called crisis of masculinity, I became aware of how the new concept of intersectionality of hate makes it possible to understand the interweaving of hateful discourses. The French historian Christine Bard, with whom I have the good fortune to collaborate, rightly points out that “anti-feminism practises intersectionality, but it’s the intersectionality of hate,” which brings together sexism, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and homophobia.

This interweaving of hate speech can also be viewed from different points of view, for example, from the racist and xenophobic or “anti-gender” and transphobic movements.

Conceptual innovation

The popularity of the concept of intersectionality no doubt explains the synchronous appearance of the intersectionality of hate on both sides of the Atlantic.

The article “How Trump Made Hate Intersectional” appeared in New York magazine on November 9, 2016, the day after Trump’s election. It was signed by the African-American intellectual Rembert Browne, who explained how the Republican candidate federated voters. “Trump won the presidency by making hate intersectional. He encouraged sexists to also be racists and homophobes, while saying disgusting things about immigrants in public and Jews online.”

Hatred is mixed here with the fear of being robbed of one’s country, institutions and personal achievements, and with anger at not having what one thinks one is entitled to simply by virtue of being a heterosexual white male. This attitude is reminiscent of that of the “Angry White Men” that was much talked about just a few years ago: it is no longer limited to blaming a single group for real or imagined personal problems but blames all minority groups. That means there is no longer a single scapegoat, but a whole herd.

At the same time, in France, Bard, who has shown that anti-feminism and lesbophobia are intertwined and mutually reinforcing, analyzed 1,367 articles dealing with women, gender and sexuality published in the far-right weekly Minute.

MSNBC: “‘He’s broke’: AOC roasts Trump for hosting a campaign rally in the Bronx”

She found that “the intersectionality of hate is practised, associating feminism, homosexualism, Islamism and immigrationism.” She notes that political and media figures are targeted with particular intensity if they are women, and also if they are Jewish, Muslim or of African origin. The historian concludes that this intersectionality of hate runs counter to any egalitarian or inclusive perspective.

Attacks on progressives

Shortly afterwards, the journal Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice devoted a short special report to the intersectionality of hate, associating it with the far right, which attacks progressives and accuses them of imposing their values and defending “minorities.”

In addition to racist and sexist attacks, there are also virulent accusations against “cultural Marxists” (or “wokes”) who allegedly control the State in order to develop “positive discrimination” programs and influence the education system to be able to indoctrinate young people with “political correctness.”

Each attack is an opportunity to point out that the essence of the United States is European, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, heterosexual, capitalist and meritocratic. The attacks also serve to distract attention from the elite that really dominates the country, which is made up of multi-billionaires in the White House, as well as heads of big business and media.

The intersectionality of hate is disseminated by influential traditional (Fox News) and web (Daily Stormer and Daily Wire) media, think tanks like the National Policy Institute and polemicists like Christopher Rufo and Ben Shapiro.

Terrorism

The notion of intersectionality of hate is taken up again in the analysis of hate speech and those associated with terrorist attacks. For example, a study in Europe, Intersectional Hate Speech Online, concludes that “Women remain the group of people most often targeted by intersectional hate speech […], for example Muslim women, Roma women or Women of Colour. […] Another target group for intersectional hate speech is women in public positions.”

Europol also mentions the intersectionality of hate in its 2020 Terrorism Situation and Trend Report. The agency presents a list of attacks motivated by anti-feminism, racism and xenophobia. It gives the example of the one perpetrated in 2011 in Norway by the Nazi Anders Breivik, who claimed in his manifesto to be defending Christian European civilization, and who massacred 76 young socialists.

Europol also mentions Elliot Rodger, who committed one of the first mass murders associated with involuntary celibates in California in 2014, and who also expressed sexist and racist hatred in his manifesto.

“I was anti-everything,” answered a former French gendarme when the court asked him if he was homophobic, during a trial for having planned attacks on several targets. The defendant had also written a neo-Nazi manifesto celebrating Breivik.

Other Islamophobic attackers had planned to attack feminists. The one who targeted the Québec mosque in 2017 was interested in feminist groups at Laval University, and the one who decimated a Muslim family in Ontario, in 2021, had scouted abortion clinics.

Finally, British journalist Helen Lewis points out in her article “The Intersectionality of Hate”, published in The Atlantic, on a mass killer who targeted Buffalo’s African-American community in 2022, that his manifesto included antisemitic cartoons.

Victim rhetoric

So, the intersectionality of hate works by superimposing similar analytical frameworks that systematically deduce the same dynamics from reality, and always lead to the same conclusion: the white heterosexual male is a victim of “minorities” he must resist.

This rhetoric helps to legitimize even the most obvious abuses, such as voting for the would-be dictator for a day Trump, or imposing one’s vision of things through terrorist violence.

The intersectionality of hate also targets progressives and reflects the refusal to recognize that the “majority” of white heterosexual men is, in reality, a minority whose claim to superiority, or even supremacy, is well and truly contested in the name of social justice.

Francis Dupuis-Déri, Professeur, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( The Middle East Monitor ) – The recent move by some European nations to recognise the state of Palestine will have wider repercussions for Israel and the far-right elements within its government and society, according to experts. Ireland, Spain and Norway plan to formally recognise Palestine next week, and more European nations are expected to follow suit in the coming days.

“This issue of Palestinian statehood has been discussed for many years,” Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s MENA Programme, told Anadolu. “I think what accelerated it recently is the war in Gaza, and all of a sudden, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is back on the table.”

With their announcement, these European countries have sent a “signal that leaving this conflict unattended has dire consequences,” he said. “One of the ways to deal with it is to change the dynamic in the relations between the Israelis and Palestinians.”

According to Mekelberg, a lot has to do with the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a key factor being the fact that it is the most far-right in history. “Plus there is the continuous building of settlements and settler violence, which sends the message to the international community that… the government has no interest in peace.”

The three countries have their own different ways and reasons to recognise Palestine, but the common thread could be an attempt at “breaking the deadlock,” the expert suggested. “It needs to be broken by changing the balance of power between the Israelis and the Palestinians, by making negotiations between a state and state, and not between a state and an organisation [the PLO].”

Israel, on the other hand, is “trying to spin it as a sort of a reward for Hamas or something that will derail any future peace process, which I think is not the case,” he said. “If all sides read into this, what they should see is that it can actually enhance the chances of peace.”

On the US position on the issue, Mekelberg said that there are divisions between Washington and some EU countries. He pointed out that the US veto remains the only obstacle to Palestine getting the UN Security Council’s backing for full membership.

“I think that when it comes to Palestinian statehood, the US is quite isolated in its opinion, not only with the EU, but also internationally.”

The decision taken by Spain, Ireland and Norway is the outcome of “growing coordination to advance a credible political track to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and support Palestinian self-determination,” added Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow with the MENA Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Recognition can contribute towards advancing a sustainable post-conflict solution for Gaza… Without strong political support for Palestinian self-determination, any post-conflict political efforts for Gaza will lack legitimacy.”

Recognition, he said, will provide further European impetus to exclude and sanction Israeli settlements – including potentially setting the scene for a push by “like-minded” countries for an EU ban on settlement products and financial services.

Al Jazeera English: “What does the increasing recognition of Palestinian statehood mean? | Inside Story”

Lovatt expects more countries to recognise Palestine in the future. “Slovenia has indicated that it will follow suit by 13 June once its parliament votes on the subject. Other European countries such as France and Belgium are contemplating similar moves, although this does not appear imminent.” He pointed out that European governments are also responding to domestic public pressure to do more to support Palestinian rights. “So, it is good foreign policy and good domestic politics.”

Lovatt believes that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will see this as a victory for his “internationalisation strategy launched in 2011,” but many Palestinians will view it as “symbolic” and “without concrete action for a ceasefire in Gaza and holding Israel to account over its violation of international law and settlement policy.”

Spain, Ireland and Norway are all countries that had been pressing Israel to stop its deadly attacks on civilians in Gaza, noted Tugce Ersoy Ceylan, an associate professor at the Izmir Katip Celebi University in Turkiye.

“Since international bodies did not take any sanction decision within the context of international law, they may have decided to take such a path to make a stand. This unilateral symbolic recognition may have been made so as not to remain a spectator, even if it is late in the day.”

Ceylan does not view the move as “progress towards resolving the Palestinian issue,” but said that it was significant that “the right of Palestinians to establish a state, which had been forgotten and condemned to the status quo of unresolved issues, is being brought up again by significant Western states.”

She suggested that this would not lead to “any immediate pressure” on Israel to sit at the negotiating table, not least because “Netanyahu is determined not to compromise.”

A wave of recognition by other countries is unlikely, but “it would not be surprising if EU governments… developed other formulas… to clear their names.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

The Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

As for France, its foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, said Wednesday that recognizing Palestine was “not taboo.” He said that France would prefer to take that step, however, when it would have a practical effect. He said, “”it is not just a symbolic issue or the challenge of taking a political position, but a diplomatic tool in the service of a solution yielding two states living side by side, in peace and security”.

President Emmanuel Macron is not as free to act decisively as Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. He leads a centrist government that has increasingly sought support from the right and big capital, though he once served in a Socialist cabinet. His backing for the International Criminal Court’s request for warrants against two top Israeli leaders has caused a backlash among his right wing colleagues.

Spain’s Sanchez, in contrast, is the Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and the head of a left wing coalition in parliament. He is facing vehement demands from those further to his left that he unrecognize Israel the way Colombia has over the brutal Gaza campaign, and that he stop selling Israel arms.

Sanchez explained his reasoning in a speech, insisting that the step was not “anti-Israel.”

“We must say to the Palestinians that we are with them, that there is hope,” he said. He continued the affirmation that “the land and identity of Palestine will continue to exist in our hearts, in international legality and in the future of a harmonious Mediterranean.” In the past, Sanchez has defined the Palestinian state as the territory of “Gaza, the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

He said that Spain’s foreign policy has to be coherent. Madrid voted in the UN General Assembly for Palestinian admission as a member state in the United Nations. “If Spain voted in favor of recognizing Palestine as a state with full rights in the UNO,” he said, “we must also recognize it bilaterally.”

Spain to recognise Palestinian state, PM says • FRANCE 24 English Video

Sanchez has been scathing on Netanyahu’s Gaza campaign. He complained Wednesday, “He doesn’t have a peace project for Palestine.” He said it was legitimate to fight Hamas after what it did on Oct. 7. But, he cautioned, “Netanyahu generates so much rancor that the two-state solution is in danger of being made unviable.” The present offensive, he said, “will only increase hatred by worsening security prospects for Israel and the entire region.”

In a subtle slam at the United States, the Spanish PM observed, “The countries that believe in a rules-based international order are obliged to act in Ukraine and Palestine, without double standards, and to do everything in our power — providing humanitarian aid, assisting the displaced, and using every political avenue to say that we will not allow the two-state solution to be forcibly destroyed.”

Sanchez made an excellent point when he went on to point out that a two state solution that guarantees security to both sides requires that the two parties feel themselves able to negotiate with legitimacy and must have the same status as states. He said that recognizing the State of Palestine was a way of enabling it to confront Hamas, an organization, he insisted, that must disappear so that the Palestine Authority can rule Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem as its capital.

I have long argued that the reason for which treaties like the 1993 Oslo Accords have been so easily trashed by the Israelis is that the Palestinians are stateless and so Israel, a state, does not have to treat them as a legitimate government. It can easily renege on any agreement with them, since they have no legitimate status. Only be recognizing them as a state can third parties actually push Israel and the Palestinians to a settlement. Sanchez sees this.

He accused right wing Spanish leader José Maria Aznar of not being able to see the Palestinians and their suffering, even though he was able to see what no one else was — the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.

Sanchez’s comments on the issue are informed, ethical and insightful. No one on the US political scene speaks halfway so coherently on this matter.

The prime minister also said the step was intended to push for a cease fire in Gaza. “In a while when shelling ceases and the dust of the tanks and the destruction of buildings dissipates, we will realize that we have witnessed one of the darkest episodes of the 21st century, and I want the Spaniards to be able to say with their heads high that they were on the right side of history.”

They were. Americans were not.

Outside the court, at most twenty people could be counted as being there to support Höcke at some point during the morning. In their conversations, they complained that the procedure against Höcke was politically motivated. This had been Höcke’s message from the very beginning. Meanwhile, around 600 demonstrators had protested against the radical right politician earlier on the morning, before the start of the judicial process. There will be hearings until mid-May, but it is already clear that the most severe punishment for Höcke would be the payment of a fine. 

Höcke, who rivals Donald Trump in his mastery of self-victimization, failed to explain in his initial “X” post why he had to appear before a court in Halle. The AfD politician, who can be openly described as a fascist according to a German court, had to answer for his use, on at least two occasions, of the slogan “Alles für Deutschland” (Everything for Germany). The phrase was employed by the paramilitary National Socialist group SA (“Sturmabteilung”, or Storm Division). Using National Socialist slogans and symbols is a punishable crime in Germany. 

Höcke, a former history teacher, promised he did not know the origins of the slogan. His repeated use of expressions with strong National Socialist connotations, such as “entartet” (degenerate) or “Volkstod” (death of the nation) in public speeches and his 2018 book, belie this claim. Furthermore, the German sociologist Andreas Kemper has long established that there are striking parallels between Höcke’s public statements and different articles that appeared under the pseudonym Landolf Ladig in neo-Nazi publications more than a decade ago. One of these articles argued that Germany had been forced into a “preventive war” in 1939. 

The lack of open support for Höcke in front of the court in Halle was all the more embarrassing because the radical right politician had been given an incredibly powerful loudspeaker by Elon Musk, the billionaire and owner of Twitter/ “X”  since October 2022. Musk reacted to Höcke’s “X” post denouncing what in his eyes was a restriction on freedom of speech and asked him, “What did you say?”. After Höcke explained he had said “Everything for Germany”, Musk asked why the phrase was illegal. “Because every patriot in Germany is defamed as a Nazi, as Germany has legal texts in its criminal code not found in any other democracy,” replied Höcke. He forgot to add that no other democracy is the successor state of a regime that killed 6 million Jewish people and set the European continent on fire, with up to 20 million deaths in six years in Europe alone. 

Al Jazeera English Video: “German far-right politician on trial for alleged use of banned Nazi slogan”

Höcke has made abundantly clear in public statements how he understands Germany’s National Socialist past. He has referred to the monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin as a “monument of shame” and said that history is not black-and-white when asked to comment about Nazism. Elon Musk’s apparent support for Höcke should not come as a surprise given their shared antisemitic and Islamophobic views. The South African businessman has launched antisemitic tropes against Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros. According to Musk, Soros “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.” The AfD, like so many other far-right movements around the world, has also targeted Soros. Furthermore, Musk recently espoused the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.” Musk’s Islamophobia does certainly not lag behind. The “X” owner agreed with a far-right blogger who said France has been conquered by Islam. Again, Musk’s Islamophobia is a perfect fit for the AfD. The party was accurately described as having “a manifestly anti-Muslim program” by an independent commission established after a right-wing terrorist killed nine people, who had originally come as migrants, in Hanau in February 2020. 

Musk and the AfD have supported each other in the past. In September 2023, the billionaire criticized the German government’s funding of NGOs rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean and called people to vote for the AfD. Three months later, the co-leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, said Musk’s takeover of Twitter was good for “freedom of opinion in Germany.” One of the deputy leaders of the AfD group in the German parliament, Beatrix von Storch, has supported Musk in his ongoing confrontation with the Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The judge is demanding that “X” close accounts spreading fake news in Brazil. Since then, Musk has become a hero for the Brazilian far-right backing former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 

The mutual sympathies between Musk and German-speaking far-right radicals also extend to the Austrian political scene. According to Harald Vilimsky, a member of the European Parliament for the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Musk’s overtake of Twitter represented an end to censorship. The FPÖ, founded in 1955, has a far longer history than the AfD, established in 2013. Their political programs, however, defend similar far-right positions and both parties are members of the Identity and Democracy Party group in the European Parliament, one of the two far-right groups at the European level.

Meanwhile, in March 2024, Martin Sellner, the leader of the radical right group Identitarian Movement in Austria, was interrupted by the local police while delivering one of his racist speeches in the small Swiss municipality of Tegerfelden, close to Germany. When Sellner posted about the police action against him, Musk replied by asking whether this was legal. Sellner, taking a page from Höcke’s self-victimization, said that “challenging illegal immigration is becoming increasingly riskier than immigrating illegally.” The local police were simply enforcing a legal provision that allows them to force people out of the region if they “behave in a prohibited manner.” Sadly enough, Sellner is used to spreading his racist propaganda with impunity.

Martin Sellner and the Identitarian Movement’s hatred against migrants knows no limits. This transnational group of radicals hired a ship in 2017 to prevent NGOs in the Mediterranean from assisting boats in distress. Once they ran into technical problems, the Identitarians were helped by Sea Eye, a German NGO that normally rescues migrants instead of radical racists. The Identitarians have directly benefited from Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. After Musk bought the company, Sellner’s account on the social platform, and also that of his Identitarian Movement, were reinstated. Twitter had blocked the accounts in 2020 as they violated the rules to prevent the promotion of terrorism and violent extremism that the social platform had in place back then. In his first post after his Twitter account was reinstated, Sellner explicitly thanked Musk for “making the platform more open again.” Sellner was denied entry to the United States in 2019 because he had a $1,700 donation from the right-wing terrorist who killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, also in 2019. 

In January 2024, the independent German investigative platform Correctiv reported that Sellner had presented his proposals for the deportation of millions of migrants with foreign citizenship and Germans with a migration background in a secret meeting in November 2023. The encounter in Potsdam, organized by two German businessmen, counted with the participation of Roland Hartwig (who at the time was the personal aide of the AfD co-leader Alice Weidel) and Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD parliamentary leader in Saxony-Anhalt. Some members of the “Werteunion” (Values Union), an ultra-conservative group within the center-right CDU, were also in attendance. The findings by Correctiv finally led the CDU to cut its ties to the “Werteunion”. 

The lack of open displays of support for Höcke in Halle last week was comforting. Even more positive were the mass protests against the far-right politician and the AfD in front of the court. However, recent polls in both Germany and Austria are reason for great concern. The AfD would currently receive around 18% of the votes and finish second in an election to the German parliament. Meanwhile, its Austrian counterpart, the FPÖ, would be close to 30% of the national vote and emerge as the strongest party. Austria will vote this autumn, whereas elections in Germany should take place at the end of 2025. 

In both Germany and Austria, as well as in other countries such as the United States and Brazil, the far-right is benefiting from Musk’s support and open-door policy to radicals on “X.” Needless to say, though, Musk is just offering a new platform to very old ideas. The far-right’s threat would hardly be less serious if the billionaire had a sudden political conversion. What to do, then? One of the banners at the demonstration against Höcke in Halle pointed to the holistic approach that will be needed to counter the far-right. The banner read “AfD Stoppen! Juristisch, Politisch, Gesellschaftlich.” In English: “Stopping AfD! Judicially, Politically, Socially.” 

A more permissive attitude toward guns in Israel following Oct. 7 will only lead to greater Israeli violence and impunity.